Received my copy of Mastering Delphi 2005

Although the book is not yet in the stores (here in the Netherlands) I received today my copy of Marco Cantu's Mastering Delphi 2005. (Woohoo)

I won this copy on the Delphi 2005 24 hour marathon.

Thank you Borland!

ASP.NET Tech-Ed 2005 presentations

Intrested in ASP.NET? Specific ASP.NET 2.0?

Check out the online presentations and demo's from the Tech-Ed 2005.

Want a free 17 hours Microsoft ASP.NET training? (worth $349,-)
Check it out here.

Hybride .NET Applications

Recently I have been working on a .NET project in Delphi 7. I hear you think, yeah right this guy needs a vacation. Well the last part is certainly true, I need a vacation.
Well the story is as follows.

This project needs to show flow diagrams based on related data in a database. ASP.NET is a very good way for generating dynamic flow diagrams. It can be used to read the data from the database and create the (mostly image)controls dynamically on a webpage. So the webbrowser can be used to view the diagram.
The maintenance application however is a win32 Delphi application hosting a webbrowser component. The choice for Win32 Delphi 7 was based on skills and existing library's.
More specific "Why not a win32 application?" or "Why not a .NET application?"
Well the answer is skills, existing code base and last but not least speed. I just can not build my apps faster then using Delphi 7.
But again with a browser in the application I can fully use the .NET features from the webapplication. It is just a matter of good interfering the browser in the beforenavigate2 and ondocumentcomplete event, so that user thinks it is one application.
In this way I can pick up a browser navigate, cancel it and take it over with a win32 form.

The webapplication is written in Delphi 8, which was not always that easy because of the rough site of Delphi 8.
However I feel that I can fully profit of the .NET framework and Win32 in a single application.

I call it a Hybride .NET Application.