August 2005 - Posts

WinFS beta 1 available now for MSDN subscribers
31 August 05 01:27 PM | ianm | 0 Comments   

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 Read More...

A .NET CF search class
26 August 05 07:01 PM | ianm | 3 Comments   

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 Read More...

Introducing w3Schools, plus here comes the PDC
24 August 05 05:17 PM | ianm | 5 Comments   

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 Read More...

(fun / off topic) Just an illusion
19 August 05 06:41 PM | ianm | 6 Comments   

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 keep Read More...

Acrylic now exports XAML - so why do you care?
18 August 05 10:22 AM | ianm | 0 Comments   

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 but Read More...

High level Vista features and benefits
16 August 05 03:23 PM | ianm | 0 Comments   

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 for Read More...

Download WinFX extensions to VS2005 (beta)
10 August 05 10:36 AM | ianm | 0 Comments   

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 Read More...

Illuminating Indigo
09 August 05 10:04 PM | ianm | 0 Comments   

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 Read More...

Ghosts
08 August 05 01:35 PM | ianm | 0 Comments   

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 Read More...