The Grid is by far the most useful, powerful and general purpose layout tool in Avalon. As a demonstration of that, Amir Khella, a Microsoft PM on an Avalon-related team, plays with the Grid to build a fish eye effect, duplicating the behavior of the scaling OSX toolbar with 8 lines of C# code. He then goes on to implement the trick in 2D to scale images as you mouse around. Cool stuff.

Scott Guthrie says:

“What we’ve set out to do is to make it dramatically easier for anyone to build AJAX-style web applications that deliver rich, interactive, and personalized experiences. Developers should be able to build these applications without great expertise in client scripting; they should be able to integrate their browser UI seamlessly with the rest of their applications; and they should be able to develop and debug these applications with ease.

“For this work, we’ve been working on a new project on our team, codenamed ‘Atlas.’ Our goal is to produce a developer preview release on top of ASP.NET 2.0 for the PDC this September, and then have a website where we can keep updating the core bits, publishing samples, and building an active community around it.

Then Scott says:

“We see Atlas as the best way to write a whole new generation of richer, more interactive, more personalized experiences in browser applications.  Avalon is the next generation presentation model for Microsoft, and will let you build the richest user experiences on the Windows platform. Avalon will deliver phenomenal graphical experiences that use the latest in media integration and hardware acceleration. And Avalon will also let you provide persistent, immersive experiences that go beyond the browser.

“Of course, when you’re building Avalon applications, you can reuse the programming model investments you make today with ASP.NET and Atlas. For example, the ASP.Net Building Block Services and Client Building Block Services will also be accessible from any Avalon client. This model gives you a smooth path to the next generation of applications.”

And then I say:

“Cool!”

You have to stand on one foot, wait for 48 hours and wave a dead chicken over your monitor, but assuming you have the foot and the dead chicken, it don't cost nothin' to download the latest beta of Monad. Enjoy.

If I were doing AJAX work in ASP.NET, Ajax.NET is the kind of thing I'd want to use.

This is fabulous! Let me give you a taste:

“We use words like L2, swaps, and working set. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline.”

I saw code that looked like this today:

class Class1 {
  static void Foo(object @this) {
    Console.WriteLine(@this);
  }

  static void Main(string[] args) {
    Foo(“hi”);
  }
}

It freaked me out, but it’s completely legal and kinda cool…

Congrats to the VC++ 2005 team for a write-up like this!

“The truth is that this new development in C++ seriously undermines the justification for C# as a language. C++ programmers yet to learn C# simply don’t need to now. What’s the point? They will find the full productivity of Visual Studio 2005 right there at their fingertips supporting the language they know and love. Why should they move to something that is slower and less feature rich?”

He goes on with choice words about those of us that use C# as either “poor folk who have already invested time in it,” “Java types moving to .NET and smart enough to avoid J#” or “dev-celebs and style gurus will realize that it’s in their interest to keep pushing the C# fashion wagon.” I don’t know which camp I fall into, but I love the phrase “dev-celeb!” : )

I remember being in a conference room many years ago with about 10 members of the VC++ team on one side of the table and me on the other with them drilling me for about an hour on what would it take for me to love C++ and give up C#. I asked for the power and performance of C++ and the simplicity of C#. According to The Grumpy Programmer, they’ve not only delivered on this promise, but

“the painful, balls-on-the-table truth is that C# has lost its point.”

Luckily, no one asked me to put any of my body parts on the conference table that day, but you gotta love a guy that can turn a phrase like that. : )

Apparently in Whidbey, “dumpbin” (and some other tools that were merely wrappers around link) has been dumped. To get to it now, do “link -dump -dumpbin_options” e.g. “link -dump -exports” does what “dumpbin -exports” used to do. In fact, if you just do “link -dump” the usage you get is labeled as the dumpbin usage. : )

BTW, it looks like “lib,” while still there, is also “link -lib” and “editbin” becomes “link -edit.”

[via Brent Rector]