Just a few days ago Moonlight 2.0 was released. Moonlight is an open source Linux implementation of Silverlight. Moonlight 2.0 should be compatible with Silverlight 2.0, but it also already supports some Silverlight 3.0 features, such as writeable bitmaps, some out-of-browser functionality, and the Silverlight 3 pluggable media pipeline (source: ARS Technica). For us this is very interesting, because we are working on a project involving Silverlight which will run in a public website. The client was worried about the possible reach, and this at least opens the door. According to Microsoft 60% of the PC's in the Netherlands now have Silverlight installed, so this is good news for our client.

Recently we moved our projects to a new TFS server. This means that all workspaces link to the old TFS, and you will get the error message "The path [path] is already mapped in workspace [workspace]" when you try to add a new reference to a project you've already worked on. I keep running into this every once in a while, because we develop from virtual machines and we have different ones for different projects. I also keep forgetting what to do, so this is partly a message to self.

You can solve this by opening the Visual Studio command prompt and typing:

tf workspaces /remove:[projectname]

If you want to remove all of them (which is the case when switching to a new TFS), you can use a wildcard, like this:

tf workspaces /remove:*

Thanks to Gergely Orosz's post on the topic.

I've been reading parts of this book on and off for a long time, and I've pretty much read the whole book and some sections more than once, so it is time for a review (even though this is an "older" book).

If you're a software developer, this is a must read. It gives you a kick in the head about what you should think of when you develop software. The examples David Platt uses in this book are very striking, and will make you think about what you've built yourself. You may feel embarrased sometimes and think "I did that too, shame on me!" However, in the end it will make you a better developer. Platt shows very well that IT is no longer about technology, but about the people operating the technology.

This book is also a fun read. Platt has a good sense of humor, and in some cases the stories he tells themselves are pretty hilarious. The only downside of the book is that at some point repetition kicks in. The message is clear, so you want to move on, but there are still more examples explaining the same thing.

We're doing a project where were talking to non-.NET web services and this means that sometimes we have to see what the exact message looks like. In case you ever need to do this: a MessageInspector will not (always) be suitable for this. This is particularly the case where you're using a certificate to sign the message. Signing happens after the MessageInspector is invoked, so it will just show you the unsigned message. One thing you can do is setup a URL you can post to that logs the incoming message as is. We have a "service" like that available to all developers, because it is a quick and easy solution that doesn't require installing additional tooling or modify code. Another option is to configure message logging (see the MSDN article Recommended Settings for Tracing and Message Logging).

At my company we we're looking at creating a generic STS that does not require Active Directory Federation Services 2.0, and we were also thinking about putting it up on CodePlex. Dominick Baier from Thinktecture beat us to it with StarterSTS. He's also posted some webcasts on how to use it. Good stuff, so instead rolling our own, we'll be using/extending this one.