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Welcome to the 13 December 2006 issue of the MSDN Flash. I'm Mike Taulty, the technical editor for the MSDN Flash in the UK.
I wanted to briefly highlight last week’s announcements of changes in the Expression suite of tools for designing web sites and rich Windows user interfaces. Take a look and see what’s coming up in the world of presentation technology and tools.
As this is the last issue of the Flash before the holiday, I’d like to wish you season greetings and all the best for the New Year when I hope to catch you at the Windows Vista and 2007 Office system launch in January or at one of our MSDN 2007 Roadshow events starting in February.
We're also planning to go on the road with a launch tour from 22 - 27 January. If you want the Microsoft team to come and present and your company, let us know and your company could be one of the stops on our tour. Find out more here.
If there's anything that you'd like to see in this newsletter, or you would like to provide feedback on its content, then please do let me know... Mike Taulty
Feature Article
Windows Mobile Managed APIs
by Daniel Moth
(visit my blog)
With all the current activity around betas, pre-release software and just released platforms, I thought I’d take a novel step and look at something that is already a year old but more relevant than ever.
In May 2005, Bill Gates announced the release to manufacturing of Windows Mobile 5.0. It came with many advances for the consumer and the business user, but also featured a fantastic move forward for the developer: managed APIs that are built in the platform. These managed libraries are independent of the version of the .NET Compact Framework used (in other words, you can use them from v1.0 or from v2.0 and beyond). Now is a great time to take a look at the managed API’s if you’ve not already done so as practically every Microsoft unit on the market today runs Windows Mobile 5.0. As we head towards the release of the next Windows Mobile platform, the managed APIs are fully supported so your code will require no changes moving forward.
The APIs ship in ROM and hence do not have to be deployed to the target by your setup programs. To code against them, you need to download the free Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK which installs the six libraries that you can reference from your Visual Studio 2005 Smart Device project, so you can use the namespaces and types and gain access to the new features. The SDK also provides Windows Mobile 5.0 emulators for use from within Visual Studio 2005. These class libraries are (in no particular order):
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Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Telephony.dll: make phone calls programmatically.
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Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Forms.dll: Contact Chooser, Picture Picker and Camera Capture dialogs.
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Microsoft.WindowsMobile.dll: it is not used directly in your code and is only necessary when referencing the Status and PocketOutlook dlls described next.
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Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Status.dll: this powerful library provides an easy to use generic way for accessing device state and for getting notified when device state changes (over 100 system properties), even when your application is not running.
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Microsoft.WindowsMobile.PocketOutlook.dll: wraps the Pocket Outlook Object Model (POOM) for interacting with Personal Information Management (PIM) items: appointments, contacts and tasks. This is also the place to look if you want to programmatically send SMS and email messages or even intercept SMS messages as they arrive.
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Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Configuration.dll: useful for processing or testing device XML configuration files e.g. for provisioning a device. Essentially a managed wrapper for DMProcessConfigXML.
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Now that your appetite is whetted, browse the online documentation for more details and install the Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK to have a play in your favourite language (C# or Visual Basic); there are links to both of those and plenty more from the Windows Mobile developer site. Keep an eye on the UK MSDN Nuggets page for short videos coming soon covering these in more detail.
Highlighted Links
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Try out the new version of Microsoft Office. You can now download a fully working trial and get to grips with the new features.
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A PowerShell User Group, Get-PSUGUK, has launched with the aim of evangelising the use of PowerShell amongst system administrators and developers, sharing information and helping solve users’ problems. Everyone with an interest in PowerShell is welcome. The first meeting will be held on 24 January at Global Knowledge Wokingham and will cover installation\configuration and a presentation on PowerShell Tools. Beer and pizza will be supplied courtesy of Power Gadgets. The group aim to meet every couple of months at various venues. For more details about the group and the meeting, see the leader’s blog.
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Spotlight on: Visual Studio Team System for Database Professionals
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Visual Studio Team 2005 Edition for Database Professionals delivers a market-shifting database development product designed to manage database change, improve software quality through database testing and bring the benefits of Visual Studio Team System and life cycle development to the database professional.
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Spotlight on: ASP.NET AJAX (formerly code-named Atlas)
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Download and install the beta release of ASP.NET AJAX v1.0, a free framework for quickly creating a new generation of more efficient, more interactive and highly-personalised web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.
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Events
Microsoft Events
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Microsoft’s most important product event for years, the launch of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, is in Reading on 19 and 20 January 2007. Over two days, developers will gain both technical and practical experience of the new tools available in Vista and Office.
There’s a parallel virtual event online for those unable to attend personally. With feedback from experts via forums, Microsoft promises that virtual attendees won’t miss a thing. From the opening keynote speech delivered via live webcast to experiencing the new applications, the virtual event will be as good as being there. Register now.
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Register now for the MSDN 2007 Roadshow
The MSDN Roadshow for 2007 will demonstrate the latest developments in our up-and-coming technologies from across the Microsoft stack. Join us for these full day events and learn from our experts, network with your peers and find out how Microsoft is supporting developers in the community. The events are free and lunch is provided. To register for these events and find out more about the content, please select your venue of choice:
Nottingham: 21 February 2007 Glasgow:5 March 2007 Harrogate:13 March 2007 London: 21 March 2007Reading: 27 March 2007
Third-Party & Community Events
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DevWeek 2007 early bird deadline is Friday 15 December - last chance to claim maximum discount.
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Training
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Designed for software developers and system architects who need to understand the architecture and programming techniques required to build collaborative applications using Windows SharePoint Services v3 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
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5 - 9 February 2007, London
DevelopMentor’s Guerrilla Visual Studio Team System, offers over 50 hours of training on VSTS, a platform that helps software development teams deliver complex software solutions.
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5-9 March 2007, Location TBD
This is an intensive (9am – 9pm) training event for experienced .NET developers who build applications in C# using v2.0 of Microsoft’s .NET platform.
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Exam Insurance gives you two chances to pass any Microsoft Certification exam free. Pass on the first try and you’ll get 25% off your next exam. Exam Insurance is offered exclusively by Microsoft Certified Learning Solutions Partners, so take your career to the next level by purchasing Exam Insurance today.
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Security
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Check out the recently added security articles under the ‘Contributors’ menu covering topics such as ‘WS-Federation and Single Sign-On’, ‘Moving to Partial Trust’, ‘Windows CardSpace’, 'Security Levels in Windows Communication Foundation', ‘Latest in Internet Attacks: Web Application Worms’ and ‘User Account Control in Windows Vista’.
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David Litchfield (of NGSSoftware and databasesecurity.com) has published a paper that compares the vulnerability track record of Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases over the past six years.
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Partner News
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Run, analyse, profile and navigate failed tests, and re-run unit tests from within Visual Studio 2005.
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Web Resources
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In MSDN Magazine This Month
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Custom workflow activities are one of the most important aspects of the Windows Workflow Foundation and there are many features to consider when building them.
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The patterns & practices (p&p) team at Microsoft recently began publishing software factories, collections of guidance assets-tools, reusable code, documentation and reference implementations to help automate the process of building software according to accepted patterns and predefined standards.
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See the top sessions, interviews and highlights from Tech•Ed: Developers on the Virtual Side.
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Use the VBA skills you already have to add new functionality to your VBA solutions
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13 December 2006
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Webcasts & Online Events
Expression Web
Learn how to create rich web sites, manipulate links and images and work with style sheets in our two new Microsoft Expression Web virtual labs. You can complete these free guided, hands-on labs in less than 90 minutes.
Also, watch our live and on-demand Expression webcasts.
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Product-related Downloads
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