Robert Burke's MSDN Weblog

I got some great feedback - mostly straight to my Inbox - following my post on which subjects and books would be found in an "Essential Academic .NET Library Starter Kit." I tried to integrate all the advice and arrive at a reasonably-sized topic and...

Suppose, hypothetically, that you had a chance to fill an academic library with all the books and training resources that a student would need to learn about .NET and other Microsoft technologies. And further suppose that, as far as physical resources...

I'm delighted to announce the Microsoft 20 Years in Ireland Academic Celebration!! Through this initiative, which we launched today, we will provide 20 Colleges and Universities across Ireland and Northern Ireland with a comprehensive library of technical...

NIMTUG’s Damien McGivern has been building an AJAX library for use with ASP.NET . If you don't know what AJAX is, you've probably experienced it at some point when visiting a particularly interactive web site and thought "wow, that's cool.. how'd they...

Among the ASP.NET questions I received was one (out in Galway) where someone asked if it's possible to customize the input controls used to enter values into a GridView or DetailsView control. Specifically, I was asked if you can present a DropDownList...

Just a quick note to invite all of you in the Belfast area to a presentation I'm giving on Monday night about SQL Server 2005 that's being hosted by the NIMTUG user group. I'm in the process of figuring out just how much of SQL I can demo in the time...

Being the moose-loving Canuck that I am, I occasionally chew my knees on flights between Dublin and my home and native land of Canada. On one such flight, I found myself flanked by not one, not two, but four young families. Two in the row in front...

April is a great month to be learning SQL Server 2005. Watch our SQL Server 2005 Developer Webcast Series (either live or offline) - and participate in our 11-part Virtual Lab ! SQL Server 2005 Developer Webcast Series Discover how Microsoft SQL...

If you're upgrading from Beta 1 (or a CTP) to Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005, you have to be careful to remove all of the previous build before installing Beta 2 . This note came around and I thought I'd forward it along. Uninstalling Express Editions...

Please let me echo Bill 's congratulations for my effervescent colleague Clare Dillon, who last night won the Young IT Person of the Year award at Ireland's ICT Expo . Truly well deserved. I tell you, I work with some really cool people.

Last Friday, Clare and I attended the gamedevelopers.ie meeting in the Digital Hub. They've got quite an impressive and diverse community there, and I'm encouraged about the future prospects for the Irish games industry! It would be fun to have a discussion...

And now, a software release that needs no further introduction; please welcome Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2! Here's the link to information about Beta 2 [note: for those in Europe, Middle East and Africa, the Beta Experience program starts next week]...

One Microsoft blog I have found particularly useful is Rico Mariani’s Performance Tidbits . Rico is a .NET performance expert, and his thoughtful articles typically offer general thinking points and guidelines for writing high-performance .NET code. ...

In an important company meeting this week, a manager asked all of us in the auditorium to turn our laptops off for the duration of his presentation. Instinctively, I turned to my PocketPC to take notes, which he also asked me to shut down. I completely...

Brian made a significant contribution to our effort to put together the library of books that has become the Essential .NET Academic Collection for our Microsoft 20 Years in Ireland Academic Celebration . We're going to be sending that collection of books...

The month of May will feature a series of MSDN Webcasts that deep-dive into the science, research and engineering motivations behind Microsoft technologies (both present and future). There will definitely be some gems in there! Click here to find out...

This is just too good not to pass on: To commemorate Channel 9's first birthday, Robert Scoble announces over 4 hours of new Channel 9 videos ! Scott Guthrie shows off the Web development features of the next version of Visual Studio: http://channel9...

Sincerest congratulations are in order to two new Irish MVPs, Kieran Lynam and Jamie Plenderleith ! Like many of you, I've had the good fortune of meeting these lads, both online and at events around Ireland. They're very active members of the community...

Yet another long-overdue response to a question I was asked about ASP.NET 2 while on the road: can you allow visitors to your web page to customize a portal site by adding an arbitrary number of instances of a Web Part to a Web Part Zone? Once again...