Brian Goldfarb's Blog

ScottGu has been burning the midnight oil (literally!) to pull together an incredibly detailed tutorial that shows how powerful Silverlight 2 is going to be.  Get an early scoop on the features in the soon to be released Beta1, get a feel for how Visual Studio and Expression Studio work together to enable developer/designer collaboration that is second to none, and see just a subset of the power that Silverlight 2 is going to bring to building amazing RIA applications.

Get the summary here and links to over 20 pages of details.

Hard to believe all of that power is packed into 4.3mb install that just takes 4-10 seconds on a typical machine without Silverlight.

Let us know what you think -- and remember this is just the beginning, there are a lot more features and details coming soon!

http://halo3.msn.com/videosHD.aspx

I've been buried in Silverlight fun... but check this out.

I'm not one to spread causes, but I comment on this one because for two reasons. (if you don't want to wait go to) http://www.helpvinay.org/dp/index.php

1) He is a friend of a very good friend of mine, good enough for me

2) This is a fascinating example of how the Web and the powerful network effects we are seeing through social networks and other new applications can

As a technologist, seeing how creative energy, individual passion, and the advancement of online communication can change the way we interact is exciting.  I'm lucky to be at the forefront of the enabling technologies, but seldom am I involved in the amazing outcomes that these technologies enable.  It's good to know that things like Facebook, Spaces, online media and more can be put to effective use.

I encourage you to spread the word, read more about Vinay and others story, and if applicable get registered.

http://www.helpvinay.org/dp/index.php

Yes I've been pretty delinquent in posting to the blog lately -- I blame it on too much work... but that's a bad excuse.  I'm going to try and be a bit better about it. 

Anyway, I'm off to Asia tomorrow for REMIX's and a bunch of other meetings and some site seeing hopefully -- I'll be at REMIX in Seoul, Melbourne, and Singapore and also visiting KL and Tokyo -- Definitely say hello if you are at those events and read this :)

Ok, so I've been quiet, but I can explain it -- I've been working really really hard on Silverlight and today is our big day!  Writing live from NAB, but this is big big big -- read about the details on the links below, and stay tuned, this is only part of the fun, keep your eyes on MIX.

Sean Alexander

Soma

And many others will post, but here is the info for now -- stay tuned!

MSDN Silverlight info

Silverlight community (coming soon)

At VSConnections in Vegas Eileen Rumwell had comedian Greg Proops interview some of us.  It was off the cuff and fun.  The conversation was about 10 minutes, but this 1 minute short is me getting completely railed.  Amusing to say the least.

Oh and if that isn't enough -- i found this post by Eileen too -- transcribed below so you can laugh at us.

Do the Support People in India Know About the Helamonsters?

What's a helamonster?  Sand, steam, water powered pcs, and how to motivate the damn things.  Is that a reinstall or just a reboot?  And Brian is in marketing ...  

http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=7fe1d278-9301-42ca-8791-af6e0140bf27

Who was Maria Tall Chief Anyway?  http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=a6c068de-a957-40cc-b02f-f1ed839e3aed

And hopefully some more time to blog :)  This week we re-organized our team so that we could better serve the needs of our internal and external partners and customers.  I won't bore you with the details but it has a pretty major impact on what I do and the kinds of information I want; so I figured this was a great opportunity to share.

My new job is focused on Developer Division (which includes designers) Platform Strategy.  My new team is 100% focused on making sure we build the best possible products for the market place.  We get to understand the trends, the big picture, the little picture, customer needs, partner needs, and partner deeply with the engineering teams run by Scott Guthrie (NDP) and Eric Zocher (Designer) to help ensure that the products we build work great together and address the key needs of the market today, tomorrow, and way into the future.

Sounds like a huge daunting challenge, but gurantee it is going to be a lot of fun.  To date, I've spent some of my time on this, but we've decided it is so critical that me and my team get to spend 100% of our time focused here.  The results, well you'll be able to tell me as we lead up to MIX, PDC, and the next rev's of our products.

My team looks after the following technologies -- so take a look and lay it on, good, bad, ugly.  What you want, what you don't want, what you don't even think you want, anything that you think will help us.

Tools

Expression Studio (Blend, Media, Web, Design) + futures
Visual Web Developer (the Web tooling inside Visual Studio)
"Cider" (the WPF tooling for VS) + futures

Platforms

ASP.NET
WPF
"WPF/E"
AJAX
Internet Explorer
Commerce Server

Plus the broader marketplace that encompasses these technologies (Web 2.0, UX, etc.) 

I'll still be posting as much useful info as I can around the outbound work that we do, but my energy is going to be focused on building amazing products.  Spread the word, we want your feedback.

Oh and joining me on the team are:

Brad Becker looking after Rich Client Platform and Tools

Sanjoy Sarkar looking after Web Platform

Pete LePage looking after IE, Web Tooling, Standards

Max Akbar looking after Commerce Server

and we are hiring a few positions

1) Expression Media and Media Workflow strategy

2) Rich Client Platform - Developer strategy

3) Rich Client Platform - Designer strategy

I'll associate JD's once we write them ;)

Words can't describe just how cool this is :)  And a pretty hot looking "WFP/E" video player to boot -- tell your friends, spread the word!  Definitely a great "non-traditional" type of activity. 

http://channel9.msdn.com/playground/wpfe/rvbplayer/

Scott's own post about this

Danielfe decided to put together a great post about how some of us look like famous people (not that we aren't famous in our own right :)) -- the similarities are shocking -- check it out, let us know what you think.

http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2007/02/26/microsoft-bloggers-the-movie.aspx

After an amazing herculean effort by MSL they have released the official ASP.NET AJAX Training Clinic -- it is a great 2 hour primer on the technology.

Go get trained:

https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/courseDetail.aspx?courseId=73568

and let us know what you think

Lot's of questions about this topic and we just posted some content to help

See ScottGu's blog post

See post from the Sharepoint team

they have all the details.

After seeing the amazing success and interset in the great Refactor! for VB applications last year, we've been working with the folks at DevExpress to deliver a rich refactoring expereince around common Web scenarios and specific ASP.NET features.  My hats off to Mark and othesr at DevExpress for an amazing partnershpi and a fabulous product.  Check it out, tell your friends, and watch the screen cast --  it will blow you away -- everything you want to knowbelow:

http://www.devexpress.com/refactorasp

Training Videos

12-minute Training Video (1024x768):

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/RefactorASP/Presentation/Refactor_for_ASP_NET/

Same Training Video, full size (for larger monitors):

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/RefactorASP/Presentation/Refactor_for_ASP_NET_Full/

Screen Shots

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/RefactorASP/Presentation/MoveStyleAttributesToCss.png

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/RefactorASP/Presentation/MoveToCodeBehind.png

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/RefactorASP/Presentation/SurroundWithUpdatePanel.png

Support

ASP.NET developers should contact support@devexpress.com with any questions, issues, or suggestions concerning this release.

We have also established a newsgroup at news.devexpress.com for this product:

devexpress.public.refactor.asp

Our developers monitor this newsgroup.

Content

This drop includes 25 refactorings, nine of which are dedicated to ASP.NET development:

Add Validator

Extract ContentPlaceHolder

Extract ContentPlaceHolder (and create master page)

Extract Style (Class)

Extract Style (id)

Move to Code-behind

Move Style Attributes to CSS

Rename Style

Surround with Update Panel

(Extract to User Control will arrive in a future drop)

This drop also includes 16 standard refactorings that work inside *.cs and *.vb code-behind files (most of these refactorings also work on code placed inside <script> tags):

Extract Method

Extract Property

Flatten Conditional

Inline Temp

Introduce Constant

Introduce Local

Move Declaration near Reference

Move Initialization to Declaration

Reorder Parameters

Rename

Replace Temp with Query

Reverse Conditional

Safe Rename

Simplify Expression

Split Initialization from Declaration

Split Temporary Variable

Known Issues

· Extract Style (Class) and Extract Style (id) are not available inside content pages. We will address this in a future release.

· Surround with Update Panel does not modify the Web.Config file. We are still deciding whether it makes sense to change this or whether it makes more sense to suppress availability of the refactoring if the project is not set up to exploit AJAX.

We are always hard at work improving the experience around our online properties.  IIS.net has been getting a lot of attention and we just launched an amazing feature to help you get what you need for IIS and contribute back -- all the details below, let us know what you think!

The DownloadCENTER at IIS.net is an inclusive community destination for discovering new components, modules and 3rd-party solutions related to the Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server.

With the worldwide release of Windows Vista tomorrow, this new section of IIS.net is particularly relevant to ASP.NET developers interested in the future of the Microsoft Web stack.

For example:

• The latest release of IIS, IIS7, is included with Windows Vista and has a completely modular architecture which features over forty pluggable components that can be easily added, removed or even swapped with custom implementations.
• The integrated pipeline gives ASP.NET developers a familiar event model and unified programming framework for enhancing the server.
• The powerful extensibility support is available to both .NET (managed) and C/C++ (native).
• The new management & configuration system and tools make it easier to setup your sites so you can spend less time troubleshooting and more time implementing.

There are already numerous downloads for all versions of IIS available today. Many are provided by Microsoft but, even more exciting are those contributed by the IIS community. In the future, the DownloadCENTER will host a large number of extensions specific to IIS7 submitted by Microsoft, ISVs and the broader IIS community.

To learn more about the DownloadCENTER, go check out Bill Staples’ blog post about it or, better yet, go visit today.

Steve Marx has been working behind the scenes on building out a community project to create native PHP support for the Microsoft AJAX Library.  Today he released the first version.  He provides a ton of details in this post which I steal liberally from below.

First download ASP.NET AJAX or grab just the client side Microsoft AJAX Library

Second, check out the codeplex project

Third, code away -- you can contribute bugs, code and more at the CodePlex site -- I think this is pretty darn cool and when you think about this in terms of our FastCGI work on IIS things are getting very cool for developers in any language/platform.

Check out this HelloWorld sample code:

<?php
 
require_once '../../dist/MSAjaxService.php';
 
class HelloService extends MSAjaxService
{
    function SayHello($name)
    {
        return "Hello, " . $name . "!";
    }
}
 
$h = new HelloService();
$h->ProcessRequest();
 
?>

<html>
<head>
<title>Hello, World!</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="../../MicrosoftAjaxLibrary/MicrosoftAjax.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="HelloService.php/js"></script>
</head>
<body>
Name: <input id="name" type="text" />
<input type="button" value="Say Hello" onclick="button_click(); return false;" />
<br />
Response from server: <span id="response"></span>
</body>
<script type="text/javascript">
    function button_click() {
        HelloService.SayHello($get('name').value, function (result) {
            $get('response').innerHTML = result;
        });
    }
</script>
</html>

Definitely let us know what you think!

It has been a bumpy and exciting ride the last few weeks with the Web Platform and Tools group as we've been putting the finishing touches on ASP.NET AJAX.  But now, the ribbon is on the box!!!  After an amazing amount of customer input (you really did shape this product, thank you), I am thrilled to be able to announce that today we released the final, fully supported, 1.0 version of ASP.NET AJAX.  You can download it here.

This release of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 includes all features in previous versions plus:

• Significant bug fixing, performance and robustness work
• Performance and scalability improvements for shared hosting scenarios.
• Globalization fixes to ScriptManager and ScriptResource handler to support date & number parsing and UI culture fallback.
• Updated ScriptResource handler to support automatic enabling/disabling script compression and caching.
• Support for FireFox, Safari, IE, and Opera
• Fully supported by Microsoft, 24x7 through PSS

• Enhanced training capabilities made available on http://ajax.asp.net/ by Virtual Labs and Microsoft Learning Online Clinics, as well as 3^rd-party reference materials and online tutorials.
  
• ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions will be available under a license very similar to the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) in the weeks following the release. This will enable developers to view the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions code aiding in application debugging, maintenance and interoperability.

Check out the full announcement on the http://ajax.asp.net/ homepage.

In case you haven’t seen, Scott Guthrie also blogged a bunch of details to help you get started.  As always, keep the feedback coming.