Mike Taulty's Blog
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July 2006 - Mike Taulty's Blog

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Mike Taulty's Blog

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  • Producing documentation from your code with Sandcastle

    Another bit of news that had passed me by. There's a new blog site up here; http://blogs.msdn.com/sandcastle/default.aspx which has the details of a tool that can produce documentation from your .NET code. In going around and talking about Visual Studio 2005 I noticed that the little tool that we shipped in VS .NET 2003 to produce HTML documentation from the C# (and now VB) code comments seemed to have disappeared and you were left with not many (Microsoft) choices to get this kind of thing done.
  • Loading workflows into Workflow Foundation

    One of the interesting things about Workflow Foundation is the dazzling array of services that you can plug into it in order to alter/extend the base functionality. I’ve just been playing very slightly with plugging in a WorkflowLoaderService which takes responsibility for loading workflows into the runtime and so I thought I’d share the very basic stuff that I’ve been playing with. When you come to the WorkflowRuntime and ask it to create a Workflow for you, you have two choices (note – this is pseudo code which I haven’t compiled); Type myWorkflowType = typeof(SomeWorkflowClass); XmlReader myXmlReader = new XmlTextReader(“c:\\somefile.xml”); WorkflowRuntime runtime = new WorkflowRuntime(); // Choice 1 runtime.CreateWorkflow( myXmlReader ); // Choice 2 runtime.CreateWorkflow( myWorkflowType ); so you can get a WorkflowInstance created either by passing in an XML definition of the Workflow or by passing in a type. The runtime handles these two instances itself but if you add an instance of a WorkflowLoaderService...
  • The future of ADO.NET?

    Did you see this yet? http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/nxtgenda.asp I missed it (until today). Looks pretty interesting to me.
  • Want to work in development at Microsoft in the UK?

    Gareth 's team is currently looking for developers to join them in working on aspects of Visual Studio such as the Domain Specific Language tools and the Guidance Automation Toolkit . There aren't many opportunities to do development work for Microsoft in the UK and even fewer that would give you a chance to contribute to Visual Studio itself so if this is of interest to you then check out the UK Jobs page for the full description . Good luck with it if it's of interest to you and you decide to take it forward :-)
  • Returning to the Mother-Ship

    It might be a bit quiet on this site over the next week or so as I’m off to sunny Seattle for an internal Microsoft junket of some sort. I’ve not been out to Seattle for about 2 years or so and really don’t get there very often so I’m sort of looking forward to it (in the way in which a person can look forward to a 10 hour plane trip followed by lots of technical sessions in darkened rooms) if only to go and see those people throw the fish around at the fish market again. (Some sort of) service will be resumed on this site the week after next :-)
  • The Windows Vista Shell, Thumbnails and Managed Code

    Quick update on this post - Ian kindly gave me a nudge and said that running of .NET code inside of the shell might not be supported in that the shell loading COM components implemented in .NET might cause some versioning problems. I'll see if I can find an official answer to that and post it here but, in the meantime, apply a reasonably large dose of salt to the post. One of the nice features of the Vista shell is its ability to display different sizes of thumbnails based on the actual contents of a document. So, when I'm looking through a folder of 100's of PowerPoints or Spreadsheets I can actually see what it is I'm looking at in the shell rather than having to open all the documents. You can plug into this for your own document types by writing an implementation of the interface IThumbnailProvider and returning a bitmap back to the shell for it to use. I was talking to Andy yesterday and he was mentioning that this interface is an unmanaged COM interface rather than a managed one so I thought I'd have a bash...
  • Lost in the maze of Vista/Net Fx 3.0 CTPs?

    If you're struggling to work out which bits of .NET Framework 3.0 work with which Operating Systems and which bits of tools then you need this post; http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/07/17/668572.aspx
  • Trying to keep the noise down with a Toshiba Tecra M3 laptop

    Maybe it's the heat but my Toshiba M3 laptop is driving me nuts with amount of noise it generates. So, here's my top tip. I saw a colleague do this recently and then forgot all about it but it certainly worked for me today with my M3 (which has a worryingly small ventilation slot on it). If you've had your M3 for a while and the fan is making a racket then pick it up, purse your lips and give the ventilation slot a few really good blows to try and get the dust out of it. It might be best doing this with the machine switched off and also watch out for the dust coming back at you :-) Naturally, if you've got a little hoover that you can suck the dust out with, that might be a better plan than blowing it further into the PC. It certainly worked for me today in shutting the fan up a bit. Hopefully it'll last for a few weeks before having to do it again.
  • MSDN Nugget Videos

    Whilst some additional content has just been posted to the UK MSDN Nugget Site I thought I'd refresh the various ways we've got of accessing this content. Firstly, there's the site itself; http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/events/nuggets.aspx Then there's the RSS Feeds that I maintain here at my site - this main one will link you to others; http://mtaulty.com/services/NuggetFeeds.ashx?query=topics Then there's a web service that I have to make this stuff available, feel free to use this service from demos and so on if it's useful to you; http://mtaulty.com/services/NuggetAccess.asmx Then there's Mike Ormond's Gadget for Live.com. You can grab the details of this form here; http://blogs.msdn.com/mikeormond/archive/2006/02/10/529667.aspx and if you pop along to Windows Live and add it as a Gadget then you'll get a view something like; (by the way - check out those London temperatures :-)) Finally, there's my own Windows Forms Smart Client that you can use for online/offline viewing and it can also perform a bit of...
  • UK Messenger Robot Competition

    There's a (relatively) new kind of software interface in town and it's the automated Messenger Robot. The first example that I saw was the Microsoft Encarta robot that you can add to your friends in Messenger (useful when, like me, your friend list is a little short) and he talks to you and answers questions as in; Mike Taulty says: Morning Encarta® Instant Answers says: Hi again, Mike Taulty! I can now answer your questions using any of the following Encarta sites: 1 Encarta Australia 2 Encarta Canada (English) 3 Encarta UK 4 Encarta US Just pick one and we'll be on our way! Mike Taulty says: Can you speak German? Encarta® Instant Answers says: Ich spreche leider kaum Deutsch...Sie können sich aber mit meinem deutschen Kollegen "Encarta IM Antworten" unterhalten. Der Kontakt für MSN Messenger lautet: de.encarta@botmetro.net Mike Taulty says: What about Italian? Encarta® Instant Answers says: Let me take you to our Language Homework Help section => Encarta® Instant Answers is inviting you to start Encarta....
  • Acquisitions

    I think that there were other acquisitions that went by today but this one interested me most; http://news.com.com/Microsoft+buys+Windows+utility+software+maker/2100-1016_3-6095376.html?tag=nefd.top
  • Workflow Videos

    The list of the screen captures (we call them "MSDN Nuggets" in the UK) that I made around Windows Workflow Foundation has grown a little today in that we've published a bunch more material to the UK MSDN site. There's now around 15 or so videos on Workflow Foundation (plus a bunch more on other topics!) so I thought I'd list them all out here. It's worth saying that around the first half of these are significantly older than the second half and were made on different versions of the technology but the general idea of the topics involved should be ok as Workflow has been great in not changing radically from CTP to CTP. It's also worth saying that I've learnt things about Workflow as I've gone along so if you spot glaring errors then let me know. Here's the list and the suggested running order; 01 Workflow Foundation Hello World Watch Download 02 Dealing with Exceptions Watch Download 03 Conditional Logic Watch Download 04 The Conditioned Activity Group Watch Download 05 Working in Parallel Watch Download 06 Dealing...
  • CardSpace/InfoCard Sandbox

    I’m really pleased to see this. There’s a new area of the www.netfx3.com site which lets you play around with CardSpaces/InfoCard. The link is here; http://sandbox.netfx3.com/ I’ve yet to try it because it’s based on the newly released July CTP of .NET Framework 3.0 but it’s great that there’s finally a proper site that shows CardSpaces as I think people have yet to grasp how powerful this is going to be.
  • .NET Framework 3.0 - July CTP

    According to the item up here http://www.netfx3.com/blogs/news_and_announcements/archive/2006/07/17/4488.aspx there’s a new July CTP of .NET Framework 3.0 that came out yesterday/today. I’m just back from holiday and I’m in a bit of a mess with my .NET Framework 3.0. I’ve got Windows XP running Beta 2 where CardSpaces doesn’t work properly :-( but I do have Interactive Designer and all the other bits I need. I’ve also got Windows Vista running build 5456 which (I think) means it has the June CTP of .NET Framework 3.0 but on that build I don’t really have a proper Interactive Designer that I can show to people. It looks like there’s another Vista build coming (5472) that has the July CTP of .NET Framework 3.0 already on it but then it’s not clear how that sync’s up with Expression and the other tooling bits. The only Vista bits I see on MSDN are still the Beta 2 bits so it looks like the 5472 build might not be made generally available. As an aside, upgrading...
  • (On Holiday) Progress on Vista 5456

    I'm on holiday at the moment but I've been upgrading my desktop PC at home to Vista in order to both see how it goes and also because my XP installation had too many quirks to it - not quite sure why but I think too much trial software got installed over time. It's worth remembering that 5456 wasn't a full CTP or a Beta build so it's to be expected that it has some rough edges to it. Here's my positive points on installation 5456; 1) Very quick installation again. 2) Straight onto my wireless network. 3) ATI Radeon 9600 detected straight away along with most of my hardware. 4) Pretty decent performance - better than XP in general. 5) I managed to get SQL Server 2005 (Sp1) to install - hadn't been able to do this on Vista for a while and it seems to be a bit random in that I tried the same thing on my laptop (same build of Vista) and failed. 6) The idea that I can play DVD's (and record to them) without buying extra software is nice. 7) Media Player 11 interface on a reasonably sized music library works much better...