[Cross posted from Telerik Watch blog]

One of the fun little activities that took place at the recent DevReach conference in Bulgaria was a panel discussion on the current state of WPF. The panel featured Tim Huckaby, Brian Noyes, and yours truly (and the famous .NET Rocks hosts, of course) discussing the merits of WPF, dispelling some of the myths, and clarifying some of the misconceptions about designer tools available for WPF. Tim brought to the table excellent first hand experience using WPF to deliver solutions; Brian brought an incredible depth of technical WPF knowledge; I brought a unique perspective that needs a little introduction.

Ever since joining the "programming world" about 6 years ago, I have been reluctant to mention my "hidden" past as a graphic designer. Yes, that's right. I'm the artist in the room of engineers. For years I did freelance logo design, brand development, and designs for all variety of print projects. I cut my proverbial computer teeth on Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop, and the Macromedia design products. In fact, in my early hunt for colleges RISD (Rhode Island School of Design or "riz-dee" for the initiated) and similar topped my list of interests.

"What in the world are you doing in programming?!" say you. Glad you asked. I may be an "artist" but I am also thoroughly pragmatic. I had no intention of becoming a "starving artist". With entrepreneurship in my blood, Texas A&M's highly ranked business school replaced my desire to go hang with hippie artists and involvement in the school's Student Council lead me to programming. An ugly (and I mean ugly) ASP application was dropped in my lap one day and I didn't run away. Quite the opposite. The web suddenly became my playground for building things and it gave me a venue to continue to flex my graphic designer muscles.

The rest (as everybody says) is history. I spent much of my own time learning as much as I could about building things for the web- ASP Classic, ASP.NET 1.x, ASP.NET 2, and now about 5,000 different Microsoft platforms. I never left my designer roots, though, so when Microsoft starts touting tools that "designers will love" my ears perk up.

I'll let you uncover my opinions on that marketing message in the .NET Rocks episode. Either way, that's my true background and the source of my unique perspective on this panel. Hopefully you'll enjoy the new point of view.

I have done this a few times in the past as well. Typing Ctrl + C instead of Ctrl + V on a blank line and losing the data on the clipboard. I am sure this post will save me some time and frustration the next time I do it.

Nice one Sara.

 

Thanks. 

 

Christophe Lauer has an interesting post (en français) that emphasizes how well-positioned .NET developers are to take on all sorts of platforms. For example, Silverlight job offers are just starting to show up on the radar in the Indeed.com Job Trends where Adobe Flex remains the leader. As Christophe says, you can learn ActionScript and start working as a Flex developer but what can you switch to with that language under your belt? On the other hand, if you know the basic .NET Framework libraries...(read more)

This article discusses how to create an HTML Editor server control for use within an ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 environment.

Jason Meridth just posted this on the alt.NET list and I thought this shoudl be of general interest:

"The 4 best blogs that I read to continually try to grok BDD:

Joe Ocampo
http://blog.agilejoe.com
Scott Bellware
http://www.codebetter.com/blogs/scott.bellware
Jimmy Bogard
http://grabbagoft.blogspot.com/
Dan North
http://www.dannorth.net
and specifically for him:
http://dannorth.net/introducing-bdd

"

 

I find that BDD still means many things to many people, even more so than TDD since it can mean quite a fine line from what many call TDD. When I've gathered my thoughts more on this, I'll post what I think the various meanings are.

The Real Development Reloaded Tour will be in Montreal on October 18.

I had the chance to review the content of this event, lots of good tips and tricks will be shown, and I am sure you will learn something new, even if like me you do ASP.NET since you are born (almost!).
This tour focus on today's technologies, the ones you use on your day to day job as a web developer. So don't miss this chance to consolidate your knowledge, feel more confident on ASP.NET, AJAX, and learn about the best tools for your browser!

 

realDEVELOPMENT_07 tour is coming to a Canadian city near you. This half-day event is your chance to get a closer look at the technologies you use to create real web applications.

In the sessions, you’ll learn how to use:

• Visual Studio® development system to debug and trace your web application
• Third party tools and utilities such as the Internet Explorer® internet browser Readiness Toolkit, Developer Toolbar, and Fiddler
• the Enterprise Library to implement best practices
• ASP.NET AJAX to create more immersive and interactive experiences

Link for Montreal registration:
MONTREAL - OCT 18, 2007 (8:30 AM - 12 NOON)

For other dates and cities, read this post.

How to integrate TortoiseSVN – a Subversion Source Control system with Visual Studio.NET

Register now for ASP.NET Connections and Visual Studio & .NET Connections on November 5 - 8 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Learn all about the new features in Visual Studio 2008 from Microsoft and industry experts.

I'm very happy to announce that our first pre-Beta release of the SharePoint Forms Based Authentication features that the Community Kit for SharePoint Internet/Extranet edition has been working on is available for download on CodePlex.  This solution builds on many of the things I created for the version on my website but adds significant improvents in management of users and roles.  This solution also gives administrators the ability to approve/deny membership before the user is added to the MembershipProvider database.  We still have more to do but we wanted to get this work out into the hands of the public so we can get any feedback you might have as early as possible.

 

I want to thank everybody who downloaded the source code for the project I created around Forms Based Authentication with SharePoint.  The work of the CKS:IEE team supercedes this project in terms of functionality and usability and so I won't be offering any further support of the version I created myself.  Basically you're better off using the CKS version as it will continue to grow in functionality and be more stable over time.

This was a group effort and so along with my relatively minor contribution you can thank Zac Smith, Edin Kapic, Brendon Schwartz, and Stacey Draper for making FBA easier and more useful in SharePoint.

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I ego-surf. Type your name into Google and see what comes up. With Google's blog search, I like to see who's referencing things I've mentioned and whatnot.

However today I saw this link on some Windows Live space site (not even sure what that is, some bastard child from MySpaces?) posted October 11. My name came up so I started skimming through the entry. I know it was about DotNetNuke and SharePoint so I assumed the writer was referencing my blog post from January 2006. After reading through the Windows Live space I realized it was a copy of my own blog entry I was reading (I *thought* it looked familiar as I was skimming). I got down to the end and it said "Published Tuesday, January 31, 2006 by Bil Simser".

Right. I get it now. It's some aggregator that copies content. I've seen them before. However what befuddles my meager brain is why in the name of all that is holy is my post from January 2006 showing up in October 2007? Slow mail delivery or something. The guys crawler *just* got around to finding my blog entry?

I just don't get it.

If you are still using HTML <table> elements to create page layouts, Chris Pels shows you why you should start using Cascading Style Sheets and <div> elements. We then learn how to create a custom membership provider and a custom profile provider for your ASP.NET application.

There's a tremendous amount of goodness (the "new" goodness?) that's circulating around the 'sphere. Martin Fowler chimed in with his take on it and I'm glad we're all generally singing from the same song sheet.

Jeremy Miller Jeffrey Palermo brought up mention of how the original Code Camp spread like wildfire as the format and idea was easy to implement. As time goes on, I think this is true for the AltNetConf idea. Jeff summed the idea of the AltNetConf best with this quote:

AltNetConf's are open spaces conferences where DotNetters get together to discuss how to build better .Net software.

Short and sweet. Just the right amount of description.

Given this the idea of new conferences springing up and spreading the new goodness is a great idea. What does it take to start up your own AltNetConf? The passion and desire to do so. So why not? There's nothing stopping you.

On the heels of the first one in Austin there are a few good ideas that you could use when you're building your own AltNetConf:

• Keep the size manageable. I think the 100 person limit was great for the Austin one. This also helps you locate a place for it.
• Self-organizing agenda. Rather than pre-canned agenda of topics, the first day/night of the conference is the time to collaborate and drill out what people are passionate about. What bugs people, what do they want to talk about. This is an agenda driven by both speaker and speakee (as I would consider everyone a speaker for each session, with someone keeping the conversation on topic rather than coffee-talk, much like a Scrum Master does during the daily standups)
• Nothing but .NET. This isn't Alt.JAVA so the conversations follow building on Microsoft platforms using the most appropriate tool, technology, and technique that makes sense for the problem at hand.
• Don't turn it into a vendor fest. While it may be Microsoft related, I think the last thing an AltNetConf needs is "Brought to you by [insert .NET vendor product here]". True, it should be free and things cost these days, but there are too many ideas that spiral out of control and become product showcases rather than guys and girls talking about software development.
• Follow the OpenSpace approach to organization and flow. Just resonates on the ideas above.

I'm at a disadvantage as I didn't directly attend the conference in Austin so I'm looking for those that were there to maybe bring out a AltNetConf retrospec. What worked well? What didn't work. What can we do better?

So spread the news, pick a location, and start doing it. For me, I'm looking to see if we can get an AltNetConfCalgary or AltNetConfEdmonton (or AltNetConfAlberta for that matter) going so ping me if you're interested. Let's keep the momentum going!

Hopefully lessons learned and ideas here would be applied to future conferences like this (which we all hope to see soon everywhere as we don't all need to coalesce to one single place once a year).

This article discusses and demonstrates to what extent the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET support Arabic, including information about the features and limitations of Arabic support.

QUEENSLAND software developer Technology One has moved to acquire content management firm Avand in a $10 million deal.

This article presents code that augments any INPUT box with an auto-suggest feature, AJAX-capable