Eli Robillard's World of Blog.

I've updated the article on how to build a development machine for SharePoint 2007.

The best tool I've discovered  is the SharePoint Manager 2007 which takes over from the SharePoint Inspector as the object model browser of choice.

Notable tools not yet on the how-to  page are the U2U CAML Creator tool and Ms. White's Event Receiver Manager.

Several of the recommended tools were moved into a new optional section, the most notable of which is the VSeWSS component which I really can't recommend. There are so many better project templates available on CodePlex that the sole bright spot of VSeWSS is the Solution Generator. In another tragic turn, VSeWSS was "updated" and baked into VS 2008 in a way that actually made a few templates worse. So while the workflow designer is better, it's even harder to deploy your custom workflow to another machine now.

As always, if you see ways to improve this how-to guide I'd love to hear from you!

I've been head-down, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, coding like it's 1999, interrupted only by the 5-day odyssey that was the Worst Move Ever. Every other day it seems I've had a search that returned 5 or fewer hits, so obscure problems were encountered, and solutions and more will be blogged in the weeks ahead.

What's been going on in the outside world? Plenty. There's a Windows Server 2008 / SQL 2008 / VS 2008 launch event in Toronto this Wednesday. At MSFT, Scott Guthrie was promoted from GM to Corporate VP of the .NET Developer Platform, Soma is now Senior VP of Dev Div, and here in Canada Elizabeth Caley's purview moved beyond SharePoint to cover all of Office System. Last Wednesday Robin Macrae wowed the Toronto SharePoint User Group with a session on developing an enterprise strategy with SharePoint as its core platform, and

http://www.torontocodecamp.net/ 

"The Third Annual Toronto Code Camp, a free .NET community sponsored event, will be held on March 1^st, 2007! Last years event was a huge success with over 350 attendees, 25 sessions, 24 speakers and 20+ volunteers. This year we will continue to build on the success of the prior Code Camps and increase the number of attendees and make the event an even greater critical and logistical success."

Nadeem Mitha from Infusion will be there to talk SharePoint (a last-minute addition, his session may not appear until the event) as will SharePoint pros Reza Alirezaei (MOSS MVP), Bill Brockbank, CodeCamp organizer Chris Dufour, and a slew of other great speakers. I'll be dropping in to see friends old and new, but the dominant theme of my weekend will be R&R with my daughter.