I have just checked in two new features coming soon in Json.NET 2.1: Silverlight client support and improvements to the LINQ to JSON objects. If you are feeling cutting edge you can download the latest source code from CodePlex. Buyer beware: Code coverage of the changes is currently light.

To compile a Silverlight build of Json.NET you will need the latest Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 bits. There is also a unit test project in the solution for the Silverlight build. Read about how it works here (I really wish this was around when I was working on TextGlow).

The LINQ to JSON changes are minor but useful. JObject now implements IDictionary and JArray now implements IList. For those that are new to Json.NET these common interfaces should make working with LINQ to JSON objects much more familiar.

If you have any suggestions of what you would like to see in Json.NET 2.1 let me know.

Of Jeff Atwood's list of 16 recommended books for developers I have read zero. Ditto this list of Top 20 Programming Books. Searching though Amazon recommended programming book lists also yielded no hits.

When learning a new software development technology or idea I have always turned to the web. Blogs, articles, open source projects and so on, leaving the books I read largely to fiction.

What am I missing out on? Are blogs and other online content enough or will reading The Pragmatic Programming (common to almost every list) make me a better software developer?

The best method of displaying nicely formatted code in a blog post in my experience is a Visual Studio plugin called CopySourceAsHtml.

Once the plugin is installed simply select the code you want to display and choose Copy As HTML. A clean HTML representation of your code will be copied onto the clipboard which can then be pasted into your blog editor of choice (I like Windows Live Writer).

The nice thing about CopySourceAsHtml is that the code on your blog looks exactly like it would in Visual Studio, right down to highlighting class names.

CopySourceAsHtml also works on any file in Visual Studio be it C#, VB.NET, XML, HTML, XAML or JavaScript. The version of C# or VB.NET also doesn't matter.

Finally CopySourceAsHtml works with almost any blog. Since it is just HTML there is nothing that needs to be done on the server.

CopySourceAsHtml is free and can be download here. To get it up and running with VS2008 follow these instructions (its not hard).