Category Archives: Microsoft - Page 2

Microsoft Live Labs Volta

Posted by on December 6, 2007 1 comment

volta header Microsoft Live Labs Volta
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.

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Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Released

Posted by on November 19, 2007 1 comment

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.

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IE 8 is comming!

Posted by on May 8, 2007 No comments

ie7 thumb logo IE 8 is comming!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.
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Scott Guthrie’s Silverlights thoughts

Posted by on May 8, 2007 1 comment

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:

screenshot fpo Scott Guthrie’s Silverlights thoughts

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.

Silverlight Adventures

Posted by on May 8, 2007 No comments

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.“

Give Microsoft input on its web sites, products and services…oh, and get PAID to do it.

Posted by on March 10, 2007 No comments

Microsoft is looking for members of the technology and business community who would be willing to provide Microsoft with their valuable insight on Microsoft web sites, products and service.

If you join and participate in an online discussion group, you will be paid a minimum of $50 and panelist who participate in an online survey are eligible for a Amazon gift certificates contest.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to tell Microsoft “where to go with our products”, uh, I mean give us your insight on how we can improve our products and services, then make sure you sign up.
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