Sweet Action!  I posted about the ease of migrating from .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0 is going to be easier.  I was reading Dave's blog today and saw his post to the new conversion wizard.  ScottGu also left a comment pointing out some tutorials.

Download it here.

Awesome.

“The Communtiy Server team is pleased to announce the availability of Community Server 2.0, beta 2. Community Server 2.0 beta 2 is already running www.hive.net and forums.asp.net. Beta 2 addresses many UI, bugs, and other issues found with the Beta 1 version.”

Here's the full post.

My blog is still running on dotText 0.95.  Once CS 2.0 is out I think the time will be here to do the upgrade.  I've been putting it off but I'll bite the bullet here in the next few months.

There will be a new project type coming to VS 2005.  It looks like the powers that be are listening to developers everywhere and wanting to make the transition easier for us.  Woohooo!!

From ScottGu's Blog:

Migrating VS 2003 Projects

One of the big reasons we are introducing this new project option is to help make upgrades from VS 2003 based web projects much easier.  Because the compile-semantics between the VS 2003 and this new project model are identical (single assembly and project file based), developers should be able to upgrade their VS 2003 projects to this new project-type, do a clean compile, and have everything build without making code modifications or file-changes to their project (the file-layout and code structure stay exactly the same).

This will make it much easier to get started with ASP.NET 2.0 and migrate large code-bases quickly.

[via Brian Scott]

This reminds me of the time when office 97 documents were not backward compatible with office 95.  I remember our office policy was to save everything as a RTF.  Now, I believe anyway, office documents are backward compatible from office 97 on.

I was in Fry's Electronics today shopping for a new printer cartridge and wanting to check their price on the Logitech MX610 wireless mouse. While in the aisle looking at the mouse I peek over at the keyboards and notice a new natural keyboard from Microsoft. The first thing I do is check the two primary key clusters that I use as a developer:  the page up/page down and the arrows. I had to pick the box up and look closer to make sure I was seeing it correctly. Yep, all looked good! No more huge delete keys like on the Natural Multimedia Keyboard and the arrows were in the standard upside down T (unlike the Natural Keyboard Elite).  I'm still using my Natural Keyboard Pro from 2000 but I'll be keeping my eye on these.  Some of the keys on my keyboard stick from time to time and are noisy so now that there is a viable alternative...

I've been a big fan of Jeff's article on the keyboards earlier this year and guess what, he's already acquired one of these bad boys.  His review is very positive.

ps. The mouse was on sale for $39 (from $59) so I'm now able to retire my original Microsoft Wireless Intellimouse Explorer.

Krypton Toolkit provides a set of free user interface controls for Windows Forms.  It is designed specifically for .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.  That's right, free..even for commercial use!  You can download it here or see a set of screenshots here.

As I get into .NET 2.0 this will definitely serve as jumping off point into the UI design.

Or at least know the formula that the author, Scott Adams, uses to ensure his comic is funny?  He calls his formula the 2-of-6 rule.  He gives a list of 6 elements that, in order for something to be funny, it needs to cover two of them.  This kind of sounds like a commercial I've seen but can't remember the product.

I won't give the list here since it is his work.  If you do click-thru you'll see that he compares two other comics where one cuts the mustard and one does not.  Funny stuff!

MOPS @ The Church on Rush Creek

If I had .NET 2.0 up and going this would've been the perfect little project to use as a test bed.  Alas, I don't so we went the quick and easy way with ASP.NET 1.1.  I didn't do a whole lot except setting up the site and a few small customizations.  My wife did all of the images/layout/look & feel and this was her first go with CSS and she did a great job.

This looks like a prime suspect for me to share in the ASP.NET 2.0 migration pain but we'll see.

I am Rerun!

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[via Dave]

One of the main reasons I read Live From Vermont is that Dave seems to always be on the bleeding edge and very helpful in his trials and tribulations.  Here is another gem of a post about migrating an ASP.NET 1.1 app to ASP.NET 2.0.

This is pretty interesting.  I guess I didn't realize that the whole development model would change that significantly.  I've not done any development in 2005 yet and Dave, knowingly or not, is providing a lot of help to those of us out here in the same boat.  Thanks Dave!