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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
How cool is this...Jen is flying back from her week back in Wisconsin, so I discovered I can track her flight in real time using Google earth.... Just pop the flight details into the search form and there should be a Google Earth icon link on the following page (which itself displays flight tracking info, though nowhere near as cool as Google Earth).
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Whilst designing the Edge Architecture I quickly realized that Relationships were a key element of systems going forward. At Spark this was reinforced and in addition I began to understand that it is actually the platform for both collaboration and discovery. Starting to drill down into the Edge Architecture the whole area of relationships seemed to be the right starting point so I have been researching and thinking about this area. Looking at it in more detail there are two different but tightly linked areas; Relationships and Reputation.
Under Relationships there is:
Identity
Groups
Membership
Relationships
Personalization
Access control
Under Reputation there is
Ranking
Rating
Trust
Reputation
Authority
Activities
Now to work out the linkages.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Browse here to find out how to create a muglet together with a personalised song - you can send it to whomever you choose!
Nothing to do with Security but I thought you'd enjoy it.
I'm not going to post any more about Muglets now :-)
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Testing to see whether my new Microsoft keyboard is working correctly. Bought an Ergonomic 4000 at the weekend as I was hoping it would speed up my typing. I think it has certainly helped, but I’ve been having trouble with the spacebar misbehaving! Sometimes it wouldn’t work at all, and others it would get stuck and I’d end up with loads of spaces. Most annoying when you are trying to type something.
Well I’ve uninstalled the drivers and plugged it back in. This is the first time I’ve tried typing anything of length and so far so good. Andybody else had similar problems with this keyboard?
edit : hmmmm it might be playing up again!
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
This is a bit half-arsed, but I think it might be a good way to work with method_missing if
you need to cope with a bunch of different method formats for different purposes:
class Object def Object.method_matching(regex, &block) if block_given?
@@method_matches ||= {} @@method_matches[regex] = block end end def Object.method_missing(method,
*args) @@method_matches.each do |regex,block| if regex =~ method.id2name matches =
Regexp.last_match.to_a block.call matches[1, matches.size] + args end end end end
class MethodMatching method_matching /^([a-hA-H])([1-8])$/ do |file, rank| p "File:
#{file}, Rank: #{rank}" end method_matching /(monkey|badger)/ do |animal| p "I saw
a #{animal}!" end a1 monkey end
Obviously this implementation isn't finished and only works with class methods, plus
it feels like bad form to catch missing methods on Object (especially as it'll just
swallow calls it doesn't accept). But it's made me a bit more intrepid with missing
methods and seems pretty clear to me.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Heck, that's not a very good blog post title is it? Well what I mean is that the MOM team have released a management pack where you can manage any instances of Communicator Web Access using MOM 2005.
There, thats a bit clearer isn't it? Dale blogged about it the other week and I missed it completely. Then I noticed it on Microsoft.com and ignored it. Now guilt, and a couple of mails from Steve, who has been having problems installing Communicator Web Access prompted me to dig a little bit deeper. So I have. And here's the link to download the management pack. Here's the info from the download site:
The Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access Management Pack for MOM 2005 monitors the health of computers running Office Communicator Web Access server components on Windows Server 2003 and alerts IT administrators about critical health conditions that indicate degraded performance. The management pack monitors and provides alerts for:
Automatic notification of events indicating service outages.
Performance degradation.
Health monitoring.
Centralized management
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Trinity's free SharePoint and Outlook integration tool has been updated and a beta made available:
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
In a word NO! There's a thorough explaination of the logic behind this answer on the Microsoft Security Response Centre (MSRC) blog here.
The MSRC own the responsibility of balancing the compromise between the risk of our customers being exploited through vulnerabilities versus the risk of applications breaking due to application of security updates. The team actively research attacks in conjunction with partners to keep track of the prevalence of "exploits in the wild" to determine how much testing can take place before releasing an update.
The MSRC blog is the BEST place to go to find out the nature of threats and to get an idea of when updates are likely to be released.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
The mobile phone giant Nokia predicts the global industry will expand 15% in 2006, with growth led by Asia and Africa.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
There's a whole new wave of technology coming your way ... and you can experience it for free! To gain exclusive insight into new product releases from Microsoft ... including Windows Vista, WinFX, 2007 Microsoft Office System, Exchange "12", ISA Server 2006, Windows Server 2003 R2. Book your places at a Roadshow near you:
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
I just came across this nifty little program, it is an HTML and CSS editor that has some neat little touches. Syntax highlighting (essential) tabbed tag lists (handy) and pretty lightweight. If you want an HTML editor that is a bit more user friendly than a simple text editor then you could do worse than download Alleycode.
A comprehensive list of features is included. I've taken the liberty of including them below. As you can see it is pretty fully featured. Nifty!
- Standard Windows functions such as cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, select all, clear all and wordwrap.
- Standard Windows and Alleycode keyboard shortcuts.
- Syntax Highlighting...Customizable syntax highlighting for HTML, XML and PHP.
- Multiple window display. Open and or work on several pages at the same time.
- Turf View... unusual real estate view of your project. Convenient if you a have a small screen. Turf gives you complete "right click"control over Alleycode.
- Synchro View... See live results with new, saved or unsaved documents. Synchro view displays two way synchronized code/design location (highlight code for design reciprocal or vice versa). Huge time saver for searching large files.
- Quick Edit... Right click enabled HTML tags for fast wizard supported updates. Covers all essential tags
- CSS wizard make styling a breeze. Create and maintain internal or external style sheets. CSS1 and CSS2 compliant.
- Table wizard... Makes it easy to create simple or complex tables. Includes background image, background color and border color options.
- Optimizer wizard... Intuitive meta content preparation for search engine spiders.
- Properties wizard... Background color and image, text and link color, margin spacing and document encoding.
- Preview in default browser. Optionally displays with IE, Netscape or Opera.
- Assignments... Easy access to active projects. Combine with "Display Directory Window" on startup in "Preferences" for one click access.
- Color picker... Inserts color in hexadecimal value.
- Anchor wizard... Link to other documents, email addresses or remote URLs.
- Image insert with preview... Alleycode has the ability to distinguish between new or saved (as well as modified) documents and creates a system path accordingly.
- Font wizard... HTML3.2 - 4.0 .
- Special character display...Click'n'Insert.
- Comprehensive frameset construction.
- Click'n'Insert Ordered and Unordered lists.. Add lines as needed.
- Ready made interactive forms... Click'n'Insert into your document and/or customize as needed.
- Form bar includes quick tags insert for all standard form layout (custom).
- Simple and functional PHP scripts to make your Web site interactive
- Common PHP statements at the click of a button.
- Search and find feature.
- Full search and replace.
- FTP access... Optionally program your favorite FTP client to open with one click!
- Print your full page or print a selected portion of your open document only.
- Convert complete HTML document to upper/lower case HTML tags.
- Convert all text to upper/lower case.
- Convert selected text to upper/lower case.
- Comprehensive Help files includes our "Quick Start Tutorial". We'll show you how to build a (good) Web site in no time with clean HTML and CSS code.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
If you'd like to see my Muglet dance and enjoy the "music" (that term's stretching it somewhat!) then click here
Thanks to Eileen for blogging about the Mobile and Embedded DevCon - that's where the Muglet creating site came from. You can create your own Muglet - it's really easy - just click here - it only takes a couple of mintues. I'm sure we'd all love to go to 'Vegas to join the conference but time and money may not be conducive ;-( At least we can have some fun by creating and sharing our Muglets :-)
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Gold partner wall trophy
Originally uploaded by Simon Harriyott.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
In a recent posting to the IE Team Blog Al Billings
announced the Internet Explorer Feedback site over at MS Connect. COOL! Finally a more public way of feeding back on IE bugs. You first have to go to the MS Connect site (http://connect.microsoft.com)
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
The Beatles' record label has failed to benefit from iTunes due to a dispute with Apple, a London court hears.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft and Brussels begin a two-day hearing that gives the firm its last chance to defend against daily fines.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Lost track of your WinFx CTPs? Well I have come up with a way of knowing what the Feb CTP is at least. Go to the install log (dd_winfxinstall80.txt) which should live in
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\WinFX Runtime Components 3.0 - Beta 2\Logs
Then look for a line along the lines of
ProductVersion: 8.0.50727.134_WAP_X86_IXP
I could be wrong and several CTP's have the same version number but its worked for me to track several Feb CTP installs.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft has a cool page Windows Server Feedback where you can leave your feedback on Windows Server. This is a great idea, although I am not sure if it actually active - the logo at the top right (for SUS) refers to a product that MS stopped supporting
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
During my limited time in the low end of the standup comedy circuit, I met so many aspiring comedians using their performance as some form of therapy, one or two even under the direct suggestion of their therapist: the mask of the clown often fronts a troubled soul. Could the same be said for podcasters?In the broader sense I do not think so, but here and there you will find the kind of content which suggests something more behind the mask.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Marc Holmes who wrote one of the best books on CCNet around has joined Micrsoft UK as an Architect Evangelist (same job as Tim Sneath and Erine Booth but from the UK side of things), congrats Marc ! His new blog is here, as a UK WinFx developer I look foward to hopefully working more with Marc.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Microsoft is making a grab for developers using Borland products with a web page answering supposedly "frequently asked questions" from current Borland developers.
I can't imagine any developers actually asking "Is Microsoft committed to supporting its developer base going forward?", but it's a sharp dig at Borland's recent decision to sell off its IDE tools.
I'm puzzled though by this comment:
As has always been the case, socialization testing of your application is appropriate for all new versions of the platform.
I have to humbly admit that I've never done "socialization testing" of any apps, though it's a pretty interesting idea. Some sort of Web 2.0 social-software-interactive thing, or just a typo?
I'd like to offer a further question for Microsoft to add to its FAQ. Why does my Win32 Delphi application run slower and consume more memory when I port it to .NET?
Seems to me there are a couple of answers. Answer one is to port it to native Visual C++ instead. Good luck with all that MFC.
Answer two is to stick with Delphi. But Borland better set up "Devco" quick, before all its customers bleed away.
Tags:
borland
microsoft
delphi
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
I am in new territory (for me) with an interface design project right now, and it has extended my understanding of the more consumer/product focused design challenges.Amazon, of course, is the exalted king of busy yet usable web interfaces.... The remit is a design which is distinctive and flexible enough to grow and evolve yet straightforward enough to be easy to use.First stop: Amazon.Second stop (to understand much of why sites like Amazon work): "The Design of Sites: Principles, Processes and Patterns for Crafting a Customer-centered Web Experience" (Douglas K.Van Duyne, James Landay, Jason I.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
I worked with the carnage that was the complex relationship
between
VS2005 and SQL 2005 betas and CTPs for pretty much the entire beta
cycle and got used to strange thinngs happening in the VS IDE. On
release I installed the RTM bits and everything
looked fine. However, teaching for DevelopMentor
I frequently end up using machines that I haven't myself configured. I
started to notice that the menus were sometimes different and took this
to be that they were different because I was debugging / editing a
certain file type / etc.
However, at a recent Guerrilla.NET
we had a conflict between the lab instructions and VS setup that meant
we had to investigate why a menu item wasn't appearing. It turns out
there are two important decisions that affect your menus. The first is
the question that you answer when you use VS for the first time "what
kind of developer are you" and depending on what you select you get
tuned menus. I believe that selecting "Visual Studio Developer" gets
you the full set.
The second issue is more subtle though. The order in which you
install SQL Server 2005 and VS 2005 is significant. SQL Server 2005 can
install the Business Intelligence Workbench which is hosted in the VS
shell. If you install SQL Server 2005 first you may find that
your menus are restricted to the BI Workbench items (an example of this
is having only two items on your Debug menu).
The remedy to this is not obvious. I spent some time trawling
through the Tools/Options
dialog to no avail. Finally I discovered the feature was controlled by Tools /
Import and Export Settings. If you choose to import to you
can import one of the other configurations. Hopefully this post will
save others some time and frustration.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Its official this site shows Windows XP Boots on one of the new MACBook Pro notebooks.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Its official this site shows Windows XP Boots on one of the new MACBook Pro notebooks.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
More than four out of 10 US web searches are conducted using Google, figures show.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
A US firm says it has set a data storage record of 515 gigabits per square inch using holographic technology.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Photographic goods retailer Jessops reports a steady rise in sales, fuelled by buoyant demand for digital cameras.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
I have toyed with various products in the past for giving access to files in the office from remote locations (including vpn's, and lots of products call accessmyfiles, or accessmycomputer), but I have to say the simplest and fastest has to be the foldershare site (www.foldershare.com) that Microsoft has just bought. Simple to install and nothing needed on the client apart from a browser, and you are away. What's more performance is good too.
Cheers
Ian
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
I spent Tuesday in Cambridge (UK) at the Microsoft research facility with about 50 or so other MVP's, we saw discussions on where MSR want to take the company in terms of their research strategies and got some interesting insights into the projects on which they're currently working with including: -
- Location aware devices and services (Think Minority Report)
- Search Engine strategies and complexities.
- Robotics systems - from Home Automation through to Frankenstein stylee Robosapiens.
- Windows Vista - all of it's dirty secrets.
- VSTS Server
In the evening we where whisked off to Kings College, an ancient complex of beutiful architecture, winding passageways and grand halls. We were wind and dined then our MVP lead brough her band in and they sang some fantastic songs whilst I got very, very drunk.
You can see the Photo's I took here: -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/plip/sets/72057594093466882/
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
I have heard about Ruby.Net but I did'nt know it was one of John Gough's babies, John wrote the Pascal compiler for the JVM and CLR, was one of the members of the orginal CLR compiler team and wrote this great book on compiling for the CLR. Using the same compiler parser as the Pascal compiler they are well under way with the project and hope to have alpha release by mid 2006. I will be really interested to see how this turns out for speed, the IronPython project has proved that dyanmic languages can work very well on the CLR and I think proving that Ruby can run well will push that bar further.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Here's a wacky idea I cooked up on the train this morning, the WebBus (ok my name :) its the Lotus\Sun InfoBus concept but for the browser rather than just a Java container. So for the every increasing number of browser components like SWT's, Applets, WPF\E, DHTML, HTML, JavaScript and AJAX etc it allows some components be data providers (like AJAX but also say a WPF\E data provider that hooks into WCF remoting or a SWT that hooks into Flash remoting channel, all of which expose data to the bus) and some to be data consumers that consume data off the bus for display. It would allow different components to consume different data sources and to share data on a single common bus.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Some 60% of government websites have HTML errors on their home pages, research shows.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
The Media Center Show #49(MP3 - 10.6mb- 30mins 49secs)
LISTEN HERE and the RSS feeds are HERE
The Media Center Show with Orb Networks
A shorter show this week and even thought my hard disk crashed and burned I still managed to get the show out :)
This week on the show is Mark Weinberg, General Manager at Microsoft’s eHome group, responsible for the Media Center core features team.
I have the Media Center Show news and email in to the show.
Plus a chance to win One Voices’ Media Center Communicator
Send your questions and feedback to isdixon@gmail.com (feel free to send your questions in mp3)
or you can send your questions and comments in to the show Skype Line “MediaCenterShow”
Don’t forget your to check out Media Center Show Gear
The forums are at Iandixon.co.uk/forums
Show Times:
00:36 Coming up this week
01:09 Update on Sky with Media Center
02:05 Email on 10 Foot World
02:35 Vista code needs re-writing???
04:02 MCE Video Encoder
05:02 Multi room audio
05:58 Sony DVD changer
07:07 Win Media Center Commentator
07:22 Users Setup’s pictures
07:53 A Message from One Voice
08:42 Welcome to Mark
09:34 CTP builds
11:00 Look and feel of Vista Media Center
14:00 Mark’s favorite feature of Vista Media Center
15:00 Media Center as a platform
17:00 Home Automation
18:30 Setting up a AV system
21:00 Media Center Server
23:00 Home testing
26:18 Media Center bloggers
27:10 Thanks to Mark
27:26 Coming up next week Akimbo
Music by Ian Dixon
&referrer=)
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Well it looks like I will be on the speakers panel at Mobile Monday this coming Monday (April 3rd 2006). There will be a series of discussions going on about the Mobile Web 2.0 stuff... So what I am going to suggest to everyone is come up with your Mobile Web 2.0 key words before Monday and I will see what I can do about getting them into the discussion... they have to be somehow related to mobile web 2.0... lets see what we can come up with...
In fact if you want to participate in the Q & A session and ask me and the rest of the panel anything at all...The panel are:
- Steve Devo (Vodafone)
- Gautam Hazari (Vodafone)
- Tim Holmes (AOL)
- Mark Wilce (Cognima)
- and Me.... (Sarah Blow... London Girl Geek Dinners Founder & Software Engineer for Cardinal Health...)
You are more than free to join in and get us answering all those really awkward 2.0 stylie questions... get us arguing against each other etc. (i.e. developer to service provider... small business vs big business etc! is there such a thing as mobile web 2.0 he he he... )
The details of the event can be found below (Courtesy of Alex Craxton):
Our hosts for April will be AOL and the event will be held at RIBA in central London. This is easy to get to on the underground and is between Regents Park, Goodge Street and Oxford Circus, address as follows:
Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
66 Portland Place
London W1B 1AD.
Directions
As usual the doors will open at 6pm and the meeting will kick off at 6.30pm.
Register yourselves in our database .
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Internet search giant Google unveils plans to raise up to $2bn through the sale of an additional 5.3 million shares.
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
Anyone who's worked as an IT Professional is likely to have faced the challenge of the need to open up access to information to third parties including customers, partners and suppliers WHILST maintaining an acceptable level of information security.
Your Information Security Policy SHOULD state what access is required, to what information and for what business purpose. Often (as previously discussed) the Security Policy is a target of derision due to it's "pie in the sky" view point where it's not an accurate reflection of HOW BUSINESS REALLY WORKS and therefore the corresponding security controls are meaningless.
I'm not going to say more about the importance of a sensible security policy here as it's well trodden ground (hit the "search" button to the left of this post to read earlier musings on this topic) or consult the blogs of your trusted security advisor(s).
Agility is all about working embracing the dynamic nature of business rather than blocking it due to archane security measures.
Effective Information Security requires "the security team" to work hand in hand with "the business". Security SHOULD allow you to do more with less risk.
What help do you need to enable you to become a business enabler?
I'd love to hear your comments so don't be shy!
BTW: Thanks to the Athena Aerobic team for the thought provoking image
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
According to the Windows Vista feature page, Vista is going to be able to use external memory devices (USB flash drives and the like to you and me) to act as extra memory to save having to go to the hard disk. I've heard this mentioned at a few places, and it's always asserted that EMDs are slower than memory but "much, much faster" than disks. This has just been stated as a fact that everyone would just go along with. I've been a bit skeptical myself, so I thought I'd write a couple of very simple benchmarks. I emphasise the fact that they're very simple because it could well be that I'm missing something very important.
Here are three classes. Writer just writes out however many blocks of 1MB data you ask it to, to whichever file you ask it to. Reader simply reads a whole file in 1MB chunks. RandomReader reads however many 1MB chunks you ask it to, seeking randomly within the file between each read.
Writer
using System.IO;
public class Writer
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Random rng = new Random();
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024*1024];
DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
using (FileStream stream = new FileStream (args[0], FileMode.Create))
{
for (int i=0; i < int.Parse(args[1]); i++)
{
rng.NextBytes(buffer);
Console.Write(".");
stream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
}
}
DateTime end = DateTime.Now;
Console.WriteLine();
Console.WriteLine (end-start);
}
}
|
Reader
using System;
using System.IO;
public class Reader
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024*1024];
DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
int total=0;
using (FileStream stream = new FileStream (args[0], FileMode.Open))
{
int read;
while ( (read=stream.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length)) > 0)
{
total += read;
Console.Write(".");
}
}
DateTime end = DateTime.Now;
Console.WriteLine();
Console.WriteLine (end-start);
Console.WriteLine (total);
}
}
|
RandomReader
using System;
using System.IO;
public class RandomReader
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[1024*1024];
Random rng = new Random();
DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
int total=0;
using (FileStream stream = new FileStream (args[0], FileMode.Open))
{
int length = (int) stream.Length;
for (int i=0; i < int.Parse(args[1]); i++)
{
stream.Position = rng.Next(length-buffer.Length);
total += stream.Read (buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
Console.Write(".");
}
}
DateTime end = DateTime.Now;
Console.WriteLine();
Console.WriteLine (end-start);
Console.WriteLine (total);
}
}
|
I have five devices I can test: a 128MB Creative Muvo (USB), a 1GB PNY USB flash drive, a Viking 512MB SD card, my laptop hard disk (fairly standard 60GB Hitachi drive) and a LaCie 150GB USB hard disk. (All USB devices are USB 2.0.) The results are below. This is pretty rough and ready - I was more interested in the orders of magnitude than exact figures, hence the low precision given. All figures are in MB/s.
| Drive | Write | Stream read | Random read |
| Internal HDD |
17.8 |
24 |
22 |
| External HDD |
14 |
20 |
22 |
| SD card |
2.3 |
7 |
8.3 |
| 1GB USB stick |
3.3 |
10 |
10 |
| 128MB USB stick |
1.9 |
2.9 |
3.5 |
Where possible, I tried to reduce the effects of caching by mixing the tests up, so I never ran two tests on the same location in succession. Some of the random reads will almost certainly have overlapped each other within a test, which I assume is the reason for some of the tests showing faster seek+read than streaming reads.
So, what's wrong with this picture? Why does MS claim that flash memory is much faster than hard disks, when my flash drives appear to be much slower than my laptop and external drives? (Note that laptop disks aren't noted for their speed, and I don't have a particularly fancy one.) It doesn't appear to be the USB bus - the external hard disk is fine. The 1GB stick and the SD card are both pretty new, although admittedly cheap. I doubt that either of them are worse quality than the majority of flash drives in the hands of the general public now, and I don't expect the average speed to radically increase between now and the Vista launch, in terms of what people actually own.
I know my tests don't accurately mimic how data will be accessed by Vista - but how is it so far out? I don't believe MS would have invested what must have been a substantial amount of resource into this feature without conducting rather more accurate benchmarks than my crude ones. I'm sure I'm missing something big, but what is it? And if flash can genuinely work so much faster than hard disks, why do flash cards perform so badly in simple file copying etc?
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Published on 30 Mar 2006 from
I was chatting with someone at the MIX conference who mentioned he’d love to have an easy way to stay up to-date with all of the things Microsoft is coming out with in the ASP.NET space. To help folks better track things I’ve decided to try and do a monthly “coming soon” post that outlines the list of things we are working on releasing from the team in the weeks ahead.
The current list of ASP.NET related things planned in April includes:
VS 2005 Web Application Project: As I mentioned in this earlier post, we are a few days away from shipping the feature-complete release candidate of the VS 2005 Web Application Project (see http://webproject.scottgu.com for more details if you haven’t heard of it). This refresh supports auto-VS 2003 upgrades (just choose file->open project, select the VS 2003 project, and it will convert it to a WAP project for you), adds all missing features from the previous previews and a ton of new ones, and fixes all reported bugs. We are looking to have it on the web for anyone to download early next week. We'll then quickly turn around and fix any final bugs people find, and post the final drop on the web (this build will also be rolled into VS 2005 SP1).
Atlas Refresh: We shipped our first go-live release of Atlas last week at the MIX conference (you can find tutorials and learn all about it here). We will be shipping the next refresh of it in April, which will provide bug fixes and more features. Note that all releases of Atlas will have the go-live license going forward – so this new one obviously will too, and support production deployments.
Atlas Control Pack: In addition to shipping the core Atlas framework and runtime, we are also going to soon release the first drop of a new Atlas Control Pack that leverages the Atlas framework to deliver a suite of cool re-usable UI controls to make common Ajax scenarios super easy (cascading dropdown lists, drag-panels, collapsible panels, etc, etc). We’ll be posting more details on this project shortly.
CSS Control Adapters: One common request we get from developers is for them to have the ability to better customize the markup generated by the built-in ASP.NET server controls. ASP.NET 2.0 actually includes an extensibility mechanism called “control adapters” that allow just this (basically you can build a class that replaces the rendering semantics of a control, and simply register it in your web.config file to override a control’s built-in rendering – no code or object model changes required in your app). Our plan is to ship a suite of CSS control adapters (with full source) in the next few weeks for a number of the built-in ASP.NET 2.0 controls (including the treeview and menu controls) that demonstrate how to use this mechanism to enable pure CSS based styling (for example: the menu will generate <ul><li></ul> elements and allow a developer apply a CSS stylesheet to customize the rendering). This will be available in a few weeks.
Data Tutorials: I started some popular ASP.NET 2.0 Data tutorials over Christmas that people really liked (you can read the two big ones I built here and here). My original goal was to build a lot more of them – although unfortunately work got too busy for me to keep up. The good news is that we are now working with Scott Mitchell (who is a much better author than me!) to create and publish a 38-part ASP.NET data tutorial series that covers all of the common data scenarios with ASP.NET 2.0, the ObjectDataSource control, and the data controls. The first installment of these step-by-step tutorials will show up on www.asp.net and/or MSDN in a few weeks, and will be available in both VB and C# versions.
“How Do I” Videos: We’ve had absolutely awesome feedback on the ASP.NET “How do I?” video series we published last month. If you haven’t watched them yet, I’d recommend spending a few minutes checking them out here. They really provide a great way to come up to speed on the new ASP.NET 2.0 features, and to watch in action how things work. We are going to be working on producing many more of these in the months ahead, and hope to have the next set of installments start showing up regularly on the www.asp.net site in April.