Blue Blip

Roundtable with Soma

Siva M — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:17:00 GMT

Yesterday was one of the most memorable days in my professional life!! As community contributors, we MVPs in and around Chennai (a.k.a. Madras) had an opportunity (can't thank Abhi enough for this!!) to have a face-to-face discussion with none other...(read more)

New Product Editions for Visual Studio 2010

Siva M — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:45:00 GMT

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...(read more)

One More Training Kit...

Siva M — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:59:46 GMT

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

Training Kits

Siva M — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:05:00 GMT

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 ...(read more)

WPF Grid from Xceed

Siva M — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:34:00 GMT

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...(read more)

Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007 Now Free!

Siva M — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:20:08 GMT

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...(read more)

data: URI Scheme - Part 2

Siva M — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:24:00 GMT

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...(read more)

Power of JavaScript!

Siva M — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:32:28 GMT

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...(read more)

ASP.NET MVC Training Kit

Siva M — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:04:27 GMT

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

Siva M — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:39:48 GMT

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...(read more)

Internet Explorer 8 RTW

Siva M — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:32:10 GMT

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...(read more)

Server-side Automation of MS Office Applications

Siva M — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:35:35 GMT

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...(read more)

On Twitter Now!

Siva M — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:26:00 GMT

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

WCF Security Guide

Siva M — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:12:22 GMT

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

Siva M — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:23:11 GMT

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...(read more)

Unity 1.1 Download

Siva M — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:54:07 GMT

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...(read more)

Microsoft Enterprise Library 4.0 - Here Comes!

Siva M — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:51:41 GMT

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...(read more)

Visual Studio 2008 Edition Feature Comparison

Siva M — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:27:21 GMT

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...(read more)

.NET Training Kits - Free Download

Siva M — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:12:34 GMT

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()

Siva M — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 12:55:49 GMT

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...(read more)