.NET Compact Framework Pocket Guide teaches you what you need to know to create applications for Pocket PC- and Windows-based Smartphones. This pocket guide is a handy reference that provides a quick tour of the .NET Compact Framework, and includes several working projects to get you productive straightaway. Whether you're new to mobile programming or new to Visual Studio .NET 2003, .NET Compact Framework Pocket Guide will have you writing mobile applications quickly. Get the information you need without all the fluff. A sample excerpt, Project A: Currency Converter, is available free online.

O'Reilly Distributes Pragmatic Bookshelf -- Books by developers, for developers: that's the pragmatic way, and it's nicely aligned with the O'Reilly approach to publishing. We're happy to help Pragmatic Programmers reach a wider audience by providing sales, distribution, and marketing support for Pragmatic Bookshelf, an imprint of Pragmatic Programmers, LLC. For a list of titles available on the Pragmatic Bookshelf, visit pragmatic.oreilly.com.

Creating an FTP Client in .NET -- When it comes to FTP, .NET's plumbing has a bit of a gap in the pipes. Fortunately, the FTP protocol is very simple, and the .NET Framework does provide enough of the plumbing to make it easy to create an FTP application. Learn how to do it from Jesse Liberty, coauthor of Programming .NET Windows Applications.

SafariU: Create, Customize, and Share Teaching Material -- Looking for a way to truly customize your course textbook and offer students exactly the material you choose to teach, while saving them a good bit of money? Become a SafariU beta tester and check out the new web-based publishing platform from O'Reilly that allows you to create custom textbooks and online syllabi. To see SafariU in action, register to join SafariU's developers for a live webcast.

New Features in VB.NET Whidbey -- Microsoft recently released the Community Preview of the next Visual Studio .NET, Whidbey, which includes a new and improved VB.NET language. Learn what's in store with the new language features from Wei-Meng Lee, author of the upcoming .NET Compact Framework Pocket Guide.

DataGrids, Improved -- In this new ONDotnet column on Whidbey, Jesse Liberty shows how to use Whidbey's ASP.NET DataGrids. You can get the details on the ADO.NET object model, including DataAdapters, DataTables, DataSets, and DataReaders, from the book coauthored by Jesse, Programming ASP.NET.

New Language Features in C# 2.0, Part 2 -- The problem with writing generic logic in C# is that sometimes there isn't a useful base class or interface that's shared by all the types you want to support. C# 2.0 finally offers a solution to this problem with a new language feature called Generics. Learn about Generics in this article by Matthew MacDonald, coauthor of ASP.NET in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition.

VSJ Reader Awards 2004 -- O’Reilly is among the winners of this year's VSJ Reader Awards, holding favored status in two categories: “Best book publisher for developers,” and “Book of the year" for Jesse Liberty's Programming C#.

Your O'Reilly Account: New, Single Sign On -- O'Reilly customers and guests now have a single address and one password to access all things O'Reilly, from oreilly.com and Safari Bookshelf to all of the O'Reilly Network sites and DevCenters. When possible, we've consolidated your prior, separate accounts into one new account. Logging into the new system is quick and easy; details on how to do it have been emailed to you, and you can read more about O'Reilly's single sign on in Tony Stubblebine's weblog.

Cooking with C#, Part 2 -- Suppose you need to examine the HTML from a remote web server to pluck out items of interest, or perhaps you'd like to secure exclusive write access to a shared resource while allowing multiple threads to still read from it. You can achieve both goals by following these recipes from C# Cookbook.

Cooking with C# -- Learn how to convert a string returned as a Byte[ ] back into a string, and how to handle an exception that occurs within a method invoked via reflection, in these sample recipes from O'Reilly's recently released C# Cookbook.

Safari Gets Bigger and Better -- There are now more than 2,000 books from the industry's leading technical publishers available on Safari Bookshelf. As the library grows, so does its functionality: searches are powerfully precise and as broad or specific as you wish; and now, with a Safari Max subscription, you can download chapters to read offline. Safari will help you save time, reduce errors, keep current, and save more money than ever with up to 35% off print copies of your favorite books. If you haven't yet gone on Safari, try a free trial subscription.

Cooking with ADO.NET, Part 2 -- Learn how to create and then synchronize a master-detail pair of DataGrid controls, as well as how to improve performance when a user pages through a large result set in a data grid, in these sample recipes from ADO.NET Cookbook.

Developing Smartphone Apps -- Microsoft recently announced support for the .NET CF in the new Smartphone 2003. Developing for the Smartphone is not the same as developing for the Pocket PC, so Wei-Meng Lee explains the UI differences between the two, and gives an overview of the controls supported in the Smartphone platform. Dig deeper with Wei-Meng in his tutorial at ETech 2004: Developing Smartphone Applications with the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework.