If everything goes well, ASPNETWorld.com will be switching to another host within the next few days (before September 10).  While the switch should be smooth, anything can happen.  If you're experiencing issues with the site in the coming weeks, just send us a comment and we'll dig right into the root of the problem.

Why the switch?

The support issues that we had with the current hosting company were too much to bear.  With the switch, ASPNETWorld.com will also be in a better position to undertake the first ever major revamp of the site in 4 years.  Hopefully, the redesigned site will emerge some time in the first quarter of 2008.

Thank you all for your support!

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If you've often encountered significant delays when debugging an ASP.NET 2.0 application in VS 2005, here's good news: A public hotfix is now available to overcome the performance issue.

• Hotfix Download
• KB Article

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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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