Bart de Smet has released a very usefully query expression translation cheat sheet this is an excellent resource if you're into Linq and want to be able to write a Linq expression in code.

I don't remember this happening yesterday, but once I've started browsing with IE8 today I quickly discovered that I wasn't able to open links in a new tab or window. Selecting open in new tab from the right-click context menu when clicking on a link caused a new tab to open with the title 'Connecting...', in the right tab color (tab grouping feature), but there was no address in the URL bar and the page never loaded while the open Link in New Window wasn't doing anything at all.

What's more I noticed that Windows Explorer (not IE) was always opening new folders in new windows even though I've had specifically set it to open new folders in the same explorer window.

Arghhh.... after running a few tests, running the browser in no add-on mode, and disabling features one by one I've discovered that both problems go away by turning IE8 quick tabs off.

Bug submitted here. Please rate it so that it gets fixed.

I've been following IE beta program since it's first public release (beta 1) so when I've read a few minutes ago that IE8 beta 2 has been released for public testing I've download it and installed it. Installation completed without any problems and IE8 was up and running in a few minutes.

Some of IE cool new features that you'll find in this release are:

• InPrivate Browsing
  Keeps Internet Explorer 8 from adding any sites you visit to Browsing History.
• Web Slices
  Allows you to keep up with changes to the sites you care about most. Once you add a Web Slice to IE8, you won’t have to go back to the same website again to get updates.
• Accelerators
  Accelerators let you complete your everyday browsing activities more quickly and even discover new services by mapping, translating, emailing, and more in just a few mouse clicks.
• Search Suggestions
  Allows you to search smarter with detailed suggestions from your favorite search providers and browsing history and see visual previews and get suggested content topics while you type in the enhanced Instant Search Box.
• Smart Screen Filter
  New security features help to protect you against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise your data, privacy, and identity.
• Compatibility view
  Internet Explorer 8’s built-in Compatibility View button enables you to display websites that were designed for older browsers. Simply press the Compatibility View button if you see display problems on a website like misaligned text, images, or text boxes. It’s located next to the Refresh button on the Address Bar.

What's more is that it's pretty fast too...

I finally managed to find an hour to update my blog engine to the latest release of Subtext (Subtext 2.0).

Migration was smooth and had no trouble at all running the new engine in a matter of minutes. For detailed instruction on the migration steps, this is probably all you'll need.

Of course my old skin does not work with the new engine so I've decided to use one of the pre-built ones till I get something mine on ;-).

Let me know, if you notice any problems. Keep on blogin ...

I'm using Linq to SQL for a project I'm working on lately and as you can imagine I've extended the partial classes that MSLinqToSQLGenerator creates to fit certain needs (basically enumerations).

After installing Visual Studio 2008 SP1 though I discovered that whenever I saved my model the above mentioned custom tool was failing to generate the LinqToSql classes. I had to, first delete my custom code file, run the custom tool to generate my LinqToSql classes and then add the custom code file again to get it working.

What I discovered after a few tests is that in order to get it working (without the work around mentioned earlier) you have to write the using statements inside the namespace block (aka first line should be the namespace) . So the extension model file should look something like that:

namespace SomeNamespace
{
  using System.Configuration;
  using System.Text;

  public partial class BussinesObject
  {
   ...
  }
}

I don't know why the scope of the using statements could cause the MSLinqToSQLGenerator to fail, or even if this is intended or not. Does anyone have any ideas?