New User Group In Cambridge

Those happy NxtGen boys have gone and cut the country in half. Henceforth the UK will consist of 3 regions:
  • those living inside the NxtGen belt
  • those living north of the NxtGen line
  • those living south of the NxtGen line
I am, of course, referring to the 4th city to fall to the Next Generation empire: Cambridge. The line now runs from Birmingham to Coventry to Oxford and finally to Cambridge. Cambridge meetings are held at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and the first meeting is on Tuesday 18th September 2007 with Mike Ormond presenting SilverLight and WPF. I won’t see you at this one but I will be conducting a reconnaissance mission into the empire’s territory on Monday 24th September 2007 in Birmingham under the guise of talking about ClickOnce and XBAPs. See you there.

(Has anyone else noticed that according to the Next Generation User Group website Cambridge is region 8. Ever get the feeling that there’s something else you should know ?)

Technorati Tags: NxtGen, NxtGenUG, Next Generation User Group, Cambridge, Mike Ormond

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Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at 7:43 PM
Categories: Events
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MIX:UK 07 Last Few Places

There are less than 50 places left for MIX:UK 07 to be held in London in under two weeks so if you’re planning on going better get your place now. You can also find the back network at http://mixuk07.underconstructionman.com.

If you’re going I should be hanging out in the Community Lounge when I’m not in sessions so come and say hello.

Technorati Tags: MIX:UK 07, MIX

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Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at 7:20 PM
Categories: Events
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.NET Internationalization: Longest Review Ever!

On the first annversary of the release of .NET Internationalization Craig Murphy has finished his new epic: a review of .NET Internationalization. Craig wins the award for "Longest Review Ever" and you’d have to reprint the whole book to get a longer review than this. Never before in the field of human reviews has so much been written about a book by so few. Thanks, Craig, a supreme effort. And thanks also to your family for letting you take the book on holiday too.

And he gave it 4.5 out of 5 so I’m still chuffed.

Technorati Tags: .NET Internationalization, Craig Murphy, Internationalization

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Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Monday, August 13, 2007 at 3:20 PM
Categories: .NET Internationalization Book
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4 User Groups In 4 Days

One of the problems with living in the South West of England is that it is no where near the North East of England and Scotland. I’ve been wanting to speak at user groups in this area for some time but it is fairly impractical to travel this distance for one meeting. So the solution is to do a tour: 4 User Groups In 4 Days (hopefully the name says it all). I’m really excited about this; I get to go to 4 user groups that I’ve wanted to go to for some time and see 4 communities and spend time talking to them and seeing how they run their communities. And I get to catch up with user group leaders Andy Westgarth, Gary Short, Colin Mackay, John Thompson, Craig Murphy and Phil Winstanley. Like I say I’m looking forward to it. Here’s the schedule:-

  1. Monday 1st October - VBUG (Newcastle) - Subjects: Astoria and Visual Studio 2005 IDE Tips And Tricks
  2. Tuesday 2nd October - North East Of Scotland User Group (Dundee) - Subject: Visual Studio 2005 IDE Tips And Tricks
  3. Wednesday 3rd October - Scottish Developers (Glasgow) - Subjects: Astoria and Using ClickOnce and XBAPs To Deploy Windows Forms and WPF Applications
  4. Thursday 4th October - VBUG (Manchester) - Subject: Astoria
Here are the abstracts:-

  • Microsoft Codename "Astoria"
    The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies has brought new opportunities and caused us to solve old problems in new ways. AJAX and SilverLight applications need read/write access to data and business objects without performing full page refreshes and without dumbing down the data so much we are just left with primitives. Microsoft’s answer to this problem is Microsoft Codename "Astoria". In short "Astoria" is a data access layer for client-size technologies such as AJAX and SilverLight. This session shows how it works, how you can write "Astoria" data servers and how you can customize "Astoria" to your applications requirements.
  • Visual Studio 2005 IDE Tips and Tricks
    Visual Studio is a treasure trove of functionality and productivity. The problem is that many developers don’t know what’s there. In this session we will cover some simple and not so simple tips and tricks and improve your productivity and enjoyment of Visual Studio 2005.
  • Using ClickOnce and XBAPs To Deploy Windows Forms and WPF Applications
    ClickOnce provides the ease of web form deployment for Windows Forms applications. The same technology is used in XAML Browser Applications (XBAPs) which are Windows Presentation Foundation applications that are hosted in a browser. This session introduces the ClickOnce technology and demonstrates its use in many scenarios including: zero touch deployment, one touch deployment, reversion to previous versions, uninstallation. We also cover deploying WPF applications through the browser (known as XBAPs) and illustrate the similarities and differences between XBAPs, MSI-deployed WPF applications and Windows Forms applications deployed using ClickOnce. This session represents an opportunity to understand how to get the ease of web deployment together with richness of Windows Forms or WPF.
Technorati Tags: Andy Westgarth, Gary Short, Colin Mackay, John Thompson, Craig Murphy, Phil Winstanley, VBUG, VBUG Newcastle, North East Of Scotland User Group,

Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Friday, August 10, 2007 at 1:29 PM
Categories: Events
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VBUG Chairman and Vice-Chairman Elected

Congratulations to Andy Westgarth and Tim Leung who have just been elected as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively of VBUG for the next two years. Well done, guys, you will do an excellent job. I look forward to seeing the effect you have on VBUG.

Technorati Tags: VBUG, Andy Westgarth, Tim Leung

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Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Monday, August 06, 2007 at 9:16 PM
Categories: Miscellaneous - Other
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Love Word ? Hate Word 2007 ?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am unhappy with Word 2007’s new and improved user interface. In short I lost all of my commands. I blogged about solutions to this problem before. As a different approach to this problem you could of course try to use the new and improved user interface instead of working out ways of avoiding it. With this in mind here’s an idiot’s guide video on how the ribbon works. It is certainly aimed at the hard of thinking but I found it useful. One quick tip: if you find marketing hype and false enthusiasm difficult to stomach bring a bucket.

Technorati Tags: Word, Word 2007, Office, Office 2007

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Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Monday, August 06, 2007 at 9:10 PM
Categories: Miscellaneous - Technical
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Preserving Windows Forms resx Comments

One of the problems with auto-generated files is that if you make changes to them then your changes are lost the next time the file is re-generated. This happens with resx files for localized Windows Forms. If you set Form.Localizable to true and then edit the resx file directly then the next time Visual Studio rebuilds the resx file your changes are lost. One reason why you might want to edit the resx file is to add comments to the entries but obviously these comments will be lost. In fairness to Visual Studio a clear and strong warning is given when you attempt to edit a form’s resx file directly so it is difficult to make this mistake accidentally. However, the question remains "what if you wanted to preserve your comments between rebuilds of the resx file ?" This is achievable using the CopyComments method shown below. This method accepts an input resx and an output resx and copies the comments from the input resx to corresponding entries in the output resx. The idea is that prior to allowing Visual Studio to rebuild the resx file you take a copy of it. After Visual Studio has rebuilt the resx file (and the comments have been lost) you run this utility to copy the comments back into the ’main’ resx file.

public static Boolean CopyComments(string inputResX, string outputResX)
{
bool changesMade = false;

// populate a Hashtable containing the DataNodes in the output file
Hashtable output = new Hashtable();
using (ResXResourceReader reader = new ResXResourceReader(outputResX))
{
reader.UseResXDataNodes = true;
IEnumerator enumerator = reader.GetEnumerator();
while (enumerator.MoveNext())
{
DictionaryEntry entry = (DictionaryEntry)enumerator.Current;

ResXDataNode dataNode = (ResXDataNode)entry.Value;
output.Add(dataNode.Name, dataNode);
}
}

// search the Hashtable for equivalent DataNodes in the input file
using (ResXResourceReader reader = new ResXResourceReader(inputResX))
{
reader.UseResXDataNodes = true;
IEnumerator enumerator = reader.GetEnumerator();
while (enumerator.MoveNext())
{
DictionaryEntry entry = (DictionaryEntry)enumerator.Current;

ResXDataNode inputDataNode = (ResXDataNode)entry.Value;

if (output.ContainsKey(inputDataNode.Name))
{
ResXDataNode outputDataNode = (ResXDataNode)output[inputDataNode.Name];
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(inputDataNode.Comment) &&
outputDataNode.Comment != inputDataNode.Comment)
{
// update the output resx’s comments with the input resx’s comments
outputDataNode.Comment = inputDataNode.Comment;
changesMade = true;
}
}
}
}
if (changesMade)
{
// write the changes back to the output file
using (ResXResourceWriter writer = new ResXResourceWriter(outputResX))
{
foreach (DictionaryEntry entry in output)
{
writer.AddResource(entry.Key.ToString(), entry.Value);
}
writer.Generate();
writer.Close();
}
}

return changesMade;
}
}

Technorati Tags: Internationalization, Windows Forms,

Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Monday, August 06, 2007 at 9:05 PM
Categories: Internationalization
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Win a ticket to TechEd Developers with NxtGenUG and Microsoft

NxtGenUG is offering one lucky winner a ticket to Microsoft’s premier European developer conference : TechEd Developers in Barcelona : November 5th to 9th 2007. To be in with a chance to win the ticket register on the NxtGenUG site and enter the TechEd ticket treasure hunt. [Terms and conditions apply]. Visit the NxtGenUG TechEd home page for more details.

Technorati Tags: TechEd, TechEd Developers, TechEd Europe, NxtGenUG

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Posted by: Guy Smith-Ferrier
Posted on: Wednesday, August 01, 2007 at 9:40 PM
Categories: Events
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