Earlier this month I blogged that Microsoft will be closing their public newsgroups. So, as a VFP developer, where do you go? First, there are any number of forums for you. The best known are Universal Thread and Foxite, but there is also FoxForum, StackOverflow, and others. But what if you don’t like forums? Good news! The fine folks over at Vulcan.NET, a great xBase alternative, have opened a Visual FoxPro support forum on their news server. Check it out at news://news1.cavo.com.
Microsoft
Microsoft to close support newsgroups
Beginning next month, Microsoft will start closing their support newsgroups in favor of support forums. I think this is a bad idea, but it has been fought by MVPs for sometime, the decision is made and can’t be changed. Microsoft claims this to be a good thing, but the biggest problem is that the URL for their support forums has the word “social” in it. Many companies block anything “social”. This means that those companies will no longer be able to get online support from Microsoft. If you participate in any public Microsoft forums, you should begin transitioning now. Microsoft says that newsgroups with the least amount of traffic is move first. I read this to mean that newsgroups related to FoxPro will be among the first. The Microsoft FoxPro forum can be found here. Read the announcement here.
Two Microsoft Events Coming to Salt Lake City
Microsoft has scheduled two events in Salt Lake City in May.
The first is XAMLFest, coming up on May 1
Are you excited about the WPF but concerned about the learning curve? Have you seen Silverlight but don’t know where to get started? Or are you curious about how tools like Visual Studio and Expression Blend help designers and developers work together to deliver great user experiences? If so, join us at XamlFest! XamlFest is an interactive event where you’ll learn about the platforms, tools, and processes used to deliver differentiated user experiences. It’s a chance for you to mingle with UX-minded Microsoft folks. To register, please send an e-mail with the names and e-mail addresses of your attendees to xamlfest-slc@live.com. Come as you are – leave xamlized!
The second is MDSN Unleashed Presents: The Best of MIX is scheduled for May 6. It will be three different topics offered in two sessions. You only need to sign up for one session and get all three topics for the price of one!
What’s New in Silverlight 3?
Are you interested in building business-focused Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)? Would you like to take advantage of 3D in the browser, but assume it is too hard? Have you wanted to take a Silverlight application offline? Then this session is for you. We will explore and illustrate the new features of Silverlight 3, including the following:
- Support for perspective 3D
- Offline Support
- .NET RIA Services which simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms
Building Web Applications with Windows Azure
This session will begin with a brief overview of Azure and discuss some of the announcements made at MIX. We will then illustrate through demo how to build a Windows Azure application from the ground up. We will illustrate how to consume Azure Table Storage, how to host services, web pages and Silverlight components, as well as how to deploy your solution to the cloud.
MVC 1.0 vs ASP.Net Webforms
Have you heard about the new ASP.NET MVC framework from Microsoft and wondered what it was all about? Are you curious whether this replaces ASP.Net WebForms? Well in this session you will learn how to use the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern to take advantage of your favorite .NET Framework language for writing business logic in a way that is de-coupled from the views of the data. In addition, we will talk about the pros and cons of both MVC and Web Forms, how to determine the best choice for a specific project, various techniques and patterns used to build MVC applications vs. Web Forms applications, and the implications for using each approach.
The morning session is from 8:00 am to 12:00 pm. Register here.
The afternoon session runs from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Register here.
All events are free and will be held at the Microsoft office in the International Center, 123 Wright Brothers Drive, Suite 100.