DevLog

Microsoft just released the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview which contains the following features (quoted from http://asp.net/downloads/3.5-extensions/)

ASP.NET MVC

ASP.NET MVC provides model-view-controller (MVC) support to the existing ASP.NET 3.5 runtime, which enables developers to more easily take advantage of this design pattern. Benefits include the ability to achieve and maintain a clear separation of concerns, as well as facilitate test driven development (TDD).

The ASP.NET MVC Toolkit provides HTML rendering helpers and dynamic data support for MVC.

ASP.NET Dynamic Data

ASP.NET Dynamic Data helps developers build a fully customizable, data-driven app quickly. It provides a rich scaffolding framework that allows rapid data driven development without writing code, yet it is easily extendible using the traditional ASP.NET programming model.

ASP.NET AJAX

New additions to ASP.NET AJAX include support for managing browser history (Back button support).

ADO.NET Entity Framework

ADO.NET Entity Framework is a new modeling framework that enables developers to define a conceptual model of a database schema that closely aligns to a real world view of the information. Benefits include easier to understand and easier to maintain application code that is shielded from underlying database schema changes.

ADO.NET Data Services

ADO.NET Data Services provide new services that find, manipulate and deliver data over the web using simple URIs. Benefits include an easy and flexible way to access data over the web, while enabling the separation of presentation and data access code.

Silverlight Controls for ASP.NET

You can integrate the rich behavior of Microsoft Silverlight into your Web application by using two new ASP.NET server controls: a MediaPlayer server control that enables easy integration of media sources such as audio (WMA) and video (WMV) into your Web application, and a Silverlight server control that allows an ASP.NET page to reference both XAML objects and their event handlers.

 

As you can see the release is rich with nice and new features that we have waited for so long for them!!

Enjoy the new release!

 

Regards

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I noticed today a new resource that lists vidoes online on Visual Studio 2008, LINQ, and WPF. It is a very rich resource and you should check it:

http://windowsclient.net/learn/

 

Hope it helps you as it helped me,
Regards

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In a Windows Installer setup project I was developing, I had the need to run a script on the Install action of the Windows Installer. There could be several ways of doing so either using:

1. vbs
2. Windows Installer Class
3. exe application

I decided to go for a Console application. However, I needed to perform some logic inside the console application based on parameters from the Windows Installer. So how can I pass parameters from the Windows Installer to the custom action handlers?

In the figure below, you can see that I am viewing the Windows Installer files in a Custom Action View:

 

I have added an EXE application to run at the Install action of the Windows Installer. If you select the Properties window of the EXE you notice the Arguments property. Here you can pass as many arguments as you want by surrounding the argument with a double quotes.

In the above example, I am passing the

1. TARGETDIR: This property gets the path of the folder where the Windows Installer shall use to install the accompanying files on the user's machine.
2. SOURCEDIR: This property gets the path where the MSI is being executed and running on the user's machine.

You could pass any property you want. Here is a link to a very wonderful reference for all the properties that you could pass in a Windows Instalelr: Windows Installer Property Reference

Now, inside the AddToExplorer, you could access the above two arguments as follows:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    if ((string.IsNullOrEmpty(args[0])) || (string.IsNullOrEmpty(args[1])))
        throw new ArgumentException("Input parameters are invalid");

    string targetDir = args[0];
    string sourceDir = args[1];

 

Hope this post is useful for you!

Regards

Tags: Windows Setup