Are you passionate about delivering on the vision of “Connected Entertainment”? Do you dream about having a mobile phone based entertainment experience powered by a compelling entertainment service? If yes, come join our team and build the next generation of entertainment experiences!

Our team is embarking on the mission to create a “Connected Entertainment” experience that spans the PC and devices. To complete this vision, we must ensure that the “Connected Entertainment” experience is available on mobile phones - the most ubiquitous, most personal and most used devices in the world. We are a rapidly growing, V1 product team with great opportunities for motivated individuals!

We are looking for an exceptional Senior Software Design Engineer (SDE) to lead the design and delivery of distributed services in the cloud for our team. You will drive technical product design across a wide set of feature areas and create detailed design specifications. You’ll write scalable, robust, reliable, secure, and high performance server code for our mobile platform. You’ll also work closely with design, PM and test teams to drive execution of these features.

The ideal candidate would meet the following requirements:
- Minimum 6+ years of development experience with proficiency in C#/C++/C with proven skills in design and product architecture
- Experience in building and shipping consumer facing products across multiple product cycles
- Experience building highly scalable distributed server products.
- Experience delivering web services, scalable data stores and related technologies are a strong plus (SQL, WCF, ASP.Net)
- Great problem solving skills and high intellectual horsepower
- Strong passion for media and entertainment
- Excellent written and verbal communication and cross group collaboration skills
- A BA/BS in Computer Science, Engineering and/or equivalent industry experience is preferred

If this position interests you please contact ncdevjob@microsoft.com

You will need to update tfsredirect.aspx on your WSS 2.0 machine.  This file is installed to %ProgramFiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS. 

This line:

   string[] uriPathParts = Request.RawUrl.Split(new char[] { '/','\\' }, 2, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

Must be replaced with these two lines:

   string uriBasis = Request.Params["HTTP_VTI_SCRIPT_NAME"] ?? Request.RawUrl;
   string[] uriPathParts = uriBasis.Split(new char[] { '/','\\' }, 2, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

This is a particularly exciting release for me as I've recently taken over leading the TFS Setup, Admin, and Ops team and we made a number of improvements in deploying and managing TFS servers for Beta 2 including support for SharePoint Farms, running TFS as Network Service, SQL Named Instances, remote SharePoint, Windows Server 2008, WSS 3.0, Client Certificates, port flexibility, Analysis Services flexibility, and more!

A company I worked for many years ago developed a huge workflow system for OS/2 and Unix so I've always been intrigued by this stuff.  It was ginormous and had all sorts of memory limits, usability was poor (it used lots of non-modal windows - and I mean lots), and everything was so darned generic that as a user you really had too much of the implementation exposed to you.  The problem is that it was a generalized engine that wasn't really a proper API that had a GUI slapped on top of it.  When what you really want is an engine that manages the flows and allows you to build a tailored customer experience that is relevant for your scenarios.

Stay tuned...

In these dark days of dot-com despair, Web developer Brian Yangas never thought a practical joke would yield three job leads in an hour.
 
Recently Patrick Husting, eHome Inc.'s chief technology officer and co-founder, told Mr. Yangas and 30 of his co-workers at the company's Bellevue, Wash., tech office that the online real-estate brokerage would shut all of its 11 regional sales offices and lay off the employees there.

Only the tech office would remain open while eHome tried to sell its technology. But the company might run out of money, so Mr. Husting suggested the employees be prepared and start looking for other work.

Mr. Yangas, a self-described "quirky guy," didn't fix up his resume; he fixed up a cardboard sign. It read "Web Developer...dot-com went bust...will code for food (or options)...hungry -- sober."

He arrived at work at 8:30 the next morning, bundled against the November chill in a hardy brown twill jacket and baseball cap. Sign in hand, he strolled out to the nearby highway-exit ramp and waited to make his co-workers laugh as they arrived. Mr. Yangas, 31, hoped his joke would "relieve the anxiety," he says. "You know, lighten the mood."

For the first 10 minutes, passing drivers essentially ignored the avid foosball player. Then some of the commuters, most of whom he didn't recognize, "started to notice and laugh, so I thought I'd stay a bit longer," he says.

A man driving "maybe a Toyota" shouted "Cogenix is hiring!" Mr. Yangas recalls. Cogenix is a database-application and Web site maker based in nearby Redmond, Wash. About five minutes later, Cami Cole, an associate with information-technology recruiter Maxim Group, stopped and asked "Are you really a Web developer?" Mr. Yangas nodded, and Ms. Cole handed him a business card with the parting words, "I can get you a job."

After about 45 minutes, Mr. Yangas went inside to warm up. He came back out at 10am because his boss wanted a picture of the prank. While Mr. Yangas was waiting for Mr. Husting to find a camera, "a long-haired guy in a blue truck" yelled, "Go to Microsoft campus building D. Ask for Tim."

"I wasn't sure what to think about it at first," Mr. Yangas remembers, "but later that day, no one was doing any work," so he headed down to the Microsoft campus. "I thought, it's been a weird day so far; let's see what fate brings."

He found the D building on Microsoft's Red West campus. It was three or four stories high and Mr. Yangas, who had caught only a fleeting glimpse of his contact, worried he wouldn't find the right Tim.

But he did. With the help of a new receptionist who didn't know a soul in the building but did have access to a photo database of employees, Mr. Yangas located what he thought might be the right extension.

The receptionist called: "There's this guy down here who said you yelled to him on the street." Tim Noonan, a development manager for Microsoft's MSN Explorer group, came down to meet Mr. Yangas, took him back to his office and talked to him for 15 to 20 minutes before passing him on to other members of Mr. Noonan's team.

"We're always looking for good developers, so why not" talk with Mr. Yangas, Mr. Noonan says. "And if he's as good a developer as he is at coming up with this scheme then woo-hoo! We value creativity."

Mr. Yangas "was pretty excited" about the outcome: Mr. Noonan called him back for a second, formal interview a few weeks later. And yet another rolled around a week later. Among other things, he was asked to write code on a dry-erase board and was interviewed during lunch to see if he could answer tough questions while eating. The interview lasted nine hours.

Thursday brought good news. A human-resources representative called to say the company would be making him a job offer early in the new year, once "the numbers guy comes back from vacation."

Meanwhile, eHome hasn't shut down. Since the pre-Thanksgiving meeting, Mr. Yangas's current employer has decided to reposition itself as a technology company. EHome's Web site is up and running, the company is referring leads to former agents and receiving referral fees.

So Mr. Yangas, who has two kids and is paying off a home mortgage and a minivan, says he hasn't "gone back out" with his sign. He was encouraged by the job leads, he says, but, in fact, "I was actually kind of hoping for money."

First make sure you have a reference to Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation - either follow Ed's steps to add them via the REG.EXE commands for convenience or load them using the Browse tab on the Add Reference dialog - in a default installation the assembly will be in "%programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies".

Next add a using clause:

using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation;

Create a member variable in your Connect class for the TeamFoundationServerExt object:

private TeamFoundationServerExt _tfsExt; 

In your OnConnection method, initialize the _tfsExt object:

_tfsExt = _applicationObject.GetObject("Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationServerExt") as TeamFoundationServerExt;

The TeamFoundationServerExt object exposes two things:

1. ActiveProjectContext - a property of type ProjectContextExt which contains the active server and project
2. ProjectContextChanged - an event which is fired when the current project and/or server is changed

public sealed class ProjectContextExt
{
    public string DomainName { get; }
    public string DomainUri { get; }
    public string ProjectName { get; }
    public string ProjectUri { get; }
}

void _tfsExt_ProjectContextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}

When I told my wife I was going to put a stereo in our living room that she had meticulously decorated she gave me a very skeptical look.  Then I brought the SoundDock home and she liked it pretty much from the get go - "you mean I just plug my iPod in and that's it?"  Yep.  And it charges the iPod as well so I/she can just grab it and go.  Since we got it we've had a lot of guests and pretty much everyone is amazed at the sound produced by that little gizmo.  I'm sure we've inspired a few iPod and Bose purchases.  The downside is that the SoundDock isn't very versatile - it just works with the iPod and that's it.

Our own UI framework does quite a bit more than this - this is just a scaled down example of what happens when a dialog is invoked from the command line.  Many of our dialogs end up getting displayed in Visual Studio, standalone Windows apps, Excel, the command line, etc.  So in our framework the method to show a modal dialog is actually virtual so the appropriate thing happens in each environment.

 using System;
 using System.Diagnostics;
 using System.Text;
 using System.Windows.Forms;
 using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
 using System.Threading;
  
 namespace ConsoleFlasher
 {
     class Program
     {
         static void Main(string[] args)
         {
             Thread.Sleep(5000); //  Lengthy operation... 
             using (MyForm form = new MyForm())
             {
                 UIHost.ShowModalDialog(form);
             }
         }
     }
  
     static class UIHost
     {
         static public DialogResult ShowModalDialog(Form form)
         {
             return ShowModalDialog(form, null);
         }
  
         //********************************************************************************************
         /// <summary>
         /// Display a modal dialog a windows application.
         /// </summary>
         /// <param name="form">The form to display.</param>
         /// <param name="parent">The parent window for window stack ordering.</param>
         //********************************************************************************************
         static public DialogResult ShowModalDialog(Form form, IWin32Window parent)
         {
             bool isTopLevel = parent == null;
  
             form.ShowInTaskbar = isTopLevel;
             form.MinimizeBox = isTopLevel;
             form.ShowIcon = isTopLevel;
  
             if (isTopLevel)
             {
                 //  Attach an event handler so maybe we'll flash the title in the taskbar
                 form.Activated += new EventHandler(OnModalDialogFormActivate);
  
                 //  This is where you would also set your app icon on the dialog as well.
             }
         
             DialogResult result = form.ShowDialog(parent);
         
             if (isTopLevel)
             {
                 form.Activated -= new EventHandler(OnModalDialogFormActivate);
             }
         
             return result;
         }
  
         //********************************************************************************************
         /// <summary>
         /// On form activate for a modal dialog for the console.  We check to see if we are the 
         /// foreground window and flash the taskbar if we aren't.
         /// </summary>
         /// <param name="sender">Form to activate</param>
         /// <param name="e">Standard event args</param>
         //********************************************************************************************
         static private void OnModalDialogFormActivate(object sender, EventArgs e)
         {
             Form form = sender as Form;
  
             if (form != null)
             {
                 Debug.Assert(form.Visible, "Form should already be visible for FormActivate");
  
                 IntPtr foregroundHwnd = NativeMethods.GetForegroundWindow();
  
                 //  First see if we're in the foreground
  
                 if (foregroundHwnd != form.Handle)
                 {
                     IntPtr consoleHwnd = NativeMethods.GetConsoleWindow();
  
                     //  We're not in the foreground so let's see if our console is.
  
                     if (foregroundHwnd != consoleHwnd)
                     {
                         //  We're not in the foreground and neither is our console window so let's
                         //  flash the user.
                         int flashCount = 1;
  
                         //  make sure we read the count from the system and respect this for accessibility
                         NativeMethods.SystemParametersInfo(NativeMethods.SPI_GETFOREGROUNDFLASHCOUNT, 0, ref flashCount, 0);
  
                         NativeMethods.FLASHWINFO fwi = new NativeMethods.FLASHWINFO();
  
                         fwi.cbSize = (UInt32)Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(NativeMethods.FLASHWINFO));
                         fwi.dwFlags = NativeMethods.FLASHW_ALL;
                         fwi.dwTimeout = 0;      //  This will get the system default which is the caret blink rate
                         fwi.uCount = (UInt32)flashCount;
                         fwi.hwnd = form.Handle;
  
                         //  blinky, blinky, blinky
                         NativeMethods.FlashWindowEx(ref fwi);
                     }
                     else
                     {
                         //  Our console has the input focus so let's be a bit more agressive...
                         NativeMethods.SetForegroundWindow(new HandleRef(form, form.Handle));
                     }
                 }
  
                 //  Don't call us again...
                 form.Activated -= new EventHandler(OnModalDialogFormActivate);
             }
             else
             {
                 Debug.Fail("Invalid sender in OnModalDialogFormLoad");
             }
         }
  
     }
  
     static class NativeMethods
     {
         public const int SPI_GETFOREGROUNDFLASHCOUNT = 0x2004;
  
         public const int FLASHW_STOP = 0;
         public const int FLASHW_CAPTION = 0x00000001;
         public const int FLASHW_TRAY = 0x00000002;
         public const int FLASHW_ALL = (FLASHW_CAPTION | FLASHW_TRAY);
         public const int FLASHW_TIMER = 0x00000004;
         public const int FLASHW_TIMERNOFG = 0x0000000C;
  
         [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
         internal struct FLASHWINFO
         {
             public UInt32 cbSize;
             public IntPtr hwnd;
             public UInt32 dwFlags;
             public UInt32 uCount;
             public UInt32 dwTimeout;
         }
  
         [DllImport("user32", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto, BestFitMapping = false)]
         public extern static int FlashWindowEx(ref FLASHWINFO fwi);
  
         [DllImport("user32", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
         public static extern bool SystemParametersInfo(int nAction, int nParam, ref int value, int ignore);
  
         [DllImport("user32", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto, BestFitMapping = false)]
         internal static extern IntPtr SetForegroundWindow(HandleRef hwnd);
  
         [DllImport("user32", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto, BestFitMapping = false)]
         internal static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();
  
         [DllImport("kernel32", SetLastError = true, CharSet = CharSet.Auto, BestFitMapping = false)]
         internal static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow(); 
     }
 }

At the same time we want you to be able to double click on an item in the list and have the file open in the editor. 

Unfortunately, the .NET ListView component automatically toggles the checked state of items when you double click on them.  I know that this is not the behavior of the underlying Win32 ListView control so it has to be something in the WinForms code.

At this point it's worth examing how this all works.  In a traditional C/C++ application, the ListView control sends WM_NOTIFY messages to the window that is the parent of the ListView.  This is typically a dialog box window.  In WinForms, events are exposed directly from the controls themselves.  So internally WinForms will take the WM_NOTIFY message and reflect it back to the child control and then the child control handles the message by firing events that you add your event handlers too.  This happens for other messages besides WM_NOTIFY - such as WM_COMMAND.

A few minutes with a program such as Spy++ will show you the message traffic.  When you double click a ListView item the underlying Win32 ListView sends a WM_NOTIFY message to the parent window (typically your Form).  The WinForms message handler for the parent window then reroutes the message back to the ListView by sending it a new message - WM_REFLECT + WM_NOTIFY.  The WinForms ListView message handler then dispatches it.  When the WinForms ListView sees a NM_DBLCLK notification it then sends a message (LVM_HITTEST) to the Win32 ListView control asking where the click occurred.  If it was on an item, the WinForms ListView code will then toggle the checked state of the item.

Since none of this behavior is exposed via the properties of the ListView control we'll have to work around it using less convenient means.  The solution I came up with for Team Foundation was to set a flag during the NM_DBLCLK notification that we're in the midst of a double click notification and then we intercept the LVM_HITTEST call and return that no item was found.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Security.Permissions;
using System.Windows.Forms;
 
namespace ListViewCheckBoxes
{
    class MyListView : ListView
    {      
        private bool m_doubleClickDoesCheck = true;  //  maintain the default behavior
        private bool m_inDoubleClickCheckHack = false;
 
        //****************************************************************************************
        // This function helps us overcome the problem with the managed listview wrapper wanting
        // to turn double-clicks on checklist items into checkbox clicks.  We count on the fact
        // that the base handler for NM_DBLCLK will send a hit test request back at us right away.
        // So we set a special flag to return a bogus hit test result in that case.
        //****************************************************************************************
        private unsafe void OnWmReflectNotify(ref Message m)
        {
            if (!DoubleClickDoesCheck && CheckBoxes)
            {
                NativeMethods.NMHDR* nmhdr = (NativeMethods.NMHDR *)m.LParam;
 
                if (nmhdr->code == NativeMethods.NM_DBLCLK)
                {
                    m_inDoubleClickCheckHack = true;
                }
            }
        }
 
        [SecurityPermission(SecurityAction.LinkDemand, Flags = SecurityPermissionFlag.UnmanagedCode)]
        protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
        {
            switch (m.Msg)
            {
                //  This code is to hack around the fact that the managed listview
                //  wrapper translates double clicks into checks without giving the 
                //  host to participate.
                //  See OnWmReflectNotify() for more details.
                case NativeMethods.WM_REFLECT + NativeMethods.WM_NOTIFY:
                    OnWmReflectNotify(ref m);
                    break;
 
                //  This code checks to see if we have entered our hack check for
                //  double clicking items in check lists.  During the NM_DBLCLK
                //  processing, the managed handler will send a hit test message
                //  to see which item to check.  Returning -1 will convince that
                //  code not to proceed.
                case NativeMethods.LVM_HITTEST:
                    if (m_inDoubleClickCheckHack)
                    {
                        m_inDoubleClickCheckHack = false;
                        m.Result = (System.IntPtr)(-1);
                        return;
                    }
                    break;
            }
 
            base.WndProc(ref m);
        }
 
        [Browsable(true), 
         Description("When CheckBoxes is true, this controls whether or not double clicking will toggle the check."), 
         Category("My Controls"),
         DefaultValue(true)]
        public bool DoubleClickDoesCheck
        {
            get
            {
                return m_doubleClickDoesCheck;
            }
 
            set
            {
                m_doubleClickDoesCheck = value;
            }
        }
    }
 
    //****************************************************************************************
    //  This is stuff you would normally put in a separate file with all the other interop
    //  you have to work with.
    //****************************************************************************************
    public class NativeMethods
    {
        public const int WM_USER = 0x0400;
        public const int WM_REFLECT = WM_USER + 0x1C00;
        public const int WM_NOTIFY = 0x004E;
        public const int LVM_HITTEST = (0x1000 + 18);
        public const int NM_DBLCLK = (-3);
 
        [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
        public struct NMHDR
        {
            public IntPtr hwndFrom;
            public UIntPtr idFrom;
            public int code;
        }
    }
 
}