April 2008 Rosario CTP Available

It's here! You can download it !

Jeff Beehler has just announced:

… that the next Community Technology Preview of Rosario (officially known as Microsoft® Visual Studio® Team System code name “Rosario” April 2008 CTP) is now available.  Customers can immediately begin downloading the VPC images from our download page.

 

Here's a list of walkthroughs broken out by product:

Architecture Edition

• Exploring the existing code structure
• Designing process flow as activities
• Designing user interactions with systems
• Designing system functionality as components
• Visualizing and designing types in systems
• Visualizing and designing interaction sequences in systems

Development Edition

• Simplify Code Analysis rule selection with rule sets
• Find and fix a bug using the historical debugger
• Identify the test impact of code changes
• Find a bug on a separate machine using the standalone debugger

Database Edition

• Building and using an off-line representation of your operational database as a “sandbox” development environment.
• Using Data Generation to custom-build data for testing your database application.
• Making and unit-testing schema and code changes in an off-line environment.
• Performing static code analysis of your programmability objects.

Test Edition

• Planning a testing effort
• Executing manual test cases
• Verify the fix
• Automate a manual test and add validation.

Team Foundation Server

• Managing an Agile schedule
• Easier reporting from Excel
• Managing features with the CMMI Process
• A new Add Files to Source Control wizard and support for drag and drop from Windows Explorer to Source Control Explorer
• An enhanced, non-modal conflict resolution experience, integrated into the pending changes tool window
• A new history view that shows labels applied to a file as well as how changes were merged across branches
• A new automated build system built on Windows Workflow Foundation, featuring dynamic build machine allocation from a machine pool and distributed build functionality
• Rollback for a check in (currently only available at the command line)
• Many Source Control Explorer usability enhancements

Feedback in the form of bugs and suggestions can be submitted via http://connect.microsoft.com/visualstudio. Make sure when you submit issues through Connect that you indicate the product version as being “Visual Studio Team System Code Name “Rosario” (April 2008 CTP)”.

Yahoo! Announcing the OpenSocial Foundation

Yahoo! announced  that the company  intends to support Google's OpenSocial initiative. Yahoo seems to be all about openness lately (Open Search, support for OpenID), so the announcement shouldn't surprise anyone.

OpenSocial is a Google coalition, which plans to build up a common set of standards for web developers to make social networking widgets and other programs for Web sites, includes MySpace, Plaxo, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Six Apart, Oracle, salesforce.com and Ning, to name but ten.

From Yahoo's blog:

Yahoo! has always been about helping users find and share information online, and we love giving our broad and loyal developer community the tools they need to keep innovating on this front. Their echo our passion for creating the best Web experience for our users.
In this same spirit, we announced today that we’ve joined forces with Google and MySpace to create the OpenSocial Foundation, and will also begin supporting the OpenSocial standard. Industry consortiums such as this often start slowly and evolve over time. So far, OpenSocial is rapidly growing and adapting, but still in the early stages. We feel that this is the right step at this stage in its evolution. It’s no longer a trial balloon — it’s for real. We are taking this opportunity to help ensure websites and developers feel confident using OpenSocial as the building blocks for their new social apps.

 

The creators of many of the most popular applications on Facebook have already said they plan to also adapt their programs to conform with the OpenSocial standard.

Announcing Volta: Web Development Using Only the Materials in the Room

Just released from Microsoft Live Labs: Volta.

Volta is another codename project from Microsoft that aims at Web UI experience.

 

The Volta technology preview is a developer toolset that enables you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns. First, design and build your application as a .NET client application, then assign the portions of the application to run on the server and the client tiers late in the development process. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and communication,erialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

See detailed architectural and fundamental description here.

• Volta web site
• Team blog
• Community forum

Technorati Tags: Volta

Release Date for Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft announced today that Visual Studio 2008 will be released before the end of November 2007.  Great News!

 

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2008

.NET Framework 3.5 Commonly Used Types and Namespaces poster

Paul Andrew introduced the .NET Framework 3.5 update to the Commonly Used Types and Namespaces poster. You can download it from here. (PDF version).

Technorati Tags: .NET 3.5

Microsoft to release .NET Framework Library Source Code

Scott Guthrie just made an exciting post, starting with .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 the .NET libraries will have source available! 

One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them.

Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year.

Anyone who accepts the Microsoft Reference License will be able to browse and view the source code. The initial publication will include the BCL (System, System.IO, System.Collections, System.Configuration, System.Threading, System.Net, System.Security, System.Runtime, System.Text, etc), ASP.NET (System.Web), Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms), ADO.NET (System.Data), XML (System.Xml), and WPF (System.Windows).

Read all about it here:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx

Here's a little more by Shawn Burke:

http://blogs.msdn.com/sburke/archive/2007/10/03/making-net-framework-source-available-to-developers.aspx

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5

EntLib Contrib September 2007 Release

EntLib Contrib is a community-developed library of extensions to the patterns & practices Enterprise Library.

The latest release of EntLib Contrib is Enterprise Library Contrib September 2007.

What's new? Per Tom Hollander:

• Data Access Application Block extensions:
  • MySql, SqLite and SqlEx providers.
• Exception Handling Application Block extensions:
  • SqlException Wrap Handler.
• Logging Application Block extensions:
  • LogParser.
• Policy Injection Application Block extensions:
  • PostSharp4EntLib.
  • New matching rules: And, Or and Not.
  • New call handlers: CursorCallHandler, OneWayCallHandler, SynchronizedCallHandler, ThreadSafeCallHandler, TransactionScopeCallHandler.
• Validation Application Block extensions:
  • New validators: CollectionCountValidator, TypeValidator<T>, ObjectValidator<T>, EnumDefinedValidator.
  • Designtime enhancements: Lightweight type picker, Test command.
  • Other extensions: Default validators, Argument Validation, ExternallyConfigurableObjectValidator.

Technorati Tags: Enterprise Library, Patterns and Practices

Astoria CTP Refresh for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

The Astoria team has just released a refresh of the Astoria Prototype CTP to work with Visual Studio Beta 2 and the Entity Framework Beta 2.
The Astoria September 2007 CTP is now available for download.
This CTP is a refresh of the May CTP/Prototype bits recompiled so they run with Visual Studio 2008/Entity Framework Beta 2.
You can visit the Astoria Team Blog for more information.
Technorati Tags: Astoria, Visual Studio 2008

The post also avalable at: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/maordavid/archive/2007/09/18/astoria-ctp-refresh-for-visual-studio-2008-beta-2.aspx

Microsoft Launches Translation Service

Microsoft launched a service for automatic translation called Windows Live Translator. The site lets you translate a text limited to 500 words or a web page from English to German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Russian.

Microsoft uses Systran to produce most of the translations, but also offers an option to translate computer-related texts using a machine translation system developed in-house. Microsoft's translation technology has been used to translate technical materials, including MSDN Library.

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 Released

Highlights of the Windows Live Writer Beta 3 Release:

• Insert videos using our new 'Insert Video' dialog
• Upload images to Picasaweb when publishing to your Blogger blog
• Publish XHTML-style markup
• Use Writer in 28 additional languages
• Print your posts
• Justify-align post text
• Better image handling (fewer blurry images)
• Resolved installation issues from last release
• Many other bug fixes and enhancements

Download here.

DBPro PowerTools Now Available!

Power Tools that extend the functionality of Visual Studio Team Edition for Data Professionals is now available. 

The tool includes:

• Dependency Viewer
• More refactoring support
• Extended Data Generation
• New MSBuild Tasks
• T-SQL Static Code Analysis
• Schema Manager API

Read Gert's post for a more detailed explanation.

Download the tool from here.

VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta 2 Released

Beta 2 release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta2 is now available for download. You can download the Visual Studio 2008 product here.

VS 2008 can be installed side-by-side with VS 2005.  .NET 3.5 Beta2 also includes a go-live license which allows you to build and deploy applications into production.

Have fun!

del.icio.us Tags: VS 2008, .NET 3.5

Technorati Tags: VS 2008, .NET 3.5

First Rosario Preview is just around the corner

Brian Harry just posted that Rosario CTP8 will be available for a first view in a week or so.

The primary features in this CTP include new tools for the manual tester and work item linking and hierarchy support. 

Be also aware of the fact that Orcas Beta2 is also ready to go and will be released in the near future.

Have fun!

del.icio.us Tags: Orcas, Rosario, Visual Studio 2008

Technorati Tags: Orcas, Rosario, Visual Studio 2008

ZOHO - online office suite

I saw today an amazing online office suite: ZOHO.

Zoho is an a product of an Indian company called AdventNet and it includes everything from word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, notebooks to wikis, online databases, project management.

Guys, I tried it: It's amazing.

A lot of features which inclueded in MS Office suite included here...and its totally free!!

Comparision to Google Docs is unavoidable: It's better!

Try it.

 

Technorati Tags: ZOHO

del.icio.us Tags: ZOHO

New and better document management in Google Docs

Google docs looks amazing!

 

Navigation

The new home page has a sidebar that lets you filter the documents by tag (renamed to folder in the interface), by type or by collaborator. You can now see all your files by default, not only the documents or spreadsheets active in the last 30 days.
The folders can now have descriptions and you can send a document to a folder by using drag and drop!

Sorting

Google removed the option to sort the files by name or author, so the only available sort option is by date.

Search

The search box includes an autocomplete feature for file names, folders, authors.

Microsoft eScrum Version 1.0 - now avaliable

Another Scrum template to try with Team Foundation Servere is avalable: eScrum,  from Microsoft, which  is a Web-based, end-to-end project management tool for Scrum built on the Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server platform.

You can download it from here.

Free Download: Refactor!™ for ASP.NET

Refactor! for ASP.NET version 2.2 by Developer Express is freely available to all ASP.NET 2.0 developers.

This release includes refactorings dedicated to ASP.NET development.

Great tool!

WCAT 6.3 web performance and scalability test tool released!

The latest version of WCAT (Web Capacity Analysis Tool - the web performance test tool that the IIS team and NT Performance team use to conduct internal performance and scalability testing of IIS and ASP.NET) just released .

For more details and download, read: http://mvolo.com/blogs/serverside/archive/2007/05/17/WCAT-6.3-web-performance-and-scalability-test-tool-released.aspx.

Google Launches New Design, Universal Search

Google's pages has been changed today? You feel that something different about Google?

They have upgraded the site with Universal Search. You can read more at the official press release and at the official Google Blog post.

Silverlight introduction

At Mix07, Microsoft announced Silverlight™.

Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

You can read more here (SilverLight site), its amazing!

Great post about Silverlight UI Controls, by Ashish Shetty, you can find here.

Slides and demos you can download from Nikhil Kothari's Weblog.

Enjoy!