David Gristwood's Blog

My blog back in August 2005, entitled “ The Site Navigation System in ASP.NET 2.0 – My First MSDN Article ”, described the structure of the site navigation system in ASP.NET 2.0, and how you could build you own provider. John from SiliconZone has been...

I just wanted to give a little plug for the upcoming TechEd Developer event in November in Barcelona . If you have attended any of the previous TechEds in Europe, you will know what great events they are - lots of speaker sessions, ask the expert areas...

I have just been reading Aaron Skonnard's excellent new article on WCF entitled " Learn The ABCs Of Programming Windows Communication Foundation ". There are lots of articles out there on WCF, but this is probably one of the best written and most concise...

Whilst reading Steve Krug’s excellent “ Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability ” I came across a wonderfully simple and evocative web site – CSS Zen Garden . I’m a developer and engineer, not a designer, so elegant, well designed...

Jason Zander gives a great keynote and shows off Visual Studio 2010, and what looks like a very large touch screen demo with Windows 7 :-) He also give my PDC track a plug - thanks Jason!  

The registration for the 2007 Microsoft Office System Developers Conference is now open. I’ll be presenting at this event, and as one of the track owners, I can promise you an interesting and enlightening experience, especially if you have never considered...

Security never gets the high profile it deserves, or indeed needs. Out there in the big world wide web, there are bad people, so understanding your security options are vital. Why not do yourself a favour – if you are building web sites or services that...

I borrowed a copy of a new workflow book "" Programming Windows Workflow Foundation ", sub-titled "Practical WF Techniques and Examples using XAML and C#", by K. Scott Allen. It's not a big book - a little over 220 pages. It's very readable, and provides...

I'll be at TechEd: Developers in Barcelona all next week, and if you're there too, I hope you a great time, and perhaps I can catch up with a few people. I'll be presenting a session on the first morning, and at the Office "Ask The Experts" area most...

Thanks to everyone who attended the Microsoft Office Developer Conference 2006 – all 400 or so off you – we hope you found it useful. Certainly the feedback was great from everyone I spoke too, and there lots of questions and discussions. I certainly...

I’ve spend most of the last year working with the various technologies that make up WinFX – Windows Workflow Foundation (“Workflow”), Windows Presentation Foundation (“Avalon”) and Windows Communication Foundation (“Indigo”). If you are new to them, why...

My recent " Windows Workflow Foundation: Tracking Services Introduction " article just went up on MSDN. I hope people will find it of interest. I wrote it for three main reasons: Firstly, I wanted to delve a little more deeply into the subject, and articles...

It's Monday and I'm back in the office, here at Microsoft in Reading. I spend Saturday here as well. Not just by myself, but with a load of my colleagues in the Developer and Platform team and around 100 developers who were keen to try out some coding...

Our UK DPE team inside Microsoft recent set up a new blog Innovation for Partners in the UK which we are all posting entries and useful links. The aim of this new blog is to "help ISV's and custom development partners innovate", so if you are an ISV,...

Oops! I’ve been out and about on the road for so long now, visiting customers and presenting at the Visual Studio & SQL Server & BizTalk Server Launch, that I haven’t had much time to blog. I will make amends, especially in this run up to Xmas...

I had great fun last night at the TechCrunchTalk and ChristmasCrunch Party in London. It’s always interesting to spend time with start ups, and the line up of speakers and panel discussions and beer was a winning combination. I’m now trying out Qype ...

I had a chat with Tara Hellier about the work we are doing with Fasttrack – if you want to know more about our fastrack reviews, check it out .

My colleagues in the UK will be presenting at the forthcoming Vista and Office developer launch later this month. The event has proved so popular that its already full! However, the good new is keynote and all the sessions will be streamed live, so you...

If so, why not visit one of our technical briefings? These one day technical briefings on the Windows Azure Platform are designed to help games companies explore the opportunities presented by Windows Azure as a rich, extensible, scalable, resilient and...

Next week is Microsoft’s premier event for senior architects, CTOs and senior IT decision makers, and this is the final chance to secure your place. This two day residential conference, at The Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Gwent, provides you with the...

Next week I'm running two half day briefings, for Microsoft Partners, and in particular ISVs, covering Open XML. This is one of the new features of Microsoft Office 2007, and one the developers will find particularly useful and interesting. This Office...

  We (myself and Eric Nelson ) have been working to create a fantastic opportunity to get yourself up to speed on the Microsoft Azure Platform over a 6 week period, starting May 10th 2010 – without ever needing to leave the comfort of your home or...

It was only when the September issue of Personal Computer World, or PCW as it it always referred to, failed to drop through the letterbox that I realised that it had ceased publication. A sad day, not only because it was an excellent magazine, but because...

I’ve put a little over 1,000 miles on my car with a drive up to Edinburgh and Leeds to deliver a session on Azure as part of the fowa tour 2009 . The tour is going really well, lots of interesting folk at the events, lots of discussion around cloud computing...

We Brits love to talk about the weather. So,  how handy, that as part of the Coalition Government data transparency plans, they publish data from all 150 weather stations and 5,000 forecast sites in the UK. Since launching the data feed, the Met...