August 29th Links: .NET, ASP.NET, IIS Express, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7

Here is the latest in my link-listing series.  Also check out my VS 2010 and .NET 4 series and ASP.NET MVC 2 series for other on-going blog series I’m working on.

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

.NET/WPF/EF

• 5 Little C#/.NET Wonders that Make Code Better: Nice blog post from James that highlights 5 nice language/framework tips you can take advantage of within your apps.  I’m betting a lot of people didn’t know about the StopWatch class.

• WPF Ribbon Control Released: The WPF team recently released the final V1 release of the WPF Ribbon control.  This makes it easy to build ribbon-based applications. Also read this WPF team blog post for lots of great details on what it enables.

• EF4 .Include() Method w/ Lambda Support: Ever wanted to use a Lambda expression instead of a string parameter when eagerly loading associations in EF4 using the Include() method?  This blog post shows you how you can.

ASP.NET

• Performance Tuning tricks for ASP.NET and IIS7 Part 1 and Part 2: Mads has a nice set of posts that detail some great performance optimization tips you can use with ASP.NET and IIS7.

• Better ViewState Management in ASP.NET 4 with the ViewStateMode Property: Scott Mitchell has a good article that discusses the new ViewStateMode property supported on ASP.NET 4 controls. This provides much more control over how viewstate is used within a page.

• Filtering Data using ASP.NET 4’s QueryExtender Control: Scott Mitchell has a nice article that talks about the new <asp:QueryExtender> control in ASP.NET 4 that makes enabling dynamic querying against a LinqDataSource or EntityDataSource really easy.

• Techniques to Avoid Duplicate URLs: Scott Mitchell has another great article that discusses techniques you can use within ASP.NET to avoid exposing duplicate URLs to the same content within your web-sites.  These can help improve your search engine traffic.

• Automatically pre-populate fields for Insert in ASP.NET 4: Scott Hunter has a nice blog post that discusses how to specify default values for insert with data controls in ASP.NET 4.

ASP.NET MVC

• MvcContrib Template Gallery: Download 58 pre-built ASP.NET MVC Template Gallery styles that you can use to customize the look and feel of your applications. All available under a Community Commons license.

• Step into the ASP.NET MVC Source Code with the VS Debugger: Nice blog post by Gunnar that describes how to use VS 2010’s built-in symbol server support to enable you to step into the ASP.NET MVC Framework source code when debugging.

• Installation Options for ASP.NET MVC: Jon has a good post that describes how to install ASP.NET MVC 2 on a server. There are a couple of options you can use for servers that don’t already have ASP.NET MVC installed – the easiest is to just enable the “Copy Local” flag on System.Web.Mvc.dll and install it in the \bin directory.

IIS Developer Express

• Visual Studio Support for IIS Express, SQL 4 Compact Edition, and Razor syntax: Channel 9 video with Damian Edwards and Scott Hanselman that discusses the support coming to enable IIS Express, SQL 4 CE, and Razor syntax support within Visual Studio 2010.

• How to Use IIS Express with VS today: Kamran has a nice blog post that describes how you can use IIS Express with Visual Studio today – without having to wait for the official Visual Studio patch to enable it.

Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

• Developers Roadmap for Windows Phone 7: The Windows Phone 7 team blogs about the release timeframe for Windows Phone 7 and the Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools for targeting it.  The official developer release will be on September 16th.

• Windows Phone 7 in 7 Minutes: Really nice set of 7 minute videos that enable you to quickly understand and learn Windows Phone 7 and the development fundamentals behind it.

• Windows Phone 7 Jumpstart Training: Nice list of free training sessions you can watch online to learn how to build Windows Phone 7 applications using Silverlight and XNA.

• Silverlight Panorama and Pivot Controls for Windows Phone 7: Jeff has a great post that discusses the awesome new Panorama and Pivot controls for Silverlight that will be part of the final Windows Phone 7 developer release.

• Using XNA from Silverlight on Windows Phone 7: Good blog post from Mike that demonstrates how to use XNA APIs from Silverlight applications on Windows Phone 7.  This post demonstrates how to use the XNA audio framework from Silverlight.

• Creating High Performance Silverlight Applications for Windows Phone 7: This is a great whitepaper written by my team that discusses best practices for building Silverlight applications that run well on Windows Phone 7.

• Performance of Silverlight on Windows Phone 7: A nice podcast with Scott Hanselman that discusses tips and techniques to enable smooth applications and great experiences on Windows Phone 7.

Book Recommendation

People often ask me for .NET book recommendations. Below is one book I always keep close by and find super-useful.  If you are looking for a good one-volume C# and .NET Base Class Library reference, C# 4.0 in a Nutshell a great one:

Hope this helps,

Scott