This will be a new feature article written at the end of the week that reflects on the week from a software development standpoint. 

Today is XML’s Birthday, so let’s all wish XML a happy 10th!  10 years ago today, XML 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation!

This week Microsoft released a hot-fix for some really annoying Visual Studio 2008 issues.  It mainly focuses on fixing many performance issues when working with larger web sites.  Our main corporate web site is over 6 GB of rich streaming video, training modules and html pages, all wrapped up in a search engine, so you can imagine how awesome this hot-fix is.  They also released Visual Studio 2008 Web Deployment projects, which had previously only been available as Community Technology Preview.

Microsoft also shipped Vista Service Pack 1 this week, which should usher in a lot more Vista adoption.  Although most out there have been slamming vista’s sales, the reality is most corporate IT policies basically ban any new operating systems from the network until a service pack is released.  I have been running SP1 for a few months now, and am extremely thrilled at the performance gains.

Eclipse 3.4 M5 is now available for download.  Some new visual components have been added, as well as some better search and replace capabilities.  Some breadcrumb navigation has been added as well, which seems like a nice feature.

Microsoft released the .NET Reference Source Code a few weeks ago now, but this week saw the introduction of the .NET Mass Downloader.  This sweet application lets you download the entire .NET Reference Source Code for offline usage.

Internet Explorer 8 will be shown at Mix 08!  For those that don’t know, Microsoft has been hard at work making IE8 the most standards compliant browser you will ever see.  It will put FireFox, Safari, and others to shame with its Standards Only mode, which recently passed the ACID 2 test.  Expect an IE8 beta midyear.

Silverlight 2.0 is nearly hear as well, various blogger’s out there have already mentioned in round about ways that it WILL ship within a month (probably for MIX 08), and will include: extensible control framework, layout manager support, two-way data binding support, control template and skinning, StackPanel, Grid, TabControl, Slider, ScrollViewer, DataGrid, Isolated Storage, generics, threading, textbox, checkbox, radio buttons, etc.

Can’t end the week without talking about the Microsoft Yahoo! possibility.  While most say it’s a done deal, it’s far from done.  Tomorrow you will hear the news that Yahoo! has turned down the deal, as Yahoo! feels it greatly undervalues the company.  The deal does make a lot of sense really for these companies.  The server farms and data centres these companies keep will be able to consolidate, saving the companies millions of dollars, and allowing Yahoo! to benefit by running much leaner.  From a developer point of view, having developer.yahoo.com and dev.live.com under one umbrella would be pretty sweet.

If I was a Yahoo! shareholder, I would freak out of they turn down the deal on Monday.  Yahoo! has failed to re-invent itself since launching, something Microsoft has been able to do at least 5 times since the 80′s.  These two companies would give shareholders a lot of things to be excited about, as well as the Web.

Lastly, Saleforce.com seems to be looking for a buy from Oracle for around 9 billion dollars. Sounds like an Austin Powers movie, and sounds like a smart move if Larry Ellison and ex Oracle Marc Benioff come to agreement.  A few other sites are reporting that Marc Benioff might be Larry Ellison’s successor. Is that the last of the rumours?  Nope.  Google is apparently buying a large share in Cnet!Gota love rumours.  Should be an interesting 2008.

Have a great week!