Latest Microsoft Blogs

Lots of big stuff happening this week. Today Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is available to MSDN Subscribers and it'll be available for everyone on Wednesday. I'm running Beta 2 on all my machines now and really digging it. It's much faster than Beta 1 and I'm doing all my work in it now. It's come a long way and I'm really impressed at the polish. .NET 4 This is a big deal. This isn't ".NET 3.6" - there are a lot of improvements of .NET 4, and it's not just "pile on a bunch of features so you get overwhelmed." I've been working with and talking to many of the teams involved and even though it's a cheesy thing to say, this is a really customer-focused release. Shouldn't every release...

The team I work for is called Server and Tools Online. If you go way, way up, our boss is Soma ( Yes, this Soma ), but down here in the trenches there's the folks that make content and systems to help you after you "File | New Project." Our goals this year are to get back to basics and make sure that our online user experience meets these goals in as few clicks as possible. A few months ago I snuck a few "comps" out of a meeting with the designers on MSDN . A few months before that we talked about the a upcoming "loband" option for MSDN and performance improvements to the MSDN library that are bringing page-load times for the MSDN library to the 1- and 2-second level. There was a lot of great comments and feedback...

If you answered “Yes” then it might be interesting to you that there is an opportunity on our team for a person who has passion for making web development easier and exciting for everyone… This job posting is the unofficial job posting  describing a person whom I am looking to refer to my team to consider for an official job posting which exists somewhere on Microsoft.com… :-) Our team is chartered with building Web Developer Tools based on web standards and so we are looking for someone who knows HTML, CSS, JavaScript/AJAX… We would love if this person knows PHP and/or ASP.NET too… If you know someone who loves building Web Sites and is passionate about web development technologies then please pass on the word… The person will most likely...

Cross-browser testing is a hassle. Most of the time you can follow standards and get a decent looking website working cross browser, but there's always variations. All browsers have their quirks and older IEs have more than their fair share. As I see it, there's basically three main pillars of cross-browser testing:   Pros Cons Breadth ScreenShot Service Gets you screenshots of your site on a million browsers and platforms No interaction with the browsers, no way to debug interactions. Depth - Interaction Virtual Machines You really get to see how your site looks and works on many browsers. You have to maintain a bunch of Virtual Machines, or a be aware lot of browser installations. Depth - Look and Feel SuperPreview Lets you see...

I open several PDF files every day ! Check out these latest attack statistics from CNet Microsoft has always been the Hack Attacker’s favorite victim, but in recent years we’ve made it harder and harder to successfully attack Microsoft products. And so, the bad guys are diversifying their efforts – and Adobe seems to now be in their cross hairs. [ Click HERE to tread the article on CNet News ]   Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Adobe , Security , Hacker , Attack Read More...

NOTE: This is “Misfit Data” - While I do work for Microsoft, this data is NOT “official Microsoft” data and is not endorsed or ratified by Microsoft in any way. I built and ran these tests because I was personally curious about comparative performance. If these test results cause you dizziness, vomiting, or other undesired side effects, please discontinue use immediately and consult your physician. How does IMPLEMENTATION Performance Compare ? Usually, when someone creates benchmarks, they are trying to prove that their thing is faster than someone else's thing. I’m PAID by Microsoft to write BOTH PHP and ASP.NET Code. I was doing PHP before .NET shipped. I love them both. This makes it hard for me to say anything good about either one....

Well, I guess it’s not so super-secret anymore now but these last few months, I’ve been transitioning from ASP.NET Ajax to a new project that aims at helping ASP.NET communities build Open Source applications on ASP.NET. It’s a lot of fun and the good news is that you can join in. We are hiring a senior developer: https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=1&jid=4567&jlang=EN Please mention me (Bertrand Le Roy, bleroy at Microsoft) as the referral if you apply. ;) Read More...

I thought this was cool - a new way to integrate Live@edu into a Moodle virtual learning environment! This plug-in is a free download that provides integrated access to Live@edu services such as e-mail, calendar, instant messaging and search within the Moodle environment. http://blogs.msdn.com/ukliveatedu/archive/2009/07/22/hello-moodle.aspx   Technorati Tags: Microsoft , Moodle Read More...

I’ve added persistence to the “In-Place-Editor” control at .NETOOP   using SQLExpress and the LINQ to Entities. Since the Control itself can be used for ANY text content, the page that contains the control is responsible for population and persistence. Note the code below. The control is populated by the first notice in the notices table (other use may use multiple records.) Of particular interest is the push back to the database. Note that this code is called from the Page_SaveStateComplete event handler. NETOOP_DataEntities ctx = new NETOOP_DataEntities(); protected void Page_Load( object sender, EventArgs e) { // Populate the In-Place Editor Control var result = ctx.NETOOP_AnnouncementSet.Where(p => p.Id == 1); if (!IsPostBack) {...

In-Place editing is a slick feature for managing some of a web sites content. I’ve mocked up a demo of In-Place editing using the new ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit’s Editor control and the ASP.NET Multi-View control. Also, I’m implementing this as a User Control so it can be easily and widely used throughout my project. Here’s how it works. Note the little “Pencil” on the top / right of the content are. If you hover over it you get an edit hint.   When you click on it you enter edit mode. Note the Ajax style behavior accomplished by a combination of using ASP.NET’s MultiView control and ASP.NET Ajax’s UpdatePanel.   Now some rich text entry. Clicking on the Floppy Disk Icon “Saves” the new content (actual persistence is not yet implemented...