My good friend Jana has added her voice to the Microsoft.com Community weblog. Jana is the product manager for the technical chat program at Microsoft, so I'm sure many of you know her from that. It looks like she'll be able to pass on some pretty interesting information, such as the following from today's post.

313, 314, 315...and counting
A cool moment happened today at work; we achieved a new record high for the # of attendees (315) in one of our live chats. Keep in mind our normal audience size for a live chat is around 30-50, this morning, the Windows XP SP2 team held a chat with their beta testers and we scrambled to support all attendees & their questions! The previous record (300) was held by the Xbox team; sorry Xbox! One bad thing about a record, you always have to keep topping it :)

The Visual Studio 2005 Developer Center is live! The Visual Studio 2005 Beta will be available for MSDN subscribers to download in a few days. Non-subscribers will be able to order the beta in a few weeks.

In the meantime, check out the new Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition Beta. You can download that right now.

Here are blog entries from various MSDN people with more information:

Sara Williams
Duncan Mackenzie
Kent Sharkey

And finally, be sure to check out the Channel 9 Summer of Express Contest. Lots of good information and cool prizes.
 

These are some of the security related events taking place on Microsoft.com this week.

June 29, 2004 11:00 AM (PST)
MSDN Architecture Webcast: Securing the Development Process

July 1, 2004 12:00 PM (PST)
Chat: Secure Programming Enhancements in Visual C++ 2005
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These are the events taking place this week in Visual C++.

June 29th - July 2nd
Microsoft TechEd 2004 Europe

June 30th, 2004 1:00 PM (PST)
Webcast: The New C++: Overriding, Templates and Generics

July 1, 2004 12:00 PM (PST)
Chat: Secure Programming Enhancements in Visual C++ 2005
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This weekend we posted RC 2 of the Windows XP SP2 Platform SDK. You can use this to get the headers and other files you need to do XPSP2 related development until the service pack is released.

Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 Platform SDK RC2
This is the Platform SDK for Windows XP Service Pack 2 Release Candidate 2. Developers can use this to build and test pre-release applications for Windows XP Service pack 2.

There's a crypto programming chat on Wednesday, June 22 at 3:00 PM (PST). Click here to add this to your Outlook calendar. Here's a link to the chat list and a bit more about it:

Programming with the Cryptography APIs
Join Microsoft experts on June 23rd, 2004 to ask questions about techniques and best practices in using the Cryptographic APIs to help secure your applications. Let us know what changes you would like to see in the CryptoAPI and its documentation on MSDN.

Rakesh Namineni owns the Class Designer for Visual C++, and so this is a blog I'll be watching closely. In this first post, Rakesh lays out a lot of important information about this feature, so you'll want to take a look:

What is Visual Studio 2005 Class Designer?
The Visual Studio Class Designer lets you visualize the structure and relationships of classes and other types. Changes made to the visual designer are immediately reflected in code, and changes made to the code immediately affect the appearance of the designer. Members of a type can be visualized as compartments within the type. Members can be added and modified through a tool window called the Class Details Window that accompanies the Class Designer.

This isn't really specific to C++, but I thought Visual C++ Developer Center readers might find this interesting. Stephen Toub links to this year's issues of MSDN Magazine in CHM format. This is a seriously cool way to read MSDN Magazine on the road:

MSDN Magazine on the go...
Since all of the current year's issues of MSDN Magazine are made available in CHM format, you can easily take multiple issues of the magazine with you on the train, on a plane, or wherever else you might go (though, like many people, I personally prefer the feel of a solid magazine that I can flip through and peruse at my leisure). In addition, every year we release a compilation CD containing in CHM format every issue of MSDN Magazine ever printed, available for only the cost of s&h.

Kate Gregory's latest column is up on CodeGuru. In it, she talks about the language changes in Visual C++ 2005.

C++ Language Changes for Visual Studio 2005
The next version of Visual Studio (formerly Whidbey, now Visual Studio 2005) is rich in improvements to the libraries and the usual sort of "behind the scenes" cleanups and speedups that don't get a lot of press. It has plenty of companion tools and new functionalities that will make the lives of developers simpler and happier. But to me, all of that pales in comparison to what Visual Studio 2005 has done with C++. In this column, I highlight some of the C++ language changes awaiting you in the next Visual Studio version.

The monthly security chat hosted by Mike Nash is Thursday, June 17th at 9:00 AM (PST). This is a great chance to get your questions about security in Microsoft products answered. Click here to add the appointment to your Outlook calendar. Here's more information and a link to the chats page:

Security in Microsoft Products
Join Mike Nash, Vice President for the Microsoft Security Business Unit, and his team of security experts each month. Ask us your tough questions; share with us what is going well and what needs improvement. This is your chance to talk up front with the leading security minds at Microsoft.