Windows
Can't make it to the Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) in LA? Well, we've started a new group called NotAtPDC! Chris Love is the genious behind this movement! Here's some info from him:
We are going to have live meeting sessions, links to Blogs, Podcasts and any other .NET related content featured this week. Right now we are trying to get things organized better. We will have a site live in the morning. If you want to schedule a session or something DM http://twitter.com/NotAtPDC.
Chris is in the process on getting a website up to aggregate some of the content that the...
That's right! We're having another ASP.NET Expert Live Chat on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 6 PM PST. Here's more info on the event: Get your tough development questions answered by Microsoft MVPs, Regional Directors, and other industry experts. Community experts will be on hand to answer your .NET- and Visual Studio-related questions. No off topic questions please. Please note that questions regarding upcoming products and future product specs might not be answered. Would you like to participate as an expert? Contact Ryan Olshan at Ryan[dot]Olshan[at]strongtypes[dot]com. MSDN Online Chats - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx Chat Room...
Long blog title, I know. Yesterday, I ran into a issue/bug that I've never encountered during my years of being an ASP.NET developer. The error message is below:
The interesting thing about this error, is that it's occurred so often that there's a KB article (KB896181) for it that tells you how to fix it. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to apply the fix in the KB. I just had to change some of my security settings to give the account hosting the website the right permissions.
Here's how the errors occurs:
So you have an ASP.NET page that calls a...
That's right, there will be a HEROES happen {here} event in Des Moines on 4/24! Here's some info on the event: The Des Moines event will celebrate the launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. The event will bring together IT Pros and Developers to get an in-depth, up-close look at the new products and will give attendees an opportunity to meet with our Partners as well as members of the development teams who created the cutting-edge technologies. And all attendees will get a promotional pack containing all three new products....
Running a user group is not easy. It takes quite a bit of coordination to get sponsorships, line up the venue, line up speakers, find swag, schedule the logistics and the most important, order pizza...just to name a few. At times we've been contacted by our members asking when the website will be updated with the meeting info or when will Levi send out the email blast reminder. Well, I'm sorry to say, but we get busy with our jobs/families and we end up dropping the ball at times. Wouldn't it be nice we had a tool to...
That's right, PDC has been rescheduled to Oct. 27-30 2008 in Los Angeles, California. Here's the info from their site: PDC 2008 October 27–30, 2008 Pre-conference October 26, 2008 Los Angeles, California OK, OK. We are delighted to announce the date and location of the next Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC): October 27–30, 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. PDC is the definitive Microsoft event for software developers and architects focused on the future of the Microsoft platform. Mark your...
Well, as I previously blogged about it, the details are done for our demo contest during the VS2008 InstallFest in Des Moines are finalized. Here they are: Visual Studio 2008 Demo Contest! Want to show off your VS2008 or .NET 3.5 skills? If you answered, yes, this is your opportunity to strut your stuff! During the Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest & Holiday Party on December 12, 2007 at the DMACC West Campus, we'll be having a demo contest in the auditorium. Here's the scoop ... What do I need to...
That's right, the InstallFest event in Des Moines has SOLD OUT! As of today, there are 13 people on the waiting list. For all of you that signed up, thanks! It is because of you that this event will be a success! Also, if you're interested, you should sign up to do a demo during the event! Those of you on the waiting list, you will be notified of an open spot if someone on the main list cancels. So if you're on the main list but can't make it, please cancel so somebody on the waiting list can...
Alright, earlier this evening I blogged about the Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest that our Des Moines .NET UG is hosting on December 12th, 2007. If you're interested in coming, please sign up!! If you would like to ensure a copy of VS2008, it is REALLY IMPORTANT that you sign up at
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032360733&Culture=en-US
Now the contest info! Have you been playing around with VS2008 beta1/beta2/RC1 or .NET 3.5 for a while? If you answered yes, then I recommend you strut your stuff by coming up with a 10-15 minute presentation you can share with the group during the InstallFest!
What do I need to...
Everyone in the Des Moines, sign up for this great event our UG is hosting in conjunction with Microsoft! We're also planning on having a presentation contest to see who can show off the best features VS2008. More to come on this, so stay tuned!!
Visual Studio InstallFest - Des Moines
Event Registration: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032360733...
ATTENTION DEVELOPERS! Are you ready to be one of the first to get their hands on Visual Studio 2008 when it RTMs? Join Microsoft and the Iowa DNUG for a Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest and Holiday Party on December 12th, 2007 at the Des Moines Area Community College!...
I would like to apologize for those who wanted to attend my presentation on Software Factories at Tulsa TechFest, but unfortunately due to technical difficulties, I missed my stand-by flight into Tulsa. When I spoke with the nice people at American Airlines they couldn't guarantee me making into Tulsa into sometime late this evening. However, for those of you wanting my slides, you can download them from the link at the bottom of this post. Also, as I mentioned on my HDC post, I will be doing a webcast series on the Software Factories on Code To Live.
First, to all of you that attended my HDC presentation on Software Factories, THANK YOU! I hope that as promised, the "Ah, Ha!" factor was high. Also, I would like to apologize for the issues I ran into with the VPC and the demos. I had tried the demo before with only two VS2005 instances running and had no issues with it...Apparently, four instances of VS2005 running concurrently is too much for VPC. Right after my presentation, I confirmed with Steve Loethen, a co-host of Code To Live, about coming up with the webcast series on Software Factories. I still to work out...
That's right, you heard it! Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman have both talked about it (Scott even has a podcast on it). Microsoft will release the source code & debug symbols for debugging purposes for the following .NET libraries under the Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL):
Base Class Libraries
ASP.NET
Windows Forms
ADO.NET
XML
WPF
They plan on adding more libraries in the months to come, such as WCF, Workflow, LINQ.
I'm not sure about you, but this IS HUGE! Way to go, MS! Taking...
A while back, I blogged some examples on how you can use .NET types within your IronRuby (IRuby) applications. So after playing around with it a bit, I wanted to do something pretty basic, inheritance. Here's what I tried:# Basic inheritance from a dynamic type
# to a static type.
class MyForm < System::Windows::Forms::Form
end
When you try running this through the interactive console, you get this error:
System.InvalidOperationException: superclass must be a Class (DynamicType given)
Nice and descriptive, huh? Well, essentially this means that your superclass needs to be a type that IRuby can understand, that is a class-type of DynamicType. While looking around at the source...
That's right, if you have a question that needs answering come check out our "Ask An Expert" live chat on August 23rd, 2007 at 5 PM PDT. Please note that this chat is not being hosted by Microsoft and as such questions regarding upcoming products and future product specs may not be answered. To see the main announcement, check out Ryan's blog for the info. Also there seems to be a prize give away for this chat! How cool?! Here's the list of experts involved in the chat. It's quite the line up! Calendar: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx ICS: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/chats/vcs/07_0823_msdn_aspnet.ics Hope to see...
While playing around with Silverlight during lunch, I ran into this plugin for Windows Live Writer (WLW) called JetFuel. It takes the creation of Silverlight applications to the next level. It's a nice little package of the steps outlined in the SDK into a wizard.
From the looks of it (via Phil Haack), CodePlex will be supporting SVN (both svn.exe and TortoiseSVN) for all of their projects. Here's the converstaion Jim Newkirk and Phil had: Haacked wrote Mon at 8:24 PM So I can download svn.exe from http://subversion.tigris.org/ and manage my CodePlex source code repository, yes? So are you rolling out Subversion? Or a Subversion facade into TFS? Anything you can reveal? :) jimnewkirk wrote Mon at 7:41 PM To clarify: it's our intention to support the functionality of the command-line Subversion client as well as TortoiseSVN. jimnewkirk wrote Mon at 7:40 PM Phil,...
I would like to thank Denny, our breadth AE, for doing a great job at our first ArcReady event last Friday in Des Moines. During the event, Denny mentioned that Des Moines will be a regular stop on the quaterly ArcReady visits. If you would like to attend, please post your email on this post (through comments) and I'll make sure that Denny gets you added to the list. Also, after the event, we held our first ArcCouncil event. ArcCouncil is an open forum were we discuss various topics dealing with software development. For example, the meeting started by...
Alright, so for our applications we have a couple of forms that use the DataGridView control to display tabular data (kinda of a common scenario for many business applications). The data is returned from our services as an IList<T> in which we can just then bind directly to the grid by using the grid's DataSource property. Pretty easy task...unless when it comes to sorting. From the looks of it, Ayende has the similar problem that he's trying to overcome... At that point, our IList<T> doesn't cut it. You could say, well, use an BindlingList<T> and override the ApplySortCore...
Denny Boynton, our regional Architect Evangelist, has just blogged information on how you can get free MS eLearning passes valued at $159. If you have the time, and don't want to miss out on this opportunity, go check out his post.
I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, but for some reason I keep forgetting (sorry, I've been busy at work). If you're wondering on how WCF compares performance wise to existing distributed communication technologies (ASMX, WSE, Enterprise Services, .NET Remoting) you should definitely check out this white paper on MSDN: A Performance Comparison of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) with Existing Distributed Communication Technologies
That's right, if you're interested in learning about becoming a more effective architect, you should check out the ArcReady event that will at the Embassy Suites on May 18th (5/18/2007). The theme for this ArcReady is entitled "Architecting for the User Experience", how does the role of user experience take part in architectural designs? More specifically, how you can use WPF, WPF/e, XAML and the Expression suite to enhance your applications. If you have the time, you should check it out. I'll see you there!
Thanks all that attended my CRINETA presentation Applied .NET 2.0 Programming! I'm pretty impressed on the level of interaction we had throughout the presentation. To me, this is what made it really memorable for me! Once again, thanks for attending!
I was asked today if there's a metric for determining whether an business application should use Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) or roll its own workflow plumbing. Here's my extended answer... As far as a metric of qualification, I can't say there is one (or that I have found one). Besides deciding whether or not to use a technology (or any type of plumbing) as an aide for development can't be (and shouldn't be meausered) by a number. It's not the number of lines of code, methods, classes, assemblies, etc. that decide whether or not you should use workflow. It all comes down to...
So, I decided to install the Spanish language pack for Vista to see the OS from a different point of view. All I have to say is that definitely different. The thing that first took me by surprized is the Recycle Bin (ó en Español Papelera de reciclaje): Also, check out the Windows Start Menu: Notice in the start menu how some programs are configured for internationalization while others are not.Yeah, I know, I'm too much of a geek... ;-)
I really like Vista, but I have to admit that this new Mac commercial is pretty funny. Those of you that have experienced the User Account Control (UAC) feature of Vista will appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, the UAC is a great way to protect your PC and the apps you build, but when you're doing development on Vista, it gets a little annoying.
I figured that I should share this information for those of you out there running Vista as your base OS. This way you won't have the same fun as I did trying to get things back in working order. So, I pediorically run Disk Cleanup Tool on my system to clean up all of the files that Windows decides to create as it runs. While looking through the list of cleanup items, I noticed an item called Hibernation File Cleaner with a size of 1.99 GB! (This is the actual size of your hibernation file used by Windows when you put your system under hibernation). My first impression...
On Wednesday, I headed up north to help out at the Minneapolis Vista Launch key city event (KCE). One of my tasks was to help people by answering questions, showing them demos at the "Vista Trial Area." Surprisingly, I was also able to answer a couple of development related questions in regards to WPF, Gadgets and running Visual Studio on Vista. Another nice thing about the event is that I got to talk and hang out with Jeff, Mike and Farhan. Also, I made a new MVP friend with Bill Smith (Windows 2003 MVP and a Mac guy!!). The cool...