.NET Reference Guide

Have you ever been in the position where you'd love to expose some functionality as a Web service, but the prospect of installing, configuring, and maintaining Internet Information Services made you cringe to the point that you found some other way or just ditched the idea altogether? IIS is a wonderful thing, no doubt, but having to install and maintain it, and having to deal with the Visual Studio way of creating and publishing Web applications is sometimes just way too much work. You'll be happy to know that there is an easier way for some applications: the .NET HttpListener class that makes it very easy to implement a simple HTTP server.

C# 4.0 hasn't been officially released yet, although it's been in public beta for over a year. The language has lots of new features that I'm excited about using in a new project that's taking shape here. With every new release of .NET and C#, there's a new group of books and sometimes great new authors to show us how to use the new features. This release cycle is no different, and the new books are beginning to appear in Rough Cuts form: PDF versions that are not yet complete, but let you see the information now rather than having to wait for ink to hit paper. Some that you'll be interested in if you're as excited as I am about the new C# 4.0:

• C# 4.0 How-To, Rough Cuts by Ben Watson.
• Essential C# 4.0, Rough Cut, 3rd Edition, by Mark Michaelis.
• Effective C# (Covers C# 4.0): 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#, Rough Cuts, 2nd Edition, by Bill Wagner

The first is a new book by a new author, and I'm interested in how he approaches the subject. The other two are new editions of very good books that I've recommended before, but extended to include the new features of C# 4.0.