Blue Blip

New Product Editions for Visual Studio 2010

2009-10-19T20:45:00Z

Oh, that's quite long since I blogged. Personal problems pulled my energy level badly and took my focus away from my regular work/life. So bad that I felt I never existed in this technology world. Everything seems to be new to me! Well, I hope it's not going to be for long! :-) Al right, enough on justifying my long pause on the blogging front. With the release of Visual Studio 2010 Beta-2, Microsoft has dropped all those Team System Dev Ed, Arch Ed, DB Ed, etc SKUs and introducing three...(read more)

One More Training Kit...

2009-06-09T16:59:46Z

Yet another training kit focused on developers: Windows 7 RC Training Kit for Developers ....(read more)

Training Kits

2009-06-05T13:05:00Z

I most of the time forget what offline free training resources are available from Micrsoft when someone asks for them. Now, I have a place to point them to: http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2009/06/04/list-of-microsoft-training-kits.aspx . One stop place for available learning kits. In case you aren't aware of MS training kits, they are learning materials (including video, slide deck, lab sessions ,etc) for technologies/platforms Microsoft releases every now and then. They also get...(read more)

WPF Grid from Xceed

2009-05-23T20:34:00Z

Microsoft has a WPF version of the DataGrid control outside its standard .NET Framework release 3.0+. This off-branch data grid is part of the WPF Toolkit maintained/released at CodePlex . However, a better one (in terms of features/ease of use, so far I have seen) is the Xceed XPF DataGrid Express Edition which has been around for quite sometime. It's a free control (reg-ware) - but won't be so after few weeks. If you want to explore its features, just take a look at their online demo (available...(read more)

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 Now Free!

2009-04-06T12:20:08Z

To be honest, when I came across this news bit few days ago, I thought it was a 4/1 prank sort of thing and never got the instinct to check it. When I saw the same news again, I decided to verify it thinking if Microsoft too could do such things. Wow! Yes, it's true!!! SPD 2007 is completely free (no trial version) from April 2, 2009. Read the official news and download SPD 2007 (after Passport registration) at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA103607611033.aspx . The official...(read more)

data: URI Scheme - Part 2

2009-04-02T15:24:00Z

In Part 1 , I discussed what the data: URI scheme is all about, its various usage scenarios and available browser support. Let's see few examples in this post. Just copy and paste the following HTML code into a HTML file and open it any of Firefox, Safari, IE 8 , Google Chrome or Opera. Since today's browsers are very forgiving, this bare HTML tag should work without any fuss! < img src ='data:image/jpg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEAYABgAAD/4QByRXhpZgAASUkqAAgAAAAFABoBBQABAAAASgAAABsBBQABAAAAUgAAACgBAwABAAAAAgAAADEBAgAQ...(read more)

Power of JavaScript!

2009-03-31T18:32:28Z

Almost no one doubts it, but still how powerful it is? Just go to http://www.chromeexperiments.com and see it for yourself! These awesome visuals use only JS and JS-based frameworks (such as Prototype & JQuery); no Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight! Not just that, these demos could also be stress testers for your browser's JavaScript engine. "Google Gravity", "Browser Ball" & "Ball Pool" are my favorites! There are other fun stuffs too. Another (game)...(read more)

ASP.NET MVC Training Kit

2009-03-31T18:04:27Z

After other Microsoft developer training kits, now is a new one: ASP.NET MVC Training Kit . Get it (~12 MB)!...(read more)

data: URI Scheme - Part 1

2009-03-23T13:39:48Z

One of the new features introduced in IE8 is support for the data: protocol. Though IE8's support this protocol is a welcome one, it is very limited in terms of features and usage compared to other browsers that have been supporting this protocol for quite a long some time. The data: URI scheme (or protocol, to use a familiar term) has been around for more than a decade but it was hardly used due to inconsistent browser support. Some web browsers have been supporting this protocol right from...(read more)

Internet Explorer 8 RTW

2009-03-22T13:32:10Z

The final version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 has been released at last. I am not a big fan of alpha & CTP releases and never bother to install them and play around and read up stuff others have written about such releases - just to catch up with what is "in" and "out". However, I do play around with beta and RC versions only to some extent and did so on IE8 beta-2 and RC-1. The overall impression from these two was, yes, there are new features, more standards-based,...(read more)

Server-side Automation of MS Office Applications

2009-03-22T10:35:35Z

I usually don't talk too much about or discuss things that are commonly known to everyone. Why add noise unnecessarily when something has already been discussed overwhelmingly by the internet community and all it takes is an internet search to find them. The subject of this post is just one of them. I frequently see many posts requesting for jump-start help, suggestions for improving performance or troubleshooting assistance for web applications that automate MS Office applications (primarily...(read more)

On Twitter Now!

2009-03-18T20:26:00Z

I am on Twitter now!...(read more)

WCF Security Guide

2008-08-06T17:12:22Z

After the beta-2 June this year, v1 of the WCF security guidance from Microsoft Patterns & Practices team is available now. Get it from its CodePlex site....(read more)

XML Utility Method in .NET BCL

2008-08-06T09:23:11Z

XML has a set of special characters that cannot appear in element/attribute names and values: &, <, >, " and '. For example, <entityText>Mark & Spencer's</entityText> is not valid. The valid equivalent is <companyName>Mark & Spencer ' s</companyName>. Here is the list of XML special characters and their entity names: & & > > < < " " ' ' There is a nice utility method in ...(read more)

Unity 1.1 Download

2008-05-16T14:54:07Z

Microsoft's version of dependency injection (DI) container, Unity (a.k.a., Unity Application Block) v1.1 is available for download . As you might remember 1.0 was released just back in April 2008. The documentation for v1.1 is here (VS 2005) and here (VS 2008) To conceptually know more about DI container/IoC patterns: Martin Fowler: Inversion of Control Containers and the Dependency Injection pattern Wikipedia: Inversion of Control...(read more)

Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.0 - Here Comes!

2008-05-16T14:51:41Z

The latest version of Microsoft Enterprise Library, v4.0, is finally here for download ! The most important additions in this release for me are VS 2008 support and integration of Unity dependency injection container (Unity Application Block). Go grab it!!...(read more)

Visual Studio 2008 Edition Feature Comparison

2008-05-16T14:27:21Z

You know Visual Studio 2008 comes in many editions but ever wanted to know the features available with these editions? Microsoft has a comprehensive feature matrix (for quite some time) here . A downloadable copy is also available here . If you are deciding which edition of VS 2008 to buy, then this should be your one-stop reference point....(read more)

.NET Training Kits - Free Download

2008-04-22T13:12:34Z

Couple of training kits available for download from Microsoft: .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit...(read more)

Response.WriteLine()

2008-04-22T12:55:49Z

Even today, many developers use the classic debugging 'tool', Response.Write() , when developing ASP/ASP.NET applications. Typically, this is the choice when someone wants to do quick debugging in a page - check variable values at runtime, write trace messages, path coverage, etc without resorting to any IDE or other full-fledged debugging tools. However, the problem with Response.Write() (in the context of debugging) is that it writes data without any line breaks, which doesn't help...(read more)

.NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster

2008-03-14T17:49:39Z

Came across this recently: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7b645f3a-6d22-4548-a0d8-c2a27e1917f8&displaylang=en&tm Available in both XPS and PDF forms, each with one large size and split/tiled format....(read more)