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I just uploaded three new photos to my site. This time, two animal and one little girl. Hope you like 'em.
Did you know that your Visual Studio 2005 (or VS.NET for that matter) has a "command prompt" where you can execute commands and see variables of your application that you are debugging? Enter the Command Window, available using View/Other Windows/Command Window, or by pressing Ctrl+W,A.
This nifty little window has many powerful features. For example, try typing these commands at the prompt:
? 4+4 ? Math.Sqrt(3*3+4*4) ? System.DateTime.Now nf MyStuff.cs
Also, what not that many developers seem to know is that you can get that ol' Immediate window back when you type "immed" and hit Enter in the Visual Studio 2005 Command window.
Well, did you guess it could happen? I didn't, and the case is about a new (or rather, extended) keyboard layout for the Finnish keyboards in the future. Sure sounds like a Candid Camera kind of stuff to me, but I guess progress can be made when it comes to keyboards, as well.
Basically, our Finnish keyboards will get additional special characters, especially useful for typing Spanish and Vietamese. Frankly, how many Finns needs these additional thingies? I don't, but I guess some do. Nonetheless, there's information available on the net, and Microsoft has also developed a new keyboard driver to support those new keyboards. Wow.
If you are just learning C# or .NET (I guess we all are some way or another), there's a great set of freely available material about .NET development from the Johannes Kepler Univesity in Austria.
By going to their web site, and following the link "Course Material" you will find the download page. You have to accept the Microsoft Curriculum License, and once you've done that, you can get PowerPoint presentations about .NET 1.1 and C# 1.1. Enjoy!
Canon has just announced new products, including a new digital EOS SLR, the 400D (in USA, the Digital Rebel XTi) and two new EF lenses, EF 50mm f/1.2L USM and EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM.
Now, I'm not interested in the Rebels as I have 5D, but it's new sensor cleaning mechanism sounds nice. Of course, it must work, too. But to me, the new 50mm lens sounds very nice. I bet it costs more than a grand.
This might not be a giant step for mankind, but Pluto is no longer a planet. This declaration came from Prague today. CNN has more info.
I today ran into an issue with Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 SP1 (SBS 2003) and Exchange Server 2003 SP2 that I couldn't immediately solve. The problem was that all users were unable to login to Outlook Web Access (OWA) hosted by the SBS server on a LAN.
Even with administrative privileges, user's got the following error message when trying to login to OWA with their browsers:
You could not be logged on to Outlook Web Access. Make sure your domain\user name and password are correct, and then try again.
Now, I initially thought this would be a security setting/permission issue, but since even the domain admin couldn't log in, I decided to investigate elsewhere. On the Internet, I found Microsoft KB article 843539 that provided the hints, and the rest I found by using Google Groups.
The reason was that the SBS server was running IIS that had SSL enforced. However, Exchange Forms-based authentication doesn't work with SLL connections, and you have to disable Forms authentication to give proper access to users.
To do this, first go Exchange System Manager, and then navigate to Exchange Virtual Server properties (Servers/Protocols/HTTP), and then clear (uncheck) the Enable Forms Based Authentication checkbox. That should do the trick.
And, if the problem still persists, make sure you've given enough file system (NTFS) rights to the Exchange virtual directory. Open the Security tab for the directory either using Windows Explorer or IIS Manager, and make sure the "Domain Users" group (or similar) has Read, List Folder Contents and Read & Execute rights.
There's a new article available on MSDN that details the differences between web service implementation on ASP.NET 2.0 and Windows Communication Foundation or WCF.
If you are about to start developing Web Service (WS) applications with Visual Studio 2005 (or, Delphi .NET for that matter), then you should take a look of this article. My opinion is that presently, for smaller projects ASP.NET web services architecture is a good choice for growth path for the future. However, for larger projects that take time to plan through, it might be wise to wait until WCF is here (think Vista).
If you are still using Visual Studio.NET 2003, there's now a Service Pack 1 (SP1) available for you to download. It is freely available from the Microsoft download center. Size is 155 MB.
I noticed from eWeek that Microsoft has announced a new software development product specifically for game developers. This product is named "XNA Game Studio". And just like the Visual Studio Express line of products, XNA is a free download.
If you are looking for a C# book to cover Visual Studio 2005 and C# 2.0, then "Murach's C# 2005" might be something for you. I haven't read this book myself, but ASP.NET Pro has a review of it.
Here's a simple tip for those of you using Visual Studio to write .NET code: to comment a block of code, first select the block and then press Ctrl+K,C to comment it. To uncomment, one has to press Ctrl+K,U. Simple and effective!
The Delphi Magazine (TDM) has published my Borland Delphi article with the title "An Exchange 2003 Programming Primer". As you can guess, this article gives an introduction to Exchange programming and gives the 101 examples of major programming technologies that Exchange supports. Happy reading!
PS. I also uploaded a new landscape photo (#7) to my Photos area, go check it.
Borland (or should I say DTG) today announced what I'd already been waiting for: a back-to-root set of development tools aimed at the hobbyist/semi-pro developer looking for a low cost. And naturally, these products are called the Turbo products. They also have a web site dedicated to these tools at turboexplorer.com.
The products that will become available are Turbo C++, Turbo Delphi, Turbo Delphi for .NET and Turbo C#. Price will be less than $500, says the company. What does this mean? For me, this means more Borland users in the field. Visual Studio has decreased the number of Borland users, since it is a more advanced solution for .NET development and costs less (or is even free, as in the Express versions). Although I love both Visual Studio and Delphi, competition is good for all of us.
Another thing that Borland is going to do with their Turbo line is to trying bring the excitement back. Compared to MSDN, Borland had BDN, but in my opinion that has been only a shadow of what it could be. Also read eWeek's commentary. More info will follow as I get my hands on these new products.
The next version of Visual Studio, codenamed "Orcas" is still on the drawing board, but details are also leaking about the next version after Orcas, codenamed "Rosario". Rosario is going to be an update to the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). To me, Rosario is still too far in the future, for Orcas and Vista/2007 Office System development is what interests me presently.
Vista Software announced the availability of their fully managed (100% .NET code, that is) SQL compatible database. What's interesting with this product is that it is light in its footprint, the vendor says only 600 KB. What's interesting is that it also has built-in Blowfish encryption, that is something that interests me. For $249 per machine, the price is also very good.
So far, my databases of choice have been Borland's InterBase and Microsoft Access and SQL Server. These are good choices for workgroup, single-user and enterprise applications, respectively. However, VistaDB seems to compete mostly with InterBase.
Borland has recently announced a roadmap for InterBase, but those features that I'd like to see (native .NET support, encryption, and better embedded installation) have to wait until the "Vault" release. Until that, VistaDB seems to be an attractive solution if you want to travel light.
I today learned about a new, high-quality stock photography site called Alamy. This site is in addition to iStockphoto, Getty Images, and the Finnish Plugi, Cartina and Albumi.
Once Windows Vista is here, we have a new driver model for display drivers, called the Windows Display Driver Model or WDDM. For users, this should result in better stability and performance, and for driver manufacturers it means a rewrite. But for application-level developers, it is also something to think about.
This is because WDDM is closely related to the new Desktop Window Manager (DWM), that will control drawing to the desktop. Previously, Windows application drew directly to the screen, but in Vista this will change. Of course, your application can still use the "zero handle" to draw to the desktop, but on Vista you will actually draw to an on-memory buffer. Says Technet:
"The DWM is, in essence, a Direct3D application that is active from the moment the computer is turned on. Thus, core features of the WDDM, such as the ability to share the GPU resources and processing, become essential in this scenario."
If you want to learn C# and .NET 2.0 programming, there's a very nice book available from Apress: Andrew Troelsen's "Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform", now at the third edition. Amazon sells one for $37.79. Recommended reading!
Microsoft has recently announced the availability of their Sandcastle project, which is a utility to build documentation from source code. The fancy thing is that Microsoft uses Sandcastle internally to build .NET Framework documentation, so it ought to be promising.
The Sandcastle July CTP is available for download. At this point, I haven't yet had the chance to test it myself, but there's still work with the project as it is a set of command-line utilities. However I wouldn't be surprised if one day it would be intergrated into Visual Studio.
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