BackgroundMotion code == Great
Note: This is a review of the recently release BackgroundMotion source code and developer guidance. Full disclosure – I used to work with Jeremy and consider him a friend.
I finally made some time today to sit down and browse through the source code for BackgroundMotion. For those of you who haven’t come across this project – it’s kind of a best practices sample built by the great guys at Mindscape. Background motion is a Web2.0, AJAXified, community driven site for submitting videos for use with Windows Vista Dreamscene (the use a video as your background rather than just an image thingy). It’s pretty buzzword compliant – it’s got tags, AJAX and user generated content. On the backend it uses ASP.NET AJAX, LINQ to SQL, the Web Client Software factory, MVP, Unit testing and all sorts of other goodies.
Unlike lots of the samples and guidance coming from the P&P team – this one is also a real functioning LIVE application. Rather than just completing something to the degree necessary to show the main concepts – this is a pretty finished piece of work. Well – production ready at least – what software is ever “finished”?
It’s also a great resource for looking at structuring a real world application using the full Microsoft .NET 3.5 stack. There are heaps of great ideas in there including:
- Echoes of discussions in Jimmy Nilsson’s book Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: Using .Net
- Implementations of UnitOfWork , Repository<T> + Repository Specialization very similar to Oren’s Exesto sample + Rhino Tools
- A declarative .net DataBinding Extender control similar to the ones in Spring.Net, the MonoRail WebForms View Engine and Rick Strahl’s wwDataBinder
There are also short videos from the guys giving an overview of some of the technology/patterns and choices that they’ve used. I particularly liked the great discussion of MVP with WebForms.
One minor criticism: I remember chatting with Jeremy about the Composite Web Application Block when it was released and complaining that after downloading it, reading the docs and source – I couldn’t figure out how to use it. His answer at the time was: Wait until we release the BackgroundMotion source – then you’ll have a real example. Well – I’ve looked through the code – and I still have no idea how the CWAB really adds value. Even after watching the video and reading the Web Client Software Factory page – I’m clueless. Maybe I’m just not smart enough to get it.
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