Few months back I had blogged about this real amazing news from .NET Framework's team, plans to release Source Code of .NET Framework Libraries and enable debugging support of them in Visual Studio 2008. Well... the special day has arrived, Recently Scott announced Source Code of .Net Framework Libraries is now available for everyone.

Isn't this great news?! I'm pretty much excited to check it out.

Currently source code for the following .NET Framework libraries are available.

• .NET Base Class Libraries including System, System.CodeDom, System.Collections, System.ComponentModel, System.Diagnostics, System.Drawing, System.Globalization, System.IO, System.Net, System.Reflection, System.Runtime, System.Security, System.Text, System.Threading, etc).
• ASP.NET (System.Web, System.Web.Extensions)
• Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms)
• Windows Presentation Foundation (System.Windows)
• ADO.NET and XML (System.Data and System.Xml)

Scott has also mentioned that they'll be adding up more libraries in near future.

And now How do you configure Visual Studio to avail this feature?

Well.. Shawn Burke has blogged a brief post explaining "How to Configure Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code".

I'd recommend checking the following links for more details:

.Net framework library source code now available - ScottGu
Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code - Shawn Burke
.NET Framework Library Source Code available for viewing - Scott Hanselman 

Cheers!
Chirag

Recently Scott announced some really exciting news for .NET developers that his team has been working to enable the ability for .NET developers to browse and download source code of .NET Framework Libraries and also with debugging support.

This feature will be available with .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, which is expected later this year.

Microsoft will begin with offering the source code for .NET Framework Libraries including:

• System
• System.IO
• System.Collections
• System.Configuration
• System.Threading
• System.Net
• System.Security
• System.Runtime
• System.Text
• ASP.NET (System.Web)
• Windows Forms (System.Windows.Forms)
• ADO.NET (System.Data)
• XML (System.Xml)
• WPF (System.Windows)

How it Works?

In Scott's blog you'll find all the details and screens on "How it works", but it's  as easy and simple like you were debugging and browsing the source code locally - step through, set breakpoints, inspect variables, etc.

Here are few links to know more about this feature.

• Making .NET Framework source available to developers
• Channel 9 Video, more details on Reference Source
• Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries
• Hanselminutes Podcast 83 - Microsoft to release .NET Framework Libraries Source

I'm really excited and just can't wait to get my hand on it. (:-P)

A day back Microsoft announced Silverlight 1.0 final release for Mac and Windows. A cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the web.

Some of its features include:

• Built-in codec support for playing VC-1 and WMV video, and MP3 and WMA audio within a browser.  The VC-1 codec is a big step forward for incorporating media within a web experience - since it supports very efficiently playing high-quality, high definition video in the browser.  It is a standards-based media format that is implemented in all HD-DVD and Blueray DVD players, and is supported by hundreds of millions of mobile devices, XBOX 360s, PlayStation 3s, and Windows Media Centers (enabling you to encode content once and run it on all of these devices + Silverlight unmodified).  It enables you to use a huge library of existing video content and provides access to the broad ecosystem of existing Windows Media tools, components, vendors and hardware. 

• Silverlight supports the ability to progressively download and play media content from any web-server.  You can point Silverlight at any URL containing video/audio media content, and it will download it and enable you to play it within the browser.  No special server software is required, and Silverlight can work with any web-server (including Apache on Linux).  Microsoft will also be releasing an IIS 7.0 media pack that enables rich bandwidth throttling features that you can enable on your web-server for free.

• Silverlight also optionally supports built-in media streaming.  This enables you to use a streaming server like Windows Media Server on the backend to efficiently stream video/audio (note: Windows Media Server is a free product that runs on Windows Server).  Streaming brings some significant benefits in that: 1) it can improve the end-user's experience when they seek around in a large video stream, and 2) it can dramatically lower your bandwidth costs. 

• Silverlight enables you to create rich UI and animations, and blend vector graphics with HTML to create compelling content experiences.  It supports a Javascript programming model to develop these.  One benefit of this is that it makes it really easy to integrate these experiences within AJAX web-pages (since you can write Javascript code to update both the HTML and XAML elements together). 

• Silverlight makes it easy to build rich video player interactive experiences.  You can blend together its media capabilities with the vector graphic support to create any type of media playing experience you want.  Silverlight includes the ability to "go full screen" to create a completely immersive experience, as well as to overlay menus/content/controls/text directly on top of running video content (allowing you to enable DVD like experiences).  Silverlight also provides the ability to resize running video on the fly without requiring the video stream to be stopped or restarted.

Silverlight for Linux

Microsoft also announced Silverlight support on Linux and its partnership with Novell to provide a great Silverlight implementation for Linux.  Microsoft will be delivering Silverlight Media Codecs for Linux, and Novell will be building a 100% compatible Silverlight runtime implementation called "Moonlight".

There are Hundreds of Ajax Frameworks available today. Sébastien Just explains How to choose the right one for yourself.

server independent or not ?
server independent frameworks will help you in mashing-up server technologies and lowly ties your software architecture while server dependent frameworks may increase your productivity but makes difficult major changes to your projects.

structural Javascript enhancements ?
Javascript can become a maze if your team does not share a common development methodology . There are so many ways of doing the same thing ( like creating objects of accessing the DOM ) in JS, that you must formalize the way to do it. Such a framework may help via on-demand Javascript, packaging abilities, enhanced OOP...

re-usability of your written components ?
making use of it shall help you in re-using written components in your next projects.

framework current documentation level ?
often low for most projects, you must take care of it

features you need ?
you may look at your projects needs ( or near future needs ) and see if the Framework can handle them. Some are GUI oriented, special-effects oriented, Javascript centrics, communication only oriented. None will completely cover your requirements. What is the complexity degree in making the framework evolve ? can you add your own features in the framework ? will you help committers ? Can you mashup multiple Frameworks ?

How long will it last ?
Most projects are companies own project spin-off. The Framework evolution depends on their ability to maintain and make the project evolve. A good user community is important as well as talking to developers when needed further functionalities.
Taking care of sponsors and the framework current uses in production web sites, is a good start in guessing if the Framework will last years or will be stopped in six months.

What sort of support ?
Is there a community support ? commercial support ? test reactivity while testing it.

How steep is the learning curve for the framework?
Can your team handle such a technology. Many developers are reluctant to Javascript . Can they handle such a change, is the Framework simple to understand ?

Who are my visitors ?
It seems that a very light framework is required for a public site. If your visitors need to upload a large Javascript API, they may not visit further your website, depending on your page's download times. When working on intranets, or professional services, it may be acceptable that the first access to the application may be longer, moreover when the website is used daily. Also think about on-demand Javascript and Javascript compression.

Flapjax is a new programming language designed around the demands of modern, client-based Web applications. Its principal features include:

1. Event-driven, reactive evaluation
2. Templating syntax
3. Persistent data saved on a data store we provide
4. Convenient data sharing
5. Access-control for shared data
6. Interfaces to external Web services

Flapjax is easy to learn: its syntax is precisely that of JavaScript. Furthermore, because Flapjax is built entirely atop JavaScript, it runs on traditional Web browsers without the need for plug-ins or other downloads. In fact, you can (in exchange for a little more code) use Flapjax purely as a library in JavaScript rather than use the compiler from Flapjax to JavaScript, so you can integrate it into your existing programs.

See Flapjax in action

Learn how to program in Flapjax

Run Flapjax programs

Explore the Javascript library

Microsoft has released the ADO.NET vNext August CTP.

• The ADO.NET Entity Framework, which includes:
  • The Entity Data Model (EDM), which allows developers to model data at a higher level of abstraction
  • A powerful client-views/mapping engine to map to and from store schemas
  • Full query support over EDM schemas using Entity SQL and LINQ
  • An object services layer that allows you to choose to present query results as rows and columns or as objects. When using .NET objects, the system will transparently do identity resolution, change tracking and update processing for you.
  • An open provider model that allows other stores to plug into the ADO.NET Entity Framework
• Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) integration in ADO.NET for this CTP includes:
  • LINQ to Entities: formulate queries using LINQ against your EDM schemas
  • LINQ to DataSet: the DataSet finally gets full query capabilities! You can formulate LINQ queries that go against one or more DataTable objects. The LINQ to DataSet implementation will even optimize certain query patterns for better execution performance.
• Tools
  • We're working hard to include a rich set of tools that integrate naturally with the runtime components to provide a great end-to-end experience. Some early tools are included in this CTP, and more will come soon!

In the CTP package you'll find:

• The actual ADO.NET CTP assemblies that will be installed in your system
• A few new project templates to create new ADO.NET Entity Framework-based applications and entity model libraries
• Various examples that illustrate how to use the ADO.NET Entity Framework and the LINQ integration in many different scenarios
• A couple of documents that describe the Entity Framework & LINQ integration.

Got 15 minutes? Give Ruby a shot right now!

This tutorial is only partway complete.. but it's getting better! Now you can hop chapters, you know? That's decent!

Ruby is a programming language from Japan (available at ruby-lang.org) which is revolutionizing the web. The beauty of Ruby is found in its balance between simplicity and power.

            URL: http://tryruby.hobix.com/

C# 3.0 introduces several language extensions that build on C# 2.0 to support the creation and use of higher order, functional style class libraries. The extensions enable construction of compositional APIs that have equal expressive power of query languages in domains such as relational databases and XML.

http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/future/

Visual Basic 9.0 introduces several language extensions that build on Visual Basic 2005 to support the creation and use of higher order, functional style class libraries. The extensions enable construction of compositional APIs that have equal expressive power of query languages in domains such as relational databases and XML.

http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/future/