25th Oct weekly trawl

Vista, Windows 7, .NET 4

Winston tells us to expect Vista SP2 - http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheSmartClientFactory/~3/430907304/windows-vista-service-pack-2.html

And more speculation about release dates for Windows 7 around end 2009 - http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081022/windows-7-targets-october-2009-rtm-retail-soon-after/

Dave Bost shows off the new logo for .NET - http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DaveBost/~3/431374104/

WPF related

Prism v2 drop 4 is out and has a focus on composition - http://blogs.msdn.com/erwinvandervalk/archive/2008/10/24/prism-v2-drop-4.aspx

Rockford Lhotka is sold on SL / WPF.  Sure there's a learning curve, but once you're there, it's no turning back  - http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/IsSilverlightReadyForBusinessApps.aspx

Karl Shifflett puts forward ideas for building WPF LOB forms.  He wants a solution that:

enables RAD GUI layout and maintenance of LOB forms

is toolable

leverages the intrinsic power of WPF & Silverlight

can be styled

lays itself out

responds well to localization

Sounds like just what we're after :-) - http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/wpf-silverlight-lob-form-layout-searching-for-a-better-solution/

James Kovacs has posted a slide deck on composite apps and Prism in particular - http://codebetter.com/blogs/james.kovacs/archive/2008/10/21/principles-patterns-and-prism-presentation.aspx

John Stockton is also pondering on the designer / developer interaction for Silverlight / WPF projects - just like we are - http://riathoughts.com/blog/designer-developer-workflow/

Glenn Block provides good insight with http://codebetter.com/blogs/glenn.block/archive/2008/10/19/finding-the-right-level-of-coupling.aspx, and also reports on bringing Prism to Winforms - http://blogs.msdn.com/gblock/archive/2008/10/20/bringing-prism-to-winforms.aspx - not that we'd go that way.

Josh Smith has released Crack.NET, a tool which allows you to inspect and manipulate the managed objects in the memory of another process. Also it allows you to write scripts in IronPython and have them run in Crack.NET allowing you to do all kinds of manipulations - http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/2008/10/20/introducing-cracknet/ and http://joshsmithonwpf.wordpress.com/cracknet/

The source code for much of WPF, as in .NET 3.5 Sp1 has been made available at -http://blogs.msdn.com/rscc/archive/2008/10/22/wpf-sources-for-net-framework-3-5-sp1-are-available.aspx

Shane Morris tells of a SilverLight designer & developer network just set up (in Melb) - http://blogs.msdn.com/shanemo/archive/2008/10/20/silverlight-designer-and-developer-network-launches-in-melbourne.aspx

Other

Iron Python 2.0 RC1 is out - http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=17404

Soma announces DevLabs - an initiative to showcase innovative new stuff - http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2008/10/23/inspiring-through-innovation-devlabs.aspx

One of the first projects is Pex - automated white box testing for .NET.  It will be in .VS2010 (Rosario), see http://blogs.msdn.com/nikolait/archive/2008/10/24/pex-now-a-devlabs-project.aspx and http://blogs.msdn.com/nikolait/archive/2008/10/22/pex-0-8-released-featuring-code-digger-and-stubs.aspx

Following on from Scott Hanselman's T4 list of resources - here's another one - http://blog.magenic.com/blogs/jons/archive/2008/10/23/How-to-Pass-Parameters-to-the-T4-Code-Generator_3A00_-Stuff-Found-on-the-Web.aspx

Some neat TFS tools are at http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2008/10/22/tools-for-tfs-on-codeplex-teamreview-and-info-kiosk.aspx

Gareth Jones of the DSL team points to some new screencasts - http://blogs.msdn.com/garethj/archive/2008/10/21/new-dsl-screencasts-avaialble-from-vsx-conference.aspx

Steve Cook points to some new videos on Visual Studio 10 architecture features http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecook/archive/2008/10/21/architecture-edition-videos.aspx. Now I wonder what the marketing people are going to do with this - not much value if it just gets squireled away in an "Architecture Edition"

Steve Cook is co-author of seminal book on Software Factories : : Assembling Applications with Patterns, Models, Frameworks, and Tools, together with Jack Greenfield, Keith Short & Stuart Kent.  After a drought of over 2 years, Keith Short has surfaced to tell us he's been working on Oslo, so I wonder if Jack has also?  Has the software factory initiative morphed into Oslo?

And because we'll be using some LINQ stuff on one of our current projects, here's some links to some useful tools.  They're not exactly new, but I think we'll find them of use  - a visual LINQ query builder - http://blogs.msdn.com/mitsu/archive/2008/04/02/visual-linq-query-builder-for-linq-to-sql-vlinq.aspx and LinqPad - http://www.linqpad.net/