June, 2009

A simple, but very powerful, little feature, especially when you deal with white space as much as I did when I tested the editor. The first time I saw one of our developers using it, I thought, "Yuck!" But now I'm addicted, even when I'm not testing white space vs tabs: From the Menu Bar, go to Edit – Advanced – View White Space From the keyboard, press Ctrl+R, Ctrl+W (using the General...

The Ottawa IT Community Awards Night takes place tonight (Tuesday, June 30th), and if you want to attend, you’ve got until 4 p.m. to register! It’s hosted by these four groups: OttawaSQL.net Ottawa .NET Community Ottawa Windows Server User Group Ottawa Code Camp The event will honour the partners and members of the groups who helped make 2008/2009 another great season for developers, IT pros and DBAs...

Did you know that Visual Studio offers two different selection models Stream and Box? Stream selection is what everyone is familiar with using Shift+Arrow Key. Box selection allows you to manually select columns and lines at the same time. Just hold down Shift+Alt+Arrow Key , and you'll quickly get the feel for box selection. Cut, Copy, Paste... it all still works, but just keep track of...

Introducing LearnHub LearnHub's home page. If you’re a student applying to colleges and universities and are looking for help with the process, you should try LearnHub . Based in Toronto, LearnHub is a social learning network that helps students to prepare for standardized tests, assists with finding places to study abroad and provides career counseling. LearnHub’s site has hundreds of thousands of...

I didn't know about incremental search until someone showed me. Now I can't live without it. Press Ctrl+I Start typing the text you are searching for. Note: You'll see the cursor jump to the first match, highlighting the current search string. Press Ctrl+I again to jump to the next occurrence of the search string (advanced tip) Press Ctrl+Shift+I to search backwards ...

If you told me a year ago that I'd be running a beta version of Windows on my main production machines, I'd have checked you into the nearest psychiatric institution. But here we are, more than half a year later, and I've been productive and happy with both the beta and release candidates of Windows 7. It’s running on both the heftier laptop I use for development and demos and the smaller one that...

Better late than never! Here are a couple of pictures I shot at the Metro Toronto .NET User Group in late May, where I presented my walk-through of ASP.NET MVC , Canada’s Next Top Model View Controller . Colin Bowern opened the session with some quick announcements about upcoming events as well as other .NET user groups in the Greater Toronto and surrounding areas: He then introduced me, and I got...

The scene at the big communal table at the May 29th Coffee and Code. There’s a Toronto Coffee and Code this Friday! For details, see the Coffee and Code blog.

The covers will be coming off our next generation of user experience tools and technologies on July 9th. That’s when Microsoft will be unveiling Silverlight 3 , which gives you the all the goodness of RIA (Rich Internet Application, although you can use Silverlight to make desktop apps as well) with out the PITA (Pain In The Anterior regions). To help promote Silverlight 3, we and our pals at ObjectSharp...

Some interesting news tidbits today: At the recent Social Recruiting Summit , LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman suggested that people are more honest on their LinkedIn profiles than they are on their resumes . Why? Because LinkedIn profiles are public and visible to your peers, who can call you out on embellishments and untruths. I write a little more about this in my personal tech blog, Global Nerdy ...

Edmonton is holding a Code Camp on September 26th, 2009! It’s going to take place at Grant MacEwan College’s downtown campus. There’s a call for speakers – if you’ve got a topic that you’d like to present, now’s the time to let them know. You can find out more at the Edmonton Code Camp site and the YEGCodeCamp Twitter account .

If it’s Tuesday, it must be time for Guelph Coffee and Code! See the Coffee and Code blog for details.

The team has been hard at work to get this surprise ready and now we can let it out of the bag! We are happy to announce that MuchMusic will broadcast the MuchMusic Video Awards online in High Definition powered by Silverlight and SmoothHD technology!!! This is one of the biggest shows in Canada (Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, and a ton of other stars that teenagers go crazy for).  It’s also the 20th...

I’ve been in conversations we're developers often discuss and argue over "the ultimate" process in software development. It's possible to standardize on one process, but most probably not likely. From my experiences and working with development teams, waterfall methods are useful where there are clear, stable requirements. Sadly enough, this isn't the case for most waterfall projects. When...

I love my job.   I really do.  Not everyone gets to say that with as much passion as I can, so it’s a special privilege to be in this position (particularly in this economy). I believe that my role here at Microsoft Canada is one of the best in all of Microsoft.  The mission of the job is amazing – connect with Canada’s Technology Professionals, build Canadian momentum for key strategic...

  Last week when John blogged about the fact that TechDays registration was coming soon, I have received a number of emails and phone calls from folks across the country asking “When can I sign up?” and “Where can I get more details about TechDays 2009?”.  I am pleased to say that we have a two part answer for you on this: On the question on “Where can I find out more about TechDays 2009...

Technorati Tags: VSTS2010 , Visual Studio 2010 It’s great to see the buzz around VSTS 2010 already starting to take place. Just last week John Bristowe and I were at DevTeach in Vancouver where we ran the first ever VSTS 2010 Beta 1 InstallFest to a packed room of brave souls armed with their laptops. It was impressive to see that we actually didn’t have any casualties;-) In fact, the installation...

I'm going to be in Ottawa this week doing a presentation on web accessibility, so I'm taking advantage of my being there and declaring a Coffee and Code event for this Thursday, June 18th at the Bridgehead Cafe at 109 Bank Street (at the corner of Bank and Albert). It’ll run from 12:00 noon to 5 p.m.. I will be joined by my fellow Microsoft evangelists from the area, the guys I like to refer to as...

As a rule, Chapter One of most programming books seems to leave me with a vague, unsatisfied feeling. I usually finish them with either: A “Hello World”-style application that provides an initial “It compiled!” rush, but little else, or A “Trees dies for this?” sort of indignation, if the chapter is one of those perfunctory one with a name like “Getting Started” that provides the same information you...

[Cross-Posted From “ The Northern Edge Of Microsoft ”]   As the school year comes to an end and summer begins, I was thinking a lot about all the students out there trying to discover the first step in their career.  Last year we surveyed 200 Canadian IT professionals, looking at their hiring and technology needs. More than 60 per cent of respondents agreed that students leave school with...

If it’s Tuesday, it must be time for Guelph Coffee and Code. The Guelph edition of this gathering of developers over coffee -- or any other beverage of their choice -- is hosted by Cory “SyntaxC4” Fowler and takes place every Tuesday in Guelph at the Albion Hotel ( 49 Norfolk Street, Guelph ON ) from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.. Tonight, our own John Oxley , Director Audience Marketing and Community Evangelism...

About Make Web Not War If you’re interested in web design and development, you should attend Wednesday’s Make Web Not War conference. It’s being presented by Microsoft Canada and is about the how open source tools like PHP and Microsoft technologies like IIS and SQL Server 2008 can be used together to make great web sites and applications. No matter how much (or how little) Microsoft technology you...

Hi Everyone, I’m spending some time this afternoon catching up on some emails, reading planning briefs and building out our Fiscal Year 10 plan.  As an FYI – we have a July to June fiscal year.  Starting July 1st we are in our FY10. If  you can’t tell I’m pretty excited about this coming year and amazed by how my team, key community individuals and many others around the country are...

The Make Web Not War event in Toronto takes place in exactly one week! We’ve been spreading the word about the event and I thought I’d do my part by helping out with a video, accordion-style: MAKE WEB NOT WAR - VIDEO FOUR - TORONTO from The Biz Media on Vimeo . There’s only one mistake in the video – “accordion” is misspelled. If you’d like the follow me on Twitter, the correct ID is AccordionGuy ...

Hi Everyone, Thanks for your all your emails.  After my announcement on Monday we’ve had many inquiries from those that need to gain approval, want to get the dates booked in their calendar or just want more information.  I’m sure you understand there is a process we have to follow to get such broad announcements to you, yet from your feedback….it’s going too slow to meet your needs.. ...