From all that I have seen Brad Abrams as the best wrap up of what is in SP1 at hi blog post Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 "SP1" Beta. It did not hurt that I stopped looking after I found it ;).

If you have not figured it out I live the MSDN Virtual Labs, they are a quick easy way to lean about stuff with little impact to your system. A few new labs were recently released, use them in good health.

What’s new in C# 3.0?
What’s new in Visual Basic 9?
Building Web Applications with Visual Studio 2008

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/VS2005SP1

Go get it! Lots of fixes and make VS 2005 work well on Vista (still not 100% but close).

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 of development you want to learn and Microsoft will show you resources and let you build a custom learning plan.

More Resources

MSDN
MSDN Flash
Future Versions of Visual Studio
CodeZone
San Diego .NET Developer Group
San Diego .NET User Group

Some great events are planned for SoCal... 

.NET Masters Series event Saturday, August 19, 2006

Link to So Cal .Net Tech Summit Saturday, September 23

More .NET love can then I can stand! What a great community we have in SoCal!

WOW I went to a MSDN event today… all I can say is wow if you have not been to a MSDN event you need to experience this type of event. You can see all kinds of geek information all in a movie theater. And yes if you try hard you can sneak in to a free movie after the event .

At the event today and I am sure at the event coming up this Thursday in Garden Grove for information about user groups and events so here is a list of local resources:

SoCal Resources:
MSDN Flash (http://msdn.microsoft.com/flash)
SoCal .NET Events (http://www.socalnetevents.org)
List of SoCal User Groups (http://www.socalnetevents.org/Default.aspx?tabid=61) I know bad back ground but the list is good!

San Diego User Groups:
San Diego .NET Developers Group (http://www.sddotnetdg.org)
San Diego .NET User Group (http://www.sandiegodotnet.com)

I will have a section of this site soon that list all the groups that I can find\know about so if you know if a group please let me know.

Do you want to see what is new in Visual Studio 2005?

The new Microsoft office in LA (333 So. Grand Avenue, 33rd Floor, Los Angeles CA 90071) will be hosting the 2 day class "What's New in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005" from 9am to 5pm on 4/24 and 4/25 (EDIT: I had the wrong dates the first time, sorry).

You will have to take a train in to downtown or pay for parking, you will be on your own for lunch but the class is free.

To sign-up Click Here I am sorry if the class is full by the time you see this.

On the .Net Security Bolg Shawn Farkas blogs about doing debugging clickonce application, he talks about the gflags tool.

Debugging a Partial Trust ClickOnce Application

I know that security can be a dry topic but of late I have been having some interesting reads on the .NET Security blog. Some gems in there include Detecting that You're Running in a ClickOnce Application and Isolated Storage and ClickOnce.

Have fun and make security a priority to avoid issues tomorrow!

The patterns & practices group has some Visual Studio 2005 content available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/practices/vs2005/ most of the content is still in the early stages but VB6 migration stuff is slid.

Microsoft is now made two books available for free:

• Introducing Visual Basic 2005 for Developers
• Upgrading Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET

I have not read either book (I will over the weekend) but they look like a great way to help move to VB.NET.

I am not sure when this was a lunched but today I found VBRun it is a Resource Center for Visual Basic 6.0. Some may say that this is strange but not so MS is still committed to supporting the developers that of plenty of valid reasons can’t move to .NET at this time. Do I think this is a good thing? Heck yes, I do think that moving to .NET is the best way to ensure organizations remain completive but there are some who will take more time then others or may move incrementally. I hope if you need this it helps.

OK this is a bit cheesy but the information is good, MS has setup a site with a bunch of avi files of some quick walk throughs of how to do things in VB.NET. topics include Deployment, Web Development and many more. VB at the Movies Have fun.

I get a tone of questions every class about the differences between VB.NET and C# and there are some crazy people who want to know about managed C++. I buddy showed me two good articles that may help to answer some of the questions. Language Equivalents is a MSDN topic that covers common programming concepts with side-by-side examples for Visual Basic, C#, Visual J#, C, C++, and the Managed Extensions for C++, JScript, Visual FoxPro. And Microsoft Programming Languages is a MSDN article that covers the Microsoft postioning of Visual Basic .NET, Visual C++ .NET, Visual C# .NET, Visual J# .NET.