Author: Ben Hall

ASP.net Ajax 1.0 has been released!!

Download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ca9d90fa-e8c9-42e3-aa19-08e2c027f5d6&displaylang=en

We also have new controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit, including tabs, Calendar, Autocomplete and MaskedEdit – cool cool and cool!

http://ajax.asp.net/ajaxtoolkit/

Keep an eye on the blog for something cool relating to this 😉

Mikhail Arkhipov has posted some screenshots of the new Web Form Designer planned for Orcas, with the designer being based on Frontpage, like Expression Web, and not IE.

I’ll let you go to his blog to view the screenshots, however it is interesting to note that this will be in the February CTP of Orcas, I have a feeling Scott Gu will be using this at WebDD ;).  It looks really good from the screenshots, can’t wait to have a play (might even with a screencast….).

February is going to be a great month if your a web designer/developer, its going to be busy.

Yesterday and today I have attended the UK developer Vista and Office launch at Reading.  Really enjoyed the event, there was a great buzz around with everyone seeming to enjoy what Microsoft was offering.

I missed the keynote and Mark’s, but they are downloadable on the Microsoft site so I will be watching them tomorrow, along with the Office track videos.

Daniel Moth gave a great presentation on whats new in Vista for the developer, not touching the .net framework features, but instead the core APIs included.  Covered a lot in a short space of time, but it was great to see how easy it was to use the APIs (via PInvoke) even without having the managed wrappers.

Martin Parry gave us an insight into the security and reliability aspects of Vista which was good to see.

Mike Ormond went over WF (Workflow),  gave some really useful tips on creating your own activities and it was good to see not just drag and drop stuff.  He also went over the RSS platform in Vista as part of what he was building (WF RSS Reader), not heard much about this but sounds really interesting, might blog more about it soon.

Mike Taulty ended the day talking about WCF,  Mike is such a great presenter (like all the DPE team) and really gave a great insight into WCF showing a lot of the new uses having a simple demo but yet demonstrating the power of WCF. Really good, wish I had a use for it.

The day was excellent and has started to get me more excited about Vista.

After the day, I went to the Geek Dinner, this was my first one so I wasn’t sure what to except.  Great to have a chat with people about technology and the world over Pizza and Wine.  If you haven’t attended one before, definitively would recommend it, its has a great atmosphere and everyone attending is really friendly.  Simon Middlemiss, who I with on the table, has some of the pictures he took on his blog (one including me, I’m the one in the blue….)  .

After the dinner, some of us continued at the hotel bar for more chat and drinks, this continued into the small hours (got to my room at about 2am) with the NxtGenUG boys (Richy, Dave, John), Zi and me having a really great time (or at least I did ;)), it was a great end to a great evening.

Zi took some pictures of the whole evening, which could be interesting…., once I have the link I’ll post it.

On Saturday, I attended the coding session creating a Vista chat application using WCF and WPF.  Was an interesting setup (90 computers in the cafe in Building 2), afterwards there was a quiz with everyone in teams while having lunch.  That was fun but sadly I didn’t win anything.

Two great days, meet loads of cool people and had great fun.  Bring on WebDD!!

For those of you who have used the Orcas January CTP you may have noticed a lack of Linq templates.  According to the forums (http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1100902&SiteID=1) this was intentional and Linq is still included and useable.

Steps to creating a Linq project using the CTP are as follows:

1. Create a new project
2. Linq assemblies are then required to be referenced, they can be found here : C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv3.5.11209
   The important ones are System.Core.dll, System.Data.Entity.dll, System.Data.Linq.dll and System.Xml.Linq.dll
   The core is for the standard linq queries, where Data.Linq and Xml.Linq are what the old DLinq and XLinq were.
3. Depending on what your planning on doing, add the required references.
4. The using statements are as follows for the various parts of Linq
   using System.Linq;
   using System.Data.DLinq; //Haven’t migrated it yet, guessing this is what will be done in February CTP and why this CTP doesn’t include much Linq to SQL
   using System.Xml.Linq;
5. Sample code to check it all works (Linq to Objects)

   int[] numbers = { 5, 4, 1, 3, 9, 8, 6, 7, 2, 0 };

   var lowNums =
   from n in numbers
   where n < 5
   select n;

   Console.WriteLine(“Numbers < 5:");
   foreach (var x in lowNums)
   {
   Console.WriteLine(x);
   }

   Console.ReadLine();

That is how to setup Linq for a project.  I will discuss Linq to SQL in another post and how you can use it with your database.

Now, back onto my degree.

Zi has arranged yet another geek dinner for after WebDD.  Plus it looks like GrokTalks are being planned for the day.

All the information can be found on the new wiki : http://wiki.webdd.org.uk

Registration is still open, but I think its down to the last few places now….if not already full.

Last night I sat in on a geekSpeak chat regarding Linq, it was really cool and got me thinking so tonight I decided I would do some work using it – they then go post the new CTP of Orcas. Improved support for Linq to SQL will be in the next CTP, due February.  I’m going to be using this as part of my final year project (decided last night) and so I will be blogging about it more soon.

Download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1FF0B35D-0C4A-40B4-915A-5331E11C39E6&displaylang=en

The highlights of this CTP include (taken from download site):

• Extended, more powerful data APIs with the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to ADO.NET
  • With the ADO.NET Entity Framework developers will be able to model the view of the data that is appropriate for each one of the applications they are building, independently of the structure of the data in the underlying database. The use of the Entity Data Model (EDM) enables developers to design models that follow the concepts built into the application, instead of having to map them to constructs available in relational stores. Once the model is in place, the powerful ADO.NET Entity Framework API is used to access and manipulate the data as .NET classes or as rows and columns, whatever is appropriate for each application.
  • ADO.NET is fully integrated with LINQ and offers many options for using LINQ in various scenarios: LINQ to SQL provides direct access to database tables from the programming environment, LINQ to Entities enables developers to use LINQ over EDM models, and LINQ to DataSet allows the full expressivity of LINQ to be used over DataSets.

• C# 3.0 Language Support: This CTP implements all of the C#3.0 language features from the May LINQ CTP including:
  • Query Expressions
  • Object and Collection Initializers
  • Extension Methods
  • Local Variable Type Inference and Anonymous Types
  • Lambdas bound to Delegates and Expression trees

• LINQ to Objects API
  • The LINQ to Objects API supports queries over any .NET collection, such as arrays and Generic Lists. This API is defined in the System.Linq namespaces inside System.Core.dll. Click here for more details about LINQ.

• ClickOnce improvements
  • This CTP delivers ClickOnce improvements for the deployment of Windows Presentation Foundation applications, alternative browser support and ISV rebranding.

• Managed classes for Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm cryptographic functionality
  • With the addition of these classes, cryptographic developers now have managed classes for Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman secret agreement and Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm signing. These classes are built on the new CNG cryptographic libraries in Windows Vista, but still follow the familiar patterns of the cryptographic classes in .NET Framework 2.0.

• Runtime and design-time support for Office 2007 (including Outlook 2007)
  • Customers can build managed code add-ins with a consistent development experience, regardless of which version of Office they target, which Office application(s) they target, and which programming language they choose. Managed code add-ins enable developers to use strongly-typed class members, with the help of modern development tools, including intellisense and auto-complete. Additionally add-ins can potentially run in multiple versions of Office, enabled by abstracting version-specific code and supported by a version-resilient infrastructure.

• Support for advanced lifetime management of add-ins and their AppDomains
  • We’ve added the helper classes that manage the lifetime of add-ins, the objects passed between the host and add-ins, and even of the AppDomains the add-ins live in. By using the ContractBase and LifetimeToken handle, pipeline developer can let the hosts and add-ins act as if everything, including the AppDomain the add-in was activated in, was controlled by the garbage collector even though .Net Remoting would normally make that impossible.

• Client service support for Login/Logout, Role management and Profiles
  • ASP.NET 2.0 shipped with new application services for authentication, authorization and personalization. Most of these services are not tied to ASP.NET and can work in non-web applications. This CTP enables the use of these services in smart client applications for Logon/Logoff, Role management and profiles.

• A trace listener that logs event to ETW, event tracing for Windows in Vista
  • Event tracing for windows is greatly improved in Vista and the most performant loggings facility available in Windows. The System.Diagnostics.EventProviderTraceListener allows managed tracing to provide events to the Vista’s ETW infrastructure. This is a highly performant, thread-safe listener.

• Jscript Intellisense support
  • Jscript code formatting and Intellisense support provide developers with a richer editing experience. These improvements enable the IDE to provide statement completion, color syntax highlighting and in-place documentation to Jscript and associated script models such as ASP.NET AJAX.

• A new numeric type that provides support for very large numbers (Beyond the range of In64)
  • All existing numeric types in the Framework have a limited range. This is the first type that supports arbitrary range and will extend to accommodate any large number as needed. This type lives in the new System.Numeric namespace where all new numeric and arithmetic features are going to reside. It supports all the basic arithmetic operations including things like Pow, DivRem and GreatestCommonDivisor. It implements the following interfaces: IFormattable, IComparable, IComparable and IEquatable. It is serliazable and immutable. It has implicit casts from all basic integral types and explicit casts to/from all numeric type. To learn more about this type – please visit the BCL team blog.

• LINQ over XML (XLinq)
  • Enable further LINQ over XML feature support (in addition to the functionality available in the Oct 2006 CTP) such as the ability to apply XLST to transform into and out of XLinq trees, support for System.XML reader/writer interfaces for improved XML sharing with DOM applications and System.XML schema validation for XLinq nodes.

• SQL Server Compact Edition (SSCE)
  • SQL Server Compact Edition (SSCE) provides a local relational data store for occasionally connected client applications from desktops to devices. SSCE is light weight, embeddable and is easy to deploy with your client applications without requiring complex administration work from users. Timestamp (row version id) data type, improved table designer, Query processor enhancements and support for local transaction scope are some of the new features you find in this version of SSCE.

Some of you might have heard but Pastie McCode and the UK DPE team are touring the country providing UK Vista and Office Launch events for local parties.  In the week they hope to deliver 12-15 sessions of around 90 minutes each – depending on the amount of traveling between each location.

NxtGenUG have organised one of these events for January, 23, 2007 at Coventry 7pm – 9pm

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS REGISTER ON THE SITE AND THEN REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT – HURRY AS PLACES ARE LIMITED!

Sounds like a great event, especially if you can’t make the event on the 19th – or if you just can’t get enough of Vista. 

More information and sign up at:
http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=48

Zi Makki is organizing a Geek Dinner for January 19th, after the Vista launch event.  This will be held at Pizza Express and looks to be a good night. 

Signup:

http://www.thehughpage.com/VistaOfficeLaunchGeekDinner

Not sure if I will be able to make it yet…..but this might just encourage me to stay overnight.  Where is everyone staying?

The registration for WebDD on February 3rd 2007 is now open.

To register visit:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032323795&Culture=en-GB

Looking forward to seeing you there (hopefully).

“Standards. Design. Future. Three topics that are on everyone’s wish list, but that often get left by the wayside as time rolls by. If you’re interested in all three, then WebDD is for you.

WebDD is a new conference covering both design and development, with a focus on design standards, best practices, and emerging  and future technologies. There will be a variety of talks covering topics such as Accessibility, CSS, Standards, ASP.NET, and Ruby, with the aim of bringing developers and designers together to share ideas.

If these sound like the sort of topics you want to learn about then sign up. The best part – it’s free and on a Saturday, so you don’t even need to take a day off from work.

WebDD is not a Microsoft event but is organised by the web community for the web community with Microsoft as our premier sponsor.

For further details and the full agenda, please visit: http://www.WebDD.org.uk ”