I spent today at the ICC in Birmingham at the Microsoft launch event for Windows 2008 Server, VS2008 and SQL Server 2008 (albeit SQL2008 isn’t quite ready…)

The event was well organized, plenty of freebies/food/drinks etc… however the first session overran by 20 minutes which then knocked out everything for the rest of the day. Not surprising for Microsoft.

The technical content of the sessions were aimed more at the beginner level which wasn’t that enthraling considering it was similar to the content I’ve seen presented at previous MSDN events. I would have liked to see some more advanced sessions for those developers who were already familiar with VS2008/.NET 3.5, perhaps even a session from the ALT.NET community, but I suppose this really wasn’t the main focus of the day.

The close of the day meant I could trade in my pass for the obligatory free software package (the only reason I really went) but was disappointed to see Windows Server 2008 only had a years evaluation licence and was not a full blown copy like the software I received at the VS2005/WS2005 launch a few years ago.

I’m hoping to get to the upcoming MSDN roadshow which hopefully should have some better content in the session, the ASP.NET Extensions sessions certainly look interesting.

The latest preview of ASP.NET MVC is now available to download.

There are also 4 new screencasts that accompany this release.

A new Acid test has been released at the same time the IE8 beta! The irony is not lost on me…

The Acid3 Test

Still, it will be interesting to see how well IE8 renders, especially as it is passes Acid2.

Microsoft have posted an IE8 beta download page:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/default.mspx

I’m also glad to see they have rethought the whole default IE7 rendering mode too, seems to make a lot more sense that it defaults to the most recent rendering mode, and by default renders as strictly as possible. I don’t see this as being an issue if you write standardised x/html.

I have read (and own) a few of the books on this recommended list over on CodeBetter.

http://codebetter.com/blogs/ian_cooper/archive/2008/03/04/some-recommended-books.aspx

I would definately recommend the Head First Design Patterns book, it was the first one I read that got me excited about solution design. The GOF Design Patterns book is a good reference read after that, although I wouldn’t recommend reading that first. Fowler’s Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture book is also a great reference.

I have been meaning to get hold of some of the DDD and SOA books mentioned for some time, and for that matter the TDD books are probably worth a look too.