Sitecore and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Service Pack 1

Do not install .NET 3.5 SP1 on your Sitecore server, doing so may result in long hours and a broken site. Here is the information directly from Sitecore that I recently received in an email.


Dear Sitecore Enthusiast,

You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the Sitecore Product Issues and Patches mailing list.

On Monday, August 4th, Microsoft released the following service packs: Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and .NET 3.5 SP1.

Sitecore has discovered that these service packs introduce a bug in the LosFormatter class (System.Web.UI.LosFormatter in System.Web.dll, used to serialize and deserialize an ASP.NET ViewState). This bug causes stability issues in Sitecore products. Sitecore has raised this as an urgent priority issue with Microsoft (case number : SRQ080813600454) and is working to help resolve this issue.

In the meantime, PLEASE DO NOT INSTALL .NET 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 on any server running a Sitecore product (including Sitecore WCMS, Intranet Portal, and Foundry) until further notice!

Symptoms associated with installing either of these service packs:

• Memory consumption increases dramatically and single core CPU usage goes up to 100% when opening the Access Viewer or Media Library applications.
  
• OutOfMemoryExceptions thrown in the Desktop and Content Editor.
  
• The browser becomes unresponsive when accessing Sitecore.

Please be aware that Microsoft may include this Service Pack as part of the monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’. Please take steps to avoid the automatic installation of these service packs.

Please be aware that the final version of SQL Server 2008 will require .NET 3.5 SP1.
If you have any questions about this issue, please contact Sitecore support.

Best Regards, Sitecore Support Team.

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Download

Here is the download link. It installs Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (Service Pack 1) and .NET Framework 3.1 SP1.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=FBEE1648-7106-44A7-9649-6D9F6D58056E&displaylang=en

Creating a custom Visual Studio Theme

Forget trying to create a Visual Studio theme by yourself, by using the frickin sweet tool below, you can create a Visual Studio theme within seconds and import it into Visual Studio and start using it.

http://frickinsweet.com/tools/Theme.mvc.aspx

Visual Studio themes are frickin sweet man!!

WSS Extensions for Visual Studio 2008 (VSeWSS)

Finally the SharePoint extensions for Visual Studio 2008 have been released. I have been using the tools with VS 2005 ever since they were released and have been waiting to switch my SharePoint development to VS 2008 but this was one of the big items stopping me.

You can download all the goodies here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7bf65b28-06e2-4e87-9bad-086e32185e68&displaylang=en