Simon's Mu-zings

Have your favorite ASP.NET book listed on forums.asp.net

Joe is working on recommended book sections for each forum in the ASP.NET forums. If you have a favorite book that Joe should know about, send him an email with a pointer to the book (title and author) so he can review it and add it to the site.

Thanks,

Simon.

Posted Wednesday, June 27, 2007 4:18 PM by simonmu | 2 Comments

Search on www.asp.net now Live

Yesterday we rolled out Live Search integration on www.asp.net. Type what you are looking for in the space in the navigation bar and up come the results. Use the tabs at the top of the results window to do a search specific to weblogs.asp.net or forums.asp.net.

Enjoy,

Simon.

Posted Monday, January 08, 2007 6:57 PM by simonmu | 1 Comments

Announcing the ASP.NET website Community Recognition Program

Last night we launched the Community Recognition Program for the www.asp.net site, which seeks to recognize each person’s contribution to the site.

Historically the greatest contribution has been in the forums, where many people moderate and answer questions from developers. More recent initiatives include the ability for people to submit articles for the home page, to provide suggestions for content (see the Videos page), to vote on polls (see the By the Community, For the Community program), and to publish weblog entries (see the Community Blogs page). Then with the launch of the German, Spanish, French and Chinese foreign-language sites, there are even more levels of contributions that people are making to the site.

The Community Recognition Program will keep track of each person's contributions and publish the details for all to see. The program is very simple. Various activities on the site have points associated with them, and when a community member does that activity he or she will receive that many points. Specifically, here's the current set of activities and points for each:

** By invitation only

As a community member earns more points, he or she will progress through five different levels, starting with Member and ending with All-Star:

To start the ball rolling, we awarded 5 points for each forum post a member has contributed to date. Check out the Community Recognition Program home page for full information on the program and see the Hall of Fame page for lists of the top contributors in the community. View your own profile to learn of your own Level within the program.

Happy holidays and have fun contributing,

Simon.

PS - Now you know why my blog has been quiet for the last two months J

Posted Tuesday, December 19, 2006 6:16 PM by simonmu | 1 Comments

The next series of team member Live From Redmond webcasts

The feedback continues to be highly positive about this series of webcasts, so we are offereing the third installment of the Live From Redmond webcasts. These webcasts are done by actual team members working on the technology itself - so if you have a question you won't get any closer to the source than here.

Upcoming Smart Client Talks

Upcoming Web Talks 

I hope to see you at some of these talks,

Simon. 

Posted Monday, October 09, 2006 10:24 AM by simonmu | 12 Comments

Simplified Chinese and German sections on www.asp.net

Simon.

Posted Tuesday, October 03, 2006 10:35 AM by simonmu | 1 Comments

Webcast series on Migrating to ASP.NET

If you are familiar with JSP, PHP or ColdFusion and would like to learn more about ASP.NET, we just added a series of webcasts to the site here. We have the first few webcasts for each area on the site, and then link to the complete series on www.learn2asp.net.

If there are other topic areas you would like to see here, let me know.

-- Simon.

Posted Tuesday, September 05, 2006 10:35 AM by simonmu | 3 Comments

Reference center for deploying client apps.

We’ve recently added a new section on www.windowsforms.net focused on deployment of client applications. It has information on Clickonce, SMS, and Windows Installer. Check it out here.

Posted Thursday, August 17, 2006 6:38 PM by simonmu | 0 Comments

Need a Windows Forms book?

I recently received an email asking me which books I recommended for someone who was getting starting with Windows Forms development. I started to respond by saying look at the books page on www.windowsforms.net and then I checked out the page and realized it was out-of-date. So there is now a new books page on the site that categorizes the best Windows Forms books that are currently available.

For complete all-feature discussions there are books like Windows Forms 2.0 Programming (by Chris Sells & Michael Weinhardt), Programming Microsoft Windows Forms (by Charles Petzold), and Windows Forms in Action: Second Edition of Windows Forms Programming with C# (by Erik Brown).

For a specific data focus there is Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0: Programming Smart Client Data Applications with .NET (by Brian Noyes), while for controls there is Matthew MacDonald’s Pro .NET 2.0 Windows Forms and Custom Controls book or Juval Lowry’s Programming .NET Components book.  

Hope the new books page helps, and if we have missed any let me know.

Thanks,

Simon.

Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 7:17 AM by simonmu | 0 Comments

Regular Series of Atlas How-Do-I videos to be Published

We received such positive feedback on the first eleven How-Do-I videos that were published on www.asp.net that we decided to do another series of videos focused specifically on Atlas and the Atlas Control Toolkit.

Last Tuesday Joe Stagner’s first two videos were released and there will be two more a week until we run out of topics. These two focus on building your first Atlas application and your first application using the Control Toolkit and in future weeks Joe will be drilling into more complex Atlas topics.

I hope you enjoy them and if you have topic suggestions, enter the into the suggestion box on the right hand side of the videos page.

Thanks,

Simon.

Posted Monday, July 31, 2006 5:53 AM by simonmu | 0 Comments

Foreign Language subsites on www.asp.net

I’ve received several questions recently asking various questions about the foreign language sub-sites that we launched on www.asp.net, specifically the French and Spanish sub-sites. So let me go through the questions one-by-one.

Question: Why is there a language X sub-site but not language Y?

Answer: I initially picked seven languages I thought were good potential candidates for foreign language content on the site. Those languages were chosen by looking at web traffic, 3^rd party community sites for web developers, and to some degree on my ability to be able to parse the content (I can read a little German, French and Spanish, so it’s easier for me personally to review content for those languages than say for Japanese which I can’t read, write or speak.) After reviewing the feedback from the community members and discussing with Telligent the work required to launch a new sub-site, we created a prioritized schedule that had French launching first, with Spanish next.

Question: The follow-on question is "I would like to help you create a XXX language sub-site for www.asp.net. What do I do?"

Answer: Email me with information. There are two fundamental requirements I always look for: 1) is there enough local language content available to make the site interesting not only at launch but months after launch and 2) can we make a site that is useful and engaging for developers. Specific content that makes sites engaging and useful are: articles, blog feeds, FAQ content, video content, tutorial content, and  language community sites all in the specific language.

Question: How do I get my blog added to the front page blog roller for language X?

Answer: Send me your blog and RSS feed. If you have a general blog then send me the tagged specific feed for just your web development content. Assuming not every second post is about your visit to the doctor’s office, we will take it from there.  

Question: I run a community site that isn’t listed as one of the community sites?

Answer: Email me your link and we will get it added. Note that we only add sites that have significant web developer content on them.

Question: I know of a great FAQ, tutorial, etc. that isn’t list on the site. How do I get it listed?

Answer: As above, contact me. If it is an article you can submit it directly using the article submit buttons for English, for French, and for Spanish. If it’s other content for now email me. We’re thinking about a better content submission engine but that is a little ways off.  

Question: I would like to translate some English content into another language. How does this work?

Answer: Contact me with details and we will go from there.

Hope this helps, and if there are other questions I missed, let me know.

-- Simon.

Posted Wednesday, July 19, 2006 11:33 PM by simonmu | 0 Comments

Upcoming team webcasts - Live From Redmond series

By The Community - For The Community

I have loved this program since first proposed a few months ago, as it’s a great way for some of the experts in the community to provide content that the community is most interested in. It is a great partnership for everyone involved and a big thanks to Pete who picked up the implementation details and pushed the program live to the www.asp.net site two weeks ago.

So what does it take to launch such a program? Actually quite a lot, and it was a long road to fruition:

1.       First we built and deployed the voting module. If you remember earlier in the year we had the voting module on the front page asking questions such as

a.       “Which database do you use most commonly with your Web applications?”

With the results being: 37% SQL Serer 2000, 20% SQL Server 2005 and then MySQL at 13% over 1388 votes.

b.       “How are you adding Ajax support to your Web applications?”

And the 1029 votes said: 31% Ajax.NET, 28% “Atlas” (Yeah!), and 15% “We’re not”.

2.       Then I contacted the asp.net MVPs to see who would be interested in participating. There were a series of emails and feedback from which we made some changes to how the program was actually implemented and how the voting should work.

3.       With Brendon, Scott, Ken, Mitch, Curt, and Jonathan volunteering to be the expects we were set, other than finalizing where the actual samples would live, the timeframes between the voting starting, ending, and when the sample would be published. Legal also wanted to review the program and provide their input.

4.       Pete then picked up the program and worked with our good friends at Telligent to push the program live.

The first voting just closed, with 930 community members voting, with the Event Organization Site receiving 47% of the vote. Next on the list were Track Back for Everything (19%) and Creating a Mashup (16%). Mitch is currently working on the Event Organization Site for publication to the community on August 4^th, and voting for the next sample has started. You might notice that we took the 2^nd place vote getter from the 1^st vote (the “Track Back for Everything” suggestion) and added it to the second vote.

Overall we are looking for innovative ways to create the content most needed by the community and this program is one such mechanism. We will be introducing others and suggestions are welcome.

Posted Monday, July 17, 2006 11:20 AM by simonmu | 1 Comments

New FAQ section on www.windowsforms.net

We've been making some changes to www.windowsforms.net over the past month and one of the largest so far is the revised FAQ section with over 550 answers to the most common questions.  

Here is a good article on how to debug the WSOD and also there are some great videos on IdeaBlade's website, showing how to build and deploy the "FunHouse" client application.

Posted Tuesday, June 06, 2006 10:34 PM by simonmu | 0 Comments

French section for www.asp.net

That's right. In partnership with the community, we have a launched a French language section of the www.asp.net site, to provide core local language content and experiences for ASP.NET users. Check it out at www.asp.net/fr, and stay tune for additional languages.

Posted Tuesday, June 06, 2006 10:30 PM by simonmu | 0 Comments

10 ASP.NET Samples in VB

And not to be outdone, MSDN also has a great set of ASP.NET samples available which showcase the 2.0 feature set:

Posted Thursday, May 04, 2006 10:46 PM by simonmu | 0 Comments