Fabrice's weblog

I know a lot of people come here searching for information about certain release dates, well here is it a last:
SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006 will be formally launched during the week of November 7!
Not much more to add. See the press release right from Tech•Ed 2005.

Chris Szurgot writes about the problems and frustrations with the new model Microsoft has chosen for web projects in Visual Studio 2005: no web project file!
The decision to remove the web projects is really a bad choice and a big source of problems. I can't believe Microsoft decided to step back like this just to seduce PHP developers and in fact ignore the enterprise world! This would have been fine for the Express editions, but why changing this for the professional editions too?!
For those who haven't tried Visual Studio 2005 yet, what happens is that there are no project files for web projects anymore. Why is that a problem? Well, it introduces a whole new set of problems: Where is stored the list of references of your project?  How do you share code between pages? How can one page reference another? etc. Of course, Microsoft engineers have found workarounds for this new situation, but they all make your web projects look and behave differently from other projects, as well as second-class citizens. Without forgetting that this requires that developers re-learn how to work with Visual Studio... Try to explain this to your manager...

Sadly, it seems to me that it's too late for Microsoft to change the way it works in VS2005, but I would certainly prefer to see it happen. I'm sure they have realized their mistake, but cannot go back...

I have compiled a list of bug tracking products, which may be useful if you need such a tool.
Maybe you have experience with some of them you'd like to share with us?

Plus:

Google releases new services at an impressive rate. Here is the last one: Google Content Blocker. Of course, it's still in beta - like any other Google service as you'd expect - but it looks very useful. The best ever, in fact!

PageMethods for Visual Studio .NET 2003 has just been released.

PageMethods (code name was sharpUrls) enables well-defined URLs for your ASP.NET sites and applications.
Linking to a web page is very easy, both in simple HTML and in ASP.NET. Linking to a page that really exists, passing the right parameters, and parsing these parameters, is a bit different.
PageMethods takes care of your URLs. It proposes a solution to define structured URLs for each of your pages, as well as a clean and simple way to call them.
The idea is based on strict page inputs and declarative parameter binding. With PageMethods, each page exposes a set of methods that represent the different ways to call the page. All you have to do to start benefiting from sharp, reliable URLs is to add methods to your pages, and mark these methods with attributes provided by PageMethods.

Features include:

• Object-oriented approach for hyperlinks
• No concatenations of strings required anymore
• Strongly typed parameters
• Automated parameter handling
• Parameter validation
• Compile-time checks
• Code completion
• Integrated with Visual Studio .NET

• an introduction
• a walkthrough tutorial
• details about the features and benefits
• and of course a page to download the product.

A lot of people have been hacking Google Maps lately, and I thought I had to play the game too :-)
Another great site is Flickr, which propose a great way to share pictures.
I wrote a small service that lets you see your Flickr pictures on a Google map.
Feel free to use it, and let me know what you think.

Update: fixed a few things; files were missing.
Update: I just noticed Geobloggers, which is quite similar actually.

Funny how quickly you get used to new features. Looking at a map on a web site, I found myself trying to drag the map with the mouse, à la Google Maps...
Conclusion: even if at first sight some features may look like gadgets, your mind can get addicted to them anyway and they become key differentiating features.