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Commercial Blog on a Community Site?
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Does anyone else find it distasteful, annoying, and unfair that Visual WebGui consistently uses its community blog on weblogs.asp.net for commercial purposes?
It’s one thing to bring new, innovative products to the community’s attention – I do that myself occasionally. But, Visual WebGui repeatedly uses its blog to post promotional material such as news releases, white papers, and endorsements.
If Visual WebGui can advertise for free in blog posts, what about Telerik, ComponentArt, Infragistics, Intersoft Solutions?
To me, Visual WebGui should be removed from the main feed if it can’t separate its community content from its commercial interests.
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Automated Web Testing
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A quick note of interest to ASP.NET developers and testers: Visual Studio Magazine has posted my review of Automation Design Canvas, a fine Web testing product from ArtOfTest. I see that Telerik is also selling this as Telerik WebUI Test Studio.
Visual Studio 2008 certainly has become a huge platform for third-party vendors. The terms 'plug-in' and 'add-on' are woefully inadequate to describe what amount to full-blown software applications running inside the VS shell.
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Windows Server 2008 R2 For Developers, Please
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I notice Microsoft is releasing Windows Server 2008 Foundation for small businesses which doesn't include Hyper-V. How about a workstation version *with* Hyper-V?
There's a lot of interest among developers in using Windows Server 2008 (and of course, R2) as a high-end workstation. Including Hyper-V harnesses the power of quad-core machines so developers can simulate a complete, stable network with top-notch performance for Visual Studio 2008 debugging and compiling.
You just have to look at Convert your Windows Server 2008 to a Workstation! and posts like this to see that this concept is taking off. Microsoft would be better to accomodate developers, recognize the dissatisfaction with Vista, and profit from another market segment than push developers to skirt the intent of the server product's EULA.
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Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer
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Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer
Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer is a visual debugging tool that makes it easier to migrate your Web sites from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7 or 8.
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Silverlight 3 Tools Available on Downloads
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The MIX 09 avalanche is hitting Microsoft Downloads:
Microsoft® Silverlight™ 3 Software Development Kit Beta 1
The Microsoft® Silverlight™ 3 Software Development Kit provides libraries and tools for developing Silverlight applications.
Silverlight 3 Tools
Add-on for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 for developing Silverlight 3 applications
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Predictions for MIX 09 Announcements
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Everybody is heading to MIX 09 except me! Poor me. I'm working on a nice ASP.NET 3.5 contract.
Microsoft always saves/targets release announcements for big events. As a Microsoft-owned conference MIX warrants major releases.
Here are my predictions on what products Microsoft will unveil:
Internet Explorer 8 release
ASP.NET MVC 1.0 release
Visual Studio 2010 ctp or beta
ASP.NET 4.0 beta
Silverlight 3 ctp
I certainly hope we see some decent tooling support for the Silverlight GUI in VS 2010.
What else? Maybe some new community controls for existing products and betas for the Expression suite? What have I missed? What leftovers will DevConnections get on March 22nd?
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Silverlight 2 Update - Get the Developer Version
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The latest Silverlight 2 update (Silverlight 2 GDR 1 (2.0.40115.0)) failed to install on my machine because it detected that I already had the developer version.
The error message and redirect to the correct file are well engineered, but developers can save some time by going straight to this page:
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/help.aspx?errorID=1512
Ken
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Source Code for Creating a Silverlight 2 Data Form Released
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I've release the source code from my screencast series on Creating a Silverlight 2 Data Form at the MSDN Code Gallery. On the Downloads tab, you'll find several files for VB and C# projects. The basic source code is the same, but the large downloads include the Northwind database and (even larger) binaries that would be a pain for people who have restricted-bandwidth.
The C# translation is courtesy of José Luis Quintero Méndez (http://www.elquintero.net).
As a reminder, you can find a list of the screencast episodes here:
http://cid-5ba3283f955d0a0f.profile.live.com/Lists/cns!5BA3283F955D0A0F!118/
My personal need to explore Silverlight data handling certainly has resonated with a large audience. Silverlight Streaming reports over 25 thousand hits as I write this! While gratified by the number of hits, the level of feedback is surprisingly low. Don't forget that there's a dedicated discussion newsgroup at http://silverlightdataformserie.groups.live.com/ .
Thanks very much to SilverlightShow for featuring my series and to Silverlight Cream for keeping the community up-to-date. For some reason, Silverlight.NET hasn't given my work a mention, but my friend Beth Massi kindly featured it on MSDN's VB site.
BTW, Episode 9 will be much delayed (no ETA) as I wait for bug reports and throw myself into a new ASP.NET contract starting Monday. The project as it stands does what I set out to accomplish, but there's always more to do.
What I find totally remarkable is that creating the series cost me absolutely nothing - except for my time. I used a complimentary copy of TechSmith's fabulous Camtasia Studio software to develop the tutorials. Microsoft's Visual Web Developer 2008 Express is free, as is Silverlight Streaming.
Ken
Microsoft MVP [ASP.NET]
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Silverlight 2 Data Form - Episode 8: Client Storage
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In Episode 8, we continue working with the AutoCompleteBox control that we implemented in Episode 7. This time, we fetch a long list of country names as XML from a third-party Web service, cache the file on the client using isolated storage, and harness LINQ to XML to retrieve the country names. One of the considerations is checking Silverlight's access to the remote data. Finally, you learn how to use (and re-use) a static resource within XAML markup.
I'm currently collecting topics for a ninth episode. My intention is to make it a bug fix screencast based on feedback, so send in those reports! It will likely also cover usability issues like implementing tabs and tooltips.
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A Better Way to do Silverlight Databinding
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The guys at Intersoft Solutions are ahead of the curve again with their Intersoft Data Source control for Silverlight. The CTP includes the AstoriaDataSource that connects cleanly to an ADO.NET Data service.
Rather than jumping through hoop after hoop to do asychronous calls and returned results, the control lets you do CRUD operations in only a few lines of code:
AstoriaDataSource1.Delete("Customers", CustomerGrid.SelectedItem);
I haven't figured out how to do cascading deletes yet with this control, such as deleting a customer from the Northwind database. (I cover the old manual way in Episode 5: 'D' is for Delete of my Silverlight 2 Data Form series.)
With the Intersoft control, you use declarative binding by configuring the control in the markup, much the way you do with ASP.NET data controls:
<ISNet_Silverlight_DataSource:AstoriaDataSource
x:Name="AstoriaDataSource1" Grid.Row="2"
ServiceHost="http://localhost:53948" ServiceTarget="NorthwindDataService.svc"
ReferenceNamespace="NorthwindDataReference" ServiceTypeName="NorthwindEntities"
Selected="AstoriaDataSource1_Selected"
Inserted="AstoriaDataSource1_Inserted"
Updated="AstoriaDataSource1_Updated"
Deleted="AstoriaDataSource1_Deleted">
<ISNet_Silverlight_DataSource:AstoriaDataSource.Services>
<ISNet_Silverlight_DataSource:AstoriaDataService
DataObjectTypeName="Customers" ServiceName="Customers"/>
<ISNet_Silverlight_DataSource:AstoriaDataService
DataObjectTypeName="Products" ServiceName="Products"/>
<ISNet_Silverlight_DataSource:AstoriaDataService
DataObjectTypeName="Employees" ServiceName="Employees"/>
</ISNet_Silverlight_DataSource:AstoriaDataSource.Services>
</ISNet_Silverlight_DataSource:AstoriaDataSource>