Ajaxus place on the net

Install Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 can be installed on Microsoft Windows Vista® Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP® Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). Downloads are available from the following locations:

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista x64 Edition and Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Window XP SP2

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Server 2003 SP2 x64 Edition and Windows XP SP2 Pro x64 Edition

Recently Scott Guthrie released some of his notes about the second version of Silverlight 2. This actually will be a beta version but still some new key features will be produced. Here is what Scott is saying:

Silverlight 2 includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework, and enables a rich .NET development platform that runs in the browser. Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer / designer workflow and integration when building Silverlight applications.

This upcoming Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 provides a rich set of features for RIA application development. These include:

* WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications.

* Rich Controls: Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications. This upcoming Beta1 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc). The built-in controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions.

* Rich Networking Support: Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support. It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web). Beta1 also includes built-in sockets networking support.

* Rich Base Class Library: Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code. It also includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support. The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.

Silverlight 2 does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer in order to run. The Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to enable all the above features (and more we’ll be talking about shortly) on a vanilla Mac OSX or Windows machine.

The Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 is 4.3MB in size, and takes 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn’t already have it. Once Silverlight 2 is installed you can browse the Web and automatically run rich Silverlight applications within your browser of choice (IE, FireFox, Safari, etc).

Read more here, plus 8 good tutorials!

Your first look at the next generation of Windows Server—straight from the experts.

Get a jump on evaluating Window Server 2008—with technical insights from Windows Server team. This practical introduction delivers real-world implementation scenarios and pragmatic advice for administering Windows Server in the enterprise.

Discover how to:
•Deploy Windows Server 2008, and configure and manage server roles
•Understand Windows Server Virtualization
•Implement a single, integrated IDA solution built on Active Directory
•Explore enhancements in Internet Information Services 7.0
•Use failover clustering for high-availability solutions
•Implement the Network Access Protection platform

get it here and say something good for me
more info

Monday morning at 6:00 am in Redmond, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008, which were co-developed from the same code base, were released to manufacturing. Vista SP1 is the first major update to Microsoft’s desktop operating system and is expected to trigger a new wave of corporate adoption. Meanwhile, Windows Server 2008 is the server-based follow-up to Windows Server 2003 R2, which was released in 2005.

“Microsoft has worked with its partners to significantly improve the Windows Vista experience in Service Pack 1,” a Microsoft spokesperson told me. “Customers will especially see enhanced value in terms of security, performance, reliability and application compatibility.”

While the schedule for Windows Server 2008 has been well known for some time–Microsoft previously scheduled a Windows 2008 launch event for late February and was widely expected to deliver the product well before that time–that for Vista SP1 was a bit less specific. In a post to the Windows Vista Blog this morning, Microsoft vice president Mike Nash finally explained how users will get SP1. New PCs with Vista and SP1 installed will arrive in “the coming months,” while Microsoft’s enterprise customers will get DVDs soon. For end users, SP1 will be released via a staged rollout. The release will be made available via Windows Update starting in mid-March, and then only to PCs that don’t have problematic hardware installed. In mid-April, SP1 will be rolled out to all users who have configured Windows Update for automatic updating.

Initially, Windows Vista SP1 will be made available in five languages, English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese. The remaining languages Microsoft supports will be released to manufacturing in April and ship worldwide after that.

I’ll be reviewing Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 on the SuperSite for Windows within the next 30 days.

This is BIG! This was about to happen sooner or later - Microsoft puts his Silverlight plug-in into the updates section as ‘optional’ update. Mary Jo Foley writes more about that here. Here is a part of her post:

But this week — specifically on January 22 — Microsoft will make its Adobe-Flash-alternative Silverlight available via WSUS, as well as via Microsoft Update (MU). In order to have Silverlight 1.0 pushed to users, admins will need to select it; it will be an optional, not automatic, download.

The Silverlight product family will include installers and updates for the Silverlight browser plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, according to the Microsoft Update Product Team blog.

Read the whole post here

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, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Developers can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting for you. Volta comprises tools such as end-to-end profiling to make architectural refactoring and optimization simple and quick. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without any changes to the application.

Download

Today Microsoft shipped Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. You can download the final release using one of the links below:

* If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download your copy from the MSDN subscription site (note: some of the builds are just finishing being uploaded now - so check back later during the day if you don’t see it yet).

* If you are a non-MSDN subscriber, you can download a 90-day free trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite here. A 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional (which will be a slightly smaller download) will be available next week. A 90-day free trial edition of Team Foundation Server can also be downloaded here.

*If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here.

* If you want to just install the .NET Framework 3.5 runtime, you can download it here.

List of New Features - old version

- VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support
VS 2008 enables you to build applications that target multiple versions of the .NET Framework. This means you can use VS 2008 to open, edit and build existing .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 applications (including ASP.NET 2.0 applications using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0), and continue to deploy these application on .NET 2.0 machines.

- ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support
.NET 3.5 has ASP.NET AJAX built-in (no separate download required). In addition to including all of the features in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, ASP.NET 3.5 also now includes richer support for UpdatePanels integrating with WebParts, ASP.NET AJAX integration with controls like and , WCF support for JSON, and many other AJAX improvements.

- VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support
VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a significantly improved HTML web designer (the same one that ships with Expression Web). This delivers support for split-view editing, nested master pages, and great CSS integration.

- Language Improvements and LINQ
The new VB and C# compilers in VS 2008 deliver significant improvements to the languages. Both add functional programming concepts that enable you to write cleaner, terser, and more expressive code. These features also enable a new programming model we call LINQ (language integrated query) that makes querying and working with data a first-class programming concept with .NET.

- Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL
LINQ to SQL is a built-in OR/M (object relational mapper) in .NET 3.5. It enables you to model relational databases using a .NET object model. You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete data from it. LINQ to SQL fully supports transactions, views, and stored procedures. It also provides an easy way to integrate business logic and validation rules into your data model.

- Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio

Lots of other improvements

The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming. For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support. ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox. WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data.

Office development is much richer - including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon, and with Outlook. Visual Studio Tools for Office support is also now built-into Visual Studio (you no longer need to buy a separate product).

New WCF and Workflow projects and designers are now included in VS 2008. Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS). Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS. AJAX web testing (unit and load) is now supported in the VS Test SKU. And there is much, much more…

Installation Suggestions

People often ask me for suggestions on how best to upgrade from previous betas of Visual Studio 2008. In general I’d recommend uninstalling the Beta2 bits explicitly. As part of this you should uninstall Visual Studio 2008 Beta2, .NET Framework Beta2, as well as the Visual Studio Web Authoring Component (these are all separate installs and need to be uninstalled separately). I then usually recommend rebooting the machine after uninstalling just to make sure everything is clean before you kick off the new install. You can then install the final release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 on the machine.

Once installed, I usually recommend explicitly running the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu option, choosing the “Reset Settings” option, and then re-pick your preferred profile. This helps ensure that older settings from the Beta2 release are no longer around (and sometimes seems to help with performance).

Note that VS 2008 runs side-by-side with VS 2005 - so it is totally fine to have both on the same machine (you will not have any problems with them on the same box).

Silverlight Tools and VS Web Deployment Project Add-Ins

Two popular add-ins to Visual Studio are not yet available to download for the final VS 2008 release. These are the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio and the Web Deployment Project add-in for Visual Studio. Our hope is to post updates to both of them to work with the final VS 2008 release in the next two weeks. If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development using VS 2008 Beta2 you’ll want to stick with with VS 2008 Beta2 until this updated Silverlight Tools Add-In is available.

Read Scott Gu

Microsoft isn’t revealing yet what they plan to deliver with new Internet Expolorer - IE8, but at last MIX conference Chris Wilson, platform architect of Internet Explorer, did share some general directions the team is taking with its next release.

However, Wilson did tell attendees that Microsoft is planning to require Web site authors to “opt-in” to standards mode when developing IE 8.0 sites.

“Five years ago, no one in the top 200 Web sites was using standards,” Wilson said. “Today it is half of the top 200 Web pages.”

Wilson acknowledged that he wasn’t sure exactly what form this kind of opt-in would take. But asking authors to opt in will “give us freedom to do some great things,” he said. By giving Microsoft permission to make IE 8.0 more standards-complaint, authors will take responsibility for breaking pages.

Wilson said to expect Microsoft to be investing across layout, object model and Ajax development fronts in IE 8.0. Specificially, Wilson said Microsoft is investing in making IE 8.0 more compliant with CSS 2.1 layout standards. Microsoft also is working to make the IE 8.0 object model more interoperable with that used by other browsers, and is looking to provide more client-side application programming interfaces (APIs) to support local storage for mash-ups, Wilson said.

Microsoft is planning to make tweaks to IE that will allow developers to more easily add extensions to its browser, Wilson said. He said Microsoft acknowledged that extensions are powerful but potentially “scary.”

He also said to expect Microsoft to continue to invest heavily in advancing its Web development toolbar with the next version of IE.
view original post

Scot is as always providing quality posts on the actual topics:

Last Monday I delivered one of the keynotes at the MIX conference in Las Vegas, and discussed a new project that I’ve been spending most of my time working on over the last year: Silverlight.

Silverlight is a cross platform, cross browser .NET plug-in that enables designers and developers to build rich media experiences and RIAs for browsers. The preview builds we released this week currently support Firefox, Safari and IE browsers on both the Mac and Windows.

To get a sense of the types of rich browser applications you will be able to build using Silverlight, please check out this 7 minute video of the Metaliq “Top Banana” video editor sample application:

The “Top Banana” application was built with C# and runs cross platform on any system where Silverlight is installed. The total download size of the application (meaning the size of all of the XAML + compiled code when a user types in the URL of the site) is only ~50kb. We’ll be shipping a source-code version of the application as a sample later this summer.

Rick Strahl is talking about his Silverlight adventures in his last post. Check it out here its really something! He is giving us his thoughts on Microsoft’s new technology!

“Well, here we are again - let the hype begin!!! Yup, we have a new toy to get excited about and this time it’s Silverlight or Microsoft’s entry in the Rich Internet Applications (RIA) space. RIA’s are interesting to a lot of developers. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard the request over the years to build richer applications that can run in the browser. If I had a penny for everytime somebody’s asked me - “how can I take and run my Windows app in the browser on the Web” I’d be - not very rich, but a good chunk o’ change would have accumulated. This request dates back a LONG time and one has to ask what took Microsoft so long?

Last week at the Mix ’07 conference Microsoft announced updated plans for a browser based technology called Silverlight (formerly known by the code name of WPF/E). Silverlight is a light-weight, self-contained and browser independent version of the Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) that can run inside of a Web Browser without any outside dependencies. Silverlight can run in IE 6 and 7, Firefox and Safari, both on Windows and the Mac and is installed by a single one-click installation that takes only a few seconds.

Microsoft announced two versions of Silverlight: Silverlight 1.0 beta which provides a base set of WPF functionality that is scriptable from an HTML document, and Silverlight 1.1 Alpha, which adds a client side version of the .NET runtime to Silverlight. Yup, this means .NET code in the browser – in various browsers and on Windows and the Mac. I’ll come back to the .NET integration later, but let’s look at the base features of Silverlight first.“