Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

Although a little dated, the MSDN article series " You Can Take It With You " offers a good insight into various facets of Windows Mobile app development . The Mobile Client Software Factory from P&P provides extensive guidance [including patterns, step-by-step instructions (How-to topics), sample application source code (reference implementation), reusable components (Application Blocks), a Guidance Automation Toolkit package that automates common mobile client development tasks in Visual Studio, and architecture documentation] to help architects and developers create line-of-business Windows Mobile applications. SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition (CTP) is the followup to SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition (SQL Mobile) . With Everywhere Edition, you can use the same client-side database for your Windows Mobile and Windows desktop applications - making it easier for you to share code and resources across both platforms.

The resumable download solution comes via some little-known features in the HTTP 1.1 protocol - Accept-Ranges and Etag. The Accept-Ranges header element quite simply tells the client/Web browser, that this process supports resumable downloads. The Entity Tag, or Etag, element specifies a unique identifier for the session. Because of ETag and Accept-Headers, the browser knows that the Web server will support resumable downloads. The downloadable code and detailed explanation are well presented in the MSDN Mag article " Build Smarter ASP.NET File Downloading Into Your Web Applications " The article also discusses various ways to implement File Downloading functionality in Web Apps using ASP.NET, like: * Response.WriteFile method * Streaming the file using the Response.BinaryWrite method * Using the Response.TransferFile method in ASP.NET 2.0 * Using an ISAPI filter * Writing to a custom browser control By manipulating the Content-Disposition HTTP header , a file

The trick is to use the position and z-index CSS attributes with a DIV tag to create a "layer" for each entity and then position the layers as required.

Virtual Earth is the mapping technology that powers local.live.com , the latest local search and mapping site from Microsoft. It is implemented using a mix of both server-side and client-side technologies that include ASP.NET, asynchronous JavaScript, and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). The interactive maps with features like panning, zooming, searching are made possible through asynchronous JavaScript communication that occurs between the browser and the Virtual Earth app servers. Custom mapping applications and mashups can be built by using the Virtual Earth Map Control (version 3 is the latest), a JavaScript component that provides all the functionality needed to draw maps, search for locations, and get driving directions. A .chm version of the Virtual Earth Map Control SDK is available for off-line viewing & reference. The Getting Started articles ( Part 1 & 2 give a quick overview of VE Map control It should be exciting news to Web developers in India that it