Vista Squad

Microsoft Blue Track

ravinar — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:30:00 GMT

Here is a sneak preview of some new technology from Microsoft that lets you use a mouse on any surface...

http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/

Live Mesh Videos

ravinar — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:49:00 GMT

Guys,

Paolo Barone, who delivered a great session on Live Mesh at our last meeting has published a list of cool Live Mesh videos.

http://blogs.msdn.com/pblog/archive/2008/08/21/live-mesh-videos.aspx

Have a look!

Engineering Windows 7

Scott Belton — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:33:00 GMT

New Blog site, maybe worth keeping an eye on for info on the future developments of Microsofts next incarnation. http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/default.aspx...(read more)

Vista Squad "First Blood Part II" Wednesday 17th September

Gavin Osborn — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:57:00 GMT

Vista Squad "First Blood Part II" Wednesday 17th September

Hey Everyone! The next Vista Squad meeting has been booked! 17th of September at the London Victoria offices of Microsoft with two great talks lined up.

Topics this month:

WPF/Silverlight Application Deep Dive
(Richard Godfrey, iPrinciples)

TBC
(James Senior, Microsoft)

Directions to Microsoft

Agenda

6pm - 6.30pm: Arrive and introductions
6.30pm - 7:30pm: WPF/Silverlight Application Deep Dive
7.30pm - 8:15: Break, Pizza and drinks
8:15pm - 9:15: XBox After Dark
9:15pm: Vista Ultimate Giveaway, Wrap up!
SIGN UP HERE!!!!

Citizens on Patrol

Scott Belton — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:18:00 GMT

Another great turn out so thanks to everyone that turned up. (& Microsoft for hosting) I hope you all enjoyed both these evenings presentations. What's new in Silverlight Beta 2 (Mike Ormond, Microsoft) Intro to Live Mesh (Paolo Barone, Microsoft) Live Mesh intro Thanks guys, both these presentations were full of useful info and some great questions and interaction from the group as well. I particularly like the idea of Live Mesh and the ability of being able to sync all my important documents...(read more)

PC Power Management

ravinar — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:48:00 GMT

Courtesy of Vista Squad Buddy, James Senior (read his blog "Views on Windows Vista" http://blogs.technet.com/james/default.aspx)

The Microsoft Environment Sustainability Blog mentions a cool new app which is FREE that allows you to control power consumption on PCs. The tool is called Edison and is developed by Verdiem.

Link to tool: http://www.verdiem.com/edison/

VS/VSTS/TFS/.NET 3.5 SP1 have all shipped!

Ray Booysen — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:59:57 GMT

Everything all of it!

Awesome work Microsoft. For those upgrading Team Foundation server, there is a ton of information you'll need, its not just the simplest upgrade. More information over at Brian Harry's blog.

Updated List of Events from Microsoft

Ray Booysen — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:55:40 GMT

I've just received the list of updated TechNet events from Microsoft. Details below:

Virtualisation and Management Technologies
21 August 2008, Liverpool: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies
9 September 2008, Reading: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies

11 September 2008, Edinburgh: Microsoft Management and Virtualisation Technologies

SQL Server 2008
10 September 2008, Reading: SQL Server 2008 Unleashed
7 October 2008. Manchester: TechNet: SQL Server - Under New Management

23 October 2008, Exeter: TechNet: SQL Server - Under New Management

A bit of Fun

10 September 2008, London: Microsoft “After Hours” – The Sequel

Exchange Server 2007

29 October 2008, London: Recipient management, policies and permissions in Exchange Server 2007

Licensing
2 October 2008, Reading: An Introduction and overview of Microsoft Licensing
21 October 2008, Reading: Understanding Microsoft’s Server Product Licensing in a Virtual Environment

Windows Powershell

14 October 2008, Birmingham: TechNet: Windows PowerShell: Around the Data Centre in 80 Scripts

Unified Communications
2 September 2008, Reading : TechNet: the Microsoft Vision for Unified Communications

Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008

22 October 2008, Bristol: Taking Care of Business Every day with Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008

29 October 2008, London: Taking Care of Business Every day with Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008

Windows Server 2008

16 October 2008, Edinburgh: Windows Server 2008 – What’s New and Exciting

European Event

3-7 November 2008, Barcelona: TechED EMEA IT Professionals

Vista Squad Photos

Ray Booysen — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:50:59 GMT

Due to hosting constraints we've decided to be a little more proactive about our assets (videos, pictures etc.) and try get more content but also move the burden off our little server that hosts Vista Squad.

So we've bought a Flickr account specifically for Vista Squad. Head on over to http://www.flickr.com/photos/vistasquad/ for all our photos from events, interviews and wherever we get ourselves to. If you've taken some photos and want them included, either tag your photos as "Vista Squad" or email them over to me at ray@vistasquad.co.uk and we can get them uploaded! With attribution of course. :)

Windows Server 2008 Video

Ray Booysen — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:57:06 GMT

Hey guys, the video from Matt McSpirit's talk is now available thanks to our brilliant videographer, Ian Smith! I've embedded it below, but head over to the actual video page if you want to watch it in HD or download it in it's entirety.

Main Video Page

Matt McSpirit on Windows 2008 Server from Vista Squad on Vimeo.

November Speaking Engagement - WPF and Practical Frameworks

Ray Booysen — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:47:37 GMT

Some advance notice on a talk I'm giving for Nxtgen in Cambridge in November.

Abstract:

"From the basics to the not so basic, WPF is an amazing framework. In this talk we'll look at creating simple data bound applications moving towards a practical framework for WPF projects. Sound pattern based approaches to building your applications with the ability to easily pull in designer produced work will be discussed with code demos throughout."

The URL for registration is here, so head on over to sign up. If not for the talk, at least for some good heckling. :)

Essential Downloads for Vista

ravinar — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:25:00 GMT

Hey all,

Came across this list of essential downloads for Vista via Channel 10 (and Steve Clayton)

http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/Essential-Downloads-for-Vista/

Windows Live – the Windows Live Suite upgrades Vista’s built-in programs like Photo Gallery and Mail to give you the newer versions – Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail. It also included Windows Live Writer, Live Messenger, and Family Safety. You can pick and choose which of these you want after downloading the installer.
Vista Codec Pack – lets you play nearly any video or audio file you come across.
Windows Search 4.0 – upgrades Vista’s built-in search with the latest version for faster and more accurate results.
Windows Steady State – Lets you easily restore your computer back to its same condition before someone (like your kids) mucked around with it.
5 recommended add-ons for IE7 – this page has five of the best add-ons to enhance Internet Explorer.
Windows Gallery – the Windows Gallery itself isn’t a download, but is where you can find tons of downloads for your desktop and sidebar.

NDepend - In and Out

Ray Booysen — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:36:29 GMT

Decided to get NDepend dealt with. I've been fortunate in that I've had a professional license but time has been of short supply in the last few months to be playing with something as cool and as big as NDepend. So here starts a series of posts on NDepend. My code base of choice is the Subtext blogging platform that I'm a contributor to.

Starting with NDepend is incredibly simple. The startup screen has a very "Visual Studio" type feel. Click "New Project", give it a name and we're presented with this screen:

The easiest way to start from here, is to immediately add your assemblies to the project that you want to analyse. As you can see below, I've now added the Subtext assemblies. Note the checkboxes in the left hand panel. You can easily see that none of my assemblies have strong names but NDepend has picked up that there are PDB files that can be used for later analysis such as LOC counts.

For this post, we won't deal with Analysis Comparison or Code coverage and move straight onto the Reports tab. This gives you some options on what reports you want to generate and the option to use your own XSL sheet in the report build. Once you've set your settings here, you're ready to go! Click the play button and let NDepend generate the results.

Once the analysis is done, a web page will pop open with the core information inside (I've attached a sample here for you to have a look at). NDepend will simultaneously change to a drill-down type display where you can view results to your heart's content.

Once you're in this view, the power of NDepend starts to show. Everything is contextual, from the dependencies view, the metrics view to the assembly info panel, you have complete control of what you want to analyse.

The Class Browser shows all the assemblies that you've chosen plus all external dependencies (in blue). Hovering over the assembly or drilling down into classes or even methods, the info panel updates, the metrics will display the position of the selected item. Very quickly you can see important information. As an example, the Subtext BlogRequest HttpModule has 71 IL instructions, 12 lines of code, 19 comments and a cyclometric complexity of 9. Awesome stuff, and a great UI.

I'm going to leave the post here. I'm wanting to deep dive into each feature and would prefer to spread each feature over a separate blog post. Keep subscribed for the next instalment. :)

WPF Memory Leak in Command Binding

Ray Booysen — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:13:53 GMT

In a medium sized project I'm working on at the moment, we've had a rather large memory leak issue. We've implemented our tiers in a pattern called MVVM. I wasn't sure on how well this would work but to be honest, its been an amazing pattern to follow and pretty easy to get right.

Our UI exclusively does binding, I.e. there is no real code behind. Our buttons are bound to commands, ItemsControls bound to ObservableCollection<T> and inputs bound to properties on our ViewModels. Pretty simple stuff and extremely powerful. During testing of the application, switching in between items in a ItemsControl, the RAM usage would go up. And up. And up. Until we hit 800MB of RAM and the system would start thrashing and be unresponsive. After further investigation, it was down to buttons that were binding to ICommands. As the button was in a template in the ItemsControl, each time we changed the selected Item, the datatemplate was being instanciated and therefore a new button instance was being created inside the framework.

        1: <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Property=DataToBindTo}" >

       2:     <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>

       3:         <DataTemplate>

       4:             <Button Command="{Binding Property=RunCommand}" />

       5:         </DataTemplate>

       6:     </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>

       7: </ItemsControl>

Above is a very simple example of the scenario I have. In the Button Control which extends ButtonBase, whenever the Command's DependencyProperty is changed, a callback is fired which is supposed to remove any handlers from the command's CanExecute EventHandler. However, the code to Unhook these event handlers NEVER seems to run, so the Button is therefore NEVER released and stays in memory.

       1: private void OnCommandChanged(ICommand oldCommand, ICommand newCommand)

       2: {

       3:     if (oldCommand != null)

       4:     {

       5:         this.UnhookCommand(oldCommand);

       6:     }

       7:     if (newCommand != null)

       8:     {

       9:         this.HookCommand(newCommand);

      10:     }

      11: }

The code above is from the WPF code base inside PresentationFramework.dll. In researching this bug on the Internet, a few posts mentioned clearing the command bindings. This would set the Command in the Button to null, which in turn, the OnCommandChanged method would be called. Line 3 and 5 are important here, since the oldCommand is not null, it will be unhooked. However, because the UI has no code behind, we can't clear the bindings in code without some serious hacking.

To get round this bug, we ended up implementing our own Button object, extending ContentControl and writing our own keyboard and mouse events to handle executing the command. Please note, this is on 3.5 without the SP1 beta installed so things may change when this goes RTM.

LINQ To XML Video

Ray Booysen — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:44:18 GMT

Hey guys, the video from Mike's talk is now available thanks to Ian Smith! I've embedded it below, but head over to the actual video page if you want to watch it in HD or download it in it's entirety.

Main Video Page

LINQ to XML by Mike Taulty from Vista Squad on Vimeo.

Project VistaSquad

Scott Belton — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:11:00 GMT

Well this might not be one of my best ideas to date but here goes! Over a few pints down my local, chatting with friends, actually listening to them whinnying on about Windows Vista's pros and cons, their main grippes seemed to always fall back on the amount of resources and hardware Windows Vista requires to run and the fact they have to go out and spend their hard earned money on Dual or Quad core machines to feel the full benefits. So project VistaSquad was born, the idea to build a usable pc...(read more)

MSDN and TechNet Upcoming Events

Ray Booysen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:11:06 GMT

MSDN Events

MSDN Event - Rich Internet Applications with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

Location: Reading

Date: 2 September 2008

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383782&Culture=en-GB

MSDN Event: Rich Internet Applications with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1

Location: London

Date: 4 September 2008

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383660&Culture=en-GB

MSDN Event: What's New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?

Location: Reading

Date: 2 October 2008

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383659&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What's New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?

Location: Manchester

Date: 7 October 2008

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383656&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What's New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?

Location: Birmingham

Date: 14 October 2008

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383649&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What's New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?

Location: Bristol

Date: 22 October 2008

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383652&Culture=en-GB

MSDN: What's New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?

Location: Exeter

Date: 23 October

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383655&Culture=en-GB

MSDN Roadshow Re-Run

Location: London

Date: 24 October 2008

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032383788&Culture=en-GB

TechNet Events

TechNet Event: Microsoft Virtualisation and Management Technologies

Location: London

Date: 4 September 2008

TechNet Event: Microsoft's Visions for Unified Communications

Location: Reading

Date: 2 September 2008

TechNet Event: Microsoft After Hours

Location: London

Date: 10 September 2008

TechNet Event: Virtualisation Licensing In-depth

Location: Reading

Date: 2 October 2008

TechNet Event: SQL Server 2008

Location: Manchester

Date: 7 October 2008

TechNet Event: Windows Powershell – Around the Datacentre in 80 Scripts

Location: Birmingham

Date: 14 October 2008

TechNet Event: Small Business Server 2008

Location: Bristol

Date: 22 October 2008

TechNet Event: SQL Server 2008

Location: Exeter

Date: 23 October 2008

TechNet Event: Exchange Server 2007

Location: London

Date: 29 October 2008

TechNet Event: Small Business Server 2008

Location: London

Date: 29 October 2008

Windows PE & Microsoft's Malware Removal Starter Kit

Scott Belton — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:48:00 GMT

I’ve recently been playing with the Windows PE boot environment and found a really good collection of information and free guides from Microsoft. So I thought I would give some of the ideas a go, I have followed the Malware Removal Starter Kit http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/disasterrecovery/malware/default.mspx This is a great guide and well planned out, helping you build a customized pre boot environment designed to tackle worms, viruses and many forms of malicious spyware. Easily...(read more)

Vista Squad "Citizens on Patrol" Wednesday 20th August

Ray Booysen — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:21:12 GMT

Vista Squad "Citizens on Patrol" Wednesday 20th August

Hey Everyone! The next Vista Squad meeting has been booked! 20th of August at the London Victoria offices of Microsoft with two great talks lined up.

Another Microsoft double header:

What's new in Silverlight Beta 2
(Mike Ormond, Microsoft)

Intro to Live Mesh
(Paolo Barone, Microsoft)

Directions to Microsoft

Agenda

6pm - 6.30pm: Arrive and introductions
6.30pm - 7:30pm: Silverlight 2 Beta 2: What's New?
7.30pm - 8:15: Break, Pizza and drinks
8:15pm - 9:15: Introduction to Live Mesh
9:15pm: Vista Ultimate Giveaway, Wrap up!
SIGN UP HERE!!!!

Slides from LINQ to XML and Windows Server 2008

Ray Booysen — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:54:33 GMT

Mike and Matt emailed me the slides on the weekend and they're available for download. Have fun! :)

Mike Taulty on LINQ to XML
Matt McSpirit on What's new in Server 2008

The Fellowship of the Ring Photos

Scott Belton — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 07:22:00 GMT

I've just posted the photos for our last meeting held on the 16th July. Apologies for the quality they were taken using a XDA II phone, main camera is still away being fixed after dropping it....(read more)

The Fellowship of The Ring Evening Event

Scott Belton — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:09:00 GMT

What a great evening two fantastic presentations, and what a fantastic turn out from over 100 sign ups to well over fifty people turning up with a few more IT Pros than normal, (come on guys and girls we really need a good showing way to many developers!) Our biggest and best event so far so thanks from us all and thanks again for your support, hopefully you all had a good evening. The 2 presentations were as follows Mike Taulty from Microsoft on LINQ to XML And Matt McSpirit on What’s New In Windows...(read more)

The Fellowship of the Ring

Scott Belton — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:16:00 GMT

Wow outstanding over 94 places taken up for tonight’s meeting. Good work all! That’s fantastic I look forward to meeting some new faces as well as seeing the familiar ones. Hopefully we have a few more IT Pro's tonight so we can finally give the Dev. guys a run for their money. Looking forward to it. See you all there! Regards...(read more)

Microsoft Press Shop

Scott Belton — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:11:00 GMT

Well worth checking out at the moment if your after any books etc as they have a load of deals on. i.e Windows Vista Resource Kit 2nd Edition at a discount of 32% of retail price http://www.microsoft-press.co.uk/scripts/product.asp?ref=880178...(read more)

Network Access Protection Video

Ray Booysen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:36:39 GMT

Hey guys, the video from Steve's talk is now available thanks to Ian Smith! I've embedded it below, but head over to the actual video page if you want to watch it in HD or download it in it's entirety.

Main Video Page

Vista Squad: Network Access Protection from Vista Squad on Vimeo.