Have code? Share it!

Tue, September 18, 2007, 02:26 PM under Links
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?
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I type 50 wpm

Fri, September 14, 2007, 01:04 PM under Random
UPDATE 4: Looks like I am bottom of the league on this one with others hitting 51.9 wpm, 62.8 wpm, 72 wpm, 73.7 wpm, 80.1 wpm, 81.6 wpm, 90 wpm, 90.3 wpm, 96.8 wpm, 97.4 wpm, 99.2 wpm, 118.8 wpm and 125.6 wpm! What are your results?

Tim talks here about Vista speech recognition, and as an aside he links to a site that tests your typing speed. I had 3 minutes to spare so I gave it a go and the results were 50 words per minute. That pales in comparison to Tim's 70 but I knew already that I am not a fast typist (which is why I rely on intellisense, snippets and "clipboard inheritance" in my VS demos). Give it a go and see how you fare...
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Power Toys for .NET CF 3.5

Thu, September 13, 2007, 01:05 AM under MobileAndEmbedded
If you are playing with Beta 2 of NET CF 3.5 then you are probably missing the brand new diagnostic/performance/configuration/etc tools. Well now there are more than ever before and available in the form of a Power Toys package that you can get here.

[Source: NETCF blog]
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My September and October events

Wed, September 12, 2007, 08:38 AM under Events
Busy October ahead so I'd better go create content for the below (various Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 topics). If you are in the UK and you read my blog, and in particular if we've never met in person, please drop by an event and say "Hi".

September
+ 13th, London, British Computer Society event. Attending, not presenting.
+ 18th, London. For Microsoft Student Partners (MSP) only – talk to your Microsoft contact.
+ 26th, Birmingham. Register here.
+ 27th, Bristol. Register here.

October
+ 2nd, Reading. Register here.
+ 4th, London. Register here.
+ 6th, Reading, SQL Bits community conference. Attending, not presenting.
+ 8th, Manchester. Register here.
+ 16th, Edinburgh. Register here.
+ 17th, Edinburgh. Register here.
+ 18th, Leeds. Register here.
+ 22nd, Coventry. Register here.
+ 26th, Reading. For Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) only – talk to your MVP lead.

Off to book travel and accomodation... it's at times like these that I wish I had a secretary ;-)
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7 links from the past 14 days

Sun, September 9, 2007, 04:06 PM under Links
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.
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Woo hoo!

Mon, August 27, 2007, 05:26 AM under Personal
Since last Friday I have been out of office, specifically back home in Greece, and the week culminated in our wedding yesterday (Greek Orthodox version of the civil one from exactly a year ago). In a few hours the real holiday starts with our honeymoon in the Maldives. Can't wait!

In the mean time, if you are addicted to my content (delusional? Moi??) I invite you to browse some of my older posts that you may not be intimately familiar with:
Start with the best of 2004 and then best of 2005 and finally - you guessed it – best of 2006. Another way to pass your time here is to browse by category e.g. Vista, Mobile & Embedded, Events, Links etc. If you are sick of all my Orcas posts, why not read my older Whidbey or general .NET posts? If you prefer narrower topics, why not learn about SideShow and UAC. If you just stumbled on this blog, why not subscribe and keep up to date? Look at the multiple, rich and flexible "Subscribe" options on the left.

Normal blogging service will resume when I come back with photos posted at the usual place…
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Video: Build UAC aware apps with VS2008

Thu, August 23, 2007, 04:22 PM under Orcas | VisualStudio | UAC
One of the improvements in Visual Studio 2008 for building Windows Vista applications that work correctly with User Account Control is the ability to embed manifests in Visual Basic and C# projects. Watch my 15' video to see how.
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Video: VS2008 Aesthetic and Usability enhancements

Wed, August 22, 2007, 12:54 PM under Orcas | VisualStudio
If you ignore the framework and compilers, then what is new in Visual Studio 2008 purely from an IDE perspective? Find out in my 10' video here.
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Office projects require NETFX 3.5

Sun, August 19, 2007, 09:25 PM under Orcas
If you try to use VSTO v3 in Visual Studio 2008, you'll notice that the project templates are only available when you select .NET Framework v3.5 (via the multitrgeting feature). You'll probably ask yourself "why?".

The answer becomes obvious when you realise that the MAF (part of Fx 3.5) is actually an evolution of the add-in infrastructure used by the Visual Studio Tools for Office team. They worked on this initially and in the 3rd iteration handed it to the CLR team so it could be baked for public use, not just private use by the Office add-ins. So, now they still depend on it of course which is why the VSTO redist depends on Fx 3.5. They also took further dependencies on some of the new security bits in System.Core, WindowsBase in Fx 3.0 for the packaging APIs and some other less major things. Now you know ;-)
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NETCF Beta 2

Sat, August 18, 2007, 06:49 PM under MobileAndEmbedded | Orcas
I got asked about new things in .NET Compact Framework 3.5 with the VS2008 Beta 2 release. Well, the NETCF team did all their good work very early on so there aren't any new features in this drop. Tons of new stuff compared to v2.0 of course, see my previous posts starting here.

In Beta 2 of NETCF 3.5 compared to Beta 1, I observe a couple of classes gone from the WCF stuff, some refactoring in System.Xml.Linq and some changes to mirror the System.Core changes I mentioned here in the 1st paragraph for the full framework.

The only major change is that the DataSet extensions have been factored into their own assembly: System.DataSet.Extensions.dll. This again mirrors the full framework implementation but internally the classes are not in sync yet. They will be by RTM, so my suggestion is to explore the LINQ to DataSet on the desktop, and use the same skills/code when it finally makes its appearance in the NETCF as well.
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