Well not only have we got the currently running SQL Data Compare Beta - well SQL Tools beta really but that's the important bit ;). We have the new DTS Compare Beta, we're going to be starting work on the next update of our brilliant SQL Log Rescue tool too. Not only all that but
also we've just finished internal testing of the next version of the Check for Updates client so that will be going out with our next round of releases.
What this new version brings to the mix is limited support for HTTP Proxies which was the main complaint of the previous versions. I really would have liked to make this support more complete but at least we can get through what I hope will be the majority of proxies. We pick up the proxy settings from the IE connection which seems to be the correct way of going about it in .NET. However if you find yourself using the auto configuration script option we're unable to help you I'm afraid. If you want to use a SOCKS proxy now wouldn't it have been nice if we were able to support that too, but no Microsoft seem to require a whole new implementation of the tcp/ip protocol which I just don't have the time to implement.
So all in all we use statically configured HTTP proxies that are either authenticating or non-authenticating. So should help quite a few of you out there.
For those of you performing authentication programs on XP or 2003 might I suggest you have a good look at the new credui.dll API documentation from Microsoft. This integrates very nicely into .NET although rather annoyingly you do have to provide fallback behaviour if - like us - you're supporting older Microsoft OS's.
Peace...