Points of interest #10 - Ajax, Silverlight, WPF, P&P, Firefox and SharePoint

A slight change this week. POI titles will now include the main topics covered in each post ("Other" and "Learning" will usually be included by default so they won't be mentioned in the title). Here are this week's points of interest:

Ajax

• Google announces Google Gears. Their framework for allowing applications to work online and offline. - With Adobe and Google offering online/offline capabilities is this something you'd like Silverlight to support?
• The Help.Net blog lets us know that a new release of Script# is out.
• Discovered an ajax pattern website called ajaxpatterns.org.
• Another link from Help.Net - talking about Bitjuice an ajax bitmap api.

Silverlight/WPF

• The Expression blog gives us a tutorial on how to create a nice button with Expression Design.
• Jay shows us how to create an XBAP gadget.
• Nikhil posts about SEO with Ajax and Silverlight.
• SilverlightCream posts some useful links.
• Fritz Onion announces a Silverlight Course.
• Delay does a great post showing how to create an interface similar to Microsoft Surface using Silverlight with sample code.
• I came across this Silverlight Learning Guide on TechTarget.com.
• Page Brooks gives an example of using Isolated Storage.
• Wynapse.com has a list of Silverlight samples and code.
• Brian posts about using Playlists in Silverlight.
• The Canux blog posts a list of useful links covering Silverlight in general, demos and learning videos etc.
• A post about using the toolbar control that was linked to in a previous POI post.
• Tim Heuer does a post about using Silverlight to create an osx dashboard widget. 
• MossyBlog provides some tips about how Silverlight allows .zip assets.
• The WPFSDK blog posts about styling controls on a toolbar.
• Marc provides links to the deck and demo code used in a recent WPF webcast.

P&P

• Came across an old document based on CAB and SCSF (Last year's release). Worth reading over to get an idea of how it can be used - this links directly to the pdf.

Firefox

• I came across this add-on for Firefox that allows you to run a .NET ClickOnce application.
• I came across this Firefox Toolbar Tutorial.
• This is an old tutorial but also covers how to create a Firefox extension in some depth.
• Lifehacker.com also has a tutorial on Firefox Extensions.

SharePoint

• Lawrence lets everyone know that the new beta of Windows Live Writer (beta 2) now has support for SharePoint 2007.
• Cameron talks about skinning SharePoint and provides a list of really useful links.
• SoCalDevGal points us towards 40 SharePoint Templates and some MasterPage samples as well.
• JOPX gives a list of useful SharePoint 2007 links.

Learning

• The P&P team release the first beta of the "Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications" book.
• Krzysztof links to his API design lecture he blogged about a ferw weeks ago (500Mb).

Other

• Vittorio shows us a sample that sends a CardSpace obtained token to an Ajax service implemented with the new Orcas features.
• Help.Net points to an article that shows you how to do file upload & compression in asp.net
• John Lam responds to Martin Fowler's post about IronRuby
• Peter gives a good post about the battle of the maps (google vs msft).
• Oracle released a beta of the next version of ODP which has support for ASP.NET Providers.
• Help.Net points to the top 15 free SQL injection scanners.

Have a good week!

John