Ever wanted to copy a link from a network file share into an email, and wound up having to traverse the path, click on the address bar, copy the details out, paste it in and then type the filename itself (with the appropriate quotation marks? With Windows...

It would be great to build a community of British-based bloggers who are writing about .NET and related technology. So I've started the ball rolling by creating a list of all the bloggers known to me who fall into that category. So - who am I missing...

The Start menu got a big overhaul in Windows Vista, with a number of significant changes made as a result of usability testing and research. One of the nicest innovations to my mind is the search bar at the bottom, which searches through your programs...

It's been an interesting afternoon! At 4pm Pacific Time today (i.e. Feb 1st 2007 0000 GMT), the Windows version of the WPF/E December 2006 CTP runtime expired somewhat unexpectedly and prematurely (it was intended to timebomb in mid-February, but I guess...

(No, that's not a whale reference...) Today we released a fresh CTP of the next release of Visual Studio (codenamed "Orcas" - it's one of the San Juan islands that are a bit further out from Redmond than Whidbey Island...). I wouldn't normally take the...

It's my hope that you're somewhat excited by this Silverlight stuff, and if so, perhaps you're wanting to spread the word amongst your fellow colleagues. To that end, I thought I'd share a couple of presentations that I've given often over the last couple...

So I'm glad to announce that the WinFX June CTP has just arrived; you can find the download for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 here (the next Windows Vista CTP, due imminently, will also include this same release). As you may have heard at TechEd...

An interesting discussion broke out in the comments to the blog post on Never Mind the Bullets during the weekend over my allegedly loose usage of the term HTML5 to describe the site. Here’s the problem: while strictly HTML5 refers to a draft specification...

Following on very nicely from my last post on deploying Silverlight content to your own production server , I'm pleased to announce that Silverlight Streaming has added full support for Silverlight 2 applications. As well as adding the basic support,...

If you're really astute, you may notice that we released a very minor update to the Silverlight 1.0 plug-in this week. There's no changes to the core itself, apart from a fix to improve logging of Windows Media audio-only streams; as a result, machines...

At Microsoft UK we run at least one free developer event a week on average, catering for all levels of skill from novice to expert. Over several years of delivering presentations at these events, I've built up an array of presentations on different aspects...

With every CTP, we're another step closer... This release is particularly exciting, because it is based on the final .NET Framework 2.0 bits. You've no excuse now for not installing WinFX and starting to prototype a great Windows Presentation Foundation...

I've been collating a few notes on installing the PDC05 "The Goods" discs that were distributed to attendees. Hopefully these tips will help get you started. I'll be updating this list based on reader comments or as new issues are discovered. [UPDATE...

The first of an occasional series exploring life in Redmond from the perspective of a newcomer to the United States. When I posted a blog entry to announce I was leaving the UK subsidiary office of Microsoft to join the Longhorn evangelism team in Redmond...

At last, the mad rush is over. The run-up to a conference like MIX is always frantic: for me, the first three weeks in February involved a constant juggle of competing priorities. With the exception of one last-minute firedrill, the worst was over by...

I've seen isolated reports of the Silverlight plug-in expiring here and there today from a few developers who have the 1.1 alpha installed on their machine. The RTM version of the Silverlight core is 1.0.20926. If you have any other version number on...

If you're into any of the technologies that this blog covers, you'll be mad if you miss the Professional Developers Conference this year. It's actually been three years since our last PDC, so we're overdue! I'm really excited about all the things we're...

A basic question I'm often asked is "where can I go to learn about WPF?" I like to answer this question here on the blog every now and again, both for new readers and to take account of new or changed materials. Here are a few useful resources that...

Three months ago, we launched Family.Show, our first end-to-end reference sample for WPF. Family.Show is a genealogy program that demonstrates the usage of WPF for a complex, realistic scenario. If you're a fledgling WPF developer who wants to pore over...

I'm behind on my write-ups of great WPF applications, and they're stacking up. Sorry! The next application I want to feature is one that has real purpose, in that it's being used by medical researchers at the Scripps Institute who are working on potential...

If there's one thing that puts me off an application, it's when it unnecessarily inserts itself into the Windows startup process so that it can have its very own system tray icon from whence it can spam me with annoying messages. Obviously it makes sense...

MVVM (Model/View/ViewModel) is an architectural pattern that is well-suited for Silverlight and WPF development. It is a variation of the MVC pattern that originated from the development of Expression Blend. At its heart, MVVM imposes three kinds of classes...

A few weeks ago, I started to build what will hopefully grow into a larger library of screencasts covering Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"). The first two have just been posted on Channel 9 . Screencasts are short pre-recorded videos that...

One of my last passing shots as I left the UK for Redmond was to put forward an idea for producing short nuggets of 5-10 minutes of on-demand technical content. It's my assertion as a developer that most of us love clear, concise, spin-free technical...

The one where Tim sells out to the marketing droids... OK, so this is more of a sales pitch than I would normally include in my blog, but I've heard a couple of people over the last week say that they thought TechEd was primarily aimed at IT Pros rather...