Sunday, November 12, 2006

[TechEd: Developers 2006] Keynote Impressions

Certainly the most interesting statement by Eric Rudder [1] at the TechEd: Developers 2006 keynote [2] in Barcelona, looking from the developer's perspective, was the promise that all Microsoft server products will get web service interfaces. A clear step in the right direction!

Day 1 - Registration

Keynote speaker and 11-year-old MCP (2x) and MVP...

 

"Arfa Karim from Pakistan, is only 11yrs and Microsoft’s youngest MVP --- hear Arfa talk about how she got into technology and her passion for the subject..."

Office, Vista, and Exchange launched

Eric Rudder hold the keynote

Building Great Applications

".NET is the way to connect"

After all the discussion in the past months about why there is no managed code in Windows Vista and only a sample showing how to use the new API's from .NET, it is an interesting note, that Eric said ".NET is the way to connect": The Microsoft technology No. 1 when it comes to consume (web) services and offer own services to the rest of the world.

 

Next Step for Web Applications

.NET 3.0 [3] and an updated web site [4] were launched simultaneous

 

The Keynote Demo

       

[1] www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ericr/

[2] www.microsoft.com/emea/msdnshowtime/sessionh.aspx?videoid=333

[3] www.netfx3.com

[4] msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

Saturday, November 11, 2006

[Virtual PC] Ever wondered why the Wireless Network Adapter is not recognized?

Wireless network adapter support is not turned on by default, but can be done by following a few steps outlined by the Virtual PC Guy  [1].

[1] blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2006/10/24/why-doesn-t-virtual-pc-2007-recognize-my-wireless-network-adapter.aspx

Why not let your customers test-drive your application in a virtual image?

Not only that the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format is now part of the Open Specification Promise (OSP), there is also a program that allows you to give a VHD to your customers with Microsoft and your software installed for evaluation purposes [2].

I think that is really cool and hat makes it very easy and comfortable for the potential buyer: no more installations, and you can put some sample data in there as well.

[1] www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx

[2] www.microsoft.com/technet/try/vhd/partners.mspx

[ClickOnce] Using the ClickOnce Publish Wizard on Windows Vista

The ClickOnce publishing Wizard on Windows Vista generates the following error message:

"Failed to connect to 'http://localhost/WindowsApplication1/' with the following error: Unable to create the Web 'http://localhost/WindowsApplication1/'.  The Web server does not appear to have the FrontPage server extensions installed."

To solve this you need to do two basic things (thanks to my thinktecture colleague Dominick Baier):

  • Configure IIS to run in IIS6 Compatibility Mode.
  • Run Visual Studio as an Administrator.

Read the whole story (at Brian Noyes' Blog).

Make sure your Word, Excel and PowerPoint can handle the new file format

... by downloading:

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.

from here.

Friday, November 10, 2006

[TechEd Developers 2006] Post Conference Material for DEVWD17 Team System Adoption Best Practices

As promised you will find our slides as well as links to the questions that were raised during the session in this post.

Additionally here's a copy of the links from the slide deck:

Something missing?

You can find more information on Ognjen's blog. If you think something is missing, don't hesitate to contact me.

Your Feedback

Many of you told us though the feedback forms that there were not enough sessions on Team System in general and that you were missing a session which deals with the "first steps" of driving towards a Team Foundation Server deployment in your companies. We clearly heard that and I will pass this on to the TechEd content team.

Need training or support with your adoption process?

In case you are interested I also offer professional training on Team System (either on-site or at various locations in Europe) or individual adoption support.

Technorati-Tags:

[TechEd Developers 2006] Post Conference Material for DEVWD17 Team System Adoption Best Practices

As promised you will find our slides as well as links to the questions that were raised during the session in this post.

Additionally here's a copy of the links from the slide deck:

Something missing?

You can find more information on Ognjen's blog. If you think something is missing, don't hesitate to contact me.

Your Feedback

Many of you told us though the feedback forms that there were not enough sessions on Team System in general and that you were missing a session which deals with the "first steps" of driving towards a Team Foundation Server deployment in your companies. We clearly heard that and I will pass this on to the TechEd content team.

Need training or support with your adoption process?

In case you are interested I also offer professional training on Team System (either on-site or at various locations in Europe) or individual adoption support.

Nächste Woche: PRIO conference in Baden Baden

Bekanntlich wird gut, was lange währt. Das kann man der prio conference [1], der "ersten durchkomponierten" Entwicklerkonferenz unter Obhut der dotnetpro [2] nur wünschen. Auch alte Bekannte tauchen auf. Ralf Westphal [3] kümmert sich um den Inhalt, den die 17 sorgfältig ausgesuchten Sprecher kundtun sollen. Darunter unter anderem auch Miguel de Icaza [4], der "Erfinder" von mono [5]. Und organisieren tut's das e-Team [6], welches von zahlreichen früheren BASTA sowie Microsoft-Veranstaltungen, wie den MSDN TechTalks [7] und Technical Summits, bekannt sein sollte.

Meine Themen werden sein:

  • Tag 2, 16. Nov, 13:45 - 15:00
    Code bauen: Continuous Integration
  • Tag 2, 16. Nov, 15:45 - 17:00
    Code bewegen: Deployment

Die Lokation ist alles andere als langweilig: das Kurhaus Casino Baden-Baden [8] und am Abend kann man sich dem Glücksspiel hingeben... Ich bin gespannt und freue mich darauf viele bekannte Gesichter dort wiederzutreffen.

[1] www.prio-conference.de

[2] www.dotnetpro.de

[3] www.ralfw.de

[4] de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza

[5] www.mono-project.com

[6] www.event-team.com

[7] www.techtalk.ms

[8] www.kurhaus-baden-baden.de

PowerToys for the Class Designer and Distributed System Designers now finally work with non-English versions of Visual Studio 2005

There were a lot of requests in the past months since the PowerToys for the Visual Studio 2005 Class Designer and Distributed System Designers were released, because there were issues with localized, non-US versions of Visual Studio 2005 that these add-in handle correctly.

The great news comes directly from the author dmitriv:

I've just uploaded a Nov 2006 update to release section which should fix the language dependency issue.
To verify that, I did a clean install of Visual Studio 2005 Professional (German) on top of German Windows XP SP2 and verified that it works.

Download the November 2006 release

[TechEd: Developers 2006] Post Conference Material for DEV001 DEMO: Adopting ClickOnce for Real World Applications

In the official slide deck you will find a book recommendation as well as a set of interesting link around ClickOnce technology. Unfortunately there were technical difficulties during the session that did not allow me to switch back to the slides, but you can download them from here.

More Information on ClickOnce

Here is a copy of the "Resources" slide:

And a new one:

Windows Installer

Additionally there's a great comparison between ClickOnce and Windows Installer by Michael Sanford available in the MSDN Library.

You're feedback was heard!

I passed on your feedback to do two sessions out of the topic so that there is enough room for advanced topics as scalability and reliability to the TechEd team.

-Neno

 

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Wednesday, November 1, 2006

Barcelona - TechEd: here we come

Next week the TechEd Developers 2006 [1] takes place in Barcelona [2] and I will be holding one "Demo Extravaganza" (DEMO) on ClickOnce technology and two Whiteboard Discussion (WD) sessions on Team Foundation Server best practices together with my Team System MVP colleague [3] Ognjen Bajic [4].

Demo Extravaganzas are similar to regular breakout sessions, but there is one big difference: there is only one slide allowed. The introduction slide with the name of the speaker. From that moment on the complete talk is a demo with chances for the audience to interact. Usually these kind of sessions are quite high-level, but in my case I discovered that this is not really the case for the whole 75 minutes, so I'm quite excited how the audience will react. :-)

Whiteboard Discussions you might already be familiar with. They are held in pretty small rooms (max. 60 people) to allow discussions. No one (not even the speaker) is allowed to dominate in terms of speaking time. It usually starts of by asking the audience about their questions in respect to the session title and from this the agenda gets generated on the fly and the speakers will try to make a story out of it and answer as the questions to maximize the benefit for the attendees.

Here are the session abstracts:

DEVWD17 Team System Adoption Best Practices

Neno Loje, Ognjen Bajic 

Thu Nov 9 09:00 - 10:15 , Thu Nov 9 15:45 - 17:00

It's a common mistake to think that installing the Team System products is enough to get started and unleash the full power. In fact Team System gets really useful and unfolds its effectiveness by being customized and tweaked to the needs of your organization. Since this is vastly an individual task this session covers the top 10 customizations from the consulting experience of the speaker such as Continuous Integration, enabling rich formatting in the description field for work items, writing a comfortable work item quick entry tool.
Neno Loje will host this whiteboard discussion jointly with his fellow Team System MVP Ognjen Bajic.

DEV001 DEMO: Adopting ClickOnce for Real World Applications

Neno Loje

Wed Nov 8 13:30 - 14:45

Do you think installations must result in heavy headaches? ClickOnce solves a lot of the typical problems by enabling .NET applications to be installed and transparently updated over a server. After a quick overview of what ClickOnce is and how it works we will drill down into the details and cover a number of common real world scenarios: bootstrapping, servicing updates for 5000+ users, scalability, reliability, different versions for different users (or groups) and many more. Make sure to come to this session if you have a WinForms application that you need to deploy or where you want to simplify the current deployment solution.

Additionally you can meet Ognjen [4] and me [5] at the Ask-The-Experts (ATE) booth at the following times:

  • Wednesday, 8 November 2006 16:30 - 17:00
  • Friday, 10 November 2006 10:15 - 10:45

And also make sure to step by the newtelligence AG [6] booth in the exhibition hall if you are interested in high-quality Team System training [7] and consulting. You will find me there occasionally as well. :-)

Hear me speak at Tech Ed Europe

[1] www.microsoft.com/europe/teched-developers/

[2] www.bcn.cat

[3] mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=B3883A23-2E77-4228-975D-1AB7C0925DD0

[4] ognjenbajic.com/blog/

[5] mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile=05D78C24-90DB-42E9-A68A-386B3FFCE244

[6] www.newtelligence.net

[7] www.teamsystemworkshop.com

Synchronize your files and folders with SyncToy for Windows XP and Vista

SyncToy [1] is a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista that provides an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without adding complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of directories at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another. Unlike other applications, SyncToy keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

[1] Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e0fc1154-c975-4814-9649-cce41af06eb7&displaylang=en

[2]  Article: Synchronizing Images and Files in Windows XP Using Microsoft SyncToy

Updated: for SyncToy V1.4 for Windows XP and Vista (based on .NET Framework 2.0)