You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Saturday, Apr 2, 2005, 1:44 PM in .NET
Omri pulls a Julia Andrews on Indigo
You can hear Omri sing a few bars of "These are a few of my favorite things" to the tune of Indigo.
Thursday, Mar 31, 2005, 12:05 PM in .NET
Avalon is changing my thinking...
Here. This application demonstrates the two things I'm finding that Avalon has changed about my thinking. The first is that data binding makes itself into even trivial Avalon applications and its presence is appreciated. The second is that I want to push as much stuff into XAML as I can. Keeping the data separate from the code makes a bunch of sense and, for my trivial application, keeping the data inline with the rest of the UI was very useful. It allows for easy maintenance and localization while pushing as much of my application into declarations and out of imperative statements. The more I can tell the computer what I want instead of how I want to accomplish it, the better off I am.
Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005, 2:06 PM in .NET
The *Official* Place for Avalon and Indigo Bugs!
What with the public availability of the Avalon and Indigo CTPs and our stated goal of pre-beta bit releases to gather feedback, you might wonder, "But where should this feedback go?" I'll tell you where to go -- the MSDN Product Feedback Center, which now has entries for Avalon and Indigo. Hog pile on the WinFX API product teams!
Monday, Mar 28, 2005, 7:27 AM in .NET
Steve Maine on Indigo Duplex Contracts
Steve Maine of Brain.Save() has done a really good job on the description of a set of duplex contracts in Indigo, i.e. those contracts where callbacks are specified, using the design of a multi-player game of blackjack. Steve shows the service contract interfaces, a bunch of the messaging code and even what's on the wire. Recommended.
Friday, Mar 25, 2005, 7:09 AM in .NET
March Avalon/Indigo CTP Available for Public Download
It took a coupla days more than we wanted 'cuz I was fighting with some internal tools, but the March 2005 Avalon/Indigo CTP is available for public download.
Make sure you follow the instructions on the download page and only use it with the February CTP release of Visual Studio 2005, i.e. don't use it against the Whidbey beta 2 that'll "coming soon*" to a theater near you.
* for some definition of "coming soon..."
Monday, Mar 21, 2005, 3:10 PM in .NET
Chris Anderson's AvPad for the March CTP
Chris Anderson has updated XamlPad for the March 2005 CTP of Avalon and renamed it AvPad. As a tool for learning and experimenting with XAML/Avalon, it can't be beat. Enjoy!
Tuesday, Mar 15, 2005, 11:39 AM in .NET
Smart Client Offline Application Block Demo
Scott Swigart has a nice video demo of putting the Smart Client Offline Application Block to use. Enjoy!
Tuesday, Mar 15, 2005, 10:55 AM in .NET
Updater Application Block v2.0 Released
TheServerSide.NET has a nice summary of what's new in the Updater Application Block 2.0 from the new Enterprise Library on GDN. If you're not using ClickOnce from Windows Forms 2.0 yet (maybe because we haven't shipped it yet...), the Updater AppBlock is your next best bet.
Friday, Mar 11, 2005, 4:59 PM in .NET
Need More Chris Anderson? Don't We All?
If you're not getting enough Chris Anderson in your diet (and who is?!?), check out these two new interviews:
- ServerSide.NET TechTalk: Chris Anderson on Avalon video
- .NET Rocks: Chris Anderson and the Longhorn Evangelism Team
Enjoy!
Thursday, Mar 10, 2005, 6:50 AM in .NET
New Community Web Site: XAML.net
A new XAML web site enters the fray: XAML.net. How did we miss the boat acquiring this domain name? : )
Monday, Mar 7, 2005, 7:06 PM in .NET
Day of Indigo Videos from VSLive
Did you miss the Microsoft's Day of Indigo at VSLive? Have no fear -- you can trade your personal details for free access to the entire day of videos from the FTP web site, including:
- Keynote: Introducing Indigo, Eric Rudder, Senior VP of Servers and Tools
- Programming Indigo, Don Box and Steve Swartz
- Building Secure Services, Doug Purdy
- Building Reliable, Asynchronous Services, Shy Cohen
- Orchestrating Service-Oriented Apps With Indigo and BizTalk, Michael Woods (Microsoft) and Curt Peterson (Neudesic)
- Indigo Upgrade and Interoperability, Steve Swartz and Anand Rajagopalan
- Building Service-Oriented Applications Today, Rich Turner
Enjoy!
Thursday, Mar 3, 2005, 9:22 AM in .NET
MS Survey: Partial Trust and Code Access Security
As Microsoft gets nearer the gate on the .NET Framework 2.0 and ClickOnce, we want to make double-sure we understand if and how you're using/would like to use partial trust and code access security (CAS). It would be a great help for anyone building .NET applications, whether they're web or Windows, whether you're using partial trust and/or CAS or not, to take this survey so that we can make sure that we've got your needs covered. With ClickOnce, we've come a long way from my initial set of No-Touch Deployment complaints, but that doesn't mean we're where we need to be. Thanks for helping!
Tuesday, Mar 1, 2005, 4:24 PM in .NET
Clemens Weekend with Indigo
Clemens Vasters, international man of mystery, has given up his normal weekend activities of partying and espionage to give us three pieces exploring Indigo:
- A Weekend With Indigo. Part 1: Simple Messaging
- A Weekend With Indigo. Part 2: Fun with Messaging and Explicit Addressing
- A Weekend With Indigo. Part 3: Hard-Core Messaging. Duplex Conversations.
Thanks for helping to make the world safe for messaging, Clemens! : )
Monday, Feb 28, 2005, 3:56 PM in .NET
Let MS make sure your .NET 1.x app run on .NET 2.0
Assuming you don't have the luxury of dipping the machines your .NET 1.x applications run on in Lucite, you are going to have to make sure that your apps run under .NET 2.0. Normally, that means testing your applications under .NET 2.0 and making changes. However, right now, Jay Roxe at Microsoft is beefing up the .NET 2.0 compatibility test suite, so if there are compatibility problems in your apps, there's a good chance* that MS will actually apply fixes to the .NET 2.0 framework itself instead of requiring you to make changes to your app.
Jay's especially interested in "corporate-scale" applications, but I'm sure he'll consider whatever you've got. Don't be shy! Get your apps into consideration for the .NET 2.0 compatibility test suite today!
* "good chance" == chance > 0, no guarantees, some restrictions apply, void where prohibited, use at your own risk, blah, blah, blah...
Monday, Feb 28, 2005, 3:39 PM in .NET
2D and 3D Chess for Nov. '04 Avalon CTP
Valentin Iliescu has updated his 2D and 3D Avalon Chess for the November 2004 CTP. Enjoy!