Welcome to Michaels Blog

All posts published in 2007

Blog of latest news, updates, and stories for developers

Microsoft Download Center using Silverlight 1.0

Some weeks ago Microsoft already published a preview version of the Microsoft Download Center. Now, there is a new URL for the preview version (which is now called beta): http://www.microsoft.com/beta/downloads/ [1].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, December 23, 2007


Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Wish List (part 2)

I got a lot of feedback for my last post about Silverlight features that are currently missing [1]. Because it is Christmas time we are allowed to wish everything we want, what we get is another thing. Here are some additional features currently missing and are maybe important for everyone.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, December 21, 2007


.NET AJAX Survey Results

Simone [1] has finished the survey and published the results of the survey about the usage of AJAX among .NET web developers [2]. The results are very interesting. The most used AJAX toolkit is ASP.NET AJAX [3] with about 73.7% followed by the AJAX Control Toolkit [4] which is used by almost half of the .NET developers that are using AJAX.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, December 21, 2007


Nintendo Wii and Silverlight: Tracking Your Fingers

While writing my Silverlight wish list I found a very nice project. Johnny Ching Lee [1] is using the controller (Wiimote) of the Nintendo Wii to track fingers [2]. The controller does not need the Nintendo Wii [3] console, simple the controller and a bluetooth connection [4] is enough. Combining this project with WPF or Silverlight would be the answer of one of my wishes. (Well, I know what I will try during the holidays.)

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, December 20, 2007


Ajax View: Remotely Monitoring Web 2.0 Applications

I'm using Ajax View [1] more and more and find it very useful.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, December 20, 2007


Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Wish List

silverlight Well, the year 2007 is nearly at the end and I have my short wish list for Microsoft Silverlight [1]. The following (maybe not complete) unsorted list would be nice to see in 2008 with the next CTP or final version:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, December 20, 2007


MVC Web Application and JSON

I like the MVC (Model View Controller) framework which is available as a public CTP, now. You can download the latest bits with the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Preview [1]. You will find further links at Scott Guthrie's posts tagged with MVC [2].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, December 19, 2007


Debug .NET Source Code

Scott Guthrie announced [1] some weeks ago that Microsoft will offer the source code of the .NET framework. The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License [2] (MS-RL) and includes all comments which is very useful.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, December 19, 2007


LINQ Quickly (Book Review)

1847192548 I got a copy of LINQ Quickly from Packt Publishing. Language Integrated Query (LINQ) is a new feature in Visual Studio 2008 that extends its query capabilities, using C# and Visual Basic. Visual Studio 2008 comes with LINQ provider assemblies that enable the use of LINQ with data sources such as in-memory collections, SQL relational databases, ADO.NET DataSets, XML documents, ect.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, December 19, 2007


Ajax usage among .NET developers

Simone Chiaretta [1] had a look at the results of Ajaxian's survey [2] about the state of the usage in the Web development community. He decided to make a new survey [3], but this time only focused on .NET developers.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, December 19, 2007


[de] Dodned Usergroup Nachtrag

Ich hatte gestern eine kurze Einführung zu jQuery gemacht, hier noch einmal die wichtigsten Links für Download und Dokumentation:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, November 30, 2007


[de] Dodned (.NET) Usergroup Franken 29.11.2007

Wer Web Anwendungen schreibt, der kommt um JavaScript nicht vorbei. Egal welche Web Server Controls man verwendet, wenn's am Client nicht mehr weitergeht oder etwas verbesser werden muss, ist JavaScript die Nummer 1. Auch die ganze AJAX Programmierung verwendet JavaScript am Client.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, November 26, 2007


Object and Collection Initializers in VS.NET 2008

While working with the new Visual Studio .NET 2008 I'm using more and more the new features that are available in Visual Studio .NET and C# compile options. One of those features are object and collection initializers. I like it to write source code like following lines (I always have my JavaScript code in mind, which is sometimes very similar):

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, November 26, 2007


MVC Framework and Mobile Device

The last days I spent nearly all my time with the MVC Framework. As you may expect I absolutely like the way to control my HTML output more and get rid of the viewstate. When you read my blog you know that I'm using a lot of JavaScript and AJAX to make Web pages to Web applications.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, November 26, 2007


Update Silverlight not working

I have noticed the last weeks that if you have an older version of Microsoft Silverlight [1] installed I get following error message when opening Web pages with Silverlight content:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, November 26, 2007


MSDN Webcast: Silverlight 1.0 Overview

Rob Bagby [1], MSDN Developer Evangelist, will present Silverlight [2] 1.0 on Wednesday, 15th August at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada).

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, August 14, 2007


Silverlight Peformance Tips

A great post about some Silverlight performance tips: Silverlight: A few thoughts on minimizing CPU usage [1]:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, August 10, 2007


PrettyPrint Fiddler2 Plugin (Alpha)

I put a first alpha version of the PrettyPrint Fiddler2 plugin [1] online. There are still some problems with regular expressions and lines that don't end with a semicolon, and some unknown maybe...

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, August 1, 2007


Fiddler2 - JavaScript Beautifier Plugin

Update: download first alpha version of the PrettyPrint plugin for Fiddler2 [1].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, August 1, 2007


Upgrading your project to Silverlight Alpha 1.1 Refresh

Scott Hanselman [1] wrote on his blog about how to upgrade your project from Silverlight 1.1 Alpha to Alpha Refresh [2]. There are a couple of breaking changes in Silverlight 1.0 RC1 [3]. Because the 1.1 version does include the same core it will be necessary to change Silverlight Alpha 1.1 projects, too.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, July 31, 2007


SwirlChat Module v2 (for DNN)

swirlhost [1] has released their new chat module [2] that is designed specifically for DotNetNuke [3]:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


Silverlight Configuration Tool

With the latest Silverlight bits you will find a new configuration tool in the Silverlight application folder (i.e. c:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight) names slup.exe (SilverLight UPdate?). You can open the configuration from any Silverlight host, too, by right-clicking on the host control and click on Silverlight Configuration.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


Updated My Silverlight Surface Version

I have updated the Silverlight "Surface" demonstration with video support [1], too. The only thing I had to do is to replace the Silverlight.js JavaScript file and change the boolean properties in the createObjectEx to their string representations (true becomes "true").

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


ASP.NET AJAX Roles and Security

David Barkol [1] writes on his blog about ASP.NET AJAX Role Application Service with Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas). [2] Well, it is a new service that is working similar to the profile [3] and authentication [4] service. As it is very easy to call it from the client-side JavaScript code you should be a little bit more careful using these new methods.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


[de] Kostenfreier Silverlight Workshop in Erlangen

Nachdem wir den ersten Workshop kurzfristig absagen mussten haben wir einen neuen Termin in Erlangen bei der the campus [1] am 9. August, ab 18 Uhr. Wir haben einen Raum, PCs, Kaffee und Kuchen! Anmeldungen über die neu angelegte Google Group NET-Workshops [2].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


New Silverlight Links

The last weeks I was a little bit busy because of some projects and other work I had to do at home. But today I will publish some new links about Silverlight:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


Silverlight 1.0 RC1 available

As you may have already noticed: the RC1 of Silverlight 1.0 has been put online on the weekend. Since the last beta there have been fixed around 2000 (!) bugs and added some more features. English downloads are available here:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


Authentication and Session

In my current project I'm using a own User object that I store in the HttpContext.Session to have personalized data available without connecting on each AJAX method / page refresh to the database. If the session will end because of timeouts, Web server resets/crash or application pool recycle this data will not be available any more, I have to read all again and store it in the session.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


Throw new Exception with AjaxPro

Last Friday I had a discussion with Kris about some problems [1] he had with Ajax.NET Professional. The thing was that he was using Response.Write somewhere in his code to write exception details to the output, but that failed because the result was not a JSON response.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007


[de] Silverlight Get Together

(English: I will start new workshops about Ajax, ASP.NET and Silverlight in the next months, first will start on Thursday about Silverlight.)

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 23, 2007


Implementing Silverlight in 21 Days

Miguel de Icaza [1] is writing yesterday on his blog that he wrote a Silverlight plugin for Linux [2]:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 22, 2007


Expression Studio in German

The German trial versions [1] of Microsoft Expression Studio [2] are now available. The full versions will be available in about 6 weeks, Expression Web is already available.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, June 14, 2007


Silverlight and Infragistics

Infragistics [1] is already deeply involved in Silverlight development [2]. They are excited about the platform as the next-generation Web UI. They think there are several key wins in Silverlight [3] for Web application development and are exploring how they can best provide controls and tooling to complement what Microsoft provides in the box.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, June 14, 2007


Balder - 3D Engine for Silverlight

The source code of the 3D engine called Balder is available on CodePlex [1], now. The state of the source code is not 100% yet, but people can download it for now and have a look at how you could do a simple 3D engine.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, June 13, 2007


[de] .NET User Group Franken am 5. Juli 2007

Die .NET User Group Franken [1] trifft sich mal wieder, diesmal in den Räumen der evosoft GmbH (Dank geht an Igor Milovanovic [2]).

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, June 13, 2007


Apple Safari for Windows and Microsoft Silverlight

Since yesterday you can download Safari 3 Plublic Beta for Windows [1]. "The world's best browser.", "the fastest, easiest-to-use Web browser in the world" - does this really be true? 

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 12, 2007


Silverlight 1.1 Plug-in installed

Well, during the weekend I added a small test to log how many visitors of my blog have installed the Silverlight [1] plug-in already.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 11, 2007


My Silverlight Weekend Summary

During the weekend I found several new examples about Silverlight [1]. Because I'm running several Web sites that need any kind of diagrams I was happy to see these nice examples from Richard: JellyBar [2], JellyGraph [3] and JellyPie [4].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 11, 2007


VistaDB with Silverlight

Today I read on the VistaDB blog [1] that their database engine will run on Silverlight [2]. I'm not sure if I want to put a complete database engine in Silverlight applications [3]. Do I have to put the database files into IsolatedStorage or will it be only in-memory?

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 8, 2007


New Examples and Tutorials

During the last days I have added some new tutorials [1] and examples [2] to my list. Dave Campbell sent me a short message that he has already a kind of Silverlight examples collection. Have a look on his list of Silverlight tagged articles he wrote [3] and external Silverlight examples as well [4].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 8, 2007


Silverlight Tutorials

There are a couple of great tutorials on how to developer Microsoft Silverlight [1] 1.0 or 1.1 Web applications:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, June 6, 2007


How to create Silverlight Applications with Notepad

You may have read my post about how you can build Silverlight Web applications with Visual Studio .NET 2005 [1] instead of using the next verison codename Orcas. Until this time I used always a Virtual PC which was sometimes a little bit slow.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007


Updated Silverlight Surface Demo

Ok, it was a very simple bug on my side with the ZIndex property. I have updated the online version [1] and the download [2]. If you have a slow connection you may have to wait some seconds to see the video.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007


Microsoft Silverlight Introduction (LiveMeeting)

Tomorrow there is an online event for developers talking about Silverlight at 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada):

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007


Bubblemark Animation Test

Did you ever compared client-side RIA frameworks? Alexey Gavrilov [1] has written a great test to directly compare performance [2]: Silverlight (WPF/e) vs. DHTML vs. Flash (Flex) vs. WPF vs Apollo vs. Java (Swing):

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007


Silverlight Surface Demonstration (Video Support)

In one of my last posts [1] I wrote about the Silverlight Surface [2] demo of the "photo table". If you had a look on the live demo [3] you only see images, no video. I have added this because it is a very great idea to do it with Silverlight and the high media support inside.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007


Silverlight Examples

During the weekend I spent some minutes to collect some of the greatest Silverlight [1] examples. Most of them need the Silverlight 1.1 alpha runtime which is available for download here [2].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007


Silverlight Surface Demonstration

Microsoft announced some days ago its Surface product [1]. If you didn't had a look on the videos you should watch it.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007


Silverlight with Visual Studio .NET 2005

Could Silverlight [1] 1.1 assemblies be generated with Visual Studio .NET 2005? Well, if you read the GetStarted [2] page of Silverlight you see only upcoming Visual Studio codename Orcas as development platform.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007


Silverlight Streaming

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming [1] is a new service by Windows Live that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich meda as part of their Silverlight applications. The new service offers web designers and developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows and Mac.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007


JavaScript and .NET Arrays in Silverlight

During my tests with the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) in Silverlight 1.1 [1] I came accross several things that didn't work first. Most of them could be fixed by using small workarounds.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007


Silverlight and JSON

Silverlight 1.1 [1] comes with an built-in JSON serializer which can serialize common data types like string, numbers and arrays. It includes a object serializer, too, I think it is nearly the same as in ASP.NET AJAX or Ajax.NET Professional.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007


Call Scribtable Methods from JavaScript with Silverlight

Today I wrote a very simple example how to call a C# method from JavaScript code. I was using this because I'd like to access the IsolatedStorage with a small wrapper that is working similar to the registry.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007


Silverlight 1.0 and OnLoad

There are some changes for the OnLoad event handler from older beta versions (code name WPF/E). In Silverlight 1.0 beta you will use following event handler, now:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007


IsolatedStorage and managed JavaScript

Today I tried to use the IsolatedStorage in managed JavaScript with Silverlight 1.1 [1]. The IsolatedStorage can be used to store data on the client. Currently the alpha version supports 1MB, which is more than storing data in cookies, but maybe will be changed in the future. Perhaps there will be a setting in a future options dialog where you can specify how much you will allow to store locally.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, May 31, 2007


DLR and Performance

The idea was to put all JavaScript libraries into the DLR of Silverlight to get better performance, but a first tests failed or is compared to JavaScript directly in the Web browser very slow.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, May 31, 2007


Running managed JavaScript in Silverlight

At MIX 07 Jim Hugunin announced a new level of support for dynamic languages on .NET that they're calling the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime). With Silverlight 1.1 you get support for dynamic languages today: Phyton, JavaScript (EcmaScript 3.0), Visual Basic and Ruby.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, May 31, 2007


Silverlight .NET Support

The Silverlight team has released a new version [1] today at the MIX with .NET support. Since Mike announced [2] this Web developers are waiting for this new feature.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 30, 2007


Orcas and JavaScript IntelliSense

I had a great discussion [1] with Bertrand [2] about the feature to have dynamically (Assembly Resources or on-the-fly created JavaScript files) added JavaScripts in IntelliSense available, too. Currently it is only possible to add JavaScript files by hand that are more or less static files, and ASP.NET AJAX does not come with plain JavaScript files, too, but it is working because ScriptManager is doing his job.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 30, 2007


webinale 07

I will be available for Microsoft Silverlight discussions at the [webinale 07 [1] conference in Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart to talk and discuss about the latest version of Silverlight presented at the Mix07 in Las Vegas. Of course, you can talk with me about Ajax.NET Professional, too.]

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 28, 2007


Visual Studio Orcas JavaScript IntelliSense

Bertrand [1] has a great post about JavaScript IntelliSense [2] with the next Visual Studio .NET code-name Orcas. I downloaded the bits to give it a try. Oh yes, it is working great when creating ASP.NET AJAX Web applications.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 28, 2007


AjaxPro more JSON compliant

I put the next beta version online to test the new JSON converters. I have added a new web.config paramter which will bring JSON converters to render a different output.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 23, 2007


AjaxPro User Experience

DotNetSlackers [1] creator Sonu Kapoor writes [2] about Ajax.NET Professional [3]:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 19, 2007


Rich Media Platform Comparison

I found a nice table which will show a comparison between Microsoft products and Flash/Flex:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 19, 2007


Silverlight Support on Windows Mobile

I got several questions about when and if Silverlight [1] (code name WPF/E) will be supported on Windows Mobile devices. The code name has included the word everywhere. Do you still remeber this:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, April 18, 2007


Microsoft Live Labs - DeepFish Experience

Some weeks ago I installed the DeepFish Technology Preview [1] which will enhance existing mobile browsing technologies by displaying content in a view that is closer to the desktop experience. After installation was finished I was very anxious to see how it is working. I have several Windows mobile devices I can test. The first was a Qtek 9100 using a GSM Internet connection (9.600 baud, is my modem at home which I can use at no cost). Oh, what will the benefit be when using Deepfish compared with the built-in Internet Explorer?

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, April 18, 2007


Microsoft Silverlight

For all of you didn't noticed the name change of code name WPF/E, it is now Microsft Silverlight. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. Silverlight integrates with existing Web applications and, of course, almost all Web technologies you are already using like Ajax.NET Professional [1] or ASP.NET in common.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 16, 2007


Download AjaxPro Beta with jQuery Support

I forgot to put the beta version online that will support jQuery and json.js from http://www.json.org [1]. You can download the latest beta of the AjaxPro library at http://www.ajaxpro.info/download/jQueryAjaxPro.zip [2]. The download currently includes only the .NET 2.0 library including a Visual Studio .NET 2005 Web Site project.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, April 15, 2007


AjaxPro and the jQuery JavaScript Provider

Because jQuery is a often used JavaScript framework I will have a provider available in the next release of Ajax.NET Professional [1] that will render only the wrapper JavaScript files in the jQuery [2] JavaScript code.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, April 13, 2007


Looking Forward to next AjaxPro Release

Some developers mentioned that it would be nice if Ajax.NET Professional [1] could be more JSON compliant to use with some JavaScript frameworks that are not using the eval statement. And, if you have a look at json.org [2] JSON message always have to be an object or array, not a string or boolean directly. Well, I absolutly see the need of these changes and I have done this already in a beta version which I will provide this evening.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, April 13, 2007


Tip #2 - Display JSON String from Object

Sometimes it is necessary to see i.e. the full result you will get inside the asynchronous callback function to see all properties. The AjaxPro JavaScript includes a method to convert a JavaScript object into a JSON string.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 12, 2007


Tip #1 - Using AjaxPro.AjaxNoTypeUsage

If you want to hide name and assembly details of classes you return in your AjaxMethod simple add the AjaxPro.AjaxNoTypeUsage attribute as meta information:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 12, 2007


Trackbacks, Who Is Linking You and where you should pay attention

Today I opened the turkish version of Google [1] and did a search for something I cannot remember. The thing was that I didn't hit enter, instead I clicked on the button Google'da Ara. What I noticed then was that the ' was not correct url encoded. Hm, nothing you have to care about. But after clicking on a link to a blog from the search results I found the same wrong url encoded url in the who is linking me section. While reading the page I had the idea to do some more testing with the apostrophe (or a quote).

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, April 11, 2007


jQuery and Ajax.NET Professional (AjaxPro)

jQuery [1] is a fast, concise JavaScript library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript, but it can be only used on the client-side JavaScript code. That means you need a framework on the server-side code if you want to add Ajax interactions to your web pages.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, April 10, 2007


Intel Software Network Videos using AjaxPro

I talked today with a Intel developer and he showed me where the are using Ajax.NET Professional JSON Library [1]. The Intel Software Developer Network [2] has it's own video library where you can see great videos on several technologies Intel is offering with it's processors. We talked about why they are using AjaxPro and the answer (that I get more and more) is: "we are using Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1". I'm happy to see that the decission to support .NET 1.1 in all my releases was one of the biggest benefits you get when using AjaxPro. Well, Intel talked about using AjaxPro as AJAX library, too. So, maybe we will see more web applications from Intel next time.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 7, 2007


JSON Hijacking and How Ajax.NET Professional (AjaxPro) Avoids these Attacks

There are a couple of web sites reporting about security issues that hackers can use to invoke AJAX methods or use the JSON output to get data from other web applications. Specificallly, these attacks use HTTP GET requests invoked via an HTML <script src=""> include element to circumvent the "same origin policy" enforced by browsers (which limits JavaScript objects like XmlHttpRequest to only calling URLs on the same domain that the page was loaded from), and then look for ways to exploit the JSON payload content. The use of HTTP POST is only working if you are in the same domain, which does not mean this is not a dangerous security issue if used in web sites where different users can access data (i.e. spaces.live.com, blogger.com,...); there it is very easy to run HTTP POST with XmlHttpRequest object in the same domain (see Google XSS bug [1]).

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 7, 2007


Windows DreamScene Preview

Windows DreamScene Preview [1] is available for Windows Vista Ultimate users, simply go to Windows Update and Windows Ultimate-Extras and you will find it.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, February 13, 2007


[de] .NET User Group Franken - Erstes Treffen 2007

Am 21. Februar ist es wieder soweit, die .NET User Group Franken lebt wieder auf. Meine Wenigkeit wird dort über AJAX und WPF/E sprechen, mehr Details und Anmeldung gibt es auf der Dodned Web Seite [1].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, February 9, 2007


WPF/E SDK (February CTP) available (and Windows Vista running in a web browser)

The WPF/E SDK [1] (February CTP) is now available, you can download the files from the MSDN web page [2]. The WPF/E QuickStart is not yet available as download.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, February 4, 2007


WPF/E February CTP and Problems with Firefox

I tried a some of the WPF/E examples I collected [1] with Firefox on Windows Vista . Oh, sorry, a lot of them are not working correct, and some kills my Firefox here.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, February 1, 2007


New aghost.js JavaScript for WPF/E

In my last post [1] I wrote that there is a new aghost.js you need. The main reason is that the December CTP of the WPF/E plugin [2] is only running until end of January, so you have to update your plugin with the February version [1]. If you have installed the old version you will get following error message:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, February 1, 2007


The February CTP Of WPF/E Is Live

Like Mark Harsh is writing on his blog [1] the new February CTP of WPF/E is live. Download the Windows [2] and the Mac [3] version, but keep in mind that there is a change in the aghost.js for the new version, see more details here and download the changed JavaScript file [4]. Joe Stegman is writing [5] about some changes:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, February 1, 2007


[de] Premiere im Internet: ZDF Folgen zuerst im Netz (s. Windows Vista Media Center)

Krimiserie schon einen Tag vor TV-Ausstrahlung bei zdf.de

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, January 30, 2007


Windows Vista Updates: Language Packs and Ultimate Extras

During the Windows Vista event in New York I noticed the new updates including some language packs:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, January 29, 2007


[de] Ingolstädter .NET Developers Group am 22.02.2007

Die Ingolstädter .NET Developers Group [1] ist eine unabhängige Gemeinschaft für Interessierte der Microsoft .NET Technologie aus dem Großraum Ingolstadt. Sie besteht aus professionellen Entwicklern, Hobbyentwicklern, Akademikern und Studenten, die Ihre Erfahrung mit anderen teilen möchten.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, January 29, 2007


I've been Tagged: Five Things You Might Not Know About Me

I've been tagged by Albert [1], so here are 5 things to share about me:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, January 27, 2007


The WPF/E Gear Keeps Turning

As you may have read on my blog I have added an animation to the gear example [1] from Mike Harsh. Now, the gear community is here! Read Bryant Likes's Blog [2] post about the gears:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, January 26, 2007


Are we ready for AJAX?

I had a watch today on the webcast How Hackers Reverse Engineer and Exploit an Ajax Application [1]. There wasn't any new security issue as we already should know as AJAX or web application developers. Samples did show how to hack the AutoComplete.asmx web service (using ASP.NET AJAX [2]) which was used on a demo web application using SQL Injection.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, January 25, 2007


Transforms, Opacity Masks and Animation to Create an Animated Reflection in WPF/E

I read a great artice about Use Transforms and Opacity Masks to Create a Reflection in WPF/E [1] and tried to add some animation for the gear image. WPF/E is really easy, and you don't need any JavaScript experience to do all this stuff, it is all WPF/E content only.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, January 24, 2007


How to surf the Internet more safely

In the past you may have heared about more and more security bugs on well-known web sites you use maybe more often a day. Below there are some tips you should have in mind when browsing:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, January 16, 2007


Thumboo moved...!

Today my snapshot service Thumboo [1] has moved to Sonu Kapoor (owner of DotNetSlackers [2]). Sonu will add much more features and make it a really nice site for the community. If you are still interessted in the original source code write me a message and I will send you the C# source code.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, January 11, 2007


How do I hack a web site?

On next Tuesday I will talk at the .NET User Group in Munich / Germany [1] about following topics:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, January 10, 2007


DotNetPro’s Search Engine Spam

My friend Philipp Lenssen [1] wrotes some days ago about the German magazine DotNetPro which offers different html output when Google's crawler is fetching the site.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, January 10, 2007


Performance Research: Browser Cache Usage - Exposed!

Tenni Theurer posted a new blog entry on the YUIBlog [1] about performance research with browser cache usage [2].

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, January 5, 2007


Pending Members - Google Groups XSS Bug [Part 2]

Some weeks ago I wrote about a Google groups bug [1] where it was possible to get all the mail adresses from subscribed members for a Google group. I have already reported this bug [2] to Google, but there is nobody interessted in fixing it. Last evening I wrote a small script that will show you how dangerous this bug is.

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, January 3, 2007


Congratulations! You have received the Microsoft MVP Award 2007

All the things around Christmas and New Year's Eve are left, now, and starting this morning reading my mails I got a very surprising mail from Microsoft:

Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, January 1, 2007