The Morning Brew

Software

• jQuery 2.0 Released – Dave Methvin announces the release of jQuery 2.0, a smaller leaner jQuery which leaves behind the support for older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6,7 and 8. 2.0 also improves the custom build file sizes, and feature jQuery 1.9 API equivalence. This release also supports the building of Windows 8 Store applications.

Information

• ASP.NET Web API: CORS support and Attribute Based Routing Improvements – Scott Guthrie gives an update on two forthcoming features of ASP.NET Web API discussing support for Cross Origin Resource Sharing, and improvements to attribute based routing, bringing the attributes closer to the actual code that executes for a given request
• Inside Portable Class Libraries – Simon Cooper takes a look under the hood of Portable Class Libraries, exploring how they allo libraries to be executed on multiple platforms and share references correctly.
• The Definitive Reference To Why Maybe Is Better Than Null – Nick Knowlson discusses the use of a Maybe type in preference to a null reference in code, looking at the concept and reasoning behind the use of Maybe and answering some of the common questions that arise from such discussions.
• Previewing image uploads with FileReader in HTML5
  – Michael Williamson shares a useful look at an HTML5 feature which allows your client side application code to access file content, allowing you to create client-side previews of files to be uploaded
• Website Performance with ASP.NET – Part4 – Use Cache Headers – Markus Greuel discusses the importance of setting the correct cache headers in your ASP.NET web applications to ensure that your application gets the most performance benefit
• Goodbye preview.nuget.org. Hello staging.nuget.org! – The NuGet team announce a change to the backend services to help aid testing QA and staging of packages by splitting their use of preview.nuget.org and introducing a new package author staging server ‘staging.nuget.org’

Community

• Windows AzureConf this Tuesday – Scott Guthrie highlights the Windows AzureConf virtual event, streaming live from 9am to 5pm PST on Tuesday 23rd Apri. The event features great range of sessions both live and pre-recorded covering many aspects of the Azure Platform.
• Interested in exploring how Windows Azure and cloud computing could be used in designing and developing computer games? – David Gristwood highlights an event being held in four European cities at the end of this month / beginning of next which looks at building gaming platforms backed by Windows Azure services. The UK event takes place in Reading on 1 May.

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Closed the laptop lid before today’s edition got posted this morning, so apologies for the lateness today, and thanks to @MonkeyOnAHill for letting me know

Software

• Facebook SDK for .NET Released – Visual Studio Magazine highlights the release of the Facebook SDK for .NET which enabled C#/XAML based applications to developed and integrated with Facebook. The project is hosted by the OuterCurve foundation and NuGet pacakges for the release are available
• New tool to play with: SemanticMerge – Jon Skeet highlights a new experimental merge tool which aims to move one step above basic file comparison by actually understanding your code. The tooling currently supports C#, with plans to add JavaScript, VB.NET and other languages soon
• ANTS Performance Profiler 8 released – Ben Emmett highlights the release of Version 8 of the Redgate ANTS Profiler, the result of 8 months of work from the team. This release includes new functionality to better understand where performance problems are coming from when working with async/await, something that has traditionally been difficult, as well as a host of other new features

Information

• Producing permutations, part two – Eric Lippert continues his series on permutations, introducing the concept of Hamiltonian tours of the graph of the permutations
• Subterranean IL: ThreadLocal revisited – Simon Cooper goes back to look at the ThreadLocal type, given that it has been re-written in .NET 4.5, looking at the key features of how this version of the type works
• Unity – Part 2: Dependency Injection – Ricardo Peres continues his series looking at the Microsoft Unity Inversion of Control / Dependency injection framework, in this part taking a look at the use as a dependency injection library.
• The ultimate git bash prompt – Jimmy Larkin shares a neat bit of code and configuration which gives a super helpful bash prompt for your Git use, including details of the repository state, number of commits and missing commits all at the command prompt
• A WebAPI Basic Authentication Authorization Filter – Rick Strahl takes a look at implementing your own authentication and authorisation in ASP.NET Web API, something which you tend to need to do yourself if you are running outside of IIS by self-hosting

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Software

• Glimpse 1.3 released with a new glimpse.axd page & N+1 detection – The Glimpse Team are rapidly iterating and releasing having just released 1.3 of the Glimpse debugging tool, featuring new feature such as N+1 query detection, ad rendering of arrays, this release also has a fresh new UI for the Glimpse.axd page.
• Announcing PostSharp 3 RC – Gael Fraiteur announces the release candidate release of PostSharp 3, encouraging users to try out the RC and feedback, with the current plan of moving to an RTM release in the next two weeks assuming no significant issues are found.

Information

• Microsoft.Bcl.Async is Now Stable – Immo Landwerth announces the news that the BCL team have declared the Microsoft.Bcl.Async which provides Async/await support to pre-.NET 4.5 platform is now to be considered stable, moving it from being a pre-release package, and effectively RTM’ing the library.
• Using Pre-processor Directives in C# – Bipin Joshi takes a look at the various Compiler Pre-Processor Directives available in C#, showing them in use, and how they interact with the Visual Studio IDE
• Unity – Part 1: Introduction – Ricardo Peres kicks off a new series looking at the use of Unity, Microsoft’s Inversion of Control / Dependency Injection framework, kicking off with installation, registration and getting instances of types.
• ASP.NET Web API parameter binding part 1 – Understanding binding from URI – Filip W also starts a new series of posts taking a look at the various aspects of HTTP Parameter binding in ASP.NET We API, starting with a look at model binding
• Moving from Expression Web to Visual Studio 2012 for client-side HTML 5 Web Design – Don Burnett takes a look at the migration from using Expression We to Visual Studio for creating HTML 5 designs, giving a good tour of the functionality available in Visual Studio.
• The beginners guide to breaking website security with nothing more than a Pineapple – Troy Hunt walks through the process of using a device to capture insecurely transmitted data over Wifi, illustrating why it is so important to observe good security practices when developing your applications to avoid information exposure.
• Are you coding for change or for stability – Marcus Hammarberg discusses two different ways of developing, considering how knowledge of future changes affect the way in which you might develop something, and asking the question of what should you optimise for

Community

• NxtGenUG – Event:Dependency…. – The Coventry NxtGenUG welcome Ian Russell as a speaker next week for an event looking at the what, how and when of Dependency Injection. The event takes place on the evening of Wednesday 24th April.
• NxtGenUG – Event: Globalization: Know Your Enemy – Guy Smith-Ferrier visits the Birmingham NxtGenUG with his latest session on Globalization, discussing some of the less well known globalization concepts that often get skipped and are becoming increasingly more important as the world shrinks. The event takes place on the evening of Tuesday 23rd April
• Refactoring Legacy Code Bases, Free Online Event May 8 – JetBrains and Microsoft are hosting a free online event looking at refactoring legacy code bases, where Hadi Hariri will look at using tooling in legacy code which does not conform to principles such as Test Coverage and SOLID. The event takes place Wednesday 8th May, 9-10am (GMT-8)

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