Keith Elder writes "Here’s what my environment looks like. I use a dark theme...If you’d like to try this theme out then download the file below. Within Visual Studio go to Tools->Import and Export Settings to import. The changes will be immediate."

David Anson writes "The typical scenario here is that someone has a chart and it's working well, but their axis labels are very long and end up overlapping - even after the default axis behavior of putting them in alternating rows to prevent such a problem kicks in...here's the complete code for the sample..."

Eric White writes "...The following example serializes the document as utf-8. Setting the encoding property of the XDeclaration (set through the second parameter of the constructor) specifies the encoding of the serialized XML...So, you can see that you can specify your desired encoding, and if the stream to which you are serializing supports that encoding, you will get what you want, but..."

Eric Ligman writes "Here is a misunderstanding I come across from time to time...So contrary to the belief of some, no, you do not need to have five (5) computers to qualify for the Open License or Open Value Volume Licensing programs at Microsoft and companies with as few as two (2) computers can easily qualify for both. Keep this in mind the next time you are speaking to..."

Pete Brown writes "...WPF and Silverlight allow you to bind to property indexers by string key or numeric index...The binding system is looking for a property named "Item[]". In your own setter, the notify would look something like this...The case of "Item[]" is important; if you change the case, the binding system won't recognize it."

Christophe Fiessinger writes "...available resources we have released...Feedbacks I have received worldwide while presenting this subject at Project 2010 Ignite has been extremely positive; enhancements such as single-entry mode, richer user interface (Excel like), delegation and last but not least extensible! As usual we are still in Beta so..."

Microsoft Security Response Center writes "Today we are releasing two Important security bulletins addressing eight vulnerabilities in Windows and Microsoft Office. Both bulletins have an aggregate Exploitability Index rating of “1” so we recommend that customers deploy these updates as soon as possible...A summary of today’s security updates can be found... [here]"

Christophe Fiessinger writes "...following Microsoft Project Server 2010 presence at TechEd 2010 in New Orleans from June 7-10..."

Alun Jones writes "...occasionally Windows 7 Explorer will corrupt files when you copy and/or move them using drag/drop. [So far, I’ve only seen this twice, and each time, I was moving MP3 files...just in case anyone’s thinking my system itself is corrupt...I have completely wiped and reinstalled the system from scratch...so the first (major) destruction of data was on a Windows 7 installation that was upgraded from..."

PSS SQL Engineers writes "...regarding SPN’s for SQL Server and what we can do to get them created and in a usable state...if the SQL Service account is using Local System or Network Service as the logon account, we will have the permission necessary to register the SPN against the Domain Machine Account. By default, the machine accounts have permission to modify themselves. If we change this..."

Jeff Bramwell writes "The Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) volunteer organizing team is now accepting proposals from discussion leaders for BOF sessions at Tech-Ed 2010 in New Orleans June 7-10...To submit a proposal visit...The deadline for proposal is Monday, April 5th...."

Pete Brown writes "...To bind to an element by a string key, you need to include the key inside brackets, just as you would in C# code. You omit any quotes, though...Here's a quick example that shows binding to the dictionary, using a simple code-behind approach..."

Keith Elder writes "I just created a brand new solution in Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate playing around with some new ideas on WCF Data Services...This is a pretty easy fix..."

Teo Lachev writes "...One R2 change that really vexes me is RDLOM...short for Report Definition Language Object Model, lets developers program RDL in object-oriented way as opposed to using XML. RDLOM could save you a lot of effort when you have to meet more advanced requirements that involve pre-processing RDL. For example..The RDLOM R2 C# console application bundled in this code sample demonstrates how you can use the "new" RDLOM..."