SVG gets rendered on IE 9.0

Looks like Microsoft has decided to support SVG in IE. This is a thing I always wanted to happen.

I ran the butterfly.svg file found here (http://www.croczilla.com/bits_and_pieces/svg/samples) in IE 9.0 Beta and it rendered as expected (shown). The Mozilla also rendered it the same way.

I also tested (with a little change) one of the svg graphics demonstrating svg as inline html from Jennifer Yu's

blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/03/18/svg-in-ie9-roadmap.aspx

Surprise, IE 9.0 rendered the HTML file but Mozilla 3.6.10 could not as shown.

IE 9.0: Love at first sight

It's cool and it's fast and it is called IE9.0
Little more than IE9.0, it's Beta 1.
You can download it from here:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/
Versions Vista (Windows 7),  32-bit or 64-Bit
 
IE9-Windows7-x86-enu.exe  19.0MB file
Installs fast and it's really nice. If you can do without Norton Toolbar you can take off a full 1 second from waiting time.
Here are some screen shots. Go get yourself IE 9.0 and experience yourself.
Some problem getting it, review some screen shots here.

I Got rid of Norton Toolbar

Navigational icons at the bottom

Home. Tools etc are unobtrusive

Here are the highlights:
Seamless with Windows 7 (how about Vista? some seams perhaps!)

HTML 5 Support

Focused, UI-Centric Page

 Faster Web. Yes, it looks like it is for now.

Pinning
Jump lists
AeroSnap

 HTML 5 supercharged web sites!!. Cool tool to design

Flower-o-scope tool is great

 I discovered my musical talents here. Go there and find out how?

http://www.beatkeep.net  

Who said you cannot have design view of an SQL Azure table?

It is true that if you are connecting to SQL Azure from SSMS you only have recourse to T-SQL for the most part (with the Delete however you do get a user interface). Well, this has been one of the sour points as some believe that GUI is more productive than using T-SQL. T-SQL and SSMS are really the two sides of a doppelgänger and, you know who the evil one is.

But the Project 'Houston' has changed it for good. It has a lovely (if I may so call it) user interface blessed with Silverlight. You even have animation effects. It is the web based database management tool that is a nice offspring of Windows Cloud platform. Although new for Microsoft web based database management tools are in vogue quite for some time.


Houston is presently hosted on the SQL Azure developer portal.

Why wait, sign-up for Windows Live follow it up owning a Windows Azure account. You are all set and ready to roll. Roll baby roll!

Here is a screen shot of something you always wanted to do with SQL Azure. See all the (gory) details of your table in design view and make changes to it and save.












I am sure if Microsoft adds a dash of CSS and shine a bit more of Silverlight you could have syntax highlighting and intellisense in no time at all. Right now the syntax is all monochrome.

Getting SQL Azure data on LightSwitch is easy

Jump start on Microsoft's latest RAD developmental tool - the Microsoft LightSwitch.It is still in Beta but looks very cool. You have data sources and screens. Hook them up and you are done. It has screens that are representative of most of the likely usage scenarios such as searching, point to parent and all the children show up, edit data, etc. You hardly need to write code for most of the common business use. In case you want to write code, you could. There are lot of events to which you can hook up code. I used VS 2010 Express and some coding is limited but I understand with a better VS versio you can do a lot more.


Before you do the big things get a head start knowing about this interface. Read this article and jump start on LightSwitch.

Start here and if you have a problem send me an email

http://www.packtpub.com/article/microsoft-lightswitch-application-using-sql-azure-database

Here comes update SU4 to SQL Azure right on time

The 4th update to SQL Azure has arrived. The new items added to SQL Azure are the following:

• Now supports database copy, allowing you to make a real-time complete snapshot of your SQL Azure database into a different server in the data center. Details of this are here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff951624.aspx
Basically two types of copying are supported:
1. You can create a copy of a database on the same server
2. You can create a copy of the database on a diferent sever in the same sub-region

The following T-SQL statement is used for copying:

CREATE DATABASE destination_database_name
    AS COPY OF [source_server_name.]source_database_name

If source_Server_name is not provided the source database must be located on the same SQL Azure that the login to the database is connected. For example, say I have a database BlueskyBengaluru and I want to keep a copy of it on the same server, all I need to do is execute this statement:

Create database BlueskyMumbai as copy of BlueskyBengaluru
Presto, you have a copy of database created.

The databases before copying the database

After the Create database BlueskyMumbai as copy of BlueskyBengaluru

• The updated How-To documentation with several how-to examples. I do not see anything new here, but perhaps the changes are in the details.

•  Update to the light-weight, Silverlight based web access HOUSTON to SQL Azure Databases

It is now available on multiple datacenters. It has moved from incubation to a more realistic scenario with reduced latency. I am yet to find out how I access Houston from my data center.