Can you describe your business?
Roundpegs.com is a new and unique job matching website that matches compatible job seekers and employers. We build deep profiles about job seekers and employers that include personality, skills, education, and intangibles – and match those who share overlapping traits. As a result, job seekers see jobs that they would want, and employers get quality, compatible candidates. All for free – think e-harmony meets craigslist meets monster.com.
Why did you choose ASP.NET 2.0?
ASP.NET 2.0 by far has the shortest time to market from idea to implementation. Firstly, the .NET platform has such a deep feature set out of the box -- the only pieces to implement were our key business logic pieces. Secondly, the AJAX toolkit provided us with AJAX functionality out of the box, helping us get a “Web 2.0” product out into the market quickly. Thirdly, the ASP.NET 2.0 development environment is great to work in – features like IntelliSense makes coding a breeze.
How did ASP.NET AJAX help you improve your user experience?
ASP.NET AJAX helped out the user experience in that it reduced the number of unnecessary post backs – when the user is modifying a small set of data, it is frustrating to have to refresh the page on submit, and with AJAX we are able to elegantly handle user interaction. Also, using AJAX we are able to better guide the user towards their goals – by running server side code as they type and click, we can offer suggestions to save them time.
What ASP.NET AJAX features did you take advantage of?
We took advantage of some of the pre-built AJAX controls – specifically, the UpdatePanel, UpdatePanelAnimation, AutoComplete, Slider, TextBoxWatermark, and more.
What was the ASP.NET AJAX development experience like?
Exactly the same as the ASP.NET development experience – the pre-built AJAX controls operate exactly the same as any other ASP.NET control.
What other Microsoft technologies does your site use?
We run our site off IIS 6 on Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, use Microsoft SQL 2005 as our backend database, and Visual SourceSafe 6 as our Source Control repository.
Anything else you want to add?
It’s great that Microsoft promotes the adopters of their technology (especially startups and small businesses) because a lot of people have the perception that a Microsoft .NET project is expensive – but the development time and staff (not requiring unix admins, etc.) savings definitely make up for it.