Seems that NDoc 2.0 project has
ended and at the same time, Microsoft releases the CTP of
SandCastle.
This post (and the previous 2) were written in Microsoft Office Word 2007 Beta 2. This version of Word supports writing blog entries and publishing them to your online blog.
The only thing you need to do is set up a Blog provider that supports the MetaBlog API. For the dotNET6 community we use Community Server 2.0 that has MetaBlog API support by default. Tbh, I did searched a while before I found the right WebService Url within CS to reach the MetaBlog API which is: http://dotnet6.com/blogs/metablog.ashx
Skimming the internet I found some interesting tools and developer items:
Paint.NET, as stated “somewhere between MS Paint and Paint Shop”
A .NET Flash Control: Allows you to add flash support in ASP.NET via this fully functioning Web Control
This week I installed Windows Vista Beta 2 Build 5384 on my Toshiba Tecra M4. Installation went smooth, however not all drivers were found. Vista discovered my NVidia drivers for the GeForce Go 6200 TE graphics card, although these drivers doesn’t seem to support Windows Vista Aero yet.
After some search on the site of NVidia, they seem to provide support for Vista in their ForceWare 88.61 drivers except for the notebook versions like the GeForce Go family as stated in this support posting.
“Mobile GPUs like the GeForce and Quadro use drivers that have been customized to support hot key functions, power management functions, lid closure and suspend/resume behavior that are normally found in notebooks. The reference desktop graphic drivers for Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 that are provided by NVIDIA on our driver downloads page do not include these custom features. For this reason, the NVIDIA Forceware graphics drivers will not install on Geforce and Quadro family of mobile GPUs.
If you need Vista Beta 2 graphics driver for your notebook, please visit the website of your notebook manufacturer and check for availability.”
Searching the Toshiba site, I didn’t found anything, but somehow I expected it. So, the GeForce Go is marked as “Vista Ready” but with yet with no support for Vista Aero.
Edit:
As I continued my search I stumbled upon a site that modifies the Driver Installation process of NVidia. This way, I was able to install NVidia's latest drivers with a modified .INF file.
So, now eventually I'm able to glare at the new glass effects of Aero...
Since ASP.NET 2.0 is by default XHTML oriented, the importance of CSS increases. In a recent post, I described the issue with ASP.NET 2.0 and your HTML coding habbits. Since then I've been looking further into CSS and started learning from sites like these.
Basically as I understand so far (still learning tho), CSS uses Floating for positioning of content. The content itself is described in HTML lists (the <ul> element).
So, armed with this new knowledge, I started a new web project in ASP.NET. So, I dropped a List control on my web page and then... mmh, seems that the List Control is limited in listing only literal text, you can't list for example hyperlinks.
Then I thought, let's use the DataList Control, but this generates a lot more HTML then I wanted and it is unfortunatelly based on HTML Tables.
So, I started writing my own HTML to exactly generate the HTML I wanted to drive my CSS driven site. Since this HTML should be data driven, I used techniques from long time ago (ASP) where I fetched my data and generated the HTML syntax based on that. You can imagine that this is feeling very strange in ASP.NET 2.0 and yes it absolutely is.
A litle later I discovered the Repeater control again, which I haven't been using for a while. I was working a lot more with the DataList and DataGrid/GridView lately but they are completely HTML Table driven (as far as I know). However, the DataRepeater offers more control on the generated HTML than the other two.
In this article on MSDN magazine you can learn how to use the Repeater control. It also shows how to extend the List Controls to create for example a list of hyperlinks.
Conclusion
ASP.NET is very flexible and extensible. Lucky for us otherwise we would have to go back to ASP style coding. However, I have the impression that it requires much more attention and effort to create exactly the HTML required for todays sites that should rely heavily on CSS due to the XHMTL character of ASP.NET 2.0.