Hey there! It's great to be back. Spent much of the week working on cleaning
up my email and moving into my new apartment. <g> Before I get into the list
of things that happened this week, let me publicly thank Seth for handling a
lot of the stuff for me.

1. This week I began work on internal infrastructure. Now that we've
begun standardizing things like chats and newsgroup blasts, I want to get
these so that they run on their own, freeing up time to focus on other
things.

2. I'm starting to focus on creating a VB developer group owned
community site - a place that provides a launching pad to all the great 3rd
party VB communities, white papers, products, etc. that are out there.

3. Got a lot of great feedback from folks on feature questions about VB
that I posted on the Microsoft public newsgroups. Next time I plan on
posting questions in even more places.


Thanks to those of you who've sent kind words about these status reports.
And just a reminder - the VB team will have a live chat every Tuesday
(barring unforeseen eventualities, natch! <g>)



-yag



Upcoming chats (http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats):

DataGrid Web Server Control
Tuesday, March 19, 2002, 12:00 - 1:00 P.M. Pacific Time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

This chat is a follow up to the white paper located at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vbvcstec
hart/html/vbtchTopQuestionsAboutASPNETDataGridServerControl.aspand will
focus on your questions about the DataGrid Web Server Control.



Working with Single File Web Form Pages
Tuesday, March 26, 2002, 12:00 - 1:00 P.M. Pacific Time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

This chat is a follow up to the white paper located at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechar
t/html/vstchWorkingWithSingle-FileWebFormsPagesInVisualStudio.asp and will
answer questions about how to work with single-file pages in Visual Studio,
and how to convert single-file Web Forms pages to code-behind Web Forms
pages.



Becoming a Help Power User
Tuesday, April 2, 2002, 12:00 - 1:00 P.M. Pacific Time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

There is a lot of great material in the Visual Studio help file. This
session will cover various tips and tricks for getting the most out of it
and will collect your feedback on the help system.


Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect Tools
Tuesday, April 2, 2002, 2:00 - 3:00 P.M. Pacific time (23:00 - 24:00 GMT)

Successfully building complex enterprise applications requires a solid
architecture and a common understanding of requirements across the
development team. The role of an architect is typically to help their
organizations build applications that scale, integrate with existing
systems, fulfill business requirements, and be maintainable over multiple
versions of the product. In this session, Keith Short, Software Architect
for enterprise features within Visual Studio will answer your questions
about the tools Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect provides for
architects to build enterprise applications in a systematic, repeatable and
predictable manner.

Programmatically Creating Web Server Control Templates (Rescheduled!)
Tuesday, April 9, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

This is a follow on to the white paper located at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vbvcstec
hart/html/vbtchCreatingWebServerControlTemplatesProgrammatically.asp and
will focus on your questions about creating web server control templates.



Creating Multithreaded Applications with Visual Basic .NET
Tuesday, April 16, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

This session will discuss how you can use multithreading techniques to
improve the performance and responsiveness of Visual Basic .NET
applications.

Whitepaper: Multithreaded Programming with Visual Basic .NET
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchasyncprocvb.asp



Emulating Control Arrays
Tuesday, April 23, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

While this session will initially cover material in the Creating Control
Arrays in Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET whitepaper, please feel free
to ask any questions you have relating to collections, event handlers, and
delegates.

Whitepaper: Creating Control Arrays in Visual Basic .NET and Visual C# .NET
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchcreatingcontrolarraysinvisualbasicnetvisualcnet.asp



Working With Data at Design Time in Visual Studio .NET
Tuesday, April 30, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Talk about the tools available at design time for incorporating data access
into your Visual Basic or Visual C# application, as well as working with
your database from within the Visual Studio Environment (IDE).

Whitepaper: Design-Time Data Tools in Visual Studio .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchDesignTimeDataToolsInVisualStudioNET.asp?frame=true




Exception Handling in Visual Basic .NET
Tuesday, May 7, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Join us for a chat covering the things to keep in mind and best practices of
exception handling in Visual Basic .NET applications.

Whitepaper: Introduction to Exception Handling in Visual Basic .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchexceptionserrorsinvisualbasicnet.asp



Deploying Visual Studio .NET Applications
Tuesday, May 14, 2002, 1:00 - 2:00 P.M. Pacific time (21:00 - 22:00 GMT)

Join Microsoft in an online chat about the brave new world of deployment
using Visual Studio .NET. This session will use the "Deployment Changes in
Visual Basic .NET" whitepaper as a starting point; please feel free to ask
any deployment questions that you may have.

Whitepaper: Deployment Changes in Visual Basic .NET

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchdistributingapplicationscreatedwithvisualbasicnet.asp






White Papers

Didn't have much of a chance to gather interesting white papers this week,
but I did come across this one that I thought was pretty cool.



The Favorites Service Server Control

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/Dncold/html/Ssf2webformdev.asp?frame=true

This paper describes the development details behind the Favorites server
control, a custom Web Form control that communicates with the Favorites
Service, a sample XML Web service.


--

Yair Alan Griver
Lead PM/Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.