Distinction is an open-source printing library for .NET. Distinction enables developers to quickly and easily create professional reports with multiple sections and only a few lines of code.
Printing documents and reports programmatically in .NET can be difficult using the general GDI+ library (e.g., you would have to draw a table line by line). Crystal Reports can be too complex to use in smaller projects, and report generation on the client’s computer requires the installation of the Crystal Reports runtime, which can be inconvenient, and sometimes the client might not have the appropriate rights to do so.
Distinction Report Printing Library’s source code and binaries are free for commercial and non-commercial use.
Distinction .NET Reporting
Microsoft has released two new open source projects for developers working with .PST data files from Microsoft Outlook.
The PST Data Structure View Tool (PSTViewTool) enables developers to browse the internal structures of an Outlook PST file. PSTViewTool is a MFC/C++ application developed in Visual Studio. Other than MFC, it has no external dependencies. PSTViewTool is largely complete with respect to its goals and is no longer being enhanced. However, patches and bug reports are welcome.
The PST File Format SDK (PST-SDK) is a cross-platform header-only C++ library for reading Outlook PST files. The ability to write data to PST files will be added to the SDK in the near future.
There is no word on when/if these tools will be ported to .NET.
In the Complete Guide .NET Performance and Optimization, Paul Glavich and Chris Farrell offer a comprehensive and essential handbook to anybody looking to set up a .NET testing environment and get the best results out of it, or just learn effective techniques for testing and optimizing their .NET applications.
Download your free eBook from Red-Gate
Silverlight Elements is a commercial suite of production-ready Silverlight controls designed to help you create stunning applications faster and more easily than ever before. Silverlight Elements contains 14 beautifully crafted controls built supporting Silverlight 3.0 + 4.0 and, of course, all customers get Mindscape’s legendary support and nightly builds.
Silverlight Elements 1.1 includes a bunch of interesting new controls, new features to some of the existing controls, updated Silverlight themes, and support for Silverlight 4.
Mindscape Silverlight Elements
What’s New in v1.1
Google Translate API for .NET is an open-source project that provides a simple, unofficial, .NET Framework API for using Google Ajax Search API service. Features include:
- Support all 8 Google Search APIs.
- CLS compatible. It can be used by any .NET languages (C#, VB.NET, F#, C++/CLI etc.)
Alpha version 0.4 is now available.
Google Translate API for .NET
PowerPivot is a free data analysis tool from Microsoft that:
- Creates compelling self-service business intelligence (BI) solutions
- Facilitates sharing and collaboration on user-generated BI solutions in a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 environment
- Enables IT organizations to increase operational efficiencies through Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2-based management tools.
PowerPivot for Excel is the user-friendly way to perform data analysis using familiar Excel features such as the Office Fluent user interface, PivotTable, PivotChart views and slicers.
PowerPivot for SharePoint brings knowledge-sharing and management to the world of self-service BI. It’s the secure and reliable platform for sharing and collaborating on user-generated data models and analysis in Excel and in the browser while automatically refreshing those analyses.
PowerPivot Home Page
The .NET Framework cleanup tool automatically removes selected versions of the .NET Framework from a computer. It will remove files, directories, registry keys and values and Windows Installer product registration information for the .NET Framework. The tool is intended primarily to return your system to a known (relatively clean) state in case you are encountering .NET Framework installation, uninstallation, repair or patching errors so that you can try to install again.
The .NET Framework setup verification tool automatically verifies the installation state of one or more versions of the .NET Framework on a computer. It will verify the presence of files, directories, registry keys and values for the .NET Framework. It will also verify that applications which use the .NET Framework can be run correctly.
Both are free tools written by Aaron Stebner and recently updated to support .NET v4.
AutoMapper is an open-source convention-based object-to-object mapper. AutoMapper uses a fluent configuration API to define an object-object mapping strategy.
New features in version 1.1 include:
- Support for Silverlight 3.0
- Auto-implementing INotifyPropertyChanged
- Conditional member mapping
- Destination member prefixes, postfixes and naming transformers
AutoMapper 1.1
Jobping has released an open-source URL shortener similar to bit.ly. The URL shortener has a “less is more” approach and was the quickest solution for the authors to get their own branded short URLs. The URL shortener has just two functions: 1. Create a new short URL, and 2. Redirect anyone requesting a short URL. The site requires IIS 7, .NET 3.5, ASP.NET MVC 2, and an MSSQL database.
URL Shortener on CodePlex
Technical Discussion
ASP.NET MVC Extensions (aka System.Web.Mvc.Extensibility) is developed on top of ASP.NET MVC extensibility point, which allows your IoC Container to rule everywhere. Major changes include:
- Namespace has been changed to MvcExtensions from System.Web.Mvc.Extensibility to avoid confusion that it’s part of the .NET Framework.
- The Project is now moved to CodePlex.
- MVC 1.0 support has been dropped.
ASP.NET MVC Extensions
