Monday, April 20, 2009

Speed up your MSDN Library experience

This tip comes courtesy of Scott Hanselman's blog.

MSDN is now available in a low-bandwidth mode.

Step 1) Goto http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/default(loband).aspx

Step 2) Click on the link Persist low bandwidth view. It is located in the upper right corner.

Step 3) Enjoy the speedy page access.

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Saturday, April 11, 2009

Book Recommendation: Framework Design Guidelines (2nd ed.)

The authoritative work by Brad Abrams and Krzysztof Cwalina on .NET framework design was recently updated.

The Book: Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries (2nd Edition)

The Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/tags/Framework+Design+Guidelines/default.aspx

The Blurb:

Framework Design Guidelines, Second Edition, teaches developers the best practices for designing reusable libraries for the Microsoft .NET Framework. Expanded and updated for .NET 3.5, this new edition focuses on the design issues that directly affect the programmability of a class library, specifically its publicly accessible APIs.

This book can improve the work of any .NET developer producing code that other developers will use. It includes copious annotations to the guidelines by thirty-five prominent architects and practitioners of the .NET Framework, providing a lively discussion of the reasons for the guidelines as well as examples of when to break those guidelines.

Microsoft architects Krzysztof Cwalina and Brad Abrams teach framework design from the top down. From their significant combined experience and deep insight, you will learn

  • The general philosophy and fundamental principles of framework design
  • Naming guidelines for the various parts of a framework
  • Guidelines for the design and extending of types and members of types
  • Issues affecting–and guidelines for ensuring–extensibility
  • How (and how not) to design exceptions
  • Guidelines for–and examples of–common framework design patterns

 

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Enterprise Library 4.1 Hands-On Labs

Microsoft Patterns and Practices has released some Hands-on Labs for Enterprise Library 4.1.

.NET 3.5 and VS 2008 are required.

This set of Hands-on Labs is a guide to learn about the application blocks included with Enterprise Library 4.1 and to leverage their capabilities in various application contexts. It includes Caching, Cryptography, Data Access, Exception Handling, Interception, Logging, Security, Validation, and Unity Hands-on Labs.

Docs for Enterprise Library 4.1 (10/2008) are here.

LINQ Links

The MSDN Site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/aa904594.aspx 

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Integrated_Query 

LINQ (Language Integrated Query) was delivered in .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. It addreses O/R mapping issues by making query operations like SQL statements part of the programming language. It also offers built-in support for querying in-memory collections like arrays or lists, XML, DataSets, and relational databases.It also allows you to develop queries in your native development language (with IntelliSense).

LINQ to XML: It is recommended that developers switch over from coding against the XmlDocument DOM to LINQ's XDocument

LINQ to SQL: Deprecated... use LINQ to Entities

LINQ to Entities: Entity Framework Learning Guide

Books:

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Silverlight 3 Beta

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx

Silverlight 3 Beta was unveiled at MIX09. It is a preview release which continues Silverlight’s track record of rapid innovation - introducing more than 50 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications out of the browser, dramatic video performance and quality improvements, and features that radically improve developer productivity.

Important notes:

  • This is a developer beta release only! This means there is no “go-live” licensing available and the end-user runtime of Silverlight 3 is not available. The tools below are intended for software developers only.
  • Once you install the Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio, your development environment will be a Silverlight 3 Beta environment.  Visual Studio 2008 SP1 does not support multi-targeting for Silverlight applications so you will be unable to develop Silverlight 2 applications once these tools are installed.  We recommend that you install the Silverlight 3 Beta tools on a separate environment if you still need to have the ability to develop Silverlight 2 applications.
  • Ensure that you have either Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1 installed as it is a prerequisite for the Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio.