.Net Development & General Tech Related News

Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 Uk Lunch Event in July

July 1st, 2009 Posted in .Net, ASP.Net, Expression Web, Silverlight, microsoft | No Comments »

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I received an email this morning inviting me to an exclusive launch event for Silverlight 3 and Expression 3.

Unfortunately I am out of the country, but the launch event is being held by Microsoft on July 22nd.

In the words of the invite, the event is to “celebrate the UK launch of Silverlight 3 and Expression 3” and will feature a keynote speaker in the form of PP&T General Manager, Ian Ellison-Taylor of Microsoft in Redmond.

So, it looks like we will be seeing the launch Expression 3 and Silverlight 3 on or around July 22nd 2009.

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BOOK REVIEW: ASP.Net MVC 1.0, Problem – Design – Solution (Wrox)

June 29th, 2009 Posted in .Net, ASP.NET MVC, ASP.Net, Book Reviews, C# | No Comments »

mvcbook Title: ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Problem – Design – Solution

Publisher: Wrox

Authors: Nick Beradi, Al Katawazi, Marco Bellinaso

It seems that recently every man and his dog have been talking about ASP.Net MVC and the many advantages it brings along with it.  I have to admit that, up until now, I have not really looked into it a great deal, except for watching a couple of sessions at last years MSDN Roadshow.  Anyway, I decided that it was about time I found out more about ASP.Net MVC and see if it really was worth all of the hype.

Why did I read THIS book?

The reason I chose this book was two fold – firstly, it claimed to give you a good grounding in using ASP.Net MVC to those with experience of ASP.Net Web Development.  Secondly, in the books’ own words it provided “solid, workable solutions to real work problems” (I was dubious about this claim….many books I have read have claimed to do this and failed miserably with the first couple of chapters).


First Impressions

Right from the very first chapter it starts off on the correct foot, giving an overview of the application you will create as you work through the book, that application being The Beer House, which is available for download as a starter kit.  The main attraction of this application to me was that it contained many of the features I often implement in my own applications, such as forums, article management and user profile / membership management.  The idea of reading a book that directly relates to my real-world programming was a big pull for me.

Thankfully, this book certainly does not try and force MVC down your throat as a must-use solution, instead giving an honest opinion that, yes MVC is very useful in many situations, but that in other situations, classic ASP.Net Web Forms may still be the more logical option.  This is a refreshing change from some of the other more self-righteous books I have had the des-pleasure of sampling where they simply see their subject matter and related methods as the only way to go.


What’s Covered?

I don’t think I can put the content of the book in better words that the book itself, so here are those very words;

  • Techniques for building a flexible, easily configurable, and instrumented site
  • How to use jQuery to enhance and extend the capabilities of your ASP.NET MVC site
  • How to design a module to manage articles, news, and blog posts
  • Tips for creating and managing multiple polls on your site
  • Ways to build a robust newsletter system for e–mail newsletters on a background thread
  • How to develop a Web 2.0 community–centric forum from scratch
  • Steps for adding a working e–commerce store based on PayPal
  • All the different ways to deploy an ASP.NET MVC site
  • All of the above is covered in ample detail and I really did find this book extremely useful when relating the MVC implementation with my tradition Web Forms methods.

    I especially liked the fact that attention was paid to the design of the application you create.  Coming from a web design background I am often astounded by the lack of attention paid to this area and it was pleasing to see a chapter dedicated to this for the non-design minded developer.

    The other thing I loved about this book was that as well as ensuring every detail was covered off when developing each solution for the Beer House application, the authors have made a clear effort to highlight when something more may be needed in different circumstances and provided sample code and examples where needed.


    Source Code Problems

    Probably the only bad thing I have to say about this book were the problems I had when attempting to get the source code to compile once I had downloaded it from the Wrox web site.  I think the main problem was that the code on the site was possibly an old version with several other versions kicking around the internet.  I am unsure as to which was the correct up-to-date copy.

    However, all that said, with some tinkering, I did manage to get it to compile and what a lovely application it is. :)


    The Final Verdict

    I found this book to be an extremely concise and focused journey through ASP.Net MVC and a perfect introduction to the subject and I would highly recommend it to anybody who is looking for a good grounding in the subject.

    This was also my first read of a book from the Problem – Design – Solution series from Wrox, and if the other books in the series are in a similar style, then I look forward to reading more as the straight forward style with real-world connections suited me down to the ground.  

    You can find this book for sale on Amazon or from the Wiley web site.

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    Windows Mobile / Smart Client Support Dropped from Visual Studio 2010?

    May 22nd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

     

    According to recent news on msmobiles.com Microsoft have dropped support for Windows Mobile and Smart Clients from Visual Studio 2010. 

    However, whilst there is no support currently in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, this does not mean that there definitely will not be in the final release of 2010.

    I can see one of two things happening;

    – Mobile support will be shipped with Visual Studio 2010 – it’s just not in the beta.

    – Mobile development is getting it’s own IDE.

    One thing I certainly know will not happen is a disappearance of it altogether.  Mobile dev is very important to Microsoft’s strategy, especially now with the recent news that Windows Mobile 6.5 is finished and the recent announcements around the new Windows Mobile Marketplace, designed to compete with the IPhone’s App Store.

    So, while I do wish that there was some mobile support in the beta, I don’t think it will be long before we find out where it will end up.

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    ReSharper for Visual Studio 2010 Preview Coming

    May 21st, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

     

    For those of us who use ReSharper on a daily basis and to a large extent rely on it, you will be glad to know that there is a preview on the way for Visual Studio 2010.

    The ReSharper developers are currently hard at work on building in all of the understanding of the new .Net 4.0 material, such as optional parameters and named arguments.

    The guys at JetBrains say that the preview will be released in June and you can get the full story from their web site.

    You can see a screenshot below of ReSharper at work in the beta of Visual Studio 2010;

    shotsearch[1]

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    Visual Studio 2010 Multiple Monitor Support – Screenshot

    May 20th, 2009 Posted in Betas, visual studio | 2 Comments »

    For those of you who have not installed the beta of Visual Studio 2010, below is a screenshot showing the new feature within 2010 that allows support for multiple monitors.  As you can see, you can now completely undock your editors and other windows and drag them onto another monitor or simply another area of the screen as shown in the second screenshot. Very nice!

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    TUTORIAL: Entity Framework v2.0 – Model First using Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4.0

    May 20th, 2009 Posted in .Net, ASP.Net, C#, Entity Framework, Tutorials, ado.net, visual studio | 2 Comments »

    Following up on my recent post about the improvements to the Entity Framework in .Net 4.0 this is the first in a series of posts examining some of the new features and showing you how to put some of them into practice.

    In this post I am going to look at one of the most anticipated features, Model First.  In the first version of the Entity Framework, you took a pre-existing database and the tools would generate your entity model for you.  In v2.0, you now have the option of creating your entity model first and then generating your database DDL from your finished model.

    To follow this tutorial you will need Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1, .Net Framework 4.0 Beta 1 installed, SQL 2005 or 2008 / SQL Express.

    Please bear with me and let me know if there are any parts of this tutorial that are not completely clear.  I am new to writing these! So any comments welcome….

    Creating your project and adding your blank entity model

    Open Visual Studio 2010 and create a new Dynamic Data Entities Web Application project(you could another project type to host your entity model, such as an ASP.Net Web Application).

    Once your project has been created add a new ADO.Net Entity Data Model to the project. 

    add_model_object

    You will then be asked about what the model should contain.  As with version 1 of the Entity Framework, you have two options, Generate from Database and Empty Model.  To a large extent, the latter was redundant in the first version of the framework, but with version 2 it becomes very useful.  Select Empty Model and click Finish. Read the rest of this entry »

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    Typemock for ASP.NET Unit Testing

    May 19th, 2009 Posted in ASP.Net | No Comments »

    This is fresh from the typemock.com blog;

    Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy.

    Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle – and for the launch will be giving out FREE licenses to bloggers and their readers.

    The ASP.NET Bundle is the ultimate ASP.NET unit testing solution, and offers both Typemock Isolator, a unit test tool and Ivonna, the Isolator add-on for ASP.NET unit testing, for a bargain price.

    Typemock Isolator is a leading .NET unit testing tool (C# and VB.NET) for many ‘hard to test’ technologies such as SharePoint, ASP.NET, MVC, WCF, WPF, Silverlight and more. Note that for unit testing Silverlight there is an open source Isolator add-on called SilverUnit.

    The first 60 bloggers who will blog this text in their blog and tell us about it, will get a Free Isolator ASP.NET Bundle license (Typemock Isolator + Ivonna). If you post this in an ASP.NET dedicated blog, you’ll get a license automatically (even if more than 60 submit) during the first week of this announcement.

    Also 8 bloggers will get an additional 2 licenses (each) to give away to their readers / friends.

    Go ahead, click the following link for more information on how to get your free license.

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    MSDN & Public Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Downloads Finally Here!

    May 18th, 2009 Posted in Betas, microsoft, msdn, visual studio | No Comments »

    UPDATE: The public version of the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 can be found here.

    Today sees the waiting over for many people, myself included, for the release of Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010.

    According to Mike Ormond the beta will be available to MSDN Subscribers today, with a public download following hot on its heels on Wednesday.

    Apparently, the beta will run fine on Windows 7 RC1.

    If you are an MSDN Subscriber, visit MSDN subscriber downloads here.

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    Recommended WordPress Ping List

    May 14th, 2009 Posted in WordPress | No Comments »

    I have updated my ping list for WordPress after reading this post.

    The list still uses Ping-o-Matic, but also includes a few other sites I had not thought about;

    http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
    http://bblog.com/ping.php
    http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
    http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
    http://ping.feedburner.com
    http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
    http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
    http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
    http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
    http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
    http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
    http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
    http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

    So, now I just have to see if this increases the traffic.

    What about you? Do you use any other sites in your ping list that we should all know about?

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    Visual Studio 2010 Beta Release Next Week…..Maybe.

    May 14th, 2009 Posted in .Net, Betas, visual studio | No Comments »

    Many people, myself included were gvery exicited this week as we were expecting the release of Vsiaul Studio 2010 Beta from TechEd, however, now Mary J Foley has posted on her blog stating that she believes that Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 will be released next week.

    Although this is nothing concrete, it certainly seems that certain people in the Twitterverse are saying that Jason Zander is saying that they are very close to release and therefore adding some more credence top the claims.

    Just hurry up Microsoft!

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