The other day, Mariano , one of the folks who worked with me on the Web Client Software Factory , posted a How-To about changing and extending StateValue (one of the classes in the Composite Web Application Block). I should have pointed it out, but we were trying to ship, which made things a little hectic for me. This how-to has some great information in it. Enjoy. Read More......(read more)

Yesterday Channel9 posted a video interview of me with Rory Blyth that was filmed earlier this week. During the interview I talk about WPF/E, VS Orcas, IIS 7 and the upcoming Microsoft MIX conference on April 30th - where Ray Ozzie and I are the keynote speakers. I also talk about having my car towed by Microsoft campus security. Click here to watch it. - Scott Read More......(read more)

Fresh from the war room: we are very pleased to announce the first release of the Web Client Software Factory. The bits are being pushed into the MSDN gazillion servers, so it will take some time to replicate. In the meantime you can get them from here: http://www.codeplex.com/websf Many thanks from all of us here, to all of you who have stayed in touch with us during this project. Please do keep sending us feedback as we prepare for Release 2. Enjoy! Read More......(read more)

The Web Client Software Factory January 2007 release is now available . About fifteen minutes ago, Eugenio and I posted the release. Now, I need to return to our release celebration and relax a bit. Enjoy. Read More......(read more)

It has been a while since I posted about a review of the Framework Design Guidelines book… But I just saw this one Review: Framework Design Guidelines … It also includes a great picture… ;-) Enjoy! Read More......(read more)

One area that we have been focusing a lot of energy is continuing to improve our online community offerings. A few weeks ago we rolled out a new Community Recognition System as a way to reward members of our community with special recognition for their contribution to the 'greater good.' www.asp.net is what it is today because of your participation and we wanted to provide a way to recognize all of you who participate on and on going basis. The system is built to be scaled out across new community properties as we bring them online and we are still working through the details. I'm personally very excited about what this system offers and how it works/looks. The hall of fame is fantastic. I'm pretty low on the actual totem poll, but we've given...(read more)

Joe Stagner was able to secure two of best counter-hacker he knows (Caleb Sima and Billy Hoffman from SPI Dynamics) to present some Webcasts for our Live from Redmond series . Check out this post to get the details -- key details below too! AJAX SECURITY The series starts NEXT THURSDAY Here are the links to register for all five in the series. Live From Redmond: AJAX Security Basics- The Building Blocks to Protecting Your Applications Built with ASP.NET AJAX Live From Redmond: How Hackers Reverse Engineer and Exploit an ASP.NET AJAX Application Live From Redmond: The Brave New World of AJAX Hacking (and prevention using ASP.NET) Live From Redmond: The Next Generation of AJAX Attacks – A New Generation of Attack Theories Live From Redmond: Best...(read more)

I’ve engaged 2 of the best counter-hacker guys I know to present a “Live From Redmond” Webcast series with me on a very HOT TOPIC. AJAX SECURITY The series starts NEXT THURSDAY Here are the links to register for all five in the series. Live From Redmond: AJAX Security Basics- The Building Blocks to Protecting Your Applications Built with ASP.NET AJAX Live From Redmond: How Hackers Reverse Engineer and Exploit an ASP.NET AJAX Application Live From Redmond: The Brave New World of AJAX Hacking (and prevention using ASP.NET) Live From Redmond: The Next Generation of AJAX Attacks – A New Generation of Attack Theories Live From Redmond: Best Practices: A Look at Developer ASP.NET AJAX Security Mistakes …. and here is some background info on my co-presenters...(read more)

We have posted a Release Candidate for the Web Client Software Factory . We hope you folks will download, install, and try out the factory. Even more importantly, we hope you will post feedback or bugs to our Forums on CodePlex . And if you installed the drop we did on Sunday, please uninstall it first. Read More......(read more)

We have not even released yet and we already have a very impressive show case of web applications and web site using ASP.NET AJAX … I am impressed with the creativity these folks have been able to use. See the full list and read the case studies at the ASP.NET AJAX Showcase Read More......(read more)

Hopefully, people reading this post are familiar with the "Web Application Projects" feature that was added to Visual Studio 2005 in Service Pack 1. If you are using Web Application Projects, you might have noticed that it doesn't have item templates for ASP.NET Mobile Web Forms (which were previously available in Visual Studio 2003). To help users with this scenario, I've created the following item templates for Web Application Projects in VB and C#: Mobile Web Form Mobile Web User Control Mobile Web Configuration File Once intsalled, these templates enable users to create and edit new ASP.NET Mobile Web Forms using Web Application Projects, similar to how one could in Visual Studio 2003. To install these templates download the attachment included...(read more)

Yesterday we rolled out Live Search integration on www.asp.net . Type what you are looking for in the space in the navigation bar and up come the results. Use the tabs at the top of the results window to do a search specific to weblogs.asp.net or forums.asp.net . Enjoy, Simon. Read More......(read more)

The entire team and I have been heads down and working very hard to get the first release of the Web Client Software Factory done. While we still have some work to do, we are getting close to a release. This week's drop on CodePlex is an MSI, rather than a ZIP file of the source code. This is a big change, and shows how close we are to being done with v1.0. A few weeks ago, Eugenio posted about some of the changes to the Guidance Package we are creating. The preview feature is great, so you can see what changes to the solution will be made before they are done. Enjoy. [Update: Of course, after I posted, I noticed that Eugenio has already posted about this weeks' release . ] Read More......(read more)

Last night we posted the Web Client Software Factory Release Candidate on CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/websf This is an MSI for the first time, code complete and content complete, including new documentation topics, enhanced Guidance Packages, substantial performance improvements, among other goodies. The content is pretty much locked, but if you find anything, please let us know! Thanks! Read More......(read more)

At the Consumer Electronics Show this week, Yahoo showed off some cool demos with their next generation messenger client (you can watch a video of it in action at http://messenger.yahoo.com/vista ). One of the really cool things about the new messenger client is that it was built using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and the .NET Framework. One of the most powerful aspects of WPF is its ability to create really immersive user experiences that go far beyond what we typically expect today from either a client or web application. Developers can style and templatize UI in a way not possible with most other UI frameworks, and use its built-in UI/Code separation model to enable both designers and developers to collaborate on projects together....(read more)

I was thrilled to get a copy of The Old New Thing recently. You likely know that Raymond is one of the most popular bloggers on MSDN and his book does not disappoint. There is tons of interesting information on both how and why things work in windows. Raymond added some additional goodness, so it is not just a reprint of his blog… A few interesting ones: Why do you have to click the Start button to shutdown? Buying an entire Egghead Store Sometimes an app just want crash I am particularly happy about Raymond's success as I way back Aug of '03 I noticed Raymond seemed to know everything on some of the internal mailing lists, and I thought he should share it with YOU… So I talked him into starting a blog (he wasn't really that hard)… Check out...(read more)

Before shipping IE7, we had regular “expert chats” where we provided you with an opportunity to ask questions and get more information about IE7 and its many features. Now that we’ve shipped, we’re going to start bringing back regular events for web developers and web designers. Every Thursday at 10am PST, we will be running either a web cast or web chat of some kind. The topics will range from CSS to RSS to HTML to AddOn Development, anything that you might find interesting. In fact, if you have any ideas, I encourage you to leave them as comments and we’ll try to arrange a webcast or chat around one[Kristen Kibble] of your suggestions. We’ll also make sure to vary the depth, for example, one week we may do an intro to a topic, and then a few...(read more)

I'm sitting here on the airplane on my flight back to Seattle. The video screens just kicked out in the last 20 minutes of my movie. I'm on an Air Canada flight where they have the personal video screens in the back of each seat. Nice that I can pick the movie that I want to watch, not so nice that at the climax of "The Guardian" the movie just kicks out. Ah well, I used points for the flight so I guess I can't complain too much. It's not like I paid for it. But, kudo's to Air Canada for offering 120v power ports in their seats. Ottawa was pretty great. For those of you who came out to my talk, thanks! It was great to see all of you. I did a talk about standards compliance with Internet Explorer and then popped into some hands on stuff about...(read more)

Total Training has released Total Training For Photoshop Elements 5, a new 6 hour DVD video series designed to help users master the extensive capabilities of Photoshop Elements 5. If you'd like to see some of the DVD lessons, you can view 3 free clips that Total Training has provided us. (posted by Jennifer Apple)

I love books that inspire you to explore Photoshop in new ways, and Adobe Photoshop Unmasked, from Nigel French, does just that. It ignites curiosity and guides you through mastering Photoshop by understanding layers. (posted by Jennifer Apple)