Microsoft has released a Best Practice Analyzer for ASP.NET and it scans configuration files to find problematic settings of your app. Downloaded and installed.

IE 7 beta 3 available for downloading. This page gives a brief explanation what's changed in this version since beta2.

Finally I received my copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional. In the same package there was also SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition. I installed both to my machine yesterday.

 

When starting Visual Studio, I noticed that any of the ASP.NET -templates weren't available. I tried to point the ItemTemplate directory to the directory where I installed VS, but that didn't help. I even changed some security settings on my Visual Studio directory. No luck. I then though, well, nevermind, I'm going to use new Web Application Project template anyway, so I installed it and that's the only web-related template there is right now with Web Service template.

 

I did some Googling and found a blog post of this issue. Others are having same problems too. Just makes me wonder why Microsoft never fixed this fundamental bug ? I'm still at the situation where I can't see any other web templates than just the two mentioned. Come on Microsoft, fix this ASAP !!!!

Since WinFS is now dead at least in it's current form, MS said that part's of it will be integrated with next version of SQL Server (Katmai) and ADO.NET. See the linked article for more info.

Yet another comprehensive list of AJAX resources, this time on the security tip. Compiled by Max Kiesler.

Finally I had a chance to start working with Atlas. Well, not as smooth start as one would expect and there has been lot's of trial and error issues when beginning with this technology. However there are couple of things I need to do right away. First, I need to obtain my copy of UpdatePanel -book (which I actually just did). Second, there seems to be a good webcast on the subject: Building Real World Apps with Atlas. Hopefully I have time to view that webcast tomorrow.

After being sick for a day and had too much time in my hands I decided to do the following:

 

1. Order my copy of Visual Studio 2005 Professional today (bye bye Visual Web Developer).

 

2. Change my blog to link blog. This is somehing that I blogged earlier but I'm thinking of doing this earlier than planned. So from July 1st this blog serves as link blog with some occasional longer posts too. Link blog publishing schedule remains to be decided but at this time I'm thinking of continuing the daily posts. The links that I post are mainly related to ASP.NET but may cover other topics (.NET) too. Also later today I'm about to start using  my domain, dotnetfilter.com, so this space should be accessible by using that address too.

 

 

I think that I have some fever now and therefore I'm not in the blogging mood today. Hopefully I'm feeling better tomorrow. So another try tomorrow then.

So, my Qtek 8010 (with Smartphone 2003 SE) started acting weird today (it tries to connect somewhere but when looking at the settings I couldn't anything special) and I needed a backup phone. And what would be a better one than my old trustworthy Nokia 6110. This model is like 8 years old, but works like a charm. Man, I need to find a shop at Helsinki tomorrow that could fix my Qtek. Until then, I'm a Nokia guy again :)

 

Because I'm travelling, the next time I'm updating my blog is on Friday, June 23rd.

I have been looking for this book for sometime and now it's been released. It's definately a monster size book (almost 2000 pages), but I'd still like to see if it's really worth buying (maybe some Amazon reviews). I have one  ASP.NET 2.0 book which I have used mainly for reference at work (Pro ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005) and it has proved to be a really great one. But there are others which I'd like to purchase sometime in the future: Fritz Onion's Essential ASP.NET 2.0  and ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks.

 

Oh well, I still have couple of books to complete before those. Maybe sometime autumn then.

Via Mike Taulty's blog I found this pretty comprehensive .NET 3.0 resource named WinFXGuide. Worth checking out. Hopefully they could provide also one single feed covering all the categories featured on the site.

Code generation for ASP.NET 2.0. LINQ May CTP needed in order to try this.

Scott Mitchell has written series of tutorials of how to build an 3-tier data architecture with ASP.NET 2.0. Gonna print this as soon as I get to the office tomorrow morning.

MSDN Magazine has an article by Jeff Prosise about 10 common ASP.NET pitfalls one should avoid. Some good advice here.

Well, as confusing as the Microsoft naming standard is, here is a post which tries to clarify this, at least a little bit.

 

.NET Framwork 2.0 + WCF + WPF + WF + WCS = .NET Framework 3.0.

 

-Edit-

 

And I you want to know what those acronyms mean, check out this post too.

 

-Edit 2-

 

And this site.

Take a look at this list and start your journey to AJAX.

For ASP.NET developers, lots of links of various areas on ASP.NET development. Take a look at the C#/VB links too.

MSDN Wiki - contribute your own documentation to MSDN. I think that this is very useful and cool idea.

I took a quick look at events that MS Finland is arranging in the near future and I found out that there is a very interesting event on August called Web Day 2006 (description is in Finnish). This is definately something that I'm going to participate. According to the description the event is about IE7, Ajax/Atlas, Windows Presentation Foundation, Live Gadgets and so on. It's really cool that an event like this is arranged. Looking forward to it.

Finally there is a book available, which all about how one can work together with .NET and Active Directory. OK, so there have been some other titles on the subject (but not too many) before. This book teaches how to work by using .NET 1.1/2.0's AD-related classes (System.DirectoryServices and such).

 

I received this book two days ago, but I have just browsed it through. Looks very interesting though. I'm really looking forward read this book and learn how to work with AD.