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I must admit I'm pretty relieved as I would have suffered a bit of a ribbing in the office had I not passed Exam 70-562: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development. This is a relatively new exam and I was a little concerned when I saw I was allowed 3.5 hours to complete it. It did feel like a bit of a marathon at times, especially when presented with one of those extra-long questions. I've definitely been spoiled though. The last time I sat an MCP exam was a couple of yea... [read more]

As you probably know by now, we've released Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and the .NET Framework Service Pack 1 (as well as the recently released SQL Server 2008). I've posted the relevant download links below: Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (ISO) Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (exe) .NET Framework 3.5 Service pack 1 If you've previously installed the beta release of SP1 then the preparation tool provides a quick and easy way to remove all traces before installing the RTM v... [read more]

I was at the end of my tether with wireless. I've been rebooting my router pretty much hourly for the last week or so. Not too big a deal - I don't live in a big house - but annoying all the same. What stopped me replacing the router was a belief that pretty much all wireless routers are flawed. My sisters and I bought our Mum a new laptop & wireless router for Christmas - she was all wired up with broadband and ready to go. Imagine her disappointment (and my hours of frustration) when the r... [read more]

If you haven't already done so, go take a browse at the agenda for ReMix UK, now published on the site. There are 4 tracks of 9 sessions as well as opening and closing keynotes. A key goal for me as a track owner was to ensure there was a structured path through the content. It *really* annoys me when I attend other conferences (particularly Microsoft ones) and this doesn't happen - ie each session seems to have simply "landed" in a random time-slot and location. At ReMix UK you'll be able to si... [read more]

In the last post I talked about how to expose or hide specific tables in ASP.NET Dynamic Data. What if you want to this based on authorization rules, eg whether a user is authenticated or a member of a particular role. ASP.NET offers a powerful set of application services that include authentication and role based authorization. It'd be a shame not to use them. The first (and easiest) way to control access is declaratively in web.config. However, as Dynamic Data makes use of ASP.NET Routing, yo... [read more]

I should mention (as I failed to do so in my last post) that some of the information (in particular the use of the location element) came from David Ebbo and his answers to questions in the forums. If you want to take things even further and implement permissions at the table and field level then things get a little more involved. Stephen Naughton has written a series of articles showing how you might implement this. This is v1 of Dynamic Data and, as David says on his blog, these were things t... [read more]

This first post is about controlling which tables get exposed through Dynamic Data. It's important to remember you have complete control over this and there are essentially two approaches: The "demo friendly" approach (which you'll see me using a lot) where I ask Dynamic Data simply to scaffold all my tables. I still have control (we'll come back to that) but my start point is "show me everything". The "start from scratch" approach where I don't expose anyth... [read more]

I got given an Expression branded Wacom CTE-440 graphics table a while back. I didn't really get on with it. Whatever drivers I installed also enabled a bunch of Tablet PC functionality that I didn't want and I struggled with the pen interface (fine on a Tablet PC when you write direct on the screen, not so easy on the desk next to you). On a whim I plugged it into my 64-bit Vista laptop this morning expecting it to moan and require me to install the Wacom drivers. Imagine my surprise when it j... [read more]

Richard Costall and Pete McGann (sorry, no link) of NxtGenUG have just released a beta version of the classic ZX Spectrum platform game "Manic Miner". While I've obviously heard of Manic Miner (I've not been living in a cave all these years), I've never played it as I've never owned a ZX Spectrum. My computer-owning history goes something like: Sinclair ZX81 Jupiter Ace Oric 1 Dragon 32 BBC Model B Atari 520ST before entering the world of PCs with an Amstrad ... [read more]

I've been trying to help out a colleague, Bruce (I use the word colleague but Bruce is several rungs up the greasy pole from me) with his admirable desire to build an ASP.NET site to share his knowledge and experience about the Maldives with the world. I remember helping him some time ago (must be over a year ago). When he came to my desk this week I was particularly endeared when he said something along the lines of "Thanks for the help you gave me way back, it's come on quite a bit since ... [read more]

I received an email question recently from a customer asking how they could dynamically load the LayoutTemplate for a ListView from a UserControl. I banged my head on this one for a while and eventually mailed our internal ASP.NET alias asking if someone could help. Fortunately David Fowler could. Hats off to him - the code below is his solution. Let's start with a basic ListView page that we want to convert to load the LayoutTemplate from a UserControl. Something like this will do: <%@ Pag... [read more]

Undoubtedly, damage was done to Vista's reputation in the early days after launch. And inevitably such damage was amplified by the "social networking" effect, particularly as a result of Apple's very effective Mac ads which poked fun not just at the platform but at the people that chose to use it. How one recovers from a perception issue is an interesting question. Perception *is* ultimately more important than reality, at least where brands are concerned, and such negative perception... [read more]

Yes, I have started Twittering or Tweeting or whatever you call it (you can see my Tweets here) and immediately I wanted to update my blog to [a] show a "Follow Me" link and [b] show my latest tweets. As I'm hosted on blogs.msdn.com, I don't have much control over my blog. Essentially I can override the Title, News and Header, apply a different Skin and add some CSS Overrides. What I can't do is directly modify the skin content so a little effort is required to, for example, add someth... [read more]

Of course, once you've found one postcode, you find yourself a reason to find lots of them as Ashley [no link] found out. You could do something like the below (which plots all the locations in postcodeArray and even labels them this time). The pushpins are added to an array before being added to the map in a single call to map.AddShape(). You need to call map.Find() sequentially. From the MSDN documentation "The callback function for this method is not re-entrant. If an application calls Find b... [read more]

I've just been going through my diary to make sure everything is up to date and thought it might be worthwhile posting a list of events I'll be speaking at in the near future while things are fresh in my mind. Many of these events aren't open for registration yet so if you want to come along, make sure you keep an eye on the relevant page or subscribe to the feed. I haven't included ReMix UK 08 as I'm not sure whether or not I'll be speaking there. I've allocated myself the job of "fallbac... [read more]

Things are starting to shape up nicely on the developer track so I thought I'd try and give you a flavour of what you'll see if (surely "when"?) you join us in Brighton in September for ReMix UK. There'll be a big focus on rich client with Silverlight, WPF and IE8 featuring prominently. You can also expect to hear a lot about data and getting stuff into and out of your shiny new client. On top of that there'll be plenty of ASP.NET, some Visual Studio IDE Tips and Tricks and some stuf... [read more]

I'm a big fan of Virtual Earth and often try and sneak it into demos as many people seem unaware of its existence or unaware of just how good it is. A common question I get is "Do I need to use lat / lon or can I plot a postcode?". Absolutely you can plot a postcode - the big advantage of having lat / lon is being able to pin point *exactly* where something is (and probably a little less overhead). Here's an HTML page that uses the Virtual Earth map control to plot the location of the Microsoft ... [read more]

I don't do so much with Open XML these days but I still get a few questions from people and I'm still on some of the internal aliases. A recent message from Eric White caught my eye. "Pranav Wagh has built a much improved version of OpenXmlDiff, with a graphical user interface." TBH, I don't think the original "unimproved" version was around when I was messing with Open XML. This would have been a very handy utility to have to hand, especially when my System.IO.Packaging code... [read more]

I am on the verge of Twittering. I still don't get it and the more "I just swatted a fly" tweets I see on there the less I get it. But I have this sort of itch that says *unless* I try it I just wont get it. And unless I try it I may be missing out on something special, some sort of communications revolution. Yet something still holds me back. A big part of my job is communications; trying to connect with lots of different people in lots of different ways. Maybe they see me at an even... [read more]

A few things I've learned over the last 10 days or so... Skye is an amazingly beautiful place It's a lot further to the Quiraing than the guidebook suggests It's a lot steeper up to the Old Man of Storr than the guidebook suggests The base of the Old Man of Storr is about the same altitude as the fast jet flypasts - you will get a fright Loch Lomond is the largest loch in Scotland by surface area Loch Morar is the deepest Loch Ness the biggest by volume (in fact Loch ... [read more]

In case you haven't seen it, we've published our roadmap for ASP.NET AJAX on Codeplex and there's an associated thread for feedback here. If AJAX is your thing then please have a read and provide feedback - now's the time if you want to steer the shape of future releases. The roadmap runs to 10 or so pages so I wont try and summarise everything here but it includes proposals such as improvements to the DOM APIs including support for native querySelector APIs, client data and UI templates (remem... [read more]

Yes, crazy though it is, we're setting off tomorrow on a 600+ mile trip to Skye in our 38 year old VW camper. Skye must be one of the most majestically beautiful places on earth yet I've never visited. When we got our camper we promised ourselves a trip up there and the time has come. It's going to be an adventure! Normal service (if there is such a thing) will resume in about 10 days... If we make it back that is... Technorati Tags: skye,vw,camper,adventure

It's funny (almost a little spooky) that only last week I was talking to MikeT about Line Rider and whether we'd ever see a Silverlight version. Then lo and behold I get an email today pointing me to the new Line Rider site in Silverlight 2. Line Rider is a deceptively simple "game" - draw a line then let loose a little bloke on a sledge to ride it for you. And it's not easy - he falls off and crashes that sledge at any opportunity. This is about the level of sophistication I can muster... But... [read more]

I posted back in May about the ability to combine standard ASP.NET webforms pages and ASP.NET Dynamic Data pages but I didn't go into the ins and outs of trying to add Dynamic Data capabilities to an existing site. Scott Hunter has two posts on adding the capability to web sites and applications: How to add Dynamic Data to an Existing Web Application How to add Dynamic Data to an Existing Web Site He documents the files, references, changes to web.config etc required to make this work. ... [read more]

I'm not sure how I missed this but we've shipped a ScriptReferenceProfiler control on CodePlex specifically to assist with the new ASP.NET AJAX script combination feature in .NET Fx 3.5 Service Pack 1. In case you're not familiar with the script combination feature, you can now ask ASP.NET AJAX to "aggregate" the scripts required for your page into a single request. This is done with the new <CompositeScript>  element on the <asp:ScriptManager> control. But how to know... [read more]