http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-2008-and-net-3-5-released.aspx

Quick Tour of Some of the New Features

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 contain a ton of new functionality and improvements.  Below are links to blog posts I've done myself as well as links to videos you can watch to learn more about it:

VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

VS 2008 enables you to build applications that target multiple versions of the .NET Framework.  This means you can use VS 2008 to open, edit and build existing .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 applications (including ASP.NET 2.0 applications using ASP.NET AJAX 1.0), and continue to deploy these application on .NET 2.0 machines.  You can learn more about how this works from my blog post here:

• VS 2008 Multi-Targeting Support

ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript Support

.NET 3.5 has ASP.NET AJAX built-in (no separate download required).  In addition to including all of the features in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, ASP.NET 3.5 also now includes richer support for UpdatePanels integrating with WebParts, ASP.NET AJAX integration with controls like <asp:menu> and <asp:treeview>, WCF support for JSON, and many other AJAX improvements.

VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 also now have great support for integrating JavaScript and AJAX into your applications.  You can learn more about this from my blog posts here:

• VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense
• VS 2008 JavaScript Debugging
• VS 2008 ASP.NET AJAX Control Extender Support
• VS 2008 JavaScript Intellisense for Silverlight

You can watch some videos that discuss ASP.NET AJAX and Visual Studio 2008 support for it here. 

I also highly recommend the excellent ASP.NET AJAX in Action book to learn more about ASP.NET AJAX (both client-side and server-side).

VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support

VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express includes a significantly improved HTML web designer (the same one that ships with Expression Web).  This delivers support for split-view editing, nested master pages, and great CSS integration.  Below are some articles I've written that discuss this more:

• VS 2008 Web Designer and CSS Support
• VS 2008 Nested Master Page Support
• VS 2008 Vertical Split View Support
• VS 2008 Support to Treat CSS and JavaScript Validation Issues as Warnings instead of Errors

ASP.NET 3.5 also has a new <asp:ListView> control that provides the ability to perform rich data scenarios with total control over the markup.  It works nicely with the new CSS support in VS 2008.  You can learn more about it from my article here:

• ASP.NET 3.5 ListView Control

You can watch some videos that discuss the new Visual Studio 2008 web designer features and the new ListView/DataPager controls here. 

Language Improvements and LINQ

The new VB and C# compilers in VS 2008 deliver significant improvements to the languages.  Both add functional programming concepts that enable you to write cleaner, terser, and more expressive code.  These features also enable a new programming model we call LINQ (language integrated query) that makes querying and working with data a first-class programming concept with .NET. 

Below are some of the articles I've written that explore these new language features using C#:

• Automatic Properties, Object Initializer and Collection Initializers
• Extension Methods
• Lambda Expressions
• Query Syntax
• Anonymous Types

Here are a few additional blog posts I've written that show off some of the new VS 2008 code editing support and some cool ways to use these new language features:

• VS 2008 Code Editing Features
• Tip/Trick: Building a ToJson() Extension Method using .NET 3.5
• The C# ?? null coalescing operator (and using it with LINQ)
• Using LINQ to XML (and how to build a custom RSS Feed Reader with it)

The Visual Basic team has also created some great free videos that cover LINQ.  You can watch them here.

Data Access Improvements with LINQ to SQL

LINQ to SQL is a built-in OR/M (object relational mapper) in .NET 3.5.  It enables you to model relational databases using a .NET object model.  You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete data from it.  LINQ to SQL fully supports transactions, views, and stored procedures.  It also provides an easy way to integrate business logic and validation rules into your data model.  Below are some of the articles I've written that explore how to use it:

• Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL
• Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes
• Part 3: Querying our Database
• Part 4: Updating our Database
• Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control
• Part 6: Retrieving Data Using Stored Procedures
• Part 7: Updating our Database using Stored Procedures
• Part 8: Executing Custom SQL Expressions
• Part 9: Using a Custom LINQ Expression with the <asp:LinqDataSource> control

I think you'll find that LINQ and LINQ to SQL makes it much easier to build much cleaner data models, and write much cleaner data code.  I'll be adding more posts to my LINQ to SQL series in the weeks and months ahead (sorry for the delay in finishing them earlier - so much to-do and so little time to-do it all!).

Scott Stanfield is also working on creating some great LINQ to SQL videos for the www.asp.net site based on my article series above (all videos are in both VB and C#).  You can watch the first 4 videos in this series here.

Browsing the .NET Framework Library Source using Visual Studio

As I blogged a few weeks ago, we will be releasing a reference version of the .NET Framework library source code as part of this release.  Visual Studio 2008 has built-in debugger support to automatically step-into and debug this code on demand (VS 2008 can pull down the source for the appropriate .NET Framework library file automatically for you).

We are deploying the source servers to enable this right now, and will be publishing the steps to turn this feature on in the next few weeks.

Lots of other improvements

The list above is only a small set of the improvements coming.  For client development VS 2008 includes WPF designer and project support.  ClickOnce and WPF XBAPs now work with FireFox.  WinForms and WPF projects can also now use the ASP.NET Application Services (Membership, Roles, Profile) for roaming user data. 

Office development is much richer - including support for integrating with the Office 2007 ribbon, and with Outlook.  Visual Studio Tools for Office support is also now built-into Visual Studio (you no longer need to buy a separate product).

New WCF and Workflow projects and designers are now included in VS 2008.  Unit testing support is now much faster and included in VS Professional (and no longer just VSTS).  Continuous Integration support is now built-in with TFS.  AJAX web testing (unit and load) is now supported in the VS Test SKU.  And there is much, much more...

Installation Suggestions

People often ask me for suggestions on how best to upgrade from previous betas of Visual Studio 2008.  In general I'd recommend uninstalling the Beta2 bits explicitly.  As part of this you should uninstall Visual Studio 2008 Beta2, .NET Framework Beta2, as well as the Visual Studio Web Authoring Component (these are all separate installs and need to be uninstalled separately).  I then usually recommend rebooting the machine after uninstalling just to make sure everything is clean before you kick off the new install.  You can then install the final release of VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 on the machine.

Once installed, I usually recommend explicitly running the Tools->Import and Export Settings menu option, choosing the "Reset Settings" option, and then re-pick your preferred profile.  This helps ensure that older settings from the Beta2 release are no longer around (and sometimes seems to help with performance).

Note that VS 2008 runs side-by-side with VS 2005 - so it is totally fine to have both on the same machine (you will not have any problems with them on the same box).

Silverlight Tools and VS Web Deployment Project Add-Ins

Two popular add-ins to Visual Studio are not yet available to download for the final VS 2008 release.  These are the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio and the Web Deployment Project add-in for Visual Studio.  Our hope is to post updates to both of them to work with the final VS 2008 release in the next two weeks.  If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development using VS 2008 Beta2 you'll want to stick with with VS 2008 Beta2 until this updated Silverlight Tools Add-In is available. 

Hope this helps,

Scott

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/WPFBusinessAppsPartOne.aspx

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752347.aspx#data_validation

http://blogs.msdn.com/wpfsdk/archive/2007/10/02/data-validation-in-3-5.aspx

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/40-online-resources-to-expand-your-english-vocabulary/

30+ Online Resources to Expand your English Vocabulary

If you’ve got the desire to master the English language, the web is one of the best resources that’s available to you. Knowing the right sites and devoting some time, you can easily take the way you read, speak, and write English to the next level. Even if you’re a native speaker, it doesn’t hurt to improve your grammar every now and then. New words are being invented all the time courtesy of the Web, a prime example being “to google” for something. " src="http://www.makeuseof.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif">

Here, I have listed the resources I have used in the past, and those I’m currently using, for your own benefit.

Online Dictionaries and Thesaurus

Reference.com - Comes with a dictionary and thesaurus, and is one of my favourite destinations to know the meaning and origin of a particular word. You can use it for free, although there’s a premium version of the site that you can pay for if you need pronounciation help.

The Free Dictionary - Get ready to learn a lot of things at the Free Dictionary site. It’s an awesome resource that has information categorized, helps you with definitions, spelling bee games and lots more. The site also features a start page where you can add your favourite modules and learn things new every day.

Visual Thesaurus - At Visual Thesaurus, you can have a great time exploring words and related terms and play around with them. Includes a pronunciation helper so you need not worry about getting a word wrongly pronounced. Some other features include examples of usages and additional tips to help you from mistakenly using the wrong word. Available as a download, it’s worth paying for.

Google’s Define Operator - Since people have got used to Googling for everything that you can imagine, it’s not a surprise that they’ve included a little functionality to their search engine. If you want to know the meaning of a word, just type define: followed by the word in the Google search box, and get the definitions instantly on your screen. Example: define: intuitive.

Definr - Definr calls itself an incredibly fast dictionary, and it really lives up to its name. Type in a word, and get the meaning instantly. Advantages - it loads really fast so you rarely have to wait. But it seems to have a smaller database of words when compared to the tools mentioned above.

HowJSay.com - This is a brilliant web 2.0 tool, just type in a word and get it pronounced immediately. It might prove very useful in some situations. This site has a large database of words so you won’t be disappointed.

Offline Dictionaries

WordWeb - WordWeb functions as a dictionary tool that comes packed with the features that you expect in a dictionary. Select a word from any application and then press a shortcut to find out its meaning in WordWeb. Something you’ll love is the way its interface has been designed. In case you need synonyms, related terms, etc, just click on the appropriate tab and you’re done. The Pro version includes a few more capabilites, although the free version might be more than enough for your needs.

Merriam Webster - Puts the reputed Merriam Webster Dictionary tool on your PC. Get instant meanings, just a right-click away. Spell Checker included.

Enso Dictionary and Spell Checker - Instantly check the spelling in your text by holding down a hotkey (works universally in Windows). Also included is a dictionary that can be activated using the command ‘define’

Grammar Resources

The BBC Learning English site has loads of information on English grammar, such as FAQs, exercises and quizzes. If you still need more, you can test yourself with the aid of exercises in these sites:

About.com Grammar Quiz, Interactive Grammar Quizzes, Grammar Self Tests, 40+ Resources to improve your Grammar and Punctuation

Dedicated Portals

BBC Learning English - There’s just so many things here that you can retain for learning - quizzes, crosswords, podcasts, radio and many other useful resources all under one internationally-recognized brand. It’s a site that must be bookmarked.

Wordie.Org - This is a social network centred around words. You can list your favourite words and phrases, see who else has your favourite word in their list, browse around their lists, tag them and have lots of fun. Create words you hate, words you find weird, words that make you laugh etc. Within a few minutes of wandering on the site, you’ll find lots of new terms that could improve your vocabulary skills.

A Word A Day

The following sites are updated every day with words that you might have never heard of. You can see their origin, etymology, pronunciation and a lot more. You could subscribe to their newsletters and spending less than a minute every day you can enrich your English vocabulary greatly.

Wordsmith’s A Word A Day - One of the world’s most subscribed-to newsletters.

Other “Word of the Day” sites: Yahoo! Education, Merriam Webster, Oxford’s Word Of the Day.

Podcasts

Podcasts are MP3 files that you can download and play on your computer or your portable media player such as your iPod. I listen to the Grammar’s Girl Podcast quite often. Maybe you want to tune in as well.

eBooks

Project Gutenberg - 20,000+ downloadable books. An awesome project that has rich classic books included. Download and distribute, share the knowledge. You have content here that’ll take you a lot of time to read and quench your thirst for literature. Books from many languages are available, just take your pick from the online Gutenberg catalogue.

There’s quite a lot of Shakespeare stuff as well, Google is your friend.

Foxit Reader - Ok, you download a lot of eBooks in the PDF format, but do you find that your Adobe Reader software slows down your entire computer? Get this alternative instead. It’s called Foxit

Educational Games

Jumble - A game I love to play when I see it in the newspapers every morning. It’s playable online and downloadable.

BingoBinge - Play Scrabble Online

ManyThings, Hangman Flash Game - Play Hangman Online

Blogs

There are of course a few blogs that provide tips on improving your English. You can check these that I found: Daily Writing Tips, The Grammar Vandal, Triangle Grammar Guide.

Start Pages

These are quite great, and can save you loads of time. A Start Page is a page on the web that you can customize with stuff that you need to keep an eye on. For example, my start page contains modules that give me access to a few blogs, top news stories and weather:

Likewise, you too can create a start page with modules like a dictionary, word a day stuff, etc. Try Netvibes or iGoogle. Trust me, if you know how to use them, you’ll find them very helpful and fun to learn with.

Let me know in the comments if you found the post useful.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old guy from India who blogs about computers and soft at Killer Tech Tips.

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ListView FAQ

11th December 2007, 02:19 pm by Matthias Shapiro

• How do I get grid lines to show up in the ListView?
• How do I style a specific column in a ListView?
• How do I make it so that, instead of cutting off the text in my column when I shorten it, my text displays ellipsis?
• How do I make it so that my text wraps when I shorten my columns?
• How do I center something in my ListView column?
• How do I wrap text in a ListView header?
• How do I embed ListView Columns in another Column? (Columns with Categories) 
• How do I style the ListView column gripper? (the gripper is also called a “splitter” and a “seperator”)

http://wiki.asp.net/page.aspx/295/how-to-postback-asynchornously-from-inside-a-gridview/

<ItemTemplate>
    <tr class='<%# (Container.DataItemIndex % 2 == 0)?"even":"odd" %>'>    
        <td>    
            <asp:LinkButton ID="EditButton" CommandName="Edit" runat="server" 
              Text="Edit"></asp:LinkButton>
            <asp:LinkButton ID="DeleteButton"  
              OnClientClick="return confirm('Delete Record?');" 
              CommandName="Delete" CommandArgument='<%# Eval("CustomerID")%>' 
              runat="server" Text="Delete"></asp:LinkButton>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%# Eval("CustomerID") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%# Eval("CompanyName") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%# Eval("ContactName") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%# Eval("ContactTitle") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%# Eval("Address") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%# Eval("City") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%# Eval("Country") %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <asp:LinkButton ID="lbOrders" runat="server" Text="Orders" 
               CommandName="ViewOrders" 
               CommandArgument='<%# Eval("CustomerID") %>' />
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr id="trOrders" runat="server" visible="false">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
        <td colspan="8">
            <asp:GridView id="gvOrders" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="False" 
                BackColor="White" BorderColor="#999999" BorderStyle="Solid" 
                BorderWidth="1px" CellPadding="3" ForeColor="Black" 
                GridLines="Vertical" Width="500px" EnableViewState="false">
                    <FooterStyle BackColor="#CCCCCC" />
                    <Columns>
                        <asp:BoundField DataField="OrderID" HeaderText="OrderID" 
                            SortExpression="OrderID" />
                        <asp:BoundField DataField="OrderDate" HeaderText="OrderDate" 
                            SortExpression="OrderDate" HtmlEncode="false" 
                            DataFormatString="{0:d}" />
                        <asp:BoundField DataField="RequiredDate" 
                            HeaderText="RequiredDate" 
                            SortExpression="RequiredDate"  HtmlEncode="false" 
                            DataFormatString="{0:d}" />
                        <asp:BoundField DataField="ShippedDate" 
                            HeaderText="ShippedDate" 
                            SortExpression="ShippedDate" HtmlEncode="false" 
                            DataFormatString="{0:d}" />
                    </Columns>
                    <AlternatingRowStyle BackColor="#eaeaea" />                                        
             </asp:GridView>
        </td>
    </tr>
</ItemTemplate> 

Update: David Findley posted something that I hadn't thought of using that's even easier.  Adding this to web.config will dump email messages sent from an ASP.NET application to the specified path:

<system.net>
  <mailSettings>
    <!--
    Production setting
    
    <smtp deliveryMethod="Network">
      <network host="localhost" port="25" />
    </smtp>
    
    -->

    <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
      <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="C:\TestMessages" />
    </smtp>

  </mailSettings>
</system.net>

http://daptivate.com/archive/2008/02/12/top-10-best-practices-for-production-asp-net-applications.aspx

Top 10 Best Practices for Production ASP.NET Applications

In no particular order, here are the top ten things I've learned to pay attention to when dealing with production ASP.NET applications.  Hopefully they will help you save you some time and headaches.  As always, your thoughts and additions are welcome.

1.  Generate new encryption keys

When moving an application to production for the first time it is a good idea to generate new encryption keys.  This includes the machine validation key and decryption key as well as any other custom keys your application may be using.  There is an article on CodeProject that talks about generating machineKeys specifically that should be helpful with this.

2.  Encrypt sensitive sections of your web.config

This includes both the connection string and machine key sections.  See Scott Guthrie's post for some good references.  Note that if your application runs in a clustered environment you will need to share a custom key using the RSA provider as described in an MSDN article.

3.  Use trusted SQL connections

Both Barry Dorrans and Alex Chang have articles which discuss this in detail.

4.  Set retail="true" in your machine.config

<configuration>
<system.web>
<deployment retail="true"/>
</system.web>
</configuration>
This will kill three birds with one stone.  It will force the 'debug' flag in the web.config to be false,  it will disable page output tracing, and  it will force the custom error page to be shown to remote users rather than the actual exception or error message.  For more information you can read Scott Guthrie's post or the MSDN reference.

5.  Create a new application pool for your site

When setting up your new site for the first time do not share an existing application pool.  Create a new application pool which will be used by only by the new web application.

6.  Set the memory limit for your application pool

When creating the application pool, specifically set the memory limit rather than the time limit which is set by default.  Asp.net has a good whitepaper which explains the value of this:

By default IIS 6.0 does not set a limit on the amount of memory that IIS is allowed to use. ASP.NET’s Cache feature relies on a limitation of memory so the Cache can proactively remove unused items from memory.

It is recommended that you configure the memory recycling feature of IIS 6.0.

7.  Create and appropriately use an app_Offline.htm file

There are many benefits to using this file.  It provides an easy way to take your application offline in a somewhat user friendly way (you can at least have a pretty explanation) while fixing critical issues or pushing a major update.  It also forces an application restart in case you forget to do this for a deployment.  Once again, ScottGu is the best source for more information on this.

8.  Develop a repeatable deployment process and automate it

It is way too easy to make mistakes when deploying any type of software.  This is especially the case with software that uses configuration files that may be different between the development, staging, or production environments.  I would argue that the process you come up with is not nearly as important as it being easily repeatable and automated.  You can fine tune the process as needed, but you don't want a simple typo to bring a site down.

9.  Build and reference release versions of all assemblies

In addition to making sure ASP.NET is not configured in debug mode, also make sure that your assemblies are not debug assemblies.  There are of course exceptions if you are trying to solve a unique issue in your production environment ... but in most cases you should always deploy with release builds for all assemblies.

10.  Load test

This goes without saying.  Inevitably, good load testing will uncover threading and memory issues not otherwise considered.

http://blogs.msdn.com/wpfsdk/archive/2006/10/19/wpf-basic-data-binding-faq.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/07/12/DataPoints/

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752071.aspx

http://kuler.adobe.com/#

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter/designingcontent.html

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/blogs/developers-diary/archives/104

I'm getting ready to setup an HTC Excalibur and I wanted to post my list of favorite sites to visit with my Mobile Browser and a list of the apps I really need to install to make my Windows Mobile Smartphone complete.

• Amazon Mobile - http://m.amazon.com - A basic, but very usable site, focused on search, that lets folks who've setup their Amazon account ahead of time purchase directly from the phone. Nice if you have Amazon Prime Free Shipping.
• BBC PDA - http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/pda or http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile - BBC has a mobile site and a PDA site, but the PDA site looks best on Smartphones or Blackberries. The best of the BBC on my phone. The mobile site would look good on an old black-and-white WAP Nokia.
• CNN Mobile - http://m.cnn.com - Same here, mobile CNN, some pics, I use this site a lot.
• Engadget Mobile - http://m.engadget.com - My favorite tech and gadget blog, now with mobiley goodness. I wish I could see comments though.
• Hanselman.com - http://www.hanselman.com - Ha! See what I did right there? Back in the day, we taught dasBlog about mobile devices and if you hit hanselman.com from a Blackberry or Windows Mobile browser (and a number of other tiny browsers), we'll detect it and give you a mobile experience. Yay!
• Facebook - http://m.facebook.com - In terms of pure functionality, I'd say that Facebook's mobile site is, hands-down, the most functional. It feels like you can most everything you'd ever want to using only Tiny HTML. This site and this company continue to impress, probably because it's running entirely on Red Bull and 20-year-olds.
• Flight Stats - http://mobile.flightstats.com - This fine site has saved my tuckus a number of times while traveling. Their Airport Chatter section is interesting also.
• Google - http://www.google.com/xhtml - The Tiny XHTML version of Google includes location specific searches and personalization with News, Weather, Movies, etc.
  • +1-800-GOOG-411 (+1-800-4664-411) - If you're able to call this number, either domestically or internationally, it's worth a try because it's amazing. Much better than the "1-800-Tell-Me stuff back in the day, but still of the same vein. I use this a LOT.
• Microsoft Live - http://wls.live.com or http://m.live.com - If you hit wls you'll get your browser detected and possible prompted to download a nice applet for your phone. If you hit m.live.com you'll get tiny Windows Live Search.
• Gmail - http://m.gmail.com - If you hit gmail with your phone you should get detected and sent over to the mobile version. If not, you can hit m.gmail.com or https://mail.google.com/mail/x/ where the x is magic. If you're running Google Apps for Your Domain (GAFYD) you can hack that URL also.
• Joystiq - http://m.joystiq.com - Tiny Gaming Site. Interestingly, while they use (I think) the same back end as Engadget, sometimes the fonts are all wonky.
• Mobile MSN - http://m.msn.com - A decent mobile portal and good jumping off point. The mobile stocks are particularly good.
• MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.msn.com - It's astonishingly LAME that you can't get to this site from http://m.msnbc.com but perhaps they'll read this and make that DNS change, because this is a really good tiny news site.
• Alarm.com - https://www.alarm.com/pda - I use Alarm.com to manage my security systems at the house and our rentals from my phone. If you've got a service available over the web, you really ought to have a minimal mobile website so kudos to them for having one.
• Twitter - http://m.twitter.com - Does exactly what it says it does...mobile twitter, although I'd like to be able to see Direct Replies in the interface.
• Wapedia (Mobile Wikipedia) - http://wapedia.mobi/en - Very useful for winning arguments with the wife self-edification, it's the mobile Wikipedia.

I think it's funny that folks thought that the ".mobi" top level domain extension was a good idea and that the internet just changed "www.foo.com" to "m.foo.com" and saved the registration fee. Plus, I don't have to tap out the "obi" which saves me, like minutes.

What are your must-have mobile websites, Dear Reader?