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This is just a quick post to highlight the fact that Microsoft is hosting a bunch of free live webcasts on all things ASP.NET starting August 2nd. They'll be hosted by industry experts such as Joe Stagner and Stefan Schackow and will highlight all sorts of things like security, scalability, Atlas, and more.
These will no doubt contain a great deal of useful information so be sure to register ASAP
I'm a huge Stephen Walther fan. Having read his other books I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of this latest edition. Microsoft has made some serious upgrades to the .NET framework since version 1.1 and while these improvements are great, they do require a lot of time to learn. At almost 2000 pages, ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed is the most complete reference book on the market.
While there's no specific section on what's new in 2.0, this book provides an in-depth look into just about everything that's possible with the ASP.NET framework.
The new data access controls such as the GridView and SqlDataSource are discussed in detail. Building a proper architecture with data access, business logic, and presentation layers is also covered.
Master Pages, caching, web parts, login controls, etc., etc. There are no stones left unturned in this book. All of the chapters in the book have extensive examples (not just code snippets) which you can actually use in your projects. They're also written in both VB.NET and C#.
Stephen also has a great, easy-to-read writing style which makes this book even better. This book is an absolute must have for any developer working with ASP.NET 2.0.
I've been a strictly PC person most of my life but about a year ago I broke down and bought a Mac. I really needed it for tesing my work for cross-platform compliance and bugging my designer friends every other day was getting old.
One of the things I LOVE about MacOS is the Exposé feature, which lets you quickly zoom out and see all of your open windows at once. I use this all the time to switch back and forth between applications. This feature is simple, amazingly useful, and severely missing from the PC platform.
While Microsoft has some cool usability features planned for Vista (if it ever comes out) there's a great solution that you can use now in the form of a $9.95 program from Otaku Software called TopDesk.
This wonderful little program basically mimics the Mac Exposé features for the PC. It's so simple but for me it's a huge productivity boost, and quite honestly it just looks cool. They have a 30-day free trail so you can set it up and test it out. I've been using it for a few days now and I don't think I can live without it.
On another note, my long-time friend and colleague Nicholas Livadas has recently launched a new site for his company, Livadas Consulting. Nik is one of Rochester, NY's premiere experts in web design and standards-based development. I encourage anyone in the western NY area to check out www.livadas.com for complete online solutions.
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