• SharePoint
• Blogging
• Development
• WCM
• .NET

Over the last month or two, I’ve been under a rock with work or had problems with my blog that I’ve been unable to post. During this time there were things I wanted to post but never had the time or the ability to post them… this post will serve as my catchall of things worth noting… ok… they are things that were big news to me…

Development

• Visual Studio 2005 Web Application Project v1 Released (via ScottGu): Basically this VS2005 add-on gives you the ability to have web projects  that don’t use the VS2005 models but rather the VS2003 model where everything is compiled into a single DLL. Then again, I tend not to use web projects… hate how VS has that tight coupling with IIS. I rather elect to go the way of creating a class library project and just modifying the class VS project templates so I can still add ASPX/ASCX/ASAX/web.config and other ASP.NET files to a class library. Fritz Onion explains how to to do ASP.NET apps without web projects.
• MSBee v1 Released (via Geek Runs Through My Veins): MSBee (MSBuild Everett Edition) allows you to build CLR v1.1 projects in VS2005. It’s an add in that overrides certain methods in MSBuild and uses targets files to tell MSBuild to use the CLR 1.1 compilers to build projects. Ah… no more having to keep VS2003 on my laptop… I can live completely in my VS2005 bliss.
• CodeRush vNext is going to be HUGE… ala Dynamic Templates (via Mark Miller): It’s been a long time since v1.1.46 had been updated, so you had to know something was coming. Well, this is it! I can’t wait to get my dynamic templates!!!

Microsoft Office SharePoint System

• Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Team Blog: ECM is a part of the next version of SharePoint Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. It includes “document management, records management, web content management, and electronic forms management” (quoting the first post on the ECM blog). What’s that? Web Content Management? Isn’t that WCM, the next version of MCMS? Yup! So what’s up with the WCM blog? Don’t kill that subscription yet, but I don’t think that day’s too far off as I don’t see it getting updated anytime soon… my guess is the WCM team will post to the ECM blog or SharePoint blog. Sad… WCM blog, we barely knew ye, but it might as well happen since it seemed most WCM posts never even made it to the WCM blog oddly enough (they were all on the SharePoint blog: here, here, and here).
• New SharePoint Community home page (via LLiu): It’s about damn time! The old one was pathetic (see for yourself… Bil’s got a comparison). Notice the section in the lower left: “Non-Microsoft SharePoint Community Resources and Destinations”… and check out who’s listed: Heather Solomon… man, it seems like only yesterday I was introducing my coworker (at the time) to the blogging scene.
• New SharePoint newsgroups announced (via LLiu): I like ‘em… easy to understand and you’ll know exactly where to go to find answers to your questions.
• Bil Simser’s SharePoint Forums Web Part v1 Released (via… duh… Bil): Used WSS/SPS? Tried the discussion list? Did it take you more than 30 seconds to realize “damn, this sucks.”? Well, Bil’s got something better… much better. Go check it out.