Dan Fernandez's Blog

Christian Gross - send me your email address

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:30:00 GMT

Update: Found him and have started exchanging emails

I received an email yesterday from someone named Christian Gross on Visual Studio Express and open source applications. I tried to write him back and unfortunately the gmail address he gave me bounced. If anyone knows who this person is, send me a working email.

In the email he described emailing someone else at Microsoft and that he was ignored, I'd like to not ignore him again :)

WebMatrix & Razor: A new option for beginning developers

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:51:03 GMT

We' just announced WebMatrix, a new, simple IDE to build and customize Web sites.

As someone who believes we need to provide a better offering for beginners and non-professional developers, WebMatrix, and specifically, the Razor syntax is a huge leap forward. Given that most customers are familiar with HTML and JavaScript, being able to have a concise, lightweight and easy-to-use language (that still has the power of the full .NET Framework) is huge.

In some sense, it’s a return to the simplicity of Classic ASP for building Web pages.

Here’s why I think it’s cool:

A Full Web Stack: WebMatrix gives you the full stack, including IIS Express, SQL Compact Edition, deployment tools, and SEO reporting tools
Perfect for Beginners: If you’re new to ASP.NET or even new to coding, you can build a Web site using Razor in a weekend.
Hoster-friendly: You don’t need any special configuration for Razor syntax pages and even SQL Compact Edition just needs to be x-copied to your bin folder. The one hoster requirement is that they have the .NET Framework 4.0 installed
Content Helpers: Similar to VB’s My static classes/methods or Popfly’s blocks, Content Helpers wrap API’s, handy features, 3rd party services and much more.

Here’s a Channel 9 video with two of the guys behind WebMatrix: Scott Hunter and Simon Calvert.

Aside: The name WebMatrix isn’t actually new, it’s the same name of the tool that existed before Visual Web Developer Express that was solely for Web development.

Correcting Grammar for Microsoft Products and Technology

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:37:00 GMT

I see book authors, editors, bloggers, press, team members, and occasionally even a VP misspell our products, technologies, and features that I thought I would build and maintain a list of the correct capitalization and spelling of the most commonly misspelled Microsoft products and technologies.

Sources: Internal site (brandtools) and the Microsoft Trademarks Web site.

Last updated: April 27, 2010

Incorrect	Correct
.net or .Net	.NET
.Net framework 4.0, .NET framework 4.0	.NET Framework
AdCenter, Ad Center, Adcenter	adCenter
Ado.net, ADO.Net	ADO.NET
Asp.net, ASP.Net	ASP.NET
Asp.Net ajax, Asp.NET Ajax	ASP.NET AJAX
Asp.Net Mvc	ASP.NET MVC
Biz Spark, Bizspark	BizSpark
Clear Type, Clear type, Cleartype	ClearType
Directaccess, Direct Access	DirectAccess
Direct Show, Directshow	DirectShow
Direct X	DirectX
Dream Spark, Dreamspark	DreamSpark
Home Group, Home group	HomeGroup
HotMail, Hot Mail	Hotmail
Info Path, Infopath	InfoPath
intellisense, Intellisense	IntelliSense
Iron Ruby	IronRuby
Kin	KIN
Linq	LINQ
MSN Messenger	Windows Live Messenger
One Note, Onenote	OneNote
Open type, Opentype	OpenType
PlayTo, Play to	Play To
Power Point, Powerpoint	PowerPoint
Powershell, Power Shell	PowerShell
Sea Dragon, Seadragon	SeaDragon
Sharepoint, Share Point	SharePoint
Silver Light, SilverLight	Silverlight
Skydrive, Sky Drive	SkyDrive
Sql Server	SQL Server
Visual Basic .net (the “.net” was removed in the 2005 version)	Visual Basic
Visual C# Express 2010 or Visual Basic Express 2010 or Visual C++ Express 2010	Visual version 2010 Express as in Visual C# 2010 Express, Visual Basic 2010 Express
Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server	Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010
Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 or Visual Studio Professional 2010	Visual Studio 2010 version, as in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio 2010 Professional
WebSite Spark, Website spark	Website Spark
Win 32	Win32
Windows Mobile (except when referring to previous versions like 5.0 or 6), Windows phone 7 Series	Windows Phone
Xaml	XAML
XBOX, xbox	Xbox
Xbox Live, XBOX Live	Xbox LIVE

Caveats

These guidelines don’t apply to URLs (ex: www.asp.net) or to code –namespaces, variables, and classes should follow the .NET Framework naming guidelines.

This list only covers capitalization/spacing rules, it doesn’t cover the correct usage of (tm) or ® symbols or the correct word usage rules. For those, refer to the trademark Web site.

Also note that I have no idea why we are so inconsistent say on keeping features/brands two words versus one word or the order of product/version/year.

Happy Valentine’s Day from Channel 9!

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:57:15 GMT

Yes, it’s Valentine’s day on Channel 9, time to have some more fun. Kudos to Laura Foy as this is her brain-child and of course Nic Fillingham and Larry Larsenfor some great cameo roles!

Bug Killer - A Channel 9 Halloween Special!

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:12:42 GMT

Check out Laura Foy’s “Bug Killer”, a Channel 9 Halloween special.

Visual Studio Documentary Part 1 & Part 2

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:26:00 GMT

I'm the last person to blog about this, but we've launched the Visual Studio documentary on Channel 9. I've embedded the videos below,

Part 1
Part 2
We're also doing the full length interviews with all of the participants that will be posted over the next few weeks

We're also going to be doing a screening at PDC on Monday from 6:30 - 7:30 PM so mark your calendars.

Download Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:00:49 GMT

Hey folks,

Visual Studio Express Editions are now live and available for download!

Express Versions

The Visual Studio Express family is unchanged from 2008 as it comes in four flavors

You can also download an ISO image that contains all of the Express products

Installation

When you install, you can expect the need to restart your PC during installation for the .NET Framework 4.

Beta Expiration

The betas expire June 30, 2010.

Download and start playing now!

My Picks for PDC 2009

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:20:00 GMT

With a little over a month to go before Microsoft’s biggest and best developer event, I wanted to pick out which PDC sessions look super interesting (to me) this year:

Dan’s picks

Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp (Mark Russinovich, Arun Kishan)– I’ll be setting up some projects during this time, but it would be great to go to this workshop. Note that this is FREE and you don’t have to be registered for PDC to go to it.
Building Live Media Viewing Experiences using IIS Smooth Streaming (Vishal Sood) – We’re looking to add Smooth Streaming to Channel 9 so any details on the programmability would be appreciated, plus seeing how they did the NFL player will be interesting
Code Contracts and Pex Go to a NerdDinner with ASP.NET MVC (Manuel Fahndrich, Peli de Halleux) – How to take an existing application and apply Pex for parameterized unit testing and code contracts for improved static checking
Visual C# IDE Tips and Tricks (DJ Park) – As I used to give this talk back in the day, it’ll be interesting to see how it’s evolved for Visual Studio 2010
Microsoft AJAX Library, jQuery and Visual Studio 2010 (Stephen Walther) – How VS 2010 will make building AJAX apps better
ASP.NET MVC 2: The New Stuff (Stephen Walther) – ‘Nuff said
How Visual Studio 2010 was built with WPF 4 (none listed) – This should be a great talk for anyone who wants high performance WPF and that has a legacy Win32 code base
Dynamic binding in C# 4 (Mads Torgersen) – Everything that I’ve seen about C# 4.0’s dynamic features makes me fall in love all over again
Networking and Web Services in Silverlight (none listed)– Interested in the “server push” pattern mentioned for scenarios like real-time chat
Introduction to SQL Server 2008 R2 StreamInsight (Torsten Grabs) – I know nothing about StreamInsight, but it’s a “platform” for processing data over real-time events (with LINQ) so I’m thinking a Twitter or Facebook scanner Coding4Fun project would be great for this
Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic (Luca Bolognese) – Luca is always an amusing speaker and I’m sure this will be a fun session
Advanced Diagnostics, Historical Debugging and Test Automation (Habib Heydarian) – Speaking of entertaining speakers, Habib’s session on cool new testing/debugging features for VS 2010 is another can’t-miss session.
Silverlight Roadmap and Futures (Karen Corby) – Your first look at Silverlight 4
Developing Advanced Applications with Windows Azure (Steve Marx) – Steve always builds cool demos (like faking how to be a CIA agent) and I’m sure this talk won’t disappoint
Windows Azure Present and Future (Manuvir Das) – As I haven’t played with Azure yet, this should be a great place to start and to see their roadmap for the future

What PDC sessions are you most excited about?

Popfly Game Downloader Available

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:22:32 GMT

While it’s sad that Popfly is going away, it’s cool that the Popfly team put out (an unsupported) tool, Popfly Game Downloader, that enables you to download and run Popfly games offline.

- Step-by-Step instructions on Coding4Fun

- Project on MSDN Code Gallery

You can download any shared games, whether they’re your games or community built games.

Kudos to Ben Anderson and Adam Nathan for building the tool :)

TweetCraft – A World of Warcraft Twitter client

Dan Fernandez - MSFT — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:21:00 GMT

After much ado, we finally launched TweetCraft, one of our new Coding4Fun applications. Shout-outs to the other members of the TweetCraft team - Gabor Ratky, Mike Sampson and Lincoln Anderson for building a kick-ass v1.

TweetCraft Overview

TweetCraft is an in-game Twitter client for World of Warcraft. TweetCraft has two major components:

Windows client - A Windows client utility that sends/receives messages from Twitter & TwitPic
Warcraft Addon - A Warcraft AddOn that sends/receives messages from Twitter

Key Features

Send/receive Tweets in-game
Upload in-game screenshots using TwitPic
AutoTweet Warcraft achievements
AutoTweet when you log in, enter an instance or change zones
TweetCraft is also extensible so that AddOn authors can build custom AutoTweet messages

More Information

Blog/Twitter friendly URLs: http://ch9.ms/TC or http://ch9.ms/TweetCraft
Frequently Asked Questions
Getting Started Guide
Coding4Fun article on how TweetCraft works
Extending TweetCraft

Screenshots

WPF Client

TweetCraft In-Game

TweetCraft Client Close-up