Wiki, meet MSDN. Hurrah for the MSDN Community Content

Most of you probably know the Microsoft MSDN, and if you’ve ever programmed for the Windows platform you have most probably used the library. It provides information on Microsoft Products (COM, MFC, .Net …) as well as more general knowledge (programming practices, networking, multi-threading …).

I definitely like this library; however some articles are poorly documented or feature no or few examples. Until now you had no choice but to go take a look on other websites for those examples you desperately need.

This time may have come to an end with the new Microsoft step toward the social web: MSDN Community Content or MSDNWiki. As of now anyone can add content to the MSDN library. However don’t get fooled by the name, it’s not a Wiki, you can’t add article, remove others contributions, you have to login with a live ID… it’s just a way for developers to share their knowledge inline.

If you want to try, just look for the “Add new Community Content” at the top and bottom of each page.

More information on the MSDN page about MSDNWiki

EDIT (12/21/2006) :
MSDN is a powerfull tool, when you can acces it. Here is what I can see of MSDN today : :

Reading office 2007 file with 2003

With the recent release of the new Office 2007, one may expect more and more .docx, .pptx , ... file to be exchanged.
For those already using 2007 no problem; but most people will wait before switching to 2007 (maybe for a new computer purchase). So Microsoft has provided us with a plug-in for Office 2003 which enables us to read/write .docx and other new file formats.

You will find this genuine tool there on the micosoft website.


Another tip: *.docx, *.pptx, files are just a bunch of .xml and image files archived in a zip file. When such a file is corrupted, one may try uncompressing the file and modifying the corrupted xml before archiving everything back.

Java meets Vista

Here it is finally, the new Java Standard Edition 6. According to Sun this version brings a lot of new or enhanced features. One may think of the enhanced Web Services and AWT/Swing (I plan to take a look at those two).

However some features are not only intended for developers, support for Windows Vista is such a feature.

Yes, you may finally run java (application or applet) on your Windows vista without getting upset at the “The color scheme has been changed to Windows Vista Basic” stuff. Hurrah for Java under Aero Glass.

Well, I am still waiting for some other applications to become fully Vista compliant (thinking of the Zen Creative Suite right now) but that’s a huge step forwards considering the number of java Web Sites and Applications out there.

You will find this new release

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

PS : Only Java Standard Edition (JSE) is available in version 6, Java Micro edition (JME) and Java Enterprise Edition(JEE) 6.0 has not yet been released.