.NET Reflector Add-Ins

Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector was revolutionary when it first come out, however as we are all now very used to the fact that our code can be re-read once complied to a binary (when not obfuscated) it does slightly loose the original 'WOW' factor.

Since .NET Reflectors release it gained a huge following including my own, but like all good applications there are always ways to enhance it and give it your own spin and Lutz Roeder was very aware that he, as one man, could not be the creator of an application which would satisfy everyone's needs which is why he give the application extensibility points.  Since that point a community has grown around this application and many new add-ins have appeared.

Some of the add-ins allow you to take the code from a dll or exe and extract to a file in the language of your choice, or create Sequence diagrams from existing code (a great way for post implementation documentation) you can even have reflector appear as a tool within Visual Studio.

If the extensive list of add-ins for reflector still does not add your own required functionality there are documents on how to create your own.

Download Lutz Roeder's .NET Reflector here.

View the community add-ins here and information on creating your own add-ins.

This application is a great example of taking a really simple idea and making available to everyone, the longevity of this application is purely down to its simplicity and extensibility.  Things to keep in mind when writing any application.

IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling

Do you serve video to users of your web site or wish you could but cannot afford the possible bandwidth costs, well the new module from the IIS development team maybe able to help. 

The new IIS 7.0 module can allow you to control the amount of data sent to a user so that only the data needed to watch part of the video or the entire video is send, possibly saving you bandwidth costs.

To get a full explanation see Scott Guthrie's blog

Silverlight 2 For The Developer

I know that almost all professional blogers say that if you aggregate then what's the point of your blog! Well I want to record this information as much for myself as for anyone who reads this;

For an introduction to Silverlight 2 with an 8 part step-by-step tutorial read Scott's blog.

For a further look at developing Silverlight 2 applications but this time using Expression Blend with an overview of how to use Blend read Scott's Blog.

Silverlight 2 Developer Poster

Need something else geeky to stick on the wall next to your desk, then I have the answer.  Microsoft have created a poster which details some of the key new features in Silverlight 2.

To get your copy go to Brad Abrams blog.

Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes

When I first started designing applications I would take the current look and feel of a Microsoft app and try and replicate it, keeping the same metaphors. Unless you a full time interaction designer, this approach tends to result in software providing the functionality your created in code to your users but does not always aid them in their process.

Recently I have seen push in the community to drive better GUIs, we are now talking about unit testing the interface and getting user involved from the very first time the screen is created and even talking them through hand drawn diagrams.  This best practice of highlighting the GUIs absolute importance in good application adoption has helped me highlight an area of my application development I have sometimes overlooked, or only briefly looked at.

If you are in need of some direction in the GUI design and some of the mistakes to avoid you should read Jakob Nielsens's Top-10 Application-Design Mistakes.

Hello Secure World

Security is a hot topic and has been for a long time, there are experts and there are those of us who are still trying to make it a first class consideration in each product we create.

There is so much content to read that anything which gives you a head start in this arena is a good thing, Microsoft have created a new site located at www.HelloSecureWorld.com to give you this head start.  This new site takes a humorous look into security which also educates you in the intricacies of developing secure applications and the threats all applications offline and online face.

To learn more about security go to www.HelloSecureWorld.com

UI Patterns

Design patterns are in vogue and have been for quite a while, I believe in them, I use them and find them invaluable to short cut my thinking processes.  I am more of a class library designer than an interface designer so I ten to use them alot.

The only issue with being at ease with class design and not interface design is that as a web developer interface design is a big part of my job, so to help me build on my interface design I spend alot of my time trawling the web to see how other people have created their interfaces and learning from their successes and failures.

What I really need is an abstract representation of these interface design patters, yes you guessed it, there is a web site with this information.  A Danish web developer called Anders Toxboe has created a great web site which lists alot of the UI design patterns you see throughout the web but in one place. 

To see his current list of UI design patters you can find them at http://ui-patterns.com/

Along with using the right UI pattern you also need the right look and feel for your web site. However to be successful you also need to know how the majority of web users actually use your web page. Smashing Magazine have published an article which contains 10 tips on achieving your goal of the best web design.  The article opens with a introduction into how users will scan your pages, which gave me a great insight into how to better structure my pages for easy access and presentation of key information.

To read "10 Principles of Effective Web Design" go here

Visual Studio Comparison

"Do I get Visual Studio 2008 Pro?"

"Is the express version enough?"

"Do I get Team System what are the benefits?" 

These are a few of the questions I am sure you ask yourself when you are looking at which version of 2008 you should get your boss the buy.  Team System is very expensive and Pro is less but will you miss some features you counted on.

Help is at hand Microsoft have created a comparison chart, well several, which are grouped by feature areas and detail each Visual Studio version including Team System and which features they actually contain.  This should be a great help in making sure that you are getting your boss the buy the right version for your development team.

To see the chart for yourself go here

The Stay At Home Server - Funny

The Microsoft Publicity machine is great and with almost every new tool, OS etc comes a gimmick web site or interesting video.

The "Stay-At-Home-Servers" web site is all about how every person should have their own server running, you guessed it, Windows Home Server.  Although I am not advocating home server I did come across quite a funny book on their new publicity site, to have a little chuckle to yourself go here.

IIS 6.0 & 7.0 Deployment

As a web developer responsible for a web farm (in a small company) I have the task of deploying my web application updates to all the servers and when things do not work I have to go to each server and make sure that no one has changed any settings. 

I hear you cry "why not create a tool to deploy to my servers" and we did along time ago but like all internal tools, where no one is willing to back them with money, it does the job and nothing else.

In steps the IIS Web Development Team who have created a the first version of their new web deployment tool.  The tool is in its infancy so do not expect a great deal however I am sure it will go from strength-to-strength.  The tool is a command line tool which allows you to sync and migrate applications and sites between web servers.  This includes content, registry keys and most aspects related to you web application/site.

When you find the time to look further into this tool, by downloading the recent version, you will find that the development team already have a road map for how they wish to proceed so you can see already they have a long term plan for this, and if this tool helps you now then all the better.

To read the team blog entry and download the current version go here

Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter

For those of you who are looking for some introduction into how to use Silverlight 1.0 but are not looking forward to reading one of the many tutorials then Silverlight 1.0 Fire Start is for you.  This is a set of eight videos created at a recent one day training event.

The videoed presentations are given by some of the industry experts and are available for view through the web site (using silverlight of cause) or for download in wmv.

You can find out more here

Bill Gates Last Day - CES Key Note Video

Here is a very funny video which covers the last day Bill Gates works for Microsoft as full time employee, first shown at the CES 2008 Key Note, the final one he plans on attending officially.

Bill's Last Day: The CES Keynote video

Visual Studio Team Foundation Tools

The follow is a list of tools for TFS available through codeplex, which also come complete with source code.

TFS File Sharer - Mimics SourceSafe like file sharing.

TFS Continuous Integrator - A TFS 2005 based continuous integration solution.  Of course, it's built in if you are using TFS 2008.

TFS Dependency replicator - A tool to make changes in the source tree when certain events occur (like copying files when a build completes).

TFS Build Virtualizer - Rather than having one physical machine for each team or build server configuration, manage a pool of virtual machines automatically.

Blog entry inspired by Brian Harry

Team Foundation Power Tools for VS2008

For those of you who have made the leap to Visual Studio 2008 and are using Team Foundations Server you may be pleased to know that there are a new set of power tools to help bridge some of those functionality gaps. Instead of recompiling the existing power tools for 2008 the development team at Microsoft have decided to create a new set of tool specifically aimed at 2008.

The new power tools include the following;

• Find In Source Control
  The ability to search source code from within the source safe database
  
• Team Build Notification
  Using this tool, which sits in the system tray, you can be notified of when specified builds are queued, started etc
  
• Updated Best Practices Analyzer

Plus many more updates.

To find out more form Microsoft or download the tools please go here

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions

You would have thought that after the latest version of the .NET Framework packed with its many new features the Microsoft .NET team would have sat back to enjoy their accolade, but this is not the case as they are still developing and have produced a number of extensions to the framework which will help developers add some of the functionality that usually takes allot of time to implement

For examples they have crated a MVC (Model-View-Container) framework and a new AJAX version, to mention just a couple of the new technologies ready for you to take advantage of.

To get the full information on these extensions please see Brad Abrams blog entry which also includes direction to tutorials.

DDD5 Videos

Unfortunately for me I missed the last DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper (DDD) day, personally I think a DDD is a good excuse to miss clashing family events although my wife does not hence I did not attend.

If you are like me and could not attend than do not fear as most of the presentations where videoed and they are now available at the web site, so although you missed out on the event at least you can watch the presentations.

You can find the videos at the DDD web site here

P & P Team System Guidance In Print

The Patterns and Practice team at Microsoft have been the driving force behind many of the additional framework which have eventually found their way into the full .NET recently this includes the new MVC framework which is due to be release early next year. 

Besides frameworks they also have a number of documents outlining best development practices, recently I have been responsible for the maintenance and implementation of Team System within my organisation and have used the P & P guidance documents within CodePlex, these have been an invaluable resource for the best way to use and run Team System. 

For those of you who prefer to read your document in physical form the Team System guidance is now in print and can be purchased from Amazon, find it by clicking here

You can also get the performance testing guidance for web application in print too, find it by clicking here

[Original Information from Jeff Beehler's blog]

Visual Studio 2008 Training Kit

Every version of Visual Studio has been accompanied by a suite of presentations, demos, and hands-on-labs and Visual Studio 2008 is no different.

This latest training kit takes you through the new buzz features including LINQ, WCF, WPF, WF etc and most of the new language features.  This is a great place to start if you want to really investigate what is new and great about Visual Studio 2008 download this kit.

You can download the 120MB kit from Microsoft here.  After downloading the kit, simply run the installation program to extract the contents to your local machine.  Once the installation process is complete, you will see an HTML page that allows you to navigate through the contents of the kit.

[Original Information from Eric Nelson]

.NET Framework 3.5 Poster

Ok this may sound a bit geeky, well in fact it is very geeky, but I like to put .NET/development posters around my desk this includes information on the MSF development cycle and coding mantras.  I find that they help me keep all those little bits of very useful information at the front of my memory especially as I seem to have a really bad one.

Recently I came across another poster to put by my desk, this one contains an overview of the .NET 3.5 common namespaces and types.  I am sure you will agree this is information no developer should be without!

Seriously you may find this useful to find your way to some of the nice new 3.5 features.

You can find the poster in XPS format here

Windows Live Writer

Up until recently my blogging experience has been, come up with an idea, write up the blog entry in an Outlook email (so I can spell check), copy-and-paste to Blogspot and format the text and insert links using HTML mark up.  This process has worked very well except I have to hand craft my links and double check that they are all working before I post.

I have seen Windows Live Writer around for a while and had the usual thought 'I should look at that', well finally I did and WOW!

I installed Live Writer, pointed it at my Blogspot account (a google site) and it signed-in checked the account took some settings from the site to configure my experience and here I am writing this blog from inside Live Writer.

The experience is everything I could hope for its a complete Word-like experience with the usual spell checking, something I greatly need, font formatting, tables, bullet points etc, insertion of links and also difference media (pictures, videos etc). Once I have finished formatting my blog entry I click 'publish' and it appears in my blog, the experience of the interface means that I could stop physically logging into my Blogspot account from now on, if I so wished.

If you write a blog or are thinking of writing one but are held back by the process of having to use another web interface then give Windows Live Writer a go I am sure that once you start using it you will suddenly realise that the only thing stopping you from blogging now is time and ideas.

To download Windows Live writer go here