The Model View Controller (MVC) architecture is valued for its enforced separation
of concerns in development. In Web development, MVC breaks apps into interfaces
(views), business logic (models) and a controller that moderates the traffic
flow. This approach is hugely useful for enterprise-scale development, where
code maintenance and unit-level QA become paramount.
The MVC architecture has long been used in Web app frameworks like Ruby on
Rails and Apache Struts. Now, Microsoft is pushing ASP.NET Web application development
in the direction of MVC, with the release of the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/12/20072 comments
As
RDN
Industry Editor Barbara Darrow
reported
last week
, the
Microsoft
Professional Developers Conference (PDC)
is back on the schedule, after
being postponed from its October 2007 date. The conference is now scheduled
for Oct. 27-30, 2008 in Los Angeles.
The announcement comes a week or so after Microsoft announced a delay for another
developer-centric show: the popular WinHEC hardware engineering confab. WinHEC
has been pushed back six months to the fall of 2008. Microsoft has yet to determine
the exact date and location.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/12/20072 comments
We're looking to get a jump on 2008 by asking folks what they expect to see
happen in the year to come. Do you have a forward-looking opinion, perspective,
insight or rant you'd like to share? Shoot me an e-mail at
[email protected]
,
and your New Year's prognostication could end up published in the January issue
of
Redmond Developer News
(and if we publish your take, you'll even win
a T-shirt).
Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/12/20072 comments
It's a well-worn cycle. Microsoft talks about an exciting new development technology
that promises to be the Best Thing Ever (BTE). Microsoft ships the technology,
but takes months to get the tooling out, so coders forget about it and move
on to another BTE. Then the tooling finally emerges, and coders quickly learn
that the BTE is really hard to use.
That cycle is about to replay itself with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF),
the exciting new graphics subsystem that relies on Extensible Application Markup
Language (XAML) to express application interfaces and graphics. While WPF and
XAML let you do all sorts of exciting things -- like mixed 3-D and 2-D graphics
and animation without crushing complexity -- there's a catch.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/05/20070 comments
We all know how crazy 2007 has been, with an absolute flood of Microsoft technologies
reaching developers this year. What's really interesting is that 2008 could
be more disruptive still.
Our question for you is, what do you think is coming in 2008? Will dev shops
actually begin coding for WPF and XAML, now that Visual Studio 2008 and the
relevant WPF tooling is finally here? Can we expect more companies to commit
to Windows Mobile development in an era of opened access to providers' wireless
networks? And will Visual Studio 2008, and the forthcoming Rosario Team System
update, earn the attention of corporate dev shops right out of the gate?
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 12/05/20071 comments
Lately, when it comes to discussing .NET and other key platform innovations
at Microsoft, I've taken to using a building analogy. For over a year, Microsoft
has been rolling out one fantastic, new platform technology after the next,
but has failed to produce mature tooling to support it. It's as if Redmond had
built a shining skyscraper that towers over the existing skyline, and never
installed the elevators.
You want to enjoy the sweeping views? You had to walk the steps. Or, in the
case of .NET 3.0, you had to hand-write the XAML code.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/28/20070 comments
This week, news broke that Verizon Wireless, the nation's second-largest wireless
network provider, would
open
its network to third-party devices and applications
. The move was a major
shift for the telecommunications giant, which -- like other major telcom players
-- has jealously restricted access to its network.
Why the change? In a word: Google.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/28/20070 comments
Back
in May
, we reported on the surprising postponement/cancellation of the Microsoft
Professional Developers Conference (PDC), which had been slated to take place
in Los Angeles in October. Microsoft at the time stated that the change was
due to the fact that many key bits were already in developers' hands in preview
form. We suspect that the real issue went deeper than a simple scheduling gaffe,
and might have something to do with the slow and uneven progress out of the
Live group over the past 18 months.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/21/20071 comments
It's been three years and a whole lot of betas and CTPs, but the next version
of Microsoft's flagship Visual Studio IDE is finally here. As reported by
RDN
Senior Editor Kathleen Richards, Visual Studio 2008
became
available for download
to MSDN subscribers on Nov. 19.
Every version of Visual Studio, from the freely available Express edition to
the enterprise-oriented Team System version, is addressed with the Visual Studio
2008 launch. VS08 includes numerous features to streamline development, including
visual designers and wizards, and hooks to tap features of the .NET Framework
previously inaccessible to developers.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/21/20072 comments
If you're like me, you've been watching the sluggish rollout of Windows Vista
and wondering about when it might be time to start targeting app development
toward the flagship client OS. By all accounts, Vista sales have lagged behind
expectations. As Redmond Media Group Online News Editor Keith Ward
reported
in an article
for
Redmond
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/14/20070 comments
A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with Sam Hiser, vice president of the OpenDocument
Foundation, a small group dedicated to advancing the industry standard OpenDocument
Format specification. At the time, Hiser's group had very publicly and emphatically
split
from the ODF working group
, complaining that the XML-based spec was hamstrung
by Sun Microsystems and other organizations unwilling to shape ODF into a true,
universal file format.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/14/20070 comments
Scott Guthrie, general manager of the Developer Division at Microsoft, has
been telling us for months that Visual Studio 2008 would arrive in November
of this year. And you know what? I didn't really believe him.
After all, VS08 is a huge upgrade for Redmond's flagship IDE. For the first
time, rank and file developers are actually going to get a chance to work with
all the neat and shiny stuff we've been reporting on for the past year. Stuff
like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the underlying Extensible Application
Markup Language (XAML) for expressing application UIs and Language Integrated
Query (LINQ) for querying data stores from directly within C# or Visual Basic.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/07/20073 comments