August 2005 - Posts
Last week I blogged about the CodeKeep and CodeGallery community sites. And here's another one: GotCodeSnippets.NET.
http://www.gotcodesnippets.net is the idea from US Microsoft Regional Director, Michael Palermo after getting feedback from several code snippet talks, and leveraging the code snippet feature in projects, assisting him in generating high productivity in code generation.
GotCodeSnippets.NET's goal is to be a valuable resource and "the" place for Visual Studio developers to download code snippets to make their IDE even more productive. The site with full repository functions (search, categorization, customized download) will be officially unveiled at PDC in September.
Michael is also on .NET Rocks where he talks about code snippets.
In 2001 Microsoft introduced the first version of the .NET Framework which enabled businesses to realize the power of web services and the programmable internet. Four years later developers and their IT counterparts need a new generation of application infrastructure and tools to deliver the new generation of solutions. Early November Microsoft will be shipping Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. In the ramp up to the launch Microsoft Belux organises a number of events to get developers and IT-Pros ready for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio Team System and SQL Server 2005. Check out the scheduled events below and make your choice!
Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 Team System Roadshow
As part of the Get Ready for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 Team System campaign we organise a roadshow. This roadshow consists of a number of technical one-day instructor-led trainings delivered by a Certified Partner for Learning Solutions fully packed with lectures and demos.Contentwise we will be covering:
- the Visual Studio 2005 Enhancements (VB.NET & C# Language Enhancements, IDE Enhacements & Security Enhancements),
- the innovations on the side of Data Access (System.Xml 2.0 and System.Data 2.0),
- what's new in ASP.NET 2.0 (overview of the new controls, the new page framework and the new services and APIs),
- smart client development in Visual Studio 2005 (how to create professional looking smart client applications, deployment with ClickOnce and programming with Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System version 2005),
- an end-to-end overview on how the integrated lifecycle tools of Visual Studio 2005 Team System can help you to reduce complexity, facilitate communication and customize & extend Team System.
This roadshow will take place in:
More detailed information and registration info can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/events/2005/roadshow.mspx. Note that space for these sessions is limited!
SQL Server 2005 Roadshow
If you want to learn more on Microsoft's next-generation data management and analysis solutions you should register for the Get ready for SQL Server 2005 roadshow. This roadshow consists of a number of technical one-day instructor-led trainings delivered by a Certified Partner for Learning Solutions fully packed with lectures and demos.Contentwise we will be covering:
- the new SQL Server Toolset (Management Studio, Configuration Manager, Profiler and the database tuning advisor wizard),
- the XML support in SQL Server 2005 (the XML Enhancements, the XML Data Type and how to use XQuery in SQL Server 2005),
- what's new in T-SQL (the DML Enhancements)
- high-availability in SQL Server 2005 (overview of clustering, database mirroring, snapshots, backup & restore and an oevrview of the new indexing features)
- the SQL Server 2005 Programmability (using the CLR in SQL Server 2005, ADO.NET 2.0 for DBAs and the service broker)
- a Business Intelligence overview (using BI Development Studio for integration, analysis and reporting services; SQL Server Management Studio)
This roadshow will take place in:
More detailed information and registration info can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/technet/events/2005/roadshow.mspx. Note that space for these sessions is limited!
MSDN Event: Visual Studio Team System On Tour
This one-day MSDN event takes place on September 23rd in Kinepolis Brussels and brings Michael Leworthy - a product manager within the Visual Studio division to Belgium. Michael will provide the attendees with an overview on how to build reliable and mission critical applications using Visual Studio Team System. Join us if you want to know how Visual Studio Team System enables software development teams (from project managers, architects, developers to testers) to work more closely together and to be more productive than ever before.
The agenda for this event:
| 8:00 - 8:45 |
Registration and Welcome coffee |
| 8:45 - 9:30 |
Introduction & Quarterly Update |
| 9:30 - 10:45 |
“Shipping in time for Christmas?” or how Visual Studio Team System brings predictability to your projects |
| 10:45 - 11:15 |
Break |
| 11:15 - 12:30 |
“How expensive is my feature?” or how Visual Studio Team System brings visibility into your projects |
| 12:30 - 13:15 |
Lunch |
| 13:15 - 14:30 |
Building Mission Critical Software |
| 14:30 - 15:00 |
Break |
| 15:00 - 17:15 |
Adopting Visual Studio Team System / Visual Studio Team System Extensibility |
These sessions target professional enterprise software developers, software architects, software testers and project managers.
More detailed information on the "Visual Studio Team System On Tour" can be found on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/nl/msdn/events/2005/vsts_ontour.mspx. Register now!
Other resources on how to get ready for Launch 2005 can be found on the Launch 2005 Knowledge Center.
Today I came accross two new community sites, CodeKeep and CodeGallery:
CodeKeep
Dave Donaldson, a .NET user group leader, just released a new community website CodeKeep. It is basically a place to store and share code snippets that developers want to keep in a permanent location. What I like about CodeKeep is that it is not exclusive to .NET developers, but rather he is pulling together different language/platform developers into a single community. A great way to build bridges.
Check also out Dave's announcement post http://loudcarrot.com/Blogs/dave/archive/2005/08/20/4921.aspx and the the codekeep site http://www.codekeep.net.
CodeGallery
The Microsoft GotDotNet-Team announces the newest member of the gotdotnet family: CodeGallery, a community site where Microsoft contributors and customers alike can share and discuss their ideas and projects with other developers and IT professionals.
CodeGallery enables you and other .NET and Windows community participants to:
- Create a Micro-Community. Members can create a CodeGallery project, upload content such as binaries, source code, and whitepapers, customize their project portal with links to related projects, approve/deny membership requests, and generate online reports.
- Consume. At CodeGallery, you can search for, subscribe to directory updates (RSS), find useful scripts, tools, applications and other types of content, view recent project activity, and then download the best of what’s next in .NET applications such as PowerToys, tutorials, diagrams, and code.
- Contribute Feedback. Project members can discuss project contents using per-project message boards or log a bug against a project using integrated bug tracking tool.
- Refactor and Refine. Project owners can incorporate online community feedback into their offline development process and upload new releases for additional community input.
CodeGallery focuses on the conversation between developer and IT Pro customers and product teams and is distinct and different from gotdotnet Workspaces, which provides source control in addition to the features available in CodeGallery.
I know that Peter Himschoot, Microsoft Regional Director in Belgium, has been requesting such an initiative for some time. Have a look at these community sites Peter!
[Via Infoworld] Microsoft is offering an upgraded version of its ILMerge utility, which merges multiple .Net assemblies into a single assembly. ILMerge is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center.
ILMerge is a utility that can be used to merge multiple .NET assemblies into a single assembly. ILMerge takes a set of input assemblies and merges them into one target assembly. The first assembly in the list of input assemblies is the primary assembly. When the primary assembly is an executable, then the target assembly is created as an executable with the same entry point as the primary assembly. Also, if the primary assembly has a strong name, and a .snk file is provided, then the target assembly is re-signed with the specified key so that it also has a strong name.
ILMerge is packaged as a console application. But all of its functionality is also available programmatically. While Visual Studio does not allow one to add an executable as a reference, the C# compiler does, so you can write a C# client that uses ILMerge as a library.
There are several options that control the behavior of ILMerge. See the documentation that comes with the tool for details.
Currently, ILMerge does not work on Rotor or Mono.
A couple of months ago I remember discussing on how to reduce the dependency coupling of objects. We had a look at a number of design patterns like Inversion of Control and Dependency Injection which are great ways to solve this issue. The September issue of the MSDN Magazine has a good article on dependency injection using .NET dependency injection frameworks like Spring.NET and Pico.NET.
While catching up after my holidays I came accross a great number of publications covering ASP.NET 2.0. An overview.
If you like to listen to geek talk, check out the ASP.NET Podcast Show #12 - Paul Glavich does the full Show and Interviews Greg Low. Download.
Tomorrow, August 22nd, marks the end of my summer holidays but it's also the start of a new Belux User Group on Information Worker technologies. Patrick Tisseghem - SharePoint MVP, Office 2003 development guru and well-know blogger - made the announcement of the new user group last week. Tomorrow, from 6.30 pm on, the first board meeting of the BIWUG (Belux Information Worker User Group) will take place in the u2u offices. Everyone willing to actively participate in the user group is invited for this meeting. If you're interested in the user group activities you can subscribe on this (temporary) SharePoint site.
The first public BIWUG meeting will be scheduled the week after PDC. More details on the meeting will be announced soon.
See you tomorrow!
Jan Tielens, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint Platform guru and member of our Belgiam on- and off-line community, is
on the OfficeZealot.com pod cast. During this 1 hour
pod cast Chris Kunicki and Jan discuss SharePoint technologies,
the SmartPart for SharePoint,
SharePoint code access security,
Workflow Lite for SharePoint, the
CAML Builder and some other must-have SharePoint developer tools.
The August 2005 CTP of Acrylic is now available for download.
"Acrylic" (code name) is the professional design program that brings together the richness of pixel-based painting and the performance of editable vector graphics for a more fluid and flexible creative workflow. Create sophisticated designs and graphic elements for your on-screen, web, and print projects.
Besides a lot of bug fixes, performance and stability improvements the The August 2005 CTP has a number of great new features like:
- Support for Alpha Transparency in Clipboard: when copying and pasting either vector or pixel images to the clipboard, Acrylic now includes an alpha channel that can be correctly pasted into Microsoft® Office products, greatly simplifying the insertion of semi-transparent elements into PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office applications.
- XAML export: both vector and raster elements can now be exported to the XAML mark-up language used by Windows Vistatm's underlying Windows Presentation Foundation.
- Pixel Painting Performance: many optimizations to the pixel painting toolset greatly improve performance when working on pixel based images.
- Document specifications for new documents: when creating documents a new dialog allows document settings to be defined, including selecting the default layer as either a vector or pixel layer.
- Document Resizing: document settings can now be changed for existing documents, including dimensions and DPI resolution.
- New Content: A variety of new strokes, bushes, gradients, patterns, and image fills have been added.
- Style List presets: the Style List now includes presets for creating effects, color correction, and graphical treatments.
- Improved UI layout: numerous changes have been made to the palette layout mechanism to correct various usability issues reported by users.
- View Info Display: A new display provides dimension, pixel co-ordinate, and color setting feedback while working directly on the document canvas.
- Vertical ToolBox: a preference has been added to select a vertical orientation of the toolbox, in addition to the default horizontal layout.
Find below some good resources on Acrylic:
While enjoying my summer holidays I've been re-reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. This book with the substitle "How to achieve stress-free productivity" teaches you how to keep a clear head, relax and organise your thoughts. If you're facing an overwhelming workload than this book is a must-read.
Excellent summaries of what Getting Things Done is all about can be found on Merlin Mann's blog 43 Folders and Wired News. Check also Marc Orchant's blog, the GTD zone on OfficeZealot, Jeff Sandquist's GTD wiki and M Vance GTD wiki for more GTD notes.
If you're interested in David Allen's "stuff" you might want to give Microsoft Office Web Conferencing Service - LiveMeeting - a try for this Microsoft Leadership Forum on August 18 hosted by David Allen. He will do a one-hour session of "GTD Light" and its implications in organizational process. Check out the details and registration for this seminar.
A former colleague of mine, Steven Wilssens, started blogging. Steven is currently working as a Technical Architect and promised to be blogging on the .NET Framework 2.0 fundamentals, the Windows Presentation and Communication Frameworks, Software Configuration Management and technical architectures.
He already has a number of goods posts on different topics like Software Configuration Management, SCM and Team System, Generics and Testing with Visual Studio Team System.
You can find his blog at http://Steven.Wilssens.net/ and the RSS feed at http://steven.wilssens.net/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss. Subscribed!
Welcome to the blogosphere Steven!
On the MSDN Belux site you can find a great collection of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 learning resources for .NET developers, ASP.NET 2.0 and enterprise development:
- Microsoft Skills Assessments
- Microsoft Press Books
- Microsoft E-Learning
- Instructor-Led Classroom Training
- Microsoft Certifications
If this wouldn't be enough to get you started with Visual Studio 2005 you can always check-out the 101 Samples for Visual Studio 2005. These 101 Samples, in both Visual Basic and C#, featuring many of the new features available with Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 are available for download:
The 50 samples currently available cover the Base Class Libraries, Data Access, Web Development and Windows Forms. The other 50 samples will be made available shortly.
These samples have been written and tested with Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005
Some good news for the TechEd 2005 Europe attendess wondering if the self-paced hands-on labs would become available for download. It took some longer than expected but since a couple of days all hands-on labs are downloadable from the events site. Your event-login and password is required to access the site.
The ASP.NET 2.0 Provider Toolkit is available for download on the MSDN-site.
The provider model is used throughout ASP.NET 2.0. It is a means of writing each of the technologies used so that new versions can easily be created and plugged in. For example, if you need to access a different database or authentication server, you can create a provider for it. ASP.NET 2.0 will then work with that provider just as it works with the existing features. This makes ASP.NET 2.0 much more flexible, expandable and customizable than before.
More info on the ASP.NET 2.0 Provider Toolkit can be found on Brian Goldfarb's blog.