PDC bound
I’m lucky enough to be able to post with the following image:
PDC selling out
By the way, as Robert Scoble noted, PDC is very close to selling out - if you want to go you’ve probably only got a day or so to buy a ticket.
.NET SDC Solution Build & Deployment Process & Tools
A plethora of build tasks compatible with MSBuild from Whidbey Beta 2.
FxCop and generated code
If you struggle with FxCop complaining about code that was generated for you, say from WSDL or XSD, then help is (well, will be) at hand. In .NET 2.0 (RTM), ...
Presence Controls for Microsoft Office Communicator 2005
The Presence Controls are designed to provide presence information and real time collaboration options to Microsoft Windows Forms, Web Forms and GUI applica...
Best IE7 Review
Sam Gentile has the most succinct review of IE7 I’ve seen yet: “It certainly sucks a lot less now.” Praise indeed, and I certainly hope it is at least that g...
Toshiba Tecra M4 crippled in the UK
I’m one of those people who has followed the exploits of Eric Mack with his new Toshiba Tecra M4. In fact, I’ve been a fan of the concept of a tablet since ...
Dogs and work
Seeing Mike Stall’s post about how his black Lab reminded him of race conditions provides me with an opportunity to mention the contribution my dog has made ...
Tip on using differencing disks in Virtual PC
Keith Brown posts his tip to make the base image of a set of differencing disks to read-only. Good idea.
Improved printing in IE7
Now that we’ve released IE7 Beta 1 to a developer audience, Markus posted about the improvements we’ve made in printing. He’s written up a good overview and ...
Synchronizing Images and Files in Windows XP Using Microsoft SyncToy
SyncToy is apparently a new power toy for Windows XP to make synchronising files between computers easier. It’s not available for download yet but will be fr...
Internet Explorer 7: Now in beta testing for developers
From the Internet Explorer 7 site:
Windows 2000 - Extended Support
I fondly remember the release of Windows 2000 and what it allowed us to do. With the introduction of COM+ and IIS 5, it dramatically improved the lot for web...
Avalon and Indigo are no more
Microsoft has released a version of the WinFX Runtime Components Beta 1 (which includes the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly code name “Avalon”) a...
IEPrint instructions
Recently, there have been a few links in popular places to my IEPrint add-in for printing from IE6. Given that this was a quick project written in a...
MaxiVista v2 released
I’ve been running MaxiVista for a while now. For the few not in the know, this application allows you to use the screen on other computers to appear as an ad...
WS-I Basic Profile Testing Tools
ASP.NET Web Services with .NET 2.0 will include testing for Basic Profile compliance. In the mean time, the WS-I has testing tools written in both C# and Ja...
Pregenerated XmlSerializer assemblies with .NET 1.1
With .NET 2.0, there is an SDK tool sgen that allows you to pregenerate the assemblies produced by the XmlSerializer. When you instantiate an XmlSerializer o...
Detecting and Resolving Stalled and Stuck I/O…
Detecting and Resolving Stalled and Stuck I/O Issues in SQL Server 2000 SP 4 is an interesting article highlighting the changes in SP4 that help to diagnose...
SOA: Myth or reality?
There is a continuing (and welcome) debate about the merits of “SOA”, although the position of some contributors doesn’t seem to be coming across very clearl...
WS-* vs. Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
Tomas Restrepo calls out Richard Turner for not being very pragmatic. Richard outlines his opposition to building a communications “bus” for the enterprise ...
ASMX 2.0 - Now with Basic Profile 1.1 Conformance
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Basic Profile support in ASP.NET Web Services (ASMX) with .NET 2.0. Since then, Beta 2 has been released changing the det...
Pragmatic Service Orientation
There is a lot of industry buzz around service orientation and “SOA” and a number of prominent voices within Microsoft are trying hard to articulate the appr...
Have email viruses had their day?
ZDNet reports that some attendees at the Infosecurity Europe conference think the email virus’ heyday is over. This is an interesting observation and one I’...
Channel 9 content
There have been some interesting Channel 9 videos recently. The video with Bill Hill was about 90 minutes long but interesting all the way through. I cited t...
Contract First web service design
The debate about the “contract first” approach to designing web services has been raging again. This usually revolves around whether to design WSDL and XSD f...
Clearing up some of the VSTS confusion?
Rick Laplante, general manager of Visual Studio Team System, responds on Channel 9 to customer complaints about VSTS’s planned licensing and pricing.
Remotely Enable Remote Desktop
Remotely Enable Remote Desktop: For those times when “…you forgot to enable the [Remote Desktop] feature before you shipped the server out to Kalamazoo.”
Team Foundation Installation Guide - Beta 2
The latest version of the Installation Guide for Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server is available for download either as a CHM or PDF file. ...
Whidbey Beta 2 Sign-off
As Scott Guthrie reports, Beta 2 for .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 was signed off at the end of last week and will be available for download from MSDN Sub...
UK C++ Briefing with the product group from Redmond
Microsoft UK are running a free technical briefing in Reading next week with members of the C++ product team coming over to present. They’re keen to speak to...
SpaceMonger
This is a pretty cool way of seeing where all that disk space you thought you bought has gone.
MSDN TV: Working with Medium Trust in ASP.NET
Excellent short MSDN TV segment explaining the Code Access Security (CAS) features in ASP.NET 1.1. This allows you to lock down the permissions for differen...
Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 05
The Avalon and Indigo Community Technology Preview - March 05 is now available to MSDN subscribers (Tools, Platform Tools, WinFX SDK).
Another Redmond convert
Congratulations to Brad on his move to Microsoft. Welcome!
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition - Feb 2005 CTP
The Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is now available to download.
ASMX 2.0 - Nullable Types
ASP.NET Web Services (ASMX) in .NET 2.0 introduces support for nullable types. In .NET 1.0 and 1.1, the framework didn’t support xsi:nil for value types be...
Nullable Types
A common problem that developers run into with .NET v1.1 is the situation where you want a value type such as an int or bool but you want to allow for the va...
ASMX 2.0 - SOAP 1.2 Support
The new ASMX runtime in .NET 2.0 will support SOAP 1.2. How useful this turns out to be remains to be seen since almost everyone is using SOAP 1.1 at the mom...
Unofficial ASP.NET browserCaps update
Browser Testing and Detection Resources [via Kevin Dente]
Asynchronous web pages in ASP.NET 2.0
Fritz Onion has a great post about asynchronous web pages in ASP.NET 2.0 [via Mike Taulty].
ASMX 2.0 - Basic Profile 1.0 Conformance - Part 2
In my last post, I described how .NET 2.0 will check your web services for conformance to the Basic Profile (v1.0 in Beta 1 and v1.1 from Beta 2 onwards). W...
ASMX 2.0 - Basic Profile 1.0 Conformance
ASP.NET web services (commonly known as ASMX web services) have been a part of the .NET Framework from the beginning in v1.0 when it was still early days in ...
WSE 2.0 SP3 released
The WSE 2.0 SP3 download was released today. There is also a Runtime Redistributable to bundle with your apps.
Microsoft Security E-Learning
Our free Microsoft Security E-Learning Clinics follow the same content outline as our Security Webcasts, but deliver that information via a learner-centered ...
Microsoft File Checksum Integrity Verifier utility
The File Checksum Integrity Verifier (FCIV) is a command-prompt utility that computes and verifies cryptographic hash values of files. FCIV can compute MD5 o...
Migrating from MC++ to C++/CLI
Managed C++ takes some time getting used to with its __everything modifiers. C++/CLI is the new managed C++ what will ship with .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 20...
How To Propagate Environment Variables to the System
This post is really a bookmark for me because I regularly seem to come back to the question of wanting to update environment variables and trying to remember...
BizTalk updates
As many have noted, BizTalk 2004 SP1 was recently released. Possibly less well known is the fact that at the same time, the BizTalk team have moved to a “st...
Enterprise Library
The long awaited Enterprise Library Application Blocks have been released. This release of Enterprise Library includes: Caching Application Block, Configur...
The problem with VB.NET default instances
Talking about the divergence between VB.NET and C# while considering their typical audiences is a common theme. The default instance support that provides ...
How much experience is enough?
I’ve lost count of the number of times where I have seen it said that “Only experienced xxxx should try to do yyyy.” For example, “Only experienced security ...
Log Parser 2.2
A new version of the Log Parser tool (v2.2) has just been published. Scott Hanselman posts about his experiments parsing IIS log files.
Browsing the Web and Reading E-mail Safely as an Administrator
If you can’t get on with running as a non-admin user or a common task you need to do requires you to be an administrator then take a look at Michael Howard’s...
Undocumented bugs fixed in .NET service packs
When Microsoft issues service packs for developer tools and redistributable runtimes or libraries there is usually a knowledge base article published that li...
SQL Server Tracing
There are a couple of good articles about SQL tracing in the MSDN SQL Server Developer Center pulled from SQL Server Professional magazine.
WSE FAQ
Lots of WSE FAQs answered here [via Sam Gentile].
WSE Hands On Lab Update
Hervey Wilson posts that the WSE hands on labs have now been updated for WSE 2.0 SP2 and also include VB.NET.
Windows Installer 3.0 shipped
With little fanfare, it seems that Windows Installer v3.0 shipped in November. The platform SDK page about Windows Installer notes that this release includ...
Speeding up Adobe Acrobat Startup
Tim Sneath outlines how to reduce the time it takes to start Adobe Acrobat Reader by moving those normally unused plug-ins.
Scott’s Lists of Ultimate Stuff
Adding to his Ultimate Tools list, Scott Hanselman publishes his Ultimate VS.NET AddIns list and Great Tools for your Tablet PC list.
Compression and web service clients
Simon Fell points to an article showing how to add HTTP 1.1 compression support to a .NET web service client proxy.