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March 2006 - Posts

Windows Workflow Foundation Videos

I've made a number of short "micro" videos around Windows Workflow Foundation that I thought I'd share here. For a full list either check out the various RSS feeds that I publish here; http://mtaulty.com/services/NuggetFeeds.ashx?query=topics or check Read More...
Posted Friday, March 31, 2006 3:46 PM by mtaulty | 1 Comments

My Site's Been Down....

Apologies if you've been having trouble with my site. For some reason it seems that the .Text engine that's running it went into a bit of a spin the other day and starting spinning the CPU's on the web server that's hosting the site so my hoster removed Read More...
Posted Friday, March 31, 2006 12:57 PM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Visual Studio 2005 - 400 + Differences

Ok, so it's clear marketing but I quite liked this site "400 Plus Differences" that MikeO pointed me to today. I like the design of the site and some of the videos made me smile a lot. Good stuff :-) Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 29, 2006 6:05 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

AJAX and Busy Cursors

One of the downsides of this whole AJAX malarky seems to be that when you're looking at a web page that's going to do some kind of asynchronous post back to a server you don't always get any notification that the web page is actually busy doing something. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 28, 2006 11:54 PM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

PowerStrip and Custom Display Modes - NVidia GeForce Go 6600 and 1920x1200

I got a new monitor for my desk at home today and I had no trouble setting it up with my desktop but I found it a bit of a struggle to get my laptop to display onto it as an external display. It would display fine but the monitor’s native resolution Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 21, 2006 3:31 PM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

What do people have in terms of hardware?

I came upon this page from Valve which gives a survey of the type of hardware that gamers are using to play their games. I thought it was really interesting in that it paints a picture of the sort of hardware that you might expect the typical gaming user Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 10:20 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Playing with C# 3.0: Anonymous Types

I’m playing with the C# V3.0 bits that you can download from here and working through the document (having seen Anders Hejlsberg walk through it at the PDC last year) that details the changes to the C# language. Anonymous types seem like a really Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 10:05 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Playing with C# 3.0: Lambda Expressions

I’m playing with the C# V3.0 bits that you can download from here and working through the document (having seen Anders Hejlsberg walk through it at the PDC last year) that details the changes to the C# language. I’ve been struggling with Lambda Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 7:56 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Playing with C# 3.0: Extension Methods

I’m playing with the C# V3.0 bits that you can download from here and working through the document (having seen Anders Hejlsberg walk through it at the PDC last year) that details the changes to the C# language. Extension methods seem like a simple Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 6:58 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Playing with C# 3.0: Implicit typing

I’m playing with the C# V3.0 bits that you can download from here and working through the document (having seen Anders Hejlsberg walk through it at the PDC last year) that details the changes to the C# language. The first thing that you come across Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 6:23 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Cool bit of interactive Web design

I happened to be looking at this site over the weekend and thought that this brochure for the Volvo C70 was a really rich and engaging bit of UI, one of the best I’ve seen. I liked the “interior” bit of the car where you can “look Read More...
Posted Monday, March 20, 2006 2:06 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Windows Workflow Foundation Talk Last Night at Microsoft TVP

I did a session on Windows Workflow Foundation down at the Microsoft Campus in Reading last night. We had a good attendance of about 80 people who asked a lot of very insightful questions about the way that Workflow works and can be used. I thought I’d Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 16, 2006 4:13 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

I think I'm learning that I'm not a designer

You’ve got to know your limits I guess. I went and took the March CTP of the Expression Interactive Designer and I got quite excited in that I picked up this sample of the 3D CD case which does a nice animated, rotating effect. I loaded this up Read More...
Posted Wednesday, March 15, 2006 7:35 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Hi-Def CRT TVs?

I caught this story on Samsung bringing its High-Def CRT TVs to the UK. It was pretty interesting to me. I’ve been monitoring the price of LCD TV’s for quite a while with a view to trying to get hold of a 32–40” screen that’ll Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 14, 2006 1:43 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Ahhhh! More WPF Goodies. March CTP of Expression Interactive Designer.

I’ve just moved my WinFX environment from Windows Vista Feb CTP to Windows XP Service Pack 2 as I’ve been having trouble getting a driver for my laptop’s video card that would cope well with an external display such as a projector (this Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 12, 2006 6:11 AM by mtaulty | 4 Comments

What I'm hoping for in Windows Vista.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want from Windows Vista as I run the previews and I’ve come to a conclusion about what I want as my number one feature from the OS above what’s present in XP. The one thing that I want sounds like Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 09, 2006 9:04 AM by mtaulty | 3 Comments

Windows gets a Window Manager

One of the new features on Windows Vista is the Desktop Window Manager or DWM. There’s a new post gone up over here explaining what the DWM is and what it’s trying to do for applications (WinFX and otherwise and that’s an important thing Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 09, 2006 8:49 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Porting code from the Jan CTP of WCF to the Feb CTP

I’ve been porting some of my demo code from the Jan CTP to the Feb CTP of WCF and it’s been a little tricky. The main problem I have is that, right now, the IntelliSense for Visual Studio seems not to match what’s in the documentation Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 07, 2006 4:53 AM by mtaulty | 1 Comments

Rumour mill running with Vista release dates?

This article over at Tom’s hardware suggests that Windows Vista will release in the first week of October. I’ve no idea whether that date has any kind of truth behind it or not but, regardless, it starts to show that Vista is on its way… Read More...
Posted Monday, March 06, 2006 2:15 PM by mtaulty | 2 Comments

WPF February CTP and WindowsFormsIntegration

Simple tip – if you’re working with WPF from the February CTP and you’re trying to do something with Windows Forms Integration then make sure that you reference your equivalent of; c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\common7\ide\cider\WindowsFormsIntegration.dll Read More...
Posted Monday, March 06, 2006 1:53 PM by mtaulty | 1 Comments

ClickOnce Security in .NET 2.0

I’ve been following this post on ClickOnce Security in .NET 2.0 and just spotted that there’s been a follow up post over here . This is one of those situations where I can see both sides of the argument but my natural leaning is towards the Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 2:07 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Windows Live Local

I hadn’t caught up with this preview demo yet – really quite smart to drive the car to a particular area and then have a look at the street level photos :-) I took the “Walk View” and managed to find the “Paramount Theatre” Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 1:53 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

The Avalon Advanced Technology Center Blog

Subscribed ! Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 1:44 AM by mtaulty | 1 Comments

Working with Rules in Workflow Foundation

There’s an excellent article gone up on the MSDN site about how the rules engine works with the WF . I don’t think anyone would be upset if I said that the rules engine in WF feels very much like the rules engine in BizTalk 2004/2006 with Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 1:35 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Breaking Changes for WCF in the February CTP

This post is required reading if you’re moving WCF code from the January CTP to the February CTP of WinFX (like I need to in the next day or two). Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 12:58 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Thinktecture: WSCF Released for Visual Studio 2005 and .NET Framework V2.0

Christian Weyer and the Thinktecture guys have released their Web Services Contract First (WSCF) tool for Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework V2.0. I saw Christian demo this down at DevWeek the week before last and I thought it had some very neat Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 12:54 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Microsoft Max Updated

I’m really pleased to see that Microsoft Max has been updated for the January CTP of WinFX. I think it’s important that people have examples of what we can do with WinFX applications and how they’ll look and behave. Unfortunately for Read More...
Posted Friday, March 03, 2006 12:49 AM by mtaulty | 0 Comments

Windows (Sidebar) Gadgets

I’ve switched to the February CTP of Windows Vista which has the Sidebar in it for the first time. I must admit that I was a little skeptical about the Sidebar in that I worry that I’m going to lose more screen real-estate but it seems like Read More...
Posted Thursday, March 02, 2006 2:41 PM by mtaulty | 2 Comments