TECH NOTES

April 7, 2009

Tools & Code: Microsoft SharePoint Designer Offered As Free Download

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 7:53 pm
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SharePoint Designer Offered as Free Dev Tool


3 April 2009 · by Kurt Mackie

Go to article source here…
Download SharePoint Designer here…


Microsoft on Wednesday announced that its SharePoint Web portal design tool is now available as a free download, which can be accessed here.

Microsoft decided to offer Office SharePoint Designer 2007 for free because it didn’t want price to be a barrier to SharePoint users, according to Tom Rizzo, senior director of product management for the SharePoint team. Microsoft has so far sold more than 100 million SharePoint licenses, he added in a video announcement.

SharePoint Designer 2007 was still listed at Amazon.com for $238.49 on Friday, but it is being removed from Microsoft’s price catalog and will only be available from Microsoft as a free download as of April 1.

In addition, Microsoft eventually plans to make its Expression Web product compatible with SharePoint. Expression Web is developer tool for creating dynamic Web sites using ASP.NET and PHP scripting, but it currently “does not directly support SharePoint,” according to a SharePoint team letter. The letter didn’t say when that SharePoint compatibility would be enabled.

For those who just bought SharePoint Designer 2007 and have Software Assurance licensing for that product, Microsoft is making a concession of sorts. The company is offering Expression Web to those who had Software Assurance licensing as of April 1, 2009 — to “make it right” for those customers, according to a Microsoft Q&A.

Both dev tools — SharePoint Designer and Expression Web — trace their lineage, in part, to Microsoft Office FrontPage, which is a “legacy” Web development tool. Microsoft’s mainstream support for the current FrontPage 2003 product will end on April 14, 2009, with paid extended support ending on April 8, 2014, according to a Microsoft lifecycle page.

Expression Web licensees have the right to use FrontPage 2003, if they prefer that dev tool, according to the Q&A.

Microsoft plans to ship the next version of SharePoint Designer with the next SharePoint release. That next release, called “SharePoint 14,” may appear in beta form in “the next several months,” according to a blog by Guy Creese, vice president and research director of the collaboration and content strategies service at Burton Group.

March 28, 2009

Tools & Code: “Gaia AJAX” – There is no better framework!

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 7:49 pm
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Gaia - ASP.NET Ajax

Need Solid Ajax In Your ASP.NET App?
Skip JavaScript
Write C# or VB.NET









It has been a while since I posted anything to TECH-NOTES. It has been a rough past few months. And like many of my colleagues in the Software Engineering field, I too am currently looking for new work as the result of a layoff in January. I am hopeful as I see signs of a strengthening US market which is showing some activity in the IT area. At least I am getting the calls.

In the meantime, I have made good use of my extra time by completing some web-site work I have wanted to get to while at the same time tinkering with some AJAX frameworks to see what all the hype has been about.  And after reseraching quite a few I have only found one of which is worth working with.

If you haven’t tried the wonderful “Gaia AJAX” framework then you are missing out on probably the most advanced AJAX framework available. Unlike so many other AJAX tools, Gaia lets you work with their AJAX controls the same exact way you would with any other .NET server control in ASP.NET. Simply add one to your web-page, fill out the necessary properties and you are in business. That’s all there is to it…

There are no requirements for web-services or web-methods. The Gaia AJAX Framework takes care of all that for you. All you have to do is continue what you have been doing when working with standard ASP.NET server controls.

Don’t believe me? Then give it a try…

Go here to download the best AJAX Framework on the planet… http://gaiaware.net/

October 4, 2008

Tools & Code: “Microsoft details WCF and WF in next-gen .NET”

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 9:03 pm
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Microsoft details WCF and WF in next-gen .NET

Go here for article source…

By David Worthington

October 1, 2008 — Microsoft has detailed some of the .NET 4.0 feature set, and how it will evolve Windows Server to host composite applications by extending the Application Server Role.

Today, the company announced its road map for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and an update to Windows Server 2008, code-named “Dublin.” Community Technology Previews of the new technologies will be released at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference at the end of this month.

Microsoft is concentrating on making the creation of representational state transfer-style applications easier by including templates and deeper integration with ASP.NET, said Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. Sample code will be accessible on CodePlex, Microsoft’s open-source project hosting website, he added.

Another design goal is to make integration between WCF and WF more seamless than it is today, he said. Microsoft is leveraging Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) to deepen that integration, using it as a common model stack for applications, he noted. “[Developers] will build the entire applications declaratively in XAML.”
 (more…)

September 24, 2008

Tools & Code: Carlos Aguilar Mares’ “ExcelXmlWriter”

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 10:21 pm
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It is common requirement at times to send data in Excel output to a client on the web. The problem however, is how do you do this, have access to cell-level formatting, and do both without using the Excel Office object on the server?

If you don’t need any formatting you can simply use the “HttpResponse” object to send formatted strings against the “Excel” content-type for a simple Excel spreadsheet. However, if you require more than you must use something that will provide you with access to the Excel objects but without using Excel for obvious performance reasons.

The answer is Carlos Aguilar Mares’ “ExcelXmlWriter”; a freeware component that is easy to install and just as to use. Light and fast it allows you to avoid the usage of the heavy Office components that weren’t designed for server usage in the first place.

Before you rush to the site to download this excellent piece of software please note that the only line of code that should be in your “aspx” page should be the “Page” directive. All other HTML code should be removed, otherwise you will experience HTML conflict errors.

Go here to download software…

Library to Generate Excel XML Workbooks in .NET

 This library allows you to generate Excel Workbooks using XML, it is built 100% in C# and does not requires Excel installed at all to generate the files. It exposes a simple object model to generate the XML Workbooks.
It supports several features for generating Excel Workbooks including:

  • Formatting
  • Alignment
  • Formulas
  • Pivot Tables
  • and more…


Note: This library is free, you can distribute it and use it at your own will and risk, it is not supported by any company including Microsoft or any other company, it does not belong to any company.


September 17, 2008

Tools & Code: CodePlex launches support for TortoiseSVN

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 12:12 am
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Posted: Sunday, September 14, 2008 7:00 PM by saraford

CodePlex is now offering server support for SvnBridge, the tool that enables TortoiseSVN to talk to Team Foundation Server. Support for Subversion has been our number one requested feature, and by hosting SvnBridge, our users can now use their favorite Subversion client with any project.

What’s SvnBridge / TortoiseSVN / Subversion? What’s the big deal with server support?

Subversion is one of the most popular source code repositories in the open source community. TortoiseSVN is a Subversion client (similar to how Team Explorer is a client to Team Foundation Server) that is widely used among open source developers. We want TortoiseSVN users included in the CodePlex community, so we created SvnBridge to enable TortoiseSVN to work with Team Foundation Server.


Our first versions of SvnBridge have required client-side installations, meaning that TortoiseSVN users first had to install and run SvnBridge prior to interacting with the CodePlex source code repository. Having to start the SvnBridge software prior to every session has been the primary cause of dissatisfaction with our TortoiseSVN support.

Starting today, TortoiseSVN will just work as illustrated below, no extra software is necessary to work with CodePlex.

Go here to read rest of article …

September 16, 2008

CodeProject Pick: “SQLite Membership, Role, and Profile Providers”

Filed under: IT CodeProject Picks, IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 11:31 pm
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Go here for article source…

SQLite Membership, Role, and Profile Providers

By Roger Martin

Introduction

This is an implementation of the Membership, Role, and Profile providers for ASP.NET 2.0. It is fully functional, except there is no support for saving or reading binary objects to/from the profile provider.

This is the same code that is included with the shipping release of Gallery Server Pro, so you can be assured it is production ready. However, if you do find any issues, please contact me and I will correct them.

It is intended that this code can be used as a drop-in replacement for the SQL Server providers by Microsoft. You can even use the backup/restore functionality in Gallery Server Pro to migrate your SQL Server membership, role, and profile data to SQLite, or the other way around. (You don’t have to use the rest of the Gallery Server Pro functionality if all you need is help migrating your users.)

(more…)

September 8, 2008

Tools & Code: Python Developers – “django 1.0” Web Development Framework Finally Released

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 1:40 am
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Go here for site and download…

Tools & Code: “Google Chrome – The Five Best New Features”

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 1:34 am
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Google Chrome: The five best new features
Posted by Jason Hiner @ 5:31 am

Go here for article source…

Google launched the first beta version of its Chrome Web browser on Tuesday after two years of development. Only the Microsoft Windows version has been released, but Google promised Mac and Linux versions would soon follow. We immediately started kicking the tires and put together a photo gallery and a quick list of the five best new features you’ll find in Google Chrome.


See the full screen shot gallery First look: Google Chrome

(more…)

Tools & Code: Google “Chrome” – YABR (yet another browser)

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 1:28 am
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Go here to download…

September 1, 2008

Tools & Code: New IE-8 Beta Allows For User Privacy

Filed under: IT Tools & Code — Black Falcon @ 9:18 pm
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IE8 beta lets users cover their tracks

By David Worthington

Go here for article source…


August 29, 2008 — On Wednesday, a beta refresh of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 that includes new privacy and search features became available for download.

End users are the target audience for beta 2. It introduces granular privacy settings that Microsoft has dubbed InPrivate browsing and InPrivate blocking. InPrivate helps users cover their tracks as they browse by informing them about cookies that may observe their browsing history and permitting them to selectively remove those cookies.

Likewise, it eliminates all traces of a browsing session, leaving no user names, passwords or search queries behind.

“[InPrivate browsing] is a double-edged sword,” said Laura DiDio, a principal analyst with Information Technology Intelligence Corp. “It is good for home users, but at work, presumably it will have the same features for corporate users, which might not be something that is welcomed by supervisors.”

With InPrivate blocking, users may subscribe to lists of Web sites to block or allow. Other changes that target the user experience are crash recovery, a “diagnose connection problem” button, the ability to reopen closed tabs, and Compatibility View, which permits users to view Web sites that are “broken” by IE8’s standards compliance.

IE8 has three rendering modes: the default “full standards” mode that has already passed the Web Standards Project’s Acid2 test and supports CSS 2.1; a mode that supports W3C standards in the same way as IE7; and a “quirks mode” that maintains compatibility with earlier editions of the browser.

It also selectively implements parts of the HTML 5 draft specification, including cross-document messaging, a client-side storage API, network connection awareness and a window location hash meant to place Web applications into the browser’s back/forward stack.

Microsoft has added new search features to help users find what they are looking for on the Web. One of those is the Instant Search box, a feature that pulls up search results from the user’s chosen search provider and the user’s browser history within the box.

The other is a little less conventional: suggested sites. IE8 makes recommendations about other, related sites that might be of interest to the user. It is not enabled by default.

The new search features fit within a concept that Microsoft is calling “Reach Beyond the Page.” As previously reported, other features in that concept are “Activities,” which is essentially a dialog box that lists available Web services when a user selects text, and “WebSlices,” which gives end users the ability to subscribe to portion of a Web page, including Silverlight controls.

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