Team System Code Name Rosario

The development community has been hit with an onslaught of releases in the past several months. First came the much anticipated Visual Studio 2008, and its various editions. Then you add in TFS 2008, Team Explorer 2008, the .NET 3.5 Framework, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 2 Beta, and the list goes on. It is truly an exciting time.

But something kind of slipped under the radar, at least in my opinion. Microsoft released a CTP of Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario", the version of Team System that follows 2008. (Wait, isn't it still early 2008?)

Here are some of the highlights that will be included in "Rosario", either in the current CTP or future releases:

• Historical Debugging - support to go back to a specific point in time.
• Rule Sets - configure your projects to use various categorized sets of Code Analysis rules in your solution.
• Just My Code Profiler - support to exclude external framework and component calls from performance tests.
• Version History - ability to track changes across branches and merges.
• Add to Source Control - ability to drag/drop and add from outside mapped folders.
• Additional Metric and Dashboards - increasing project visibility.
• Build/Deploy Setup - integrated support to build setup packages.
• And a ton more...

Here are some helpful links regarding "Rosario":

• November CTP (VPC Image)
• November CTP Documentation
• Specification RSS Feed

Mounting ISO Images on Windows Vista

This post will be entirely useless to you, until you encounter this same problem and remember that you read this.

I was recently building out a new developer image for Vista. I have all of my ISO files for installing large programs such as Visual Studio Editions, SQL Server, and the like, stored on a handy external hard drive. One of my first tasks is to install an application that allows me to mount images. I have been using Virtual CloneDrive lately. I have really liked this tool, especially since it allows you to just double-click an ISO file and off it goes.

I used Virtual CloneDrive to mount a couple files and those installations went fine, including VS 2008 . I then proceeded to an ISO for VS 2005 Team Edition for Software Developers. I have used this ISO many a time before, not on Vista however. However, this time the setup could not access certain files. After some digging, I found a forum post about similar issues, and another post on a possible solution. It seems that Virtual CloneDrive is not completely compatible with Vista, at least for some ISOs. The solution was to uninstall, and use Daemon Tools instead. I tried, and sure enough, the installation worked fine with Daemon Tools.

Silverlight 2

I recently attended Mix '08, Microsoft's conference for discussing new web technologies. The buzz was definately around Silverlight 2, the latest release of Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash. Silverlight 2 Beta 1 is now available, and in my opinion, will become the norm for consumer-facing rich internet applications.

Silverlight 1.0, and subsequent 1.1, was released in 2007, and included support for mainly media-driven content sites. Version 2.0 introduces a wide variety of built-in controls and layout options that will bring the simplicity and familiarity of .NET Web Development to a rich client-side interface.

Here are a variety of resources I have assembled around Silverlight 2.0, from installation guides, to tutorials, examples, and sites.

Tools/Installs:

• Silverlight Beta 2
• Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 (March Preview)
• Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and Installation Tips

Presentations/Tutorials:

• Mix '08 Keynote given by Scott Guthrie and others and included a great showcase of Silverlight 2 sites.
• Mix '08 Session: Building Rich Internet Applications Using Microsoft Silverlight 2. This is an excellent presentation/demo given by Mike Harsh and Joe Stegman. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, and Mike's blog post.
• First Look at Silverlight 2 is a great post by Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 2 including a sample Digg client application.
• Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2 is another good post by Scott Guthrie on getting into this design tool for Silverlight apps.
• Jeff Procise delivers a nice MSDN Magazine article on Silverlight Tips and Tricks, touching on performance, installation, and other goodies.

Sites/Examples:

• Deep Zoom is a feature in Silverlight 2.0. Hard Rock's new memorabelia site showcases it. Scott Hansleman has a good post about this site and the technology in general.
• Video featuring some of the previous and new Silverlight sites.
• PhotoZoom is a great site featuring Deep Zoom. You can upload photos, and it will stitch them together into an album and you can Deep Zoom away.
• A plethora of great examples are in the showcase at Microsoft's Silverlight site.

FinalForman.NET

For those that know me, you know where my brain is this time of year. There is something always special about the tournament. Even when I haven't been paying close attention this season, February turns to March and all of a sudden I care again.

And that brings me to......http://www.finalforman.net. Trying to do my part in getting the word out. Check it out, let me know what you think.