Thom Robbins .NET Weblog

Changing times and changing companies

trobbins — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:08:00 GMT

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost nine years ago that I started at Microsoft. It seems such a long time ago. During that time I have had the opportunity to be part of some amazing things. But like all things people change - me included! I have made the tough decision to leave Microsoft. It was hard to make the decision given the amount of respect that I have for the company, the people and the belief that they are doing some incredible work.

A couple of month’s back I started talking with a company called Kentico. They build a .NET based CMS system that immediately impressed me. The more I started talking to them the more impressed I became. They currently have 1600+ clients in over 80 countries. Pretty amazing! They are growing quickly in the US. They contribute a lot to the developer community. I have seen many companies that talk about it – but they actively do. Their site contains areas for user groups and they even offer free templates to support user groups.

I couldn’t be more excited to start officially after some vacation time with Kentico on October 19. It’s the right place for the next stage of my career. The company has a belief and passion in delivering a great product and this show clearly in the opportunities they are providing for .NET developers and their customers.

I will even have the opportunity to blog and speak again! My new blog will officially be located here. I hope that the followers of this blog will continue to read my posts, connect with me and provide feedback on the things that we can do better. Also, connect with me on Linked In, Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks
Thom

SharePoint for Developers Part 2

trobbins — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:59:00 GMT

Ramp Up (www.MyRampUp.com) is a free online learning program for developers. We’ve just launched a new track: SharePoint for Developers, Part 2. This track, along with the other currently offered ones (eg, Visual Studio 2008), teaches the important skills in a guided path, making the learning process easier and more efficient. The easy-to-access content (provided by subject-matter gurus) is specifically tailored for the Ramp Up program, and offered in a variety of forms (article, v-lab, codecast and slidecast). Check it out now at www.MyRampUp.com, and see how Ramp Up can help you become more employable by learning important and marketable skills.

TechDays Virtual – Defy all Challenges

trobbins — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:41:00 GMT

Helps spread the word and make sure to register!

Event Date: April 1
Event Cost: Free
Event Location: Your PC (worldwide access)

With speakers starting to confirm we have published twenty session and will be adding more on a daily basis for the Tech·Days Developer 2009 – Defy All Challenges 24-Hour virtual event!

Check out the sessions - here

Announcing TechDays Defy All Challenges

trobbins — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:24:00 GMT

One of the things that I always love about the technical world is our love of learning. Personally, I find it incredible to hear the different ways that people solve day to problems and their personal best practices. In thinking about this a great group of people (from all over the world) started thinking about how we could take this idea global.

I am extremely proud that we are starting the ball rolling! TechDays Defy All Challenges is alive and accepting content submissions here. It’s up to you to make this successful – will you help?

Free Virtualization e-book offer

trobbins — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:23:00 GMT

Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions will teach you about the benefits of the latest virtualization technologies and how to plan, implement, and manage virtual infrastructure solutions. The technologies covered include: Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2009, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, and Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Register to download the e-book, and sign up for the Microsoft Press Book Connection newsletter which provides news about upcoming releases and other special offers.

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/books/virtualization.mspx

Announcing the Microsoft Web Platform Installer 1.0

trobbins — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:19:00 GMT

This is always something that I hear people ask for –

The Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a simple tool that installs Microsoft's entire Web Platform, including IIS, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition, SQL Server 2008 Express Edition and the .NET Framework. Using the Web Platform Installer’s user interface, you can choose to install either specific products or the entire Microsoft Web Platform onto your computer. The Web PI also helps keep your products up to date by always offering the latest additions to the Web Platform.

Available here

Windows Live Messenger translation bot now available

trobbins — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:41:00 GMT

Pretty cool idea for a messenger translation bot

Introducing the Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit Beta & Reader Beta SDK!

trobbins — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 03:34:00 GMT

This looks pretty cool –

We are very excited to take the wraps off of our newest addition to .Net client development – a Starter Kit designed to make it easy to create rich, syndicated multimedia and content experiences which engage the user, from documents and photos to videos and podcasts.

These Syndicated Client Experiences (SCE) applications exploit the push capabilities of RSS in a model where content is synced down to the local computer and each application retains full control over the presentation of the content. Microsoft’s Sync Framework-based Subscription Center takes care of syncing, local storage, subscription management and the safe caching of authentication credentials. These building blocks and services are designed to help application developers focus on what matters to them most: providing an optimal, highly-differentiated content experience on the desktop with very rich content, branding, skinning and custom user interface elements.

Available here

A Quick Look at XML Literals

trobbins — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:54:00 GMT

XML literals are new to Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Basic. Simply put they enable the incorporation of XML directly into application code. Essentially this allows a quick way to create XML objects. At their core XML literals represent a LINQ to XML object and follow syntax similar to XML 1.0. At run time XML literals are turned into their equivalent calls to the LINQ to XML object. This makes it easier to create XML elements and documents programmatically because you code has the same structure as the final XML. One of the clear advantages of using XML literals is that they can span multiple lines without need a line continuation. This makes code look similar to an XML file. At run time the compiler treats the line continuation characters as part of the XML literal. For example, using the XElement, which represents the fundamental XML construct we can create the following code.

Dim CProduct As XElement = _

<name>Stereo</name>

<deptname>Engineering</deptname>

</department>

</Product>

TextBox1.Text = CProduct.ToString

At runtime this produces the following

You can also embed a Visual Basic expression in an XML literal. At run time your application creates a LINQ to XML object for each literal, incorporate the values of the embedded expressions. This lets you specify dynamic content inside an XML literal. For example, the following code takes an XML document literal and builds an XML document.

Dim CProduct As XElement = _

<ProductName>Stereo</ProductName>

</Product>

Dim doc As XDocument = _

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<%= From i In Enumerable.Range(1, 5) _

Select New XElement(CProduct) %>

</Products>

TextBox1.Text = doc.ToString

At run time this produces the following

Tabbing within Visual Studio

trobbins — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:04:00 GMT

Tabs are everywhere within Visual Studio. By default each time a new window is opened a new tab is creates. Many times a lot of tabs can make moving around quickly seem a bit difficult. Within Visual Studio the <CTRL> + <TAB> key open a dialog similar to the Windows Alt-Tab dialog that shows all the open documents.

Using this dialog you can choose files to open by pressing the <CTRL> + <TAB> again. Also, the arrow keys allow the selection of the Active Tool Window.

Selecting a Block of text

trobbins — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:18:00 GMT

Regardless of the new framework features – copy and paste is still one of my favorites. One of my favorite tricks is selecting a block of text. By default normal text selection is line by line. For example it’s not possible to select just the items to the right of the equals sign.

However, Visual Studio does offer this ability using block selection. Block selection is sued to select text in a block as opposed to line by line. Essentially allowing you to select text regardless of what line you are on. For example, select the <ALT> key while selecting text to do the following.

Block selection can be used with both the keyboard and mouse. When using the keyboard hold down the <ALT> + <SHIFT> and use the arrow keys to perform the block selection.

Have you checked out Ramp Up?

trobbins — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:54:00 GMT

Ramp Up has just launched a brand-new learning track today: SharePoint for Developers, Part I. This track, along with the other currently offered tracks (eg, Visual Studio 2008), teaches the important skills in a guided path, making the learning process easier and more efficient. Currently, there are no assessments in the program, so it's quicker than ever to graduate and receive the reward (25% off on certification and 50% off on e-Learning - only for graduates of Ramp Up).

Setting the startup form for a Windows Application

trobbins — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:07:00 GMT

Question: I am new to building Windows forms’ applications and am writing my first application. It’s a basic application that has three different forms. As you can imagine I am building, deigning and architecting the project as I go along. One of these changes is that I want to make a different form than I have currently the form that is shown when the application starts. I know that I can do it via code but it seems there has to be an easier way. Any ideas?

Answer: Well welcome to the world of Windows Forms! One of the things that you will want to get to know is the “My Project” Window in the Solution Explorer window.

Within the My project Application tab you can select the Startup form and change it to the name of your form.

Give us feedback on Silverlight 2

trobbins — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:16:00 GMT

Via Brian

Give us feedback on Silverlight 2

We’ve put together a short survey to help us improve our Silverlight features and API. Spend 15 minutes and tell us what is good and bad about Silverlight so far.

A quick look at the lambda expression

trobbins — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 20:47:00 GMT

The lambda expression is new to Visual Basic and Visual Studio 2008 and part of the new Linq support. A lambda expression is an anonymous function that can contain expressions and statements. Basically it’s a function without a name that calculates and returns a single value. It is combined with the new Func type that is essentially a delegate that has the return type specified and allows arguments to be supplied. The Func delegate type is part of the system namespace and defined in the assembly System.Core.dll. By default all new projects created with Visual Basic automatically reference this dll. The underlying type of a lambda expression is one of the generic Func delegates. This makes it possible to pass a lambda expression as a parameter without explicitly assigning it to a delegate.

We can write a simple TimesTwo lambda expression that takes an integer and returns an integer. This expression effectively takes the input number and multiplies by 2, and then returns the result.

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click

Dim TimesTwo As Func(Of Integer, Integer) = Function(Numberin As Integer) Numberin * 2

Dim ReturnNumber As Integer

ReturnNumber = TimesTwo(50)

MsgBox(ReturnNumber)

End Sub