January 2008 - Posts

• ASP.Net MVC Further Info & Microsoft ASP.Net 3.5 Extensions Preview Download Available

  This is a slightly belated "catch-up" post to update those that haven't seen it elsewhere, but Scott Guthrie has posted further details (Parts 3 and 4) of  the ASP.Net MVC Framework on his blog.  ASP.Net MVC Part 3 is available here and ASP.Net MVC Part 4 is available here. ASP.Net MVC is not a solution for everyone as you lose things like state management and parts of the page lifecycle. It does however offer very targetted functionality for those that have a specific need for Model View Controller based solutions. The ASP.Net MVC framework is now available for download as part of the new Microsoft ASP.Net 3.5 Extensions Preview . This is a roll-up release of new functionality to be added to ASP.Net 3.5 and ADO.Net  in 2008. It currently includes the following: ASP.Net MVC Framework ASP.Net Dynamic Data ASP.Net AJAX ADO.Net Entity Framework ADO.Net Data Services Silverlight Controls for ASP.Net Some of these elements were previously available via the ASP.Net Futures CTP.  This is now superceded by the extensions preview. You can get the ASP.Net 3.5 Extensions Preview from here Posted Jan 11 2008, 09:38 AM by rogerw with no comments

• NxtGenUG Oxford Branch - Visual Studio 2008 Talk - Monday 14 January 2008

  This is a shameless plug for a talk being given by Daniel Moth from Microsoft, on Visual Studio 2008 and Framework 3.5. I have previously attended and given talks at he NxtGen User Group events. Daniel is an entertaining speaker and Visual Studio 2008 and Framework 3.5 is well worth hearing about, so if you have the time its well worth going along to. The talk is being held in Abingdon at 7PM on Monday 14th January 2008. You can get full details on registration and attending here. Posted Jan 09 2008, 07:26 PM by rogerw with no comments Filed under: Programming, C# 3.0, Visual Studio 2008

• Happy New Year - Happy Visual Studio 2008 on Windows Vista 64 bit!

  Firstly Happy 2008 to one and all! Those of you that have read this blog previously, will know that I have a lot of compatibility issues with Windows Vista 64 bit. Most of these issues relate to web and mobile device development using Visual Studio 2005.  I have only just managed to get debugging running with ASP.Net development. I've never managed to debug a Windows Mobile device application or deploy content files via Visual Studio 2005 on a 64 bit OS. I keep getting "module not loaded" breakpoint errors even in the simplest of projects. Yet the same code copied to Visual Studio 2005 on Windows XP works just fine without alteration. I'm not sure where the issue regarding debugging mobile projects lies, but my suspicions are that it is a permission,WOW64 emulator or device cradling related. Unless of course I have some twisted configuration somewhere. Visual Studio 2008 on Vista 64 bit Recently however I installed Visual Studio 2008 on Windows Vista 64 bit (I'd previously only tried it on Windows XP 32 bit) and life is good. Installation was a breeze, with the requirement for 64 bit versions recognised correctly. Amazingly, I can now code debug and deploy all my mobile applications without any issues at all, straight out-of-the box, with no configuration changes! It even seems slightly faster! You do have to convert Visual Studio 2005 projects to the new Visual Studio 2008 format but so far I have done this and so far haven't experienced any major issues. The only issue I experienced was trying to remember the password I had used for the key signing file for the assemblies! As with the Visual Studio 2003 to Visual Studio 2005 process, following the conversion to 2008 format you can't then edit the solution again in Visual Studio 2005. In my case, given the behaviour on 64 bit this isn't a major loss, but I worked on a copy just to be sure. A backup copy is made automatically by the conversion process anyway, in case things go wrong. Upgrading To Compact Framework 3.5 Interestingly Visual Studio 2008 contains an Upgrade Project option (Right click on a mobile project in Solution Explorer) which states that it will irreversibly convert the project to Compact Framework 3.5. I am not entirely sure what this entails but intend to try this in the future. Carry on Coding... So right now I am going to do all my personal mobile coding on Visual Studio 2008 and start to explore Compact Framework 3.0 and 3.5 more. At least on my machine it looks like Visual Studio 2008 is the mobile IDE that 64 bit Windows Vista always needed. For some reason Visual Studio 2005 couldn't quite do that for me. Posted Jan 02 2008, 10:29 AM by rogerw with 1 comment(s)