Absolutely hilarious story of a banking computer system crash... I had heard it before from someone before but didn't know if it was true or not.  Take a look:  http://www.thehumorarchives.com/joke/A_true_story_of_computer_stupidity

In March 1992 a man living in Newtown near Boston Massachusetts received a bill for his as yet unused credit card stating that he owed $0.00. He ignored it and threw it away. In April he received another and threw that one away too. The following month the credit card company sent him a very nasty note stating they were going to cancel his card if he didn*t send them $0.00 by return of post. He called them, talked to them, they said it was a computer error and told him they*d take care of it.

The following month he decided that it was about time that he tried out the troublesome credit card figuring that if there were purchases on his account it would put an end to his ridiculous predicament. However, in the first store that he produced his credit card in payment for his purchases he found that his card had been canceled. He called the credit card company who apologized for the computer error once again and said that they would take care of it. The next day he got a bill for $0.00 stating that payment was now overdue. Assuming that having spoken to the credit card company only the previous day the latest bill was yet another mistake he ignored it, trusting that the company would be as good as their word and sort the problem out. The next month he got a bill for $0.00 stating that he had 10 days to pay his account or the company would have to take steps to recover the debt.

Finally giving in he thought he would play the company at their own game and mailed them a check for $0.00. The computer duly processed his account and returned a statement to the effect that he now owed the credit card company nothing at all. A week later, the man*s bank called him asking him what he was doing writing a check for $0.00. After a lengthy explanation the bank replied that the $0.00 check had caused their check processing software to fail. The bank could not now process ANY checks from ANY of their customers that day because the check for $0.00 was causing the computer to crash. The following month the man received a letter from the credit card company claiming that his check had bounced and that he now owed them $0.00 and unless he sent a check by return of post they would be taking steps to recover the debt. The man, who had been considering buying his wife a computer for her birthday, bought her a typewriter instead.

Ed B.

Okay... so in hindsight this is so stupid but I only post so it won't cause you as much time as it did me!

So I'm in VS 2005 after installing the Orcas Beta 1 and I needed to get something from the Team Foundation Server... BUT I COULDN'T!  All of the context menus on the files in Source Control Explorer kept telling me that there were "No Commands Available."  "I don't think so!  We're not playing this game" said me to the computer. :)

Of course my first thought was that it might have had something to do with the Orcas install.  So I did a reinstall of both VS 2005 and Team Explorer but it didn't help any.  Aggravated now I begin my quest for the answer.

I don't know how it happened but the fix is simple:  Make sure Team Foundation Server is selected as the source control plug-in.  You can go to Tools --> Options (make sure you have the "Show all settings" option is checked at the bottom of the dialog) and select this plug-in.

GRRRRRR... Okay... back to productive work now.

Ed B.

Right now there are limited training resources for learning WPF and pretty much a non-existence of proven patterns and practices.  All of these assets will eventually come to the developer community as more people adopt the technology.  For right now, I would recommend this book for learning and as a keeper for a decent reference book.

Title: Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed
Author(s):  Adam Nathan
ISBN-10: 0672328917
ISBN-13: 978-0672328917
Publisher: Sams

Some of the things that I really appreciated out of this book:

· This is truly a value-add, especially for a “visual” technology. There are other WPF books that don’t have a single screenshot and it is extremely helpful to have the visual side of WPF represented throughout the book.

· XAML Demystified and Important New Concepts Chapters -- I’m really happy that he did this at the beginning of the book and is where any beginner of WPF or Silverlight (formerly WPF/E) should start the learning process.

- Organized Extremely Well:  It's great if you want to read it from cover to cover or hit a particular topic.  I always give a book the "Index Test" and check to make sure I can easily find the most common WPF topics.

So, be sure to check it out!  Let me know what you think about it too.

Ed B.

Just a quick post to spread the word about supporting "Team Hanselman". Click the links below to help him support the "Fight Against Diabetes".

Ed K. and Ed B.

"TeamPlain is a web front end for VSTS that enables users to access the majority of TFS functionality from within a Web browser.  The focus of TeamPlain is on work item tracking but it also includes some valuable version control capabilities (like viewing history/change sets, diffing files, browsing the source base, etc.), some SharePoint integration, Reporting services integration, and some upcoming build support.  TeamPlain gives VSTS a new avenue to reach a broader array of people within the development team who don’t use Visual Studio today and don’t want to install Visual Studio clients on their machines.  It also improves reach by enabling some access from non-Windows clients.

TeamPlain has been in the market for about a year now and has been very successful.  Many of our VSTS customers use TeamPlain today and are very satisfied with it.  Our advisory council and other customers have been telling us for the past year that we need a web UI for VSTS and that TeamPlain would be a great solution for us.  We’ve listened, looked very closely at the product and concluded that they are right.  Today is the culmination of a long process and the beginning of another.

TeamPlain will become Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Web Access.  Effective today, TeamPlain is available, at no additional charge, to users who own a Team Foundation Server and can be downloaded from here.  It will be accessible by any user properly licensed with a TFS CAL.  Support will continue to be provided by the current staff via the DevBiz online forums.

Over the next few months, we will be rebranding TeamPlain as a Microsoft product and running it through our release process.  When that is complete, we will be releasing it as a VSTS Power Tool, transitioning support to the Microsoft forums and beginning CSS (phone) support.  In the Orcas timeframe, we will be releasing Team System Web Access as an official, documented, localized, and officially supported component of Team Foundation Server.

A look at the product

I've included a few screen shots here to give you a flavor for what TeamPlain looks like and what it can do:

Some likely questions

What version of TeamPlain are you releasing? - The initial download that is available today is TeamPlain V1.0.  After we have run it through the Microsoft release process, we will be releasing TeamPlain version 2.0 as a VSTS Power Tool.  V2 includes some cool new features, including Viewing/Managing builds, additional version control capability, AJAX support for a more responsive experience and larger project support, and much much more.  Ultimately we will be incorporating V2 (or a derivation of it) into the official product in the Orcas timeframe.

What is the Microsoft release process? - It is a long checklist of things (I think about 20 or so) that we have to do before we release any product.  It includes security reviews, scans for geo-politically incorrect terminology, test sign-off and much more.

When is "the Orcas timeframe"? - If I told you I'd have to kill you.

No, seriously, when is it? - Seriously, I can't tell you :)  What I can say is that we have been releasing CTPs for Orcas for a good while now.  We are currently working on getting ready for Beta 1.  Keep your eyes and ears open over the coming months for more news about it.  I'll have to let you draw your own conclusions about how long it will take after Beta 1 releases.  Our philosophy is to get the product to you early, in many forms, CTPs, Betas, RCs, etc and use your feedback on when you believe it is ready to help guide us.

Why do you say "the Orcas timeframe"? - Because, as I mentioned, Orcas has been in the works for a while now and we are just adding web access to the line-up.  It's going to take us some time to work out the details of how it fits into our schedule and I am expecting that it may not actually ship on the same day as the rest of Orcas but rather in the same timeframe.

How does this relate to CodePlex? - I think of them as different things, although clearly there is some overlap.  TeamPlain and CodePlex both have web UI for some overlapping areas.  Over time, we may look to see what we can share but we'll see how that evolves.

Does this mean I don't need TeamPrise any more? - No, not if you do X-Plat development and/or want Eclipse integration.  While TeamPlain can provide some cross platform access via the browser, it is not designed to provide the full set of capabilities that a developer would use: IDE and editor integration, command-line access for scripting, full version control access, etc.

Is Microsoft using TeamPlain internally? - Some groups are, yes, but it isn't broadly used yet.  The IT group probably uses it the most.  We installed a pre-release copy on the DevDiv dogfood server to experiment with it.  We are in the process of rolling it out to all of our internal users now.  I'll probably blog about the progress of this over the next couple of months.

What happens if I call Microsoft support about TeamPlain now? - We are working with our support organization to prepare them to support the product.  They are expecting to begin supporting it when we release it as a Power Tool in a few months.  I wouldn't be surprised if you run into some people in support who don't know anything about the product today.  I expect over the next couple of weeks we will educate the front line phone representatives on how to route calls for it.  Until we begin Microsoft based support in a few months, you will be directed to the DevBiz forums for answers to your questions.

In closing

This is a big step forward for Team System and I hope you are as happy about it as I am.  The future is looking brighter every day!

Brian "

Source: Microsoft Acquires TeamPlain!

Ed K.

I recently gave a talk at the Dallas BizTalk User Group on using WMI with BizTalk Server 2004/2006.

Sorry for the delay on posting the slides and links for download.

WMI Code Creator v1.0
Scriptomatic 2.0
WMI Diagnosis Utility -- Version 2.0
WMI CIM Studio

WMI.ppt (314 KB)

Ed K.

I ran across the issue of my "Code Snippets Manager" not being visible in my tools menu. I searched the web for an resolution to my problem but just found other people having the same problem with no answer. So I search around the IDE for a while till I found out how to get it added to the tools menu (wasted productivity).

 Here is a screen shot of the tools menu without the "Code Snippets Manager".

To resolve this issue go to the Customize option in the "Tools" menu. Go to the Commands tab and select "Tools" from the listbox. On the right side you will see "Code Snippets Manager", select it and drag it to your "Tool" menu and drop it in to place.

Now you are good to go.

If you hate having to search the IDE for options that you cannot find easily, then hopefully, I have saved you some time :)

Ed K.

The SDK consists of two different types of libraries, Implementation and the Interface. I love this API, they developed it for ease of use and scalability for future functionality in mind. The Implementation assemblies are not publicly expose and undocumented (protecting the developer from himself ;) ). The Interface assemblies are the interface to the implementation assemblies. There are several benefits to having the SDK architecture this way.

• Do not have to add references to implementation assemblies, freeing up the the possibility of being too tightly coupled to the implementation logic when the assembly version could change anytime.
• Follows the rule "Program to the Interface and not the implementation"

This API architecture style follows very much inline with how MS did the Team Foundation Server Object Model.

The SDK allows the develop to tap into any area of MOA2007:

• UI Add-In
• Business Logic Add-In
• Reporting Applications
• Integration Applications
• Specialize Applications

The SDK is packed full of samples and the documentation is right on.

I know, I know.... Accounting software is extremely boring but as my partner in crime Ed B has pointed out to me numerous time "This software is essential to business" and accounting software only has the minimal functionally in accordance with accounting needs but business never works great with "out of the box" functionality, sure it works but we want the software to match the process of the business. Being able to add value to accounting software with ease via a powerful API is exciting, the possibilities are endless and there is much money to be made with add-on's. This is a great API for ISV's and "Micro" ISV's.

The Interface assemblies in the SDK are versioned. I dig this. Let me break this down. Since we are programming to the interface and not the implementation, MS can change stuff up in the implementation assemblies and it will not break my production code. But what if they need to change some stuff up in both layers to add new functionality that they want to expose to the developers. In this case they would develop a new Interface assembly and note it as "IwhateverV2". As a SDK consumer I can use this new interface assembly or I can not, and my code will work just fine. To get a some of this new functionality exposed in the new Interface I can upcast my return Interface to the new object. Currently there are 2 versions of the interfaces in MOA2007, all the new Interfaces are appended with V2, which makes it very easy to keep track of what's what. For example: when MOA2007 was Small Business Accounting we had IAccountFactory now that it is Office Accounting we have IAccountFactoryV2. We can still use the old if we want. The rule of thumb is, If you are creating a new project with MOA2007 then use the V2 interfaces, If you already have production code and are writing new code or doing maintenance coding for the same project you will probably want to upcast to the new interface version.

Ed B and I will be developing some good examples using this SDK over the next few weeks to share with the community. We are very excited about MOA2007.

Ed K.

"The Team Foundation Administrator's Guide" is available for download here.

The Team Foundation Administrator's Guide is a comprehensive guide that covers procedures for administering Team Foundation Server, including planning, daily operations, recurring tasks, and infrequent operations. Use this administrator's guide to manage Team Foundation Server.

Note: The Team Foundation Administrator's Guide now includes content that was previously published separately in the Team Foundation Planning Guide, which is now deprecated.
(Microsoft 2007)

Ed K.

Take a look at this....

For some reason the clock in my system tray is not updating.  Any ideas?  I hovered over it a ton of times and no refresh... Very STRANGE!

Ed B.

Tim Rayburn has an excellent post on Reflector 5.0 and highlights an awesome new feature that really rocks.

Tis a great read: Here

Ed K.

As a lover of WinForms Apps I have been totally excited about the ClickOnce Deployment technology introduced in the .NET 2.0 Framework.

Over at the Vertigo Software Team System Blog they have included the SIMPLE steps at accomplishing a ClickOnce "publish" during a Team Build.  Thank you guys!  Take a look... Here

Ed B.

Just as a reminder... The simplest way to delete a team project in TFS is:

1.  Open the Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt

2.  Use the following command:

TfsDeleteProject /server:TFSSERVERNAME "PROJECTNAME"

Where:

TFSSERVERNAME - name of your TFS Server

PROJECTNAME - name of your Team Project

Ed B.

Press Release

This is really going to be awesome for the Sogeti Dallas office, SARK has some really outstanding consultants, especially in the BizTalk arena. We will truly have the most talent Microsoft Practice group in the area after the accquitsion finalizes.

It is going to be a great year for Sogeti!

Ed K.

Being a huge fan of Vongo, well, at least before they decided to take there time on getting Vista ready, I love being able to download movies. I never have time to watch TV so, having movies on my laptop and portable video player is a beautiful thing. When I heard that WalMart finally launched their video service I was soooooo excited. I rushed home after work and prepped myself for full on "Rocky" movie downloads. The experience was a total let down. Let me show you some screen shots of the adventure.

First of all, it was hard as heck to find the system specs for the service on the website. Once I found them I was presently surprised that it actually stated OS Support "Vista". WOW!!!! A website that really states that they support Vista, very much a rarity. Wait a sec....don't get to excited.....lets try and install the WalMart software.

First I go to download the software with my FireFox Browser:
 
hmmmm.... not to pretty.

O well lets fire up IE7 and continue on our way:
 
Looks as if they have had problems in QA with the install blowing up. Nice fail safe WalMart.

Ok cool, our install went ok. Now we have to name our computer for the WalMart download manager.
 
Well crap, guess we are not going anywhere today.

Lets open up the software that was already installed to see what it looks like:

As expected..... the never ending "trying to connect" cycle.

All and all it was a sad day for Ed K. No "Rocky" movies tonight, I guess "American Idol" is on the schedule for tonight. I look forward to trying this service again soon, I see a very promising business venture here. Nice day one try WalMart.

Ed K.

"Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 requires a hotfix to comply with the new start and end dates for DST in the United States. This hotfix will be available in February 2007. We will update this article when the hotfix is available." (Microsoft, 2007)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931961

Ed K.

I still can't believe that developers do not program securely, especially when they have all these great tools and best practices easily available. I just wanted to share a quick "WTF" with a recent experience I had.

I am currently looking for a house, so naturally I am calling all sorts of agents to get info and pictures before I commit to driving to look at the house. For this example, we shall say X1 company supplied we with an email with a hyperlink to view information such as pictures, builder, taxes and layout. So Cool right? Ya you bet, being able to view all this data at home before wasting my time driving all over the place. But the hyper link to the home information was a little more interesting, the URL contained there site www.CompanyX1.com then the query string http://www.CompanyX1.com/SearchDetail/AllTheGood/Search.aspx?AgentID=12345&password=IamSoSecure. Bang no need to call again, I can search all there internal listing (which I did not, I will not deal with a company that is that careless). 

Crazy?

Ed K.

This will be a rather short blog post because I intend to write a much longer blog post about a this topic once I finishing coding a side project that uses WMI with BizTalk. So for now I am just going to throw down some quick, dirty code and explanation to show the power and usefulness of this topic.

If your a BizTalk guy, you probably get tired of opening the HAT and saving messages then terminating. Unless of course your BizTalk solution is just perfect and this never happens to you...ya ok.

What I am going to do is show you quick example of how to generate Managed WMI classes for BizTalk and show an example of how useful it can be.

First thing is to download this:
Management (WMI) Extensions for Visual Studio .NET 2003 Server Explorer

Next thing is connect to the BizTalk box with Server explorer in Visual Studio. Right click on the "Management Classes" and click "Add Classes"
 

Now Select "ROOT\MicrosoftBizTalkServer" and click "ADD>"

Now you see all the classes you can deal with in your Server Explorer.
Right click on "MSBTS_ServiceInstance" and select "Generate Managed Class"
Now you have a class file in your solution that you can program with.
 

Pretty cool eh?
Go ahead and generate one more class from "MSBTS_MessageInstance"

So, lets writes some quick dirty code to do something. I am sure I have at least 100 suspended messages on my local BizTalk server box to work with here :).

   11  ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.ServiceInstance.ServiceInstanceCollection _colServiceIns;

   12 

   13   //get a collection a ServiceInstance that are in "Suspended Not Resumable" status

   14   _colServiceIns= ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.ServiceInstance.GetInstances
                                  (String.Format("ServiceStatus='{0}'", 32));

   15 

   16   //Loop though them

   17   foreach(ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.ServiceInstance _serviceIns in _colServiceIns)

   18   {

   19 

   20       Console.WriteLine("ServiceInstance GUID: "+ _serviceIns.InstanceID + "\n");

   21       Console.WriteLine("Error: " + _serviceIns.ErrorDescription);

   22 

   23       ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.MessageInstance.MessageInstanceCollection _messCol;

   24 

   25      //get a Collection of messageInstance with a condition that the ServiceInstanceID 

   26      //of ServiceInstance is equal to ServiceInstanceID of MessageInstance

   27      _messCol= ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.MessageInstance.GetInstances
                     (String.Format("ServiceInstanceID='{0}'", _serviceIns.InstanceID ));

   28 

   29      //Loop though the MessageInstance collection and save off the message

   30      foreach(ROOT.MICROSOFTBIZTALKSERVER.MessageInstance _messIns in _messCol)

   31      {

   32          Console.WriteLine("Saving to File");

   33          _messIns.SaveToFile(@"C:\here\");

   34          Console.WriteLine("Done Saving");

   35      }
           _serviceIns.Terminate();

   36   }

All that happens here is, we get a collection of ServiceInstance that are "Suspended Not Resumable", loops through some of the properties and displays them. Then, matches up the MessageInstance with its ServiceInstance and saves off the message to a location on disk and Terminate.

Here is our output.

Ed K.

I have not seem too many companies offering quality training on Visual Studio Team System yet. I just saw that Notion Solutions have a training track offered in several locations and even on-site. Their prices look unbelievable, considering who the instructors are, Chris Menegay and Dave McKinstry, both Team System MVP's. I have seen these two guys present at Launch Events and .Net Users Groups; they are awesome! If anyone is looking for great training at an outstanding price check them out.

They have not posted a schedule/curriculum for 2007 training yet, but here is a link to the 2006 one, to get an idea of what they offer.

Here is a list of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Training Partners.

Ed K.

Microsoft has recently released a version of their application that generates the .NET Framework documentation that we see and love...  You can take a look at it and get more information about the project codename Sandcastle here:  Sandcastle Team Blog

Download the December 2006 CTP here:  Sandcastle - December 2006 CTP Download

Some of the high level features:

Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN style, comprehensive documentation by reflecting over the source assemblies and optionally integrating XML Documentation Comments. Sandcastle has the following key features:

Works with or without authored comments

Supports Generics and .NET Framework 2.0

Sandcastle has 2 main components (MrefBuilder and Build Assembler)

MrefBuilder generates reflection XML file for Build Assembler

Build Assembler includes syntax generation, transformation..etc

Sandcastle is used internally to build .Net Framework documentation

Ed B.

Our new team at Infragistics, the User Experience (UX) Group, has come out with an article on Code Project about creating fantastic user interfaces using the NetAdvantage family of products. Kudos to several on the UX team who wrote and edited!

Be sure to check it out!  How to Make Users Happy Article

Ed B.

So watch out for the mysterious 28002 Error Unknown.  It really took me a little while to figure this one out.  I was updgrading a client's TFS server and they are using TFS Workgroup Edition and I was getting this annoying error when installing the KB919156 prerequisite to SP1.

Well, if you have 5 users (which is the limit for the workgroup edition) you are going to receive this error... Dave Glover writes a good explanation of this:  TFS SP1 Article

You need to remove one of the users from the "Team Foundation Licenses Users" group and add them after the SP1 install is finished.

Ed B.

So I just need to take a minute or two to say a few words about SonicWall. I usually will not get angry with a vendor but this is an exception mainly for the way I have been treated as a customer.

As you know I am a consultant, so I must be on top with the newest and greatest products that are solid i.e Vista. I, of course installed Vista soon as it was available to MSDN subscribers. As an owner of a SonicWall Firewall I am now crap out of luck connecting to my network since the their VPN Client does not yet support Vista. I have called several times to get a status of a beta, so that I could help them perfect the application as well as have a dogs chance of connecting to my servers, I received unhelpful responses such as this "We did not say we were going to support Vista when you bought it", "Would you like a refund?", "Have you tried any other VPN Clients to see if it will connect?" WOW!!!! great responses from a company that is  a world wide leader in firewall products....... Cruse on over to the Sonic Forums and check out all the post of customers posting "We just dropped Sonic and went with Cisco". No not threats but actual actions of product drops. The company has not even responded to any of the posts on the forum....... I must say I posted a few comments as well hoping maybe an executive would check out the forums every once in awhile (you never know).

So your probably thinking..."Well Vista has not been released to the general public yet, that's not till Jan 30. So there still on top of their game"... Hello...... general users are not the ones interested in firewalls. Here is the kicker.....I read that Sonic did say they will have a VPN Client that works on Vista sometime in the late first quarter to early second quarter of 2007. I have no facts on that, just stuff that I have read in several places.

My next firewall will be a Cisco for sure! Yes, Cisco had a beta for Vista out quick, which I used to connect to another network I work with.

So my rant is done... I believe in the consumer speaking out....If your quite, companies will continue to disappoint the consumer with no repercussions.

Ed K.

If you are deploying a pre-complied DNN website developed from the starter kit you will run into issues. The issue you will see is that App_GlobalResources cannot be found. The directory App_GlobalResources is removed and all files are compiled into an assembly.

The work around solution is this:
Download the DNN Source. Navigate to:

Project - DotNetNuke.Library
SourceFile - Localization.vb

Find Public Const ApplicationResourceDirectory As String = "~/App_GlobalResources"
rename the value to "~/AppGlobalResources"

Recompile and replace DotNetNuke.dll in your DNN Sites Starter kit bin

Go to your solution and rename the App_GlobalResources to AppGlobalResources.

Rebuild

You should be good to deploy to your target box.

Ed K.

So it's been known by the other Ed and few choice co-workers... but I'm moving to New Jersey.  Somewhat scary (considering the movers are coming in T-minus ONE WEEK!) and the fact that I know no one in New Jersey except the great people I'm working with.

Oh yeah, I didn't say who I was working with, did I?  I have the privilege to join the Infragistics team!  I'm going to be starting out as the Best Practices Engineer.  Awesome title huh?  Not as cool as say... Codemunicator; but we'll work on it!

It is sad to be leaving Ed K after working together for so long... But we've decided to continue the branding and work together still in the future with our shared interests (what exactly are they?)  Ed's a Data Guy and I'm a UI Guy.... how does that work out?  Well that's what's been so great about our partnership.  I LOVE working with Ed.  He's everything I'm not!  I'm not afraid to take my stupid "Ed my query is taking too long, what's wrong?" questions to him!  (And it's always funny when he brings his GUI's that have like text boxes all over the places with different sizes and not even lined up - you know which ones I'm talking about! Then he asks "There's nothing wrong with it - it's beautiful!)  HA HA :)

How did it all begin?  Well... at the Tulsa Tech Fest in October, Ed K, Tim and I joined Caleb  and the rest of the speakers out to have drinks.  Did I mention how great the group of speakers were?  Anyhow, so I'm sitting with the guys, Ambrose, and Shaun Walker and we're just talking and somehow we start talking about UI or something... after a couple of drinks of course!  I just gave my spiel about UI and if you haven't ever heard it before, then just keep watching for posts; I talk about it all the time!  (Tim and Ed K. are sworn to secrecy about some of the stories that night!)  I stalled for a while since it was the middle of a huge deployment at the client I was at (and still am.)  But seriously... it was a crazy idea for me at the time to move from Texas to New Jersey; a place I had never actually been before.  It's not like I was afraid of the East Coast (I lived/worked in DC for a while a couple of years ago.)  It's just that... well... OK, so I started to get rid of the reasons why I shouldn't move.  I'd like to thank Ambrose for bothering me for several weeks to send my resume to him!  Without it, I wouldn't have come to my senses to accept the position that is most perfect for me.

Visiting Jersey and Infragistics was a lot of fun!  Wait did I just say that?  Seriously, the interviews were fun.  I really enjoyed the talks and the more I was the there the more I knew that I needed to be there.  Great People, Great Environment, Great Job...  I really couldn't ask for more and before I left the building I knew I just needed to figure out how to get through the obstacles (which I did.)  I will be working alongside a ton of great people.  I already told you about Ambrose but if you haven't ever met Jason Beres... wow! Quite the character also.  Being surrounded by really great people who are passionate about the presentation layer is something I know will just help my improve my skills.

I'm having to put a couple of my personal development projects on a hold for right now... I'll pick them back up when I get settled and actually find some friends :)

So I've pretty much three working days left.  It looks like I'm spending the entire time boroughing through the red tape of the Integration Lab to prove that Click-Once deployments are really not.

Now for those of you who always ask me about the "Telerik vs. Infragistics" questions and my opinions about each release from the companies, I have always done my best to stay objective and I plan to.... with reason of course!  There are things about both company's control suites that I love but anyone who has talked to me before knows that I prefer the Infragistics toolset over Telerik any day.  I'm hoping to take what I know about the different companies and make the Infragistics toolset that much better!

Hope everyone has had a Happy Holidays and wish everyone a great new year!  I'll post my new Infragistics blog whenever I get it set up....

Take care,

Ed B.

I usually do not blog about movies but this is definitely an exception. I grew up watching the "Rocky" saga, I am a die hard fan and seriously look at Rocky as an idol. For years there had been rumors of a Rocky 6 being written but never did I see anything; I felt robbed at not getting a final chapter in the life of the Italian Stallion; I am now satisfied :).

The movie was overall great. The story could have used a little more work to fill in some gaps after Rocky V but it was still a very riveting story line. The acting was good, Sylvester Stallone delivered a realistic character and still had the good 'ol accent we have all grown to love and mock. I was displeased with the absence of a few key characters but surprised at the reentry of some very obscure characters. As you know, the movie always has a big fight scene that the story builds up too but I did not like the camera angles and feel of the frame for the first few rounds, it was kinda like watching boxing on TV, which they have done this in all the movies but this one just took it overboard and lost the movie feeling. During the last rounds they use to much mise en scène, they tried to hard to bring a psychological unity to each frame set. The movie ends a bit different than you would think but, its the final movie, so I expected that. I was pleased with the ending and felt closure with the Rocky chapters. I bid a farewell to Rocky, I have enjoyed sharing in the moments of his climb to fame, fall into retirement and rise in achievement to become a lasting legacy in the hearts of the American people.

I don't want to ruin the movie so I will say no more. Drop your 9 bucks and watch this movie, you will love it :) !

I give the movie two enthusiastic thumbs up! I can't wait to round out my Rocky DVD collection with the last.

  Rocky (1976)                           Rocky II (1979)                         Rocky III (1982)       
   

  Rocky IV (1985)                         Rocky V (1990)                         Rocky Balboa (2006)

Ed K.

Tim Rayburn of TimRayburn.net presented at the Dallas .Net Users Group this month. This was one of the best presentations I have heard in a while. Tim Rayburn is a big BizTalk guy in Dallas and when it comes to XML he is Master Yoda. He reviewed XML namespaces, XPath syntax, and closed with a review of the XmlReader object in the .NET Framework. There were awesome questions that spurred great conversations and best practice discussions. He has posted his notes, code samples and slides on his blog. Check them out you will definitely learn something.

Get the slides and code samples HERE.

Ed K.

NOTE:  This is an unfinished article.  I have been working on this commentary for several weeks now but I felt I needed to post what I already have.  I will be adding sections over the next several days to complete everything so look for more links, screenshots, images, sections, and content.  I'll also watch for comments and post answers to really good questions or requests for more commentary.

I have been working on this post for several weeks now.  It's the "Toy Boy" in me that has been irking to talk about my experience with all of the .NET UI "toys" out there.  I am a huge fan and proponent of organizations choosing a third-party .NET component suite for purchase for their development team(s).  There are just so many reasons to have one chosen and used in all of an organization's applications.  The question that always pops up though is:  Which One?  In the last three years this question has come up for me from several different organizations including clients that I have consulted with.  Honestly, the best choice will always depend on the organization and its needs but I would like to go through a comparison of the major component vendor suites that are out today.  Even though I have my favorites, my goal was to be completely objective in my analysis and judging.  I will be comparing the following versions:

• Infragistics NetAdvantage 2006 Volume 3
• Telerik r.a.d. controls Q3 2006

I have further split my comparison into control groupings to ease the reading for major controls.

Grids

<Section Not Completed Yet - Update Soon>

I'd like to see the component vendors offer data bars support like in Microsoft Office Excel 2007... that would be way awesome!

ASP.NET AJAX(Atlas)

Now, for the longest time I have been a huge fan of Telerik ajax control because of how simple it was to "ajaxify" your current web apps.  You still can easily but now you can also do the same with the new Infragistics release.  I would suggest giving them both a try but both components compete extremely well with each other and are compatible with the latest beta release of Microsoft AJAX.

Something minor but worth saying:  I love the gallery of different "loading" animations that are available out-of-the-box with the Telerik r.a.d. ajax control.  Take a look at them:  http://www.telerik.com/demos/aspnet/Ajax/Examples/Common/LoadingImages/DefaultCS.aspx

Editors

<Section Not Completed Yet - Update Soon>

Charting

Anyone who knows me knows how much I LOVE charts.  Love them Love them Love them!  (I know... the look you are giving me now is the same look I get from many when I talk about charts.  But hey, I LOVE charts!)  Charts in my opinion are one of those most fundamental tools you can use to convey so much information to an end user.  Well-presented charts are a must-have for every application that deals with data and needs to convey useful information.  With that said:  Absolutely nothing else to say:  Infragistics has the best charting controls between the two comparison suites.  I love using them.  They are just too easy to learn.  Just figure out how you want to convey the information using the design-time designers and then data bind!  POOF! 

Aside:  There are some things that I wish Infragistics would include in their charting controls.  Best of breed in the charting control space would have to be Dundas.  If you haven't taken a look at them, they have great controls for charts, maps, and gauges.  (Something that I would like to see included in the other component suites.)  Beware though... Dundas charges a pretty penny for them, but if all you need is really good charting controls, Dundas is definitely the way to go.

XHTML/Accessibility

<Section Not Completed Yet - Update Soon>

Toolbars

If you think about it, toolbars and menus have been around for a very long time; way before I was even born.  I think since the 1970s!  Wow... and they have really been the way UI designers have presented commands and features to users in just about every application.  With the latest release of Microsoft Office, Microsoft has invested several years of R&D for a new concept to replace menus and toolbars.  I think they did a great job with the Ribbon with Galleries and the Quick Access Toolbar, and "Office Button."

Telerik and Infragistics along with other component vendors have jumped onboard to offer us the ability to easily use these new UI features in our own applications!  Both have done a great job.  I'm somewhat biased with the Infragistics toolbar managers controls (with run-time customization support for end users) because I think the architecture of this is great.  The only two things that they missed (and I'm sure they know about since everyone has brought it up already) is that the window frame that would normally be "glass" in Windows Vista is being drawn over and the missing support for ribbon command merging in an MDI application.  The MDI merging has been one of the great features that has allowed Infragistics to excel.  Between all of the different ribbon controls out there I also think that Infragistics has done the best job at making their ribbon implementation most look like Microsoft's ribbon implementation in Office 2007.

<I want to put an image of each of the component suite's version of the Ribbon for comparison against an actual image from the Word Ribbon>

Office 2007 Ribbon UI Licensing Information

Microsoft has recently released how it is going to allow ISV's to use the new Ribbon.  It's pretty simple and here's my summary: 

• Follow the Design Guidelines (Five years down the road we don't need to see a million different versions of the ribbon!  We want to keep it the same so that end users will be able to feel comfortable going from application to application
• Register your application on the Office UI Site
• Don't use the new UI in an application that competes with the core applications in Microsoft Office - (Sorry, you can't use the Ribbon if you are developing something like a commercial ve