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Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 Released

Microsoft has released the Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Public Beta Testing.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htmIE 8 has a host of new features, which includes

Activities - Activities are contextual services to quickly access a service from any webpage. Users typically copy and paste from one webpage to another. Internet Explorer 8 Activities make this common pattern easier to do.
WebSlices - WebSlices is a new feature for websites to connect to their users by subscribing to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds where clients can subscribe to get updates and notify the user of changes.
Favorites Bar - In Internet Explorer 7, the Links bar provided users with one-click access to their favorite sites. The Links bar has undergone a complete makeover for Internet Explorer 8. It has been renamed the Favorites bar to enable users to associate this bar as a place to put and easily access all their favorite web content such as links, feeds, WebSlices and even Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
Automatic Crash Recovery - Automatic Crash Recovery (ACR) is a feature of Windows®Internet Explorer® 8 that can help to prevent the loss of work and productivity in the unlikely event of the browser crashing or hanging. The ACR feature takes advantage of the Loosely-Coupled Internet Explorer feature to provide new crash recovery capabilities, such as tab recovery, which will minimize interruptions to users’ browsing sessions. Learn more…
Improved Phishing Filter - Internet Explorer 7 introduced the Phishing Filter, a feature which helps warn users when they visit a Phishing site. Phishing sites spoof a trusted legitimate site, with the goal of stealing the user’s personal or financial information. For Internet Explorer 8, we are building on the success of the Phishing Filter with a more comprehensive feature called the “Safety Filter.”

Internet Explorer 8 can be installed on Microsoft Windows Vista® Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows Vista, Windows XP® Service Pack 2 (SP2), Windows Server® 2008 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). Downloads are available from the following location:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/getitnow.mspx

6 March 2008 in Beta Testing & Developer Tools & Software | Comments (0)

Microsoft Live Volta

Microsoft Live Labs hs announced the Volta technology preview, a developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques and patterns. Volta’s declarative tier-splitting enables developers to postpone architectural decisions about distribution until the last possible responsible moment. Volta enables new end-to-end profiling and testing for higher levels of application performance, robustness, and reliability. Using the declarative tier-splitting, developers can refine architectural decisions based on this profiling data. This saves time and costs associated with manual refactoring. In effect, Volta extends the .NET platform to further enable the development of software+services applications, using existing and familiar tools and techniques.

You architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience in multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.

Learn more about Microsoft Live Volta.
Download Microsoft Live Volta

27 February 2008 in Beta Testing & Developer Tools & Live | Comments (1)

Home Screen Alarm - Starter Kit for Windows Mobile

Name: Home Screen Alarm Plug-in
Category: Home Screen Plug-in
Platform: Windows Mobile 6 Standard
Language: C++

This Windows Mobile® Starter Kit is a ready-to-run home screen plug-in that shows alarm information on the home screen and provides a shortcut to access alarm settings.This starter kit demonstrates the following technologies:

Developing a basic Win32 smart device application in C++.
Getting data from Windows Mobile registry.
Creating a shortcut to the settings page.
Using home screen APIs.
Programming with COM.
Building and debugging a home screen plug-in.

Download

4 October 2007 in Developer Tools & Starter Kits & Windows Mobile | Comments (0)

Ski Time Mobile - Starter Kit for Windows Mobile

Name: Ski Time Mobile
Category: Game
Platform: Windows Mobile 6 Standard
Language: C++

This Windows Mobile® Starter Kit is a ready-to-run arcade game for Windows Mobile 6 Standard devices, with a portrait format 220 by 176 pixel display.This starter kit demonstrates the following technologies:

Encapsulation of an application window within a class.
Encapsulation of an application WNDPROC within a class.
Loading images from embedded resources, and accessing them through static names.
Clean separation between game logic, framework and Windows API code.
DirectDraw initialization, double buffering and clipping.
Resource management to facilitate shared resources and reduced loading times.
A flexible, stack-based model for game state transitions.
Basic Animation.

Download

3 October 2007 in Developer Tools & Starter Kits & Windows Mobile | Comments (0)

Tic Tac Toe - Starter Kit for Windows Mobile

Name: Tic Tac Toe
Category: Game
Platform: Windows Mobile 6 Classic and Professional
Language: C++

This Windows Mobile® Starter Kit is a ready-to-run Tic Tac Toe game that uses the new Mobile Ink APIs. The user can play against another person or against the computer, by writing X’s or O’s directly onto the touch screen.This starter kit demonstrates the following technologies:

Basic Win32 smart device application development in native C++.
Creating and enabling ink objects to allow a user to write ink strokes on the user interface by using the IInkOverlay interface.
Enabling handwriting recognition by using the IInkDisp and IInkStrokes interface.
Using dialog boxes, controls, and resources.
Using a flexible UI that supports portrait, landscape, and square-screen devices of various resolutions.
Using ScreenLib to make controls aware of screen size and orientation

Download

3 October 2007 in Developer Tools & Starter Kits & Windows Mobile | Comments (0)

Silverlight Launched

The much awaited Silverlight 1.0 is launched.

Microsoft has released Silverlight Plugins for IE, Firefox and Linux.

Learn More …

29 September 2007 in Developer Tools | Comments (0)

Visual Studio 2008 Beta Released

The next version of Visual Studio, Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008, is out for Beta Testing. It will provide an industry-leading developer experience for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web. In addition, it will continue in the Microsoft tradition of development language innovation.

Several versions of Visual Studio 2008 Beta are available for download. You can download the following versions,

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Express Editions
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Standard Edition
Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 Professional Edition
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Suite
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Team Foundation Server
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Beta 2 Test Load Agent
MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

Learn more about Visual Studio 2008 and download the Betas

26 September 2007 in Beta Testing & Developer Tools | Comments (0)

.NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1 Released

The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1 is a preview release of the latest version of the .NET Framework. Many ISV’s, enterprises and Microsoft product teams are successfully building on the new features Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows CardSpace in the .NET Framework 3.0. Microsoft plans to continue to invest in the .NET Framework developer platform and in support of existing users the .NET Framework 3.5 has a minimal number of breaking changes. So that existing applications built for .NET Framework 2.0 or .NET Framework 3.0 should continue to run without requiring changes. The .NET Framework 3.5 adds new features in several major technology areas; including:

Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness
ASP.NET AJAX for quickly creating more efficient, more interactive and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers
New web protocol support for building WCF services including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM and several new WS-* standards
Full tooling support for WF, WCF and WPF including the new workflow-enabled services technology
New classes in the base class library (BCL) for the .NET Framework 3.5 address the most common customer requests.

.NET Framework 3.5 is planned to release at the end of 2007 and will ship with Visual Studio code name Orcas and will also continue to be available for separate download from MSDN.
Download .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1

28 April 2007 in Beta Testing & Developer Tools | Comments (0)

Microsoft Silverlight

On ^16thApril Microsoft officially unveiled the name for what was previously known as the “WPF/e” at the 2007 National Association of Broadcasters Conference. WPF/e is now Microsoft Silverlight.Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web.It’s a new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in that allows users a new and richer multimedia experience when using a Web browser (for example, it supports 720p HD media playback). Web developers targeting IE, Firefox and even Apple’s Safari browser can all make use of Silverlight for a consistently amazing experience. It’s also a client- and server-agnostic platform; this means that the runtimes are the same on any platform, allowing you to deliver the Silverlight experience from an Apache web server, if you like — without requiring any MS software on the server. Learn more about Microsoft Silverlight,

18 April 2007 in Developer Tools & News | Comments (0)

Sandcastle - March 2007 CTP

Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN style, comprehensive documentation by reflecting over the source assemblies and optionally integrating XML Documentation Comments. Sandcastle has the following key featuresL: