As Jeff points out, I too usually don’t buy into conspiracy theories, but reading this makes you really think. I may have to pop in my 9/11 DVD that I purchased a few years back and re-watch it now, looking & listening for those possible detonation explosions.

Ran across a couple posts late last night from a blogger code-named “happyfunboy”. Seems like he has the general consensus of how the new Partner Membership Center is working. His posts are a pretty good synopsis of the good, the not-so-bad, and the changed (no ugly, never ugly). If you’ve not figured out, we are listening, and your input counts. If you don’t want to publicly post your experiences / suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact me. If you do post, shoot your url on over to me so I can pass it on.

So I may be a little late to the game on this, however, its the first time I’ve seen the list which makes me think there are many others that haven’t seen the list of breaking changes from .NET 1.1 to 2.0. A few notables include:

• “Conditional Grammar ambiguity” – Because of the new nullable syntax, there are certain scenarios where the compiler cannot tell the difference between a conditional operator and the nullable ? syntax. (bool A; for (A ? F() : G(); ; ))
• “Ambiguity between comparison and generic definition” – The addition of generics has led to an ambiguity between a generic method and function parameters. (int a, b, c; F(a < b, c > (7));)
• “Ignore ‘remove’ and ‘clear’ directives” – This change only affects web.config and application.config files that remove a section handler declared in a parent configuration file.
• “FormsAuth should not leave tickets around for 50 years”
• “<location> path attribute cannot end with any of '.', '/', or '\'.” – In V1.1, a user can put <location path="app/"> in the config file. The config system won't complain about the trailing forward slash, but the problem is that the config settings inside this location tag actually won't get applied in a request to that path.
• “The title element on aspx pages with a runat server tag was instantiated as a HtmlGenericControl in v1.1, in v2.0 it has its own type HtmlTitle but this doesn't derive from HtmlGenericControl and thus the compat break.”
• “HttpContext is a sealed class. If users created their own wrapper to expose this and returned their wrapped instance as the Context property for pages / usercontrols, their apps would fail unless they implemented the new properties on HttpContext. “

At approximately 5PM PST this evening, the new Partner Membership Center went Live! Check it out, and let us know what you think!

I just found out that the VS2005 Web Deployment Project bits are now released for public consumption. You can find more information out about it here, download the bits, read the article to get started, and provide feedback at the forums. Enjoy!

From the site:
“Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Projects provide additional functionality for building and deploying Web site applications that you create in ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. This add-in includes a new tool that enables you to merge the assemblies created during ASP.NET 2.0 precompilation, and it provides a comprehensive UI within Visual Studio 2005 for managing build configurations, merging, and pre-build and post-build task using MSBuild.”

Microsoft Korea has put together a pretty awesome flash video rapping to VSTS. They have the translation there too for those that don’t know Korean.

Okay, so its not as dramatic as if Clippy was returning, but if you've been doing any VS2005 work recently, who am I kidding...who isn't now that its released, and you've been trying to figure out how to create your own code snippets (and if you've not heard of them, have you been living under a rock?), enter "Snippy". A powertoy released that's actually a standalone app that allows you to create your own code snippets. Simply enter the title, shortcut, the code & the literals/objects - save it to “~\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\LANGUAGE\My Code Snippets” and you’re good to go. Just open up VS2005 after that and type in your shortcut to see your code snippet appear before your eyes. Cool.

So the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten the chance to play around with the Atlas bits and during that time, I’ve come across a few“gotchas” that aren’t documented anywhere that I’m sure people would love to know about…

• You can attach into Page Methods just like Web Service Methods in the declarative syntax by using pageMethod instead of serviceMethod. When doing this, there is no need for defining the URL.
• When binding properties from pageMethod’s or serviceMethod’s in the declarative syntax, you should set the dataPath to “response.object”. I’ve been told that this will be changed in the future, to make it easier to get the data.
• If you’re using Page Methods, you should be aware that the current state of the form (including ViewState) is posted to the server. Not only that, but the entire life cycle, minus Render, is taken place (Page.IsPostback == true). While it makes it easy to get form data, it can be inefficient if your form has a lot of data. To circumvent this, you can register page as being a Web Service which will, in turn, have no context
  
  Page_Load:
  Microsoft.Web.Services.WebServiceManager.RegisterWebService(GetType(), this);
  
  Javascript:
  Namespace.PageName.MethodName(OnWebRequestComplete);
• If you want to do anything relating with page or service methods, you currently have to write the declarative XML-Script yourself. There’s currently not an Atlas control that interacts with page or service methods.

With that in mind, here’s some resources that I’ve found invaluable while working with Atlas…

• Nikhil Kothari - Blog | PDC Slides and Demos | Architecture Overview
• Wilco Bauwer – Atlas Class Browser | Bindings | Page Loading
• Atlas Quickstart Tutorials

So, make sure you download the latest bits (uninstalling any older versions first – which actually means just deleting the ZIP files contained in “~\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual Web Developer\[CSharp,VisualBasic]”) and giving the latest CTP a whirl. Here’s some notes on the latest drop if you’re interested in the change list.

Over the last 7 months, I’ve been locked away for countless hours working on the v.Next wave of products for Microsoft’s partners. I’m happy ecstatic to announce that we’re finally shipping v.Next of Microsoft’s Partner Program portal, rather the Partner Membership Center. While I can’t talk specifics about the release just yet, I will let you in on some new teasers to wet your noggin’ with…

• A brand new, streamlined way of managing your organization, competencies, individuals, references and products which enriches the Partner user experience.
• A brand new way and vast improvement of competency enrollment.
• A brand new “point engine” that calculates a partner’s points on-the-fly giving the most accurate and up-to-date information to the Partner.
• A simplified and easier way of enrolling and re-enrolling within the Partner Program.

So there you have it. A great user experience is coming your way. So, when it goes live, I urge you to log onto https://partners.microsoft.com, enroll, and start your partnership with Microsoft. In the mean time, check out the Microsoft Partner Program Enhancements page for more information.

So I too ran the cool little tool that calculates your blogs worth, but didn’t feel like spamming my worth. Much to my amazement, I made Roy’s Top 31 list! Really, I think he was just being nice, and it should have been top 30, but – I made it. (Link to original worth listing by Jon)