Your Access To .NET information in Lebanon

Steve Ballmer to announce iPhone, iPad Visual Studio support at WWDC? [Crazy alert!]

2010-05-27T14:57:00.000+03:00

Steve Ballmer to announce iPhone, iPad Visual Studio support at WWDC? [Crazy alert!]: "

An analyst has let fly that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will be getting 7 minutes of time during the WWDC 2010 keynote — where the iPhone HD/iPhone 4G will al but certainly be introduced — to announce Visual Studio 2010 will support the native creation of iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps. Is there a word in the English language for something so bat$#!t crazy “rumor” and even “fiction” just don’t properly convey its bat$#!t craziness?

What makes this particular type of bat$#!t craziness so crazy is that it comes on the wake of Apple disallowing Adobe Flash CS5-style cross-compilation for development, Google’s awkwardly aggressive and increasing attacks on Apple, and Microsoft’s shakeup of their own devices division — triple trendy tie-in.

Hey, Microsoft and Apple have come to deals on Office and ActiveSync in the past, and we keep hearing about Bing being on the table to replace Google as default search…

So will Ballmer take the stage and monkey-boy dance out to iPhone developers, developers, developers!? Will Windows PCs get a way in to Apple app creation? Will I ever use bat$#!t insane in a post this much again?

Find out June 7!

[Barons via DF]

Steve Ballmer to announce iPhone, iPad Visual Studio support at WWDC? [Crazy alert!] is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Worldwide Web Camps

2010-05-17T08:59:00.000+03:00

Worldwide Web Camps: "

Over the next few weeks Microsoft is sponsoring a number of free Web Camp events around the world. These provide a great way to learn about ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET MVC 2, and Visual Studio 2010.

The Web Camps are two day events. The camps aren’t conferences where you sit quietly for hours and people talk at you – they are intended to be interactive. The first day is focused on learning through presentations that are heavy on coding demos. The second day is focused on you building real applications using what you’ve learned. The second day includes hands-on labs, and you’ll join small development teams with other attendees and work on a project together.

We’ve got some great speakers lined up for the events – including Scott Hanselman, James Senior, Jon Galloway, Rachel Appel, Dan Wahlin, Christian Wenz and more. I’ll also be presenting at one of the camps.

Below is the schedule of the remaining events (the sold-out Toronto camp was a few days ago):

Moscow May 19-19
Beijing May 21-22
Shanghai May 24-25
Mountain View May 27-28
Sydney May 28-29
Singapore June 04-05
London June 04-05
Munich June 07-08
Chicago June 11-12
Redmond, WA June 18-19
New York June 25-26

Many locations are sold out already but we still have some seats left in a few of them. Registration and attendance to all of the events is completely free. You can register to attend at www.webcamps.ms.

Hope this helps,

Scott

P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

Make the Visual Studio 2010 IDE colors look like Visual Studio 2008

2010-05-15T08:42:00.000+03:00

Make the Visual Studio 2010 IDE colors look like Visual Studio 2008: "

Personally, I like the new Visual Studio 2010 IDE colors but I got this comment recently from a helpful reader:

Why did the default colour theme for VS 2010 have to be so hideously ugly? Why put all that work into making the most advanced IDE ever, and then present it with a look that screams "we didn't care?" ... An official facelift patch would be nice, if just the 2008 look was applied to 2010.

Well, each to is own. Just like Henry Ford said, "You can have any color you want as long as it's black." Seriously, though, you can change the colors if it makes you happy. Folks feel strongly about their colors, like our friend above.

There's a free Visual Studio Color Theme Editor by Matthew Johnson that you can download and modify the VS IDE theme however you like. Once you've installed it (it's a VSIX - an extension to VS2010 - not an MSI, so don't be scared) there will be a new menu in VS called "theme."

Here's the built in themes. Remember these are VS themes, not Windows themes, so they won't affect Windows colors. Also, this is changing the colors of the IDE itself, not the text editor. You can choose your text styles at http://studiostyles.info.

Windows XP Silver

Windows Classic

Windows XP Emerald

Windows XP Autumn

Windows XP Olive

Windows XP Blue

Windows Aero

Windows XP Blue

Default Visual Studio 2010 Theme

Have fun! You can make your own themes as well and import/export them. Enjoy.

30 Tips for Successful Communication as a Remote Worker

2010-05-14T12:46:00.000+03:00

30 Tips for Successful Communication as a Remote Worker: "

As a Remote Worker I'm always looking for tips and tricks and checklists to make my, ahem, remote working life easier. I've made a cheap Wide Angle Lens so I could better see my co-workers, created a robot cart so they won't forget me, tested 4G cards so I can be online anywhere, switched to Hi-Def Video Cameras for web chat, written articles on how to Collaborate with Remote Employees with Office Communicator 2007 R2 and Phil Haack and I made the HanselPortal, for virtual camaraderie.

Yesterday Jonathan Tuliani, a remote worker in Dublin (or maybe we're remote) on the Azure team sent out a great list of tips for Remote Communications. He and Satya Nadella from Bing and myself and the many other non-Redmond workers sometimes struggle to be effective remotely.

Here's their list of tips, reprinted from an internal mail with permission.

Show consideration

Set up calls at mutually workable hours. Avoid blocking calendars with local meetings during shared hours. Fridays are often a poor choice.
Start on time. Leaders should set up the bridge or Live Meeting before the call starts. Attendees should always show up on time.
If you can't make it, cancel or decline least 18 hours in advance. Changing your plans to attend a non-existent meeting is very frustrating. Think carefully if the recipient will see your cancellation in time (they may be asleep).
Assume the best. If the other team isn't meeting your expectations, it's probably because of a lack of awareness or a misunderstanding—not incompetence. Clarify and confirm before drawing conclusions or judging.

Use the right tools

Choose the right tool. Office Communicator is great for 1-1s and small group meetings. LiveMeeting is usually better for large group meetings.
Use video. Seeing faces increases the quality of the communication. It also helps create focus, preventing people from getting distracted, having side conversations, checking their email, etc.
In a group, use a RoundTable. As well as enabling video, the noise-cancelling mics it has are excellent. Make sure all your meeting rooms have one, including the satellite mics.
On your own, use a headset. The sound quality for both parties is far superior.
Don't use your laptop microphone. Laptop microphones are poor quality and pick up noise from your laptop's fan, disk, and keyboard. Use the mic on your webcam or, better yet, an external mic.
Be a black-belt Ninja with the tools. Make sure you can set up and join meetings quickly so that they start on time. Learn all the available features. Set up time to sit with your local team to practice and explore.

Be Heard and Understood

Speak clearly and slowly. The connections aren't always clear.
Be precise and concise. Help to keep the meeting short and productive.
Speak one at a time, otherwise no-one can be heard.
Ask for confirmation that the callers heard everything clearly.
Sit near the microphone, especially if your voice is soft.
Ask for comments. It's hard to break into the conversation over the phone.
Avoid jargon and culture-specific phrases. English is not the first language of many people on our teams, and can also vary greatly across cultures.
Meet face to face from time to time. Meeting in person builds your knowledge of each other's mannerisms and communication style. Subsequent remote communications are much richer and misunderstandings rarer as a result.

Make meetings effective

Pick the right forum. Use meetings rather than long email threads to discuss complex issues. For small meetings, it is often better if everyone is in their own office rather than using a meeting room—this promotes equality between local and remote team members.
Share the context and goals. Shared context is critical to clear communication. There are often a lot of assumptions you know in a particular location based on side-conversations, etc.
Share a deck. It's much easier to follow the conversation if everyone is looking at the same thing. Even if you are sharing via OC or Live Meeting, send the deck or a link to the deck by email well in advance (home connections can be slow) and call out each slide.
Send minutes promptly. After every meeting, send minutes documenting all decisions and including clear actions and owners. Avoid cryptic or overly-concise notes—imagine them being read or reported out by someone who wasn't there, six months later.
Record and share brown bags. Brown bags are often at unsociable hours. Recording and sharing helps partner teams as well as your own.

Make Email Work

Be clear and precise. It's very easy to misinterpret email, especially across cultures and languages. Re-read your emails before sending.
Document everything. Document all decisions - if it's not recorded in email, it didn't happen.
Share everything. Use email to share face-to-face hallway, office, lunchtime or post-meeting conversations.
Be inclusive. Leave time for other sites to read and reply before closing the issue (as appropriate).
Set up inclusive DLs. Having all stakeholders on the appropriate distribution lists is the easiest way to keep from forgetting other sites. Don't hide DL membership.
Answer all questions asked. Incomplete answers lead to frustration and wasted time.
Avoid unnecessary questions. Ask yourself ‘is it really worth a 24-hour turn-around to answer this question? Can I answer it myself, or ask someone local?' Don't block an important thread with a trivial question.

Related Links

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Training Courses Updated

2010-05-14T08:35:00.000+03:00

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Training Courses Updated: "Want to learn how an integrated platform featuring Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 can change the way people work?

Check out the latest updates for the Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 training courses. Both were updated on today in concert with the Office and SharePoint business launch in New York. You'll find a wide range of topics, including video, sample code, and hands on labs.

To attend an upcoming launch event near you, go here."

Fun Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers

2010-05-13T17:09:00.000+03:00

Fun Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers: "

Two weeks ago I blogged about a cool new site that allows you to download and customize the Visual Studio code editor background and text colors (for both VS 2008 and VS 2010 version). The site also allows you to submit and share your own Visual Studio color schemes with others.

Another new community site has recently launched that allows you to download Visual Studio 2010 themed images that you can use for your Windows desktop background. You can visit the site here: http://vs2010wallpapers.com/ In addition to browsing and downloading Visual Studio themed wallpapers, you can also submit your own into the gallery to share with others.

[In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

Browsing Wallpaper Images

The site has dozens of wallpaper images that you can browse through and choose from. They range from the cool and abstract:

To the fun and silly:

Enabling the Wallpaper Images as your Windows Desktop

You can zoom in on any image (hover over the image and then click the “zoom” button that appears over it) and then download it to be your Windows desktop image. If you visit the site using Internet Explorer, you can also zoom in on the image, then right click on the image and choose the “Set as Background” context menu item to enable it as your Windows desktop.

Note: you want to make sure you download the zoomed-in/high resolution version of the wallpaper to make sure it looks good as the wallpaper on your desktop.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Visual Studio 2010 - Help Viewer Power Tool BETA - Help Index and Standalone Help

2010-05-13T08:51:00.000+03:00

Visual Studio 2010 - Help Viewer Power Tool BETA - Help Index and Standalone Help: "

The help system changed in Visual Studio 2010. I totally had a "Who Moved My Cheese" moment, as did many folks.

Where's my "as I type" Help Index?
Where's my separate Help Viewer? I don't want help in my browsers, it clutters my tabs.

If you don't install the Help Documentation at the end of the Visual Studio 2010 setup, you help will be online and shown in your default browser. Personally, I like the idea of an external help viewer. I just saw on the Help Team's blog that they released the Help Viewer Power Tool today. It's an unsupported local content Help Viewer.

First, make sure your Help Content is installed locally, rather than served from the web.

Click Help Manage Help Settings.
Click Choose Online or Local. Select Local, a path, then OK.
Click Install Content from Online (or from Disk)
Select your content by clicking Add on each topic you want, click OK.

When you've got local help content setup, go install the Help Viewer Power Tool. So what do you get?

The Help Viewer Power Tool supports two modes: in-browser and standalone.

The Power Tool defaults to an in-browser experience that adds two additional tabs – Index and Search – to the left pane using a Silverlight control. In addition, the left pane is now fully resizable.
The Power Tool can be configured to provide a standalone experience with three tabs for navigating content: Contents, Search Results, and Index. This mode provides some additional features over the in-browser experience:

The help window has its own icon and is easily located in the task bar.· The help window can be pinned to the Win7 Taskbar.
F1 queries overlay the previous help topic (eliminates tab proliferation).
The standalone window is resizable and can be positioned independently without affecting browser settings.

Here's what your in-browser Help will look like. Notes the Contents, Search Results and Index on the left:

Here's the standalone Help Viewer. Once you've run it, you can also pin it to Explorer in Windows 7.

How do I switch to standalone mode?

From your system drive, run the following from an elevated command prompt
(note you might be in \Program files (x86))
cd \program files\microsoft help viewer\v1.0
hlpvwpt.exe standaloneviewer=true
Shut down any instances of the Help Library Agent. Right-click on the Help Library Agent icon in the taskbar and select ‘Exit.

How do I switch back to in-browser mode?

From your system drive, run the following from an elevated command prompt:
cd \program files\microsoft help viewer\v1.0
hlpvwpt.exe standaloneviewer=false
Shut down any instances of the Help Library Agent. Right-click on the Help Library Agent icon in the taskbar and select ‘Exit.

If you're installing on a non-English system, make sure you read the Readme to make sure your localized help is shown. Also, if you only have IE6, you'll need IE8.

Another way to find the Help Viewer Power Tool

As an aside, you can also just go to the Tools Extension Manager inside VS2010, and query something like "help viewer power" and you can get to the download page from inside VS.

Related Links

How To: Updating multiple VS 2010 installations' Help content with a single download - This technique will show you how to share help between multiple developers via a Shared Drive. This is helpful in constrained bandwidth environments.

A comment from my blog: "Also, while the updating feature is great, the downloads appear quite large and if you have a number of machines to update then this can be a slow and bandwidth consuming task, is there any way to download and share the help system updates between multiple installations?

Community Created H3Viewer.exe - Alternative VS 2010 help viewer in the style of DExplore. Features a full TOC, full Index, Search and favorites.
Keyword Index for Visual Studio 2010 Help Documentation - An unsupported inside-the-IDE Help Client with keyword index.
Developer Documentation and Help Forum - Ryan, the developer of this tool, will be watching the forums for your feedback.

Pinning Projects and Solutions with Visual Studio 2010

2010-05-12T18:10:00.000+03:00

Pinning Projects and Solutions with Visual Studio 2010: "

This is the twenty-fourth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.

Today’s blog post covers a very small, but still useful, feature of VS 2010 – the ability to “pin” projects and solutions to both the Windows 7 taskbar as well VS 2010 Start Page. This makes it easier to quickly find and open projects in the IDE.

[In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu]

VS 2010 Jump List on Windows 7 Taskbar

Windows 7 added support for customizing the taskbar at the bottom of your screen. You can “pin” and re-arrange your application icons on it however you want.

Most developers using Visual Studio 2010 on Windows 7 probably already know that they can “pin” the Visual Studio icon to the Windows 7 taskbar – making it always present. What you might not yet have discovered, though, is that Visual Studio 2010 also exposes a Taskbar “jump list” that you can use to quickly find and load your most recently used projects as well.

To activate this, simply right-click on the VS 2010 icon in the task bar and you’ll see a list of your most recent projects. Clicking one will load it within Visual Studio 2010:

Pinning Projects on the VS 2010 Jump List with Windows 7

One nice feature also supported by VS 2010 is the ability to optionally “pin” projects to the jump-list as well – which makes them always listed at the top. To enable this, simply hover over the project you want to pin and then click the “pin” icon that appears on the right of it:

When you click the pin the project will be added to a new “Pinned” list at the top of the jumplist:

This enables you to always display your own list of projects at the top of the list. You can optionally click and drag them to display in any order you want.

Cool Keyboard Trick with Windows 7 Jump Lists

A cool trick that Scott Cate taught me about is the ability to activate Windows 7 jumplists from the keyboard without having to use a mouse.

Simply press the Windows key + the Alt key + [task tray icon index] and the jump list will appear. For example, above VS 2010 is the 4th program icon from the left on my machine – so if I press the Windows Key + Alt + 4 at the same time then the VS jumplist will appear. You can then use the up and down arrows on your keyboard to select the project you want to load from the jumplist.

VS 2010 Start Page and Project Pinning

VS 2010 has a new “start page” that displays by default each time you launch a new instance of Visual Studio. In addition to displaying learning and help resources, it also includes a “Recent Projects” section that you can use to quickly load previous projects that you have recently worked on:

The “Recent Projects” section of the start page also supports the concept of “pinning” a link to projects you want to always keep in the list – regardless of how recently they’ve been accessed.

To “pin” a project to the list you simply select the “pin” icon that appears when you hover over an item within the list:

Once you’ve pinned a project to the start page list it will always show up in it (at least until you “unpin” it).

Summary

This project pinning support is a small but nice usability improvement with VS 2010 and can make it easier to quickly find and load projects/solutions. If you work with a lot of projects at the same time it offers a nice shortcut to load them.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Visual Studio 2010 keybinding cards

2010-05-10T20:06:00.000+03:00

Visual Studio 2010 keybinding cards: "

If you’re a bit like me you like to have a lot of keyboard shortcuts handy while coding
in your favorite IDE, Visual Studio. In the past I blogged about cheat sheets for former
versions of Visual Studio but I recently found out about documents for 4 different
languages in Visual Studio 2010: C#, F#, VB.NET and C++.

Take
a look here to download these.

Grz, Kris.

Tips & Tricks with Business Data Connectivity Model Deployment in Visual Studio 2010

2010-05-07T07:54:00.000+03:00

Tips & Tricks with Business Data Connectivity Model Deployment in Visual Studio 2010: "

I'm back with Boris Scholl, the Program Manager who designed the BDC Model designer in Visual Studio 2010. Boris is a SharePoint expert, and in this interview he shares some tips and tricks having to do with BDC model deployment to SharePoint 2010. He provides insight into what the designer is doing behind the scenes, what happens when you deploy the package, and how you can configure it to do exactly what you need.

Boris and I are good friends and in this interview we joke around a bit as he explains to me (a total SharePoint n00b!) how BDC models work. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

For more information on SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010 please see:

SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010 Walkthroughs

SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010 Samples

SharePoint Development with Visual Studio 2010 Video Series

SharePoint 2010 Development Resources

For more SharePoint 2010 interviews with the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools team members see:

Overview of SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010

Importing SharePoint Solution Packages (WSP) into Visual Studio 2010

SharePoint Feature and Package Designers in Visual Studio 2010

Using the SharePoint Business Data Connectivity Designer in VS 2010

Implementing a Silverlight SharePoint WebPart with Visual Studio 2010

Best Practices on Building SharePoint 2010 Web Parts with Visual Studio 2010

Enjoy,

-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

STL: Some Underlying Algorithms, Data Structures, and More with Stephan T. Lavavej

2010-05-05T09:12:00.000+03:00

STL: Some Underlying Algorithms, Data Structures, and More with Stephan T. Lavavej: "With the recent release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4/Silverlight 4 (Managed 4), I figured it was time to learn a thing or two about some new native functionality, specifically in the STL (Shared Template Library) that ships with VS 2010.

Who better to dig into some STL internals than the great Stephan T. Lavavej? Stephan spends most of his time maintaining the STL (along with the core producers of the library, who last I heard work from a remote location in Hawaii...). Stephan is no stranger to those of us who spend time in the native programming world (and use C++, specifically, to compose), and you've already met Stephan a few times on C9.

As always, this conversation just happened. Stephan and I didn't draft up some highly structured and scripted plan. Spontaneity is always our goal, and we met that goal here! So, if you are interested in STL internals and C++ in general, then this is for you.

Thank you, Stephan, for another great lesson.

Enjoy!
"

Being a pimp without Silverlight presentation

2010-05-04T13:56:00.000+03:00

Being a pimp without Silverlight presentation: "

Yesterday evening I did my first presentation for the Belgian user group Visug together
with Maarten
Balliauw. The session was about ASP.NET
MVC 2 and jQuery and
some of the cool plugins and also Bing
maps integration. The slides can be seen here:

Being
a pimp without silverlight - ASP.NET MVC 2 and jQuery

View
more presentations from Kris
van der Mast.

I enjoyed my time delivering the presentation and plan on doing some more in the (near)
future.

Grz, Kris.

Array and Collection Initializers in Visual Basic 2010

2010-05-04T11:29:00.001+03:00

Array and Collection Initializers in Visual Basic 2010: "

In this interview Spotty Bowles, a tester on the VB Compiler team, shows us a couple of new language features: Array and Collection Initializers. He gives us insight into how they are implemented in the compiler and best practices on how to use them in our code. Additionally, he discusses how to extend Collection Initializers with your own extension methods.

For more new Visual Basic language features in Visual Studio 2010 see:

Article: What's New in Visual Basic 2010?

Video: What’s New in Visual Basic 2010?

Also, stop by the Visual Basic Team Blog and the Visual Basic Developer Center.

Enjoy,

-Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community

Ping 56: Mouse Mischief, Social Media Clock, Windows 7 Embedded, Ballmer loves Natal

2010-05-04T11:29:00.000+03:00

Ping 56: Mouse Mischief, Social Media Clock, Windows 7 Embedded, Ballmer loves Natal: "After a tiny hiatus we are back and better than ever. The show is jam-packed this week so let's get right to it:

Mouse Mischief: The Multi Point Mice Game!

Windows 7 gets embedded

The Social Media Clock

Ballmer LOVES Natal

Live Action Trailer for HALO"

GTX Theme Coming Back From The Dead With An Update

2010-05-03T14:55:00.000+03:00

GTX Theme Coming Back From The Dead With An Update: "

If you have been waiting for the latest in HD2 themes to get that CHT 1.71 support, well Dark ninja’s team has done that in their recent update. The update produced by Dark Ninja includes many new things, mostly fixes, but the most important and the one I have been waiting for is the Co0kie Hometab 1.71 support which has now been made available by these hard working men.

The update includes:

02/05/2010

- Support for Co0kies Home Tab 1.7.1

- Fixed Calendar crash issue

- Fixed all font color issues

- Fixed flip clock

- Fixed backgrounds for 6 clocks

- Fixed Layout of clocks

- Added Clock Colon as a separate image

- Some Graphics enhancements

- Eliminated all known bugs in first version

If you own an HD2 and want a cleaner look, and the blue theme posted earlier cannot do it for you. This GTX is the next best step available to you.

Download it

Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9

2010-05-03T14:52:00.000+03:00

Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9: "

Our recent post generated many comments and questions. The discussion of intellectual property rights is complex and invites many different points of view. This is a good opportunity to talk through the certainty and uncertainty relative to our goals for IE9 from Microsoft’s point of view.

Developers have consistently conveyed that they want certainty and predictability in the underlying browser platform. We want to deliver a great HTML5 experience in IE9 with great certainty. The goal of certainty informs a lot of choices, such as which of the many standards still under construction we’ll pursue. Browser developers have to make decisions like this all the time.

For many reasons, H.264 video offers a more certain path than other video formats and does so in a way that delivers a great HTML5 experience for developers and end-users. First and most important, we think it is the best available video codec today for HTML5 for our customers. Relative to alternatives, H.264 maintains strong hardware support in PCs and mobile devices as well as a breadth of implementation in consumer electronics devices around the world, excellent video quality, scale of existing usage, availability of tools and content authoring systems, and overall industry momentum – each an important factor that contributes to our point of view.

H.264 also provides the best certainty and clarity with respect to legal rights from the many companies that have patents in this area. The rights for implementations of the H.264 standard (see this Wikipedia article about the standardization process) are managed by MPEG-LA as part of a program that has been in place for many years. This long-standing licensing program for a codec that is in broad usage today in the industry provides a stable system from which we can support our customers. As experts will note, there is never complete certainty in an area like this one.

Some comments asked for examples to support the statement in the previous post about “The rights to other codecs are often less clear, as has been described in the press.” One comment linked to a Streaming Media article; other examples are easy to find.

Intellectual property is a complex topic. As it’s not an engineering topic and this is an engineering blog, the remarks here are by definition limited. On the topic of whether one person’s codec does or doesn’t use someone else’s intellectual property, the only opinion that ultimately matters is a court’s. Many people seem to assume that availability of source code under an open source license implies that there are no additional costs, or that the code has properly secured necessary intellectual property rights from all rightful owners. Our experience and the experience of others indicate otherwise, and the web standards groups have discussed this issue as well. For other codecs, it’s not clear today how the rights will be determined for commercial scenarios and what the costs will be. By virtue of existing commercial use in a wide variety of products implemented by a large number of companies, H.264 minimizes uncertainty for consumers and developers.

Several comments speculated about Microsoft’s financial interest in the codec. (Microsoft participates in MPEG-LA with many other companies.) Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264. Much of what Microsoft pays in royalties is so that people who buy Windows (on a new PC from an OEM or as a packaged product) can just play H.264 video or DVD movies. Microsoft receives back from MPEG-LA less than half the amount for the patent rights that it contributes because there are many other companies that provide the licensed functionality in content and products that sell in high volume. Microsoft pledged its patent rights to this neutral organization in order to make its rights broadly available under clear terms, not because it thought this might be a good revenue stream. We do not foresee this patent pool ever producing a material revenue stream, and revenue plays no part in our decision here.

There were many questions about royalties, and a lot of speculation in the comments about licenses and payments. The majority of H.264 video content on the web today is royalty-free. MPEG has said that individuals can create video files in the H.264 format and distribute them and play them over the internet for non-commercial purposes without further obligation on licensed platforms like Windows. We are aware that this commitment is set to expire in 2016, but fully expect to commit to supporting the extension of this license and associated terms beyond that date. In general, distributing encoders or decoders or offering sophisticated pay-for-video requires a license from MPEG-LA. Third-party applications that simply make calls to the H.264 code in Windows (and which do not incorporate any H.264 code directly) are covered by Microsoft’s license of H.264.

Some comments pointed to language in our Windows EULA that comes directly from MPEG-LA and reinforces many of these terms. As with all licensing programs, there are limitations and issues, which people have pointed out. The functionality we provide is technology we license and we follow the terms of that license.

Several comments asked about Microsoft’s support for plug-ins (like Flash and Silverlight). Of course, IE9 will continue to support Flash and other plug-ins. Developers who want to use the same markup today across different browsers rely on plug-ins. Plug-ins are also important for delivering innovation and functionality ahead of the standards process; mainstream video on the web today works primarily because of plug-ins. We’re committed to plug-in support because developer choice and opportunity in authoring web pages are very important; ISVs on a platform are what make it great. We fully expect to support plug-ins (of all types, including video) along with HTML5. There were also some comments asking about our work with Adobe on Flash and this report offers a recent discussion.

We’ve read some follow up discussion about support for more than the H.264 codec in IE9’s HTML5 video tag. To be clear, users can install other codecs for use in Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. For web browsers, developers can continue to offer plug-ins (using NPAPI or ActiveX; they are effectively equivalent in this scenario) so that webpages can play video using these codecs on Windows. For example, webpages will still be able to play VC-1 (Microsoft WMV) files in IE9. A key motivator for improving the codec support in Windows 7 was to reduce the need that end-users might have to download additional codecs. The security risks regarding downloadable codecs and associated malware are documented and significant. By building on H.264 for HTML5 video functionality, we provide a higher level of certainty regarding the security of this aspect of browsing and our web platform.

The biggest obstacle to supporting more than H.264 today is the uncertainty. When there’s industry consensus and confidence that the uncertainties are resolved, we’ll be open to considering other codecs. Until then, we’ll continue with our current plans to deliver great HTML5 video in IE9 with certainty for consumers and developers.

Dean Hachamovitch

List of articles referenced

AVC/H.264 Licensors

Fake codecs that drop widely spread malware

Google may face legal challenges if it open-sources VP8 codec

H.264 Already Won—Makes Up 66 Percent Of Web Videos

H.264 licensing body won't charge royalties for HTML5, other Web streams

IE Blog: HTML5 Video

JPEG patent case steams forward

Mac OS X malware posing as fake video codec discovered

Malware Posing As Youtube Codec

Media Streaming with Windows 7

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Volume 8

Microsoft Sued Over JPEG Patent

MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Continue Not to Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free to End Users

NPAPI

Open letter to Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash

Re: Codecs for <video> and <audio> from Silvia Pfeiffer on 2009-07-29 (public-html@w3.org from July 2009)

Cloud Cover Episode 9 - Blob API

2010-05-03T11:42:00.001+03:00

Cloud Cover Episode 9 - Blob API: "Join Ryan and Steve each week as they cover the Microsoft cloud. You can follow and interact with the show at @cloudcovershow

In this episode:

Using the StorageClient library, take a lap around the Blob API and discover the common operations

Hear the latest news and announcements for the platform

Discover a quick tip/gotcha for running the AppFabric Service Bus in Windows Azure

Show Links:

Windows Azure self-paced training

OData under Apache 2.0 license

Filtering Diagnostic Events

New SQL Azure features are live

AppFabric Service Bus troubleshooting Tips

Blob API Upload Optimizations (via Rob Gillen)

Ch9Live at VS2010 Launch - Stephen Toub on Parallelism

2010-05-03T11:42:00.000+03:00

Ch9Live at VS2010 Launch - Stephen Toub on Parallelism: "Stephen Toub and Charles Torre discuss Parallelism at DevConnections 2010 as part of the Visual Studio 2010 Launch in Las Vegas.

This session was recorded live as part of Channel 9 Live at the Visual Studio 2010 Launch from the Bellagio Hotel & Casino on April 12th 2010.
"

Reading between the lines of Microsoft's latest IE 9 standards missive

2010-05-03T11:08:00.001+03:00

Reading between the lines of Microsoft's latest IE 9 standards missive: "Mary Jo Foley: It's been a week of attempting to decipher motives and messaging in Microsoft-land. The (hopefully) last piece over which I’ll be puzzling before the weekend is Microsoft's latest missive on the company’s IE Blog.

On April 29, IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch posted a short blog entry about Microsoft’s decision to back the H.264 video codec in Internet Explorer 9. That fact, in and of itself, wasn’t new; Microsoft officials said the same back at Mix 10 in March, when they rolled out the first preview of Microsoft’s next-gen browser...

View Full Article: Mary Jo Foley's Blog"

Microsoft fires back at critics of its HTML5 strategy

2010-05-03T11:08:00.000+03:00

Microsoft fires back at critics of its HTML5 strategy: "Apple and Microsoft are at it again. This time, though, the two archrivals find themselves on the same side (more or less) of a tremendously contentious issue: Which video format will be adopted as the standard for the Internet over the next five (or more) years?

The answer from both companies is H.264. Coincidentally, both Apple and Microsoft issued manifestos announcing that support last week. But how they continued that discussion with developers, partners, and customers is a very different story indeed...

View Full Article: Ed Bott's Microsoft Report"

Windows Theme Generator Tour

2009-10-09T09:27:00.001+03:00

In this video Pocket Now cover Microsoft's web-based Custom Theme Generator for Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. Although right now you can only choose from three phones on the Generator website, choosing the Pure or Imagio will generate a skin for any WM 6.5 device with a WVGA screen, and clicking on the Intrepid will generate a theme for any landscape QVGA WM 6.5 device. We tested the themes on 6.0 and 6.1, and sadly they don't work.

Follow this link

http://pocketnow.com/software-1/windows-phone-custom-theme-generator-tour

HTC HD2 official Specs

2009-10-07T09:35:00.001+03:00

Physical

Size:

Weight: 157 grams (5.54 ounces) with battery

Buttons:

CPU Processing Speed

1GHz Snapdragon™ processor

Power & Battery¹

Battery type: Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery
Capacity: 1230 mAh
Talk time:

WCDMA: Up to 320 mins
GSM: Up to 380 mins

Standby time:

WCDMA: Up to 390 hours
GSM: Up to 490 hours

Video playback Up to 8 hours
Audio playback: Up to 12 hours

Camera

5 megapixel color camera
Auto focus
Dual LED flashlight

Connectors

3.5 mm stereo audio jack
Standard Micro-USB
(5-pin micro-USB 2.0)

Sensors

G-Sensor
Proximity sensor
Ambient light sensor

Home Screen

Home, People, Messages, Mail, Internet, Calendar, Stocks, Photos & Videos, Music, Weather, Footprints, Twitter, Settings

Social Networking

Facebook™ integration
Sharing photos on Facebook and Twitter
Sharing videos on YouTube™
HTC Peep™ for twittering

Recommended Windows System Requirements

Windows XP or Windows Vista®
Microsoft® ActiveSync® 4.5 for Windows XP
Microsoft® Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1
for Windows Vista

Display

Type: Capacitive touch screen
Resolution: 480 X 800 WVGA

Operating System

Windows Mobile® 6.5 Professional

Storage

ROM: 512 MB
RAM: 448 MB
Expansion slot: microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)

Network Bands²

Europe:

HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz
GSM: 850/950/1800/1900 MHz

Asia Pacific:

HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz
GSM: 850/950/1800/1900 MHz

Internet³

Browser: Opera Mobile™
3G:
Up to 7.2 Mbps download speed
Up to 2 Mbps upload speed
GPRS: Up to 114 kbps download speed
EDGE: Up to 560 kbps download speed
Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g

Tethering

Internet Sharing through USB or Bluetooth
Wi-Fi Router

Bluetooth

Bluetooth® 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate
Supported profiles: A2DP, AVRCP, BIP, BPP, DUN, FTP, GAP, GOEP, HFP, HID, HSP, OPP, PAN, PBAP, SAP, SPP

Multimedia

Windows Media® Player
Albums
Pictures & Videos
FM Radio
Audio supported formats:
.aac, .amr, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .mp4, .qcp, .wav, .wma
Video supported formats:
.wmv, .asf, .mp4, .3gp, .3g2, .m4v, .avi

Location⁴

Internal GPS antenna
HTC Footprints™
Digital Compass
NaviPanel

Battery times (talk time, standby time, and more) are subject to network and phone usage.
Network bands in regions other than Europe and Asia Pacific may be different, depending on the mobile operator and your location. Please check with your mobile operator.
Actual data speed is dependent on the network or Wi-Fi signal strength.
NaviPanel requires the HTC HD2 car kit which needs to be purchased separately.

HTC Touch HD2 Images

2009-10-07T09:33:00.001+03:00

http://www.htc.com/uploadedImages/WWW/Press_Room/Product_Photo_Gallery/HTC_HD_2/Download_03_HTC_HD2.jpg

http://www.htc.com/uploadedImages/WWW/Press_Room/Product_Photo_Gallery/HTC_HD_2/Download_02_HTC_HD2.jpg

http://www.htc.com/uploadedImages/WWW/Press_Room/Product_Photo_Gallery/HTC_HD_2/Download_01_HTC_HD2.jpg

http://www.htc.com/uploadedImages/WWW/Press_Room/Product_Photo_Gallery/HTC_HD_2/Download_04_HTC_HD2.jpg

http://www.htc.com/uploadedImages/WWW/Press_Room/Product_Photo_Gallery/HTC_HD_2/Download_05_HTC_HD2.jpg

http://www.htc.com/uploadedImages/WWW/Press_Room/Product_Photo_Gallery/HTC_HD_2/Download_06_HTC_HD2.jpg

Enjoy….

ANH

Get The Best Phone of All

2009-10-07T09:28:00.001+03:00

HTC Touch HD2 is here…get the greatest of all devices now……Check out the product tour on the official website and enjoy being there.

http://www.htc.com/www/product/hd2/product-tour.html

ANH

Upgrade To Windows Mobile 6.5

2009-10-07T09:11:00.001+03:00

Have you heard about some exciting new features in Windows Mobile 6.5 that you’d like to try (like enhanced web browsing and improved messaging)? Have you wondered if you can update your older Windows Mobile phone to Windows Mobile 6.5? The answer depends on the model of your phone and conditions put in place by your mobile operator (also known as your carrier).

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/meet/wm65-upgrade.mspx

the website above provides much more information…

ANH

Windows 7 Global Launch

2009-10-06T13:21:00.001+03:00

Welcome to the windows 7 world. The official global lunch would be October 14. More and more resources are being put to teach out about windows 7. Stay tuned and visit Microsoft Technet more often to get a grasp of the learning snacks.

here are some links to enjoy while waiting for October 14

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/10/05/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-console-host.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/10/04/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-unified-background-process-manager-ubpm.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/10/02/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-fault-tolerant-heap-and-memory-management.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/10/01/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-upgrade-paths-registry-enhancements-crash-dumps-and-page-file-sizing.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/09/18/windows-7-is-coming-see-y-all-in-two-weeks.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2009/09/15/is-your-organization-ready-for-windows-7.aspx

ANH

Windows Mobile 6.5 is hitting your Door

2009-10-06T12:38:00.001+03:00

WM 6.5 is arriving in hour time. Even some devices are already around. If you wanna a short list of what is new, look no further.

New Features In Windows Mobile 6.5

Rather than a thorough reworking of the platform, 6.5 is very much a nip-tuck job -- just as every Windows Mobile version in recent memory has been. Here are the biggies:

New Today screen: Though the "classic" Today screen is still available, 6.5 introduces an all-new version that somewhat closely approximates the Zune's home screen experience (whether that's a harbinger of things to come remains to be seen). Perhaps more than any other single feature, the new Today screen gives 6.5 a freshened look -- but ironically, many users will never see it because it's often replaced by a manufacturer customization (in HTC's case, TouchFLO).
"Honeycomb" Start screen: The main menu of old -- a white screen with a grid of boring, old icons -- looked like a relic of Windows 3.1. Happily, it's gone here, replaced with a themed alternating list of thoroughly modern images for default apps. The Start menu is gone, too -- pressing the Windows icon in the upper left of the screen now leads straight to the new Start screen.
Finger-friendly UI elements: Windows Mobile's notorious for being unable to shake the stylus, but 6.5 makes some additional baby steps to help fingertips do all of the work -- inertial scrolling in many screens and a redesigned context menu style both help here.
New lock screen: Though not revolutionary, Microsoft put a commendable amount of thought into this one -- instead of merely settling to give the user one way to get back into their device, 6.5's lock screen gives you multiple points of entry depending on the current status; if you've got a new text message, for example, you get a separate unlock slider that can take you straight to it.
Revamped Internet Explorer: Bringing a "desktop" browsing experience to the pocket has been a big focus for mobile platforms over the past couple years, and Microsoft's been lagging desperately in bringing a version of Internet Explorer Mobile that's both easy to use with a few swipes of a finger and also capable of digesting thoroughly modern pages using up-to-date standards and technologies. The company's made it a big focus for 6.5, adding a new, prettier UI, a zoom slider, better support for full HTML, and a new JavaScript engine.
Windows Marketplace: The biggest news in 6.5 might not be a 6.5 specific feature at all, ironically. Windows Marketplace finally takes WinMo into the all-important world of consolidated, managed mobile app stores, but it's only exclusive to 6.5 for a few weeks before being made available to 6 and 6.1 later this year.
Exclusive content: It's hardly a platform "feature," really, but Microsoft is making a pretty big deal of the fact that it's signed on a number of internationally-recognized designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Vera Wang to craft themes for 6.5 that ship with the platform free of charge (we're not sure if you'll find them on every 6.5 phone to be produced, but they came loaded -- albeit turned off by default -- on our Pure).

For a complete review of what is new…Please visit the following link:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/06/windows-mobile-6-5-review/

ANH

Windows Phone Online Theme Creator

2009-10-06T11:01:00.001+03:00

Microsoft is serious about letting you customize your phone and has created for you an online theme creator that let us personalize your phone. A screenshot is presented below:

You can access more information and create your own theme at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/downloads/theme-generator.mspx#

Unfortunately this support only the Windows 6.5 for now and you need to install silverlight in the browser…

In addition not all phone are supported now…But definitly more phone will be supported in the future (if your phone has same resolution you can still use the theme creator).

ANH

Windows Market Place is open now…for wm 6.5

2009-10-05T11:22:00.001+03:00

It's live and dancing right now a full day before any of this was supposed to launch

check the link

Marketplace is live on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones

HTC Leo latest information

2009-10-04T17:54:00.001+03:00

Features
Platform
Ultra slim bar type touch phone / Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
Processor/Chipset
Qualcomm MSM 8250, 1GHz
Memory / Internal Storage
ROM: 512 MB / RAM: 320 MB / HD: 207.13MB
Display Module
4.3-inch 480x800 WVGA resolution / 65K-color / Sensitive touch screen (Capacitive) / Keep support Multi-Touch capability for WM7 Chassis
HSPA/UMTS/EDGE/GPRS/GSM Function
Internal antenna
HSPA/UMTS 2100/900 MHz and GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) / HSDPA / 3GPP Release 5 compliant
Up to 7.2Mbps / HSUPA / 3GPP release 6 compliant / UE category 5, up to 2 Mbps peak rate / EGPRS Functionality / EGPRS class B / Multi-slot class 12 (10 Operator dependent) / PBCCH
Standalone GPS
Internal GPS antenna
Sensors
Motion G-sensor / Proximity sensor / Ambient Light Sensor / FM Radio
Digital Camera
Main camera: 5 MP Color CMOS with auto focus / 2x LED flash
Key/Button/Switch
Volume up and down control / Send Key / End Key (Power Key) / Windows Key / Home Key / (Cinema mode Key, TBD) / Back Key / Reset
Notification
Notification by sound, vibration, LEDs or status shown on the display
One dual colors (Green and Amber) LED in the left / lens for PDA event, battery and charging / status
Audio
Built-in microphone / Receiver / Loud speaker with hands-free support
Connectivity & Interface
Bluetooth / Version 2.1 compliant with EDR / Wi-Fi / IEEE 802.11 b/g compliant / Micro-USB: / USB 2.0 High-Speed client / 3.5 mm stereo audio jack with mic / 1.8/3V USIM/SIM card slot / microSD card slot with SDHC support
Power
Battery / Removable and chargeable battery, 1,230 mAh / AC adaptor / AC input: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz / DC output: 5V and 1A
Accessories (In-Box)
Quick Start Guide [Inbox] / Travel Charger, TC P300 [Inbox] / USB Sync Cable (Micro-USB to Standard USB) [Inbox] / Battery [Inbox] / Wired stereo headset with 3.5mm audio connector, HS G335 [Inbox] / Premium pouch (Carrying Case) [Inbox] / Car Charger [optional] /Car Holder with
battery cover [optional]
Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional Applications
Microsoft Outlook Mobile / Messaging (SMS/E-mail), Contacts, Calendar,Tasks, Email Set Up Wizard / Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile / Microsoft Media Player Mobile / Microsoft ActiveSync / Microsoft Windows Mobile Update / Internet Sharing / Pictures & Videos / Games / MSFT Zip
File Explorer / Device Management / Security Enhancement / Microsoft Office Mobile / Microsoft Windows Live! / Microsoft Smart Dial / Microsoft Remote Desktop Mobile
Value-Added Applications
Windows Mobile Enhancements / Pictures & Videos enhancements / Ring Tone enhancements Telephony (HTC) Phone Canvas(HTC) Phone Experience Multimedia / (HTC) Camera Album / MP3 Trimmer / Streaming Media Player / FM Radio / Presentation mode / Web / Push Internet / RSS HUB / YouTube Client Social Networking / Input Method EZ-INPUT / Messaging SMS/MMS Client / GPS/LBS Navigation (CoPilot, Papago) / Google Maps / Quick GPS / Support CLL.dll library for indoor positioning andreverse geo-coding / Navi-panel / Calendar to Navi / User Interface (Enhanced Manila) / TouchFLO Footprints / Auto Screen Rotation /
Tools & Utilities
HTC Common Sense / 3G to WiFi router / Task Manager / Text selection (HTC) Connection Setup / OOBE / Voice Recorder / Document Viewer / PDF / OMA DRM Engine / Java virtual machine / Long Press / End Key Confirmation (to shut down) / STK SIM manager / (HTC) Volume Control / Business Card Reader / Document Printing / Magnifier.

Find some photos below:

Windows XP Mode Launch

2009-10-02T15:46:00.001+03:00

XP Mode is ready, will be a free download on October 22.

Check out this blog entry

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/10/01/coming-soon-final-release-of-windows-xp-mode.aspx

Windows Mobile Market For WM 6.1

2009-10-02T13:33:00.001+03:00

There’s been some speculation on when Marketplace will come to older phones. Well it is coming…

http://mobiletechaddicts.com/2009/10/02/windows-mobile-marketplace-coming-to-6-1-in-november/

Trapster on Windows Mobile

2009-10-02T11:04:00.001+03:00

Some of you have probably seen Trapster on an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android device. If you haven’t seen or heard of it, Trapster is a free app that tracks your location on a map (using GPS) and alerts you to surrounding speed traps/cameras.

Check out more info at this link…

http://pocketnow.com/software-1/trapster-for-windows-mobile-revamped-coming-to-marketplace-oct-6

Happy Windows Mobile

BumpTop Mutlitouch

2009-10-02T09:16:00.001+03:00

hey there…I wtold u that windows 7 is great. Adding Bumptop to it is amazing also…Check the following link…

http://lifehacker.com/5371919/bumptop-gets-amazing+looking-multi+touch-on-windows-7

Windows 7 Walkthroughs…

2009-10-01T10:50:00.001+03:00

Anybody who would like to know more better about windows 7 new features better take a look at these great walkrthroughs…

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd320282.aspx

Happy Windows 7…

Windows 7 Walkthroughs…

2009-10-01T10:40:00.001+03:00

Anybody who would like to know more better about windows 7 new features better take a look at these great walkrthroughs…

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd320282.aspx

Happy Windows 7…

WTP ( Windows Troubleshooting Platform Walkthrough)

2009-10-01T10:38:00.001+03:00

Windows Troubleshooting Platform

The Windows Troubleshooting Platform can reduce calls to the help desk by diagnosing and resolving common issues, and by providing built-in troubleshooters for several different types of problems including audio, video, and networking. Learn how to develop custom Windows Troubleshooting Packs using Windows PowerShell to help resolve issues commonly encountered in your environment.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd320282.aspx

Happy Windows 7

Windows 7 XP Mode

2009-10-01T10:36:00.001+03:00

Designed for Small and Medium businesses, Windows XP Mode for Windows 7 makes it easy to install and run older Windows XP productivity applications directly from your Windows 7-based PC. It utilizes virtualization technology such as Windows Virtual PC to provide a Windows XP Mode environment for Windows 7.

Click on the following link to get a walkthrough…

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ee530028.aspx

Happy Windows 7

Wanna A full Featured Phone…Look no More if HTC Leo Deliver what it promises…

2009-10-01T10:34:00.001+03:00

HTC Leo is the latest device that has been revealed to deliver windows mobile….this device should replace the famous Touch HD and is sometimes called HTC Touch HD2.

Take a look for it…

Click on this link to get more data…

http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2009/09/30/htc-hd2-makes-first-official-appearance-in-o2-uk-catalog/

Happy Windows Mobile…

SPB Mobile Shell Update

2009-09-30T15:37:00.001+03:00

There is new a version of one of the most famous windows mobile interface with great additions.

A list of additions is:

Improved SPB Carousel design (e. g. added reflections and some additional interaction gestures)
Gravity sensor support in the SPB Carousel
3D email viewer
3D SMS viewer (with contact pictures)
Access to online catalog in “Change Background” dialog
New “Add Widget” dialog
Widget skin selection with preview
New widget: Tasks (customizable task list on your home screen)
New widget: Picture Frame (widget and full-screen slideshow)
New widget: Facebook Status
New widget: Twitter Status
New widget: Four instant wireless switches (WiFi, Bluetooth, Flight Mode, Phone Switch)
New widget: Internet Search (with instant suggestions)
New widget: Birthdays reminders (never forget about your friend’s birthday again)
Contact widget: ability to choose default action
Wireless manager widget: icon shows current states, popup shows current states
Weather widget: support for more advanced skins with detailed forecast and current conditions
Streamlined background change (with cropping and easy to view local gallery)
Current weather conditions (in addition to forecast)
New skins for most widgets
Professional home customization using widgets
Option to have only one home screen (lifestyle or professional)
Option to change number of screens in lifestyle or professional layouts
Weather in Agenda
Force feedback on tap and hold
Option to choose the default tab for Contacts and Launcher
Improved design of most dialogs (popup menus, settings etc.)
Category filter in the contact list
Improved widget edit mode (widget can be dragged to other pages, recycle bin for easy delete etc.)
Color themes support on Windows Mobile 6.5
Integration with SPB Weather and SPB Traveler via widgets
Improved “Choose Shortcut” dialog with similar look to SPB Menu
New widget: Operator Name
New widget: Date
New widget: Alarm
Option to disable tap and hold
Redesigned settings dialogs

A complete review can be found here

http://mobiletechaddicts.com/2009/09/29/spb-mobile-shell-3-5-review/

A quick video tour is also available here

http://pocketnow.com/software-1/spb-mobile-shell-35

Happy Windows Mobile

Discover the Error and Correct It

2009-09-26T11:54:00.001+03:00

Visual Basic has one of the most useful tools in helping you discover and correct your errors. Starting from highlighting the statement with error, giving you a quick watch of the value of the variables at that stage or even giving you the best menomic message at the run time that will help you identify the error.

In addition to all of this…the debugging tools provided is amazing and very useful. I will not go into debugging detail now.

The useful approach that I have used is the following:

Read the error message thoroughly and try pressing F1 to get additional help
The second step would be to identify the expected value of the variables as well the current values (hover with the mouse over them)
Bing on the .NET for possible reasons as well as solution
Last Resort…ping me or any other friend for help…

Happy Programming :)

Error Handling in VB.NET

2009-09-26T11:32:00.001+03:00

Visual Basic has three main error handling techniques while writing code.

On Error Go To technique allows you to go to a special section in your code to handle the error and exit gracefully. An example is added below.

Sub CalculateD()

On Error Go To HandleDivisionByZero

Dim a as integer = 0, b as integer = 5

Dim d as decimal = b/a

Console.WriteLine (“B divided by a is = “ & Str(D))

Exit Sub

HandleDivisionByZero:

MessageBox (“Division By Zero. Exiting”)

Exit Sub

End Sub

On Error Resume Next technique is simply ignoring the current statement with the error and start from the next statement directly. An example is below:

Sub ResumeWork()

On Error Resume Next

Dim a as integer, b as integer

a = 5: b= 0

dim c as decimal

c = a /b

Console.Writeline(“Finished”)

End Sub

This subroutine would simply ignore the line where c = a/b even that there is a division by zero and continue to print the word Finished as if there is nothing wrong.

The two previous technique were simply the old techniques. However, .NET has introduced the Java old technique of try and catch where you can handle all kind of errors and it is extensible.

Try and Catch techinque is a well structured one and allows for even other vendors like Oracle to introduce their own catch blocks.

An Example of this technique is provided below:

Sub CalculateD()

Dim a as integer = 0, b as integer = 5

Try

Dim d as decimal = b/a

Console.WriteLine (“B divided by a is = “ & Str(D))

Catch MyException as exception

MessageBox (“Division By Zero. Exiting”)

Finally

‘ A Comment The programmer can do whatever cleaning he need here

End Try

End Sub

You can see from this code that the technique does not include jumping as well as you are able to catch the exception and handle it as needed. Oracle for example has added another exception called OracleException to handle errors returned by their own database and display their exact exceptions instead of using the .NET exception.

Programming Dilemma

2009-09-26T10:37:00.001+03:00

A famous pizza man said one “Success is a horrible teacher”. You should know that pizza man because he ended up as one of the most infulencial guys in our modern history. Bill Gates.

Especially in programming, the best way to learn is when you commit, discover and correct mistakes as you go along.

In programming there are two kinds of errors that could happen.

Design Time (Compile Time) errors happens when you are simply writing the program in visual studio. Fortunatly these errors are highlighted automatically by underlining them using red and green line (read mean error and green mean warning)

Run Time errors occurs when the programming is running (the most commonly used term for this is bugs). All of us want to write programs that are bug free. However since we are humans we can not achieve this goal. the good news though is that with practice your are more likely to write near bug free programs. As somebody has said “programming is easy, it is finding all the problems that is hard”.

A recommended technique is simply “Write a little, Test a little”. Simply write your piece of code and make sure after testing it that it behaves as expected.

What is a Variable

2009-09-25T21:28:00.001+03:00

a variable is a container that has a name and holds some value at the end. In VB.NET you dimesion variables before you can start using them. The dimensioning process simply tell VB.NET that you want a variable before using it.

VB.NET allocates a space in memory for each variable you dimension so that you can put there whatever you like. However since VB.NET does not know what you want to store, you have to give to the variable a datatype which restricts what you can store in this variable.

Datatypes keep VB.NET and you in harmony. Since the computer has to make special arrangement for the space in memory based on whether it will store a string of text, a numerical value or may be even a picture.

There is a lot of datatypes to choose from but I will explain these most commonly used one's before.

Integer: It is a variable type that allows you to store numerical values without a decimal point that range between -2,147,483,648 to +2,147,483,647. Mostly commonly used as a counter for something like this example.

Dim NumberOfChildren as integer = 5

Boolean: It is a variable type that allows you to store one of two values (true or false) used to indicate a status. For example

Dim HasChildren = True

DateTime: This is a variable type that allows you to store date and time information as accurate as it can be up to the ticks of the second. An Example would be

Dim CurrentMoment as DateTime = Now()

Double: This variable will be able to store numerical values of all sizes approzximatly. It can store numbers with decimal point also. the range of values is 5.0 x 10^-324 to 1.7 x 10³⁰⁸which is a pretty long range for you. An example would be

Dim SolarDistance as Double

Decimal: When dealing with some banking issues decimal proves to be more useful when you want a precise number of decimal places. It's not as accurate as the Double Type, though.

Dim Balance as Deicmal = 18732.321

String: Very useful in storing large amount of text. It is able to store a unicode string with a maximum length of 2,147,483,647 characters. I think that this is enough to store any type of text you have (except if we are talking books)...

Dim FullCustomerName = "Nidal Bin Hasan Bin Ahmed Bin Tarek Bin Omar Bin Enough"

You can see from this succint list that VB.NET has the power to store any type of variables that you have (you will see different types in the future).

There is a nice addition to these variable with .NET 3.0 which is the nullable data type. I will be posting another entry about them.

See you in a later blog post.

Expressions and Statements

2009-09-25T21:27:00.001+03:00

Expressions are simply a statement where you have included a calculation that should end as a result (numerical, character or as a boolean also).

Example of expressions are given below:

5+6 (Sample Numeric Expression)

x+y

"Nidal" & " Arabi" (Sample String expression)

x.ToString() + " Is the Number of Children"

X > Y (Sample Boolean Expression)

Statements on the other hands are the building block of the programming when dealing with VB.NET

They are made up of (or combination of)

keywords-i.e. reserved words for the VB.NET language like Dim, If, Else, etc...
Operators (Explained in previous post)
Variables (Explained in previous post)
Constants (Will Be explained when need arise...But think of them as variables with a specific single value that should not be changed once assigned)
Expressions (Explained Above)

There are three main different categories of statements

Declarative: When you define a variable like Dim EyeColor as String
Assignment: When You assign a new value to a variable like EyeColor = "Brown"
Executable: A statement that usually instruct the computer to do something special like If A > B Then MessageBox("A is Greater then B")

To summarize

Each statement is simply a command to execute
Each statement can be on its own line. Statements can also be grouped on a single line by separating them with a column. Example of two statements together would be X = X + Y : Y = Y * 2
Sometimes you may also need to span a single statement on two lines. You can do this simply by using the underscore character. Example: Gross Income = _
TotalIncome – Tax.
A sequence of statement can make you programs do beautiful things. :)

Operators in Visual Basic

2009-09-25T21:26:00.001+03:00

An operator performs a function on one or more operands. For example, we add two variables with the "+" addition operator and store the result in a third variable with the "=" assignment operator. Visual Basic comes with many built-in operators that allow us to manipulate data.

Operators in VB.NET comes in different categories: (All in order of precedence)

Arithmetic Operators

Operator	To Do
^	Exponentiation
-	Negation (used to reverse the sign of the given value, exp -intValue)
*	Multiplication
/	Division
\	Integer Division (Division without remainder 5\2= 2 and not 2.5)
Mod	Modulus Arithmetic
+	Addition
-	Subtraction

String Operators

Concatenation operators join multiple strings into a single string. There are two concatenation operators, + and &.

Comparison Operators

A comparison operator compares operands and returns a logical value based on whether the comparison is true or not. Please find them below.

=	Equality Operator
<>	Different or Not equal
<	Less than
>	Greater Than
<=	Less Than or Equal
>=	Greater than or equal

Last but not least Logical Operators

The logical operators compare Boolean expressions and return a Boolean result. Below a list of them.

And	compare two Boolean expressions and return true if both of them are true else return false
Or	compare two Boolean expressions and return false if both of them are false else return true
Not	negate true to false and vice versa.

Happy VBNetting

VB.NET Start Series

2009-09-25T21:25:00.001+03:00

Starting Today I will be posting a series of topics in VB.NET as part of my learning and exprience. Keep Coming Back to see more

Need Some Microsoft BI Concepts

2008-09-23T14:41:00.002+03:00

Another interesting article can now be found ....

On the topic of BI at SSAS (Sql Server Analysis Services...)

http://aspalliance.com/1728_SQL_Server_Analysis_Services_Concepts.all

Enjoy intelligence on Microsoft

How Does SQL Server Analysis Do the Job

2008-09-16T11:47:00.002+03:00

You can know right away from the picture that Microsoft Has done a great job in SSAS....You can read this article for fun on the Asp Alliance

http://aspalliance.com/1726_SQL_Server_Analysis_Services_Work_Flow.all

Hierarchy Data Type

2008-09-14T16:21:00.002+03:00

Another great feature for Microsoft SQL Server Level

What about your family tree ....Want to store into your SQL Server

got it using the new data type
http://aspalliance.com/1722_SQL_Server_2008_New_Features__Hierarchy_Data_Type

Check this link

SQL Server New Article On ASP Alliance

2008-09-11T09:28:00.001+03:00

Dear SQL Server Lovers

Follow this link to read and rate my new article on SQL Server new features - Table-Value Parameter

http://aspalliance.com/1718_SQL_Server_2008_New_Features__TableValue_Parameter

Grouping Sets

2008-09-05T09:53:00.001+03:00

Any SQL Server Lover Here

There is another article on SQL Server 2008 Features....Grouping Sets

Follow this link http://aspalliance.com/1716_SQL_Server_2008_New_Features__Grouping_Sets.all

New Article On Asp Alliance

2008-09-05T09:50:00.001+03:00

Dear Microsoft Lover,

here comes another article on the New Features of SQL Server 2008 about using grouping sets....

Here you can find the link
http://aspalliance.com/1716_SQL_Server_2008_New_Features__Grouping_Sets.all

Another Article On SQL Server New Features

2008-09-01T15:11:00.001+03:00

I have published another article on SQL Server 2008 New features as it applied to date and time variables...
Check this the link for more info
http://aspalliance.com/articleviewer.aspx?aId=1717

New Article- SQL Server 2008 New Features (Row Constructors)

2008-08-25T17:48:00.002+03:00

I just published a new article on a new SQL Server 2008 Features (Row Constructors) on ASPAlliance....You can see the new article using this link

http://aspalliance.com/articleviewer.aspx?aId=1709

Want To Learn VB Easy Way

2008-08-25T16:13:00.003+03:00

VB.NET is one of the easiest langauges to learn and Microsoft has made available some videos to teach you concepts of of this language....

Download them for free from MSDN here

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/bb466226.aspx

LebDev Community Night

2008-08-25T15:59:00.003+03:00

Dear All Lebanese Developers
I would like to welcome you to register for a new community night given by Ralph Varjabedian (Telephone.com Team Leader)
About SQL Injections Hands On

The location , time and date are
Friday, August 29, 2008 - 6:00-8:00 PM
Microsoft office

visit the www.lebdev.net to register for the event. see u there

My Articles RSS Feed

2008-08-25T15:57:00.001+03:00

As you know by now, I write articles on Microsoft Technologies....You can always get a list of my articles at the following link http://aspalliance.com/author.aspx?uId=61925

New Service Pack

2008-08-25T15:54:00.002+03:00

Microsoft has introduced a new service pack for Mircosoft Visual Studio 2008 as well as .NET framework 3.5....You can access service pack 1 using this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533448.aspx

Merge Statement Tutorial

2008-08-25T15:51:00.001+03:00

You can check my new article publisghed on www.aspalliance.com on the new merge statement in MSSQL Server 2008 using this link http://aspalliance.com/1712_SQL_Server_2008_New_Features__Merge_Statement

Want the Source code of .NET

2007-10-15T14:08:00.000+03:00

Check this link to read more about the .NET source code

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx

ASP.NET MVC

2007-10-15T14:06:00.001+03:00

That guy scott continues to amaze me....Have you heard of MVC...Well ASP.NET has it now....

Check this link on Scott blog
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx

New Presentation

2007-09-20T09:17:00.000+03:00

I will be delivering a new presenation on AJAX control tookit on Saturday 21 september. The presentation will include demos of accordion, collapsible panel and always visible control

If you want a copy of the presentation please email me at naraby@hotmail.com

UpdatePanel

2007-09-20T09:16:00.000+03:00

You can read my new article on the update panel of asp.net extensions on asp alliance using this link
http://aspalliance.com/1403_Working_with_ASPNET_AJAX_UpdatePanel_Control

LebDev Meeting

2007-09-06T12:36:00.000+03:00

The LebDev usergroup, in collaboration with Microsoft, is holding a Community Night on Tuesday 11th of September 2007. The Community Night's main theme is "Community Thinking".
All Professional Developers, IT Pros and Students are welcome. However, Registration is required as seats are limited. To register, please go to Lebdev website and fill in the required Information.

Silverlight

2007-09-06T12:34:00.000+03:00

Microsoft on Tuesday night announced the availability of Silverlight, its online player for videos and interactive Web applications that will compete with Adobe's Flash, the dominant platform for Internet multimedia.
Download the final Release, http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Microsoft AJAX Rules

2007-08-31T10:50:00.000+03:00

Do you want to know more about Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX. Visit www.asp.net and get more information...

Wanna Know Microsoft Codenames

2007-08-23T21:01:00.000+03:00

Microsoft codenames are the codenames given by Microsoft to products it has in development, before these products are given the names by which they appear on store shelves. Many of these products (new versions of Windows in particular) are of major significance to the IT community, and so the terms are often widely used in discussions prior to the official release. Microsoft usually does not announce a final name until shortly before the product is publicly available.
There has been some suggestion that Microsoft may move towards defining the real name of their upcoming products earlier in the product development lifecycle so as to avoid needing product codenames.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_codenames

Overiview of Orcas

2007-08-13T19:05:00.000+03:00

Wanna know an overview of changes about Orcas....
Here is a short list:
Overview
Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 delivers on Microsoft’s vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create connected applications that deliver the highest quality, rich user experiences. With Visual Studio 2008, organizations will find it easier than ever before to capture and analyze information, which means they can make effective business decisions. Visual Studio 2008 enables organizations of every size to rapidly create more secure, manageable, and reliable applications that take advantage of Windows Vista™ and the 2007 Office system.
Visual Studio 2008 delivers key advances for developers in three primary pillars:
· Improve Developer Productivity
· Manage the Application Life Cycle
· Employ the Latest Technologies
This document will discuss the different customer experiences that deliver on these three pillars through seven different technology areas:
· Develop Smart Client Applications
o Visual Studio 2008 delivers new and easy ways for developers to build smart clients by providing a comprehensive set of tools and classes that simplify integrating smart clients with new or existing web applications, and by handling local caching of data for disconnected scenarios.
· Create Microsoft Office applications
o Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) is now fully integrated into Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition. Visual Studio enables developers to customize various Office applications, such as Outlook® and PowerPoint®, to improve user productivity and simplify deployment.
· Build Windows Vista Applications
o Developers will be able to easily leverage new platform technologies, and deliver more compelling applications to their customers, by effortlessly incorporating new Windows Presentation Foundation features into both existing Windows Forms applications and new applications.
· Handle Data More Productively
o The introduction of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), and various other data access improvements, now enable developers to deal with data using a consistent programmatic approach, perform data access with new data design surfaces, and use built-in classes for the occasionally connected design pattern.
· An Improved Developer Experience Overall
o Visual Studio 2008 delivers a better developer experience overall through the combination of significant product quality improvements, changes to the way the most popular design surfaces return errors to the user, and simplifying the user’s ability to adopt the toolset and framework separately.
· Enable New Web Experiences
o Beyond the secure, reliable and extensible infrastructure of IIS, developers can easily create efficient, interactive Web applications. The seamless integration and familiar programming model of ASP.NET AJAX enables more efficient client-side execution to deliver end-users a more responsive Web interface.
· Improves Application Life-cycle Management (ALM)
o ALM provides great support, not only for managing the entire software development life cycle but also for the critical interaction with the final end-users and IT stakeholders of an enterprise application.

Follow this link to download great high level features changes using this llink
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=17319eb4-299c-43b8-a360-a1c2bd6a421b&DisplayLang=en
Written by Tony Goodhew

Orcas Beta 2 is available For download

2007-08-13T19:02:00.000+03:00

Netting Guys,,

Now it is time to download the new Beta 2 visual studio 20078 Orcas....

BTW it is as stable as a release product....

Follow this link to download the beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b98a61ba-99b0-40b7-ab6e-5386a2b94217&DisplayLang=en

New Launch

2007-08-10T11:14:00.000+03:00

Did you know that as a developer...your life will be easier...Watch for your February month. Launch of Orcas and other products

2006-08-12T11:46:00.000+03:00

Multiple Radio Buttons DataGrid

2006-08-12T11:18:00.000+03:00

How To Create a DataGrid in ASP.NET with multiple radio buttons Per Row.

Sometimes you may be asked to create a datagrid in ASP.NET with multiple radio buttons that can be selected by each row. For example a user may ask for the option to reject, accept or cancel a product from a list of received product. Take a look at Figure 1.

ProductId
Name
AcceptRejectCancel
17
Alice Mutton
AcceptRejectCancel
3
Aniseed Syrup
AcceptRejectCancel
40
Boston Crab Meat
AcceptRejectCancel
60
Camembert Pierrot
AcceptRejectCancel
18
Carnarvon Tigers
AcceptRejectCancel
1
Chai
AcceptRejectCancel
2
Chang
AcceptRejectCancel
39
Chartreuse verte
AcceptRejectCancel
4
Chef Anton's Cajun Seasoning
AcceptRejectCancel
5
Chef Anton's Gumbo Mix
Figure 1. List of products with multiple radio buttons

The question is: is it easy to do it in ASP.NET. The answer is provided in this article.

To proceed you should create a Visual Basic web site.
1. Name the project MultipleRadioButton.
2. Now take a datagrid from the toolbox and post it on webform1.
3. Add a template column to the datagrid
4. Enter template editing for the template column
5. Add a label in the template item field and name it LblStatus
6. End Template editing
7. Go back to the web form and create a button and name it BtnProcess
8. Drag a textbox from toolbox and place it on the webform and name it TxtProcess and set the TextMode to MultiLine

For a complete web form design take a look a figure 2 below.

Figure 2 A complete design of the page

Now, for the page load event you have the following code that should be inserted:
Dim MySQLConnection As New SqlClient.SqlConnection
Dim MySQLCommand As New SqlClient.SqlCommand
Dim MyDataAdapter As New SqlClient.SqlDataAdapter
Dim MyDataSet As New Data.DataSet
MySQLConnection.ConnectionString = "Data Source=.; Initial Catalog=Northwind; User ID=sa; Password=pass@word1"
MySQLConnection.Open()
MySQLCommand.Connection = MySQLConnection
MySQLCommand.CommandType = CommandType.Text
MySQLCommand.CommandText = "Select TOP 10 ProductId, ProductName From Products"
MyDataAdapter.SelectCommand = MySQLCommand
MyDataAdapter.Fill(MyDataSet, "Products")
DataGrid1.DataSource = MyDataSet
DataGrid1.DataMember = "Products"
DataGrid1.DataBind()

Remember that you have to change the connection string as to connect to your database server. Also to create the multiple radio buttons on the fly, copy the following code:

Private Sub DataGrid1_ItemDataBound(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Web.UI.WebControls.DataGridItemEventArgs) Handles DataGrid1.ItemDataBound
If e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.AlternatingItem Or e.Item.ItemType = ListItemType.Item Then
Dim r As Label
r = e.Item.FindControl("LblStatus")
r.Text = "Accept" & _
"Reject" & _
"Cancel"
End If
End Sub
If you run your project now, you will receive figure 3 but when you click Process nothing will happen:
Figure 3 A run time presentation of your project
In order to process the rows after the user select his option, you have to post the following code for the BtnProcess click event.

Private Sub BtnProcess_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles BtnProcess.Click
Dim RequestString As String, Ind As DataGridItem, RequestValue As String, RowNumber As Long
RowNumber = 1
For Each Ind In DataGrid1.Items
RequestString = "mycheckoption" & Ind.ItemIndex
If Ind.ItemType = ListItemType.AlternatingItem Or Ind.ItemType = ListItemType.Item Then
Dim r As Label
r = Ind.FindControl("LblStatus")
RequestString = "mycheckoption" & Ind.ItemIndex
RequestValue = Request.Form(RequestString)
TxtProcess.Text = TxtProcess.Text & "Row " & RowNumber & " has status " & RequestValue & vbCrLf
RowNumber += 1
End If
Next
End Sub
Now, run your project and make your selections then click the Process button. Something similar to figure 4 should happen depending on your selections.
Figure 4. A complete test of project

Thank you for reading my article and see you in the next one….

How to Create a Complete Dynamic SQL Statement in SQL Server

2006-08-12T11:16:00.000+03:00

How to Create a Complete Dynamic SQL Statement in SQL Server
Restrictions
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 does not allow the use of variables in some parts of your SQL Statement. Two examples would be selecting a variable top number of rows or defining a variable where clause. However, there are several ways to overcome those obstacles. In this article, I will define an SQL stored procedure called DynamicSQL. This procedure allows the caller to provide multiple parameters:
Solution
1) How many top rows the user would like to select (0 if all rows are to be selected)?
2) A field list (separated by commas) to be selected or ‘*’ to select all fields in the table(s)
3) A table name or a list of tables separated by comma
4) An order by clause
5) A Where Clause
6) An output parameter if used (null if not provided)
7) An output parameter type (int, bigint, etc…)
A copy of the stored procedure is shown below:
Use Northwind
Create Procedure DynamicSql (@TopRows int, @FieldList varchar(1000), @TableName varchar(100), @OrderDirection varchar(500) = null, @DynamicWhere varchar(1000) = null, @OutParamater varchar(100) = null Output, @OutType varchar(15)= null )
As
Begin
Declare @MyNewSql nvarchar(4000)
Declare @ParamList nvarchar(500)
Declare @ParamString nvarchar(500)
-- insert the top number of rows in the sql as well as the fields list and the table name
If @TopRows <= 0
Begin
Set @MyNewSql = 'Select '
End
Else
Begin
Set @MyNewSql = 'Select Top ' + Convert(varchar,@TopRows) + ' '
End
Set @MyNewSql = @MyNewSql + @FieldList + ' From ' + @TableName
-- Insert the dynamic where now
if not @DynamicWhere is null
Begin
Set @MyNewSql = @MyNewSql + ' ' + @DynamicWhere
End
-- INSERT THE DYNAMIC ORDER BY CLAUSE
if not @OrderDirection is null
Begin
Set @MyNewSql = @MyNewSql + ' ' + @OrderDirection
End
-- CHECK IF THERE IS AN OUTPUT PARAMETER
If Not @OutParamater is null
Begin
Set @ParamList = @OutParamater + ' ' + @OutType + ' Output'
Set @ParamString = @OutParamater + 'Output'
Exec SP_EXECUTESQL @MyNewSql, @ParamList, @ParamString
End
Else
Begin
Execute(@MyNewSql)
End
End
Listing 1: The Complete Copy of The DyanmicSQL Stored Procedure

Explanation
I think that the procedure is self-explainable with some comments inside it. Note that in order to use this procedure it is enough to copy and paste the procedure to any database. (In my case, the procedure was created in the Northwind example database that ships with Microsoft SQL Server 2000).
Note that the execute statement provided at the end of the procedure is the key to this procedure. The Execute statement is provided by SQL Server to execute any dynamic SQL statement at run time. As for the execution of a procedure with parameters, I am calling a stored procedure called SP_EXECUTESQL that would create virtual stored procedure on the fly with the supplied parameters and return the result to you.
However, there are several precautions that you should take into consideration when using this procedure:
1) The SQL Server engine has no way of checking the syntax of the SQL statement that you have provided until it is run. i.e. If you supply an invalid table name or invalid field name, the SQL statement will not run correctly but you will notified of this and you have to catch this error in your code.
2) The procedure provides a way to a hacker to invoke a high risk SQL Injection statement that may affect your database.
3) The new SQL Statement is not compiled in the database i.e. loose the speed of execution that SQL Server provides with a compiled stored procedure.
Examples
An example of calling the stored procedure is provided below that would select the first 5 rows from table called Products, order them by the ProductName field after filtering for the product name that start with the letter A from the Northwind database. You can copy this code directly to SQL Server Query analyzer and
Use Northwind
Exec DynamicSql 5,'ProductName, SupplierID,QuantityPerUnit','Products','Order By ProductName','Where ProductName like ''A%'''
The following result is generated:
ProductName SupplierID QuantityPerUnit
Alice Mutton 7 20 - 1 kg tins
Aniseed Syrup 1 12 - 550 ml bottles
Another example with the usage of the output parameter is presented below:
Exec DynamicSql 1,'@ProdName = ProductName','Products',null,'Where ProductName like ''A%''','@ProdName', 'varchar'
This example would return the string ‘Alice Mutton’ to the calling part.
Risky Point To Avoid
In order to prevent or minimize the probability of SQL injection to happen, you can check for any semicolon in the string and replace it with a space. An example replace function is presented below:
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.CleanChars
(@Str varchar(8000)) Returns Varchar(8000)
Begin
While CHARINDEX(';', @Str) > 0 Set @Str = replace(@Str, Substring(@Str,CHARINDEX(';',@Str),2),' ')
return @Str
End
Listing 2- The CleanChars Function used to prevent SQL Injection

This function would clean the passed string from any semicolon and replace it with a space. Not that every string passed to DynamicSql stored procedure should be checked against the CleanChars function in the following pattern:
Set @FieldList = dbo.CleanChars(@FieldList)
After doing the check for every alphanumeric passed variable, you should be safe when calling the DynamicSql stored procedure.
Thank you for giving the time to read my article.

Your Access To .NET information in Lebanon

Steve Ballmer to announce iPhone, iPad Visual Studio support at WWDC? [Crazy alert!]

Worldwide Web Camps

Make the Visual Studio 2010 IDE colors look like Visual Studio 2008

Windows XP Silver

Windows Classic

Windows XP Emerald

Windows XP Autumn

Windows XP Olive

Windows XP Blue

Windows Aero

Windows XP Blue

Default Visual Studio 2010 Theme

30 Tips for Successful Communication as a Remote Worker

Show consideration

Use the right tools

Be Heard and Understood

Make meetings effective

Make Email Work

Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Training Courses Updated

Fun Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers

Browsing Wallpaper Images

Enabling the Wallpaper Images as your Windows Desktop

Visual Studio 2010 - Help Viewer Power Tool BETA - Help Index and Standalone Help

Another way to find the Help Viewer Power Tool

Pinning Projects and Solutions with Visual Studio 2010

VS 2010 Jump List on Windows 7 Taskbar

Pinning Projects on the VS 2010 Jump List with Windows 7

Cool Keyboard Trick with Windows 7 Jump Lists

VS 2010 Start Page and Project Pinning

Summary

Visual Studio 2010 keybinding cards

Tips & Tricks with Business Data Connectivity Model Deployment in Visual Studio 2010

STL: Some Underlying Algorithms, Data Structures, and More with Stephan T. Lavavej

Being a pimp without Silverlight presentation

Array and Collection Initializers in Visual Basic 2010

Ping 56: Mouse Mischief, Social Media Clock, Windows 7 Embedded, Ballmer loves Natal

GTX Theme Coming Back From The Dead With An Update

Follow Up on HTML5 Video in IE9

Cloud Cover Episode 9 - Blob API

Ch9Live at VS2010 Launch - Stephen Toub on Parallelism

Reading between the lines of Microsoft's latest IE 9 standards missive

Microsoft fires back at critics of its HTML5 strategy

Windows Theme Generator Tour

HTC HD2 official Specs

Physical

CPU Processing Speed

Power & Battery1

Camera

Connectors

Sensors

Home Screen

Social Networking

Recommended Windows System Requirements

Display

Operating System

Storage

Network Bands2

Internet3

Tethering

Bluetooth

Multimedia

Location4

HTC Touch HD2 Images

Get The Best Phone of All

Upgrade To Windows Mobile 6.5

Windows 7 Global Launch

Windows Mobile 6.5 is hitting your Door

Windows Phone Online Theme Creator

Windows Market Place is open now…for wm 6.5

HTC Leo latest information

Windows XP Mode Launch

Windows Mobile Market For WM 6.1

Trapster on Windows Mobile

BumpTop Mutlitouch

Windows 7 Walkthroughs…

Windows 7 Walkthroughs…

WTP ( Windows Troubleshooting Platform Walkthrough)

Windows 7 XP Mode

Wanna A full Featured Phone…Look no More if HTC Leo Deliver what it promises…

Power & Battery¹

Network Bands²

Internet³

Location⁴