Here. At a recent talk at XML Web Services One, Don says that a lot of the plumbing work is winding down and that applications are about to take center stage as they have the basic bits they need to really work well. Of course, he says that we still have a couple more years of plumbing work to "finish up", but Don's a long thinker. : )
Here. "Have you ever wondered what was *really* stored in the view state of your .aspx pages? Well, now you can find out with the free view state decoder utility [1]. Just type in the URL of the page whose view state you would like to decode, and view the contents of the view state through a tree-view, as raw text, or as parsed XML. You can also copy and paste the view state string by hand to decode it. For a screenshot of this utility in action, check out: http://staff.develop.com/onion/images/decoderscreenshot.gif"
I've used this and loved it. It works a treat!
Here. Thanks for the submissions, folks! People reported exhaustion after spending 24 hours rushing to finish their entries, but uniformly thanked me for having them do it (and thus the power of .NET is revealed : ).
The judges are judging and I will the results as soon as I have them.
Here. "I got an email today from David, who says, 'So, I am looking to see what I can do to develop my skills as a designer. The trouble that I have, is simple. Where does a programmer that is over 40 years old, with a good job, and a good family turn to to learn something like this?'"
Here. "There is a common belief among programmers--particularly those disinclined to believe the truth of anything coming out of Redmond--that Windows is full of 'secret functions.' These functions, so the story goes, are used by Microsoft to prevent independent reimplementation of its operating system and to give its own applications programmers an extra advantage. With the August 2002 release of its Platform SDK, Microsoft is complying with the terms of the consent decree it signed with the Department of Justice in November 2001. ... If you are one of the people who harbor suspicions against Microsoft, then you're not likely to be convinced that the recent release has changed anything. For a lot of the rest of us, including shell integration programmers, cryptographers and the terminally curious, the new information is fascinating and potentially useful, although not always as complete as we'd like."
