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• Google Chrome: First impressions (and a few benchmarks)

  Google have released a downloadable version of their new Chrome browser. It looks good, seems solid and is really, really fast. I put together some benchmarks about how it compares against Internet Explorer 7. Read More... Posted 02 September 2008 22:13 by john.rayner | 6 Comments Filed under: Google Chrome

• ReSharper 4.0 from JetBrains is released

  The JetBrains team have been working hard at getting functionality and bug fixes into version 4.0 of ReSharper. I'm very excited to see that it's finally reached RTM status and now fully supports Visual Studio 2008 and all the C# 3.0 goodness! Go get Read More... Posted 09 June 2008 23:17 by john.rayner | 0 Comments Filed under: Development practices, Engineering practices, Visual Studio, C#, .Net

• Design-time perf improvements in Visual Studio 2008

  Some metrics that we captured on my project: (I think the numbers speak for themselves) Operation VS 2005 VS 2008 % Improvement Start the IDE 00:30 00:09 70% Load solution 03:45 00:45 80% Get Latest (no changes) 00:13 00:05 62% Rebuild solution 02:21 Read More... Posted 28 January 2008 16:00 by john.rayner | 12 Comments Filed under: Development practices, Engineering practices, Visual Studio

• Altnetconf UK: First round of registration is closed

  Registration to the first ALT.Net UK conference was recently announced by Michelle . Unfortunately it's already full, so if you're name isn't on the participants list of people who have registered then I'm afraid you're a bit late Read More... Posted 03 January 2008 22:20 by john.rayner | 2 Comments Filed under: ALT.Net, altnetconf

• Exploring quality in software architecture

  Strength, utility and beauty. Here we will be exploring a number of the traditional “ilities” of software architecture and seeing how they can be related to these three architectural qualities. Read More... Posted 19 October 2007 00:39 by john.rayner | 1 Comments Filed under: Technical Architect Role, Architecture

• What makes a good (software) architecture

  Lately I've been investigating software architecture with regard to how it can impact on an agile development project. I recently read ( here ) a very short list that resonated really powerfully with me and describes key architectural virtues (explanations Read More... Posted 11 September 2007 23:30 by john.rayner | 2 Comments Filed under: Technical Architect Role, Architecture

• SAPI: Speech synthesis on Vista

  The MIX07 Keynote includes a brief screen capture from the Daily Mail eReader and reminded me that I had meant to blog about the speech synthesis portion of the app. It's something which many users might not have seen, because it's only available Read More... Posted 10 May 2007 01:11 by john.rayner | 0 Comments Filed under: WPF, SAPI, Vista, TTS

• MOSS: Error "The handle is invalid" when starting Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) Search service

  If you attempt to start Windows SharePoint Services Search service and receive the following message: Try modifying the Log On Identity of the service. In my case, it was setup to log on as "Local Service". After I changed this to "Local Read More... Posted 16 February 2007 09:22 by john.rayner | 1 Comments Filed under: MOSS, WSS3

• TFS: Automating unit tests as part of the Team Build

  In my new project, we're using Team Foundation Server (TFS) as our source code repository and also as our continuous integration (CI) engine. The CI aspect is handled neatly by Automaton which leaves me to setup the build process (or the Team Build Read More... Posted 13 February 2007 15:42 by john.rayner | 0 Comments Filed under: Continuous integration, Continuous build, Engineering practices, TFS, Team Foundation Server

• MOSS: Programmatically modifying a shared webpart

  On my current project, we create SharePoint sites in response to calls to a particular webservice and there is one site per domain entity. In this webservice, there is a certain amount of customisation of the site homepage which needs to be done. In particular, Read More... Posted 22 January 2007 13:07 by john.rayner | 0 Comments Filed under: MOSS, WSS3

• MOSS: Custom commands for the stsadm.exe utility

  I'm doing some work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and I recently discovered that with MOSS (and WSS v3) the administration utility is extensible. Stsadm.exe is something that I have a love-hate relationship with, but it's interesting Read More... Posted 22 January 2007 09:18 by john.rayner | 0 Comments Filed under: MOSS, Installers, MSI, Deployment, WSS3

• WPF/E: A glass button

  A round glass button written for WPF/E and implemented in XAML and JavaScript. Feel free to download this and use it however you like. Read More... Posted 22 December 2006 00:19 by john.rayner | 4 Comments Filed under: WPFE, WPF/E, Silverlight Attachment(s): glass.zip

• WPF/E: Running side-by-side with WPF Designer (a.k.a "Cider")

  There are two main ways to develop WPF/E within Visual Studio 2005 - one is to edit the XAML in the XML Editor, and the other is to use Cider, the XAML WPF designer . There are pros and cons to each approach, and some configuration for each. Using Cider Read More... Posted 08 December 2006 14:00 by john.rayner | 5 Comments Filed under: Development practices, WPFE, WPF/E, Silverlight

• WPF/E: Setting up your workstation for development

  So you've installed the WPF/E runtime and played with a few samples . You've probably also installed the WPF/E SDK and opened up some of the sample source code . What next? Write your own WPF/E code, of course! Adam Kinney has posted a video on Read More... Posted 05 December 2006 13:47 by john.rayner | 12 Comments Filed under: WPFE, WPF/E, Visual Studio, Visual Studio project templates, Silverlight Attachment(s): WPFEJSApplication.zip

• WPF/E: Only HTTP locations work by default

  Trying out some of the WPF/E samples, I noticed some rather odd behaviour. I loaded a sample directly off my file system and was rewarded with a blank security and a notice that Internet Explorer was blocking some active content. I then setup a virtual Read More... Posted 05 December 2006 09:28 by john.rayner | 5 Comments Filed under: Deployment, WPFE, WPF/E, Silverlight