Remember to hug a developer today!

General

• DateTime vs. DateTimeOffset In .NET 3.5: In part one of his two part series on working with dates & times in .NET 3.5, Dan Rigsby takes a look at the new DateTimeOffset structure.
• TimeZone vs. TimeZoneInfo In .NET 3.5: In part two, Dan takes a look at the new TimeZoneInfo class.

Web Development

• The Evolution Of MVC: Stephen Walther has an excellent post discussing the evolution of MVC from conception through ASP.NET MVC.
• The Complete Guide For You To Become An Almighty jQuery Developer: A massive collection of jQuery tips, tricks, tutorials, & resources.
• ASP.NET Routing Documentation: Good documentation on the new routing system in .NET 3.5 SP1.

Software

• NHibernate 2.0: Oren Eini announces the release of NHibernate 2.0, which is comparable to Hibernate 3.2.
• Firebug 1.2: John Resig announces and outlines the release of Firebug 1.2.

General

• Red Gate Buys Reflector: Lutz Roeder’s Reflector – the best free .NET development tool of all time – has been purchased by Red Gate Software. They say that it will remain free…let’s all hope that it does.

Web Development

• jQuery Animation Jump: Ever notice that subtle jump at the end of your jQuery animation? Here’s a quick tip on how to fix it!
• 10 Useful CSS Tricks To Conquer The World: A collection of simple, yet powerful, CSS tips that would likely be useful in nearly every project.
• Why I Am No Longer Supporting IE6: Ryan Farley is fighting the good fight and is no longer supporting IE6 on his website.
• 7 Principles Of Clean And Optimized CSS Code: 7 simple tips for writing better CSS.
• 40+ CSS/JS Styling And Functionality Techniques: The title says it all – a nice collection of ways to spruce up your forms.

General

• The Tortoise And The Hare: Tim Barcz has a must-read post comparing enterprise development to the fable of the tortoise and the hare. As someone who’s been dealing with this sort of cycle for the last few years, I couldn’t agree more. Diligent developers should be striving to be the tortoise, writing maintainable, unit-tested code that breaks the cycle of the hare – quickly written applications that degrade so quickly another rewrite is the only way to fix them.
• Hidden Gems – Not The Same Old 3.5 SP1 Post: As I’m sure you’re already aware, SP1 for .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 shipped this week. Scott Hanselman takes a look at the "metric buttload" of changes with this release.
• 12 Unit Testing Tips For Software Engineers: A great article by Alex Iskold with 12 tips for unit testing.
• Implementing Repository And Specification Patterns Using Linq: Ritesh Rao shows how to get your hands dirty using Linq.
• Inversion Of Control Is NOT About Testability: Jeffrey Palermo reminds us that IoC is not about testability – it’s about a good design, of which testability is a byproduct.

Web Development

• Conditional-CSS: This slick tool lets you include conditional statements right in your CSS files to target specific browsers.
• ASP.NET Performance: High CPU Utilization Case Studies And Solutions: Alik Levin, of the Microsoft ACE Team, takes a look at a number of issues that can cause high CPU utilization on your web site.
• Keep Your Link-Juice By Using A Custom HTTP Module For 301 Redirects: Dana Coffey shares some SEO-foo – using a custom HTTP module to permanently redirect requests from an old URL to a new one.
• Filters In ASP.NET MVC Preview 4: Phil Haack writes about the four types of action filters you’ll find in the 4th preview of ASP.NET MVC.
• Build Better Pages With Firebug: This is an excellent tutorial on what is without a doubt the MVP of web development tools – Firebug.
• ASP.NET Gets No Respect: ASP.NET is a great platform – the best, in my opinion – for building anything on the web, yet it just doesn’t have much visibility in the most trafficked web sites. Why? Rick Strahl has the answers!

Probably the biggest news of the week is that SQL Server 2008 RTM’d this week, and is already available on MSDN. A word of warning…if you have Visual Studio 2008 installed, you’re better off waiting until Monday when SP1 for Visual Studio 2008 ships.

General

• The Onion Architecture Part 3: In this third installment, Jeffrey Palermo puts the Onion Architecture side by side with the traditional layered architecture.
• 36 Steps To Success As A Technical Lead: A good article about how to be successful as a technical lead, a title that brings with it some subtle challenges.
• Visual Studio .NET Platform Targets Explained: With 64-bit computing starting to make its way into consumer desktops, it’s even more critical to target the appropriate platform.
• Visual Studio Theme Generator: A slick tool for creating themes for Visual Studio.

Web Development

• JSON Serializers In .NET – Not There Yet: Rick Strahl explains why he’s created his own JSON serializer, despite there already being two such classes in .NET.
• YUI Compressor For .NET: Some kind souls have ported the popular YUI Compressor to .NET.
• A Practical Review Of ASP.NET MVC: Josh Charles takes a good long look at ASP.NET MVC.
• Moving My Site Onto A 64 Bit Server: Rick Strahl has a lengthy post outlining his move to a brand-spanking-new 64-bit server and the challenges he encounterd along the way.

General

• The Onion Architecture Part 1: Jeffrey Palermo proposes a new architectural pattern that is based on how components are coupled to each other.
• The Onion Architecture Part 2: Jeffrey Palermo continues his presentation of the Onion Architecture with a practical example.
• How To Review NHibernate Applications: Oren Eini writes about some key points to look for when reviewing an NHibernate-based application.
• More Fun With ‘yield return’: Mike Hadlow presents a great usage of the yield keyword…very, very nice!

Web Development

• jQuery Hotkeys Plugin: A jQuery plugin that lets you easily add and remove handlers for keyboard events using almost any key combination!
• Generate Web Page Thumbnail Screen Shots: Chris Pietschmann shows how to use the WebBrowser component to take screen shots of web pages.
• ASP.NET MVC – Avoiding Tag Soup: As a response to Jeff Atwood’s Tag Soup post, Rob Conery shows the spaghetti code can be pared down to something much simpler.
• Enhance Your Input Fields With Simple CSS Tricks: Janko Jovanovic shows some simple CSS tricks to spice up your form fields.
• Using CSS To Do Anything: 50+ Creative Examples and Tutorials: A nice collection of some neat things you can do with CSS.
• Get Language and Country From A Browser In ASP.NET: Mads Kristensen shows off a pretty slick trick – determining a visitors language and country using only information sent by the browser!