Do programmers dream in Byte Code?

The Cops are in at Work

2008-08-20T21:34:10Z

New versions of my favourite Cop(that’s police to you and I) Duo, FxCop and StyleCop are out.

FxCop 1.36 is out including but not limited to 200+ bug fixes over Beta2, new globalisation rules (I smell a Guy at work), half the memory requirement.

StyleCop 4.3 is out also including great features such as better VS integration, a bunch of new rules which you can’t live without and the final changes to make StyleCop its name :)

251 ways to help the community and learn visual studio

2008-08-13T17:07:48Z

I have been consistently impressed by the blog/efforts of the ever lovely Sara Ford. for those of you who do not know who Sara is, she is a SDE/T on the Visual Studio Core team at Microsoft and via her blog provides us time strapped developers with visual studio hints in bit size easy to understand chunks almost everyday. if you don’t read her blog shame on you, subscribe now.

Sara is the author of the upcoming book Microsoft Visual Studio Tips. Sara has compiled 251 tips from her Tip of the Day series, to help on your way to Visual Studio enlightenment.

Sara comes from Waveland on the coast of the US which was hit badly by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and quite wonderfully Sara is donating 100% of her author book royalties to create a scholarship fund at the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

Black Marble have ordered half a dozen to get things going. I would suggest ordering a copy of this book for any/all of the reasons mentioned.

Boss.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is here

2008-08-11T17:21:40Z

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is now available on MSDN subscriber downloads. or from Microsoft download.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe)

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (iso)

there are a good number of fixes and new features in the service pack (including TR1 for you C++ philes out there)

you MUST read the readme to make sure there are no problems and with the Silverlight 2 beta 2 tools you will need to download and run the new installer

If you get a Windows Update prompt to reboot during SP1 installation, ignore it. Wait until after the SP1 installation completes and then reboot.

Visual Studio 2008 themes

2008-08-11T16:10:51Z

there are some nice themes for Visual Studio 2008 but if you want your own try this online tool to get that colour scheme you have always wanted.

WPF Performance

2008-07-24T22:32:17Z

When I was at DDS a nice chap asked me if I knew about WPF performance and the answer was no but I did do some digging and just for the record this is what I found , comments welcome.

Perf in WPF

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa970683.aspx

Perf tools for WPF

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa969767.aspx

the most important bit could be .NET 3.5 SP1

http://blogs.msdn.com/jgoldb/default.aspx

you need to make sure that the problem is not poor code performance ( your code )

http://blogs.msdn.com/timothyc/archive/2006/02/28/540291.aspx

Virtual BizTalk -

2008-07-24T10:44:02Z

The BizTalk CAT/UE team have just released the “Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Hyper-V Guide”.

It covers Deploying, Evaluating and Testing BizTalk with Hyper-V. if you are even thinking of virtualizing BizTalk read this guide.

Richard is an MVP

2008-07-02T22:57:01Z

I know it is on his blog but Richard is an MVP, it couldn’t happen to a nicer person. I am also pleased that Kevin Ball was renewed and Andy Westgarth is also now an MVP. it was nice to see all of the above at our event today.

congratulations to all the new and renewed MVP’s

TechED 2008 IT in Orlando

2008-06-17T23:23:32Z

I am just back from a week on the BizTalk Stand at TechED IT in Orlando, it was great to have the opportunity to chat to so many great people and to meet other BizTalkers.

I was privileged to meet some great people to name but a few

Mark Beckner author of the classic Apress BizTalk 2006 EDI book.

Todd VanNurden co editor of the legendary BizTalk Hotrod

Clint Huffman Microsoft PFE

Winston Woo

Ofer Ashkenazi , BizTalk Product Manager

Tim Wieman , BizTalk Ranger Team ( cool team name )

and great thanks to Michael Iem (Ziem Group Inc) who made the week go like clockwork.

Ewan Fairweather and Petr Kratochvil announced the BizTalk Performance Guide , it is an essential read for any BizTalk project.

Despite daily thunderstorms and flying back on Friday the 13th , it was amazing fun , especially the Simpsons Ride @ universal :)

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 is here

2008-06-09T03:17:55Z

As promised you can get silverlight 2.0 beta 2 here and the june preview of blend and zoom here.

The SDK is available here or with the Visual Studio 2008 tools here.

Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview

2008-06-05T22:02:33Z

I like the concept of SideShow and I think one of its flaws is not enough devices NOW , they are slowly coming on stream but not quickly enough for me. So along with all of the other items arriving this week I was pleased to see this a windows mobile version of side show and I have spent the day controlling my PC from my phone :)

Live Writer Preview

2008-06-05T22:01:14Z

I will say it now and I will say it again , Live Writer rocks. A new tech preview with some cool user features and even more developer features are available here.

User Features include:

Video and Image enhancements : Soapbox support , Better Image support (cropping , tilting , effects )

Editing: Word count , smart quotes , auto linking

UI:

tabs for view switching

Bugs:

many UI WSIWYG faults fixed ( scripts and objects :) )

Dev:

Insert code before and after post

Header and footer support

Samples:

there are half a dozen

the emoticon plug-in seems to be a bit wobbly but all in all :)

TechED Developers Announcements

2008-06-05T21:58:30Z

I am not at TechED Dev in Orlando ( I am going to IT Pro next week , see me at the BizTalk ATE stand ), but there are some important announcements to cover off.

Microsoft Project Codename “Velocity” CTP

“Velocity” allows high availability to data by integrating Large clusters of machines seamlessly into a single cache, making it easier to develop scalable, high-performance applications.

Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 v1.2

A new version of Sharepoint extensions to allow developers to use Visual Studio 2008 for Sharepoint dev.

Silverlight 2 beta 2

Available later in the week with a Go Live license, also Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview and Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008 should be available at the same time.

More on “Oslo”

“Oslo” will be based on a foundational repository built on SQL Server 2008 for managing application metadata

It will include visual modelling and composition tools and a new, declarative modelling language to enable interoperability of models between tools and domain-specific modelling notations.

woo hoo Oslo

Microsoft Source Analysis for C#

2008-05-25T22:03:45Z

Phew what a name, well if you want consistent style across developers this is the tool for you. Previously known as StyleCop inside Microsoft. Microsoft Source Analysis is pretty much a mandatory addition to any team development toolkit.

In the same way the FxCop helps "focus" developers towards consistent better quality code , StyleCop does the same with code style. But also like FxCop , StyleCop will make a lot of developers gnash their teeth, while they get used to it.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta is out

2008-05-12T22:27:59Z

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta is out for testing.

Scott has a great blog post on SP1, but the highlights (which are numerous)

- Classic ASP intelisense and debugging is back

- Faster application startup time

- Better client side rollout

- New Windows Form Controls

- WPF Performance Improvements

- WPF Extensible shader effects

- WPF Direct3D interface

- WPF Design surface improvements in VS2008

- ADO.NET Entity Framework included

- WCF - 5-10x scalability improvements

- WCF Enhanced Test Client

and best of all more Red Squiggles for the C# compiler

You can download and use the beta now here

there are TFS improvements but Richard will be blogging about those

The Microsoft Telepathic™ Interface is finally here

2008-05-07T19:04:25Z

After years of discussions with clients that their ever and rapidly changing requirements could only be met if we implemented a telepathic interface to read their users minds, Microsoft have done the decent thing and released Microsoft® ESP™. Now Microsoft are saying that ESP is a toolkit to allow developers to build realistic simulations and models that are rich and easy to use, but we know the truth ;)

if you want to find out more here is a video you must watch.