New XML Features in VS 2005 and .NET 2.0

New XML Features in VS 2005 and .NET 2.0: "I attended a session hosted by Alan Griver a few weeks ago at the Israel C# Users Group (IVCUG).

It was a lovely talk, who's first part centered around the new XML features in VS 2005. Amazingly, I don't think I've heard anyone talk about these before, because most of it was brand new to me!

Here's a short list of the new cool stuff he talks about:

- XSL is actually compiled in IL, which means you can actually debug into XSLT statements. Which leaves me wondering - maybe someone should write a visualizer for XSL objects?

- There's a cool XML toolbar to let you do all sorts of cool stuff while editing and viewing XML files

- XML Snippets: This is a cool thing. Let's say you have an XML that contains something like this:

1 Roy

you can write this:


  and then press Tab. You'll get a 'snippet' sort of popped into your code editor that looks like this:

1 [Cursor]

How cool?

- The properties window for an XML file contains a 'schema' setting with a button that allows schema for the document form a bunch of preknown schemas (you can also add your own to this list). "

Code Snippets Manager Hidden in VS2005

Code Snippets Manager Hidden in VS2005: "This is a very good article about Code Snippet Manager in VSTO V2.0 by Kelvin. However, the 'Code Snippet Manager' is hidden in VS2005 by default (strange?!), so you can't do anything nor increase your productivity even though you'd read this article.
 
So what we have to do is to customize the menu by adding the Code Snippets Manager to the Tools menu 'manually'.
 
Before:

 
After:

 
Colt Kwong"

Upcoming Releases of Useful ASP.NET 2.0 Things

Upcoming Releases of Useful ASP.NET 2.0 Things: "A few people have asked me about what else is coming down the road in terms of downloads and other releases for ASP.NET 2.0.  Here is a non-exhaustive brain-dump of a few things coming out in the near future that we've been working on:

- Major Update to the Atlas Project: A pretty significant update to Atlas will be coming out soon.  It adds a number of pretty cool features -- including a lot of additional support to make common Ajax-style scenarios dead-simple with ASP.NET (previous refreshes of Atlas provided a lot of power features -- this refresh drop is also making common scenarios super easy).  It also provides the beginning of really nice integration of Atlas functionality into the server-control model.

- Updated VS 2003 Web Project->VS 2005 Web Site Migration Utility: This adds more support for migrating existing VS 2003 web projects to use the built-in VS 2005 Web-Site project model (specifically it better handles a number of cases we've seen with customers apps since VS 2005 shiped).  Our goal is to ship it this week (maybe as early as Tuesday).

- VS 2005 Web Application Project Refresh: A refresh of the new VS 2005 Web Application Project download will be coming out early next year.  The big feature we are looking to add with the next refresh is suppo"

2006 XML.com Reader Survey

2006 XML.com Reader Survey: "As you may know, we've been retooling our editorial focus during 2005 to focus on what the world looks like in the post-core-XML specification era; that is, what happens when we stop working so much on XML as with it? Toward that end, we've prepared a survey for XML.com readers, which I hope you'll take a few minutes to complete. One thing I can promise is that your responses on this survey will be carefully studied as I think about the editorial focus of XML.com during 2006."

Open Source Security Library in .NET

I tried the folowing component and it's great. if you need to use a security library or just http communication you can try that component.

from mentalis site:

The Mentalis.org Security Library is an add-on for the .NET framework. Its goal is to provide various security related tools to the C# and VB.NET developers. The library currently consists of the following subprojects:

• SecureSocket Library [SSL and TLS support]

• CertificateServices Library [Certificate Management support]

• Crypto Library [Cryptographic Transformations support]

It ships with extensive documentation that can also be viewed online. If you have questions about the library, you can ask them on the Security Library forum.

You can download the Mentalis.org Security Library over here.