August 29th Links: .NET, ASP.NET, IIS Express, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7

Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 series and ASP.NET MVC 2 series for other on-going blog series I’m working on.

[In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

.NET/WPF/EF

  • 5 Little C#/.NET Wonders that Make Code Better: Nice blog post from James that highlights 5 nice language/framework tips you can take advantage of within your apps.  I’m betting a lot of people didn’t know about the StopWatch class.

  • WPF Ribbon Control Released: The WPF team recently released the final V1 release of the WPF Ribbon control.  This makes it easy to build ribbon-based applications. Also read this WPF team blog post for lots of great details on what it enables.

  • EF4 .Include() Method w/ Lambda Support: Ever wanted to use a Lambda expression instead of a string parameter when eagerly loading associations in EF4 using the Include() method?  This blog post shows you how you can.

ASP.NET

  • Techniques to Avoid Duplicate URLs: Scott Mitchell has another great article that discusses techniques you can use within ASP.NET to avoid exposing duplicate URLs to the same content within your web-sites.  These can help improve your search engine traffic.

ASP.NET MVC

  • MvcContrib Template Gallery: Download 58 pre-built ASP.NET MVC Template Gallery styles that you can use to customize the look and feel of your applications. All available under a Community Commons license.

  • Installation Options for ASP.NET MVC: Jon has a good post that describes how to install ASP.NET MVC 2 on a server. There are a couple of options you can use for servers that don’t already have ASP.NET MVC installed – the easiest is to just enable the “Copy Local” flag on System.Web.Mvc.dll and install it in the \bin directory.

IIS Developer Express

  • How to Use IIS Express with VS today: Kamran has a nice blog post that describes how you can use IIS Express with Visual Studio today – without having to wait for the official Visual Studio patch to enable it.

Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

  • Developers Roadmap for Windows Phone 7: The Windows Phone 7 team blogs about the release timeframe for Windows Phone 7 and the Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools for targeting it.  The official developer release will be on September 16th.

  • Windows Phone 7 in 7 Minutes: Really nice set of 7 minute videos that enable you to quickly understand and learn Windows Phone 7 and the development fundamentals behind it.

  • Windows Phone 7 Jumpstart Training: Nice list of free training sessions you can watch online to learn how to build Windows Phone 7 applications using Silverlight and XNA.

  • Using XNA from Silverlight on Windows Phone 7: Good blog post from Mike that demonstrates how to use XNA APIs from Silverlight applications on Windows Phone 7.  This post demonstrates how to use the XNA audio framework from Silverlight.

Book Recommendation

People often ask me for .NET book recommendations. Below is one book I always keep close by and find super-useful.  If you are looking for a good one-volume C# and .NET Base Class Library reference, C# 4.0 in a Nutshell a great one:

ir[1]nutshell

Hope this helps,

Scott

20 Comments

  • Great list scott!!! Thank you so much...

  • Thanks for these great links! I have a question about outputcache provider in ASP.NET MVC, I wrote my own outputcache provider but could not apply it to controllers or actions, there's no such a property called ProviderName in OutputCacheAttribute class, and I don't want to change the default output cache provider in web.config file, is there any way to apply different output cache provider to different controllers or actions? Thanks in advance!

  • Thanks for the link :) I am using IIS Express daily with some of my projects and it's excellent.

  • Scott, is there any way at all to get the *.chm file documentation viewer to remember the chosen language from page to page? I'm using both Enterprise Library 5.0 and SilverLight 4.0, and having to choose 'C#' several hundred times a day sort of cuts into productivity. I know the doc is online as well, but on a broadband connection, that also takes quite a while. Apologize if you've already answered this in the past, but I couldn't seem to formulate a search in the search box above that was useful
    Thanks
    David McBroom

  • I know MS isn't really big on UI consistency, however would it kill you to release a ribbon control that actually looks like the one in office? How many versions of the “ribbon” are out there now? You have the original Office 2007, you have the one in the new word pad and paint, 10 other versions people have come up with on their own, now we have a much nicer looking one in Office 2010, now today, months after 2010’s release, we have a control that looks nothing like the current look.

    Why?

    I would get into another rant about how as a platform MS should really have a solid and consistent look and feel, but it would get rather long. Open all of the stock programs in Windows 7, there are some glaring oddball programs. Open other MS programs, Office, VS2010, Expression, Zune, etc. It’s a complete mess. I hope, heck, I will even pray, that someone in MS is trying desperately hard to change this. If I pick up a Windows Phone 7 phone, will I even know it is windows, from MS? (BTW – I happen to love Metro as a UI theme, it’s just that it completely clashes with everything else presently, that could be fixed of course). Other platforms are now succeeding because they have this nailed, not because they are great under the hood. It’s just depressing.

  • Hi Scott,

    Thanks for these valuable links. One catch though (I am unable to post this on Mitchell's article). The article link "Techniques to Avoid Duplicate URLs" by Scott Mitchell has an issue I guess. This article talks about 301-redirecting from root/default.aspx to /root. The technique shown will not work and will cause an endless loop because this code:
    else if (Request.RawUrl.EndsWith("/default.aspx", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
    url = string.Format("{0}://{1}{2}",
    Request.Url.Scheme,
    Request.Url.Authority,
    Request.RawUrl.Remove(Request.RawUrl.LastIndexOf("/default.aspx", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)));

    will go in an infinite loop as RawUrl will always catch /default.aspx even if the requested URL looks like /root only. Can you shed some light on this issue?

    Thanks,

    Vivek

  • @Tao,

    >>>>>>> Thanks for these great links! I have a question about outputcache provider in ASP.NET MVC, I wrote my own outputcache provider but could not apply it to controllers or actions, there's no such a property called ProviderName in OutputCacheAttribute class, and I don't want to change the default output cache provider in web.config file, is there any way to apply different output cache provider to different controllers or actions? Thanks in advance!

    Very good question - can you send me email (scottgu@microsoft.com) about this? I will then loop you in with some folks on the team.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @david,

    >>>>>> Scott, is there any way at all to get the *.chm file documentation viewer to remember the chosen language from page to page? I'm using both Enterprise Library 5.0 and SilverLight 4.0, and having to choose 'C#' several hundred times a day sort of cuts into productivity. I know the doc is online as well, but on a broadband connection, that also takes quite a while. Apologize if you've already answered this in the past, but I couldn't seem to formulate a search in the search box above that was useful

    I sent some mail to follow-up on this. I haven't heard back yet though.

    Thanks,

    Scott

  • @my comment above: I am using ASP.NET 3.5, and using 301-Response.Redirect instead of the new 4.0 RedirectPermanent method. Below is the code I am using:

    else if (requestedURL.EndsWith("/default.aspx", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
    {
    newUrl = string.Format("{0}://{1}{2}",
    request.Url.Scheme,
    request.Url.Authority,
    request.RawUrl.Remove(request.RawUrl.LastIndexOf("/default.aspx", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)));
    context.Response.Status = "301 moved permanently";
    context.Response.AddHeader("Location", newUrl);
    }

  • Hi there, is the IIS Express Stand-alone package out yet?

  • Speaking of new books, whatever happened to the "Moving to Microsoft VS2010" e-book that was supposed to be out in the summer of 2010? The Microsoft Press blog page doesn't seem to have been updated since the 2nd Draft release in May.
    I'm in a shop moving from VS2005 to VS2010 and the draft chapters have been helpful, but it would really be helpful to have the book. Thanks.

  • Thank you so much...

  • thanks for these useful links.

  • Does anyone know a potential release date for SQL 4 CE?

  • @RyanLM

    The WPF Ribbon control is actually patterned off of the Windows 7 Ribbon. That's the UI standard being brought forward. WPF Ribbon applications will have the same Ribbon look as native Windows 7 applications.

    The original Ribbon look from Office 2007 isn't currently supported as the team felt the Windows 7 look had more currency. The Office 2010 look is much closer to the Windows 7 look.

    Pete

  • That's really helpful, thanks for sharing the links!

  • Does anyone know a potential release date for SQL 4 CE?

  • Great set of links. Especially appreciate the one on Techniques to Avoid Duplicate URLs. Very important for preventing negative impact on your SEO.

  • Thanks for sharing the links. I'm sure they will be very helpful to me

  • can u tell me that how to add silverlight toolkit in vs2008

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