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

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".

Many of you might be thinking, what's this Nokia N95 Ad catch line doing up here. Now, all that I can say is, the new Visual Studio 2008 is not just yet another release, its pretty much more than that.

There has been huge number of improvements in the latest Visual Studio and covering up each and everyone is beyond the scope of this post. So I'll be pointing out key objects.

• Multi-Targeting Support.
• Better AJAX and Javascript Support.
• Rich HTML/CSS WYSIWYG Designer. 
• Significantly Improved Data Support

Multi-Targeting Support - Few weeks back Scott Guthrie blogged about this amazing new feature. One of the big changes that you are going to experience starting from VS 2008 release is to support what is call "Multi-Targeting" - which means that Visual Studio will now support targeting multiple versions of the .NET Framework, and developers will be able to start taking advantage of the new features Visual Studio provides without having to always upgrade their existing projects and deployed applications to use a new version of the .NET Framework library.

Better AJAX and JavaScript Support - As all might know how frustrating it was by manually typing Javascript before, you are going to be in for a pleasant treat with "Orcas".  Visual Studio now provides full Javascript Intellisense completion in .ASPX files, .HTM files, as well as in external .JS files.  It delivers Intellisense for vanilla Javascript code, as well as provides rich support for the new ASP.NET AJAX client Javascript framework and Javascript code built with it.

Rich HTML/CSS WYSIWYG Designer

• Split View Support (the ability to have both HTML Source and WYSIWYG design open simultaneously)
• Extremely rich CSS support (CSS property window, CSS inheritance viewer, CSS preview, and CSS manager)
• Dramatically improved view switching performance (moving from source->html design mode is now nearly instantaneous)
• Support for control designers within source view (property builders, event wire-up and wizards now work in source view)
• Richer ruler and layout support (better yet, values can be automatically stored in external CSS files)
• Designer support for nested master pages

Significantly Improved Data Support - VS2008 will include support for LINQ - which makes data access with .NET radically better by making the concept of querying a first class programming concept.

Wish to try Visual Studio 2008 Beta1?

Earlier this week Microsoft said that they planned to ship Visual Studio "Orcas" Beta 1 for download some time in April. On April 19, they made good on their word.

Microsoft posted Visual Studio Codename "Orcus" Beta 1 Professional Edition for download and accompanying Team System lifecycle-development system tools; the 3.5 release of the .Net Framework; and a first Community Technology Preview (CTP) pre-beta build of the Express version of Orcas for non-professional programmers and hobbyists.

Microsoft said earlier this week to expect a Beta 2 of Orcas later this year. The final version of Orcas may be released to manufacturing by the end of calendar 2007, but could slip into 2008, they said.

Here are some links to know more about the new Visual Studio Codename "Orcus":
Feature Specifications for Visual Studio and .NET Framework "Orcas"
Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1
Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Express Editions
My "First Look at Orcas" Presentation
Visual Studio "Orcas" Web Designer Integrated into Main
Conversation with Somasegar: Orcas Beta 1 and Beyond on Channel9

The .NET Framework 3.0 has officially been released!  You can download the .NET Framework 3.0 components here:

• .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components
• Windows SDK for Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0 
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP

Note, if you are using Windows Vista the .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components are installed by default.

The Readme for the released version of the .NET Framework 3.0 is available here.  If you have a previous CTP installed, please be sure to review the uninstall instructions.   If you have questions about installing the .NET Framework 3.0, please post your questions to the .NET Framework Setup Forum.

With its powerful 3D capabilities WPF provides a leap forward in user experiences; but how do you create compelling 3D models and then make them available to your applications? In this Channel 9 video, Microsoft UK’s Richard Godfrey interviews the developers of Shaxam (www.shaxam.com) about their experiences and approach to building a Lightwave 3D to XAML convertor. Michael Stocking, Mark Hennessy-Barrett, Alex Young and Steve Kennett have all played a part in creating a friction-free way of building impressive WPF applications using complex 3D geometries such as the human heart shown in this clip.