Visual Studio 2005 introduces a new model for web based projects which is great but has some limitations for what I need to do. Basically I need to specify which permissions are needed to be able to access a specific web control using attributes.

ASP.NET 2.0 does away with class level members for each web control so I basically needed the old web project model back; Scott Guthrie to the rescue with Web Application Projects.

Basically you get the old model back with some of the new stuff from ASP.NET 2.0. Be aware that this is preview version. There are only a couple of minor annoyances present at the moment, i.e. you have to declare your web controls members on the class yourself and switching from code view to UI view using hotkeys doesn’t always work reliably. These are things you’ll be able to live with until the final version is released.

Download Web Application Project or read Scott’s initial post about it which includes a tutorial.

I was very fond of Whidbey Commands for Visual Studio 2003 so naturally I was disappointed when the features wasn’t included in VS 2005 as I originally assumed they would be. Anyway I discovered that Gaston Milano was kind enough to port his code to VS 2005 in the form of Cool Commands for Visual Studio 2005.

It adds the following features of which I find “Open Project Folder” and “Collapse All Projects” very useful:

- Reference Manager

- Collapse All Project, Command Prompt Here, Open Project Folder, Demo Font and Wheel Font Zooming

Check out CoolCommands for Visual Studio 2005 RTM, you’ll never know how you made do without it  Please note that you need to run the install.bat from a Visual Studio command prompt for it to work.

Microsoft finally released the next version of their anti spyware utility Windows Defender, formerly Microsoft AntiSpyware. Hope this one will be able to remember allowed programs so I can stop clicking that annoying allow dialog every single time my computer starts up.

Microsoft Defender

Sit back and enjoy the wonder that is direct manipulation of a computer screen using only your hands. A friend of mine passed along this link for an absolutely amazing demo of new technology which basically reminds me of a scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise is manipulation a couple of views using a data glove-thingy. Now the truly amazing thing about the actual technology is that is has done away with the gloves making the experience look very intuitive.

You need to see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVI6xw9Zph8

Speaking of UI changes in IE7 I stumbled on the “A New Look for IE” post on the IE blog which describes many of the changes made to the UI. Great read for sure.

Here’s snip, “Hello, I’m Max Stevens, and I recently joined the IE team as a Program Manager working on the user experience. In anticipation of our next major pre-release of IE, I’d like to give an overview of some of the great work we’ve done in the UI, especially a lot of the progress we’ve made since Beta 1.”

I went ahead an installed the preview version of Internet Explorer 7 and I got to say that lots of neat stuff has happend to the product. IE 6 was great in its day but was getting a little long in the teeth, especially missing a key feature such as tabs.

Most notably other than the added tabs in IE 7 is the snazzy new interface which is more evolution than revolution although it does improve on the space used by the UI quite a bit. Much more space is dedicated to the actual content window than before and the icons all got a shine looking even more polished than before.

I think IE 7 will be sticking around on my main machine for the time being. Having spent the evening playing around with it I haven’t found any issues thus far. Being nit picky I could cite the performance which is less than staller but wa t do you expect running beta software on a laptop?

Download Internet Explorer 7 if you want to give it a go and be sure to report all that feedback to Microsoft so they may improve on the product even more.

Snippet Compiler is a tool I first learned about in the book From Coder to Developer by Mike Gunderloy. Basically it does what the name implies: Compiles snippets of code which is great for testing and debugging small pieces of code.

While version 1 was useful I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with it simply because there was no intellisense. Today, however, I took Snipper Compiler for a spin again and went to check for a new version on the website. Sure enough version 2 had popped up there and what a joy it is to use: Intellisense was added along with support for .NET Framework 2.0.

I’m sure I’ll be seeing a lot more of Snippet Compiler on my desktop in the future

With the continued development of Omea the product just keeps getting better and better feature-wise, however one of the things which have been bothering me from v 1.0 is performance. Omea simply isn’t a very appealing application to use every day simply because of lacking performance, a shame.

Needless to say I was exited to find a post in the Jetbrains newsgroups with details on how to speed up Omea by making it run on the .NET Framework 2.0.

Here’s the lowdown from Michael Kent Werle:

I have no real data to back this up, but Omea "feels" much faster when I run it under .NET 2.0 by changing Omea Pro.exe.config to:

<configuration>
<startup>
<requiredRuntime version="v2.0.50727" />
</startup>
<system.net>
<settings>
<httpWebRequest useUnsafeHeaderParsing = "true" />
</settings>
</system.net>
</configuration>

(Thanks to Daniel Cazzulino for the tip on how to force Omea to load under .NET 2.0.)

In particular, I noticed this today when installing 2.1.1 -- it felt much slower until I realized that I had to re-do this change.

I was sceptical but it really does seem to have an impact on performance. Startup is faster and the UI is generally more zippy.

Enjoy!

I passed my 70–320 Web Services with C# exam today. Luckily all went well otherwise my Christmas might have been poorer for it

872 of 1000 points, not too shabby either.

You probably know the new security feature introduces in Outlook 2003 to disallow other programs to access Outlook doing away with some of the most simple worms out there. One problem with the Allow Program Access popup is that it gets quite annoying in the long run when for example syncing calendars and contacts to a mobile device using an external program.

Advanced Outlook Security from MAPIlab to the rescue. It adds a much needed feature which allows you to specify that a program should always be allow access to Outlook. For me iTunes is now always allowed in order to allow me to sync calendars and contacts to my iPod without any action on my part, just as it should be.

Here’s a blurb:

Get rid of annoying security alerts in Microsoft® Outlook®! Advanced Security for Outlook allows you to determine the violator as well as specifying the status for this program for future occasions e.g. allow access, block access or run the default Outlook handler. Future specified actions will be executed automatically and Outlook Security will cease to annoy you with messages concerning attempts to access e-mail addresses you have stored in Outlook.

Definitely a keeper!