The .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit includes presentations, hands-on labs, demos, and event materials. This content is designed to help you learn how to utilize the .NET 3.5 Enhancement features including: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET Routing, ADO.NET Data Services, ADO.NET Entity Framework, WCF 3.5 SP1, and the .NET Framework Client Profile.

You can download and find more information by clicking here.

DevExpress has decided to release over 60 controls for downloading that are free of charge – without royalties or distribution costs. Here is a listing of the controls that are available:

WinForms Controls (the XtraEditors Library)

Embeddable Editors

	TextEdit		ButtonEdit		CheckEdit
	CalcEdit		ColorEdit		ComboBoxEdit
	ImageComboBoxEdit		FontEdit		DateEdit
	ImageEdit		PictureEdit		MemoEdit
	RichTextEdit		MemoExEdit		SpinEdit
	LookUpEdit		PopupContainerEdit		TimeEdit
	RadioGroup		MRUEdit		HyperLinkEdit
	ProgressBarControl		TrackBarControl		RangeTrackBarControl
	ZoomTrackBarControl

Controls

	XtraTabControl		FilterControl		ListBoxControl
	CheckedListBoxControl		ImageListBoxControl		DataNavigator
	ControlNavigator		LabelControl		SimpleButton
	CheckButton		DropDownButton		MarqueeProgressBar
	PanelControl		GroupControl		SplitterControl
	SplitContainerControl		XtraScrollableControl		VScrollBar
	HScrollBar

Framework Controls

XtraForm

XtraUserControl

XtraMessageBox

Controllers and Repositories

	StyleController		ToolTipController		DefaultLookAndFeel
	PersistentRepository		DXErrorProvider		DXValidationProvider

ASP.NET Controls (the ASPxperience Suite)

Components

	ASPxCallback		ASPxCallbackPanel		ASPxCloudControl
	ASPxDataView		ASPxHeadline		ASPxMenu
	ASPxNavBar		ASPxNewsControl		ASPxObjectContainer
	ASPxPageControl		ASPxPager		ASPxPanel
	ASPxPopupControl		ASPxPopupMenu		ASPxRoundPanel
	ASPxSiteMapControl		ASPxSiteMapDataSource		ASPxTabControl
	ASPxTimer		ASPxTitleIndex		ASPxUploadControl

Microsoft has released the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 this week to Microsoft Downloads only a few days after releasing SQL Server 2008.

Two of the main features added in the .NET Framework service is pack is the ADO.NET Data Services and the ADO.NET Entity Framework. Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 comes with a better WPF designer, a rich entity designer and full compatibility with SQL Server 2008 that was released a few days ago.

I ran across a cool idea from Microsoft where they have released a Power Toy for middle school aged kids. The tool is called Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0 and is a software package particularly designed by Microsoft to help middle school students learn computer programming.

Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0 is a software package particularly designed by Microsoft to help middle school students learn computer programming. It consists of the following five components:

• Visual Sort Designer Control - is a supplementary teaching tool developed to help middle school students learn the basic concepts, algorithms, and implementations of popular computer sorting algorithms. It supports bubble and insertion sorting. The control generates initial values automatically and demonstrates intermediate states in the sorting process. It also generates sorting source code for both Visual Basic and C#.
• Visual Search Designer Control - is a teaching tool developed to help middle school students learn the basic concepts, algorithms, and implementations of popular data search algorithms. It supports binary and sequential searches. The control generates initial values automatically and demonstrates intermediate states in the searching process. It also generates source code for both Visual Basic and C#.
• Visual Declarative Designer - is an intuitive variable declaration tool designed for novice programmers. During the coding process the student can declare variables of various types and generate the corresponding source code. Visual Variable Declarative Designer provides a visual approach to variable declaration. Teachers in the Information Technology (IT) field can use this designer to teach students the basic concepts of variable declaration and naming, variable types, access modifiers, and initial values.
• Assistant Class Designer - is a visual class designer intended for novice programmers such as middle school students. During the design process, students can easily add classes, properties, methods and events. The designer also generates source code that can be inserted into a project and modified as needed. By using this class designer and code generator, complicated classes can be easily created and configured. The Assistant Class Designer provides an intuitive approach to designing classes and helps students to understand key object-oriented programming concepts such as classes, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.
• Visual Programming Flow Chart - is a supplementary teaching tool designed to help students understand program control flow. It generates flow charts for functions and saves them in the JPG picture format. This tool is easily activated from the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) by simply right-clicking on a function name and choosing “Generate flow chart…” from the context menu. The resulting flowchart can be customized by changing its colors and other effects. This visual tool provides an intuitive way to explore source code, to examine its control flow, and to identify logic errors.
   

You can download the tool from the Microsoft Download site by clicking here.

Microsoft has released a new Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 and Sliverligh SDK for the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 release.

Overview of the Tools:

JetBrains has finally released a release candidate for ReSharper 4.0. ReSharper 4.0 introduces comprehensive support for Visual Studio 2008 and
C# 3.0, solution-wide analysis, .NET Framework classes annotated with custom attributes for better code inspection, single-click code cleanup, brand new refactorings for both C# and VB.NET, plus a whole lot of productivity features. As before, ReSharper comes in three editions: Full, C# and VB.NET*, which are called on to bring every customer precisely what they need — and enjoy the savings.

Download ReSharper 4.0 Release Candidate to test the power of new capabilities and help us put the finishing touch on the product. Whatever edition you want, whatever version of Visual Studio you use, there's a single download file for all.

See also "ReSharper 4.0 vs plain Visual Studio 2008" Comparison.
For more details, please visit ReSharper 4.0 Release Candidate Feature set.

*VB.NET Edition provides support for Visual Basic 8

What's New

• Full Support for C# 3.0 and LINQ
• ReSharper 4 Full Edition and C# Edition provide comprehensive support for C# 3.0, including LINQ, implicitly typed locals and arrays, extension methods, automatic properties, lambda expressions, object & collection initializers, anonymous types, expression trees, and partial methods.
• Comprehensive Insight into .NET Framework
• We have analyzed a great share of .NET Framework Class Library, as well as NUnit Framework, and annotated it through external XML files, using a set of custom attributes from the JetBrains.Annotations namespace.
• Solution-Wide Analysis
• ReSharper 4.0 provides a full-fledged feature called Solution-Wide Analysis, which looks for erroneous C# code in your whole solution on-the-fly, without compiling it first.
• Code Cleanup
• A new, extended reincarnation of what was previously known as Reformat Code. You can now save a myriad of "go-to-next-highlight-then-apply-a-quick-fix" iterations by simply running Code Cleanup!
• New Refactorings
• In line with the major message of the current release, all refactorings support C# 3.0. New members of the refactoring family are available, including a pack of C# 3.0-specific refactorings. Plus, we have a surprise for VB.NET aficionados: all refactorings that were previously limited to C# 2.0 are now available for Visual Basic 8.
• Multiple New Productivity Features
• Here's a glance at a number of improvements intended to make your coding experience appreciably more enjoyable.
• Complete Statement, introduced in ReSharper 4.0, is a feature that inserts necessary syntax elements (braces, semicolons etc.) and gets you to the position to start the next statement, saving you from excessive juggling with the caret. As you work, keep in mind the default shortcut for this feature — Ctrl+Shift+Enter .
• CamelHumps in Code Completion -
  In ReSharper 4.0, all three completion features — Symbol Completion, Smart Completion, and Import Symbol Completion — support CamelHumps. That lets you complete any symbol by entering only its uppercase characters.
• Live Templates Editor & Manager
  Live Templates Editor is a rejuvenated set of user interface items for viewing, managing, and editing all three types of templates — Live Templates, 'Surround With' Templates, and File Templates.
• Recent Edits
  Recent Edits is a drop-down list similar to existing Go To features that shows files and symbols that you recently modified.
• ASP.NET Speedup
• ReSharper 4.0 significantly speeds up analysis of ASP.NET pages, to enable more web developers benefit from the great toolset that ReSharper provides.