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A few years ago I advocated the addition of a Minister of IT to our government in a column. One of the main reasons for supporting this (or even being up for the position myself) is the apparent lack of thorough knowledge of information technology amongst our leaders. I still think that IT is so fundamental...
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Whenever you test it is vital that you pick correct test data. Suppose you need to verify that you implemented an Add method correctly and you test it by passing 2 and 2 to be added. There are many implementations that would respond with 4. Here are a couple: return num1 + num2; return 4; return num1...
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It's official! WPF/E has been named Microsoft Silverlight. (Yet another meaningless name...) Flash, eat your heart out! Link to Microsoft Silverlight
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Today Microsoft releases XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 The official link and download page aren't there yet but after digging around I found a link[1]. Here's the official link[2] [1] Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0 [2] Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express 1.0
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In my previous post about using and Dispose[1] I touched lightly on the Garbage Collector. Indeed very lightly, I never mentioned it but Dispose is very much related to the GC. Today I found Chris Lyon's Weblog which contains excellent info on the GC, ranging from Dispose to WeakReferences. Read the...
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Please note that my explanation in this post is incorrect. I am sorry if I caused any trouble. In .NET 2.0 disposing the SqlConnection DOES return the connection into the connectionpool. In my experience .NET 1.1 acted differently; I will try to investigate this and let you know. In many talks, tutorials...
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During the last few weeks I developed the idea that it would be nice to be able to pull Key Performance Indicators (KPI) data from a data warehouse to the desktop in gadget on the sidebar in Vista. I even asked some colleagues if there are any standard API's or Web Services to access KPI's. Today (the...
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As you might have noticed the Microsoft Expression Products[1] got their final names and a new addition. In true adherence to other naming schemes[2][3] they decided to give Interaction Designer a name that is 'easy' to recognize. I remember it by remembering that it's the one with the non descriptive...
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An excellent explanation[1] of Transaction Management in .NET 2.0 [1] System.Transactions and ADO.NET 2.0
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It appears that there aren't many breaking changes from the last CTP to Beta 2 of WPF and I love the addition of the ZIndex property[1]. [1] The ZIndex Property -- At Last!
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And, yes! They released Beta 2 versions of the Expression products[1] Graphics Designer and Interactive Designer at the same time. Wow, imagine a PC running Vista, Office 2007, WinFX all Beta 2 [1] Microsoft Expression - Home
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Read this post[1] to learn how to use Glass in WPF on Vista. Now I can't wait any longer for Beta 2… I want it now! [1] Aero Glass inside a WPF Window
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If you're looking for a nice, clean control style or a very good starter to make your own. Look here[1]. Building templates can be quite a hassle. I have learned a lot by looking at the standard templates that you can copy using Expression Interactive Designer[2] Hmmm… I feel the sudden urge to design...
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I have added two downloads to the Windows Presentation Foundation Tutorials page. Both are zips that contain the (working :)) demo code for the WPF Overview session (Dev002) and the WPF Data Binding session (Dev013). I really enjoyed speaking at the conference; it's big fun to talk to several hundred...
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ThinkTecture created a tool to do Contract First Design using web services. I have blogged about this tool before and now ThinkTecture has released a version that supports Visual Studio 2005 and a lot of .NET 2.0 features. Get it here: http://www.thinktecture.com/WSCF (Now let's hope for a WCF version...