March 2008 - Posts
A forum for developers and IT Pros to discuss about interoperability has been launched on MSDN forums. The Interoperability forum is getting started with several posts and a FAQ. You can join in by logging in with your Live ID. The Interoperability forum
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The documentation for the existing 2006 implementation of XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) has been published. The XAML technical documentation set provides detailed preliminary technical specifications of Xaml Object Mapping. This documentation
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I'll often be asked for solid information about the performance of SQL Server 2008 . Even though it is not yet completed and there is more performance tuning going on, the SQL team has published the results of February 2007 community technology (CTP)
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Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Team Foundation Server, Team Suite, Architecture Edition, Development Edition, Database Edition, and Test Edition. In addition, discuss what's new for these editions
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For those interested in getting acquainted with Silverlight 2 development, there an application online for you to try out. It's a Silverlight 2 online banking application for a fictional company named Woodgrove Financial. Now don't go try to get money
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Have you been putting together a great application on Windows Server 2008 and wondering where you might have it hosted? After all Windows Server 2008 with IIS7 is the most advanced Windows Server operating system yet. Check out these special values: www.crystaltech.com/WS08offers
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Continuing my "not exactly..." series of posts related to surface computing (see http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2008/01/17/roll-your-own-surface-well-not-exactly.aspx for more scintillating insights), I'd like to point out that there's a great
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The SoftGrid team would like to reach out to our ISV community, and have requested to provide a guest posting to our humble blog. I'm pleased to accommodate their request, so without further ado, here's Sean Donahue. "Coming soon...Your only limitation
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A feature complete release candidate of Microsoft's new Hyper-V technology is now available. Hyper-V is Microsoft's new virtualization stack for Windows Server 2008. The release candidate can be downloaded here , while the release notes describe hardware
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San Ramji, director of the Open Source Software Lab , has announced the beginnings of Microsoft's collaboration with Eclipse Foundation. The idea is to help Eclipse developer build software for Windows. Microsoft will provide engineering support to allow
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You can download Windows Vista SP1 from Windows Update. SP1 will start downloading to PCs automatically beginning in mid-April. The launch of SP1 was delayed to help insure support for drivers. If you are running Windows Update, but don't see Windows
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Today I published another new screencast for Office developers. This brief (5 minutes) screencast walks through creating your own Word Add-in and placing the Ribbon Tab/Group in between existing Office built-In ribbon bar tabs. You no longer have to settle
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One of the key ways to differentiate your application is to integrate tightly with the tools used in your customer's IT departments. When you make it easier for the IT Pros to figure out what is right and what it wrong with your applications customer
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I'm occasionally asked by ISVs about how they can establish a partnership with Microsoft. We offer Microsoft Empower for ISVs to meet this need. While it's not free, it is a good value, offering: Up to five internal-use software licenses: One (1) software
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Two open-source accessibility testing tools have been released for developers. The two new tools include the User Interface Accessibility Checker ( AccChecker ) and UI Automation Verify ( UIA Verify ) both on Codeplex . These tools enable developers to
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Stuart Celarier of CheckFree and I explore the new languages features in C# in a series of screencasts on Channel 9. Each is a whirlwind tours of the important language features since C# 1. Stuart describes the feature and why it is useful. But he doesn't
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Do you know someone of any age interested in writing code? Or maybe you are the parent of someone interested in learning more about what you do. Check out the Kid's Corner on MSDN for lots of fun, easy to understand lessons on programming. There's eBooks
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The Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos. This content helps you learn how to utilize the Visual Studio 2008 features and a variety of framework technologies including: LINQ, C# 3.0, Visual
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Windows Mobile Line of Business Solution Accelerator 2008 has been released to the web and can be found here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=428E4C3D-64AD-4A3D-85D2-E711ABC87F04&displaylang=en at the Microsoft Downloads site.
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I recently published a new screencast for Office developers. This brief (6 minutes) screencast walks through creating two different Excel add-in projects that add controls to the same group on the same tab within Excel. Since I had been asked a few times,
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With the new workflow extensions added to .Net 3.5, some of the ISVs I work with have expressed a renewed interest in the Workflow Foundation. I found myself covering certain topics more frequently than others, so I decided to start a short how-to series
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"Do you have any training on {INSERT CURRENT TECHNOLOGY}?". This question comes up every once in a while and I thought I'd share my research as it may benefit other out there. The Microsoft eLearning team has a really good site that you should bookmark
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This introductory Web seminar series will provide a high-level overview of the world of Windows Mobile® development. You will become familiar with the device development landscape: tools, emulators, APIs, and data access. It is available April 14 - 18
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The beta version of Silverlight 2 is available for download. Version 2 features support for managed code applications and for developing with multiple languages including Iron Ruby, Iron Python, JavaScript, and .NET. Silverlight 2 includes more than 40
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Finding good people is often the number one challenge for ISVs. This goes for developers and IT Pros. A new portal helps connect students graduation with skills on the Microsoft stack with ISVs. The Microsoft S2B program helps you connect and hire talented
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My colleague and fellow WPF/Silverlight enthusaist Jack Nip ( http://jack888corner.spaces.live.com ) pointed out some great resources on Silverlight Deep Zoom that I think would be of interest to the broader community, so I've decided to share it here.
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Kevin Moore (formerly a PM on the WPF team) published a really great set of utilities and demos he called the "WPF Bag of Tricks". Despite my ongoing interest in WPF, I was unaware of where to find this up until recently, and in my own unscientific polling,
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Labs around the world will be set up to test the interoperability of various document formats as part of the Document Interoperability Initiative. The program will include Open Office XML and the Open Document Format (ODF) originally developed by Sun
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Some of the VE guys put together a CodePlex project to make VE development a lot easier. Marc Schweigert ( http://blogs.msdn.com/devkeydet ) got a group of 11 devs together and in just 4 days they created a Javascript library that generates Intellisense
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Microsoft Research has released our "concept car" or prototype of the operating-system-of-the-future. It is called Singularity . The operating system is available for use by academics.You can find it on Singularity on Codeplex site. Singularity is designed
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SQL Server Data Services (SSDS), previously codenamed “Sitka”, has been announced at MIX08 . SSDS is a web-facing, storage and data processing service exposed over HTTP (via REST or SOAP). Built on top of the SQL platform, SSDS is a highly scalable, pay-as-you-grow
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The first Internet Explorer 8 Beta has been released at MIX08.The version is primarily for use by web developers who want to test their web sites. A test version for consumers is slated for later this year. The release date has not been announced. A new
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The first community technology preview (CTP) of the Unity Application Block (Unity) has been released. It is a lightweight extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection. Unity addresses issues
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Bill Gates announced Microsoft Online Services will be delivered as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft and sold with partners. Designed for customers with managed IT needs, the offering will include Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office
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Over the past year, I've gotten lots of questions from the ISVs I work with about how to integrate SharePoint with Silverlight. "I dunno - give it a try and let me know how it works out" quickly became a tiresome response, some I'm pleased to let you
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The numbers are in... If you need to support a large number of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 users then you might find inspiration in a new whitepaper. Yes its true we have tested Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 up to 24,000 users with sub second response times.
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You can now visualize your web service as a model to quickly build your WCF or ASMX web services. The Web Service Software Factory: Modeling Edition (also known as the Service Factory) is an integrated collection of resources that helps you quickly and
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The Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) provides a set of guidance for architects and developers building enterprise Web applications. The factory includes samples, reusable code and a guidance package which automates key development tasks from within
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We mentioned last year that Expression Blend and Expression Web were being added to MSDN premium. While helping an ISV locate the download today I noticed that the full Expression Studio is available there as well. Studio includes Expression Web , Expression
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Occasionally there's a piece of software that offers inspiration and a vision of what we can really do with software. The Microsoft Research project WorldWide Telescope offers such software and was officially unveiled for the first time at the TED Conference
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