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The Atlanta Code Camp was today, so I finally got to give my LINQ and O/R Mapping talk that I've been preparing.

I tried to have minimal slides so that I could do a deep dive into real code, but I still went a little too long.  The slides look great on my own PC, and in fact they're mostly some I stole straight from other LINQ presentions.  But the overhead I was using made the text nearly unreadable for some reason, which made me take longer on the slides.  It also made some of the standard VS color syntax unreadable, with the work-around being to select that code.  I small the same problem with another speaker in the same room, so I guess it was the projector, but very frustrating.

In the end I still got to hopefully show a fair amount of LINQ to SQL, but I had really hoped to show more.  I also made sure I gave a glimpse at SqlMetal and LINQ to Entities, but both of those were meant to be just glimpses.  Finally, I briefly demoed my new "real" example application written with LINQ to SQL which is included in my download.  This example shows off my own POCO objects with an external XML Mapping file, instead of the ugly code gen with attributes.  Its also a "real" app that consumes the LINQ to SQL with WinForms grids, drop-down filtering, and create, update, and delete.

Note that it assumes the May 2006 CTP, but I'll update it to the next one when it comes out, hopefully next month.  Its also nearly identical to my existing "real" example app downloads that I have for my own ORMapper and NHibernate.

I"ve just noticed that a new beta version of the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar is available! Not yet final but I like this Web Developer tool. No more toolbar menu in IE but a shortcut button instead, which open the bottom panel, the menu is inside this one now (but I think toolbar will be back again soon, or at least as an option).
Despite all the cool things in it I advise people NOT to install this version as it is far for stable and some features simply crash.
If you still want to try it, don"t forget to uninstall previous beta versions.

What"s new?
Still in beta but it comes with enhancements over previous versions, including:

• Style Tracer: Right mouse click on a style value for an element and select Style Tracer to find the style rule that is effecting that value.
• CSS Selector Matches: View a report of all style rules set and how many times they are used on the current page.
• View Source: View the formatted and syntax colored source of the original page, currently rendered page, element or element with the styles that are effecting it.

What is it?
In case you don"t know this IE extension, here is the official description:

"The Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides a variety of tools for quickly creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages. This version is a preview release and behavior may change in the final release."

What"s cool?
It works with Windows Vista and IE7 (and XP/IE6 too) and add lot"s of great features :

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
• Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
• View HTML object class names, ID"s, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS Web feed links.
• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
• Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
• Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.
• Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element.
• View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS.

Where is it?
You can download this free tool there : 
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

What"s next?
Words from the Microsoft team : "There’s lots more we hope to provide for the developer toolbar in future versions and all your ideas are welcome."
For me the killer feature would be a live CSS replacement panel, like the one in Firefox Web Developer Toolbar, with it you can edit your CSS on-the-fly without the need to edit/save/reload/repeat.
Also a javascript console like the one in Firefox would be welcome.
If you too have feedback or suggestions go to the Developer Toolbar Wiki on Channel 9 :
http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Channel9.InternetExplorerDevToolbar

Can"t wait for the final release!

While I was walking up the slopes with Frans to watch the World Championships Big air qualifications in Arosa, Switzerland during our annual Software Architecture Workshop, we talked about the support for Domain Model patterns in his product LLBLGen Pro. I shared my thoughts on language extensions and in the workshop, both on and offline, there were a lot of discussion on how to support the Domain Model in our languages, frameworks and tools. Mats wrote a very insightful post on Domain Model Management which covers some aspects of our thinking. Why not take this thought one step further? With all the great language innovations in C# 3.0! What about supporting the Domain Model directly in our favorite language. Imagine the compiler being able to validate the implemented Domain Model.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea!

coredomain Transportation
{
  aggregate Car
  {
    ..
  entity Wheel
  {
    ..
  valueobject Position
  {
    ..
  repository CarRepository
  {
    ..
  service FuelTransfer
  {
    ..
subdomain Navigation
{
  ..

Many of you may have seen the recent game of blog tag going on called "5 Things...".  I got tagged by David Walker from Tulsa and so here are some things about me that you probaby don't already know.

1. I was born in Xenia, OH.  Weather fans may remember this as the site of the worst tornado disaster in history.  More than 30 people died, over 1100 people were injured, and over 1000 homes were destroyed by an F5 tornado on April 3 of 1974.  My family however had moved from our home there to the suburbs of Tampa, FL only 2 months before.  The high school my brother attended, the stores my father had owned, and even our house were all flattened.  Talk about dodging a bullet!
2. Along with my various Microsoft certifications, I have a few other that are considerably more interesting.  For example, I have a US Sailing Keelboat certification for up to 44' yachts and have sailed 30'-40' yachts on the Chesapeake Bay, Tampa Bay, San Diego Bay, and Lake Michigan.  Now that I live in Texas, I don't get much of a chance to sail but I still love it and dream of sailing the Caribbean when I retire (or sooner).  I also have a PADI Open Water diver certification.  I haven't done a lot of diving though, but I do have a picture of me getting an underwater kiss face-mashing from a dolphin in Cozumel.
3. I am a graduate of numerous programs from Landmark Education, including the Landmark Forum.  For those of you who haven't heard of Landmark Education, they offer an amazing educational series that opens your eyes to new possibilities for your life.  My current career as a .NET nerd is a direct result of what I learned about myself in these programs. 
4. I met my current wife Susan in a chat room on Match.com.  She mistook me for somebody else she was talking to and started up a conversation.  I read her profile where she listed one of her favorite activities was sailing.  I immediately went back to the chat screen and typed "You like sailing?  Will you marry me?"  The rest as they say, is history.
5. While I travel extensively for conferences and work, I don't like to fly.  What this means is that I have traveled on every major route that Amtrak has, from Boston to Seattle and everywhere in between.  In June of last year, I put 3500 miles on my car in less than seven days.  I live in Dallas and can be in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, and even as far as Seattle and New York in a weekend.  I will admit, I have been known to exceed the highway speed limit. 

So that's it for me.  I'll tag some others when I have more time to investigate who has and has not already gotten bit.

Below are the slides + demos for the two breakout talks I presented this past Friday at the CodeMash conference:

Tonight I attended the third annual "Turing Lecture" at Manchester University which was given by Grady Booch.

The session was about "The promise, the limits, and the beauty of software" and proved to be a very interesting and thought provoking talk.

Grady discussed lot"s of different issues we face as software people ranging from the physical aspects (chip speeds, head, speed of light) though to processes and methodologies in development.

Grady is a fantastic speaker and entertained a lecture theatre full of software professionals, one thing he said made me smile from ear to ear: -

"IBM had a near death experience in the 90"s, Microsoft is going though a mid life crisis and Google is in desperate need of adult supervision"

I completly agree with that statement :-)

Check out Grady"s blog, it"s a good read.

Cheers,

Phil.

As you can tell I really love this VisualWebGui stuff from Guy Peled.  Take a look at the latest ability, its called "Dual Mode". Essentially you build your web site using their technology and you deploy to the Web normally, or deploy as a complete Windows Forms application!  Of course you will have to make special consideration for your business objects and more importantly your data source but its just damn cool.

I know I have been waiting for something like this for many, many years now. 

I have to jump in with everyone else.  Me too, me too!  :D

http://ajax.asp.net/

In the coming months you will see our platform pushed to Channel 9 and 10 and we use ASP.NET AJAX heavily.  Hopefully I'll have time to work up some samples from our code to share.

It had to happen, we finally got it done! :-)

Dave has been working on the site and has put together the agenda page for WebDD.

Cheers,

Phil.

We"ve had a set back which means we can"t film the sessions using the Microsoft equipment on the day so we are wondering if a couple of people would kindly volunteer to film the sessions for us.

They would need to provide their on camera equipment but it would be really cool if anyone can help us out - if you can please drop Dave or I an e-mail to: phil@winstanley.name or davids@ipona.com

Additionally if we have any Photographers who are attending we"d like you to also get in touch to help us out.

Thanks,

Phil.