The Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate was released last week to MSDN subscribers. Microsoft promised back then that the download would be made available to the public shortly afterwards. Microsoft kept the promise and downloads are now available for the public as well.
Visual Studio 2010 offers many improvements over the current retail version Visual Studio 2008. It features a redesigned streamlined IDE that has been optimized for multiple document windows and multi-monitors. The new version of Visual Studio comes with The Microsoft .net Framework 4.0 which is currently also available as a release candidate.
Other additions include integrated support for developing Microsoft Silverlight applications, parallel computing enhancements and support for IBM DB2 and Oracle databases.
Interested users can take a look at the official Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 website for additional information about the changes and additions of that new version.
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Creating Facebook Applications in WPF, Silverlight, WinForms, and ASP.NET with Facebook SDK 3.0
12 Nov
Posted by Nedzad as Facebook
Clarity Consulting Inc. and Microsoft have released Facebook SDK 3.0, a toolkit allowing developers to write WPF, Silverlight, WinForms or ASP.NET applications integrated with Facebook.
Facebook SDK helps writing both Canvas and Facebook Connect type of applications on all major .NET platforms. The toolkit contains the following assemblies:
- Facebook.dll: This is the main assembly that will be used by all applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications (Silverlight and WPF) to enhance the Facebook platform to make data binding and data caching easier.
- Facebook.Silverlight.dll: This is the Silverlight version of the main assembly that will be used by all Silverlight applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications to enhance the Facebook platform to make data binding and data caching easier. The REST API in this assembly is Asynchronous only.
- Facebook.Web.dll: This assembly should be used by Canvas applications. The main functionality supported in this assembly is to encapsulate the handshake between the Facebook application and a canvas application (both FBML and IFrame)
- Facebook.Web.Mvc.dll: Provide a support building canvas applications using ASP.NET MVC. Separated from Facebook.Web.dll to avoid all developers from needing to install the MVC bits.
- Facebook.Winforms.dll: This assembly provides support for writing Facebook applications using Winform technology. This provides a Component that wraps the API to make it easier to use from Winforms. This also contains some user controls to help display Facebook data easily.
I have been using Windows 7 RTM for almost a month and while everything else was in line with expectations, one thing made my work a little bit more demanding than it was before. You are already guessing, it is a new Windows 7 taskbar, that replaced old-fashioned taskbar that originated back then with Windows 95.
At first Win7 taskbar seemed cool: grouping, Aero Peek preview, effects and so on are fun to observe. But when it comes to productivity, especially when you are used to work with a number of programs opened, then new taskbar will force you to work harder.
Previously, in times of Windows XP and Vista, I used to stretch the taskbar to occupy two rows, which enabled me good overview of the stuff running and combining it with Quick Launch toolbar, it was perfect. Now, with Windows 7 that is not possible anymore.
Worried, I have been looking for a solution and luckily, it was a success. Here are the steps that will get you back the Vista taskbar:
Many database developers have loudly bemoaned Microsoft’s decision late last year to marginalize LINQ to SQL in favor of its ADO.NET Entity Framework.
The angst played out as many who build applications designed to access Microsoft’s SQL Server felt left holding the bag as reported here. Make no mistake: the Entity Framework is Microsoft’s object relational mapping (ORM) technology of choice and that will become even more evident next year with the release of Entity Framework 4, Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.
Microsoft has released a new preview for ASP.NET MVC 2. Preview 2 builds on the features of Preview 1, adding client-side validation, streamlined support of Areas, and abstractions of Data Annotations validation and metadata providers.
ASP.NET MVC 2 will include the jQuery validation library to provide client-side validation based on the model’s validation metadata. With Preview 2, it is also possible to “hook in alternative client-side validation libraries by writing an adapter which adapts the client library to the JSON metadata in a manner similar to the xVal validation framework.”
An important feature introduced in V2 Preview 1 was the concept of Areas. Areas provide a means of dividing a large web application into multiple projects. Preview 2 further refines this idea to allow using Areas within a single project, still providing most of the organizational benefits.
Here comes one of the, very probably, first public websites in Bosnia that were developed using a brand new ASP.NET MVC framework. The work has begun somewhere in June, this year and although done in my spare time, it was a pleasure from a day one. ASP.NET MVC contains a bunch of some really good stuff, but let’s point out the most important ones:
- Clear separation of the concerns
- Full control over the rendered HTML
- Easy integration with JavaScript frameworks
- TDD
- and many others…
Microsoft WebsiteSpark – Free Tools for Professional Web Developers
27 Sep
Posted by Nedzad as Uncategorized
Microsoft has launched a program that gives web development professionals the chance to get free software and technical support to help them get new businesses off the ground.
Web development companies with less than 10 employees can apply for the new WebsiteSpark programme, which was unveiled at the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam.
The program is similar to Microsoft’s BizSpark programme launched last year, which provides software and other resources to startups, and the DreamSpark program, which does the same for students.
Oxite – The Open Source ASP.NET Blog Engine
11 Dec
Posted by Nedzad as ASP.NET, Open Source, Personal
Probably the best place to look for open source .NET projects is the Codeplex community, that since June 2006 has served thousands of different projects. Recently, the users of this website have come up with another interesting project – Oxite, a simple blog engine written using ASP.NET MVC, and designed with the following goals:
Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP)
09 Dec
Posted by Nedzad as .NET Framework General, Personal
The next iteration of Visual Studio known under code name “Hawaii” has been released for community preview (CTP). Hand in hand with Visual Studio we are getting the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, that brings us a ton of interesting stuff like:
Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Released!
14 Aug
Posted by Nedzad as .NET Framework General
Great news indeed.
Download now at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/cc533448.aspx