Jon's News Wrapup - June 25, 2008 Edition

• url

  live.sysinternals.com

  
  Run Sysinternals utilities directly off the internet without having to install them. You can browse to them at http://live.sysinternals.comor open them as a network share using \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\. I'd love to see more Microsoft utilities delivered this way - it's incredibly convenient.
  • sysinternals
  • windows
  • microsoft
  • jongalloway
  • May 30, 2008 at 01:18 AM
  • May 30, 2008 at 01:18 AM
• url

  Microsoft StyleCop: Source Analysis for C#

  
  We are very excited to announce the release of a new developer tool from Microsoft, Source Analysis for C#. This tool is known internally within Microsoft as StyleCop, and has been used for many years now to help teams enforce a common set of best practices for layout, readability, maintainability, and documentation of C# source code. Source Analysis is similar in many ways to Microsoft Code Analysis (specifically FxCop), but there are some important distinctions. FxCop performs its analysis on compiled binaries, while Source Analysis analyzes the source code directly. For this reason, Code Analysis focuses more on the design of the code, while Source Analysis focuses on layout, readability and documentation. Most of that information is stripped away during the compilation process, and thus cannot be analyzed by FxCop.
  • microsoft
  • visualstudio
  • dotnet
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:59 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:59 PM
• url

  Shoes, a Tiny Toolkit

  
  Shoes is a very informal graphics and windowing toolkit. It's for making regular old apps that run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It's a blend of my favorite things from the Web, some Ruby style, and a sprinkling of cross-platform widgets. (More in the README.) Here's a trivial little button app: Shoes.app { button("Press Me") { alert("You pressed me") } }
  • ruby
  • shoes
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:46 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:46 PM
• url

  Ruby / Shoes (Scott Hanselman)

  
  Ruby is a very aesthetically (to me) pleasing and flexible language. Shoes is a GUI Toolkit for making Windowing Applications using Ruby. Shoes is legendary for a number of reasons, but above all, it has the greatest API documentation in the history of all software documentation.
  • ruby
  • shoes
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:44 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:44 PM
• url

  ReSharper 4.0 Released with C# 3.0 and Visual Studio 2008 Support

  
  ReSharper 4.0 Full Edition and C# Edition provide comprehensive support for C# 3.0, including LINQ, implicitly typed locals and arrays, extension methods, automatic properties, lambda expressions, object & collection initializers, anonymous types, expression trees, and partial methods.
  • resharper
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:36 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:36 PM
• url

  Windows Vista DRT (Demo Readiness Toolkit)

  
  Installing the Demo Readiness Toolkit will completely erase all data on your hard drive and create a Windows Vista Demonstration PC. Be sure to use a machine that can be re-formatted. Do you demonstrate Windows Vista features? Or maybe you demo 3rd party applications, services, solutions and/or hardware with Windows Vista? With the Demo Readiness Toolkit, your workload just got a whole lot lighter! With a comprehensive demo script, sample content, and a preconfigured installation including user accounts and applications, you have everything you need to demo with Windows Vista with virtually no effort. No more searching for the right software, creating user accounts, tweaking settings, or writing product/feature messaging - now you can focus on your pitch, NOT on building a demo environment.
  • microsoft
  • windows
  • jongalloway
  • May 30, 2008 at 01:28 AM
  • May 30, 2008 at 01:28 AM

Web / Cloud / Interwebs

The big news here has to be the official release of Firefox 3. I'm not going to dump a bunch of links here, see Lifehacker's Firefox 3 coverage for more in-depth info.

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  Top 10 Firefox 3 Features (Lifehacker)

  
  • Souped-up Add-ons manager...
  • More intuitive interface overall...
  • Stronger phishing and malware protection...
  • Improved download manager...
  • Native looks for every system...
  • Streamlined "Remember password" handling...
  • Smart bookmarks...
  • Places Organizer replaces the Bookmark Manager...
  • Smart Location Bar learns how you browse...
  • Insanely improved performance
  • firefox 3
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 05:30 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 05:30 PM
• url

  BrowserPlus™

  
  Yahoo BrowserPlus™ is a technology for web browsers that allows developers to create rich web applications with desktop capabilities. The most unique attribute of BrowserPlus is its ability to update and add new services on the fly without a browser restart or even reloading the page! As a user, this means no more installers to run or losing your place on the web. For developers, you can check for and activate new services with a single function call, pending user approval - we handle the complexity of software distribution and updates for you. (Runs Ruby on the client, probably a much better fit than the server).
  • ruby
  • yahoo
  • browserplus
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:49 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:49 PM
• url

  Comparison of Microsoft and Applesync services

  
  Apple’s introduction of the successor to .Mac — a k a, MobileMe — raises the question as to what’s taking Microsoft so long to roll out Live Mesh. There aren’t a whole lot of details yet available on MobileMe, other than that it will allow cloud-based synchronization of data and devices. (And will make use of Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology, which Apple licensed from Microsoft in order to bring push e-mail to the iPhone, creating its “Exchange for the rest of us.”) From initial reports, MobileMe sounds like a combination of a Windows Live (the various Webified versions of the .Mac point products), Live Mesh (the Mobile Me sync service) and SkyDrive (the Mobile Me cloud-based storage). It is slated to be available to customers in July for a (pricey) $99, which includes 20 GB of storage.
  • microsoft
  • apple
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 04:37 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 04:37 PM
• url

  goosh.org - the unofficial google shell.

  
  goosh is a google-interface that behaves similar to a unix-shell.
  • google
  • goosh
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 08, 2008 at 04:15 PM
  • Jun 08, 2008 at 04:15 PM

.NET Community

The ALT.NET community coalesced over a common disatisfaction with the direction the Entity Framework group was heading, so it's no real surprise to see a public statement as the Entity Framework gets set to ship without having substantively addressed any of their core criticisms. I don't have production experience with Entity Framework or pre-existing comptetitors like NHibernate, so I don't really feel qualified to much of an opinion here, other than this: deferring community engagement on core issues as a "Version 2 feature" is generally a bad development model (c.f. Internet Explorer), and that seems to have been part of the problem here. On the other hand, the ALT.NET community, as a whole, is absolutely awful at communicating effectively. While this "No Confidence Vote" letter could improve with a quick proofread by the Unibomber, it's probably the most coherent problem statement they've put forth. Like I said, though, my uneducated opinion here doesn't matter much. I've pulled some links in which cover some of the opposing viewpoints.

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  ADO .NET Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence

  
  The signatories of this letter are unanimous in expressing concern for the welfare of software projects undertaken in the Microsoft customer community that will make use of the forthcoming ADO .NET Entity Framework...

  • Inordinate focus the data aspect of entities leads to degraded entity architectures
  • Excess code needed to deal with lack of lazy loading
  • Shared, canonical model contradicts software best practices
  • Lack of persistence ignorance causes business logic to be harder to read, write, and modify, causing development and maintenance costs to increase at an exaggerated rate
  • Excessive merge conflicts with source control in team environments
  • microsoft
  • entity framework
  • alt.net
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:37 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:37 PM
• url

  Testers give Microsoft’s Entity Framework a no-confidence vote | (Mary Jo Foley)

  
  Another Entity Framework tester, who requested anonymity, noted that the no confidence vote shouldn’t be interpreted as across-the-board dissatisfaction among .Net developers with Microsoft’s course. “The best thing that happened in response to this latest action is that the Entity Framework team responded to it immediately,” the tester said.
  • microsoft
  • alt.net
  • entity framework
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:29 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:29 PM
• url

  Tim Mallalieu's response to the Vote of No Confidence

  
  The unfortunate reality is that these are scenarios that we care deeply about but do not fully support in V1.0. I can go into some more detail here. One point to note is that the choice on these features were heavily considered but we had the contention between trying to add more features vs. trying to stay true to our initial goal which was to lay the core foundation for a multiple-release strategy for building out a broader data platform offering. Today, coincidentally, marked the start of our work on the next version of the product and we are determined to address this particular developer community in earnest while still furthering the investment in the overall data platform.
  • microsoft
  • entity framework
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:42 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:42 PM
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  Thoughts on the Entity Framework Vote of No Confidence - Blog

  
  I'm far from an expert on Microsoft's Entity Framework (EF), but I have dabbled a bit with betas 2 and 3. Recently, Brian Ellis, a colleague of mine, summarized the points made in an open letter claiming a "vote of no confidence" in the Entity Framework. I'm no ORM guru or EF junkie, but I know enough about EF to see that it has both potential and limitations. I'd like to share my thoughts on the letter. To be fair, I've never used NHibernate (the Holy Grail), and work primarily with Microsoft technology. That doesn't make me an EF evangelist. I'm still quite skeptical, but interested in understanding the value of the technology.
  • microsoft
  • entity framework
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:40 PM
  • Jun 24, 2008 at 04:40 PM
• url

  I’m not taking on the Alt.NET world

  
  Cohesion and maturity do not define the best approach for the vast numbers of programmers that make up this industry. That’s why the good thing is that Microsoft did not blindly follow the pattern that worked for the relatively small Alt.NET community when developing Entity Framework. Entity Framework is a far broader initiative and EF must work in scenarios where the other pieces of Alt.NET style development are not in place (BDD, behavior based objects, test first development, etc). If the Alt.NET ideas are the whole answer, why isn’t everyone using that approach? If it’s because everyone hasn’t personally been indoctrinated by working for months on an Alt.NET project, as I understood Scott Bellware to be implying about me in a recent comment on my blog, then Entity Framework cannot succeed regardless of the perfection of the tool. If you have to go be personally instructed, you can no more be personally instructed in EF than in NHibernate. Entity Framework should not block any technique, including agile, additional infrastructure, code generation, rules engines, workflow, SOA, dynamic user interfaces, as the top of my head list. But neither should it be built in the vision of one existing – and therefore outdated – approach to software development. The change in terminology from TDD to BDD illustrates how fast thinking within the Alt.NET community changes and Entity Framework cannot chase these changes must but blaze its own trail based on the best thinking in every community.
  • microsoft
  • alt.net
  • entity framework
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 25, 2008 at 02:39 PM
  • Jun 25, 2008 at 02:39 PM
• url

  Windows UX Taskforce

  
  Hey, something interesting that's got nothing to do with Entity Framework! Long Zheng started something, again. The Windows UX Taskforce is a community driven site where users can submit and vote on UI inconsistencies and problems in Windows Vista. Apparently the Windows Experience team team is treating these as bug reports.
  • microsoft
  • windows
  • vista
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 05:05 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 05:05 PM

Future MS Tech

There were some announcements at TechEd 2008, most of them pretty much expected. It seems like the bigger announcements this year will be at PDC08. One surprise was Velocity, a distributed caching solution which is conceptually similar to memcached. Little bits of news on Windows 7 are trickling in, although the featureset of this Windows release is being kept pretty quiet.

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  TechEd 2008 Keynote Summary

  
  • Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 will be available this August
  • Silverlight 2 beta 2 will be available this week with a commercial Go Live license. NBC Universal's 2008 Beijing Olympics will be using Silverlight 2 Beta 2 (which may have had something to do with that commercial go live license). Along with the Beta 2 release, we'll get Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview and Microsoft Silverlight Tools beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008. Dan Wahlin has a concise summary of what's new in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. I'm really excited to be able to talk about some of the new features here as well, but that's a subject for future posts.
  • IBM DB2 database access with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition due to an IBM / Microsoft alliance.
  • A new CTP (community technology preview) of the Microsoft Sync Framework, along with announcements of partnerships.
  • Microsoft code-name “Oslo.” At least from the demo (and from what I've heard so far), Oslo is a unified model platform along with some visualization tools which will be built into future versions of Visual Studio, Microsoft System Center, BizTalk Server and Microsoft SQL Server. It's still a little too buzzwordy and high level for me to get excited yet. You can view the demo at 45 minutes into the keynote in case you're able to get more out of it.
  • A new version of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 v1.2, which will allow developers to use Visual Studio 2008 to extend the value of Windows SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server by providing a simplified development environment.
  • The first CTP of the Microsoft project code-named “Velocity,” a distributed, in-memory application cache platform that makes it easier to develop scalable, high-performance applications needing frequent access to disparate data sources. Large clusters of machines can be seamlessly integrated into a single cache, providing high availability to data.
  • microsoft
  • teched2008
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:49 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:49 PM
• url

  Velocity - Microsoft Distributed Cache (Scott W.)

  
  There is an interesting distinction between these tools. One on hand you have Memcached which treats the cache as something you should never rely on. It is there to help but you should always assume it is going to fail on you and even more importantly (to Memcached) you should accept that as a fact. If you read the Memcached FAQ you can almost here the author laughing when talking about fault tolerance. On the other side of the fence you have features like replication and high availability. It is just a CPT, but it looks like Velocity wants to be in the latter group.
  • microsoft
  • velocity
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:51 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:51 PM
• url

  Setting Up Velocity (Distributed Cache)

  
  Velocity is currently in its first public CTP, so there are certainly going to be some rough spots. The documentation is pretty good, but setting it up and using it the first time required some trial and error. Here is a quick overview on getting it Velocity setup and and using the API.
  • microsoft
  • velocity
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:52 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:52 PM
• url

  Microsoft project code named "Velocity" : Introducing Project Codename "Velocity"

  
  Microsoft is announcing the first CTP of a distributed caching product to provide the .NET application platform support for developing highly performant, scalable, and highly available applications. The project code named “Velocity” is a distributed cache that allows any type of data (CLR object, XML document, or binary data) to be cached. “Velocity” fuses large numbers of cache nodes in a cluster into a single unified cache and provides transparent access to cache items from any client connected to the cluster. http://msdn.microsoft.com/data provides additional information about project code named “Velocity” as well as links to download our first CTP.
  • microsoft
  • velocity
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:41 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 03:41 PM
• url

  Windows 7 to add native support for Virtual Hard Disks

  
  Windows 7 is adding native support for creating, mounting, performing I/O on, and dismounting VHDs (virtual hard disks). Imagine being able to mount a VHD on any Windows machine, do some offline servicing and then boot from that same VHD. Or perhaps, taking an existing VHD you currently use within Virtual Server and boost performance by booting natively from it.
  • microsoft
  • windows 7
  • virtual machine
  • virtualpc
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 02, 2008 at 12:09 PM
  • Jun 02, 2008 at 12:09 PM
• url

  What we do know about Windows 7

  
  • Windows 7 is being designed around five pillars (specialized for laptops; designed for services; personalized for everyone; optimized for entertainment; engineered for “ease of ownership”)
  • Windows 7 will be more modularized and componentized
  • Windows 7 will be a minor update to Vista — with “minor,” here, meaning as less disruptive as possible to users and their applications. Microsoft has said Windows 7 will use the same driver model that Vista did.
  • Windows 7 will allow users to run legacy applications in virtualized mode to minimize backward compatibility problems.
  • Windows 7 will include touch functionality
  • Windows 7 will be more tightly integrated with Windows Live services.
  • Windows 7 will be more tightly integrated with Windows Mobile.
  • Windows 7 will add support for “HomeGroup” networking
  • Windows 7 will add native support for Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs)
  • microsoft
  • windows 7
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 05:16 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 05:16 PM

.NET Dev Releases

Things were busy here, with the release of SP1 Beta for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. Silverlight 2 hit Beta 2, as well. I'm just going with bullet point excerpts from ScottGu's blog on these; there's a ton of information. They could have called this .NET 4.0 and I don't think anyone would have argued.

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  Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Beta - ScottGu's Blog

  
  • ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
  • ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
  • ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support
  • ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining Support
  • Visual Studio 2008 Performance Improvements HTML Designer and HTML Source Editor
  • Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Script Formatting and Code Preferences
  • Better Visual Studio Javascript Intellisense for Multiple Javascript/AJAX Frameworks
  • Visual Studio Refactoring Support for WCF Services in ASP.NET Projects
  • Visual Studio Support for Classic ASP Intellisense and Debugging
  • Visual Web Developer Express Edition support for Class Library and Web Application Projects
  • .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 contain major performance, deployment, and feature improvements for building client applications.
  • Application Startup and Working Set Performance Improvements
  • New .NET Framework Client Profile Setup Package
  • New .NET Framework Setup Bootstrapper for Client Applications
  • ClickOnce Client Application Deployment Improvements
  • Windows Forms controls - including new vector shape, Printing, and DataRepeater controls:
  • WPF Performance Improvements
  • WPF Data Improvements
  • WPF Extensible Shader Effects
  • WPF Interoperability with Direct3D
  • VS 2008 for WPF Improvements
  • Data Development Improvements
  • SQL 2008 Support
  • ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities
  • ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria")
  • .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 include several enhancements for WCF development.
  • microsoft
  • dotnet
  • visualstudio
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 06:26 PM
  • Jun 20, 2008 at 06:26 PM
• url

  Silverlight 2 Beta2 (ScottGu's release notes)

  
  • More Built-in Controls
  • Control Template Editing Support
  • Visual State Manager (VSM) Support - (being added to WPF as well)
  • TextBox: Text scrolling with text-wrap, multi-line text selection, document navigation keys, and copy/paste from the clipboard, FullScreen mode (arrow, tab, enter, home, end, pageup/pagedown, space), new APIs to support inking and stylus input support.
  • UI Automation and Accessibility
  • DeepZoom
  • WPF Compatibility
  • Adaptive Streaming
  • Content Protection (Windows DRM and PlayReady DRM)Server Side Playlists
  • Cross Domain Sockets
  • Background Thread Networking
  • Duplex Communication (Server Push)
  • REST and ADO.NET Data Services
  • JSON (LINQ to JSON support)
  • DataGrid enhancements
  • Core data-binding features and better validation support
  • Isolated Storage (Increased local storage, better end-user management for Isolated Storage)
  • microsoft
  • silverlight2
  • jongalloway
  • Jun 23, 2008 at 04:34 PM
  • Jun 23, 2008 at 04:34 PM

General Microsoft News

Wasn't sure where to put this one, but it's interesting. Will Office 2007 be the first Office suite to support ODF?

• url

  Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 gets ODF and PDF support

  
  When using Microsoft Office 2007 SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.
  • microsoft
  • office
  • odf
  • jongalloway
  • May 30, 2008 at 01:29 AM
  • May 30, 2008 at 01:29 AM