DevLog

Microsoft released recently templates for VS 2008 that you can use to create websites or applications targeting .NET 2.0 and using ASP.NET 2.0 Ajax Extensions 1.0.

Brad Adams has a post about that, check it out: http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2007/12/19/using-vs2008-to-target-net-framework-2-0-with-asp-net-ajax.aspx

 

Hope this helps,
Regards

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Yesterday we had a very long day at the Metropolitan hotel - Sin El Fil with Microsoft and the different partners in Lebanon.

In the morning we had a section for MS Academic partners, where most of the universities in Lebanon sent representatives, in the afternoon there was a section for the MS partners and ISVs, we had some sessions on VS 2008 and WCF - WF.

As always, the star was Samer Chidiac (DE-MS) where he presented several sessions all through the day!

In addition, Khaled Chbat also presented a very nice and smooth session on WCF and WF, his charisma is one of a type!!

 

In the evening, we had a community night for the LebDev.NET. This time we decided to have developers from the community to present and we had two nice and informative sessions on:

1. Generics in .NET by Rabih Abla
2. WPF by Hassan Ayoub

I will soon upload the session slides and demo codes to the www.lebdev.net, so keep an eye there!

 

Thank you Microsoft for such great days and above all, for your continuous and none-stop support for the www.lebdev.net user group!!

 

Regards

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I would like to wish people all over the world and specifically all Muslims Adha Moubarak!

Today is the Adha Eid, hope this Eid will bring you all the peace and prosperity!

 

Kind Regards,

Bilal

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Check this valuable add-in for your VS 2005/20008

http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2007/12/13/spell-checker-for-html-asp-net-jscript-vb-c-css-and-c-for-visual-studio-2005-and-2008.aspx

 

really cool!!!

Regards

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Always discovering nice stuff on the www.asp.net website!

For those of you who haven't yet checked out the ASP.NET Podcasts, have a look at: http://www.asp.net/learn/podcasts/

 

Hope this helps,
Regards

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Last Saturday (December 8, 2007) I went to a governmental place to apply for a new Identity card because it was stolen from me in Spain, while I was attending the Techd Developers 2007.

That governmental place is located in Baabda. A city that contains so many governmental buildings and above all the presidential palace in Lebanon.

To reach that place, there is a tiny circlular way I had to take to reach that place.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007, 7:00 AM, a huge bomb took place with aroud 35 Kg of TNT and the result, so many people were killed and injured and above them a General in the Lebanese Army was killed!

That bomb could have easily happened on Devember 8 instead of December 12!! Those people who were killed and injured, I would have been simply one of them!!

Are those criminals noticing that in their way to kill those targetted people, they are killing and injuring so many innocent and civil people??

 

The question remains, till when Lebanon and the Lebanese people have to pay?? And the main theme is, it is all about timing ...

 

...

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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

I have been browsing online to locate some Web casts on WF and found this blog post by Paul Andrew, which lists several Web cast links:

http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/articles/460630.aspx

 

I am sure you will appreciate that blog post when you start looking for resources on WF!!

 

HTH,
Regards

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