Okay, so let’s pickup one of those “learnings” from my last post . How do I get started with the mobile device emulator in Visual Studio 2005. You can start the emulator from the Tools -> Connect to Device menu. Select “SmartPhone 2003 SE...

You can download it here . Make sure you uninstall previous versions (through Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs) before installing the June CTP. I upgraded yesterday without any issues. You can also download documentation and samples at the same...

Everyone at work has been ribbing me over a little mobile application I’ve been developing. I don’t get it – I think it’s great. I carry this phone around with me everywhere. Once in a while I make / receive a call on it but it can do so much more. I...

Someone asked about my “blogpost” magic word (in SlickRun – see earlier post ). This magic word starts Word 2007 with the “new blog post” template open so all I have to do is type "blogpost" in SlickRun and I’m ready to start creating my next posting...

It seemed like the day took forever to come around and, like the World Cup itself, it was over in a flash but on Friday we set off from Twickenham on a footballing pilgrimage to Cologne to see the mighty Togo take on France. With a dash to Dover to catch...

Cypress is a fully supported free add-on to Visual Studio to allow you to build Office 2007 applications with Visual Studio 2005. VSTO “Orcas” will provide additional support including Excel workbook and Word document support and visual designers for...

I’m delivering a session later this week at the UK Office Developer Conference on “Microsoft Office Word 2007 Structured Solution Authoring and XML” (hey, I don’t come up with the titles!). Much of the session is focused on content controls – a powerful...

We expect to get questions at events when we’ve finished a presentation but it’s surprising how many people come up and ask “What was that application you were running that allowed you to type commands on the desktop?”. Well, the answer for the uninitiated...

One of the demos I show at the Roadshow is how easy it is to hook up Atlas controls to ASP.NET application services (in this case the Profile Service). I use a DragOverlayExtender to add drag/drop functionality to a panel on my page. The position of this...

I got a question at a recent MSDN Roadshow regarding using the Atlas AutoCompleteExtender with a list that already exists on the client (ie no call to the server). That’s not the scenario the control was designed for so the simple answer is no – that...

Also noticed the new MSDN Wiki site referenced on Soma’s blog. A chance for everyone to add to the MSDN documentation. Should be very interesting indeed….

Makes a lot of sense to me and the reasoning behind this is a theme we’ve been trying to stress at the MSDN Roadshows ie WinFX is an extension of the .NET Framework ( "The .NET Framework has always been at the core of WinFX, but the WinFX brand didn’t...

As you’ll have gathered from a test post earlier, I now know how to blog from Word 2007 and it’s really, really nice. Of course my reference point is not that great but I do think the ability to use a very familiar tool (in this case Word) and just hit...

Okay, subsequent to my rant about hotel food (and burgers in particular) I’ve stayed at two hotels for the MSDN Roadshow and both have proven me to be utterly and completely wrong in my belief that “There's something wrong with hotel food in this country...

At yesterday’s MSDN Roadshow event in Manchester (if you were there, apologies again for the temperature in the presentation room. I was melting and I had the luxury of stepping outside after my sessions - I was impressed so many of you stuck it out for...

Many of you will probably be aware that the team I’m a part of generates a stream of short technical videos we call “ Nuggets ” and I generated a few ASP.NET 2.0 videos some time back fully intending to create a full series. Of course I was overtaken...

I am at the DDD3 day today and Martin has just showed me how to blog from inside Word.

I wont mention the names of the hotels but just recently I have had two terrible experiences. In Birmingham for the MSDN Roadshow I ordered room service on arrival (about 8pm) so I could do some work in my room. I was told it would take about 45mins ...

Jeez - I can't believe how long it is since I wrote anything. The MSDN Roadshow has completely absorbed me (and a few others) - you just forget there's a world outside! (By the way, if you were hoping to attend the Roadshow and couldn't get a place -...

And of course, how could I forget Andrew Whitechapel's Blog ...

I was asked at last night's event if it will be possible to work with the actions / task pane in Outlook in the 2007 release of Office. The good news is that custom task panes are supported in Access, Excel, InfoPath, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word. Here...

A big thank you to everyone that turned up last night to hear me talk about the 2007 Microsoft Office System from a developer's perspective. And a big apology as well for the pregnant pauses as my overworked laptop struggled to cope with host OS + 2 Windows...

I've been blown away by just how good PowerPoint 2007 is. Since I got back from the Office System Developers Conference I've been using the various 2007 Office products more and more - in particular PowerPoint. I had 2 presentations to deliver yesterday...

Marcus and I each did a session yesterday in conjuntion with one of our partners, QBS Software . Marcus was talking VS2005 / Fx 2.0 productivity features and I was talking ASP.NET 2.0. Neither of us managed to sum things up in quite such a comprehensive...

In Seattle that is... Microsoft Office System Developers Conference