.NET Archive

On his blog, Mike Harsh of Microsoft writes that the support of WPF/E on the Macintosh platform will not be limited to a JavaScript engine: "WPF/E supports programmability through JavaScript for tight browser integration. The WPF/E package also contains a small, cross platform subset of the CLR and .NET Framework that can run C# or VB.NET code. Yes, we are bringing C# programming to the Mac."

Chris Muench is a mobile and embedded MVP. Here he shows how to write a managed Direct3D application for Windows Mobile devices.

C# 2.0 is just out and Microsoft is already working hard on the next version of C#, version 3.0. In this post, Niek describes a few of the new language features that will be introduced in this version. Please note that the resulting binaries will be backwards compatible with .NET 2.0, so C# 3.0 is only new on the compiler side.

In .NET 1.0, the DataGrid control was the primary Windows Forms control for presenting tabular data. Even though that control had a lot of capability and could present basic tabular data well, it was fairly difficult to customize many aspects of the control. Additionally, the DataGrid control didn’t expose enough information to the programmer about the user interactions with the grid and changes occurring in the grid due to programmatic modifications of the data or formatting. Due to these factors and a large number of new features that customers requested, the Windows Client team at Microsoft decided to introduce a replacement control for the DataGrid in .NET 2.0. That new control, the DataGridView control, is the focus of this chapter.

A new version of DotGNU's Portable.NET and libjit (designed to be independent of any particular virtual machine bytecode format or language) has been released. There are a lot of new features, enhancements and bug fixes accompanying this release.

Partial classes permit splitting a single class, interface, or struct into multiple, separate files. There are several advantages to splitting these elements into many files, including permitting more than one developer to work on the same class. Paul Kimmel shows where partial classes are used and how you might use partial keywords to fine-tune your productivity.

"ActiveState has announced the end of engineering support for Visual Perl, Visual Python, and Visual XSLT, effective immediately. The plug-ins will not be updated for Visual Studio 2005, and there will be no further maintenance on the Visual Studio 2003- and 2002-compatible versions. Due to the necessary inclusion of Visual Studio integration code in Visual Perl, Visual Python, and Visual XSLT, the plug-ins will not be open-sourced."

"How can Microsoft kill Python? When I say 'kill', I mean 'seriously damage the relevance of Python'. I don't mean that Microsoft, as some have suggested, will work on IronPython for a while, get people using it, then hijack the language by seriously changing the syntax of it and thereby breaking compatibility with CPython. So, how does this damage the relevance of Python? If Microsoft, who is investing considerable time and money to create a .Net implementation of Python, only refers to IronPython as a 'dynamic language' and only pushes it as a 'scripting language', many people will begin to assume that that's all that it is good for."

IronPython is the codename for an alpha release of the Python programming language for the .NET platform. It supports an interactive interpreter with fully dynamic compilation. It is well integrated with the rest of the framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers.

Code once. Use many. That's what generics are about. Called templates in C++, C# generics support separating code by algorithm and data structure. For example, the generic list means that you'll never again have to write a strongly typed collection. Paul Kimmel shows just how easy it is to define and use generics, long considered one of the most advanced and difficult idioms. This article is adapted from Paul Kimmel's book C# Express.

Activities are the building blocks of a workflow. A number of activities are provided in the Visual Studio 2005 toolbox to create basic workflows. You can also easily create your own activities, which can be added to the toolbox for use in your workflows. This chapter introduces you to all the activities that come with Windows Workflow Foundation.

While demonstrating the rudiments of anonymous methods, Paul Kimmel answers the question "Are anonymous methods just someone being a bit too clever?"

Microsoft on Thursday released to manufacturing its Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 products, previously known by the code names Whidbey and Yukon respectively. Officials at the company called the RTM of the technology a significant milestone on the road to the launch of Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. The .NET Framework 2.0 has also been released. All will be available via MSDN today.

There are more than 50 GUI controls available in the .NET Framework Class Library. This chapter takes a selective look at some of the more important ones. They all derive from the System.Windows.Forms.Control class that provides the inherited properties and methods that all the controls have in common.