Well I guess many of have heard already that Internet Explorer version 7 is soon to be available as a priority download to all Windows XP users. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Personally I believe that this is a very good thing as Internet Explorer 7 is supposed to drastically increase the level of secrurity and usability for all. Also the level of compliance to standards is known to be improved on this release IE7 and the level of CSS compliance is quite similiar to the ever so popular Firefox and Mozilla browsers.

One of the best new features of this browser is the integrated RSS capabilities of this browser. Now I am a huge fan of the RSS Bandit aggregator but I would like to try something new. Also the tabs feature is quite nice, especially if you have been used to using Firefox as the functionality is quite similiar.

I believe that this browser will help improve Microsoft's reputation by delievering a high quality, high secure application. Now go update your computer with this new version. I think you may be very pleased.

Just a quick reminder to those that read my blog that we here in Sarasota will be having another meeting for our small but rapidly growing .Net Developer Group. The details are as follows:

November 2006 Meeting:

Introduction to WCF - Windows Communication Framework - by Jeff Barnes (Microsoft) 

Just a quick reminder for us all living down here in Sarasota that there is another Sarasotadev meeting this September 12th. The details are as follows:

2007 Office System as a Solutions Platform by Microsoft's David McNamee

This meeting will be on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 6pm. Location: Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

The release of Office 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007 is quickly approaching.  Come learn what is available for developers in these new releases and how Office System can become an integral part of your custom solutions.  We will also demonstrate building an end-to-end solution using Office and SharePoint.

David brings his experience as an enterprise developer, architect, and trainer to helping customers unlock their business information by using the Office System as a rich developer platform. There is nothing that cannot be solved with the creative application of the .NET Framework, Office System, and Windows Mobile! Find David's blog here.

It seems like to be a good meeting and since Sharepoint and the 2007 Office system seems to be where Microsoft is headed it might be a good idea for all software developers to attend this meeting. The community foundation is always a good place to meet as they have by far one of the best meeting facilities in the area and the staff is very friendly and welcoming. If you are a not for profit organization then I would highly recommend using this resource in the area.

Just a quick note that I updated my personal website with some more content today. It is something I was meaning to do for a long time but have finally got my act together and resolved that this was the time to update that stagnant website. I added some of the more popular articles that were on my old blog and updated them for today. A quick tutorial was added on how to perform a really basic mode statistic with SQL. Anyways more additions are soon to come so check back often.

You can visit my personal website here.

http://www.richard-callaby.net

Just as a friendly reminder to all those here in Sarasota that we have an upcoming Sarasotadev meeting sponsored by INETA. I recently received a reminder from Stan Schultes reminding the group that Tim Huckaby is coming to give a presentation on Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions and Smart Client Development. It should be an interesting event.

The details I received were the following:

August 2006 SarasotaDev meeting:
Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions and Smart Client Development - by Tim Huckaby

This meeting will be on Thursday, August 17, 2006 at 6pm. Location: Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

This two hour session will overview Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and then Tim shows off his bag of tricks for developing smart client apps. This is a must-see session - Tim is immensely entertaining and knows his stuff like no other...

Architecting and Building Workflow Solutions with InfoPath, WF and SPS V3
In this session you will learn how to build custom workflow solutions with Visual Studio 2005.  You’ll learn how to integrate those workflows into SharePoint, and how to interact with workflows using InfoPath.  This session focuses on the power and developer productivity of workflow solutions built on WF.  WF is a powerful technology and this session will delve into the tips and tricks, positives and negatives when designing and building workflow solutions with WF.

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), a platform component and part of the Windows plumbing included with the WinFx runtime, has an extensible programming model and runtime components to make powerful workflow solutions.  Couple WF with the latest version of SharePoint Portal Server (v3.0) Infrastructure and InfoPath Forms backed by managed code and you have quite a powerful set of tools, plumbing and infrastructure to build powerful and scalable workflow solutions with ease. 

This combination of technologies addresses one of the biggest challenges that .NET solution developers face today – workflow.

Smart Client Development
In the second hour, Tim will highlight smart client development by showing a bunch of demos from his developer bag of tricks.

Tim Huckaby is a Microsoft Regional Director and well-known international speaker.

On Tuesday, September 12, 2006 we've got a visit lined up by Microsoft's David McNamee of Tampa, who will talk about the upcoming Microsoft Office 2007 Server System (MOSS).

On Wed, October 11, 2006, we've got another superstar lined up in Miguel Castro, an author, speaker, and independent consultant in the NY/NJ metro area who specializes in building web server controls and .NET applications.

Rory Blyth has put together a nice set of screencasts on how to develop applications on Windows Mobile 5.0. These screencasts cover the whole range of topics that you would need in order to get started developing on this platform. I have personally viewed several of these screencasts and the quality of their presentation is what you would expect from Rory - meaning quite darn good.

You can catch all of these screencasts that are uploaded to Channel9 through the following links.

• An Introduction To Windows Mobile Development
• Building a Simple Web Browser With the .NET CF 2.0
• A Simple Data Driven Windows Mobile App Using SQL Server Mobile
• Data Synching: Part One
• Data Synching: Part Two
• Windows Mobile 5.0: State Notification API
• Windows Mobile 5.0: Pocket Outlook Object Model
• Windows Mobile 5.0: Camera API

I can only hope in the future deliever the same amount of material at the same level as Rory. He sets the bar for us all.

Perhaps you may have noticed that none of my posts actually ever contain any code. The reason is simple I have never found a nice way of posting code on my blog without it looking like crap. However I believe there may be a solution to my problem. You see there is this guy named Noah Coad who developed a way for all of us to create well formated code in our blog posts.

Basically what Noah did was create a Word Macro that will automatically format code pasted into the clipboard that you then want to place into Word and then from Word you place into whatever blog engine you desire. Now I have to admit I have not actually tried these macros out but I can assure you that his code on his blog looks pretty darn good to me so I am willing to try it.

Find out more details on how Noah Coad places well formated code on his blog by going here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/noahc/archive/2006/07/06/658458.aspx

Later on I will attempt to have more in depth postings using this template. Hope this helps someone out there.

I recently came across Matt Hester's blog. Turns out he has some really great performance tips for improving Virtual PC. Some of these tips I would have never thought of had he not blogged about it.

The tips come in a three part series with the first part here.

http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms/archive/2005/09/09/410546.aspx

The second part of the three part series is here.

http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms/archive/2005/09/23/411478.aspx

The third part of the three part series is here.

http://blogs.technet.com/matthewms/archive/2005/10/07/412159.aspx

With those blog posts you should have Virtual PC running quite smoothly and fully optimized so as to not hang during a crucial presentation or developing the next big thing. Hope this helps.

I am sure many of you who read my blog are already aware of Microsoft releasing Virtual PC for free today. This is great news as it will allow me to beta test products I have been very wary to do so because I did not to ruin my production machine. However, I have also found out that VMWare has also released their VMWare Server for free today as well. This is beginning to look a lot like the browser wars of the mid 90's.

You can download the Microsoft Virtual PC here.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6D58729D-DFA8-40BF-AFAF-20BCB7F01CD1&displaylang=en

You can find out more information about the VMWare Server release here.

http://www.vmware.com/news/releases/server.html

You can download VMWare server here.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

What does this mean to you and me? A whole lot as the cost of hardware is relatively cheap and now you can fully use all your resources of each server. I know of several very large companies that run their production web servers on VMWare servers, I am not going to tell you who as that could be a potential security breach for them. However though this does tell you the robustness of these products.

Have you ever wondered how to integrate the LLBGenPro with ASP.Net 2.0? Do you need an easy to use walkthrough that demonstrates how to do just that? Well you are now in luck as Frank Bouma, the inventor of LLBGen Pro, has done exactly that.

You can find details here.

Now what would be cool is the Atlas functionality can be integrated into these examples so as to really demonstrate a powerful web application example. Just a thought. I am sure someone is working on such a thing right now.

Even though the Atlas toolkit is still in CTP, that is beta for the rest of us, there is a Automation Test Harness released to make testing your web applications just that much easier.

You can download the Atlas Toolkit here.

You can out how to test the toolkit thorugh Shawn Burke's Blog here.

And finally you can visit the Codeplex Atlas Control Toolkit page here.

I am really looking forward to the enhanced functionality provided by the atlas framework. Personally I have always felt that web applications have been lacking. This framework solves the problem.

I have recently became a fairly avid user of the CSLA.Net framework by Rocky Lhotka. I find that the framework fills in some of the gaps that I need when I am developing applications. Since I am somewhat new to this framework I am just happy as all get out that there is a new forum where I can ask questions regarding this piece of code.

The forum can be reached here:

http://forums.lhotka.net/

It is powered by Community Server which is also something I am a bit of a fan of as I hope to eventually start a community based programming site with it when I get the time.

So if you have any questions regarding this particular framework and how it may be able to help you or at least clarify some issues that was not covered in the books then this is the place for you.

Just a short note right now I guess.

According to a recent blog entry from Robert Scoble I have been removed from his feeds. This is I believe not a personal attack (he deleted all his feeds) by any means but rather a way for him to find high quality content on the web. I think that this is a GOOD thing, actually. The reason is simple. With all the search engines out there determining what is relevant we need people like Robert to help filter out the "krap" that can sometimes the search engines will determine to be on the first page of a certain keyword.

A human aggregator can do a much better job than any search alogorithm based on some artifical page ranking mechanism that is developed to cover a general range of topics. So I thank Robert for linking to me for the short time that he did.

Just my two cents.

I recently subscribed to Scott Guthries blog. I am really glad I did! You see it was Scott that informed me of the article on how to integrate credit card processing into a ASP.Net application. You can read the article here.

http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/aspnetecommerce/aspnetecommerce.asp

Also today was another good day in that Scott informed his readers that the ASP.Net Provider model source code is open to the public.  This is great news on those that want to see the inner workings of the new way ASP.Net 2.0 handles things like Membership, Roles and Sitemap among many others. You can find the blog post on this subject here.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/04/13/442772.aspx

If you have not subscribed to this blog and are only slightly interested in ASP.Net or .Net Programming then you should do so pretty soon. The informaton that Scott conveys in his blog is a lifesaver.

Also from Stan Schultes is a note that Russ Fustino our local Developer Community Champion is going to present. Be sure to attend this one as our low attendence in the past has forced Microsoft to cancel regular meetings in this area. We need to show them that there is a market here for these MSDN presentations. The details is as follows:

Coming on May 9: Russ Fustino, our Microsoft Developer Community Champion, returns with an MSDN session in his famous Russ' Tool Shed series. Please make an effort to attend this (and the morning TechNet session). If our attendance is high, they come back. If they don't get enough audience, well, you know what happens :)

The MSDN session (for developers) from 1-5pm (event code: 1032291809) has the following topics:

• Create customizable user interfaces with web parts and ASP.NET 2.0
• Language enhancements in .NET Framework 2.0
• Exploring Enterprise Library for .NET Framework 2.0

The TechNet session (for IT pros) from 8am-noon (event code: 1032291919) has the following topics:

• Implementing security for wireless networks
• Responding to computer attacks
• What's next for Microsoft security?

Since both subjects should be of an interest to a developer you could make a whole day out of this!

I got a note from Stan Schultes that our next Sarasotadev meeting will be April 17th, 2006. The meeting details is as follows:

Note the choice of next Monday for our April meeting - it's a bit unusual for us (although we don't have a set day of the month for our regular meetings). Turns out this is the only day the facility is available at no cost to us in the middle two weeks of April (thanks to the Sarasota Community Foundation, and Van & Jody Vangor!).

April 2006 SarasotaDev meeting:

Hands-on sessions - by our own Dave Hayden. Dave's a top-notch, hands-on kind of guy, so these are very practical talks. I've seen both - and they really kick:

• SQL 2005 - native web services, SQL SMO, CLR integration, new XML datatype
• Enterprise Library 2.0 - Applying the Data and Logging Application Blocks

This meeting will be on Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 6pm. Location: Sarasota Community Foundation, located at 2635 Fruitville Rd., Sarasota, FL 34237 (just west of Tuttle on the north side of Fruitville).

In the SQL 2005 session:

• Learn how to expose and consume your stored procedures as XML web services without using IIS.
• Understand the basics of creating and deploying CLR database objects, like stored procedures, user defined functions, and triggers.
• Use SQL Server Management Objects with C# to create database objects, script objects, and transfer database schema and data.
• Leverage schemas and XQuery with the new XML Datatype for validating and querying XML.

In the Enterprise Library session:
Leverage the application blocks in Enterprise Library 2.0 to more quickly create patterns-based, extensible applications in a consistent manner. Learn about the most popular application blocks (Data Access and Logging) in Enterprise Library 2.0 and how to use them in your applications.

Dave is a Sarasota-based consultant and a Microsoft MVP in C#. Find his excellent tech blog here:  http://davidhayden.com/blog/dave.

Seems like it is going to be a fairly good meeting. Be sure to attend if you have the time.

I just got a note from Scott Spradlin of INETA who informed me of some really great webcasts that INETA is holding in cooperation with Microsoft. This is a really great way to learn about the products from those that actually made them.

Some of the sessions are as follows:

• April 12, Crossbow - Building WPF and Windows Forms hybrid applications
• April 20, Essential Tips and Tricks for .NET Compact Framework Application Developers
• April 26, Improving your web application's user experience with Atlas
• May 4, IIS 7.0 as a development platform
• May 11, Using Cider to build WPF applications
• May 17, Using ASP.NET 2.0 and SharePoint together
• May 23, An Introduction to WinFX AddIns

You can register for these sessions at live.ineta.org. Hope you found this brief note useful.

Just a quick note that since Rocky Lhotka has sent his book off to publishing you can now get the source code for the next version of CSLA.Net 2.0 from his website. This is good news for all those using .Net 2.0. I have not yet had the chance to download and inspect it yet, because I am writing this blog post instead! <G>

You can find the code here.

When the book comes available I am sure there will be a much better explaination of how and why we should use this code framework. Enjoy!

I have some free DotNetNuke skins for all to download and use if they wish. I have a total of four skins with different color layouts. You are free to modify, alter or improve on these skins as much as you want. Furthermore there is no restriction as to how many computers you can run these skins on.

You can find them on my main personal website here. Enjoy! I will be back later with some more tutorials and other information as soon as I am done creating it. Thanks for reading!

Recently I have come across some very good resources for those that want to learn the ins and outs of ASP.Net 2.0 but do not have the time to attend a class or learn it on their own. The ASP.Net team has a series of “How do I” tutorials that covers many topics with  more topics on the way.

The topics covered are:

• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Caching (Part 1)
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Caching (Part 2)
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Create a Full-Featured Customer Login Portal
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Data
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Form Building for a "Contact Us" Page
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Localization
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Master Pages and Site Navigation
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Membership and Roles
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Profiles and Themes
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Tips and Tricks
• ASP.NET HOW DO I Video Series: Web Parts and Personalization

Also, there is the ASP.Net webcast series of videos that aid in the transition from PHP, JSP and ColdFusion to ASP.Net 2.0 so if you are coming from a different language altogether this might be the way for you. This can be found here.

http://www.learn2asp.net/campaign.aspx

Now with those webcasts there is a bonus where you can obtain Visual Studio 2005 standard after watching just three webcasts. What a deal. Now you have no excuse not to learn ASP.Net 2.0.

Microsoft recently prematurely posted the potential names for their upcoming operating system, Vista. As reported by EntMag.com, they later retracted and stated that the names were posted on the Vista help system as a merely a test.

The names included on that page were the following:

• Windows Starter 2007
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Now I have to seriously wonder if Microsoft really needs 6 different SKU’s for this operating system. I thought the whole idea was to make things a bit simpler and not more complicated. Is this not simply going to cause confusion among the general population if there are so many versions of the same operating system in the market? One has to wonder if this course of action is truly a good idea. Just my two cents.

So you have decided to take the plunge and take your business on the web. This most likely means you will need a reliable hosting service to host your e-Commerce website. What are the key factors that you should consider when considering various web hosting companies?

When considering a web hosting service you should consider at least three factors, how reliable the service actually is, how knowledgeable and prompt are their support staff and what is the actual cost of using this service. Let's break down each factor and really consider this situation in depth.

The reliability of the web hosting service is perhaps the most important to your business as a unreliable service can seriously hamper the reputation of your business. So how do you determine if a host is actually reliable? The first and perhaps the easiest way is to join a public newsgroup of web developers and simply ask them who they use to host their websites. For instance if  you should want to use a ASP/ASP.Net hosting service I would go to asp.net and simply ask who is the most reliable hosting service. Also, searching through these newsgroups will reveal quite a lot of information regarding how knowledgably and helpful the support staff is as well. Simply stay away from hosting providers that have a poor reputation as those service companies most likely are only concerned with separating your money from your wallet and not actually helping you grow your business.

How do you determine which service has the most knowledgeable and helpful staff? This one is again fairly easy to determine. If the staff of the company takes the time to answer questions on public newsgroups and is willing to share their time and knowledge to help out others then this is the company you should utilize. For instance I have noticed that on some public newsgroups or forums many of the questions being answered are from various web hosting services. This not only reinforces their reputation of being really knowledgeable and helpful but it allows the company to get some "free advertising" as well.

Lastly is the cost factor to consider. There are many low cost web hosting providers out there. All you  have to do is a search on Google and you will obtain potentially millions of hits on that key term. However, even low cost web hosting services can turn out to be

expensive when you consider the various add-ons that you may have to attach to your website to make it truly useful to you. So therefore when considering a web hosting service write down your exact requirements you need to make your website run. Also consider the amount of growth that you anticipate when using this website. A website that may work for you now may not work for you in the near future if your business should really take off and you have not factored that consideration into account. Also take into account any cost of upgrading your service should you outgrow it or you need to move to a high end hosting solution.

When considering a e-Commerce hosting service or any web hosting service these are the key factors to consider before making any purchase. While certainly not an exhaustive listing of everything you need to consider this should get you on the right path to narrow your choices down to at least three or four services.