• SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 Released:
  • Information: http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2009/04/07/service-pack-1-for-sql-server-2008-available-today.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6f26fc45-f0ca-49cf-a6ee-840c7e8bb8af&displaylang=en
• Internet Explorer 8 Released:
  • Information: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/worldwide-sites.aspx
• ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Released:
  • Information: http://www.asp.net/mvc/
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=53289097-73ce-43bf-b6a6-35e00103cb4b&displaylang=en
• Expression Blend 3 Preview Released:
  • Information: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/blendpreview.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a04aa0ae-87be-4201-a65e-e792859122fc&displaylang=en
• Silverlight 3 Beta Released:
  • Information: http://silverlight.net/themes/silverlight/getstarted/sl3beta.aspx
  • Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=11dc7151-dbd6-4e39-878f-5081863cbb5d&displaylang=en
• Microsoft Web Platform Installer 1.0 and 2.0 Beta Released:
  • Information: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx
  • Download:
    • 1.0: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9588072
    • 2.0 Beta: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=145505

The blog post regarding this release makes a few important points to be aware of:

• jQuery support for Safari 2 is being phased out. 
  • Safari 2 has been superceded by Safari 3 and no longer has an appreciable market share.
• Packed versions of jQuery will no longer be available.
  • Packed scripts make debugging more difficult, cause platform incompatibilities (e.g. Adobe Air, Caja), and can actually increase loading times in many cases versus a plain minified script.

This update should not contain any breaking changes. Happy jQuerying!

• FxCop 1.36 download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9aeaa970-f281-4fb0-aba1-d59d7ed09772&DisplayLang=en
• Whats new in FxCop 1.36 can be found in this post on the MS Visual Studio Code Analysis Team Blog.

For those who haven’t used it before, FxCop is a tool to analyze .NET assemblies based on a set of rules in order to find potential defects or design issues. The tool comes with a lot of very helpful built in analysis rules that are broken out into seperate categories (e.g. Performance, Design, Globalization, etc..). A lot of Continuous Integration tools have the ability to include FxCop analysis as part of a build so that the warnings FxCop generates can be tracked over time (hopefully in the *downward* direction).

And on a somewhat related note, I also wanted to add the download link for StyleCop, which ironically, is easy to find even though I’m pretty sure a lot more people are using FxCop.

• StyleCop 4.3 download: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sourceanalysis/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx
• Updates and news about StyleCop can be found on the StyleCop Blog.

StyleCop is a tool which analyzes C# source code using a set of rules (much like FxCop) in order to enforce code styling guidelines. It can be used in Continuous Integration projects to verify code style rules are being met. The rule documentation is also available at the link above. I have found reading the rule justifications to be quite educational at times, especially since many of the StyleCop rules run counter to common .NET programming practices that I’ve seen.

I blogged previously about this release and the performance enhancements it’s expected to bring, but the release notes spell out in detail the performance differences of the new selector engine.

Along with this release, jQuery has created a new API Browser at http://api.jquery.com that is available in addition to the existing jQuery docs site. Whats nice about the new api browser is it can be downloaded and installed as an Adobe Air application.

Happy birthday jQuery!