Back in the day Microsoft created a code base to be used to help people learn .NET programming. The format was a cool game called Terrarium, the concept was that using .NET code you would build creatures of different types. You had to build each creature within a range of specifications if your animal met the specifications you could put in in to the Terrarium environment and see how it manages with the goal that your creatures take over the Terrarium. I used the original Terrarium as a way for my students at UCSD to get some real world experience with .NET. I found that a lot of students really got in to the game and enjoyed creating creatures. I never created a successful creature my self but I think I may give it another try this time around. If you want to learn .NET or know someone who dose you might point them to the new version on CodePlex. The URL is http://www.codeplex.com/terrarium2, just don’t get too sucked in to it! :)
@shanselman pointed out an interesting blog post titled "Building a web app the Microsoft way" where the author Jeremy Baines dose a good job of giving the facts that he and his team found while developing ‘Meet with Approval’. I could not find the case study that was mentioned but that is because the case study site sucks, I will try to find it internally and find the external link. I know that I have tainted opinion but I don't see why more people\companies\startups don't evaluate the MS stack. From all of the comments only one that I saw was accurate and that is that Windows hosting is quite abit more expensive than LAMP hosting but I think that price will be coming down with the new support we have in Windows Server 2008 for hosters. I also think that a company looking at long term success and would want to look at the cost of self hosting, there are a lot of reasons that Windows for self hosting can be more cost effective but the big one for me is support.
I just mostly successfully upgraded this blog from Das Blog 1.7 to 2.1. The big deal there is now I am running the .NET 2.0 CLR and all the 3.5 components. The only thing I am missing now is with the trust level that GoDaddy supports I can't have the server email anymore. I can't wait until more hosters support virtual private hosting of Windows Server 2008! I love that now I can work on this site in Visual Studio 2008, I had keep a Virtual Machine with Visual Studio 2005 on it and now I will enjoy reclaiming that hard drive space ;). Technorati Tags: Das Blog
Wan to get up to speed on on .NET 3.5 (I know I do!) the Microsoft Corporate Platform Evangelism team released the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit it has information on: ADO.NET Data Services ADO.NET Entity Framework ASP.NET AJAX History ASP.NET Dynamic Data ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET Silverlight controls You can think of this kit as a CTP it's not to where the team wants it to be but there are a lot of people asking for this type of resource so they decided to release it now. Technorati Tags: .NET, Trainning
My good friend, MVP and super user group leader David McCarter just released the first version of his long term code base dotNetTips.Utility on CodePlex. It is worth a look to see what little helper functions it has and please give him feedback! Technorati Tags: CodePlex, dotNetTips
Do you have a big .NET framework poster or some other post showing objects and methods hanging someplace? I do I am a total geek that way but I also thing that it helps to visualize the objects you work with. Well the Office dev group has out done that and created the Office Interactive Developer Map, it's a WPF application that lets you explore the Office object model. Way geeky!
Just announced Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework I had not know we were going to CTP with this but it's a huge features that will solve a lot of problems! Wow SliverLight 2.0 and now this... too much good stuff not enough time in the day! Technorati Tags: .NET, concurrency
OK I work for Microsoft but I don't work at Microsoft because it's a great place to work... Wait what did he just say? That is correct I don't work for Microsoft because it's a great place to work... It is a great place to work but like any place there are frustrations and issues but what keeps me going is one simple reason! The value proposition of the software Microsoft makes. The problem we (Microsoft) as a company has is that we use way too many ways to try to describe this but finally we have a resource that lays this out for developers quite well. Check out the Why learn about .NET you will find some of the arguments about why developers should consider .NET for their next project and it lays out some good resources for them get started with. We just now need more resources that talk about how and why rest of out products save time and money. For a start you can go to the Compare site on Microsoft.com. Technorati Tags: .NET, Learn
The content for the mobility touchdown events that I was at in Los Angeles and Las Vegas has been updated and is available for download from Q4Tech's web site at Mobility touchdown content. If you attended any of the events around the world you will want to get the final content as all the bugs were fixed as the content was bending given. For a review of what the Mobility touchdown events were see the MSDN blog http://blogs.msdn.com/mobilitytouchdown.
Just incase you had not seen this back in November Q4Tech released to CodePlex an implementation of the Patterns & Practices Mobile Updater Application Block. I have seen it used and it's quite feature complete, I hope to have my line of business application demo back online soon and have it using this block.
A area of development that miss not working with as often as I would like is programming for Windows CE. I did a lot of development for CE with the Compact Framework before I joined Microsoft and have contented to develop some small proof of concept applications to show what is possible but as always if not part of your day to day job you tend not to keep up and that is where I am at with this (and many other) topic. I recently found the HopperRX blog that has a bunch of good advice and tools to help develop applications for CE I hope it can help any of you keep up as well.
My fellow DE Kirk Allen has a good list of items that develops should consider getting up to speed on and the reasons for it. Check it out in his blog post What Technologies Should I Focus On?
LA event next week... sorry for the late heads up. ARE YOU INTERESTED IN LEARNING ABOUT THE NEXT GENERATION OF THE WEB?
Come join our Web Experience Events where you can learn about design tools, web building and web management software! Friday, June 08, 2007 8:00 AM - Friday, June 08, 2007 6:00 PM Pacific Time (US & Canada)
Welcome Time: 7:30 AM Microsoft Los Angeles Office
333 South Grand Ave,
Suite 3300 Los Angeles California 90071
Map Register
I loved working with Visual Basic, I stared with VB 1 just after spending more then 6 months learning to program Windows 3.0 with C and the Windows API (yes that C not even C++) so naturally VB was a great thing for front end programming. The VB "hello world" app was 0 lines of code vs. Petzold's HELLOWIN.C file of 82 lines (yes that includes wight space) so I loved that (on a side note his entire book is on line at http://www.charlespetzold.com/books.html). When I started to program .NET I did most of the projects for Microsoft (as a contractor) and all the projects and code samples were in C# so I moved back to the work of curly brackets and semicolons but wow do I miss my "End" statements! But what still shocks me is how many people are still using VB6 but many do not know that Microsoft has invested a lot to make the migration of VB6 projects to .NET much easer in the latest round the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 has been released. Beth Massi has a good blog post that explains what the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 is read the post "Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 Released!". Technorati tags: VB6, .NET
My life after 4 out of 5 weeks of the road have been filled with Silverlight all the time. My boys and wife are cursing Silverlight every day now as I just keep running them out of my office so I can work on more Silverlight 1.1 alpha. While looking for more information on I found this cool mind map of the Silverlight universe, enjoy! Technorati tags: mindmap, Silverlight
It's here in all of it's glory! There are a lot of write ups of what the MIX keynote was like but the big thing for me was the announcement about Silverlight 1.1 having a cross platform CLR. For more information checkout the new Silverlight web site Link to Silverlight. Technorati tags: Silverlight, MIX, CLR
I just had a wow moment... I was not paying attention to the presentation I should be paying attention to and catching up on blog reading and found this entry by Adam Hems Link to A British Geek in Texas Pontificates : Caching in Winforms / SmartClient Apps. The interesting thing he suggests is to use the System.Web.Caching namespace on a Windows Form application to cache client data... WOW I have used the winforms namespaces in a web app in the past but I never thought to try the reverse. I can't wait to play with this.
I know that more people in the world know Scott Mitchell than know me but for the few of you that may not know this he is going to be doing a class as described below: ASP.NET Black Belt Training - Saturday, April 21st, 2007 San Diego, California Cost: $199 (good through March 31st; afterwards, $299) Overview: Learn a variety of real-world tips, tricks, and techniques for building data-driven ASP.NET 2.0 web applications in this one-day event with speaker, author, and consultant Scott Mitchell. Over the course of the day, Scott will walk attendees through the process of creating a feature-rich web application. Starting from scratch, the talk includes discussions and demonstrations on Membership, building an application architecture, techniques for code reuse, caching to boost performance, and many other topics. Detailed Outline: http://fuzzylogicinc.net/BlackBelt/Outline.aspx Signup/more information: http://fuzzylogicinc.net/BlackBelt/Default.aspx The best part of getting to hear Scott is all is points are extremely real world!
Are you going to MIX? Don't know what MIX is? Don't care what MIX is? OK my first question are you going MIX? I will be there and am looking forward to it greatly, last year there were a whole slue of announcements from the product groups and many real world customer examples of usage of the technology. Please let me know if you are coming so I can look for you at the craps table ;). So you don't know what MIX is go look at www.visitmix.com and once you figure out there is no useful information for you there then checkout last years event on Flickr and then do a live.com search and see what people said about it last time. And last you don't care about MIX? You should! This is the event that where designers and get together and get along. As a developer I know (and have lived) the tensions between developers and designers. Check out Ryan Stewart blog posing Microsoft, Developers, Designers and Bill Gates to see what we are trying to do to make the interface for developers and designers easer and note he says that MIX should be a good show. Technorati tags: MIX, WPF\E
I know I have bloged about Virtual Labs in the past but now all of the .NET 3.0 labs are done including the Core Features of Windows CardSpace all of the labs are great. If you are a .NET developer this is the way to get up to speed quickly on the .NET 3.0 platform.
I would be interested to here of your experiences with the new 3.0 tools.
I am on a plain back from Hawaii which means I am done with all the launch events in SoCal and Hawaii... I know you say how could it have been that bad if it ended in Hawaii but I assure it was a boat load of work. And the Hawaii was a 72 hour trip with 12 hours on a airplane and much work. It stared with the "Key City Launch" in Los Angels where we had a great set of presenters in including Michele Leroux Bustamante and Tim Huckaby. We had a great turnout and with good feedback. Then we had three SoCal (Ontario, San Diego & Anaheim) events and finally Honolulu Hawaii. These events were done by the Microsoft Across America team. At each event I got to meet several MVPs that are based in each location. Wow what a great group of people, they know the Microsoft better then some of the product group people. All the MVPs that helped out at each of the events were invaluable in making each event a success my only regret was that I never got to spend the amount of time with any of them that I wanted. The best part of the events was I got to work with a new team member, Lynn Langit who is the new SoCal based Microsoft Across America (MSAM) Developer Evangelist. I am so excited to have someone else local in SoCal with me and the best part is that with the normal Microsoft reorganization she now is part of my west region team so we will be able to work closely together. If you did not get a chance to come see Lynn at the launch events you need to come check her out at the next set of MSDN sessions in SoCal. Some of the feed back I got at the events was first WOW! Second "I can't wait to start working with .NET 3.0 and SharePoint 2007. If you did not make any of the events check out Lynn's blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/socaldevgal/) about the session she did. She has done a great job of capturing all the resources and references to information about the information she covered. Technorati tags: MSND, MSAM, Launch
On Tuesday night of this week I had the opportunity to present to the San Luis Obispo .NET User Group. This is a new .NET focused group in the central coast of California an aria I have only driven through at break neck speeds to get to San Francisco or back home so I was looking forward to seeing a little of the place.
The group is run by Robert Hope who has done a great job of building a community of people who are interested in .NET. The people at the meeting were quite interesting and had some great questions. I presented on the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions and ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. This was the first time I presented anything about ajax and I was impressed how well received it was received. For the demo pillaged the great content that Steve Marx did in blog post Bad AJAX jokes, good AJAX sample I also had a slide deck but it was not much if you want to see it you can get a pdf of it here.
As an aside after the meeting some of us when out for a drink and they suggested a place downtown called Mothers Tavern but a Linsey Lohan movie was being shot downtown and Mothers was rented out for crew catering. But it was quite surreal seeing how many people were just trying to get a look at Linsey Lohan... If you don't offend easily then checkout what Foamy has to say about celebrates. Yes I feel the same way he dose!
In SoCal Microsoft will be doing two VSTS seminars if you are interested go register. Los Angeles Irvine For more info see all the details here.
If you are starting a new project that will be .NET 3.0 focused consider the Visual Studio Orcas TAP? Ok what is TAP? (I don't like acronyms but MS is full of them) TAP = Technology Adoption Program. The overall purpose of TAP programs are to get customers to use new software and tools early so we can have the best product possible at release and to have information about the experience highlighted so other customers can lean for you experience. Let me know if you are interested. Technorati tags: Orcas, TAP
This coming work I will be starting a Fundamentals of the .NET Framework Class at UCSD all the details can be found at the UCSD web site here. I have created a web site to support this class here. There is still room for more people in the class. Technorati tags: .NET Class
This will be the third set of Live From Redmond webcasts that have been done, each time I get a lot of good feedback of how good the events are. I hope if you are not familiar with this type of webcast that you check out this set of events for topics that interest you. For all the details check out Simon Muzio blog entry about the announcement.
I just got asked a question that comes up quite often when someone starts working with ASP.NET... The question was: "I have an asp.net 2.0 page which all I’m trying to do is populate a label control with the selected text of a dropdownlist control, whenever a button control is clicked. It always puts the name of the first item in the dropdownlist in the label control, no matter what item I have selected. Any ideas?" The Code was: Partial Class _Default
Inherits System.Web.UI.Page
Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
With Me.DropDownList1.Items
.Clear()
.Add("Item 1")
.Add("Item 2")
.Add("Item 3")
.Add("Item 4")
End With
End Sub
Protected Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
Label1.Text = DropDownList1.SelectedItem.Text
End Sub
End Class
The issue is that the Page_Load event will fire each time the page gets rendered, this includes on the post back from the button click so the list will be cleared then repopulated and the first item will always be selected once the Button1_Click event fires.
There is a good MSDN article for this ASP.NET Page Life Cycle Overview that covers this and cool diagram by Leon Andrianarivony ASP.NET Page Lifecycle diagram.
To solve this issue all that you need to do is use the Page.IsPostBack property in the Page_Load event like: Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, _
ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Me.Load
If Not Page.IsPostBack Then
With Me.DropDownList1.Items
.Clear()
.Add("Item 1")
.Add("Item 2")
.Add("Item 3")
.Add("Item 4")
End With
End If
End Sub
This assumes ViewState is on...
Tonight I will get to talk to a class at San Diego State University about how to use Visual Studio to complete a class assignment. I will do a in class demonstration but I will also show a lot of the free tanning resources Microsoft has for learning the toolset. I hope others can find this information useful. First Free software! There are a set of products Microsoft offers for free that will allow students, and hobbyists program on the windows platform. They can be found at the Visual Studio Express home page. There you can download two different types of Visual Studio, one for doing web development and four different ones for doing Windows development. You can also download SQL Server Express. For the work in this class students will need one of the Windows Development Express products and SQL Server Express. I also suggest that they get the SQL Server Management Studio Express and the Northwind and Pubs sample database. Now we have an environment to learn with... How about some lessons? MSDN Virtual Labs Some of my favorite things that are available are the MSDN Virtual Labs the Virtual Labs are way cool in that you don't need to install any of the above software locally. You will need to have JavaScript enabled, IE6.0 or higher and the Virtual Server VRMC Advanced Control but that is a small price to pay for free hands on training. I was shocked to see that we have not updated all of the labs to Visual Studio 2005 but you and still learn the basics in 2003 and there are labs what is new for Visual Studio 2005. Learn Visual Studio The Learn Visual Studio site on MSDN lists other resources available, these include Learning Plans, E-Learning, Classroom Training, Available Books and Exams. The Learning Plans are quite cool, you identify what type |