My eleventh Toolbox column in the November 2006 issue of MSDN Magazine is now avaiable online. The November issue examines three products:
- BeyondCompare - a top-notch product for comparing and syncing text files, locally or remotely (through FTP, for example).
- Camtasia - many software vendors' websites these days include interactive, Flash-based demos showing their product in action. This can be used both as a selling point and for technical help (a more interactive knowledgebase). Camtasia is a program designed to capture screen interactions, optionally lay over voice or various video edits, and export the resulting creation to any of a variety of formats.
- FCKEditor - a free, open-source rich textbox for ASP.NET.
This month's issue reviewed Len Fenster's book Effective Use of Microsoft Enterprise Library. The Enterprise Library is a set of free, open-source application blocks released by Microsoft that perform a variety of standard tasks - data access, configuration, caching, exception handling, and so on. Len's book looks at the utility of the Enterprise Library, how it can fit into your organization's applications, and how to create your own custom application blocks that fir the same pattern. From the review:
The book is composed of nine content-packed chapters and three appendices, with each application block thoroughly explored in its own chapter. Each chapter begins with an examination of the application block's purpose, followed by a look at its class structure. The author then walks through how to configure an application to use the application block; numerous source code samples illustrate how to work with the application block from code. The book is a must read for those who are using the Enterprise Library or are in the midst of evaluating it.
As always, if you have any suggestions for products or books to review for the Toolbox column, please send them into toolsmm@microsoft.com.
ALSO! Brand new!! You can now read MSDN Magazine online in one of (currently) seven languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, or Chinese! From the homepage you'll find a drop-down list in the upper right corner from where you can select your language preference.
So you can now read Toolbox in Spanish (or French, or Russian, or...)!!
You can keep abreast of the latest Toolbox articles through the column's RSS feed or the Toolbox column category here on my blog.