DevExpress have released a collection of free ASP.NET controls that you can use “without royalties or distribution costs". The applications you create with these controls can be distributed royalty free and all the controls are are fully supported by both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008.

Some of the ones I think stand out as potentially being very useful are the:

TextEdit
ProgressBarControl
XtraTabControl
SplitterControl
ASPxCloudControl

For a full list, visit http://www.devexpress.com/Products/Free/WebRegistration60. You’ll need to register so they can send you your account details and instructions on how to download and use the controls.

I’ll be trying a few of these out over the next couple of weeks, so let us know if you’ve tried them and what your thoughts are on them.

I like my iGoogle alot (since last week ;-)) it gives me a good rss reader and gtalk for those places where instant messenging is blocked (although this doesn’t seem to work in IE7 only in FF3).

But sometimes the Ajax features or is the javascript part causes some problems.

In my setup you will see the google reader thing on the left and gtalk on the right. And the red square is the problem area. Yes that’s right my scrollbar gets painted over with the gtalk thing and some of the border too. Not pretty and lucky for me I have a scroll button on my mouse.

So pushing something to the foreground is full of perils. I can’t say if this works in IE because IE can’t get gtalk to work.

I wonder if there is a fix for this.

Dare Obesanjo has made an excellent post: Windows Azure from a Developer’s Perspective

To try out Azure you need to be running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista with a bunch of prerequisites you can get from running the Microsoft Web Platform installer. Once you have the various prerequisites installed (SQL Server, IIS 7, .NET Framework 3.5, etc) you should then grab the Windows Azure SDK. Users of Visual Studio will also benefit from grabbing the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio.

After this process, you should be able to fire up Visual Studio and see the option to create a Cloud Service if you go to File->New->Project.

Very interesting stuff, check out the post here: Windows Azure from a Developer’s Perspective

The Azure Services Platform is in CTP, here are some details:

What is the Azure Services Platform?
The Azure Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

Azure reduces the need for up-front technology purchases, and it enables developers to quickly and easily create applications running in the cloud by using their existing skills with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to managed code languages supported by .NET, Azure will support more programming languages and development environments in the near future. Azure simplifies maintaining and operating applications by providing on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web and connected applications. Infrastructure management is automated with a platform that is designed for high availability and dynamic scaling to match usage needs with the option of a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Azure provides an open, standards-based and interoperable environment with support for multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML.

Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for consumption by customers such as Windows Live™, Microsoft Dynamics™, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint® Online. The Azure Services Platform lets developers provide their own unique customer offerings by offering the foundational components of compute, storage, and building block services to author and compose applications in the cloud.

Windows Azure

Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage internet or cloud applications. Windows Azure supports a consistent development experience through its integration with Visual Studio. In the early stages of CTP, .NET managed applications built using Visual Studio will be supported. Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. Windows Azure welcomes third party tools and languages such as Eclipse, Ruby, PHP, and Python.

Learn more about Windows Azure.


Live Services

Live Services is a set of building blocks within the Azure Services Platform for handling user data and application resources. Live Services provides developers with an easy on-ramp to build rich social applications and experiences, across a range of digital devices that can connect with one of the largest audiences on the Web.

Learn more about Live Services

Microsoft SQL Services

Microsoft SQL Services extends the capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server into the cloud as a Web-based, distributed relational database. It provides Web services that enable relational queries, search, and data synchronization with mobile users, remote offices and business partners. It can store and retrieve structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.

Learn more about SQL Services

Microsoft .NET Services

Microsoft .NET Services make developing loosely coupled cloud-based applications easier. .NET Services includes access control to help secure your applications, a service bus for communicating across applications and services, and hosted workflow execution. These hosted services allow you to easily create federated applications that span from on-premises environments to the cloud.

Learn more about .NET Services

Microsoft® SharePoint® Services & Dynamics® CRM Services

In the future, developers will have access to SharePoint & CRM functionality for collaboration and building stronger customer relationships. With the flexibility to use familiar developer tools like Visual Studio, developers will be able to rapidly build applications that utilize SharePoint and CRM capabilities as developer services for their own applications. Developers can expect a breadth of SharePoint & CRM capabilities across the spectrum of on-premises, online & the Azure Services Platform.

Register for Azure Services Platform here: http://www.microsoft.com/azure/register.mspx

Silverlight 2 got released about a week ago. And this is what ScottGu promises us.

Silverlight 2 is a cross-platform browser plug-in that enables rich media experiences and .NET RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) within the browser.

Silverlight 2 is small in size (4.6M and takes only 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn’t already have it. It does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer to run - the Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to play video or run applications.

Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby).

That looks promising, especially if you are a .Net programmer like me. But let’s not forget that I’m a programmer and not a designer so my app won’t look as cool as it could.

I’m not convinced yet that Silverlight won’t go the same way as flash. And by that I mean that flash is being misused for advertising and moving things on a website. I hate things that flicker and move while watching a website, probably because most of those things are advertising. The whole advertising thing made people grab onto tools like adblock plus for firefox, or other flash adblocking programs.

Here are some of the suggested remedies.

• How to block Flash selectively
• SuperAdBlocker.Com
• Block Flash Ads in Firefox
• Adblocker for IE

Of course we all know that Youtube does have a good application for flash movies.

I’m not saying flash is bad. It did bring something to the webscene that was sorely needed. And that was a rich user experience. The user could finally do cool things in his webbrowser. The webpage was no longer static. There was user interaction on a scale where you could only dream of with javascript (at the time). But there was also java applets. What happened to them, how many people still use them?

So is Silverlight going to be that killer app we all want to use? Is it finally going to replace all that tedious HTML/CSS/Javascript stuff that we have to check a million times in a several thousand browser to see if we get the same result everywhere? I hope so. But since my crystal ball got broken, I can’t tell.

So I went out to see if people are coming up with any cool things for Silverlight yet.

• A list of Silverlight apps with sourcecode.
• This is a way cool and addictive game. My computer seemed to have some performance problems with it.
• Silverlight airlines. User friendly? Only if you give them the manual. I’m sure my parents won’t be able to use it. But cool none the less.
• Tetris. I think only Cobol doesn’t have a Tetris implementation ;-)
• dr.popper. Another game
• DeepearthPlayin with maps. A bit like googlemaps.

So the cool things are happening and are possible. We will see what the future brings but I think we should start installing Silverlight, it’s out there and it will be used.