My Toolbox column in the July 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine is avaiable online. The July issue examines:
- ScrewTurn Wiki - a wiki is a web application whose content is maintained by its users. Adding a wiki to your site is remarkably easy with ScrewTurn Wiki, a free, open-source ASP.NET wiki application (written in C#). By default, ScrewTurn uses the file system to store its content, which makes adding it to a site as easy as copying a few files up to the web server.
- Blogs of Note - Scott Hanselman - Scott is one of my favorite technical bloggers. His The Weekly Source Code entries and annually-updated Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List are something every .NET developer should check out.
- SnagIt - SnagIt is one of the best screen capture utilities available. With a simple keyboard shortcut or the click of a mouse it can capture a particular window, a specific region of the screen, or the entire contents of a scrollable window. What's more, you can very easily touch up the image, adding text, highlighting, callouts, and so on, and then save it as an image, Flash file, or PDF, or send it via email, IM, over FTP, or to a Microsoft Office document.
For The Bookshelf section I reviewed LINQ in Action, by Fabrice Marguerie, Steve Eichert, and Jim Wooley. An excerpt from the review follows:
LINQ is made possible thanks to a number of new language enhancements and several new namespaces and classes in the .NET Framework. Because of the breadth and depth of the topic, to really learn LINQ you'll need more than a few online articles. One LINQ book, which explains the various facets through rich examples that build on previous chapters, is LINQ in Action. ... What I liked best about LINQ in Action is how the authors start each new section with straightforward, easy-to-follow examples that highlight the most important features. Next, they pull back the curtains and show how the LINQ queries and features are actually implemented.
Enjoy! - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc700339.aspx
As always, if you have any suggestions for products or books to review for the Toolbox column, please send them to toolsmm@microsoft.com.