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The Wait for Visual Studio 2008 is Over

On Monday, Nov. 19, Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 were released to manufacturing (RTM). With more than 250 new features,Visual Studio 2008 includes significant enhancements in every edition, including Visual Studio Express and Visual Studio Team System. Developers of all levels – from hobbyists to enterprise development teams – now have a consistent, secure and reliable solution for developing applications for the latest platforms: the Web, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office system, and beyond.

MSDN Subscribers: Get Visual Studio 2008 Now

For a good startup, get the Free Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions

Or get the free 90 days trial for VS2008 Team Suite Edition, which can be converted to full version with a key.

Don’t forget the MSDN Library for Visual Studio 2008.

Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and now CTO at Mozilla, and Microsoft’s Chris Wilson are in sharp disagreement over the next version of JavaScript

Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich, creator of the popular scripting language ECMAScript, better known as JavaScript, and Microsoft’s Chris Wilson, platform architect of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer platform team, are trading heated rhetoric over the proposed next version of the language. Microsoft, whose own version of JavaScript is called JScript, is quibbling with the ECMAScript Edition 4 effort, which is supported by Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser.

Click for more on Mozilla and Microsoft Battle Over JavaScript »

Outside developers will be allowed to create programs for the iPhone, changing a policy that had angered many.

Blocking outsiders from making programs that would run easily on the iPhone has been one of a series of restrictions that have annoyed users, even leading to some lawsuits.

Jobs, in comments on Apple’s Web site, said a kit for developers still will not be available until February, as the company works out how to open up the phone without exposing it to malicious programs.

Click for more on Apple to open up iPhone software »

Microsoft is making source code for the .Net Framework available to interested developers under its Shared Source license, the company announced on October 3.

Microsoft will be rolling out the .Net code piecemeal, after scrubbing comments. It plans to start with the .Net Base Class Libraries, ASP.Net, Windows Forms, ADO.Net, XML (System.XML) and the Windows Presentation Foundation, blogged Microsoft Developer Division General Manager Scott Guthrie. Over time, the company also plans to make available the source code for Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation and Language Integrated Query (LINQ), Guthrie said.

Click for more on Microsoft to release .Net as Shared Source »

Team System Web Access (formerly known as TeamPlain) is a Web interface to Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server. Its a free download that will be incorporated into a future release of Visual Studio Team System. You may install it with licensed installations of Team Foundation Server.

Features

• NEW: Display custom controls on work item forms
• NEW: view queued builds new, queue new builds
• Add new work items or edit existing ones
• Work with any type of work item, including custom ones
• Add new work item queries or edit existing ones
• View, download, upload, check-in and check-out documents on SharePoint team portal
• View reports, export as PDF or Excel
• Browse source control repositories, download files, view changesets, diffs, histories, and annotated views
• View build results, start or stop builds
• Search for keywords in work items

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Adblock effectively robs these free sites of their revenue. If Internet Explorer came with a feature such as Adblock, it would effectively wipe out thousands of websites, maybe more. These are the same free sites users of Adblock frequently visit. The irony is how this is self-defeating.

Click for more on Site owners fight back against Firefox for aggressive Adblocking »

The domain used to host small Google Gadget applications written by Web developers could be misused by phishers, a Web security researcher said Friday.

Google Gadgets are little programs that gather information on the Web and then display them on multiple Web pages. They are used to give Webmasters an easy way to display everything from sports scores to astronomical data on their sites.

Unfortunately, they can also be misused by phishers to get around antiphishing filters. Attackers could create a phishing site on the gmodules.com domain and then send that URL to victims. Because Google’s gmodules.com domain is trusted by antiphishing filters, victims might then go to the phishing site without being warned by their browser’s filtering software.

Security researcher Robert Hansen, a frequent critic of Google, reported the issue to the company’s security team, but he was not satisfied with their response. He says Google told him that what he sees as a flaw is simply part of the site’s expected behavior. Google couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

Google should restrict the URLs that can use this domain to avoid helping online criminals, said Hansen, who is CEO of SecTheory. “If they leave it intact, I guarantee you it will be used in an attack.”

Such an attack would probably be obvious, however, to a vigilant Web surfer, who would know better than to enter banking information on a site hosted on the gmodules.com domain.

There’s not much that can be done to prevent phishers from abusing sites like this if Google wants to let its users create content, said Alex Stamos, a researcher with Isec Partners. “They have to have this throw-away domain to jail modules written by other people,” he said. “It’s not an unreasonable model, and it’s the best they can do to host content created by malicious parties while not exposing themselves to attack.”

Click for more on Google Gadgets can be misused by phishers »