Just a couple of links to stuff that's in beta right now:

WinFX, XAML and SDK
ASP.NET ATLAS
C# and LINQ
VB.NET and LINQ

I'm finally catching up on some reading that I've been meaning to do.

Right now I'm reading 'Programming Windows Presentation Foundation' by Chris Sells & Ian Griffiths. Good read and I hope to finish it on my next flight

Also spend some time this morning reading an article by Ted Neward on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/linqcomparisons.asp) which gives food for thought on LINQ and the whole OR-mapping issue.

I just received a mail from my friend Lucas pointing out that some products are getting close to the end of the Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

The mainstream support for the 2000 editions of several products is ending in the near future, as detailed in the following table (for more information on Support Lifecycle, visit www.microsoft.com/lifecycle).

With generic in C# 2.0 life just become so much easier. Today I was impressed by the ease with which you can now sort a list of T.

Code below shows how with one method you can now implement a sort. This used to be much more complex!

public class Person
{
    public Person(string name)
    {
        this.Name = name;
    }

    public string Name;
}

class Demo
{
    public List GetAllPersons()
    {
        List result = new List();
        result.Add(new Person("Mark"));
        result.Add(new Person("Dennis"));
        result.Add(new Person("Duncan"));
        result.Add(new Person("Jeremy"));
        result.Sort(SortByName);
        return result;
    }

    public static int SortByName( Person x, Person y )
    {
        return x.Name.CompareTo(y.Name);
    }
}

I was reading my way through the Internet and came across some interesting stuff about Smart Client Architecture. It seems that the definition of a Smart Client is not so clear. On the Microsoft site it says:

Smart client (n) Definition: Smart clients are easily deployed and managed client applications that provide an adaptive, responsive and rich interactive experience by leveraging local resources and intelligently connecting to distributed data sources.

But then it shows the following picture:

As you can see there are two features that are unique to a Smart Client:
a) Online/Offline support
b) Device Adaptability
Without these features a Smart Client is really nothing more than either a Thick or Thin Client.

Personally I feel that from an architectural point of view offline/online support is much more important than device adaptability. Therefore I think that the definition for a Smart Client should read:

Smart client (n) Definition: Smart clients are easily deployed and managed client applications that provide an adaptive, responsive and rich interactive experience in both an online and offline scenario, by leveraging local resources and intelligently connecting to distributed data sources.

More interesting reading on: The ServerSide.NET and Clemens Vaster's Blog.

I always wondered how some sites managed to get their little logo in my list of Favourites. Turns out it is really quite easy, just add a favicon.ico file to the root of your website. Internet Explorer will pick it up automagically.

If you happen to have a different browser you can try:

<link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">

Found it on Matthias Benkmann's website: http://www.winterdrache.de/freeware/png2ico/favicon.html

I've recently moved to the United States. To Lincoln, Maine to be exact. I've started a new company called Develop-One and with the start of a new company I think it also time for a new blog. I'll still run my old blog as a more personal account of my life in Maine, but anything to do with .NET, C#, Windows Vista, LINQ, WWF, WCF, WPF and every other technology that keeps me occupied in my life as a developer I will post about on this weblog.

Happy reading.

- Mark