The Daily Grind 889 by Mike Gunderloy Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The only thing wrong with taking a day off is coming back.

• 2007 Microsoft Office System Preview Site - This is where you can download Beta 2. I suppose it's time that I took a second look to see whether I can stomach switching.
• Microsoft Pre-Release Software Visual Studio Tools For Office "v3" - June Community Technology Preview (CTP) - These are the bits to synch up Office 2007 beta 2 with Visual Studio development.
• Microsoft Pre-Release Software WinFX Runtime Components - Beta2 - A fresh and hopefully high-quality drop of WCF, WPF, and WF.
• Microsoft® Windows® Software Development Kit (SDK) for Beta 2 of Windows Vista and WinFX Runtime Components - All 2.5 gigabytes of it. Have fun.
• Microsoft® Expression® Interactive Designer May 2006 Community Technology Preview - Formerly "Sparkle," for building WinFX apps on the Windows platform.
• Microsoft® Expression® Graphic Designer May 2006 Community Technology Preview - Formerly "Acrylic," for general artwork purposes.
• Custom MSBuild task for running sql scripts - A useful-looking extension from Joey Beninghove.
• Windows Vista, Windows SDK and WinFX Beta - Just in case there's anyone out there who wants Vista beta 2 and doesn't know how to get it.

• IIS.net - New Microsoft site showcasing, of course, Internet Information Services. You can't download a copy yet, but you can dink around with it in your browser.
• Getting Started with XPO - Developer Express adds some new tutorials for XPO, the ORM software about whose documentation I have complained previously.
• Five things you need to know before buying an Automated Build Tool - Of course, the list comes from the FinalBuilder folks, so you might consider the source, but it's a good starting point.
• Just Released - Updater Application Block for .NET 2.0 - Peter Provost has the news. EntLib should have the bits.

• Top 13 reasons NOT to consider the Microsoft platform for Web 2.0 development - Matt Griffith (an experienced Windows developer) vents.

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Mike Gunderloy is the editor of Larkware, the daily .NET newspaper of record.