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In the Spotlight - Brad Abrams

Brad Abrams

Group Program Manager for the Atlas Team at Microsoft

Brad Abrams was a founding member of both the Common Language Runtime, and .NET Framework teams at Microsoft Corporation where he is currently the Group Program Manager for the UI Framework and Services team which is responsible for delivering the developer platform that spans both clients and web based applications as well as the common services that are available to all applications. Specific technologies owned by this team include ASP.NET, Atlas, and Windows Forms.

Brad has been designing parts of the .NET Framework since 1998 when he started his framework design career building the BCL (Base Class Library) that ship as a core part of the .NET Framework. Brad was also the lead editor on the Common Language Specification (CLS), the .NET Framework Design Guidelines and the libraries in the ECMA\ISO CLI Standard. Brad has been deeply involved with the WinFX and Windows Vista efforts from their beginning

Brad co-authored Programming in the .NET Environment, and was editor on .NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference Vol1 and Vol2 and the Framework Design Guidelines


















Presentations by Brad Abrams

Microsoft Atlas

Take an in-depth first look at “Atlas,” a new set of technologies that will build on innovations in ASP.NET 2.0 and make it easier to build Web applications that deliver rich, interactive, and personalized experiences in the browser using technologies such as DHTML and XMLHttp. Atlas includes a 100% JScript cross-browser client script framework that allows you to easily build browser applications with rich UI and connectivity to Web services, full integration with ASP.NET application services such as user profiles, a set of ASP.NET server controls for “Atlas,” and a set of client application services.










Brad Abrams
Design Guidelines, Managed code and the .NET Framework


Brad Abrams's complete blog can be found at: http://blogs.msdn.com/brada

What Changed in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1?
Monday, August 18, 2008

Patrick Smacchia, of NDepend fame, has done a detailed, low level look at exactly what changed in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. 

Some data he lists:

# Assemblies    112
# Namespaces    919 to 935      (+16   +1.7%)
# Types    39 988 to 40 513      (+525   +1.3%)
# Methods    387 421 to 386 790      (-631   -0.2%)
# Fields    241 567 to 246 795      (+5 228   +2.2%)
# IL instructions    8 598 933 to 8 620 940      (+22 007   +0.3%)

Overall, for the amount of new functionality we added in SP1, I think this seems like fairly modest growth of the framework.

 

Patrick also includes some cool eye charts to help visualize the changes...  I am not sure you'll see this poster as a marketing give away at the next conference, but it is pretty neat to look at.. 

 

Enjoy!


Framework Design Guidelines 2nd Edition Available today on Rough Cuts
Saturday, August 16, 2008

Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reuseable .NET Libraries

Krys and I just finished writing the update to the framework design guidelines and you are can already get the "Rough Cuts"!   That is right, in today's instant information world why wait for copy editing, printing and shipping time! 

Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reuseable .NET Libraries on Rough Cuts

Expect it in on Amazon and in book stores late this year. 


.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Allows managed code to be launched from a network share!
Thursday, August 14, 2008

This has got to be one of the most consistently asked for "features" of .NET from the start!     Download .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Run off a network share with local permissions - You have voted and we have listened!  We have brought managed executables in line with native code executables in how they behave when run off a network share.  Yea!   

Vance has the full scoop.. If you want to send someone flowers for getting this done, it is Vance... he designed, coded, tested, cajoled, prodded, persisted and advocated strongly for the fix.

Download .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1


Some Results from Visual Studio and .NET Framework Developer Documentation Survey
Monday, August 11, 2008

Recently our documentation team hosted a survey on how you use VS and .NET Framework documentation.  Here are a few things that I thought was interesting.  I'd love to have your comments as well...  Any thoughts from you on this?

 

It seems that the the majority of developers in our community are using the latest (3.5) version of the .NET Framework.  Most are also using 2.0 as well...

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On the question of how you would like to see .NET version information in the docs, it seems most folks want to see it all, with a filter! 

  • Documentation should be specific to the .NET Framework version I am developing with
  • Documentation should be cumulative (including all versions of the .NET Framework with version specific information inline)
  • Documentation should be cumulative (including all versions of the .NET Framework with the ability to filter on specific versions)

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In terms of what folks use the docs for in their daily development, the .NET Framework reference is the winner by far! 

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And how do you find information?  Well, not surprising, web search engines win out by a high margin.  Although, it does seem from the feedback that if we could improve performance of offline Help and F1 folks wouldn’t need to search online as much.  Does that seem right to you?

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And, as always, the verbatim comments were very helpful as well.  Here are a couple I thought was valuable both positive and constructive:

  • Mostly good, mostly accurate, certainly better than most of the competition.
  • First let me say that the overall quality of the documentation is very, very high.  In general, Visual Studio / .NET documentation is the gold standard for technical documentation.
  • I would like to be able to specify my preferred language(s) so I do not see language examples that are not relevant to my needs.
  • I would like to see more tutorials - for new technology.   ScottGu's blog if often a better source of information.
  • Help loads way too slowly. Pressing F1 often brings up the wrong article.   Entering a search term also brings up the wrong articles. The only way to navigate help is to use Related links, or "See also" at the bottom of each article

New Web Developer Tips and Tricks Blog
Friday, August 8, 2008

We recently launched a very cool tips and tricks blog series just for web developers.  The goal is to get a similar format to Sara Ford's successful tips and tricks series. 

We are of to a very goo start!

Did You Know… Tip #1 – Powerful CSS Tools to Create, Manage and Apply Styles

Tip #2 Did you know...The Style Application Toolbar works in both Auto and Manual modes?

Tip #3 Did you know… Split View could be set vertically in VS 2008

 

Look for more in the coming weeks... if you have any suggestions for tips, please send them my way... 

 

Enjoy!


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