Here is a nouget of goodness that everyone who does Visual Studio development should be aware of. If you decide you want the testing suite available with Visual Studio professional or the other slick little tools that come only with a paid version of the tool, you can purchase an upgrade version due to the very lenient upgrade policy. According to the VS 2008 purchasing options the upgrade is available to those using: "Any other developer tool (including free developer tools, such as Visual Studio Express Editions or Eclipse)"

The different in purchase price from Retail version to Upgrade version is somewhere around $300. 

If you are considering migrating away from Visual Web Developer to a fully licensed and operational verision then buy the upgrade. Notepad could even be considered your "development environment" if you use it for development (although that is a very loose idea of a development environment).

Ok. So this is not a technical article like I originally wanted to post but it is some very cool information that I think everyone should have access to.

With the changes that are coming in the world today (economic crisis in America, weird weather and natural disasters in diverse areas) it is important to be prepared for what may come. I recently worked on a new website for a company that is selling milk on the internet. This shelf stable milk is a wonderful product. I have tried the different varieties and thouroughly enjoyed my experience with Gossner milk. Milk on the Moove is the authorized online distributor of Gossner Milk products. Their prices are reasonable and include the cost of shipping. This product is perfect for the person that is trying to prepare themselves for the storm that is coming.

As a web developer you need to have at least some rudimentary skills with a image manipulation software such as Photoshop or Fireworks. These are two of the most common image manipulation programs for web developers. They were developed by Adobe and Macromedia respectively until Adobe purchased Macromedia. This aquisition lead to a CS3 Web Development suite where both Photoshop and Fireworks were offered side by side.

As a web developer I have been very fond of the Macromedia projects since I first started using them with the MX edition. My purchase of Macromedia Studio 8 left me with an even greater appreciation of the product that made my life as a web developer bearable. They had enhanced the PSD file editability so now the nested layers that my graphic designer was using show up in the same manner for me as they do for her. 

With renewed appreciation for Fireworks I decided to test out Photoshop. In the past I had found Photoshop difficult to use and that many of the functions that were somewhat simple in Fireworks were hidden or difficult to find in Photoshop. Of course this is to be expected from someone who has cut their teeth on Fireworks. I decided to open a couple of PSD files in Photoshop and and in Fireworks. One of those files was the layout for this website. When I cropped the images using Fireworks and exported them each image was more pixelated than when I exported them with Photoshop. I soon found out that there are some image manipulation effects in Photoshop that seem to port over well to Fireworks and some that do not.

So what is a web developer to do? I suggest you run both applications, legally. If you want to be successful, pay the money for the CS3 Web Suite and use both when necessary. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. I would never recommend a graphic designer to use Fireworks since it is limited in that realm but Photoshop can be cumbersome to work with and at times does not do what you'd expect it do do as a web developer.

This is just a bit of good news I wanted to share with the world. For my Master's project I suggested an Advanced HTML course for the Multi-Media minor offered through the Instructional Technology department at Utah State University. They already have an introductory course which contains excellent instruction and really helps people know what is going on behind the scenes when they are using a GUI web development tool such as Dreamweaver. Unfortunately it does not prepare students for much of they work they would do as a web developer.

The advanced HTML course outline was developed by searching Monster.com for descriptions of what types of knowledge would be required of a web developer. I took those bits of knowledge that seemed most important to an employer and created a course around them. Remember that this is a second level introductory course that will build upon basic knowledge of HTML. Since HTML could be the first programming they have ever attempted we build upon rudimentary knowledge and skills to give them a stronger base and another item in their portfolio that will enable them to be competitive if searching for a job as a web developer.

The course includes the following lessons:

1. Introduction, familiarization with assignment website, and review of basics of HTML
2. Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
3. Dissecting a PSD File
4. CSS Positioning and Browser Differences (Tableless Layout)
5. CSS Menu with Javascript
6. Writing Javascript Functions and DHTML
7. Introduction to XML
8. Ajax with Prototype and Scriptaculous (GoogleMaps Optional - KML Files)
9. Introduction to Server Sided Programming Languages, Databases, and Hosting
10. What are SEO and SEM?

This should give students most of the tools they would need as web developers with the exception of knowing a Server Sided Programming Language. That was the top requirement of most of the companies searching for a web developer. I also proposed that USU offer some more robust courses on Server Sided Languages such as PHP, ASP.Net and Ruby on Rails. Perhaps they will offer a variety of Special Topics courses that would cover each of those in different semesters. If so, I would love to develop and teach the course on ASP.Net.

If anyone reading this is attending USU they can register for courses this summer and fall. I look forward to seeing you there! 

If you are a .Net programmer and you have not checked out the Microsoft ASP.Net 3.5 platform you are really handicapping yourself as a programmer. There are so many enhancements to the 3.5 platform that make programming in .Net something to enjoy more than you ever have in the past. Any .Net programmer should be subscribing to Scott Guthrie's blog as he explains some of the best kept secrets in the .Net world.

One of the newest additions to the 3.5 framework that makes my life as a ASP.Net developer enjoyable is the LINQ (language integrated query). LINQ allows you to write a simple query to pull data from the database, xml file, or other LINQ source. The query is based on a dbml file that models the datasource showing relations between the different tables you may have. You can then specify an object of one table and get it's children from another table using LINQ notation. LINQ does all the inner join statements necessary to pull that data back out for you. This is a great tutorial on LINQ to SQL.

My second favorite nugget of goodness with the 3.5 framework is the ability to extend CLR datatypes without having to sub-class the type. If you create your own static class you can just use the "this" keyword in the declaration of an object extend the methods applied to that object. Scott Guthrie again teaches us how to use that in his article here.

As I review this post I have realized that instead of reading this you should be reading Scott Guthrie's blog. So go! Read it! He has written some very cool stuff that will help you become a better ASP.Net developer.