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The Release Candidate (RC) for Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 is now available to the public.  The biggest change from Beta 2 is a major improvement to Visual Studio performance, specifically as it relates to loading solutions, typing, building and debugging.  The RC includes a “go-live license” for companies that wish to deploy Related posts: Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Beta 2 Documentation Available for .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Now Available for MSDN Subscribers

Do you need help convincing your boss that your company needs to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010?  Or perhaps you are looking for additional ammo in your .NET vs. Java religious wars with your programming colleagues? Microsoft has produced a Silverlight-based “Myth Busting Matrix” for Visual Studio.  This nifty web tool details the benefits of upgrading Related posts: Microsoft Unveils Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 Beta 2 Documentation Available for .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010

XML is an increasingly popular way to encode documents, data, and electronic messages. There are a number of ways to programmatically create, modify, and search XML files. Since its inception, the .NET Framework’s System.Xml namespace has included classes for programmatically working with XML documents. For instance, the XmlReader and XmlWriter classes offer developers a means to read from or write to XML files in a fast, forward-only manner, while the XmlDocument class allows developers to work with an XML document as an in-memory tree representation. LINQ to XML is a new set of XML-related classes in the .NET Framework (found in the System.Xml.Linq namespace ), which enable developers to work with XML documents using LINQ’s features, syntax, and semantics. Compared to .NET’s existing XML APIs, LINQ to XML is a simpler, easier to use API. For a given task, LINQ to XML code is typically shorter and more readable than code that uses the XmlDocument or XmlReader / XmlWriter classes.

The good news is that Microsoft .NET Framework is installed on a majority of Windows PCs.  The bad news is if you are developing an application with the newest version of .NET (3.5), nearly half of Windows PCs cannot run your app. Story at DevTopics Related posts:Determine Installed .NET Versions from a Web PageWindows SDK for Windows Related posts: Determine Installed .NET Versions from a Web Page Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: RC Microsoft Sets Windows 7 Pricing and Upgrades

Microsoft is applying its Community Promise to the C# programming language and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI).  This means that anyone can freely build, sell, distribute or use programs with C# and the CLI without signing a license agreement or otherwise communicating to Microsoft.  This applies to all distribution models including open source and GPL.  Under Related posts: Blogs from Microsoft C# Development Team Microsoft to Share .NET Framework Code Microsoft Unveils Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0

Microsoft has announced retail pricing for Windows 7 that includes an option to preorder the operating system at a substantial discount.  From today through July 11, U.S. consumers can preorder an upgrade from XP or Vista to Windows 7 Home premium for $49 or Windows 7 Professional for $99.  However, XP customers must do Related posts: Determine Windows Version and Edition with C# Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: RC Microsoft to Share .NET Framework Code

Documentation for the next generation of the Visual Studio, the .NET Framework, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is now publicly available at MSDN. Visual Studio 2010 Docs .NET Framework 4 Docs WPF Docs

Microsoft has just released the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1): Release Candidate (RC). The Microsoft Windows SDK is a set of tools, code samples, documentation, compilers, headers, and libraries that developers can use to create applications that run on Microsoft Windows operating systems.  The Windows

Websites that produce new content on a regular basis should include a syndication feed , which is a specially formatted XML file that includes a summary of the most recently published items. Virtually all blogs, news sites, and social media sites have a syndication feed, and 4Guys is no exception. The 4GuysFromRolla.com syndication feed contains the most recent articles. Syndication feeds are meant to be consumed by computers. Sites like Technorati parse the syndication feeds from blogs and use that data to determine the topic du jour

By Quentin Zervaas. In this article I will introduce you to Zend_Loader, a Zend Framework class used to automatically load other classes. Typically you would use include_once or require_once when you want to load a class but using Zend_Loader you don’t have to.