I predict that Avalon will be a smashing success with developers. Why? Because XAML is so darn fun to say. Zaml. Just kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Coupled with its partner in crime - BAML - it's got a one-two punch that just can't miss. Way more fun to say than SVG. Or XUL. Yep, best technology name since SCSI.
XAML BAML, baby.
From Tim Sneath's blog entry about new C# features in Whidbey
- Properties can now have different accessibility for get {...} and set {...}.
Yee haw! This is the first I've heard of this (maybe I would have seen it if I had slogged through the C# 2.0 language spec).
All I can say is - wow. ScottGu has already answered all of my questions. Unbelievably cool. Gee, who needs the PDC? Just kidding. Even cooler is that the answers to just about all of the questions are “yes, we're doing that”. They seem to be addressing pretty much every limitation that I've encountered doing server control development. Did I mention wow?
The big problem now is - even more than ever it makes me want Whidbey NOW! :)
Oh, and the one issue that wasn't originally being addressed - COM interop in ASMX web services - he's trying to get that on the schedule. So I, like, might have influenced the feature set of the product. Oh god, the power...coursing through my veins...intoxicating.
Now I'm bummed that I don't get to go to the PDC and worship at Scott's feet.
Although I sadly won't be attending the PDC, I do have a few specific questions about Whidbey - mostly around limitations or annoyances that I've encountered in the current framework, and whether they'll be fixed in 2.0. If any good-hearted soul runs across the answers to these questions and has time to post them, I would be most appreciative. Hopefully that answer to these questions isn't “you can already do that, dufus“. On the other hand, maybe that would be a good answer after all (except for the dufus part).
So here are the questions:
ASP.NET Server Controls:
- Is there better support for using style sheets in server controls? E.g. an easy way to register a stylesheet link, design-time support, support for stylesheets embedded in an assembly, etc.
- Is it possible to build more self-contained server controls? I dislike the whole “copy this directory of icons to your web server“ model that seems to be the standard. I'd like my entire control, with all of it's dependent elements, stored in one DLL.
Out-of-the-box support for linking to resources embedded in assemblies might be one solution to this problem. Any support for that in Whidbey?
- Using a custom http handler, you can write a control that generates dynamic images. However, as far as I know there's no good way to provide design-time support for this. Any improvements in that area? Scott Guthrie described a DynamicImage control in his blog posting - that sounds promising.
- Any support for visual composition of server controls?
ASMX Web Services
- Any improvements to the COM interop threading model for web services? Although ASP.NET web pages can be flagged as ASPCOMPAT to ensure apartment threading, ASMX web services don't currently support this attribute. Since large chunks of legacy code out there are written as VB6 COM objects, this limitation greatly hinders the application of the Web Service Facade pattern that Microsoft discusses here. Microsoft's recommended workaround of running the COM object as a COM+ library application is problematic - many COM objects don't play nice under COM+.
- Any support in WSDL.EXE for generating properties rather than fields in web service proxies? Or, conversely, any support for databinding to fields in addition to properties?
This one drives me bonkers - it's a major impedance mismatch between these two parts of the framework. It annoyed me enough that I actually wrote a drop-in replacement for the MSDisco code generator (which I've been meaning to get around to posting) that generates properties. But I'm hoping Whidbey supports this out of the box.
OK, that's all I can think of for the moment. I'm sure I'll think of more immediately after I hit the “post“ button.
Well, now that the PDC has sold out, I guess I can say definitively that I won't be attending. Back when I first heard about this year's PDC, I assumed that I would be attending. And the truth is, I probably would be attending if I wasn't in the midst of a big release cycle and buried in hard-core DHTML coding. Nonetheless, as summer progressed and I learned more about the PDC contents, I curiously found myself less interested that I was initially. Yes, I, like many of my fellow bloggers, had fallen victim to Longhorn Lethargy. As fully geek-enabled as I am, I just can't get excited about an operating system that's at least 2 years away from being released, and probably 3-4 years from being widely deployed. As a software developer, I get paid to develop software that people can actually use, and anything Longhorn related is ways from fitting that criteria.
This isn't to say that I'm not interested in what's in Longhorn. God, I'm so ready for WinFS, it's killing me - I find the hierarchical file system to be one of most profoundly limiting elements of current computing platforms. But I'm having a hard enough time keeping track of all of the knowledge that I need today - I can't afford the brain storage for info that won't be applicable until 2006 at the earliest.
Another big topic of the PDC is Yukon, and unfortunately that's not too interesting to me either, albeit for different reasons. My company's product has to support multiple database platforms, and that pretty much kills any of the killer benefits of Yukon. Believe me, I wish it wasn't so, but it is.
So that leaves Whidbey. I'm VERY interested in Whidbey. The more I hear the better it sounds - kick ass improvements all over the place, from the CLR to WinForms to ASP.NET. It sounds like this is going to be the release that gets hard-core VB6-heads off their butts and into the managed world. Unfortunately, it looks like Whidbey is further out than I originally expected. This ain't no 2001 PDC, where we got release candidates of the stuff.
So I'm bummed that I'm missing the Whidbey portion of the show. Fortunately, it looks like their will be legions of reporters doing near-real-time onsite journalism, in the form of PDCBlogger.net. Something tells me it'll be almost like being there.
I also would have enjoyed putting some faces to names that I'm seeing in the blogging community. Perhaps another time. And I was so looking forward to rolling around in a dumpster and then introducing myself to Rory Blyth with a big hug. ;)
As a side note, a Q&A section was added to PDCBloggers for the various panels that are taking place at the PDC. Cool idea. I'd also love to see a more general and open “register your PDC question here“ site. Something where anyone (in particular non-attendees) can post a question, and anyone that attends can post an answer. Anything like that out there?
Microsoft has posted
EIF, the Enterprise Instrumention Framework, on the Microsoft download site. Interesting. EIF is the .NET API for centralized logging and event monitoring that was only available on the MSDN subscriber downloads site. I never did understand why it was only posted there, but I guess they're making it more readily available.