Greg Blogging On .NET

Community Update...

Dustin Campbell from DevExpress came out and presented at our user group last night.  He did an excellent job, especially on such short notice (we were in a bind for a speaker this month!). The topic was gaining productivity for CodeRush and Refactor.  These are two tools that every developer should consider- definitely worth the price!   CodeRush basically allows you to write code faster- use a simple syntax to create stub methods, properties. Even better is the navigation. I've always wanted to be able to easily bookmark code and jump back and forth, and that is really easy to do with this tool.  And this tool is also extensible. Refactor is similar. Highlight your code and press a key- the code you want will be converted to a method call.  The call will also be coded. 

More info here: http://www.devexpress.com/Products/Locator/ByPack.xml?packid=dxperienceent&grouptab=2&category=ide

Other community news...

Jason and I recently wrapped up our MCE 2005 presentation road show in Columbus last week. About 30 people attended. Presentation went well- got some great feedback. I'll be playing around with the latest Vista bits and MCML and I imagine we will be ready for another round next year touting the new features of MCE and developing with MCML.  I am very excited about this new technology. It is quite similar to XAML, and renders a full-fidelity experience on extenders (meaning you will get the same interface, animations, etc as the rendering is done natively on the extender, currently only the Xbox 360).  You can learn more about MCML and Vista by going to the Media Center Sandbox.  I'm currently having issues getting the latest running on 5346 but that could be my own issues.

In other news, we have the Ann Arbor Day of .NET coming. There are some awesome speakers that will be presenting there. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say who yet, so I won't- not sure it's even finalized.  Be sure to check out Day of .NET web site to keep up to date w/ the latest news. I am going to be working on an ATLAS presentation.

For all the NWNUG members out there there is also some news!  Jason Follas will be taking a more active role and acting as President.  I will continue to be heavily involved- "Chairman of the Board", aka Bill Gates as someone put it last night.  However, Jason has been helping out quite a bit- has some fresh ideas and energy and I want to give him the opportunity to help move the group forward.  Welcome aboard Jason!  And thanks to theother leaders who have been making NWNUG work- Dave Claydon and Aaron Myers.  This change will allow me to spend more time focusing on presentations, speaking, and other things that I've been wanting to do in the community.  We've got some exciting initiatives that we're thinking about- web site changes, meeting format changes, additional activities (such as geek dinners), etc. If you want to volunteer to help w/ any of these, please contact Jason or I.

Vista 5342 First Impressions

It took me about 1 hr 45 minutes to install on a Celeron 2.4, 768 MB ram. The setup was relatively flawless once I determined that I needed to clear off at least 12 GB of space. I only had about 9 GB free- lots of junk in the recycle bin. I didn't format the drive prior to installing- just installed right over XP.

First impressions...

- Really great build.
- IE seems to render great. Lots of cool new features.
- I was surprised how stable this build has been so far. I've installed some programs to interface with my cell phone and other USB type devices and they've worked pretty well.
- Media Center- new and improved UI. The main up and down scrolling w/ large fonts remains. There is an additional horizontal scrolling that I really like. On the to do list for next week is playing around with the SDK and the MCML examples. It also looks like adding an extender might be a little easier / more straightforward than doing so in MCE 2005.
- Aero Glass interface: It is a nice touch. I am running a 128MB Geforce 5500 and it handles it well. The way the windows minimize/maximize is nice eye candy, but not much more. Overall the rest of the interface is pretty similar to XP. The first thing I did was change it back to classic so I could be productive.

The not so great:
- IE was having problems rendering some of the commmon sites I visit such as digg.com, and Xanga.com. The rich textbox control isn't loading on community server so I am having to mark up with HTML.
- My built in audio is really choppy. It breaks up when playing back any kind of music file.
- Things do run pretty well, but not as snappy as what I am used to. That is certainly to be expected with beta software!

Overall I am very excited about Vista. I still have a ways to explore!!

Upcoming .NET Meetings

Upcoming Presentation Information (3/28/06)

Dustin Campbell is going to be presenting at the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group (http://www.nwnug.com) Tuesday, March 28th. The topic is Refactor and CodeRush. We're going to get a demo on those tools (created by Developer Express- Dustin being one of the developers). I'm looking forward to this presentation. I've heard a lot about the tools but haven't really used them too much.

We're also going to be giving away a MSDN Premium Subscription (including VS.NET 2005 Team Suite) if we have more than 25 people. So come 'on out and help us have a great meeting if you're in the neighborhood!

Just a reminder... I will be presenting (along with Jason Follas) Development for Media Center 2005 at the Columbus .NET User Group on Thursday March 23- http://www.condg.org/events_view.aspx?eventid=10 
Fellow roadies welcome- we will be leaving from Toledo at noon.

After this I begin working on my ASP.NET Atlas presentation. Really excited about that.  Most likely will be giving it for our upcoming Ann Arbor Day of .NET on May 13th.

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