Saturday, January 01, 2011

2010 has been a busy blogging year for me (this is the 100th blog post I’ve done in 2010).  Several people this week suggested I put together a summary post listing/organizing my favorite posts from the year. 

Below is a quick listing of some of my favorite posts organized by topic area:

VS 2010 and .NET 4

Below is a series of posts I wrote (some in late 2009) about the VS 2010 and .NET 4 (including ASP.NET 4 and WPF 4) release we shipped in April:

• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Released
• Clean Web.Config Files
• Starter Project Templates
• Multi-targeting
• Multiple Monitor Support
• New Code Focused Web Profile Option
• HTML / ASP.NET / JavaScript Code Snippets
• Auto-Start ASP.NET Applications
• URL Routing with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms
• Searching and Navigating Code in VS 2010
• VS 2010 Code Intellisense Improvements
• WPF 4
• Add Reference Dialog Improvements
• SEO Improvements with ASP.NET 4
• Output Cache Extensibility with ASP.NET 4
• Built-in Charting Controls for ASP.NET and Windows Forms
• Cleaner HTML Markup with ASP.NET 4 - Client IDs
• Optional Parameters and Named Arguments in C# 4 - and a cool scenarios with ASP.NET MVC 2
• Automatic Properties, Collection Initializers and Implicit Line Continuation Support with VB 2010
• New <%: %> Syntax for HTML Encoding Output using ASP.NET 4
• JavaScript Intellisense Improvements with VS 2010
• VS 2010 Debugger Improvements (DataTips, BreakPoints, Import/Export)
• Box Selection and Multi-line Editing Support with VS 2010
• VS 2010 Extension Manager (and the cool new PowerCommands Extension)
• Pinning Projects and Solutions
• VS 2010 Web Deployment
• Debugging Tips/Tricks with Visual Studio
• Search and Navigation Tips/Tricks with Visual Studio

Visual Studio

Below are some additional Visual Studio posts I’ve done (not in the first series above) that I thought were nice:

• Download and Share Visual Studio Color Schemes
• Visual Studio 2010 Keyboard Shortcuts
• VS 2010 Productivity Power Tools
• Fun Visual Studio 2010 Wallpapers

Silverlight

We shipped Silverlight 4 in April, and announced Silverlight 5 the beginning of December:

• Silverlight 4 Released
• Silverlight 4 Tools for VS 2010 and WCF RIA Services Released
• Silverlight 4 Training Kit
• Silverlight PivotViewer Now Available
• Silverlight Questions
• Announcing Silverlight 5

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7

We shipped Windows Phone 7 this fall and shipped free Visual Studio development tools with great Silverlight and XNA support in September:

• Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Released
• Building a Windows Phone 7 Twitter Application using Silverlight

ASP.NET MVC

We shipped ASP.NET MVC 2 in March, and started previewing ASP.NET MVC 3 this summer.  ASP.NET MVC 3 will RTM in less than 2 weeks from today:

• ASP.NET MVC 2: Strongly Typed Html Helpers
• ASP.NET MVC 2: Model Validation
• Introducing ASP.NET MVC 3 (Preview 1)
• Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 Beta and NuGet (nee NuPack)
• Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate 1 
• Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate 2
• Introducing Razor – A New View Engine for ASP.NET
• ASP.NET MVC 3: Layouts with Razor
• ASP.NET MVC 3: New @model keyword in Razor
• ASP.NET MVC 3: Server-Side Comments with Razor
• ASP.NET MVC 3: Razor’s @: and <text> syntax
• ASP.NET MVC 3: Implicit and Explicit code nuggets with Razor
• ASP.NET MVC 3: Layouts and Sections with Razor

IIS and Web Server Stack

The IIS and Web Stack teams have made a bunch of great improvements to the core web server this year:

• Fix Common SEO Problems using the URL Rewrite Extension
• Introducing the Microsoft Web Farm Framework
• Automating Deployment with Microsoft Web Deploy
• Introducing IIS Express
• SQL CE 4 (New Embedded Database Support with ASP.NET)
• Introducing Web Matrix

EF Code First

EF Code First is a really nice new data option that enables a very clean code-oriented data workflow:

• Announcing Entity Framework Code-First CTP5 Release
• Class-Level Model Validation with EF Code First and ASP.NET MVC 3
• Code-First Development with Entity Framework 4
• EF 4 Code First: Custom Database Schema Mapping
• Using EF Code First with an Existing Database

jQuery and AJAX Contributions

My team began making some significant source code contributions to the jQuery project this year:

• jQuery Templates, Data Link and Globalization Accepted as Official jQuery Plugins
• jQuery Templates and Data Linking (and Microsoft contributing to jQuery)
• jQuery Globalization Plugin from Microsoft

Patches and Hot Fixes

Some useful fixes you can download prior to VS 2010 SP1:

• Patch for Cut/Copy “Insufficient Memory” issue with VS 2010
• Patch for VS 2010 Find and Replace Dialog Growing
• Patch for VS 2010 Scrolling Context Menu

Videos of My Talks

Some recordings of technical talks I’ve done this year:

• ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET MVC, and Silverlight 4 Talks I did in Europe
• VS 2010 and ASP.NET 4 Web Forms Talk in Arizona

Other

• About Technical Debates (and ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC debates in particular)
• ASP.NET Security Fix Now on Windows Update
• Upcoming Web Camps

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who follows my blog – I really appreciate you reading it (the comments you post help encourage me to write it). 

See you in the New Year!

Scott

P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu