Now available on MSDN subscriber downloads: Visual Studio Beta 1 Refresh with Visual Studio 2005 Team System

Thankfully, I just created a base image for my Virtual PC instances. Unfortunately, however, Virtual PC still seems to have issues mounting DVD ISOs. Hopefully theres a hotfix for that soon. Ironically enough, VMWare seems to handle the ISOs just fine. Go figure…

Christopher Hawkins has another great article online talking about how professionalism means saying “No” sometimes.

This article is about sometimes having to say no to maintain a release schedule. Christopher talks about his experience with a client, and how it played out. Also, he cites Bill Gates in relation to the recent well-publicized Longhorn cuts. Only time will tell how that plays out.

My opinion: People dont remember if you ship late. They do, however, remember if you ship crap.

There have been some questions about how the pop-up blocker included with IE6.0 in XP SP2 works.

Jeff Davis has a post that talks about what constitutes a “user initiated action” and what you will want to look for to make sure your app still works.

*Q:* Why does IE6 + XP SP2 block new windows launched from my onMouseDown handler?
*A:* We wanted Pop-up Blocker to allow new windows launched as a result of a user initiated action. We defined ‘user initiated action’ as a click (or keypress). A click is a mouseDown followed by a mouseUp. So you can launch user initiated windows from an onMouseUp or onClick handler, but not a MouseDown handler.

Whether we like it or not, popup windows are a necessity for some web functionality. For example, one project that Im working on uses popup windows to display definitions. It would really take away alot of the user experience to display these definitions in the regular content window.

The drawback with the implementations of popups is how cluttered up your code typically gets with target and onclick attributes. This is a drawback no more… I just stumbled across the cleanest, simplest and most elegant way of doing popups, bar none…

Absolutely stellar technique, and Im looking forward to implementing it…

Earlier tonight, I finally finished downloading Fedora Core 2, which is the latest version of Linux from the Redhat group.

I created a VM for this and followed the directions available here to actually get XWindows running inside of VMWare (which I had to use, since VPC appears to have issues with Linux). I do hope that Microsoft decides to fix this in a future release, or I feel that I will end up moving to VMWare. But, I digress…

One of the things that I wanted to do for a long time was play around with Mono, which is a .NET implementation for Linux. I followed the directions available here to get Mono installed and configured.

I’m quite pleased to report that I have successfully compiled and executed a C# program on Linux. Cross platform capabilities appear to be here.

I was also successfully able to install and run Monodoc (which demonstrates the Gtk# capabilities). I assume that Gtk# is the implementation of System.Windows.Forms. Also, I was able to get XSP up and running, which is a simple web server written in C# that can be used to run your ASP.NET applications.

In the next little while, I want to work through a little bit more of the framework to see how System.Windows.Forms and System.Web are implemented throughout Mono.

You know, it just seems like yesterday when my daughter, Sierra, was born. That was August 16, 1999. This morning, five years later, I had the opportunity to walk Sierra into her very first kindergarten class.

There was a little bit of separation anxiety on her part. Mostly, I think she was just nervous about all the new kids. However, she found one of her friends from ballet class and off she went. I’m really proud of her and am looking forward to watching her progress through her education.

I’ll tell you what, it sure makes you feel old as your kids grow up…

Google yesterday released the first beta of the Gmail Notifier, which is an application that sits in your system tray to let you know if you have unread messages, and shows you their subjects without opening a web browser.

The Gmail notifier can also register your Gmail address as the default address when you use mailto style links.

I’ve tried to install it, but so far have not had any luck getting this to run on my non-administrative account.

Suggestions would be greatly welcomed… :=)

Léon Andrianarivony has a spectacular poster that details the ASP.NET 2.0 page lifecycle. I know I’m going to print this and hang it on my wall.

Bertrand Le Roy has an excellent introduction to injection attacks.

If you’re doing web development and don’t know what an injection attack is or how to prevent them, you have got to read this.

Most people would bond with their children with an afternoon at the park, playing baseball in the backyard, amongst other things.

However, if you’re Andrea Wilkey from Indianapolis, you bond with your five year old son by sharing your crack pipe with him.

The mother said she then used a lighter to ignite the crack cocaine, turning off the lighter after she saw smoke coming from her son’s mouth.

How about this classic quote from the prosecutor?

“Sharing a crack pipe with your 5-year-old is no way to bond,” he said.

What an absolutely horrifying story. The thing that gets me too is that her bond is only $25,000, which actually implies that she’ll be getting out of jail at some point in the future. In my opinion, this woman needs the electric chair.