Beta 2 brings many improvements to the table, including improvements in Sharepoint, WPF, ASP.NET, WinForms, as well as improvements to the core IDE and testing tools. I saw some of these IDE improvements at an event with Scott Gu in Manchester a couple of weeks ago and they look pretty cool.

Visual Studio now comes in several flavours, namely Premium, Professional and Ultimate and the good news is that TFS 2010 comes out of the box with all three.  Apparently it only takes 20 minutes to setup source control, bug and issue tracking and automated build with it.

Finally, another great piece of news is that this release also ships with a Go-live license, so this can be used for production projects if you wish

If you are a member of MSDN and want to download the beta now, you can get it from here.

For more information on the release visit Scott Gu’s blog where you he has started a series of posts on the new features in 2010 Beta 2.

Have any of you been using Beta 1? Will you be using Beta 2? What do you think of the way 2010 and .Net 4.0 are shaping up?

Technorati Tags: .NET 4.0, beta 2, visual studio 2010, vs2010

Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice Presedent and all round .Net Guru is coming to Manchester, UK, later this month to talk about what’s new with Visual Studio 2010, ASP.Net 4.0, Silverlight 3 and upcoming improvements to the MVC Framework!

Seating for this event, entitled Guathon 2009,  is very limited and as such you can only join the wait list at the moment, but I have been lucky enough to secure a place at what promises to be a fantastic workshop.

The announcement on the event home page over at DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper also has a funny section of “things you might not know about Scott Gu”, such as;

When Scott Guthrie throws exceptions, it’s across the room.

All arrays Scott Guthrie declares are of infinite size, because Scott Guthrie knows no bounds.

Scott Guthrie doesn’t have disk latency because the hard drive knows to hurry the hell up.

Scott Guthrie writes code that optimizes itself.

Scott Guthrie can’t test for equality because he has no equal.

Scott Guthrie doesn’t need garbage collection because he doesn’t call .Dispose(), he calls .DropKick().

For the rest of this amusing list and more info on the event or to add yourself to the wait list, visit the event home page.

Technorati Tags: ASP.Net, ASP.NET MVC, scott gu, scott guthrie, silverlight 3, visual studio 2010

Firstly, here is a full screen shot of the new Outlook 2010 interface.  I suppose I must state that this is only a technical preview and this may still change a lot before the final version is released.

The Ribbon

As you can see from the screenshot above, the biggest change to the Outlook interface is the introduction of the infamous Ribbon, with four main tabs. Lets look at these tabs in a bit more details and see what they bring us;

Home - This contains many of the standard buttons you are used to seeing at the top of an outlook window, such as “New Mail”, “Reply”, “Forward” and a plethora of options relating to email rules and categorising your items.

Send / Receive – As you would expect, this tab contains……the send and receive button!   Along with some of the more commonly used items, such as buttons for marking items for download or triggering the download of headers only.

Folder – From here you can control your mail archiving, mark items as read, create and modify your folders and run your mail rules.

View – This is one of my most used tabs.  Here you can set different views for each of your folders.  The most notable introduction here is the “Conversation” view, which will attempt to group your mail into conversations.  This is not for everyone and certainly not for every folder (I switched it on in a folder to receive Facebook messages and it created one huge conversation as all the subjects were the same), but I like it in the right circumstance.

Contact Actions

One feature I really do like in Outlook 2010 is the new contact action popups.  If you hover over a name in the from or to fields on an email, you now get a popup giving you several actions you can perform on this person, such as adding them to your Outlook contacts, scheduling a meeting, viewing their stored contact information if they are already in your contacts, sending an instant message or even starting a telephone call.

Quick Steps

Quick Steps are a set of very useful buttons on the Home tab. They include ways of replying to a team of people or your manager, both of which are customised tasks to suit you.  There are a standard set of buttons here and you can also create custom quick steps to suit yourself. Very nice!

Quick Bar

Ok, here is something I didn’t even notice until a couple of days ago, the Quick Bar.  Until recently, every time I wanted to send and receive my email I have been switching to the Send / Receive tab and click the S & R button.  This was ok, but got a bit annoying having to switch tabs every time, as most of the time I use the Home tab for functions like “Reply” etc.  Then I noticed the Quick Bar.  This handy little addition allows for a constant set of buttons that are displayed either above of below the ribbon (your choice) and by default contains a send and receive button with more being added as you see fit.  This is a nice feature, but it is quite small, so that’s why I didn’t notice it for so long!!!

The “Office” Button

The “Office” button sits in the top left hand corner of every Office 2010 application. When clicked, this button allows access to all the features you would normally have seen under the standard menus (file, edit, tools, etc) in Outlook 2007.  You can see Microsoft have spent a long time designing this feature and it works well.  As you can see from the screen shot below, there is plenty of room for each task, much more space for explanations and it just ‘feels’ like a better way of doing things to me.

The Windows 7 Task Bar Context Menu

Ok, so you have probably seen this before, but I thought it was worth a mention anyway.  Outlook 2010 now gets it’s own context menu on the Task Bar in Windows 7, which gives a very nice shortcut to common tasks.

Verdict To Date

So far I have found the improvements made in this latest incarnation of Outlook to be very useful and have increased my productivity, which is always good, especially with an integral everyday task such as email management.  But, of course, please feel free to disagree with me as this is just my opinion after all!

Technorati Tags: microsoft office, office 2010, outlook, outlook 2010

What I did not love though was after installing Office 2010, my Visual Studio 2010 Beta stopped working, simply displaying the message “Cannot Create The Window”.

Microsoft claimed not to be able to recreate the issue and I was quite happy to wait until another version of VS 2010 was released, but luckily for me, Microsoft have now found the issue.  Apparently, there is a version msvcm100.dll in C:\windows\system32 which is different in office 2010 than in vs 2010.  It also seems that office and vs play nice when using the VS version of the dll, but that VS falls over when using the office version.

Ok, so to the workaround……

You have two options;

1. Replace the msvcm100.dll with this one, msvcm100.zip, I took from my system32 folder. 

or

2. If you would prefer not to use a randomly downloaded dll from here, you can rename the msvcm100.dll in system32 to msvcm100.dll.old and then run VS 2010 setup and choose to repair.  This will recreate the dll.

The working version of msvcm100.dll has a datetime stamp of 6th May 2009 7:20AM.

Well, now my Visual Studio is working again, I am off to have a play!

Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: msvcm100.dll, office 2010, visul studio 2010

If you know of any more good articles you have found yourself, let me know!

Enjoy!

The ADO.Net Entity Framework (2010) (MSDN) – If you don’t know or are unsure of what the Entity Framework is, then this might be a good place to start.  It provides a good overview with links to more articles going into details in specific areas.

Visit Site

What’s New In Entity Framework 4 (Slides) – For those of you who are familiar with the first version of the Entity Framework in .Net 3.5 SP1, but have not yet delved into the next release, these slides give an overview of what has changed and what has been introduced.

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TUTORIAL: Model First using Entity Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 – This is a tutorial I wrote a while back for those with the Visual Studio 2010 beta who wanted to see the new model first functionality introduced in EF v2.

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Entity Framework v2 and Data Access Architecture Best Practices – Some design patterns and development style discussion for when using the EF v2 and Visual Studio 2010.

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N-Tier Application Patterns with Entity Framework v2 – A good article regarding designing N-Tier applications with EF v2, using .Net Framework 4, Visual Studio 2010 and WCF.

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Multiple Database Support in Entity Framework 4 – Interesting article discussing the database independence being introduced with the Entity Framework.

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BOOK: Professional ADO.Net 3.5 With LINQ and the Entity Framework - I am currently reading this book which tackles ADO.Net 3.5 with the Entity Framework.  Whilst this is not specifically for version 2, this seems to be a good into the the EF and worth a look if you are new to the subject.

Visit Site

Technorati Tags: .NET 4.0, ef 4, ef v2, Entity Framework

I think I may have just stumbled across one of the reasons why.

I have just noticed that my HTC Touch Pro hadn’t picked up some new appointments from my calendar in Outlook.  Hmmm……odd I thought!  At this point I tried to open Windows Mobile Device Center to attempt to start a sync manually and I received this error!

Upon seeing this I also tried to launch Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 for the first time since I upgraded and…..nothing……not even an error message. It just didn’t launch.

Anyway, I have just re-downloaded and re-installed the beta of .Net 4.0 framework and now my mobile is syncing correctly and WMDC starts without a problem. Great….a 2 minute fix I thought! 

Then I launched Visual Studio 2010 and to my delight I saw the splash screen!…….for about 4 seconds until this……

So unfortunately, it looks like I will need to re-download the Visual Studio 2010 beta and re-install it before that works again

That will teach me to upgrade from RC to RTM!

Well, I just wanted to let you know that this also appear to be happening on Windows 7 RTM / Final.

When the installation reaches the Expanding Windows Files stage at 21% (some people have reported various different percentages but mostly it has been 21%) the install remains here for a significant period of time, appearing to have hung and causing many people to reset their computers. However, my advice to you would be to WAIT as it will continue eventually!

There have been reports that it can hang here for over an hour but does eventually carry on. So don’t give up on Windows 7 RTM yet!

EDIT: Just to add some weight to this post, see the comments on my similar post about the same issue for the RC of Windows 7 here. So don;t give up…..just leave it to get on with it!

Technorati Tags: install, microsoft, win7, Windows 7, windows 7 rtm

However, the workaround available to upgrade from the Beta to the Release Candidate is still applicable here. 

So here is what you need to do to upgrade from previous versions of Windows 7 to the RTM / Final;

1. Download the ISO for Windows 7.
2. Extract the ISO to your computer.
3. In the extracted directory there will be a “Sources” directory. Open the file cversion.ini in this folder.
4. Change the MinClient value to 7000.0

Now when you run the setup,  you will have the option to Upgrade.

Good luck with your upgrades!

Technorati Tags: microsoft, Windows 7, windows 7 rc, windows 7 rtm

After several take-over offers from Microsoft were refused by Yahoo over the last year, the final deal that has now been reached will see Microsoft’s search engine Bing powering Yahoo’s search, with the advertising sales team at Yahoo taking over the same role for Bing’s advertising.

According to the BBC, there are two main factors as to why a deal has now been reached.  Firstly, after the CEO of Yahoo stood down towards the end of last year, Carol Bartz took over the role and she is not clouded by the centiment of keeping search within Yahoo, as was the case with many of the individuals who have been with the company since the glory days.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Microsoft have finally come up with a search engine that can actually compete with that of Google.

You can read the full article on the BBC here.

Technorati Tags: bing, google, microsoft, search, yahoo

Microsoft have gone through the ringer in recent times.  They have had the relative failure of Windows Vista (which I have to say I thought was ok), the rise of the IPhone and other Windows Mobile competitors, the dominance of Google on the search arena and their own Internet Explorer being hit in the browser wars by the three main rivals, Safari, Mozilla and more recently Chrome.

A dying horse?

For a long time it seemed that MS was not putting up much of a fight, however, it seems that Microsoft are on the bounce back at the moment.  This being the case, I thought I would take a look at some of the ways Microsoft could be returning to form, some of them already here and some that are just visible on the horizon;

The big cheese…

Ok, so lets start with the obvious one, Windows 7, because lets face it, this is the biggest deal, at least for Microsoft. It was looking pretty bad after Vista failed to make the grade, but it now seems that Windows 7 is getting a lot of love from many people.  With better performance and stability, an improved UI (not to the taste of everyone I know, but I think it will become well liked) and a general feeling of “this is Vista the way it should have been”, it looks like we might be on the way back to the glory days of Windows (well, a lot better than Vista anyway).  This response seems to go beyond that of just the tech industry as well, with many of my non-geek friends very eager to get the final release of 7 and already happily using the public Release Candidate.  One of the big wins here for MS was the level of public interaction and previewing that has gone on. 

Have you Binged yet?

So, moving on to another area that Microsoft seems to never get anywhere with, web search.

First we had MSN, then came Google, so MSN sort of….well….flunked.  So, along came Windows Live Search…..not a lot better.  Now though, Live Search has become Bing…..and this just might be the one to grab back some market share.  It appears that the folks behind Bing actually thought about what was useful to the user and implemented it, rather than simply re-branding their existing engine.  With features such as web page content preview, improved search results, a streamlined user-interface and better support for video searching / playback, the initial results for Bing look good with it’s usage rates starting to increase.  Now, please do not mis-understand me, I am not saying that there is any way that Bing is a massive threat to Google at the moment, but it is a start.

Browser Wars……

MS has also suffered hits in the web browser wars for years, with release after release of sub-standard browsers when compared with the more standards complient and more secure competitors in the field.  Internet Explorer 6 came in for a huge amount of criticism, with IE7 not performing much better.  However, it seems that just like in the areas of OS and search, Microsoft finally actually listened to what people wanted from the browser.  So with the release of IE8 there appears to be a much more positive mood in the air as it is more standards compliant, which makes it much easier for us web designers / devleopers for create content for and much more secure / stable which makes the whole experience much nicer for everybody else.

IPhone…..You Phone……We all scream for Windows Mobile 7??

Last but not least, this round up would not be complete without mentioning the mammouth impact that has been felt with the arrival of the IPhone, taking the mobile computing and web from the minority to the majority.  Before Apple came along with the IPhone, Microsoft had been able to cruise along comfortably with their Windows Mobile Pocket PC software and then later Windows Mobile 5 / 6, even though all of them left a lot to be desired from an end-user perspective, not least the poor performance. But just like it the rest of it’s fighting grounds, Microsoft has been forced to stand up and listen to what people want from their mobile device.

As an interim answer, we have seen the release of Windows Mobile 6.5, which addresses many usability issues with the touch screen interfaces and significantly improves performance.  However, the release that the guys at MS are hoping will be the real IPhone competitor is due out next year in the form of Windows Mobile 7.  Not a great deal is yet known about this next incarnation of the mobile OS, but recent leaked reports suggest many of the familiar features familiar to IPhone users will be appearing such as accellerometers, mandatory built in GPS and a slick new touch enabled user-interface as you can see from some recently leaked images over at WMPowerUser.com.

Is it enough?

Whether or not the responses to the various challenges will be enough to propel Microsoft back to number 1 in all of the above areas is doubtful, but it certainly is interesting watching them try.  

What are your thoughts?

Technorati Tags: bing, browser wars, ie8, Internet Explorer, microsoft, Windows 7, Windows Mobile