MVC3, ActionLinks and Virtual Directories

In my day job, my team has been slowly transitioning to MVC3 from Webforms. With some of the normal transitions of learning the nuances of MVC3 (strict mapping of parameter variable names on posts and gets for one) there have been others that I have come to learn even over a year later after starting.
In particular, I am going to point out extensionless URL's and virtual directories in IIS 5.1. And yes, I said IIS 5.1. Unfortunately our servers are running 2003.
Something that had been bothing me for some time was the problem that when you had a site in a virtual directory, none of the links worked with a simple @HTML.ActionLink(...) call. In general, within a View, if you wanted a simple url link you could do "@Html.ActionLink("LinkName","ControllerName","ActionName") and it would automatically map the URL relatively. The above would turn into "/ControllerName/ActionName".

If the site was hosted in a virtual directory (call it "testSite"), then the above ActionLink would resolve to "/testSite/ControllerName/ActionName".

But after publishing to it, even after adding the Extensionless effect, it would always fail on me. And I always had to resort to other means.

Until today.

Note the Checkbox on the bottom left "Check if file exists". Admittedly I don't know why, but having that checked will create 404 Not Found errors on ActionLinks within virtual directories. Unchecked that and BAM! They are found now!

Changing focus

My current app in progress was moving along just fine for Windows Phone, but I came to a realization. Windows 8 is right around the corner. I need to focus on the Windows 8 version!

So consider this my official change. Windows 8 app development in full swing!

Barely a conversion to be had.

Been watching my downloads on My Animal Age and Free and have noticed that I have not had a single person pay for My Animal Age since the 16th of July. And before that? 19th of June.

So one has to wonder a few things. Is it the app? Is it the marketplace and lack of desire to pay for apps? Is it just not that kind of app that receives tons of attention? What could it be?

Paying attention to the twitter stream, I see plenty of people talking of thousands of downloads, a good conversion rate and really decent money being made. Nothing spectacular, but the returns they receive would have paid for my tools and time investment.

I think it's time I take a look at the trial and see if something is wrong but nobody wants to tell me. And if you happen to be one of those that have tried my app's trial and would like to let me in on a secret I don't know, drop a comment. :)

Integrating with Facebook.

Well, I'm happy with my first app (and it's free version) and now it's time to officially move on.

Actually, I already did, I just haven't said it yet. :)

So, no reveal yet but I am working pretty heavily on it's Facebook integration. In particular, getting the users name and stuff and to access their photos for the apps primary usage.

I am using the not-so-well-documented Facebook C# SDK and so far, so good. The really hard part right now is deserializing teh JSON. This is all new to me, so I'm having fun here.

Some fixes incoming!

Well, as I mentioned before My Animal Age Free was doing terribly. I really didn't pay attention to details as I should have. So, I fixed it!

I tightened up the UI so text isn't overlapping. I fixed the Dog and Mouse calculations. And I did a little housekeeping on the back-end of the code.

I took the opportunity to do the same with my paid version of My Animal Age.

OK, I actually did buy the Telerik Rad Controls and used them to do that tightening of the UI. And wow. I didn't really do that much with them but after taking a moment and practicing with the DockPanel control, it really made the textbox, button and image seem a little tighter and cohesive.

Oh, and got my first earnings check from Microsoft for the paid apps. I won't spill the exact amount, but suffice to say I think I might be able to afford a McDonalds Happy Meal with it. :D

Never really was in it for the money. At least, that would have just been icing on the cake. I'm just happy to do this in general.

My Animal Age Free woes

Note to self:

Be more aware of the changes you make when converting an app from one user flow to another.

Based on reviews so far of My Animal Age Free, which is essentially the paid version but with ads, it is fun for kids and interesting, but the dog and mouse do not work and the text is hard to read over the animals.

I fully admit I felt it was readable *enough* but that is obviously not the case so I will make some changes to get that text more readable. Can't have the text that is the POINT of the app unreadable.

Dog and Mouse do not work? How did I not notice that? Will fix right away.

Good for kids???? WHAT?!?! thats awesome and essentially my goal of these apps.

If any of the reviewers read this blog post, Thank You for your feedback. It's important to me and I will jump on fixes right away. I just wish there was a quicker way to communicate with my users to solicite and discuss the feedback as some reviews sometimes end up being a little too vague to act on.

Totally don't understand the metrics...

As of yesterday, My Animal Age had 98 downloads total. Whether that includes conversions or not, I am not sure. Today, it says 103. So, if I understand that right, in one day it got 5 downloads?

I also released an update that probably is hitting current owners (even trial owners) so I wonder if that increase is includes conversions?

Top that with the fact that the data in the charting and details with actual trials vs. paid and on what day is about 5 days old at any time, and I don't really know what is happening on a day to day basis.

I understand it has to deal with ensuring that paid apps are actually paid for and credit cards are not rejected, but still, would be cool to have more immediate info. Even if only a day old.

Just trying to make sense of it all, you know?

On a side note: My Animal Age Free (now w/ ads!) has been certified! It has not been published and pushed to the marketplace yet, but that's incoming. I will post when it's available.