Microsoft was kind enough to release the Consoles font from Vista for VS 2005. I hadn’t noticed the first time around how nice this font is but it does actually make a difference when reading coding although it did take some getting used to before I was convinced. Give it day before you decide.

I highly recommend downloading and installing it.

Both Scott Hanselman with Consolas Font Family now available for download and guidmaster with Consolas Font Pack tuned me in to this one. Thanks.

Scott Guthrie has announced that Web Application Product 1.0 is available. Other than being a final version of the project we’ve come to love in VS 2003 it introduces a couple of new feature not available in any of the preview releases:

• Team Build Support with VSTS: You can now perform automated and command-line builds with VS 2005 Web Application Projects and VSTS

• Resource support with the App_GlobalResources directory: Strongly typed resource classes are now automatically generated for resource files defined with the ASP.NET app_globalresources directory (allowing you to program against these directly).  You can also alternatively define .resx files within the code-behind assembly of the project itself.

• Custom Build Tool Action Support: You can now configure and define custom build tool action support for file-types within a project.  This was missing in the previous release candidate and prevented some third-party utilities from working.

• Edit and Continue Support: You can now make code updates that apply immediately to applications while the debugger is attached and running (see walkthrough below for details).  This is supported with both VB and C# projects. 

Download Web Application Project 1.0. Be sure to uninstall any older version of the software you might have installed.

I’ve often sung the Reflector praise and today is no different. You sometimes end up in a situation with two assemblies; you don’t know which version is which and need to know specific differences between assemblies.

Enter the Reflector Diff plug-in by Sean Hederman which allows you to do text style diffs between two assemblies. A truly inspired use of disassembly and by  itself reason enough for the existence of Reflector 

Also be sure to check out Sean Hederman’s blog while you’re at it.

I wonder whether the corporate language at Bolia.com will be Bolia any time soon  Oh yeah, we’ve begun implementation of new functionality on ASP.NET 2.0. You won’t be seeing any of this on Bolia.com any time soon as the first systems to get the royal treatment are internal processing ones. Stay tuned though stuff will start to happening on the frontend too.

… Been busy moving that’s why. We bought a house for our small family and have been getting it ready for us to move into. The move is completed and I should return to my not so regular blogging schedule soon.

I’ve got a couple of very cool posts planned based on some of the stuff I’ve been working on lately including creating an attribute-based Code Access Security framework which integrates to Active Directory, my experience unit- and webtesting with Team System, and some of my gotchas about switching from ASP.NET 1.1 to 2.0.

An updated version of the beta 2 preview of Internet Explorer 7 is available as of today. Go get it while the getting is good and be aware that you need to uninstall previous beta versions before installing the refresh.

More information on the IEBlog: New IE7 Build Available from MIX06!

Update: If you are doing any sort of webtesting with Team System on your box please be aware that neither this nor the previous build of IE7 will work with the webtest recorder. I’m told that work is being done to fix this.

A colleague of mine (thanks Sune) sent me a link to a hilarious post over at Joel on Software. Descriptions don’t do it justice so just head on over there to get a good laugh. Before you go keep this quote in mind, “we're introducing a general-purpose tool-building factory factory factory”. I guarantee that It’ll all make sense when we’re done over there

Why I Hate Frameworks

If you’re just getting started with ASP.NET 2.0 Dino Esposito has a great article just for you over at Code Magazine called Top-Ten Annotations and Remarks about the Wonderful and Powerful New Set of Features in ASP.NET 2.0. A great read for a heads up about some of the new features:

“You’ll still write a good deal of code in ASP.NET 2.0. Don’t completely trust those who say that ASP.NET 2.0 cuts 70% of the amount of code you’re called to write. You’ll end up writing more or less the same quantity of code, but you’ll write code of different quality. You’ll have more components and less boilerplate code to tie together pages and controls. Features like the provider model, data source controls, and master pages make coding easier and equally effective. But since there’s no magic behind, you have to learn the implications of each feature you employ. In the end, ASP.NET 2.0 comes with code behind, not magic behind.”

I liked this little bit of statistics:

“The core functions of ASP.NET are implemented in the system.web assembly. In ASP.NET 1.x, the system.web assembly counts 14 namespaces and 321 exported types. In ASP.NET 2.0, the number of namespaces grows up to 22. The number of exported types, instead, almost quadruples up to 1121 types. Do you still want to call it a major upgrade?”