Microsoft Mathematics 4.0

Microsoft Mathematics provides a graphing calculator that plots in 2D and 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science studies.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9caca722-5235-401c-8d3f-9e242b794c3a

Microsoft Commits Code to jQuery!

This week on Web Camps TV, Stephen Walther from the ASP.NET Team joins James Senior (@jsenior) to discuss an exciting announcement: Microsoft is about to make the first contributions to the jQuery open source project!

In the past 6 months, we've been busy working on three features:

1. Templating
2. Data-Linking
3. Globalization

In this video, we show demos of the contributions in action and how/when they will be available for developers to use!

Find out more at www.jquery.com and be sure to sign up for a freeWeb Camp to learn more about the jQuery contributions.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Web+Camps+TV/Web-Camps-TV-5-Microsoft-Commits-Code-to-jQuery

jQuery Globalization Plugin from Microsoft

Today, MS released a prototype of a new jQuery Globalization Plugin that enables you to add globalization support to your JavaScript applications. This plugin includes globalization information for over 350 cultures ranging from Scottish Gaelic, Frisian, Hungarian, Japanese, to Canadian English.  We will be releasing this plugin to the community as open-source.
You can download our prototype for the jQuery Globalization plugin from our Github repository: http://github.com/nje/jquery-glob

You can also download a set of samples that demonstrate some simple use-cases with it here.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/06/10/jquery-globalization-plugin-from-microsoft.aspx

Expression Web SuperPreview makes cross-browser testing like moist delicious cake

Editorial note: If you’ve been following my tweets in the past 12 hours you’d have seen me hinting at something very cool for web developers coming out of Microsoft’s MIX09 event today. Well, it’s still at least 3 hours until MIX but it appears Microsoft’s own Expression Web team blog has let the dogs out early (their server is set to to New York time, not Las Vegas time), so consider the NDA broken

“Expression Web SuperPreview”, the name is typical of Microsoft products, it’s technically self-explanatory but mind-numbingly bland and ridiculously long.

To make matters worse, the beta being released today - a subset of the full release coming with Expression Web 3 - is called “Expression Web SuperPreview for Windows Internet Explorer”. Granted the name is not that important for a developer tool, a kickass one at that.

Every web developer today faces the challenge of checking website compatibility across a large pool of browsers and browser versions in the marketplace. Up and until now, either you could install every browser, verify the website via a visual inspection and debug with tools specialized to that browser, or you could send a URL to a third-party screenshotting service like BrowserShots for an all-in-one visual inspection. The former is messy and tedious but gives you more control and an opportunity to diagnose problems, whilst the latter is simple but slow and useless to fix the problem. Needless to say, SuperPreview is the best of both worlds.

Note: The following screenshots come from a newer unreleased internal build of the application and does not reflect accurately what you can do in Expression Web SuperPreview today. Please don’t hurt me. I like kittens.

SuperPreview as a tool allows you to compare different rendering engines in a single unified interface. Simple clicks gives you comparisons between Internet Explorer 6, the native version of Internet Explorer installed, other browsers you may have installed locally - Firefox 3.5, Safari 3, Safari 4 - and even an bitmap images of website prototypes.

Pushing the envelopes a little, Microsoft is also building in support for remote rendering, such as those on different operating systems even. Details about this feature is not entirely clear at the moment, but I would expect this to be more advanced than just an image rendering.

On top of just a visual inspection, you have a standard set of modern HTML debugging tools like a DOM inspector, CSS inspector, element highlighting, pixel rulers and guides.

And perhaps what I think is the coolest feature, an overlay mode to compare exactly what’s different for pixel-perfect alignment. Or if you cross your eyes, the web in 3D.

Finally, how you can get your dirty web developer paws on this awesome tool, and it’s a little complicated to say the least. The beta of this software available right now is downloadable from Microsoft.com (250MB). The catch being it only supports renderings between IE6 and versions of IE installed on your computer already, but it should ease the pain of testing for IE6/7/8 compatibility for a lot of devs.

The full and final version of this product will be bundled together with Expression Web 3, sometime later this year and will run as a separate standalone application. Unfortunately for the many Mac web developers out there, because Expression Web is not an application part of the Expression Mac suite, SuperPreview will not be available.

You can watch this announcement and more from MIX09 from the livestream website starting at 9AM PST (Las Vegas time), and not EDT (New York time).

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090318/expression-web-superpreview-cross-browser-testing/

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.

By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en

Microsoft Silverlight 2.0

Microsoft Silverlight extends your existing development skills, empowering you to build new types of applications for the Web regardless of target platform or browser. Rapidly create compelling rich Web applications using all the familiar features, languages and tools of the .NET framework.

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/default.aspx