Ian Moulster's blog

A number of people have asked me some searching questions since Quartz Web Designer (QWD) was aired at the PDC last week. For example: Is QWD replacing FrontPage? Why would I need FrontPage if I have QWD? Alternatively, why would I need QWD if...

Ok, 10 more things to be aware of that were talked about today (again in no particular order, and again these are just my personal views, take careful note of the disclaimer at the end of the posting!) And yes, I will be digging into these in more...

Day 1 of the PDC is done (apart from a meal with the Press tonight) - what's the scoop on features and announcements? The problem I have is there is just too much - if I list it all this will turn into a marathon posting. So I've decided instead to post...

Leopards shouldn’t be caged. And with a little help from Acrylic I’ve managed to set one free (well, in a virtual sense). Acrylic is a great product for doing clever vector or bitmap based artwork, and if you’re that way inclined you can produce some...

We have released beta 1 of WinFS, the new relational file system for Windows that I'm sure you'll have heard about. It's only available to MSDN Subscribers at the moment - so feel free to get your MSDN Subscription now ! :-) There's also help documentation...

There's a clever little feature on smartphones that I've been keen to replicate in my own .NET CF apps: It's the way searching happens when you're looking for a contact. It works like this: Let's say I'm looking for my friend Graham. I go to contacts...

As I'm a fairly simple sort of person I'm always on the lookout for resources that explain things in really simple terms. I don't have much time and I have too many priorities (sound familiar?) so I when I need to understand something I want to get straight...

If you haven't come across this before, it's really quite surprising. Stare at the crosshairs in the centre of this picture. After a short while you'll notice that there is a green dot revolving around, replacing each purple dot in turn. Then if you...

If you’re watching a number of blogs you will already have seen this news: The August CTP of Acrylic, the code name for our new graphics designer product, can export XAML. It’s an 81MB download but worth it. It might seem an unexciting announcement...

We're making a fair amount of noise about Vista these days but it can still be fairly difficult to get a simple high-level summary of what's in it and why it's interesting. Or so I thought. This page on the PressPass area of ms.com is really useful...

In case you missed it, you can now download the extensions to Visual Studio 2005 for developing WinFX projects (well, a beta version anyhow). So, for example, once you've installed these and you start up VS2005 you'll see new project types for Avalon...

Indigo, or more correctly the Windows Communication Foundation, isn’t the easiest technology to grasp in a 30 second elevator conversation. But then neither is .NET, or Biztalk, or any technology that is reasonably complicated and doesn’t have an obvious...

I’ve decided that there’s a market niche that isn’t being exploited: Blog ghost writing. The concept is simple – you’re under pressure to write a blog that’s informative, clever, readable and just downright good. The problem is you a) don’t have the time...