The Morning Brew

Software

• Released: New Version of Expression Blend for Silverlight 5 – Pete Brown highlights an updated release of Expression Blend for Silverlight 5 which extends the expiration date to 20th June 2013 (yes – next year). This version has a go-live license meaning you can use it in production.
• VSCalm extension for Visual Studio 11 Beta « Visual Studio add-ins, extensions and tools – Sergey Vlasov highlights Jeremy Iverson’s VSCalm extension for the Visual Studio 11 Beta. This extension takes away the capitalisation of toolbox windows, and removes the ‘:::::’ from the windows titles – two of the more disliked new UI features.

Information

• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Skip() and Take() – James Michael Hare continues his little wonders series looking at the Skip and Take LINQ methods, also exploring the SkipWhile and TakeWhile methods to create subsequences of values.
• Targeting the right .NET Framework Profile: Missing Types and Methods? – Brian Grunkemeyer blogs on the BCL team blog looking at the .NET Client Profile in .NET 4, looking at how an understanding of profiles and references is key to understanding why certain framework features are unavailable, and also discussing the portable class library approach.
• Transform app.config and web.config – Mehdi Khalili discusses using transformations on your configuration files, exploring how tools such as CodeAssassin.ConfigTransform and SlowCheetah can help you further enable transformations to help with CI scenarios.

Community

• Welcome to the website of the UK Windows Azure Users Group – The London Windows Azure User Group are expanding theiir operations up to Manchester for an event on Wednesday 4th April where Michael Royster, Becca Martin and John Mitchel will be delivering on ‘Win 8 and Azure; Agile and Azure perfect bedfellows’. The group is also continuing its events series in London, with ‘Navigating the cloud with diagnostics, storage and PowerShell’ featuring Gaurav Mantri on 3rd April. Registration is required for these events.
• Microsoft UK TechDays Azure BootCamp 11th and 18th May – Lee Stott highlights two new Windows Azure Bootcamp events in May. The first, held in London is on Friday 11th May, and the second is being held in Liverpool on Friday 18th May. Registration is required for these free events, and spaces are limited.
• Microsoft UK TechDays Windows Phone BootCamp 12th and 19th May – In addition to the Azure events, there will be Windows Phone Bootcamps on the Saturday following each, meaning Saturday 12th May in London, and Saturday 19th May in Liverpool. Again, registration is required, and the will fill up quickly.

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #1076