Kurt Shintaku's Blog

<taken from our Web Development Tools blog>
Silverlight 3 Tools Beta for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is now available for download.

This installer includes:

• Silverlight 3 Beta SDK
• Silverlight 3 Beta Developer Runtime for debugging
• XAP Compression Improvements
• Support for Caching Transparent Platform Extensions
• New Page and Project Templates

XAP Compression Improvements
The Silverlight 3 SDK creates XAPs compressed up to 40% better than the Silverlight 2 SDK.

Support for Cached Transparent Platform Extensions
Reduce the size of your Silverlight XAP by referencing platform extensions (like DataGrid, Calendar, ScrollView, etc) hosted on Microsoft.com instead of packaging them in your XAP. This property is set on the Silverlight tab of the project properties.

New Project and File Templates
When you create a new Silverlight project, there is a new project template called “Silverlight Navigation Template” that will help you get started using the new navigation controls supported by Silverlight 3 like Frame and the new Page and ChildWindow file templates. Be sure to check out Corrina Black’s UX blog for new App.xaml files to re-skin this template.

Build Data-Driven RIAs
We are simplifying the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provide a pattern to  write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight toolkit components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier. The toolkit components provide a rich set of controls for building LoB RIA applications.

Install the RIA Services CTP after you install Silverlight Tools

Note to Silverlight 2 Developers
The Silverlight 3 Tools are for creating Silverlight 3 projects only. You will not be able to release Silverlight 3 projects until Silverlight 3 RTW. To switch your development environment from Silverlight 3 back to Silverlight 2, you will need to uninstall the Silverlight 3 Runtime and Silverlight 3 Tools from Add/Remove Programs and re-install the Silverlight 2 Tools. If you’re going to be frequently switching between targets, check out this blog on Switching between Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 2 Tools.

DOWNLOAD:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=143571

<reposted from the Forefront blog>
FSOCS provides fast and effective protection against IM-based malware for OCS 2007 and OCS 2007 R2 environments by including multiple scanning engines from industry-leading security partners. FSOCS also helps reduce corporate liability by blocking instant messages containing inappropriate content.

This release includes:

• 64bit support
• Support for OCS 2007 R2
• Support for OCS 2007 Enterprise Edition server roles
• Integration with OCS 2007 Access Edge role to protect corporate IM from external public IM threats
• Localization in 11 languages

Like other Forefront server security products, FSOCS provides superior detection of the latest threats when compared to single engine solutions by using our multiple engine scanning technology. FSOCS has also been featured in a few of the OCS 2007 R2 virtual launch sessions that you should check out. Lastly, we are making available some new content including a new demo walk though, case studies from Sporton International and Convergent Systems, and a datasheet. Be on the lookout in the next few weeks for our Technet virtual hands on labs!

Secure your OCS deployments and download FSOCS today!

There’s a unique opportunity coming up next week.  On Thursday, March 26^th, the IE team will host the Internet Explorer 8 FireStarter event.  This is a one-day conference with IE8 talks from John Hrvatin and other team members. 

“So you already downloaded Internet Explorer 8 and love the Web Slices feature. But did you know there’s lot more to IE8 than just Web Slices?

Come attend the Internet Explorer 8 FireStarter event in Redmond on March 26th and learn why Internet Explorer 8 is the browser designed for the way your customers really use the web.  Enhanced tools and options make it fast and easy for you to build add-ons or deploy in your organization. Learn about Accelerators, SmartScreen™ filter, deployment best practices, compatibility and migration issue, and much more…

This daylong event is targeted at both IT Professionals and Developers. Take a look at the agenda below and let me know if you have any questions.”

If you are local to Redmond, we invite you to attend the event in person.  Other options to attend are via Live Meeting or at a live streaming session hosted by your local user group.  (Check with your INETA or Culminis associated user group.)  Here is the schedule for the day (times are Pacific local time):

DATE/TIME:
Thursday, March 26, 2009 8:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

AGENDA:

• 8:15 – 8:30 Kick off  Mithun Dhar
• 8:30 – 9:30 Keynote – A lap around IE8 Dean Hachamovitch
• 9:30 – 10:00 Creating value with IE8 Giorgio Sardo
• 10:00 – 10:15 Break
• 10:15 – 11:45  Trustworthy Browsing in Internet Explorer 8 Eric Lawrence
• 11:45 – 12:30  Lunch
• 12:30 – 1:30 Designing cross-browser websites using  Steven Guttman
• 1:30 – 2:00 Application Performance with IE8 John Hrvatin
• 2:00 – 2:15 Break
• 2:15 – 3:15 Compatibility & Migration Michel Barnett
• 3:15 – 3:45 IE8 Deployment  Michel Barnett
• 3:45 – 4:00 Break
• 4:00 – 5:00 Browser War 2.0 David Tesar

REGISTRATION:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032408665&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Greg Shields, columnist for Technet Magazine, wrote an awesome article about 19 “must-have” utilities for the IT Administrator – specifically for Active Directory Admins and the like.

He starts off with ADMX Migrator which is a tool that many forget about.  It upgrades older ADM files to the new ADMX file format.  (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=136657)

If you’re a Microsoft IT guy, this is definitely a list you’ll want to check out:

LINK:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.03.geekofalltrades.aspx?pr=blog

Powershell MVP Keith Hill has published an eBook which contains much of the contents of his blog.  It’s now downloadable from his blog on Spaces.

Here’s a sample of the contents:

• Introduction
• Item 1: Four Cmdlets that are the Keys to Discovery within PowerShell
• Key #1: Get-Command
• Key #2: Get-Help
• Key #3: Get-Member
• Key #4: Get-PSDrive
• PowerShell 2.0 Update
• Item 2: Understanding Output
• Output is Always a .NET Object
• Function Output Consists of Everything That Isn’t Captured
• Other Types of Output That Can’t Be Captured
• Item 3: Know What Objects Are Flowing Down the Pipeline
• Item 4: Output Cardinality – Scalars, Collections and Empty Sets – Oh My!
• Working with Scalars
• Working with Collections
• Working with Empty Sets
• Item 5: Use the Objects, Luke. Use the Objects!
• Item 6: Know Your Output Formatters
• Item 7: Understanding PowerShell Parsing Modes
• Item 8: Understanding ByPropertyName Pipeline Bound Parameters
• Item 9: Understanding ByValue Pipeline Bound Parameters
• Item 10: Regular Expressions – One of the Power Tools in PowerShell
• …

DOWNLOAD:
http://keithhill.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!5A8D2641E0963A97!6930.entry

Today, Microsoft and HiSoftware are pleased to announce the release of the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint (AKS) v2.0.  The AKS v2.0 provides an accessible development framework and significantly reduces the level of effort and knowledge needed by customers and partners to improve the accessibility of SharePoint based sites and applications.

The AKS v2.0 follows on from the success of the AKS v1.0 and v1.1 which have been downloaded by more than 4000 organizations in fifty countries.  The AKS v2.0 is intended to be a community based project which other individuals and organizations can contribute to and is released today under the Microsoft Public License.

Key Features in the AKS v2.0
The AKS v2.0 introduces the following:

• Smart Control adapters which greatly reduce the amount of custom configuration previously required for AKS control adapters.
• The Web Part Zone Control Adapter, a special Smart Adapter that modifies the output of SharePoint so that it does not use tables for layout of the Web parts.
• HiSoftware’s Compliant Code Engine (HCCE) to assist organizations in creating code that is compliant to standards-based HTML or XHTML.
• Additional requirements under Canadian Common Look and Feel 2.0 (CLF 2.0) guidelines.
• Examples of remediation to comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
• French language version of AKS 1.0 components.

DOWNLOAD:
https://aks.hisoftware.com/downloads/AKS2.0Agreement.aspx

This post is too awesome not to re-direct people to.

John Jansen, Test Lead for Sharepoint Designer just had his book published by Microsoft Press, “Building Web Applications with Microsoft Office Sharepoint Designer 2008”.

Just as importantly, the team directs people to these two links where you can view John’s free training videos on SharePoint Designer 2007 on Office Online:

SharePoint Designer 2007 Business Administrator Training

 

LINK:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/GetThePoint/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=8d9e2a99%2Df288%2D47c2%2D916b%2D2f32864f7b82&ID=179

The Sharepoint Product Team released the set of Sharepoint Architecture Diagram stencils that they used with Visio 2007 to create the diagrams from the posters they created around sample designs.

To create your own diagrams for models of server deployments, just download the stencil pack below. For examples of how the IT pro content publishing team for Microsoft Office used these shapes, see these pages:

• Supplemental documentation for Office Project Server
• Technical diagrams and other supplemental documentation for Office SharePoint Server
• Supplemental documentation for Windows SharePoint Services

DOWNLOAD:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=08105458-1d92-44ad-b7e0-744aa853a7bf

The IE team created a video that demonstrates the performance testing that was done against the new Internet Explorer 8.0 release in order to prove it’s performance improvements.  It would appear they’ve done a VERY good job.

• VIDEO:  IE8 Performance
  In the absence of effective benchmarking tools, the Internet Explorer Team created a real world test which took in several key factors into consideration and created a level playing field for all browsers tested. The results when comparing Internet Explorer 8 page load times to Firefox and Chrome were captured on this video.
  http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/
  us/details/cffddf93-14cf-4047-9b25-b4e07cdf6bf6

If you’re interested in raw benchmarking scores, take a look at my previous post on Internet Explorer 8.0 benchmarking and the documentation that was written

• WHITEPAPER: Measuring Browser Performance: Understanding issues in benchmarking and performance analysis
  http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!4893.entry

RichCopy is a multi-threaded extremely robust utility to copy files between locations.  In particular this tool is fantastic when copying many files at a time especially across a slow link. 

We’ve had RichCopy internally at Microsoft since before the turn of the century and it’s reached almost legendary status as a must-have tool for us field folk, however after version 3.0, the tool required a direct connection to Microsoft’s internal network to use.  (For some reason, the author prohibited usage by anyone other than MS employees.  In fact, to this day have version 2.34 which was one of the last versions of RichCopy that didn’t have this requirement.)  Well, looks like the tool’s been released into the wild care of Technet.  Release the hounds!

So why do you care – besides the fact that it’s free?

MULTI-THREADED
One of the key capabilities is RichCopy’s ability to open multiple threads simultaneously, allowing many files to be copied in parallel and cutting the total time required to complete the operation several times over.  If you’re doing network-based copies, this is definitely a tool you want to use.  (Personally, I find that for large scale large file based disk-to-disk copies, Teracopy does a better job because it’s approach is entirely serial based and it’s integrated into the Windows UI.)

ROBUST RETRY
If you get cut off from the network, or you decide to pause the transfer, checkpoint restart is available, meaning that you can reinitiate the file copy and it will continue where you last left off.  A lifesaver if you’re copying a big ol’ Virtual Machine or an .ISO file and you get disconnected from the wireless or something.

DOWNLOAD:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.utilityspotlight.aspx?pr=blog