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Although the ability to transform a simple watch into a piece of beautiful jewelry is an art form that is at least a century old, it is rarely, if ever, thought of in connection with LCD display watches. The Seiko Electronic Ink Watch for women has no diamond or ruby embellishments, but instead has the appearance of a sleek silver (titanium) and black lacquer bracelet. The "lacquer," which surrounds the center of the watch is actually a flexible LCD display that features extraordinary contrast and clarity. The display is covered in a continuous sapphire crystal (not the deep-blue faceted type but the clear smooth type usually used for high end watch crystals). Already awarded one of the highest honors in watchmaking for this design, Seiko has dubbed this forerunner as the shape of things to come. |
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"Seiko has a long-term plan for the Indian market and will introduce its latest International Collection of watches, here. Company will be active in the Premium segment of the Indian Watch market." I love Seiko watches. My grandpa use to have a collection of them, no kidding. They're now antiques but still ticking strong. via 3Yen.com |
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Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks - work and life have been busy here lately. Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Bulk Inserting Data with the ListView Control: Matt Berseth continues his awesome posts with one that shows how to handle bulk-editing of data using the ASP.NET ListView control in .NET 3.5. Master-Detail with the GridView, DetailsView, and ModalPopup Controls: Another great post from Matt that describes how to cleanly handle a common data entry scenario. Creating Great Thumbnail Images in ASP.NET: A really nice blog post by a different Matt that details an approach that generates high quality (and small) thumbnail images. Warning the User when Caps-Lock is on: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how to automatically detect and warn users in login pages when the caps-lock button is on. ASP.NET Perf Issue: Large numbers of application-restarts due to virus scanners: Tess Ferrandez has a great post that details a debug session to determine why an ASP.NET application was restarting frequently (causing performance slowdowns). The issue was a virus scanner that was causing files to be constantly updated. Make sure to check out the logging code you can add to your application to identify restart causes like this. ASP.NET AJAX ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar Control: Matt Berseth has another great article that describes his new ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar control. Faster Page Loading By Combining Multiple JavaScript files in Batch: Omar Al Zabir (founder of PageFlakes.com and author of the great Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book) has a good article that describes the performance benefit of merging multiple JavaScript file downloads. Note that .NET 3.5 SP1 will include a new script combiner feature that helps make doing this even easier. Create ASP.NET AJAX Server Controls using the ScriptControl base class: Chris Pietschmann has a nice article that talks about how to build new ASP.NET AJAX server controls by deriving from the built-in ScriptControl base class. Inline Edit Box and Postback Ritalin Beta: Dave Ward and Mike Davis have created a new CodePlex project for their popular Inline Edit Box and PostBack Ritalin ASP.NET AJAX controls. .NET 7 Ways to Simplify your code with LINQ: Igor Ostrovsky has a great blog post that talks about new code techniques you can use to improve your code using .NET 3.5 and the new language and LINQ features in it. Visual LINQ Query Builder for LINQ to SQL: Mitsu Furuta has created a cool Visual Studio designer that allows you to graphically construct LINQ to SQL queries. Also make sure to download download the latest LINQPad utility - which is invaluable for learning LINQ and trying out LINQ queries. DataContracts without Attributes (POCO support): Aaron Skonnard has a good post that talks about a nice usability change with .NET 3.5 SP1 that allows you to serialize POCO (plain old objects) using the WCF serializers. Ukadc.Diagnostics: Josh Twist pointed me at a new CodePlex project he is working on that extends the System.Diagnostics features in .NET to include richer logging features (SQL trace support, email support, etc). Visual Studio 11 More VS Short Cuts you Should Know: A great post that talks about a bunch of useful shortcuts to print out and remember when using Visual Studio. Did you know you can show extension methods in the object browser?: Sara Ford continues her excellent "Did you know" series. I confess I didn't know this one. Silverlight 50 New Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Screencasts: Mike Taulty and Mike Ormond have put together 50 nice tutorial screen-casts that cover Silverlight 2 - all in their "spare time". Wow. AutoComplete for Silverlight TextBoxes: Nikhil Kothari has a nice blog post that demonstrates how he built an auto-complete behavior control for Silverlight. Scrolling through Large Resultsets with Silverlight 2 and LINQ to SQL: The Swiss MSDN team has a nice blog post that demonstrates how to scroll through large resultsets using the Silverlight DataGrid and LINQ to SQL. IValueConverter: The Swiss Army Knife of Bindings: David Anson has a useful blog post and sample that demonstrates how to use the IValueConverter feature in Silverlight and WPF to support richer bindings against complex objects. Silverlight 2 Pie Chart: Peter McGrattan has posted a nice control and article that demonstrates how to use a new Silverlight charting control he has written. WPF WPF week on Channel9: Watch 6 great videos on Channel9. Each one includes interviews and demos with members of the WPF team talking about some of the awesome work that went into WPF 3.5 SP1 (read my blog post here for a summary of some of it). WPF Testing and Application Quality Guide: Check out the 0.2 release of a free online book being developed by Microsoft that covers how to test WPF applications. Definitely worth book-marking if you are doing WPF development. Moving Toward WPF Data Binding One Step at a Time: Josh Smith has a great article on CodeProject.com that explains WPF data binding and walksthrough how to use it. WPF 3.5 SP1 StringFormat: Lester has a nice post that describes how to use the new StringFormat feature in WPF 3.5 SP1. This makes it much easier to handle formatting of databound values. Hope this helps, Scott |
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Earlier today we shipped a public beta of our upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. These servicing updates provide a roll-up of bug fixes and performance improvements for issues reported since we released the products last November. They also contain a number of feature additions and enhancements that make building .NET applications better (see below for details on some of them).
We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and install the beta here.
Important: SP1 Beta Installation Notes
The SP1 beta released today is still in beta form - so you should be careful about installing it on critical machines. There are a few important SP1 Beta installation notes to be aware of:
1) If you are running Windows Vista you should make sure you have Vista SP1 installed before trying to install .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta. There are some setup issues with .NET 3.5 SP1 when running on the Vista RTM release. These issues will be fixed for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release - until then please make sure to have Vista SP1 installed before trying to install .NET 3.5 SP1 beta.
2) If you have installed the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2 Beta1 package on your machine, you must uninstall it - as well as uninstall the KB949325 update for VS 2008 - before installing VS 2008 SP1 Beta (otherwise you will get a setup failure). You can find more details on the exact steps to follow here (note: you must uninstall two separate things). It is fine to have the Silverlight 2 runtime on your machine with .NET 3.5 SP1 - the component that needs to be uninstalled is the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight 2 package. We will release an updated VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight package in a few weeks that works with the VS 2008 SP1 beta.
3) There is a change in behavior in the .NET 3.5 SP1 beta that causes a problem with the shipping versions of Expression Blend. This behavior change is being reverted for the final .NET 3.5 SP1 release, at which time all versions of Blend will have no problems running. Until then, you need to download this recently updated version of Blend 2.5 to work around this issue.
Important Update: If you previously installed a VS 2008 Hotfix, you must run the HotFix Cleanup Utility before installing the VS 2008 SP1 Beta. Click here to download and run this.
Improvements for Web Development
.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 contain a bunch of feature improvements targeted at web application development.
The VS Web Dev Tools team has more details (including specific bug fix details) on some of the VS specific work here. Below are more details on some of the work in the web-space:
ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support for a rich ASP.NET data "scaffolding" framework that enables you to quickly build functional data-driven web application. With the ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature you can automatically build web UI (with full CRUD - create, read, update, delete - support) against a variety of data object models (including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, REST Services, and any other ORM or object model with a dynamic data provider).
SP1 adds this new functionality to the existing GridView, ListView, DetailsView and FormView controls in ASP.NET, and enables smart validation and flexible data templating options. It also delivers new smart filtering server controls, as well as adds support for automatically traversing primary-key/foreign-key relationships and displaying friendly foreign key names - all of which saves you from having to write a ton of code.
You can learn more more about this feature from Scott Hanselman's videos and tutorials here.
ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes a flexible new URL routing engine that allows you to map incoming URLs to route handlers. It includes support for both parsing parameters from clean URLs (for example: /Products/Browse/Beverages), as well as support to dynamically calculate and generate new URLs from route registrations.
This new routing engine is used by both ASP.NET Dynamic Data as well as the new ASP.NET MVC framework. It will support both WebForms and MVC based requests.
ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds new APIs to ASP.NET AJAX to allow you to better control the history list of a browser (enabling you to control the behavior of the back/forward button of the browser).
You can learn more about this feature in the article here and the screencast here.
ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining Support
.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new <CompositeScript> element on the <asp:ScriptManager> server control, which allows you to declaratively define multiple script references within it. All the script references within the CompositeScript element are combined together on the server and served as a single script to the client, reducing the number of requests to the server and improving page load time for ASP.NET AJAX applications.
The script combining feature supports both path based scripts and assembly resource based scripts, and dynamically serves up the combined scripts using the ScriptResources.axd handler.
Visual Studio 2008 Performance Improvements HTML Designer and HTML Source Editor
In February we released a HotFix roll-up that included a number of performance improvements and bug fixes for the VS 2008 Web Designer. VS 2008 SP1 includes all of these fixes, as well as a number of additional performance improvements.
Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Script Formatting and Code Preferences
Visual Studio has for several releases supported rich source code formatting options for VB and C# (spacing, line breaks, brace positions, etc).
VS 2008 SP1 adds richer source code formatting support for JavaScript as well (both inline <script> blocks and .js files). You can now set your Javascript coding preferences using the Tools->Options dialog:
These preferences will be automatically used as you type new Javascript code in the source editor. You can also select existing code, right-click, and choose the "Format Selection" option to apply your style preferences to existing JavaScript code. You can learn more about this new feature here.
Better Visual Studio Javascript Intellisense for Multiple Javascript/AJAX Frameworks
VS 2008 includes Javascript Intellisense support in source view. The intellisense support with the initial VS 2008 release works well with vanilla JavaScript as well as code written using the ASP.NET AJAX JavaScript type patterns. JavaScript is a very flexible language, though, and many JavaScript libraries use this flexibility to full advantage to implement their features - sometimes in ways that prevented the intellisense engine from providing completion support.
VS 2008 SP1 adds much better intellisense support for popular Javascript libraries (we specifically did work to support JQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, ExtJS, and other popular libraries). You will get better default intellisense when you reference these libraries. We are also looking at whether we can maintain additional intellisense hint files that you can download to get even better intellisense and documentation support for some of the more popular libraries.
Below is an example of using a JQuery startup function with the VS 2008 SP1 JavaScript intellisense engine:
Notice below how VS 2008 SP1 can now provide method argument completion even on chained JQuery selectors:
Visual Studio Refactoring Support for WCF Services in ASP.NET Projects
VS 2008 SP1 adds better refactoring support for WCF services included within both ASP.NET Web Site and ASP.NET Web Application Projects.
If you use the refactoring support to rename the class name, interface contract, or namespace of a WCF service, VS 2008 SP1 will now automatically fix up the web.config and SVC file references to it.
Visual Studio Support for Classic ASP Intellisense and Debugging
Previous versions of Visual Studio included support for intellisense and debugging within classic ASP (.asp) pages. The file and project templates to create classic ASP pages/projects hasn't been in VS for a few releases, though, and with the initial VS 2008 we incorrectly assumed this meant that people weren't still using the classic ASP support. We heard feedback after we shipped that indeed they were.
With VS 2008 SP1 this support for classic ASP intellisense and debugging is back:
Visual Web Developer Express Edition support for Class Library and Web Application Projects
The Visual Web Developer 2008 Express edition (which is free) is being updated in SP1 to add support for both class library and ASP.NET Web Application project types. Previous versions of Visual Web Developer Express only supported ASP.NET web-site projects.
Among other benefits, the support of class library and web application projects will enable ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight projects to be built with the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. All of the above JavaScript, Dynamic Data, Classic ASP, and AJAX improvements work with Visual Web Developer Express as well.
Improvements for Client Development
.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 contain major performance, deployment, and feature improvements for building client applications.
Tim Sneath has a great blog post that talks about some of the client improvements here. Below are more details on them:
Application Startup and Working Set Performance Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes significant performance improvements to the CLR that enable much faster application startup times - in particular with "cold start" scenarios (where no .NET application is already running). Much of these gains were achieved by changing the layout of blocks within CLR NGEN images, and by significantly optimizing disk IO access patterns. We also made some nice optimizations to our JIT code generator that allow much better inlining of methods that utilize structs.
We are today measuring up to 40% faster application startup improvements for large .NET client applications with SP1 installed. These optimizations also have the nice side-effect of improving ASP.NET application request per second throughput by up to 10% in some cases.
New .NET Framework Client Profile Setup Package
.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new setup package option for developers building .NET client applications called the ".NET Framework Client Profile". This provides a new setup installer that enables a smaller, faster, and simpler installation experience for .NET client applications on machines that do not already have the .NET Framework installed.
The .NET Framework Client Profile setup contains just those assemblies and files in the .NET Framework that are typically used for client application scenarios. For example: it includes Windows Forms, WPF, and WCF. It does not include ASP.NET and those libraries and components used primarily for server scenarios. We expect this setup package to be about 26MB in size, and it can be downloaded and installed much quicker than the full .NET Framework setup package.
The assemblies and APIs in the .NET Framework Client setup package are 100% identical to those in the full .NET Framework setup package (they are literally the same binaries). This means that applications can target both the client profile and full profile of .NET 3.5 SP1 (no recompilation required). All .NET applications that work using the .NET Client Profile setup automatically work with the full .NET Framework.
A developer can indicate that the client application they are building supports both the .NET Framework Client Profile and the full .NET Framework by pulling up the project properties page for a client application within VS 2008 SP1. Within the project properties page they can select a new checkbox that indicates it only requires those assemblies included in the .NET Framework Client Profile:
VS 2008 will then ensure that the project can only reference those assemblies shipped in the client profile setup package (and it will generate a compile error if you try and use a type in an assembly not included in the client redist). The compiled client application will then run on machines that have both the full .NET Framework installed, as well as machines that only have the .NET Framework Client Profile installed.
If you have a machine that only has the .NET Framework Client Profile installed, and you try and run a .NET application on it that did not mark itself as supporting the .NET Framework Client Profile, then the CLR will refuse to run the application - and will instead prompt the end-user to upgrade to the full .NET Framework package. This ensures that applications always run correctly - and that developers do not need to worry about missing assembly exceptions at runtime if a user tries to run an application that requires the full .NET Framework on a machine that only has the .NET Framework Client Profile installed.
We believe that a large class of .NET client applications will be able to use this new .NET Client Profile setup to significantly speed up their installation, and enable a much more consumer friendly experience.
New .NET Framework Setup Bootstrapper for Client Applications
.NET 3.5 SP1 introduces a new "bootstrapper" component that you can use with client applications to help automate making sure that the right version of the .NET Framework is installed.
The bootstrapper component can handle automatically downloading and installing either the .NET Framework Client Profile or the full .NET Framework Setup Package from the Internet if your machine doesn't have either of them installed. The boostrapper can also automatically handle upgrading machines that have a previous version of the .NET Framework installed. For example, if your machine already has .NET 3.0 installed, and your application requires .NET 3.5, the bootstrapper can optionally download just the update files needed to upgrade it to .NET 3.5 (and avoid having to download the full .NET Framework setup download).
The setup bootstrapper component can be used with both ClickOnce based setup packages, as well as with third party installer products (like Installshield). The boostrapper optionally enables fully customized setup branding experiences (splash screens, custom setup wizard steps, etc) and should make it much easier to build optimized client setup experiences.
ClickOnce Client Application Deployment Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes several improvements for ClickOnce deployment of both Windows Forms and WPF applications. Some of these improvements include:
Support for the .NET Framework Client Profile (all ClickOnce features are supported with it)
ClickOnce applications can now be programmatically installed through a ‘Setup.exe’ while displaying a customized, branded install UX
ClickOnce improvements for generating MSI + ClickOnce application packages
ClickOnce error dialog boxes now support links to application specific support sites on the Web
ClickOnce now has design-time support for setting up file associations
ClickOnce application publishers can now decide to opt out of signing and hashing the ClickOnce manifests as they see appropriate for their scenarios.
Enterprises can now choose to run only Clickonce Applications Authenticode signed by ‘Known Publishers’ and block anything else from running
FireFox browser extension to support Clickonce installations using FireFox browsers
Windows Forms Controls
SP1 adds several new Windows Forms controls - including new vector shape, Printing, and DataRepeater controls:
WPF Performance Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes several significant performance optimizations and improvements to WPF. Some of the specific graphics improvements include:
Smoother animations
Hardware accelerated rendering of Blur and DropShadow Bitmap Effects
Text Rendering speed improvements - especially with VisualBrish and 3D scenes
2D graphics improvements - especially with z-index scenarios
A new WriteableBitmap class that enables real-time and tear-free bitmap updates. This enables custom "paint"-style applications, data visualizations, charts and graphs that optionally bypass the default WPF 2D graphics APIs.
Layered window performance improvements
SP1 also adds support for better data scalability in WPF. The ListView, ListBox and TreeView controls now support "item container recycling" and "virtualization" support which allows you to easily achieve a 40% performance improvement with scrolling scenarios. These controls also now optionally support a "deferred scrolling" feature which allows you to avoid scrolling in real time and instead wait until a user releases the scroll thumb (the default scrolling mode in Outlook). This can be useful when scrolling over very large data sets quickly.
WPF Data Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes several data binding and editing improvements to WPF. These include:
StringFormat support within {{ Binding }} expressions to enable easy formatting of bound values
New alternating rows support within controls derived from ItemsControl, which makes it easier to set alternating properties on rows (for example: alternating background colors)
Better handling and conversion support for null values in editable controls
Item-level validation that applies validation rules to an entire bound item
MultiSelector support to handle multi-selection and bulk editing scenarios
IEditableCollectionView support to interface data controls to data sources and enable editing/adding/removing items in a transactional way
Performance improvements when binding to IEnumerable data sources
WPF also now exposes hooks that enable developers to write custom panels w/ virtualized scrolling. We'll be using this support together with the above data binding improvements to build the new WPF datagrid that will be shipping later this year.
WPF Extensible Shader Effects
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support in WPF for a new shader effects architecture and API that allows extremely expressive visual effects to be created and applied to any control or element within WPF. These shader effects support blending multiple input compositions together. What makes them particularly powerful is that WPF executes effects (including custom effects you build yourself) using the GPU - giving you fully hardware accelerated graphics performance. Like almost everything in WPF, you can also use WPF databinding and animation on the properties of an effect (allowing them to be fully integrated into an experience).
Applying an effect onto a Control is super easy - just set a Control's "Effect" property. For example, to add a hardware accelerated drop-shadow effect on a button you can use the built-in <DropShadowEffect> on it via either code or XAML:
Which will cause the button to render like so:
Because Effects are extensible, developers can create their own custom Effect objects and apply them. For example, a custom "DirectionalBlurEffect" could be created and added to a ListBox control to change its scroll appearance to use a blur effect if you rapidly scroll across it:
Keep an eye on Greg Schechter's blog to learn more about how the Effects architecture works and to learn how you can both create and apply new effects within your applications (his first set of posts are here).
Note: In addition to introducing the new Shader Effects API, WPF in SP1 also has updated the existing Blur and DropShadow Bitmap effects already in WPF to be hardware accelerated.
WPF Interoperability with Direct3D
.NET 3.5 SP1 adds support to efficiently integrate Direct3D directly into WPF. This gives you more direct access to the hardware and to take full advantage of the Direct3D API within WPF applications. You will be able to treat Direct3D content just like an image within an application, as well as use Direct3D content as textures on WPF controls.
For example, below are three samples from the Direct3D SDK:
We could either load them in as image surfaces within a WPF application, or map them as textures on WPF controls. Below is an example of mapping them as textures onto cubes in a WPF 3D application:
Note: the Direct3D integration isn't today's SP1 beta release. It will appear in the final SP1 release.
VS 2008 for WPF Improvements
VS 2008 SP1 includes several significant improvements for WPF projects and the WPF designer. These include:
Several performance improvements
Events tab support within the property browser
Ability to sort properties alphabetically in the property browser
Margin snaplines which makes form layout much quicker
Better designer support for TabControl, Expander, and Grid
Code initiated refactoring now updates your XAML (including both control declarations and event declarations in XAML)
Go to Definition and Find All References now support things declared in XAML
The debugger has also been updated in SP1 so that runtime errors in XAML markup (for example: referencing styles, datasources and/or other objects that don't exist) will now be better identified within the debugger:
Data Development Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 include a bunch of improvements for data development. Some of them include:
SQL 2008 Support
VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 are being updated to include support for the upcoming SQL 2008 release. Visual Studio 2008 data designers, projects and wizards now fully supporting connecting and working against SQL 2008 databases.
ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities:
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes the new ADO.NET Entity Framework, which allows developers to define a higher-level Entity Data Model over their relational data, and then program in terms of this model. Concepts like inheritance, complex types and relationships (including M:M support) can be modeled using it. VS 2008 SP1 now includes built-in designer support to help with this modeling:
The ADO.NET Entity Framework and the VS 2008 Entity Framework Designer both support a pluggable provider model that allows them to be used with any database (including Oracle, DB2, MySql, PostgreSQL, SQLite, VistaDB, Informix, Sybase, and others).
Developers can then use LINQ and LINQ to Entities to query, manipulate, and update these entity objects.
ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria")
.NET 3.5 SP1 includes a flexible framework that enables the creation of REST-based data services. Formerly code-named "Astoria", the ADO.NET Data Services framework provides support for publishing data through a standard REST URI syntax and using standard HTTP verbs to operate on the data resources. Developers can easily expose data models created using the ADO.NET Entity Framework, and/or use a pluggable provider model to expose other data models.
In addition to publishing data sources, the framework also adds a client API for working with remote REST services. Included with this client API is a LINQ library that allows the remote query of REST services.
WCF Development Improvements
.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 include several enhancements for WCF development. Some of these include:
Significant scalability improvements (5-10x) in Web-hosted application scenarios
Support for using ADO.NET Entity Framework entities in WCF contracts
API usability improvements with DataContract Serializers, and with the UriTemplate and WCF web programming models
Enhanced TestClient support within VS 2008 SP1
New Hosting Wizard in VS 2008 SP1 for WCF Service Projects
Improved debugging support in partial trust scenarios
VB and C# Improvements
The VB and C# teams have also added some nice improvements to VS 2008 SP1:
Visual Basic
You can now add "XML to Schema" items to Visual Basic projects. On adding these project items a wizard will open that allows you to create a XSD schema set from a variety of XML sources. This schema set is then added to the project and it enables VB XML intellisense. This support was previously available as a web download - you can learn more about it here.
A XSD browser is also now included with VS 2008 SP1 and allows you to browse XSD schema sets. With the final SP1 release, developers will be able to right-click on XML element names (either in XML properties or XML literals) in the VB code editor and select “Go To XML Schema Definition” - this will open the XSD browser and display the schema set (and select the current element) for the VB project.
C#
The C# code editor now identifies and displays red squiggle errors for many semantic code issues that previously required an explicit compilation to identify. For example, if you try to declare and use an unknown type in the C# code-editor today you won't see a compile error until you do a build. Now with SP1 you'll see live red squiggle errors immediately (no explicit compile required):
The debugger in VS 2008 SP1 has also been improved to provide more debugging support for evaluating LINQ expressions and viewing results at debug time:
LINQ enabled data sources now have a "Results View" node show up within the debugger watch window. Expanding this node will evaluate a LINQ expression and allow you to examine the materialized objects it returns:
Team Foundation Server Improvements
TFS 2008 SP1 includes a ton of improvements. Please read Brian Harry's Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 Preview blog post for more details.
Summary
.NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 provide a bunch of bug fixes, performance improvements, and additional feature enhancements that make building all types of .NET applications better. It will be a fully compatible service pack release.
We plan to ship the final release of both .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 this summer as free updates. You can download and use the beta now here.
Hope this helps,
Scott |
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One of the things I like to track are book sales on Amazon.com, which provides a useful data point to monitor what developers are interested in on any given day. I use the www.TitleZ.com site (which is built using ASP.NET) to track specific titles I want to watch - it then generates a report showing real-time Amazon sales ranking data, as well as 7 day, 30 day and 90 day sales ranking averages. This morning I pulled up my report and saw the usual books near the top of my list, and was about to navigate away when I noticed the eye-popping amazon ranking of the top book -"Professional ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB" by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman and Devin Rader. Its Amazon sales rank was a stunning #95 (of all books on Amazon), which meant it was outselling even Harry Potter (which is pretty much unheard of for any technology book). It turns out that Amazon is holding a special price promotion for a short time on a few books - and this was one that was selected. Instead of the usual $54 price, you can buy it for a short time for a ridiculous $16.49. I'm not sure how long this promotion will last - but if you are looking for a great ASP.NET 3.5 book this might be something you might want to take advantage of: The book is a great ASP.NET 3.5 book and an excellent end to end resource. It has been on the best seller list for programming books since it came out in March (usually in the top 5 of all programming titles), and has received glowing reviews (I posted a review of it on Amazon a few weeks ago and gave it 5 stars). If you are in the market for a good ASP.NET book, you might want to consider taking Amazon up on this offer before it closes (and apologies in advance if the price changes before you read this). Hope this helps, Scott P.S. If you are looking for other good .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 books - I also recommend: C# 3.0 In a Nutshell, LINQ in Action, and Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 (all of which average a 5 star rating on Amazon). |
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Go to www.TravelMole.com for breaking news from next week's gathering in Gran Canaria and watch via TravelMoleTV |
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Adam Laurie lived a few Novembers as a dog earlier this year. By duplicating the RFID tags used to identify pets in the United Kingdom and sewing it into his watch strap, Laurie, an independent security researcher, re-created his dog's ID as a hacking exercise. However, this kind of virtual animal cloning could become a serious issue as industrialized countries roll out RFID-based systems to keep track of their livestock.Japan and the United Kingdom have led the way, developing so-called source and age-verified tracking systems that could help contain the damage caused by outbreaks of mad cow disease, scrapie, or avian flu. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has also been testing the use of RFID chips as part of a National Animal Identification System.These systems are changing the way we purchase meat, notes Sue Brown, a product manager with Destron Fearing, a maker of RFID tracking chips. In Japan, consumers can scan a package of beef and have a photo of the people who raised the cow, along with details on how it entered the country, sent to their mobile phones. According to Brown, Destron Fearing has taken steps to prevent its tags from being cloned, including placing the chip in a tamperproof polyurethane casing. "This is an unalterable means of identification," she says.But not everyone sees the technology as foolproof. Laurie points out that the RFID tags communicate without encryption, so some of them can be cloned or even reprogrammed. "If you create another tag that has the same ID, you can effectively clone the animal." Or at least its identity.Still, why would someone want to do this? A farmer might want to swap out the identity of a sick animal in his stock to save an entire herd from being destroyed. That's why some companies are starting to match DNA samples with existing ID systems in order to offer a greater level of assurance.The United States has been lucky so far. There hasn't been an outbreak of mad cow disease like the one that crippled the U.K. beef industry. But that might all change very quickly, says Brown. "We are probably one disaster away from having that sort of thing occur in the U.S." |
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Are you sitting there, reading this, thinking you would like to exercise someday if you only had the time, the energy, the money to join a gym, someone to watch the kids, cuter clothes, better legs, not so many ... |
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Two years ago the Hublot Company was honored to receive the 'Prix du Design' award for its Big Bang watch creation during the Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie de Geneve. |
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Chuck Woehler doesn't understand the intricacies of the feud between the NFL Network and the big cable companies, nor does he care to. All he knows is he won't be able to watch his beloved Dallas Cowboys from his San Antonio home as he can every other week — and he faults the NFL for that. |
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