Mike Murach and Associates has just published a new edition of their bestselling ADO.NET book.

Now entitled Murach’s ADO.NET 2.0 Database Programming with VB 2005, it covers what today’s professional developer needs to know to create database applications for Windows and the web. And this edition has been reworked from start to finish to make it quicker, easier, and more reliable for do-it-yourself training and on-the-job reference.

Here are some highlights:

#1: For rapid application development and prototyping...
This book shows how to use the ADO.NET 2.0 tools, like data sources and the DataGridView control, that enable developers to create working database applications in a minimum of time, with a minimum of coding.

#2: For serious production applications...
This book shows how to go beyond the RAD tools, using heavy-duty coding and ADO.NET 2.0 object data sources to build 3-layer Windows applications that consist of presentation, business, and database classes.

#3: For web applications...
This book shows how to use the time-saving ASP.NET 2.0 data controls as well as ADO.NET code and object data sources for everyday business applications.

#4: For XML data handling...
This book shows 4 ways to work with XML data in Windows and web applications.

#5: For report generation with Crystal Reports...
This book provides a work-saving tutorial on how to create, format, and display Crystal reports in Windows and web applications.

To ensure mastery, this book presents 25 complete database applications that demonstrate best programming practices. And all the content is formatted using Murach’s distinctive paired-pages approach, where each topic is presented in a concise, two-page spread.

Murach’s ADO.NET 2.0 is available directly from the publisher at www.murach.com and from all major retail outlets.

Note: You may also get this book here.

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As announced by Somasegar last week, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 (including Express editions), .NET 3.5 Beta 2 and Silverlight 1.0 RC are now available.

.NET 3.5 Beta 2 includes a go-live license.  Scott Guthrie has an excellent blog post  on some of the new features for web development with the new VS 2008/.NET 3.5 development platform.  Among the new features are multi-targeting support, improved web designer and CSS support, built-in ASP.NET AJAX and Javascript support, language improvements including LINQ, data access improvements with LINQ to SQL and lots of other improvements.

Links:

• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx
• http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/express/future/bb421473.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/downloads.aspx

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Microsoft is has released a preview of the next version of the main ASP.NET web site.

Check it out here: http://publicbeta.asp.net/

First impressions are good.  It's clearly more elegant and aesthetically appealing. 

The layout has been improved.  More panels of information can now be seen in one screen.

Kudos to the Microsoft team!

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Open source blogging platform DasBlog (which incidentally powers this blog) is now available as version 1.9.7.  This release is to be the final release on ASP.NET 1.1 (though it works on ASP.NET 2.0 too).

The next release (DasBlog 2.0) will be compiled under .NET 2.0 and will support Medium Trust environments.  This is great news as many web hosters operate in Medium Trust mode or a variant of it.

Scott Hanselman has indicated that there'll be a plan to move towards .NET 3.5 as well as 60-day release cycles.

For a full list of features in this release, head over to Scott Hanselman's blog for details.

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If you're running IIS7 on Vista and attempt to debug an ASP.NET application by pressing F5 on VS 2005 (or VWD Express), you've probably encountered one of the following error messages:

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There's a refresh release for the Microsoft AJAX Control Toolkit.  This release fixed some of the issues found in the 1.0.10606.0 release.

Changes include:

• Tabs naming container fix
• Visual Studio design time dependency fix
• FilteredTextBox navigation and control key issues and
• New languages support

For details about this refresh, check out the following blogs:

• Delay - Tweaks and improvements by popular demand [AJAX Control Toolkit update!]
• Delay - Script combining made better [Overview of improvements to the AJAX Control Toolkit's ToolkitScriptManager]
• Kirti - Lather, rinse and release

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Apple has announced the availability of Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows.

Browser testing should be a whole lot easier, at least thoretically.

Here are some interesting posts on Safari for Windows:

Safari for Windows and Silverlight

• Scott Hanselman: Microsoft Silverlight in Safari for Windows - Blogs about the issues he discovered when trying out the Silverlight Airline sample on the browser.
• Michael Schwarz: Apple Safari for Windows and Microsoft Silverlight - Describes the quirks he discovered while experimenting with a Silverlight app on the browser. 
• Tim Heuer: Silverlight and Safari on Windows - Describes a workaround to make Silverlight work on Safari for Windows.

Safari for Windows and Microsoft AJAX

• Bertrand Le Roy: Is Safari on Windows a good thing or a bad thing? - Testing history management in Microsoft AJAX and the browser.

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An updated version of the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit has been released. 

Key improvements in this release include:

• About 125 bug fixes
• Designer support for the TabContainer
• Support for ASP.NET Validators
• Extended event support for better interaction with client-side Toolkit components
• Automated Page Method callback generation
• Script combining - for faster load times
• Dynamic context support for components doing callbacks
• Accessibility fixes
• Built-in animation support for toolkit controls built on top of PopupBehavior

There are no new controls in this release.

Blog references on this release:

• Scott Guthrie
• Shawn Burke - includes screenshots of new features
• Delay - describes in greater detail the fixes and improvements in this release.
• Kirti
• Garbin - describes the new TooltipText property and accessibility fix in Slider extender

Books on ASP.NET AJAX:

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