Visual Studio .NET 2008 provides many new features that will definitely enhance developer productivity.  In this video tutorial I provide an introductory look at VS.NET 2008 and show a few features such as multi-targeting, split view, and the LinqDataSource control.  In the video you'll see how to build an ASP.NET page that retrieves data from a data context object (created with the new LINQ to SQL designer) and binds it to various controls using the LinqDataSource control.

If you haven't heard already, VS.NET 2008 beta 2 is now available for downloading.  I'm installing it right now. :-)

Web Services provide a convenient way to pass data between AJAX applications and a server.  ASP.NET AJAX provides an excellent infrastructure for Web Service integration into AJAX applications and makes it all cross-browser through incorporating JSON into the mix.  While JSON is compact and a very good fit for AJAX applications, there may be times where it's easier or more convenient to pass back raw XML to an AJAX client for processing.  This is especially true if the browser provides robust XML parsing APIs like Internet Explorer 5+.  For example, you may have a Web Service that obtains RSS data and returns it as an XmlDocument or XmlElement object.

While there are a lot of testing tools out there to look for bugs, test a Website's scalability and perform unit tests, precious few seem to handle automating the testing of AJAX applications.  As a result, I wanted to start a list of tools that support automated testing of AJAX applications as well as debugging.  If you have other tools or applications you know of or something listed is out of date please add a comment to the blog and I'll get the information added/updated.

Patrick Long recently blogged about some new ASP.NET (and WinForms) controls released on CodePlex that are specific to the health care industry.  Several of the controls are AJAX-enabled (based upon the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions and the Toolkit) and as I went to download them I found an online demo available here.  I wish I would've had some of these controls on past health care projects I worked on.  An example of one of the more robust controls called MedicationGrid is shown below:

The coolest program I have for my Windows Mobile phone (by far) is Windows Live Mobile Search V1.  I use it daily to check how traffic looks as I'm driving to downtown Phoenix.  V2 of the program has been released that adds the following new features (and I see there's even a beta for BlackBerry users...but iPhone users are out of luck):

Wally McClure, Steve Smith and several others recently had their Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX book released.  I hear that lines at book stores around the world were huge and people have been camping out for days to be the first ones to get it. :-)  Congrats to everyone involved with writing it.  I haven't seen it yet, but knowing several of the authors I'm sure it's excellent.