Tips for OneNote Create separate work and personal folders and store everything else below that level Can create custom note flags and then search easily for them; for example, to store items for follow-up with your line manager or (for academic use) to highlight whenever a lecturer says "this will appear on the exam"! When you send a OneNote...

1. Creating an n-Tier DesignFirstly, create a data layer as a class library that encapsulates your SQL. This layer will typically return DataSets or DataReaders, or indeed your own object that implements IListSource or another bindable interface. If you're using an object such as a data reader, use interfaces as a way to abstract the specific...

Don Box and Doug Purdy kicked off the Connected Systems track with a typically off-the wall, outspoken thesis of development. Although this session was nominally described as a technology overview, it would better have been described as a philosophy, but I'm not convinced that the TechEd level definitions stretch that far… (NB For the...

Steve McConnell is the author of Code Complete, one of the classic software engineering titles that should be on the bookshelf of any professional developer. I first read this book when I started out in software development, and rediscovered it again a couple of year ago. Amazingly enough, the first (and still current) edition dates...

There are some really cool new capabilities for smart device development in Visual Studio 2005. This is one area of Whidbey that I've barely touched up until now, but I've just been wowed by the breadth and range of improvements. For example: Skins in the development environment with wired hardware buttons; Dynamic refactoring of a single...

ClickOnce (one of the new designer features in Visual Studio 2005) is designed to solve all the traditional problems associated with deployment of a .NET application. It takes away much of the traditional pain of generating installer files and handling different security zones. How do you use ClickOnce? Well, when you've created your...

I'm currently sitting next to Roger Jennings, who's the author of the forthcoming Microsoft Press book Introducing Microsoft InfoPath. Roger tells me that this is the only book on the market that includes the significant changes in the programming model introduced in Service Pack 1, including the InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio. Roger's...

I've been pondering about the perpetual problem of cost for attendees for TechEd Europe - I've heard from a number of people directly or indirectly that they'd love to go to the conference, but in the current economic climate for contractors etc. etc. it's just too hard to afford it. Sadly there really is very little I can do to give away free...

OK, so I'm heading off to TechEd US in San Diego tomorrow. Obviously this conference will be but a pale imitation of the main event - call it a dress rehearsal, if you will! There's a pre-conference press workshop on Whidbey to which I'll be accompanying a couple of UK journalists, and then the conference itself. I blogged a number of the...

You might have noticed that the Microsoft UK site has had a bit of a make-over. The intentions behind this reworking are all good: to take full advantage of ASP.NET and to provide personalised information relevant to the profile you choose (for example, "technical" visitors will get information on upcoming technical events and webcasts). One of...

After someone posted a question internally about getting hold of the limited edition Xbox Crystal Clear Edition, someone replied with an amusing link to an Ebay auction that made wildly more than the seller had possibly imagined. Read the advert then click on the comments link and read the comment by the guy who "won"! (Thanks to Jason for the...

If you've got a Windows Mobile device such as a Pocket PC or Smartphone attached to your computer, you might want to take a moment or two out to check that you've got the latest version of ActiveSync installed. I thought mine was up to date, but it seems we've been quietly releasing minor updates on a fairly regular basis, sometimes without...

We're delighted to announce the arrival of Esther Alice Sneath, born at 9:50pm BST, 9th May 2004 by Caesarean section. She weighs 8lb 7.5ozs, and is beautiful! Louise and Esther are doing very well and all of us are very thankful to God for the second little package of blessing he’s bestowed upon us.  

As I'm sure most people know by now, we've made an updated build of Windows "Longhorn" (build 4074) available. My colleague Mike Taulty pointed to a webcast from Dave Massy that highlights the progress that's been made since the bits we handed out at the PDC. Of course many people (myself included) hate webcasts: they're just too slow and it's...

I posted a little while back about the changes to Windows XP Service Pack 2. At the time we shipped a document that described those changes in great detail. Yesterday a new version of this document was released that added a ton of updates and extra details on features like the new Tablet PC interface. It's well worth downloading the new version as...