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Tag Archives: Microsoft

Microsoft to Release .NET Framework Source Code

Microsoft .NET FrameworkI’ve covered a few stories on this blog [1], [2], [3] where Microsoft is making some positive strides toward opening up to the concept of open source, particularly in relation to it’s software development arm.

On October 3rd Scott Guthrie, manager of the teams who build the development and platform tools at Microsoft, announced that the source code for the .NET Framework would be released with the next release of Visual Studio (VS 2008).  This announcement is the latest in a series of moves by Microsoft over the past couple of years.

Though the source code will be available for download and reference by software developers, it will be licensed under the Microsoft Reference License, meaning that the source will not be freely distributable.

Still, this is a major step forward for the software giant, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next step will be on the journey toward peaceful coexistence with the open source community.

Visual Studio ‘Rosario’ — CTP

I just read on Jeff Beehler’s blog that Microsoft has released a CTP (Community Technology Preview) of the next version of Visual studio… and I don’t mean VS 2008 “Orcas”.

Virtual PC images of the new VS install were made available from the Microsoft Downloads website on August 3rd.  I’ve included a direct link to the download page.

A bit of idle speculation…?  Microsoft may have features in store for Rosario that were originally been slated for Orcas, but were bumped due to the changes in the Windows Vista feature set… WinFS anyone?

I haven’t had a chance to read over the whitepaper yet, but It seems strange to me that they would be so far along with Rosario when Orcas is still several months away from RTM.

Have a look through Jeff’s post for more details on what precisely we can expect from VS ‘Rosario’.

Silverlight – Microsoft takes on Flash

Microsoft has recently released Silverlight 1.0, a .NET-based competitor to Adobe’s Flash animation product.

This is an interesting strategic move as Microsoft is moving into what is clearly established territory for the Flash brand.  Microsoft is extending the reach of the new Windows Presentation Foundations (WPF) to the web with a version being called WPF/E (WPF/Everywhere).

I’ll have a more in-depth look at Silverlight in the next couple of weeks.

Microsoft Longhorn/IIS 7.0 GoLive

Last week (while I was too busy watching playoff hockey to post), Microsoft announced that the Beta 3 version of Windows Server “Longhorn” complete with the brand spankin’ new IIS 7.0 would be offered with a “Go-Live” license.  This means that the new version can legally be deployed in a production environment prior to the RTM launch of Longhorn.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Go-Live license, but it is welcome news.  This typically means that Microsoft now has a feature-complete and virtually bug-free (never completely bug-free) release of the product.

From what I read over on Scott Guthrie’s blog, one of the new features will provide enhanced support for other platform technologies (FastCGI support) which will improve the experience for those running Perl or PHP.  Gee… I wonder if this would fix my IIS 6 MediaWiki woes…

Visual Studio 2005 on Vista Requires Admin Rights

I finally got the chance today to get back to working on PowerTray, this time with my Visual Studio 2005 installation on my Virtualized Windows Vista setup.  The first thing I ran into was this warning dialog:

VS2005 requires admin permissions

To me, this is the kind of issue that shows immaturity in the OS.  Though it is possible to run the environment without full-blown admin permissions, some of the functionality of the environment is limited as a result.  There is an MSDN article on the subject which outlines the difficulties that are faced without admin rights.

Most of the problems are only resolvable by running VS2005 using administrative permissions.  Ross Dagan has a post on his blog on just how to set this up using the VS2005 shortcut.

Admittedly this is just another front in the battle between security and usability.  I understand why most of the security features which cause these issues exist in Vista, and admittedly the option to run only Visual Studio in administrative mode does keep the computer quite secure.  It’s just disappointing that there isn’t a more elegant solution.

Microsoft Joins OpenAjax Alliance

This week Microsoft announced yet another foray into the Open-Source arena.  The company will be assigning ASP.NET team member Bertrand LeRoy to be the company’s liaison to the OpenAjax Alliance starting tomorrow.  According to a post on Scott Guthrie’s blog, one of Bertrand’s focuses will be to ensure that Microsoft’s AJAX technologies (Library & Extensions) will integrate well with other open-source projects (ie: making sure they play nice in the sandbox…)

This marks yet another step forward for the software giant who seems to be making continuous baby-steps forward into the realm of the open source community.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Good on ya MS! (now where’s that open-source version of windows…)

Microsoft launches ASP.NET AJAX 1.0

This past week marked the official launch of Microsoft’s ASP.NET AJAX libraries for the .NET platform (formerly “Atlas”). The uptake on this new implementation of a not-so-new technology has been moderate, with the folks who really want to use .NET to target a Web 2.0 solution being the most enthusiastic.

AJAX in and of itself isn’t overly groundbreaking, at least not these days.  The ability to do these types of things has been around for some time now (after all it is just Javascript and XML). What is new about packages like the Atlas framework from Microsoft is that it puts these technologies into a much more user-friendly context and makes them more accessible to the less-technical developers. Those who may not have hand-coded their own AJAX scripts will user built-in controls that come with the Atlas package for Visual Studio (and the Express editions).

So kudos to Scott Guthrie and his team for getting this out there. It will make Web 2.0 development on .NET a much more user-friendly experience for developers. But I can’t wait to see what the next new thing will be… As we get closer and closer to eliminating the line between web-based and client-based technologies like AJAX are forming the basis for a new Internet and computing experience.

Free Download: Microsoft XML Notepad 2007

Microsoft has recently released an updated version of its XML Notepad. This is a fairly basic tool which provides a tree interface to edit XML documents which is easier to understand and work with than hacking through the file using Notepad or even Visual Studio.The interface takes a bit of getting used to at first, but the colour-coding of the attributes makes it fairly easy to quickly distinguish between types of nodes in the file, and the tree structure provides a more intuitive view of the data in the file. Though it doesn’t have all the features of a more complete product like Altova’s XML-Spy, the price is right. If all you want (need) is a basic XML editor, XML Notepad may be just what the doctor ordered. This is just another in a series of free releases that Microsoft has targeted at the software development community. Beginning with the Visual Studio Express Betas in 2005, carried forward with the full releases in 2006 and the use of the open-source Cassini web server in both Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Web Developer Express 2005. It has been interesting to see some progression in Microsoft from a company who would aggressively defend and copyright every piece of software they ever wrote, to a company who is willing to share strategically valuable tools with the community.  Obviously it makes good business sense to get your development tools into the hands of developers before they start that next job; but the optimist in me hopes that this is a continuing trend we see from the giant over the coming years.