The Morning Brew

Windows Phone 8

• Meet Windows Phone 8 - The Windows Phone team introduce their latest version of the Windows Phone platform, giving a taste of some of the phones, features and applications coming on the new version of the platform
• Announcing the release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8 - Pracheeti Nagarkar introduces the .NET CLR for Windows phone, which brings the core CLR to the Windows Phone 8 platform, increasing flexibility and performance available, as well as bringing advanced language and framework features to the Windows Phone platform.
• Introducing Windows Phone SDK 8.0 - The Visual Studio and Windows Phone Teams announce the release of the Windows Phone 8 SDK, which comprises of an Express Edition of Visual Studio 2012 dedicated to WP8 development, the emulators, Expression Blend for Windows Phone, Team Explorer and XNA Game Studio
• Building Apps for Windows Phone 8 - Somasegar reflects on the new Windows Phone 8 platform and the development tooling available as a part of the Windows Phone 8.0 SDK.
• Windows Phone Developer registration costs $8 - Wriju highlights a limited time offer which will allow you to register for a Windows Phone Developer account for just $8. The offer lasts for just 8 days, and is provided by way of a refund (so you still initially pay the full registration fee).
• Windows Phone SDK 8.0 now available for download - Aaron Stebner shares a collection of links to the various downloads for the Windows Phone 8 SDK, along with highlighting release notes and discussing the installation process.
• Windows Phone Toolkit - Dr. Z highlights the latest release of the Windows Phone Toolkit, a community collection of components to help Windows Phone Developers get the maximum productivity in their projects. This release updates the libraries for maximum compatibility with the WP7.1 and WP8 platforms.

Software

• Bootstrap 2.2.0 released - The BootStrap team announce the release of Bootstrap 2.2.0. This release was previously scheduled to be released as 2.1.2, however the scope of the changes made them reconsider and make it a more significant release.
• OData Client Tools for Windows Phone Apps Now Available - The WCF Data Services Team announce the release of the OData Client Tools for Windows Phone 8, released separately from the Windows Phone SDK this separate download gives you an easy client experience for working with OData based services in your WP8 applications.

Information

• Synchronizing webpages across devices with SignalR - Eric Hexter takes a look at building a UI for multiple devices which can be loaded on each device and have its state synchronised with changes from one being passed to the others using the SignalR Library.
• //build/ today with open source frameworks on Windows Phone 8 - Olivier Bloch highlights some of the Open Source projects featured at //build which are available for use and support the Windows Phone 8 platform.
• Single Key Multiple Values Data Structure for one to many mapping - Saurabh Nijhawan highlights one of the less well known data structures available in the .NET Framework, looking at the Lookup collection.
• Visual Studio Little Wonders: Box Selection - James Michael Hare deviates from his usual Little Wonders series to take a look at some less well known features of Visual Studio

No Comments »

Due to an early start at work this morning today’s edition is a little later than usual…

Software

• Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 - Final CTP - Brian Harry highlights the release of the final CTP of Update 1 for Visual Studio 2012. This release offers a range of improvements across the product, and Brian highlights the ones that particularly apply to TFS.
• Download ASP.NET MVC 4 for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and Visual Web Developer 2010 SP1 - Microsoft Downloads has a download availablw which brings ASP.NET MVC RTM to Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and Visual Web Developer 2010 SP1.
• Knockout 2.2.0 released - Steve Sanderson announces the release of Knockout JS 2.2.0, a release which has focused on adding new features, improving performance, fixing bugs, and also improving the architecture of Knockout.
• Your Visual Studio, Your Colors - The Visual Studio Team announce the availabiluity of an extension which allows you to customise the colour scheme of the Visual Studio IDE
• Free ebook: Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - Microsoft Press highlights the availability of the free PDF e-Book of Programming Windows 8 Applications with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, offering over 800 pages of excelent free content.
• Windows Phone 8 Development Internals (Preview 1) available now - Microsoft Press also announce the availability of the first preview of the Windows Phone Developerment Internals book, available at a low cost purchase for the preview versions.

Information

• Design patterns in the test of time: Prototype - Ayende continues his series of posts looking at the orignial Gang of Four design patterns with a look at the Prototype pattern which manages the creation of objects which are based on an existing object
• Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and Bitbucket - Sandrino Di Mattia takes a a look at applying continuous deployment with Windows Azure Websites using the BitBucket repository hosting
• Links to .NET Framework 4.5 deployment guides - Aaron Stebner highlights the availability of the .NET 4.5 Framework deploymetn guides, which give guidance and advice on deploymnet, the use of redistributatble packages, installation, packaging, and much more
• The Complete Guide to Building HTML5 games with Canvas & SVG - David Rousset takes a look at making use of the HTML5 Canvas and SVG graphics to create games in the browser (and beyond), discussing performance, physics, and touch events, highlighting frameworks, and some example games.

No Comments »

Software

• Announcing the Windows Azure SQL Data Sync October Update - Gregory Leake announces the release of an updated edition of the Windows Azure SQL Data Sync. This update allows for multiple sync servers within a single subscription, allowing for sync groups and hubs in different regions.
• Sound Code: NAudio 1.6 Release Notes (10th Anniversary Edition!) - Mark Heath announces the release of NAudio 1.6, and also celebrates the 10th anniversary of the project starting. This release addresses a number of issues in 1.5, and adds a bunch of new features, see the change notes for the full set.
• Tools To Simulate CPU / Memory / Disk Load - The Way I See It - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - Shinva takes a look at some tools which aim to simulate three different types of system load, looking at CPUStress for generating CPU load, TestLimit for adding in memory pressure, and SQLIO for generating disk load

Information

• A Web Developer’s Look at the MVC4 Request Pipeline - James Chambers takes a trip down the ASP.NET MVC 4 pipeline discussing the various stages of request processing provided for within the MVC pipeline, illustrating with code samples which highlight the use of some of the features.
• ASPNET WebAPI REST Guidance - Josh Reuben shares some useful notes on implementing REST like service APIs using the ASP.NET Web API, discussing the various key concepts behind RESTful services, and looking at how they map to ASP.NET WebAPI concepts.
• MSDN Magazine November Issue Preview - Michael Desmond gives a taste of what is to come in November’s edition of MSDN Magazine, discussing some of the articles coming from a variety of excellent writers
• Building ASP.NET applications using Knockout.js with a server side defined view model - CodeProject - Paolo Costa takes a look at combining an ASP.NET application with client side data binding using the Knockout.js framework, illustrating with a simple sample application in this CodeProject article.
• Do Not Optimize Without Measuring - Alois Kraus discusses one of the (if not the) most important concepts of performance optimizing - make sure you measure where and what the performance is like before you optimize.
• Initial thoughts on some new-fangled things part 1 - Jeremy D Miller gives his take on some of the more cutting edge technologies, discussing the use of Document Databases, Automated Testing, Command Query Responsibility Separation, and some thoughts on eventual consistency,

Community

• NxtGenUG - Event: Get your head in the clouds! - The NxtGenUG in Cambridge welcome Andy Cross and Richard Conway for an introduction to working in the cloud using Windows Azure, giving an introduction to all aspects of cloud services on the Azure platform including management, diagnostics, tooling and running sites on Azure Websites.

No Comments »

Software

• Welcome to Windows 8! - Paul Laberge highlights the official release of Windows 8, available right now. I shall be attempting to get my official copy this evening.
• Chutzpah - Chutzpah 2.2 with TypeScript support - Matthew Manela announces the release of Chutzpah 2.2 his Open Source Java Script test runner. This release brings with it support for the TypeScript super-set of JavaScript along with addressing some reported issues, and support for reference folders.
• AspectMap Is Now Open Source! - Chris Surfleet announces the open sourcing of AspectMap, with the project hosted on CodePlex this moves this aspect oriented programming framework built on top of the StructureMap IoC framework into the next stage of its life.
• CoffeeScript 1.4.0 Released, No Sign of Source Maps - Chris Smith highlights the release of CoffeeScript 1.4.0, a release which removes annoying deprecation warning messages when used with node.js, and improves handling of Microsoft UTF-8 BOM marked files.
• Introducing Unfold - Thomas Van Machelen introduces Unfold, a deployment solution for .NET applications which is implemented in PowerShell. The project is similar in many ways to Capistrano, and as such builds on PowerShell, PSake and PowerShell Remoting. In this post Thomas gives an overview of the use of this system.

Information

• .NET 4.5 now supported with Windows Azure Web Sites - Scott Guthrie announces the completion of the roll out of .NET 4.5 to the Windows Azure Web Sites clusters, allowing the publication of ASP.NET 4.5 based sites and applications to Azure Websites hosting.
• ASP.NET 4.5 on Windows Azure Web Sites - Nathan Totten also highlights this news, sharing a simple hello world example which illustrates the use of async . await on the Windows Azure Websites platform.
• Design patterns in the test of time: Builder - Ayende continues his series of posts re-looking at the Gang of Four design patterns with a look at the Builder pattern, discussing its purpose, use and discussing an example of how its is used within NHibernate.
• Caveats with the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests in IIS 7/8 - Rick Strahl discusses the use of runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests within IIS7 and 8 to allow ASP.NET to intercept all requests through the IIS Site, looking at other related settings which help control where requests go.
• Not a Windows 8 machine, but you do want to start creating Store Apps - the possibilities. - Clemens Reijnen shares two useful alternatives if you are interested in having a go at Window 8 Development, but aren’t able to take the leap to running Windows 8 on your own hardware.

Community

• patterns & practices Symposium 2013 - Eugenio Pace highlights the 2013 Patterns and Practices Symposium, taking place in Redmond, WA between the 15 and 17th January. This 3 day event looks to be packing in a lot, and with early bird pricing until 9th November of $398 ($498 full price) is pretty good value.

1 Comment »

Software

• Announcing Public Availability of Service Bus for Windows Server (Service Bus 1.0) - Todd Holmquist-Sutherland makes the official announcements of the first release of Service Bus 1.0, providing enterprise class messaging for on-premise which matches the capabilities of the Azure Service Bus.
• Announcing the Public Availability of Workflow Manager 1.0 - Similarly Jürgen Willis makes the official announcement of the release of Workflow Manager 1.0, which allows the hosting and management of long running workflows on Windows Server
• CSLA 4 version 4.5 released with support for WinRT - Rockford Lhotka announces the release of his CSLA 4 application framework version 4.5 bringing support for .NET 4.5, WinRT, .NET 4 and Silverlgiht 5, available via NuGet or as a direct download. This release also includes support for async/await via the Async Targeting Pack, and offers improvements to the Business rules ending engine and to Windows Forms support.

Information

• Cryptographic Improvements in ASP.NET 4.5, pt. 3 - Levi Broderick returns for the final part of this series looking at the various changes, new features and improvements to Cryptographic related features in ASP.NET 4.5. This part discusses usage, and also answers a number of common questions.
• Getting user information on Azure Mobile Services - Carlos Figueira takes a look at how you can get more than just authentication from the Azure Mobiles Service authentication, looking at how you can access additional user information from the various providers.
• Typescript - a real world story of adoption in TFS - Brian Harry discusses how the TFS team were an early adopter of TypeScript to help them work with their JavaScript heavy Web Application Interface, discussing some of the areas which TypeScript help address issues, and also sharing some of the techniques used to help aid the introduction.
• Using Jasmine To Test JavaScript - Joel Ross takes an introductory look at using the Jasmine framework to test JavaScript Code, sharing a getting started example.
• Getting Started with SASS for Microsoft Developers - Jason Roberts takes a look at how us Microsoft Developers can get up and running with Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets), exploring the options for tooling, looking at the language, and seeing how Sass can be used to help with things like responsive design.
• Design patterns in the test of time: A modern alternative to Abstract Factory–filtered dependencies - Ayende continues his look at the original Gang of Four design patterns, taking a look at how modern language features allow us to create a better implementation of the Abstract Factory pattern.
• Technology Radar - The team over at ThoughtWorks have released the latest edition of the ThoughWorks Technology Radar, where they share their opinions on what state various technologies are in - well worth checking out, and seeing how what you use compares.

No Comments »

Software

• Windows Identity Foundation Tools for Visual Studio 2012 RTM - Vittorio Bertocci announces the RTM release of the Identity and Access Tools for Visual Studio 2012, along with a refresh of all the Windows Identity Foundation samples. In the post Vittorio walks through the release notes, and sows some of the tooling in action.
• Idera pluses PowerShell by freeing PowerShell Plus v4.6 - Gren Duncan highlights the news that Idera -have made PowerShell Plus v4.6, their interactive console, script editor, debugger and learning centre, available for free
• Introducing Icenium - an Integrated Cloud Environment for Hybrid Mobile App Development - The taem over at Telerik announce the general availability of Icenium, their tooling to help you build mobile applications to run acorss multiple platforms, utilising the cloud to make the product lightweight, and remove the need to install all the various SDKs locally - certainly looks interesting.
• The Truth about NuGet and its Future - Phil Haack discusses the future of the NuGet package manager, sheds light on the ownership of the project, Microsoft’s involvement, and clarifies the difference between the open source version and the version that is integrated in Visual Studio.

Information

• Cryptographic Improvements in ASP.NET 4.5, pt. 1 & pt. 2 - Levi Broderick discusses the various improvements to the cryptographic related features in ASP.NET 4.5 in the first 2 parts of a three part series, discussing the use of the various generated keys, pipeline improvements, viewstate MAC, plugability of encryption, and backwards compatibility with previous versions.
• Design patterns in the test of time & Design patterns in the test of time: Abstract Factory - Ayende kicks off a new series of posts looking back at the design patterns included in the original work on design patterns, looking at the uses and abuses of the patterns we have seen over the past 18 years
• Access to an ASP.NET website via multiple authentications - MonkeyTennis takes a look at the use of Windows Identity Foundation in ASP.NET appplications, exploring the ability to customise and extend the authentication adding additional steps if required.
• Feature branches and toggles - Jimmy Bogard discusses feature branches, the potential problems as outlined by Martin Fowler, and shares his experiences of working with feature branches
• Clean up your Web API controllers with model validation and null check filters | StrathWeb - Filip W. takes a look at the use of Filters in WebAPI to take away the need for some of the common boiler plate code that many service APIs have like the checking for null or required arguments.
• Isolating database data in integration tests - Jimmy Bogard takes a look at some techniques for ensuring that your integration tests data is correctly isolated from each other allowing the same database to be used for multiple tests

No Comments »

Software

• Mono 3.0 is out - Miguel de Icaza announces the offical release of Mono 3.0, a significant release which brings features such as async in C#, .NET 4.5 async support, integration with the opensourced Microsoft projects (ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Entity Framework, Razor, etc), a new garbage collector and much more.
• Announcing TouchDevelop Web App Preview - Nikolai Tillmann announces the first preview of TouchDevelop Web App, a development environment which runs in the browser allowing development of Windows 8 and Windows Phone applications which you can then sell in the marketplace
• Uber Prof V2.0 is now in Public Beta - Ayende announces the public beta of the second edition of Uber Profiler, the framework aware profiler for NHibernate, Entity Framework, LINQ to SQL. As always with a beta the team are keen on your feedback.

Information

• Using async/await without .NET Framework 4.5 - Immo Landwerth announces an update to the Async Targeting Pack which brings the wonders of async/await Visual Studio 2012 projects targeting the .NET Framework V4, and Silverlight 5, Silverlight 4, Windows Phone 7.5 and portable class libraries targeting those versions, all available as a NuGet package
• A method group of one - Eric Lippert discusses the implementation of the C# dynamic functionality, discussing how expressions involving dynamic types are analysed, illustrating with some examples.
• Thread.Interrupt Is Evil - Alois Kraus discusses the evil’ness of Thread.Interrupt, discussing some problems encountered in a production application’s shutdown, and discussing the CLR’s behavior when it encounters Thread.Interrupt.
• Updated F# Language Specification for F# 3.0 Now Available - Don Syme and Wonseok Chae highlight an updated version of the F# language specification document which includes all the language features introduced in F#3.0
• Single page apps in depth (new free book) - Mikito Takada shares ‘Single Page Apps in Depth’ an online book looking at the development code and concepts behind this relatively new type of application.

No Comments »

Software

• Updates: Coreinfo v3.1, Desktops v2.0, Livekd v5.3, PsPasswd v1.23, Testlimit v5.22, Whois v1.11 - The Sysinternals team share updates to 6 of their tools, a few of which are updates to support Windows 8. This includes Desktops 2.0 virtual desktop support for Windows 8, support for LiveKd kernel debugging on Windows 8.

Information

• New Web Optimization Pre-Release Package on NuGet - Howard Dierking highlights the latest development on the ASP.NET Web Optimisation library which adds support to fall back through content delivery networks to local paths, template strings, Virtual Path Providers. The latest version is available as a pre-release package on NuGet.
• What’s new in ASP.Net 4.5 and VS 2012 - part 1 & Part 2 - Nikolaos Kantzelis takes a screen shot rich look at the new features of Visual Studio specifically aimed at ASP.NET developers, exploring amongst others the improvements in the editor for both server and client side code and CSS.
• ASP.NET 4.5 & MVC 4: Revisiting IBundleTransform - Nandip Makwana takes a look at the changes between developer preview and release with regard to the Bundling and Minification support of the Web optimization frameworks.
• Newsflash! ASP.NET Web API does not Sit on Top of ASP.NET MVC! In Fact, It does not Sit on Top of Anything - Tugberk Ugurlu highlights the not insignificant fact that the ASP.NET Web API does not rely on the ASP.NET MVC stack, instead resting only on top of the .NET Framework, part of the fact that makes embedding WebAPI inside your own applications possible.
• From API key to user with ASP.NET Web API - Maarten Balliauw takes a look at the MVC like Filters that are present in ASP.NET WebAPI, looking how you can use the framework to create API-Key support for your Web API endpoints.
• Multi threaded design guidelines for libraries: Part III - Ayende continues discussion of the use of Multi-threading in library code, discussing the dangers of exceptions, and the lack of understanding of the calling applications requirements, discussing how you can at least allow the controlling code to decide how to do the threading.
• Web Performance: When millisecond resolution just isn’t enough - Jatinder Mann of the Internet Explorer Team discusses another W3C Proposed Recommendation, this time addressing the need for high resolution rime within Web client applications.
• The Sophisticated Procrastinator - Volume 1 - Miguel de Icaza shares a collection of links in the first of what I hope will be a regular series - lots of interesting things to read in there on all things .NET, open source, and wider.

Community

• Free Webcast - Getting Started with .NET Gadgeteer - Clare Morgan highlights a free webcast event presented by Simon Morgan which will take a look at getting started with the .NET Gadgeteer. The event takes place on Thursday 8th November 9pm UK, 4pm New York, etc.

No Comments »