Bander ALSHARFI

NeoWin.com writes about how Windows Blackcomb changed its name to Windows Vienna. Windows Vienna is the successor of the Windows Vista operating system. The new codename was not officially confirmed by Microsoft, however Robert Scoble confirmed the rumour in a Channel9 topic.

"The codename for Blackcomb has changed to 'Vienna'. This does not reflect a big change for us; we have used city code names in the past," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. "These code names are derived from cities/locations in the world known for great 'vistas'. The kinds of places we all want to see, experience and that capture the imagination. Vienna fits with this concept."

source: http://www.windowsvienna.com/

Don't you wish that the day will go for 48 hours! I wonder why god made it only 24?
Yeah, I know its a stupid question because devs like us are used to pressure and to be swamped;
this time I wanna share this with you:

1)      At BEAT (Company I work with): I have to close 3 projects by the end of this month, not to mention business development and writing proposals.

2)      At Jordev: I have to deploy the new site no later than Tuesday

3)      At EDC: I have to finalize the EDC CD project, the EDC mobile application, and finalize the FTP hosting for the speakers presentations no later than Today

4)      Also At EDC, I have to deliver 4 presentations, 2 are about Business Intelligence regarding our partner ProClarity tools and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services, one about XML Web Services in SQL Server 2005, and the another about Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System.

5)      The new masters semester will start next Saturday, and till now I didn’t register for any classes

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa3, It’s gonna be a crazy week!

Windows SharePoint Services SP2 does support the .NET Framework 2.0, CLR 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0; therefore you can build ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts using Visual Studio 2005 and deploy them on Windows SharePoint Services SP2; however, this process is not as straight-forward as it sounds here!

To leverage ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts in Windows SharePoint Services, a wrapper Web Part must be written to make the ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part appear to be a Windows SharePoint Services Web Part. After this is done, your ASP.NET 2.0 Web Part should function normally within your Windows SharePoint Services pages. Wrapper Web Parts will not be required in the next version of Windows SharePoint Services or the next version of SharePoint Portal Server (code named Office "12" SharePoint Servers), which both natively support ASP.NET 2.0. For wrapper Web Parts, you might want to investigate http://www.smartpart.info/default.aspx. You can grab the latest version of SmartPart (called Son of SmartPart) off of GotDotNet at http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/releases/viewuploads..... This SmartPart should allow you to contain ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts on WSS SP2 sites inside Web Part Zones J – I suggest you give it a shot!

However, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP2 DOES NOT support .NET Framework 2.0. However, the next major release of SPS will be fully based on ASP.NET 2.0 and will make use of its many features.

This article would shed more light on the new features in WSS SP2 and would also give more info on how to configure WSS SP2 to support .NET Framework 2.0.

My opinion around the matter is this: 

• If you need to deploy the Web Parts on SPS 2003 then it’s best to continue building native .NET Framework 1.1 Web Parts until the next major release of SPS is out.
• If some features in ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts are necessary for your application at this time, and you can afford to deploy the Web Parts on Windows SharePoint Services instead of the full-fledged SPS (i.e. a case where the enterprise features of SPS are not needed), then you can build ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts and deploy on WSS SP2 as described above.

Finally, I would suggest that for Enterprise-Level Portals you continue to use SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP2 and build native Web Parts on .NET Framework 1.1 like you would normally do until the next major release is out.

Source: http://ihsana.spaces.live.com/

Remeber the demo Don and Chris did in one of the MSDN TV shows?

In my last WinFX presentation one of the attendees asked me during the break to build the same simple app that Don and Chris built; honstly I was happy to know that people in Jordan are watching MSDN TV, in addition he gave me an idea in what to demo about! to tell the truth I didn't plan a demo scenario, I was relying on the feedback from the attendees.

Down below is the source code:

<Window x:Class="Window1"

xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/avalon/2005"

xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/xaml/2005"

Title="Hello Geeks with blogs"

Width="640"

Height="480"

>

<MediaElement Source="C:JordevWinFXCNBliss.avi" Opacity="0.7"/><

<StackPanel.LayoutTransform><

<ScaleTransform ScaleX="2" ScaleY="2" /><

</TransformGroup></

<TextBox Width="2in" Height="30" Name="txtbxMyName" Background="#44ffffff"></TextBox><

</StackPanel></

</Window>