Thanks to everyone who came to my webcast today on Using the Microsoft AJAX Library with PHP . We had about fifty people at the live webcast. If you missed it, a recording should go up in the next 24 hours. During the talk, I showed how to use the Microsoft AJAX Library to create client-side controls and behaviors. I also showed how to use the networking API (plus " PHP for Microsoft AJAX Library ") to communicate with a PHP server. The sample I showed during the session is brand new. It's called "Achord", and you can play with it here . The idea is for you to be able to write notes during an event (like a webcast!) while seeing the notes other people are taking. Then you can aggregate (copy/paste) when you see something useful. That way not...

The March CTP (community technology preview) of Visual Studio Orcas is now available here . You can either install it (side-by-side with VS 2005) or use via a VPC image. This is the first CTP that contains significant web tools feature enhancements - the new HTML/Webforms Designer, Jscript Intellisense and Debugging, LINQ to SQL Designer and Multitargeting being some of the key features. You can learn more about these features from this blog post by Scott as well as this forum post by Jim. We encourage all of you to try out the CTP and provide us early feedback that will help shape the rest of this release. We have created a new forum for you to post your questions, issues/bugs and suggestions regarding the feature set. Team members will be...

Being a good web designer requires some artistic tendencies. I have none ! I think most developers lack real artistic abilities. Maybe being able to use the logical engineering part of the brain is mutually exclusive from using the artistic part. I’ve been getting lots of email from developers asking for guidance on doing good DESIGN when using ASP.NET. If you’re a designer, you know the questions. DIV versus Table? CSS in ASP.NET, etc. Do you have some ASP.NET Visual DESIGN topics that you are especially good at? Let’s web cast them. Contact me and I’ll host you in a Live-From-Redmond Webcast on Design. The web cast will get linked from www.asp.net Great way for independent designers to show off their skills. Contest for highest attendance...

Are you a Microsoft MVP or RD ?? Wanna show off your tech skills to the developer world ? Pick ONE COOL THING and I’ll host you to show it off in one of my Live-From-Redmond Webcasts. Just email me !!! Read More...

Glenn Wasserman took this on 42 nd in NYC this morning – COOL ! Read More...

Susan Wisowaty, my friend and former team mate on the MSDN Events team has TAGGED me. Tagging is a bit like a chain letter, but with some redeeming social value. The idea is that after reveling five things about yourself you get to compel 5 other people to do the same. So……. As a young hungry dude I won 54 of 58 Kickboxing matches and won minor titles in three countries, fighting primarily in Australia (Where I lived in 1978 & 79) and Malaysia (which was a very cheap and short flight from the coast of Australia). I was married, became a father, and got divorced all before my 21 st birthday. In the years that followed, in order to try and survive the financial disaster that divorce can create, I had funny work situations. At one time I worked...

I often forget to blog about some of the cool events I attend until it’s a little too late, but hey, better than blogging about it after the fact, when people can’t even try to show up right? Tomorrow, Chris Wilson and I are headed down to San Jose for an event put on by the Read More...

I often forget to blog about some of the cool events I attend until it's a little too late, but hey, better than blogging about it after the fact, when people can't even try to show up right? Tomorrow, Chris Wilson and I are headed down to San Jose for an event put on by the Silicon Valley Web Builders for a session that they're calling Browser Wars: Episode II Attack of the DOMs . Beside the name being something that bugs me a bit, this is going to be a fantastic event! This is one of the few times that Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera have been on stage together to talk about where the web goes next, and what their visions are for the future. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what Chris has to say. Chris and I sat down on Monday...

Danielfe decided to put together a great post about how some of us look like famous people (not that we aren't famous in our own right :)) -- the similarities are shocking -- check it out, let us know what you think. http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2007/02/26/microsoft-bloggers-the-movie.aspx Read More...

People often ask me for guidance on how they can dynamically "re-write" URLs and/or have the ability to publish cleaner URL end-points within their ASP.NET web applications. This blog post summarizes a few approaches you can take to cleanly map or rewrite URLs with ASP.NET, and have the option to structure the URLs of your application however you want. Why does URL mapping and rewriting matter? The most common scenarios where developers want greater flexibility with URLs are: 1) Handling cases where you want to restructure the pages within your web application, and you want to ensure that people who have bookmarked old URLs don't break when you move pages around. Url-rewriting enables you to transparently forward requests to the new page location...