The Moth

A few links you may be interested in.

• This week was a big week for Microsoft with the unveiling of the developer story for Windows 8 Metro-style apps. The recorded sessions are available on channel9. Note that you can use C++ AMP in both Metro and desktop apps, and in fact even on Windows 7.
• Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview is now available. To download it, here is a link to a link plus context.
• As I previously shared, I was also speaking at BUILD on C++ AMP, and here is a direct link to that recording.
• Kate Gregory has started a book on C++ AMP and she has graciously shared the first 1-2 draft chapters for free online – get the link from her blog post which is also where you can leave her feedback.
• As Yossi Levanoni (the architect of C++ AMP), posted on our team blog, the C++ AMP article that he and I co-authored is now available at Dr Dobbs.
• Important reminder: Questions on C++ AMP should be posted at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/parallelcppnative/threads

A few months ago I shared a UX blog that I found interesting. Today I'll share another: UX Movement. They have interesting design articles (e.g. this, this, this, this and that) and occasionally shares great UX resources (e.g. this and that).

Let me know if there are other UX resources you recommend…

While most of the buzz at the recent PDC here at Microsoft's headquarters has been about Windows Azure and Windows Phone, there is a truly noteworthy technology that as a .NET developer (of any kind of application) you should pay attention to, even in its early technology preview stage: Visual Studio Async CTP.

I could provide many more direct links, but you do not need them: just visit the home page of this technology to download whitepapers, watch videos on how this technology integrates with C# and with VB, (through the new async and await language keywords) as well as videos on how the technology works under the covers (based largely on the Task Parallel Library). More importantly, download the actual bits (they install on top of your Visual Studio 2010), which include many samples. Get ready for a revolution in Asynchronous Programming with C# and Visual Basic.

I've mentioned before our Technical Computing group and today it takes the next step with the launch of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2.

Get the official word and read all about it at Soma's blog post, the Microsoft blog, and on the Microsoft news center. To watch the keynote plus more don't forget to visit the dedicated HPC launch site.

The last few months I have been spending a lot of time designing (and help design) the developer experience for the areas I contribute to (in future versions of Visual Studio).

As a technical person who defines feature sets, it is easy to get engulfed in the pure technical side of things and ignore the details that ultimately make users "love" using the product to achieve their goal, instead of just "having to use" it. Engaging in UX design helps me escape that trap.

In case you are also interested in the UX side of development, I thought I'd share an interesting site I came across: UX myths. In particular, I recommend reading myths 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 21.

Let me know if there are other UX resources you recommend…

Over at the Intel Software Network Aaron Tersteeg runs a "Parallel Programming Talk" audio show on which I was invited as a guest (for the 55th episode) to talk about Microsoft's parallelism offerings in Visual Studio 2010. The call started at 7:45AM, so if my voice sounds croaky to you, now you know why ;)

Check out the 20-minute chat (and related hyperlinks) on Aaron's blog.

Hopefully anyone reading this blog monitors ch9, but on the remote chance that is not true, you must watch the two-part brilliant 1-hour documentary on Visual Studio: Part One and Part Two.

I want to share this comprehensive blog article by John Robbins. No need to paraphrase the title, it perfectly describes the content already: PDB Files: What Every Developer Must Know.

At the PDC2008 attendees received USB hard disks with tons of software and information. One of the items was a technical whitepaper that my org published and you can open that XPS document directly here. For more, I have a permalink to our Parallel Computing Dev Center on the left pane of my blog.

Mark Dunn asked me some questions on parallel computing during a 15 minute interview at the fishbowl in Barcelona. Find it on this web page (or watch it directly in your media player).

You may (or may not) wish to listen in on a 5 minute random chat (after a few beers at the Ask The Experts) I had with Chris Hay and John McLoughlin (NxtGenUG boys) on their PDC podcast (38:45 – 43:25).

...are the names of our next release that developers can look forward to (it is great to finally be able to talk about some of the new features publically... even though I have already hinted at a couple e.g. here ;-).

Soma made the announcement; his blog post focuses on the VSTS SKU. The theme continues on channel9 all week.

Also just noticed the presspass announcement and MSDN page.

...according to Craig Mundie. The 2 videos on that page are demos that I've seen internally before and I especially like the first demo, check it out. Beyond the videos the report looks good too. Favorite quote:

"We have to master the transition to a parallel programming environment, with highly distributed, concurrent systems."

Read the full article.

While at Tech Ed, I spent 13 minutes chatting with Richard Campbell about my two sessions. View the recording on this page (or download the wmv).

Following the first ever drop last December, the latest preview is now available. Ed has the link and details here.

Back in 2006 when Windows Vista was released I got very excited about the SideShow feature (the auxiliary display support). I got so excited that I wrote a series of long blog posts. Read bottom up my SideShow category.

I just got word that the team finally released the managed bits:
+ Windows SideShow Managed API 1.0 SDK.
+ Windows SideShow Managed Runtime 1.0.

I haven't played with the final release of the API, but I doubt it is that different to the Beta version that I used to record this SideShow screencast (in January 2007). If you spot any differences, let me know.

In last’s week Flash issue, I wrote 500 words About Silverlight 2.

I have enjoyed being the editor of the UK MSDN Flash newsletter. Ever since I took it over, it has topped Microsoft's (worldwide) newsletter growth stats compared to previous years in more areas than one. Additionally, its format inspired other newsletters from other Microsoft subsidiaries outside the UK. Hope you don't mind me blowing my own horn and since I can't publically back up these claims with numbers, you'll just have to take my word for it ;-). Exactly a year after the first issue I edited, the time has come for me to hand the newsletter back and I look forward to receiving it with a bit more anticipation as to what content I'll find inside!

Thanks to everyone that stayed tuned to that Flash feed, and I also hope you'll stay tuned to my blog feed.

My TODO list has had for a while to find some time to play with the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) and I may find an excuse to do that soon given that it is supported (and aligned to ship with) Silverlight 2. In the meantime, I needed a true expert to write a short related article for the MSDN Flash. All my research pointed to one guy and he happened to be based in the UK too: Michael Foord. Read his succinct 500 words on getting started with IronPython here (scroll down). Like I stated in my Flash intro... "exciting times!"

Occasionally people will ask me why I don't blog about some of the new data technologies. The answer is simple: my colleague MikeT (aka internally as Data Boy) owns that space. So who better to ask to write a relevant article for the MSDN Flash that went out 10 days ago. Read his great 500-word introduction to the Entity Framework here (scroll down).

In the latest issue of the MSDN Flash, ScottHa wrote an article that, in my opinion, perfectly positions the ASP.NET MVC Framework. Read the 500 words here (scroll down).

If you missed the keynote (live in Vegas or online), Tim Sneath was updating his blog live for it so you can read an outline here.


- You already know about ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 form my previous blog post.

- Many Silverlight 2 Beta 1 related downloads – Guy had all the links here before anyone else I think. You'll be hearing a lot more from me on that technology on this blog so stay tuned...

- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is out with unprecedented standards support. Choose the most appropriate download for you.

- There were many other announcements (such as Silverlight for Windows Mobile and Nokia) but nothing that we can actually get our hands on right now.


One of the most impressive keynote demos was actually not appreciated as much as I thought it would be (judging from audience reaction... maybe it is the wrong crowd?). Hardware accelerated performance improvements in WPF. The application was doing all kinds of crazy 3D effects and the CPU utilisation in task manager was barely moving! I can't wait to get my hands on that when it is released in the summer. Move the thumb of the video to 02:08:10 to watch it...

UPDATE: It went dead for a while but now it is back - same URL ;-)

Just spotted the ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 download. Three things to say about the subject in reverse order of importance:

3. I'll be doing half a session on this in Newcastle in May (but more on that closer to the time)

2. It is now separated out from the larger ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions package

1. You can go get it here.

Join me, MikeT and MikeO as the "developer folk" in Microsoft UK DPE.

'DPE' stands for "Developer & Platform Group" (the 'E' is silent :-).

Job Description here.

At my last blog post I shared some links, video and code for Sync Services. I mentioned how it is the first step/part of the larger upcoming Sync Framework. In the latest Flash newsletter from earlier this week, we have a great first look at the Sync Framework describing "participants" and "providers". For the non-Flash subscribers, scroll down on this page to read the 500 words.

On an internal MVP newsgroup (yes I am still monitoring those) someone complained about the removal of the "search" explorer menu option from Windows Vista SP1 (available now to msdn and technet subscribers) and someone else came to the rescue. Susan Bradley captured the background and solution on her blog.

Recently I wrote a 2-page article on Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework v3.5 for QBS Software. You'll find the hard copy of the QBS magazine via various means if you are in the UK, and they have also kindly made it available online. Download the 1MB PDF file here.

In my quest to get some feedback I setup 3 surveys for my subscribers with identical questions on three different sites: surveymonkey, zoomerang and questionpro (I also signed up and test drove for a bit wufoo but it wouldn't let me setup the questions the way I wanted them so I gave up). I thought I'd share my learnings here so you can use the knowledge if you setup a survey for your own site/blog or even for your team at work or your customers. At the bottom I also have some generic tips.

Remember my disclaimer.

COMPARISON
All 3 vendors offer a free version of their paid for services. The main limitation of the free service on all sites is that they only allow 100 responses per survey.

In all cases you sign up by providing your email and then you receive the login info. Surveymonkey sent me one text-only email with login details and that was the last I heard from them. The other 2 sent me html emails and also decided to sing me up to their newsletter (which I promptly unsubscribed from). Surveymonkey gives you a URL that points directly to the survey; the other two force a landing page (where they have their adverts) before allowing the survey taker to proceed.

Zoomerang has a funky easy to use user interface and with minimal clicks you can setup the survey and ditto for browsing the results (both overall and individual). There are 2 reasons I will not be using their free service again. Not only you cannot download the reports but they will only hold them on their servers for 10 days since the launch time of the report. More importantly, they will not notify you when the 100 allowed responses are complete and instead let people fill in your survey beyond that and if you want to see the additional completes you have to pay (I noticed this at some point and had to manually close the survey)!

QuestionPro has a horrible unintuitive user interface IMO. In addition, it takes far too many clicks and slow response times to setup the survey and ditto for reading the reports. Its login timeout is also too short so it added additional clicks to my user experience every time I refreshed the reports page. The main advantage it has is that even the free version allows you to get csv/xls reports to your own machine, whereas the other 2 will not let you do that unless you pay. Even generating the report involved making a few clicks and then receiving an email with an attachment (instead of just right click->save as). Beware that they will not notify you when the response limit reaches 100 and if there are more than 100 responses they will not show you *any* reports until you upgrade!

Surveymonkey just works. Best experience for setting up, quickest to use for browsing reports, keeps you logged in with no apparent timeouts and smoother experience altogether both for me and for the people taking the survey. None of the issues I mentioned in the previous two paragraphs.

TIPS
To conclude, here are some random tips if you run a survey. This is based on my vast experience of doing this...twice ;-)

1.Keep the number of questions short; definitely make them fit on a single short page. Any more than that and users will abandon the survey the minute they see it. Budget 20 seconds per question and then gauge how long you think someone will spend overall there before giving up – this should guide you to the total # of questions.

2.Write questions in such a way so the user can just select the answer (i.e. Yes/NO or multiple choice). Again, if you force me to have to do a lot of typing, I will probably not take the survey. Make the last choice "Other" where applicable and offer an optional textbox for additional comment.

3.Following on from the previous point, try and make the multiple choice answers exclusive. Allowing multiple responses per question (like I did) means having to spend a lot more time analysing the results as the percentages alone do not show the full picture.

4.When you think you wrote a good question, visualise how the results will be interpreted. If you cannot think of how you would interpret the results or what action you'd take based on the results then the question is wrong. For example, I asked a question in my survey that was just to satisfy my curiosity and in hindsight it was not actionable or interpretable so I should have left it out.

5.The more factual-based questions you have, the faster the user can move through them. The more opinion-based questions that you have the longer it takes to fill in and the longer it will take you to analyze. Just something to bear in mind.

6.Assuming that you managed to write questions where the user didn't have to use the keyboard, make the last question open ended. Make it last, so you don't receive feedback that is covered in other questions. Make it open ended because the verbatim feedback will likely be more important than the rest of the questions.

7.Never use multiple different survey sites for the same set of questions. Aggregating the results from 3 different engines for consolidation is a bit of a time consuming nightmare.

As per my intro in today's MSDN Flash (that will at some random point appear here), the registration is now open to everyone. Come learn about Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 in Birmingham on 19th March. Register from here.

Even though I am a developer (as opposed to an IT Pro), I do enjoy some of the content of the UK TechNet magazine to which I subscribe. In the January issue, they feature a two-pager (p10-11) on the three launch products for 2008 (SQL Server, Windows Server and Visual Studio). I recall being asked to share my top 5 features of VS2008 with them, so I wasn't too surprised when I saw my name and photo in there.

To read my relevant bits, scroll down on this PDF page until you read the words "On Visual Studio 2008".

The MSDN Flash was delivered yesterday (subscribe here). In addition to a great SharePoint article, my UK readers will find great choice for in-person developer events in the Register and Horizon sections – you can view this issue online now.

You all know that 19th March is the UK launch of the three 2008 products. If you are interested in receiving an email about with the registration link a few hours before anyone else sees it, please register your interest here.

Tim asserts that most developers think WPF is irrelevant and blames Microsoft for it. I am as guilty as the next person about stating where I think WPF fits compared to WinForms. Of course, not everybody holds that view and Jaime backs up his thoughts with a pointer to an interesting article: WPF goes to work.

Assuming you have WPF experience, what do you think?

The MSDN Flash was delivered yesterday (subscribe here).

In every issue we have a feature article on a specific topic and this time it is about building Silverlight Sidebar Gadgets – you can view this issue online now.

- How can a truly innocent blog post on Internet Explorer 8, attract over 100 comments!

- ScotGu states in a reply to his own post that the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview will be available tomorrow.

- PDC08 announced (hopefully it won't be rescheduled again). Can you believe that I've never been to one?!

- There are 5 (five!) other announcements made in the last 36 hours, but rather than list them here I'll include them in the upcoming Flash as usual. Please subscribe now.

The MSDN Flash was delivered yesterday (subscribe here). In the editor's intro you'll find where and when the UK 2008 Launch takes place – you can view this issue online now.

"Parallel Computing Initiative Ushers Computing into the Next Era"
A bit high level (marketing?) at times in this 10-page document, but there is definitely some interesting stuff in there - read it!

I am a bit slow so I had to read this page twice on wikipedia, but it was worth it in the end, I think. See if you get it all in one pass: Futures and Promises. Because my imperative head wasn't completely blown away I also spent time trying to grok dataflow programming. Opens your mind doesn't it?

Via Jason, I discovered this post on the concurrency learning curve and following links from there, I found Intel's view on "data and task parallelism". Interesting stuff!

If you are looking for a copy of Expression Blend that works and is supported with VS 2008, look no further than Blend SP1.

Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for VS2008 spotted in the wild.

The MSDN Flash was delivered earlier (subscribe here). There is a FULL roundup of the Tech Ed announcements and downloads. Also, as usual, you can purchase the featured MS Press book (this time it is a Silverlight book) at a huge discount for a limited time (until the next Flash issue comes out) – you can view this issue online now.

The MSDN Flash was just delivered (subscribe here). The Fresh discoveries include "Oslo" and the editor's Intro may have the bag let the out cat of – you can view this issue online now.

I don't like "me too" posts but this is important, especially since I am responsible for some of you downloading it: If you are running VS2008 Beta 2 in a VPC, it will expire November 1st. Full details on JeffBe's blog.

The MSDN Flash was just delivered to its subscribers. There were 15 Fresh discoveries and an opportunity to win an Xbox Elite 360 – you can view this issue online now.

When I get emails for support that are not directly related to my blog posts/events/screencasts I usually point the person to an appropriate free online support forum and newsgroup (e.g. for mobility questions I point them to these two and for questions in other domains I find the appropriate forum).

Occasionally the email (or phone call as the case was recently) is much more involved and for an educated answer the helper must gain a lot more context and insight into the environment. In these scenarios I recommend consultancy (not the body shop variety where people get installed in your office, but true advice from experts on a as needed basis). If the company is serious about their architectures staying up to date with where the Microsoft platform is going and about getting advice ranging from high level strategic issues down to performance optimisations in a certain implementation, then I suggest Microsoft Application Development Consulting.

As a customer you buy a set of consulting (150-2400) hours that you can use as you see fit during the year (maybe a presentation on some new technology of interest, a code review, an architectural planning meeting, help in building a proof of concept, debugging a nightmare bug etc). You are assigned an ADC that is effectively on-call for your company, (but who can decide to bring other members of the team as he sees fit – at the same rate). The ADC understands your product(s), environment(s) and people, and can be used remotely and/or on-site as the occasion dictates. To find out more about the rates, view a datasheet and get the contact email and phone number, please visit the ADC page.

As an aside, when I interviewed here at Microsoft UK 17 months ago, I got two job offers: one being the one I accepted and do today, the other being the ADC role which I am advertising on this blog post. Reasons for choosing one over the other are irrelevant here, but I did have to sleep on it for a couple of nights... As a second aside, when I joined my current team, 3 out of the 4 other guys were former ADCs...

Occasionally I get emails which include attachments with Visual Studio projects and I am asked to look at them and give my opinion. Please note that I do not do that – sorry, I don't have time to look at my own code let alone somebody else's.

Stick it on your blog (if you don't have one, what a great way to start one!) or if you want it to be contributed by others maybe on codeplex. If there is more of a story to be told around the code (e.g. an article) then as a reader I find codeproject to be great for that kind of thing. Another place to post code and start a discussion is on channel9 of course. There are other places on the net but these suggestions should give you a good start...

Recently I gave such a reply to Ricardo Bartolomeu and you can see the results of his work here.

Where else do you share your code projects?

If you've been living under a rock (or on a remote disconnected beach) for the past 2 weeks, then below is what you have missed.
And if you have been online for the past 14 days, then you get a yellow card for every link you are not aware off (2 yellows make a red and you are sent off ;)

1. Silverlight v1.0 was released for Windows and Mac OS X, Linux to follow. TBH, I was expecting the release date to coincide with Mix:UK as I may have hinted, but clearly I was wrong. Read more here.

2. Plans for Windows Vista SP1 are made public. Read more here.

3. Release date period for Windows Server 2008 refined. Read more here.

4. ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 2 released. Read more here.

5. OpenNETCF launch public community site for mobile and embedded developers. Read more here.

6. The first UK SQL Server community conference has opened registration. Read more here.

7. Now THAT'S innovation! I've always explained how touch screens suffer from the obvious problem of the stylus/finger/hand obscuring the line of sight and hence the touch precision. How about a double sided touch screen with a few additional twists? I very strongly encourage you to watch the entire 3 minute video. Read/watch more here.

For those of you with blogs out there, how many times do you genuinely search for something on the web only to get your blog as the top result? As pleasing as it is to see your blog in the top search results, sometimes it just gets in the way because you know darn well that you do not have the answer on your blog (or else you'd just search that, rather than the whole wide web, right?).

I somehow ended up having a similar conversation over email with one of our interns, Ian MacGillivray, here at Microsoft UK and he found a solution (showing off LIVE's rich customisation) and it looks like he is phishing for a link to his blog now... So, if you want to see how LIVE is superior to Google or how to create your own customised search engine or how to search the web excluding my blog (not recommended!), read the post from Ian MacGillivray aka Bartholomew ;-)

It looks like the world has gone crazy with this Facebook thingy. I have zero time for real socialising let alone for online socializing so I have ignored the whole thing. By "ignored", I mean I have acted on invitations (meaning I had to create my space or whatever it is called) and other things that come into my email inbox, but I have not customised anything or initiated connections/invitations or even uploaded a photo. So why am I talking about it here?

It turns out that there is a .NET API for Facebook! It also looks like supreme device developer and all around top geezer, The Foot, has started porting it to support the .NET Compact Framework. Check out his blog post for more (which follows on from this one that includes screenshots).

Not sure how this term managed to escape me up to now, but it did. Simple stuff like this fascinate me. From wikipedia:

"In computer science, duck typing is a principle of dynamic typing in which an object's interface and attributes determine valid semantics, rather than having the language enforce rules regarding inheritance or require type casting."

Found via Krzysztof where he discusses Duck Notation.

Having done a lot of real world work with threading in the .NET Framework including working with the numerous limitations of NETCF v1.0 (inc. implementing the BackgroundWorker for it), I read with interest Sam's parallel computing blog post to see what links there would be in there and I wasn't disappointed. Check it out if you are new to threading in the managed world. That reminded me about a related topic that I keep mentioning at the end of my LINQ presentations and that I've been meaning to blog about in response to Tim's question: Parallel LINQ (PLINQ).

One of the numerous benefits of LINQ is the move to declarative programming, which has side benefits over and beyond the obvious ones. By writing code that tells the engine what it is that we want it to do rather than how to go about it, we open new possibilities where the engine can take our intent and split/execute it on multiple threads/cores (since ultimately it is responsible on the how). While most devs "get" that, it may sound a bit woolly to others, so here are some links/info about PLINQ.

I believe the first mention of PLINQ is in this eWeek article (August 2006). Joe Duffy announced his involvement (September 2006) and then followed it up with more info and a slide deck (January 2007). Bart watched a presentation on the topic and spills the beans on the AsParallel extension method which he follows with a NON-Plinq code example (April 2007). Finally, watch a real 5' demo by Luca from Tech Ed [between 51:26-56:40] (May 2007).

Of course, it is early days and PLINQ will not ship with VS2008 (or even as part of the wider Orcas-wave) but you get the idea... The earlier you start taking advantage of LINQ, the earlier you'll be able to take advantage of PLINQ when it eventually ships ;)

If you are a developer on the Microsoft platform you should subscribe to the bi-weekly MSDN Flash newsletter to keep up to date with the latest news. The newsletter is available in the US and most other countries translate it to their own language so you can subscribe to a localised version if you wish. Check your local MSDN website. In the UK we have had our own version for a very long time and a couple of months ago I took over as the editor. After soliciting feedback from numerous people in the community we have streamlined the UK MSDN Flash newsletter to make it much more digestible and very easy to scan for info relevant to you. I also personally ensure that the content is aimed squarely at developers with no other noise.

If you are a developer in the UK, I urge you to subscribe to the MSDN Flash (you can unsubscribe from the same place at any time and your email isn't used anywhere else). Even if you are outside the UK, 3 out of the 5 sections are still useful ;)

For a taste of what you've been missing go check out the latest issue. Let me know what you think and I am also interested in what you like in other developer newsletters that you may subscribe to!

Mobile Development Handbook

My book is now in my hands, and here is the proof... and another wobbly photo of the back :-D

At some point in 2006 I started writing a book and at some point in April 2007 we completed the project. I say "we", because I had two excellent co-authors, both long standing Device Application MVPs: Peter Foot and Andy Wigley. I would have liked to be able to say that I also am a .NET Compact Framework MVP, but unfortunately I lost that title when joining Microsoft last year as per the rules.

We explicitly targeted two audiences with our book and implicitly excluded one audience segment:
1. Existing C# and VB device developers - YES
If you are already targeting Windows Mobile devices you will know that all existing books talk about version 1.0 of the .NET Compact Framework and Visual Studio.NET 2003. Since those times there have been three service packs for v1.0, version 2.0 with two service packs and, of course, Visual Studio 2005. Furthermore, v3.5 is in Beta 1 right now as is Visual Studio "Orcas". Our book covers what is new in the .NET Compact Framework and Visual Studio 2005 compared to their predecessors. It also covers throughout the chapters, but also in a dedicated chapter, version 3.5 of the NETCF and VS "Orcas" for Devices.

2. Existing .NET developers who are complete newbies to device development - YES
There are millions of proficient .NET desktop developers that would like to know how to write code for their mobile device or generally want to find out how to transfer their skills or business logic to the mobile platform. The book's tone is certainly aimed directly to those developers by continually contrasting and comparing with desktop development as applicable, highlighting what is different or missing when doing device development.

3. Existing native device developers - NO
This book is all about managed code, but we never introduce any basic .NET concepts from scratch. We expect readers to know about those either through experience with previous versions of NETCF or through .NET desktop development. So if you are a native device developer, you should pick up another book to learn the basics of .NET. We also have made no assumptions of knowledge about the Windows CE and Windows Mobile platform. The reason is so desktop developers can get an introduction to the whole stack/environment and not just the dev platform and tools. So, as a native device developer, you will encounter concepts explained that you probably already are intimately familiar with.

Whether you are looking for a book to read cover-to-cover or for a reference that you go back to, this book will fulfil your needs. It isn't just a book on the raw technology, but more importantly it captures lessons from developers that have practised mobile and embedded development in the real world.

Mobile Development Handbook

...with updates mainly for WM6 devices, available here (32-bit) or for 64-bit here.

It is as if Roy has been eavesdropping to similar discussions we are having here in the UK. Check out his list of tips for better user group meetings.

As if I didn't have enough things to play with and events to prepare for, my incoming list shows me an Acropolis CTP. Download it here.

Been on the road for a week so catching up with my aggregator:

- Microsoft Surface (my wife asked me "Why is your mouth open, what are you watching there?")

- There has been discussion on the web about comments Martin made about AlphaGeeks. It is too easy for people to jump on the "doom train" (fact: being negative is so much easier than being positive), which is why I found Rocky's take most interesting: Busy, busy, busy.

- Bill and Steve talk. If you don't have time for the full interview, watch this 8' of highlights video.

- I am glad that other companies are finally seeing my point of view: pure web apps don't cut it; we need offline support and fast UI response. Read Tim's report from Google Developer Day.

Kenny Kerr has released Window Clippings v2.0. Read his announcement here. There is still a free version with all the important features and an advanced version for a truly modest price. Not only I downloaded it, but I paid for the extras as well. If nothing else, I encourage you check it out especially if you regularly do screen captures on Vista!

Remember when the news broke about PDC07? Go back to my blog post and follow the link again (and weep).

It looks like Dan's pit of cool toys is truly bottomless! If you thought the video from CES had a cool collection of SideShow devices, then check out this video from WinHEC.

When I come across Greek codenames internally it always pleases me (sad I know), but of course they cannot be talked about until they are public. It looks like this one is now since it has appeared in the Tech Ed US session list (type "Acropolis" in the keyword box, and then hit the Filter button). Out of curiosity I searched the web and found that there is a reference to Acropolis from over a year ago! So much for the secrecy... :-)

I have been expecting this website for a while, and AFAIC see, Ian is the first to break the news. Have a browse around the site and expect some even cooler stuff to go up there at some point (I only wish I knew when). Oh, and if you ask me, mobile should have been included up there... I see it as part and parcel of the "client".

OK Mark, I'll take the bait! I don't make it a habit to talk about technologies that are so far out, but I guess this very early prototype is worth highlighting to my readers in case you guys have been under a rock for the last 10 days ;-).

Scott has the video he made with Derek on his blog and if you want to see the exact Silverlight demo shown at MIX, then download the WMV (15', 55MB) and fast forward to the 14th minute for the Window Mobile version of the demo shown in the first 14 minutes on the desktop platform. If you want to read more from the dev lead of the Windows Mobile Silverlight prototype (including screenshots) then go to Rob's blog entry (some great stuff there!).

Personally, I want to see how Compact Silverlight will compare to .NET Compact Framework. Sure, one is for cross-platform, cross-browser and the other only for Windows CE but there is an overlap. If all I am targeting is the Window Mobile platform, then I can write smart clients with the NETCF today that do the job nicely. All I am missing is a Windows Forms layer replacement so I can create rich user experiences (rather than dull LOB apps). That is, I want to use my existing NETCF apps and simply remove the UI and replace it with a XAML-based UI – I don't want my app running in the mobile browser and I certainly don't need another CLR. But hang on, isn't that essentially how WPF differs to Silverlight on the desktop? Yes it is, so if you ask me, I'd rather we got Compact WPF instead of Compact Silverlight. Just my 2 drachmas worth :-)

Steve is giving up his job. If I ever decide that I am fed up of so many in-person events and would like to shift the bulk of my efforts to writing, I would go for this one. Imagine contributing in more ways than one to every issue of the world's best developer magazine on the Microsoft platform!

The other one is not a specific role but boy does Mike sell the MED division well! I tell you what, I am tempted already...

If the two above don't take your fancy, check out the full list (it is free to register).

The baby of our team (sorry Mark :-)), just dropped me a line to point to an official version of Camtasia that works on Vista.

This is great news, I can now resume to producing some screencasts, which is something I haven't done for a while. If you are new to this blog, check out my previous screencasts on channel9 and on the MSDN nuggets page and stay tuned for some Orcas recordings.

Office 2007 introduces a new file format, which you will have at least heard of e.g. PowerPoint files are now pptx, Word files are docx and Excel files are xlsx. Not everybody has made the switch to the new Office suite and I know that because I keep getting requests to provide my slides in the old format. Please open the files in the new format with the legacy version that you are using - just download the Office Compatibility Pack.

Still ROTFL with ".NET Love" part 1 and part 2. :-D

More often than not Sahil’s blog entries are written in a very entertaining style, so when I saw the title of his latest post I knew the content would make me smile: Hi, I'm a PC, and you're just a liar!! :-D

The replacement of ActiveSync on Windows Vista, the Windows Mobile Device Center has RTMd (only 3-4 months after my last WMDC post)!

Remember to remove any Beta you may have had and get download links from here.
(or wait for Windows Update by the end of the week with your phone plugged in as always).

I love Microsoft marketing. Even though they mostly get it wrong IMO when naming Microsoft developer products/technologies, you’ve got to give it to them when it comes to catchy phrases. How can you not love:

The "Wow" starts now

Finally, all the stuff I’ve been talking about over the past 9 months, will be publicly available to everyone in about 5 hours!

- Tim's insightful commentary on why Vista's cosmetic changes aren't just that.

- Came across an interesting article on 'Quantifying Complexity: .NET vs J2EE'. I read to my wife a quote from the article that I liked: "Beliefs without evidence are just bias [...]". She came out with a cheap shot but one that made me chuckle nonetheless: "What's your evidence for that?" :-). Anyway, read the article.

- And finally, all you wanted to know about why, when and how to use NativeMethods, SafeNativeMethods and UnsafeNativeMethods.

Exactly two years ago on New Year's day, I wrote the Best of "The Moth" 2004 blog enrty where I picked my favorite blog entries out of 96 posts. Exactly one year ago I had to choose from 151 posts to find the ones I thought were the best in terms of content and the result was the Best of "The Moth" 2005.

The year of 2006 I made 142 blog entries and below are a select few. Happy New Year!

01. I didn't have a chance to play with it as much as I wanted to, but with very little public info available, this blog served it well: .NET Micro Framework, its product sheet and other NETMF links.

02. Recognising an idiom of the using statement.

03. A cute desktop feature implemented for the Windows Mobile/WinCE platform in a reusable NETCF control: TextBox cue banner.

04. A picture is worth a 100 words and a video is... a whole bunch of pictures! Check mine out following the instructions here for my nuggets.

05. A comprehensive collection of links for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).

06. I collected the links to my 9 blog posts on sharing assets between desktop and mobile platforms in one place. Follow the numbered links.

07. The most controversial feature of Windows Vista is something every developer must understand: User Account Control.

08. One of Vista's features is becoming my obsession and that is SideShow. My series of SideShow gadgets blog posts will continue in 2007 and so far you can read parts one, two, three, four and five.

09. I spent 6 months last year focusing almost entirely on Vista developer features that are new and that are *not* part of NetFx3. I have catalogued my blogging & screencasting efforts in a large collection of links to content that supports my speaking engagements on Vista. IMO this blog post alone could have been the best of "The Moth" this year:

Vista-only features for the managed developer.

Stay tuned in 2007 via one of the subscribe options on the left :-)

After installing the RTM version of Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2005, this is what will greet you the first time you run VS on Windows Vista:



It references the “SP1 Update” for VS2005 to make it run best on Vista. Note that even with that, the advice is still to run with administrative permissions. I have said before that you can get away with many things by not running VS elevated, but to play it on the safe side do follow the explicit advice given.

You can get a Beta of the SP1 Update for Vista here soon.

BTW, we are all familiar with the term “RTM” and we are all used to “SP”, but this “SP1 Update for Vista” is a new one. It made me smile but, if you think about it, what else could they have called it?

Save the dates. Hot off the press.

The exciting stuff I hinted at here are now... live!

Mike has all the useful links and accurate IMO commentary. BTW, you can catch both of us at the FOTB event tomorrow in Brighton.

Other link blogging about Expression or WPF/e: UX journey, WPF/e DevCenter, Wow indeed.

In case any of you are not getting with the programme in this new “UX matters” world, go visit the Microsoft Design Centre.

I really hope you guys were not waiting for me to point you to a (fairly) new blog on Vista. This is the authoritative blog of the Shell team that is growing in readership like no other blog ever has.

Go read everything they’ve written to date as every single post is a gem, e.g. the one about minesweeper or the one about the menus or best of all the one with the treat at the end.

And if you’ve had enough of serious information, they published something on the lighter side today :-D

I was over at the Tech Ed Europe site to steal a logo for my blog (check it out on the left) and came accross this uber cool concept/contest: Speaker Idol.

…just got word that they are finally available for your viewing pleasure so go check out my nuggets!

1. Under "Filter nuggets by" go to the "Presenter" listbox and select "Daniel Moth".
2. Click the "Search" button.
3. From the list of nuggets select the ones of interest and the "Add to My Downloads".
4. In the top right panel under "My Downloads" you can watch/download the nuggets.

Nuggets are basically short (10'-20') pre-recorded videos that have minimal slides and capture the presenter's screen & voice while they demonstrate some technology feature.

Other sites call nuggets, screencasts (not to be confused with webcasts, which are longer online presentations with a live audience).

Recently I trimmed down the number of blogs I subscribe to and will do that again over the next couple of weeks. It came to the point where there were always 3-5 thousand unread items in my aggregator... I could never catch up!

So on my quest to be more selective I faced the dilemma of what I do with group blogs. The same goes for aggregate blogs. (discussion for the difference between the two here)

Current plan is to split the group/aggregated feeds from the direct ones (i.e from the ones where a single person is blogging.. allegedly :-).

Goal will be to keep enough direct subscriptions so that by the end of each week I can say "I've caught up with all of them". Who knows, I might bring back my BLOTW feature (BLOTW 2004 and BLOTW 2005). Will share my OPML when I am done with the trimming...

As for the group and aggregate feeds that I subscribe to (I call them "mass feeds")... they will be in a separate area and will only be scanned occasionally rather than read thoroughly. So, in contrast with the direct feeds, I do want to increase the number of mass feeds I subscribe to. One of the reasons is that a lot of the blogs that I am trimming out are part of some mass feed already so I can keep in touch with those that way :-)

Here is my current list of "mass feeds" (let me know if there are others I should know of) in truly random order:

http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/
http://blogs.conchango.com/
http://codebetter.com/blogs/
http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/
http://blogs.geekdojo.net/
http://geekswithblogs.net/
http://msmvps.com/blogs/
http://www.pluralsight.com/blogs/
http://www.developerfusion.co.uk/blogs/
http://blogs.vbcity.com/
http://wdevs.com/
http://weblogs.asp.net/Bloggers.aspx?GroupID=2
http://www.wintellect.com/Weblogs/
http://blogs.msdn.com/

... and my latest addition, the feature-rich:
http://www.dotnetslackers.com/ ("an emergent and popular .NET community")

- Even though not a asp.net guy by any stretch of imagination, I still find this quite cool

- Remoting -> Indigo

- Did you know you can add solutions to solutions?

- Ilya Tumanov provides the A to Z on netcf v2.0 cab files

- Follow the links to get Virtual Earth for your Windows Mobile :-)

Not quite recovered from Seattle yet and there are still 5337 unread blog entries in my reader, but here are two that caught my eye

- For those of us that missed PDC: What's new in GC v2.0

- How would anyone guess this without reading the manual ?!

PDC is over and the biggest buzz seems to be around the "LINQ project" a.k.a. Language Integrated Query Framework or just "Language INtegrated Query"

There is something not right about discussing Orcas, .NET 3.0, C# 3.0 and VB9 features when Whidbey hasn't RTM'd yet, but that is the industry we are in I guess... I dedicate this BLOTW to LINQ

* From the top dog in the developer division

* By the VB top dog

* With C# examples (and further links)

* Even more C# code

* Interesting comments as always from Wes

* Scared by DLINQ

* Series of blog entries on Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP)

* Unit testing asynchronous code

* Mobile stuff at the PDC ( the first reports of the precon day are already appearing and, no, sadly I am not there )

- Pablo points to "Solution Folders", a new feature in VS2005. (Note, it is not available with zero-impact projects so save if you want to use a Solution Folder)

- Tired of all the positive buzz on Indigo? Read this.
BTW, anyone here attending the Indigo event in Seattle? I'll be there :-)

- Even though this is not this week's news, I'll make an exception since I somehow missed it last month: Delphi for NETCF (cool!)

If she writes a book, I'll be the first one to buy it. This week: Application.DoEvents is *not* OK (don't say I didn't tell you)

GeneratedCodeAttribute. I say... finally!

Arguing over details... my kind of arguing :-)

"Thorough" doesn't begin to describe the coverage: Mouse Input and drag'n'drop.

Highlights of the performance enhancements in Whidbey

Generics Variance

Replies to some JIT questions

Notes and screenshots of longhorn client Windows Vista Beta 1

# Code Snippets FAQ.

# Generic delegates in the framework.

# String Basics (and a few people come to mind that should go back to basics ;-)

# Katie Blanch (previously known as K. Schaeffer) contributes 3 interop articles on the netcf blog:
Extending GUI Functionality
Common Issues and Debugging Techniques
Log File Information

# One of the hot WM 5.0 topics is persistent storage.

# Hah! Recently I had an argument discussion on this topic so I hope my "opponent" reads this: Singleton or ExpensiveResourceSingleton.

After delays upon delays I finally just made it back home from Dublin. Some photos from my talk are here (btw, if anybody wants me to talk at a user group or anywhere else, my new term of contract is that it must be followed by a “mouths-on” wine tasting lecture ;-).

So, since I haven’t personally caught up with any blogs this week, BLOTW redirects you to the Mobile Minute 105, 104 and 103.

This time round BLOTW is dedicated to Tech Ed Europe which was on last week. I was there in 2001-2002-2004, but sadly not this year.

Many blogs covered the event and some that caught my eye are here, here, here, here and here.

A Letter To The Terrorists, From London

* Loads of useful tools. Bookmarking it here for its "TabletPC Indispensibles" (since I just ordered a Toshiba Portege M200 :-)

* Don't Fsck With Nerds

* Interesting perspective on the .NET vs Java debate

* Rules for better presentations
      (don't forget this Thursday to come see if I apply them)

Read both the BlueJ side and a MSFT-employee view then make your own mind up. Personally, I thank BlueJ for the concept and I thank MSFT for borrowing everything that is good in the software industry and bringing it to my platform of choice.

SafeHandle

Enterprise Library background (via)

The endless debate: Custom Objects vs Datasets (check out all the comments and links too)

Human vs Computer (again, read the comments too!)

It's a known fact that while the VB compiler team focuses on VB6 compatibility, the C# compiler team focuses on optimisation (funny that, for a compiler team); so I was not surprised with this.

Robert points to updates on the Windows Mobile Migration FAQ for developers

I echo *every* single sentence on this post on signing in VS2005

Looking at the number of comments, you don't need me to tell you about it but... here is some info on tabbed browsing implementation in IE7

Microsoft's view on modelling makes an interesting read, e.g. "What about UML" (via)

Funny and so true (I have used at least half of them in the past :-)

Expect this technique to be used extensively with NETCF 2.0. Sure there was an easy workaround for obtaining the Handle, but pinvoking APIs with callbacks was impossible (without a native helper dll) since DllImport in CF 1.0 does not support delegates in the signature. Enjoy Subclassing controls in CF 2.0

I know I will be referring to these steps for removing SS from VS projects

Now I'll never forget the OSI layers "Please Do Not Throw Salami Pizza Away" (via)

Q: How long should a tech book be? A: 450 pages. Do you disagree?

Application Blocks for the Compact Framework

Quote of the week: Attributes are like tattoos - static and permanent

I hope the C# team follow the link from there and implement the only item I miss when coding in C#: Background Compiler

Popular tool re-implemented in unmanaged code for perf reasons! (via this)

James gives some insight to what it's like preparing MEDC.

David and Scott inform us of their sessions (both of them in my top 3 choices) and provide interesting links.

OT: I just came back from a trip to the Grand Canyon and I'll tell you the obvious: it is massive and as they say round here...awesome! No picture or video can capture it but I'll have photos soon at the usual place.

* The debate that never ends: VB vs C#

* Message to the VB team: Remove the crutches (why do I think that falls on deaf ears?)

* "Hello world" with code coverage

* I didn't know that either! I'll have to revisit those remoting projects, where I needed to debug server and client at the same time!

Your CF 1.0 app can run against CF 2.0 in compatibility mode or not. Learn how here

Target the v1.1 framework with VS2005 Beta 2

You can unwind exception call stacks

Do you agree that .NET is the best thing since OO?

This isn't the first and it won't be the last but, judging at how many times the question gets asked, it is needed: WinCE vs WM

Funny :-D

+ Everybody and their dog know that VS2005 Beta 2 is out on MSDN so I will not link to it. Early experience descriptions are aplenty and the lengthiest one I came across is here.

+ I wish I had the chance to attend that lecture as this post whets my appetite.

+ Some folks are brave living in a multi platform world. I found these two posts interesting. (Recollections of a previous life spring to mind: "write once debug everywhere" a.k.a. Java development)

As a "lover" of nntp I can't say I was immediately happy about this, but if properly managed it could end up being fantastic for Visual Studio 2005 developers everywhere and the beginning of a new way to get/give help: MSDN Forums Beta announced

I've been considering this lately, so the advice in this article is very welcome.

:-D Reserved for whom?

* In protest to the pricing model of Team System, no msft blog will be linked from this week's BLOTW. The pricing model is widely discussed in the blogosphere, but I find the quote at the end of this entry covers my thoughts:

"Congratulations to the development teams bringing these products to us. We're glad that you've been listening. Now go kick down the doors of the marketing people and blast them for wasting your time."

* On Monday, Roger asked in the wince.app.dev ng if people would be interested in styled controls; I directed him to the cf ng, where he got positive feedback. Here is the result.

* Seems I have to brush up on my UML, as there is a diagram in v2.0 I was not aware of

* In the past I run an internal "Advanced .NET Basics" session (covering the topics on this list). This full day tutorial seems to cover similar ground and all material is available for download.

* Don't throw from finally

+ If you think there is a scientific way classes are assigned to namespaces, think again.

+ I have thought about this before and, without going into details, I fundamentally disagree with the notion of "contextual keywords".

+ On the one hand I am not impressed with 35 blog entries in 2 days because I am not sure it is right to put such useful content into blogs rather than the traditional MSDN help (and MSFT do the former more and more). On the other hand, have you any idea how long we would be waiting had they taken this information through the stringent MSDN article submission process?

+ I have been bitten by this in the past, so follow the advice.

+ This neat little feature hasn't had as much exposure as it should IMO: incremental searching.

+ We will need this feature for an upcoming project, so I am bookmarking some info/links here on hosting the designer.

+ At some point I will blog about the process I followed when upgrading our VB6 system to .NET and then to CF. Until then, I'd keep my eye on Mike McIntyre’s blog (45 upgraded VB6 projects is a few dozen more than what I have done!)

+ Declarative validation with attributes and Java annotations by ex-Avanade Steve Maine.

+ Assuming this has no irony/sarcasm and without belittling anybody, with a dead-straight face I wholeheartedly agree with this (the alternative is to steer VB.NET to cater for this overlooked group; as a .NET dev do you want that?)

+ Never realised comment spam has good side :-)

- My favorite blog entries are those that cover a topic from A to Z. Another attribute I look for is content that has not been published before. Naturally, stuff like that comes once in a blue moon; on Wednesday the moon must have been blue on Peter Foot's blog.

- Layout in WinForms.

- Windows CE History (via droppings)

- After last week's BLOTW, it is only fair that I point to an MSFT response. There have been many more replies (I count at least 10 in my aggregator) so I will point you to one more, where you should read the comments in addition to the post.

- I was fairly confident I had nailed most of the differences between C# and VB in my head and then I came across a post on value type initialization. Another difference that is widely known is regarding interface implementation. It has been discussed before and is raised again here; if you think you can defend C#, please go comment (I am genuinely interested).

- Not sure if everybody is familiar with the versioning advice found here, but I am looking forward to "The Build Master".

- Some add-in is required to automatically create a BLOTW entry whenever Rico writes something new :-) Check out his latest, where he nails the differences between managed and unmanaged runtime performance.

3 days ago a thread started on an internal list (which is still going) whose subject was enough to catch my attention (paraphrased here):
Richard Grimes gives up on .NET

On one side I am shocked, on the other his justification is not convincing (to me anyway). Either way it does make you stop and think so I reckon it deserves BLOTW even if it isn't strictly a blog link.

Oh, and if like Frans you are asking "Who's Richard Grimes", here is a small example of his work (Workshop on Fusion).

Richard better have something else planned. I make it a point to never leave something old without having something new lined up: be it a car/house/job/PC/woman etc... only joking about that last one :-D

I hope you are not waiting for BLOTW to find out about the Indigo news from VSLive… or about Java creator’s anti-dotnet comments (and the numerous responses).

Go understand the nice post on cctors (even though you should know by now about beforefieldinit).

It’s not everyday I learn about a new Whidbey feature (don’t take that the wrong way, it’s true) so I was pleasantly surprised this week with linkedConfiguration

Are you looking for a formal explanation to switch to .NET

There are better uses of your cpu, but this is funny (via Sahil)

- Shawn Burke wraps up the "shipping source" discussion.
I wonder: If we do reach a stage where the framework code is available for stepping into, will VB developers ask for a VB version of the code (or will the last few that resist learning how to at least read C# give in?

- Jono turns his blog entry into a job board for CF developers and recruiters
(of course, if you are looking for NETCF consulting you should start here).

- "You should log unhandled exceptions, not just swallow them!" I have met many that refuse to adopt my advice (usually the type that love On Error Resume Next). If I can't convince you of the opposite, maybe this blog entry will.

- Some obvious, some not so obvious; overall a great post that brings together in one place the wisdom of when to go async and related advice

- Some humour on Unit testing :-D
(if you are a sensitive TDD advocate, keep your knickers on please, it is only a joke!)

By now you know about the yesfollow OR the chance to bid for an hour's consultancy with payment going to the victims... I will also remind you that the next installment of the training we mentioned last week is out - of particular interest the talk about progressive API...

Instead, go give a piece of your mind about default Form instances in VB (why would they listen now when they didn't before is a different matter)

I've already given a piece of my mind on the Class Designer in the past but I am still interested in new Beta 2 features.

On Friday (I almost broke my pattern and posted BLOTW then), Brad Adams announced a free .NET training series on Class Library design, kicking off with "Setting the Stage". I must admit it really does set the scene and there isn't any technical info in this one, but it does make me unable to wait for the next ones (make sure you read slides 11-14 for MSFT's business model as per BillG)! Definitely one for your bookmarks.

If you are after a quick WinForms tip, Cathi Gero has a cool one. Not only I've always liked the AutoTab feature as an end user, but as a developer I was not aware before of the highly configurable Control.SelectNextControl method.

And the lighter side of Project Management

I will not flood you with links like last time, but I must tell you that last week's winners have come back with killer posts; so revisit their blogs if you haven't already subscribed.

At the end of the first calendar week of 2005, why not download some tools (that I must admit not having played with yet)
-Check it out if you are working with process in WinCE and NETCF

-VS2005 Device Command Shell (a new tool that I bet will become very popular)

-Finally, subtle but important points about mixing operator overloading and inheritance.

-Like last week, it is a (almost) new blogger that headlines BLOTW, an MSFTie no less, Scott Holden. Read all 5 posts he makes in his first week including the one where we learn that the GC threshold in CF 2.0 changes from 750KB to 1MB.

-Not technical, but it caught my attention (and read it to the end following all links etc). Have a look and decide where you stand. I am not quite so sure...

-Some A-list bloggers claim that if you haven't posted for a month you are worthy of un-subscription, I don't buy that. Steven Pratscner's last post was over 4 months ago; had I unsubscribed I would have missed this most informative entry.

-How do you calculate the size of a directory?

-Not sure how you'll use this knowledge but if you like knowing what goes on under the covers when you set a breakpoint, this entry is for you.

-This BLOTW is the longest I've done, but still, I must point you to a time waster (via Tech Blender). I managed to write "THE MOTH" but the closest I got to my name was "DA IE MO H"

Imagine if all weeks were as slow (from a blogging activity perspective) as the one just gone by (I also wonder if the next one will be quieter)...anyway...

Rather than a specific blog entry link, we welcome one more .NET dev to the blogging world, Angelos Petropoulos; and if you don't have time to read all 3 posts he made in his first week (and not a "Hello World" in sight), enjoy this one.

The worst thing that can happen to me from a BLOTW perspective is this: a good post appears on a Monday so the people focusing on link blogging have already told the world about it. Given my BLOTW policy, that eliminates it from my shortlist for Sunday's BLOTW entry. This week I was lucky :-)

If you haven't already, go read why going to the bathroom will help you understand threading (Monitor.Xxxx methods) (long)

I can't help making a NETCF observation here. We only have Monitor.Enter/Exit in CF 1.0; CF 2.0 adds TryEnter but that's it, no Pulse methods :-(

Regular readers know by now that I would not talk about some conference that is 10 months away or some autocomplete search feature (in the same way I will not be talking tomorrow about yet another desktop search feature).

Did you think that "GC" and "leak" could exist in the same sentence? Apparently they can.

To balance things out, go to this not so technical post about MSFT shipping practices/processes.

Finally, take a seat back and enjoy the arguments discussions between one of the 3 amigos and the respectable opposition (if ever I needed proof that MSFT recruitment works well, I got it when they hired some of the best UK UML/methodology minds - all they need is this guy and they'll be flying).

Where did you read about yet another CTP, new spaces for blogs, unit testing software release, the number one word for 2004 and an antisapm screensaver? ...not here...

Brad Adams shows how to validate parameters in security-sensitive operations; I would have never thought of that and probably still won't ever use it..how about you?

I bet you can't sleep at night [:-)] not knowing why Windows run the timer at 55ms

Go back to basics with a performance analysis of the ArrayList

Giagnocavo cracks code!

Jared Parsons mixes Generics and Singleton. I wonder how many patterns can be rewritten using generics... anyone working on that?

Over at Saurabh Verma's blog there is a pretty picture showing a memory representation of a reference type holding a value type. Hopefully we'll get more pretty pictures of more complex scenarios.

No links here to some new CTP download or to some language feature getting dotslashed (I know it is the other way round :) although I could have linked to the 3 CLR videos

Earlier in the week I came across a writing that expresses a view which I fundamentally disagree with, but at the same time have to admit that the author is absolutely right! It may be long but I suggest you go read Sriram Krishnan entry (and then decide where you stand).

Soon we will be adding web-serving capability to our CE-based product so this entry was very welcome.

You are wrong if you think I'll link to the new browser launch (ieview is the best thing it has going for it) OR about the new MSFT game (when I get time to play a game I go here) OR about the poor devs at that game company (naturally I sympathise) OR about the flash CV of the Frenchman OR about YA search engine and I am definitely not telling you what file extension I am! [if none of these references make sense to you, stay in and read more blogs:-]

Instead, go read why Thread.Abort is evil (good thing the CF doesn't support it then so I didn't use it here :-)

Testing if this works in blogger

C# (btw, for the full MsgQueue API set look here)


VB (btw, this is a another example of this)

Windows CE 5.0 - Get the Facts, by Mike Hall

While on the subject of CE, a bunch of QFEs for all versions were published this week; if you want to know when MSFT downloads are available just subscribe to their rss feed (e.g. then you'd know that this week a new .NET CF sample became available also)

David Notario (x86 JIT developer) kicks off his blog with two great posts.

Alex Feinman does non-rectangular windows on CE with CF. Cool!

Now that C# gets EnC, if you don't want to use it, there will be a menu item option to turn it off. Early Adopter leaks a Whidbey screenshot of the context menu :-))

As you know I usually do the BLOTW feature at the end of the week but I will not be online this Sunday so here it is...

This week I recommend All About Handles in Windows Forms; the title says it all.

If you can't stomach the full thing you must at least go through the Design Guidelines Digest

On Monday Mike Harsh (of the WinForms team) told us why WinForms technology is not dead. Dan Appleman comments.

Two weeks ago I found a nice GC blog post. Now another one comes along by Maoni. Cool!

How does your code determine if it's on the development machine? Really, WTF :-)

You thought the .NET Framework only has one little brother (the CF)? Just when things couldn't get any smaller, Jeffrey Richter talks about TinyCLR here.

This week Kenny Kerr started an Introduction to MSIL
Check out parts 1, 2, 3, 4
[if you are interested in MSIL, there is the good “Partition III CIL.doc” on your dev machine – on mine its under: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\SDK\v1.1\Tool Developers Guide\docs]

If you are confused about the various different GCs (Server, Workstation, Concurrent) check out this entry by Chris Lyon as well as this one.

Luca blogs about x+=x++; (via post from Ericgu) and then Paul Vick follows it up with The joys of ++ and --

Help improve the WinCE debugging tools by replying to Sue Loh here

Rico gives us Performance Tidbits.

The big news this week are the changes to the shipping/content plans for Longhorn. Chris Sells has all the links here.

When it comes to threading we can think of locking in terms of a "linear acquire-do-release approach" or a "callback-based approach". I will not attempt to summarise any further this cool entry by Ian Griffiths.

If you find VB's language/syntax evolution weird/funny then laugh at this from the 3 Leaf guys.

Want to restrict a windows app to a single running instance? The traditional way is via a mutex and K. Scott Allen explains that very well here. As usual, its the gotchas that add the value...

David Cline continues his series on using cordbg on the CF with part VII (check out parts I, II, III, IV, V and VI).

Also, Brian Grunkemeyer on the BCL blog talks about Managed Debugging Assistants (MDA's) in Whidbey, in the context of finalizers.

Finally this week, Wes discusses differences in memory/speed between the Hashtable implementation of Whidbey and the current one.

This week Casey started blogging about new namespaces in CF 2.0, unique types on CF compared to desktop and breaking changes in CF 2.0 compared with 1.0. But then he summed it all up and much more in this article; go read it!

Also this week, Stan Lippman gives us his insights into the problem of a language retaining its character while having to fit in with the .NET Framework where "individual languages are diminished". Go read it especially if you are interested in templates vs generics in C++.