The Morning Brew

Software

• Introducing VsixCompres - a NuGet package to compress your Visual Studio Package - Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi shares a NuGet package which manipulates the build process for your Visual Studio Extension projects to add in generation of a fully compressed VSIX build artefact.

Information

• Reactive benefits with commodity option barrier events - Wes McClure takes a look at refactoring some code to make use of the reactive extensions and along the way making the code clearer and simpler
• CSI: Visual Studio - Unable to translate Unicode character at index X to specified code page - Scott Hanselman discusses the tracking down of a bizarre build error caused by some invalid characters in the PATH environment variables.
• WintellectNOW FTW - Wintellect now providing on-demand learning for everyone (and there's even a few free sessions too) - Greg Duncan highlights some free and some paid for trainign content from Wintellect. The free modules available include jQuery, Azure and IntelliTrace content.
• Using Environment.FailFast - Richard Carr takes a look at how to get your application to bail out completely in the case that something very serious has gone wrong using Environment.FailFast.
• Agile software development methodologies and how to apply them. - Monjurul Habib shares a nice overview of all things Agile, looking at the guiding principles and the various skills , practices and techniques which under pin in this CodeProject article.

Community

• TechEd North America 2013 - Channel 9 now has all the session recordings from TechEd available online, giving you access to what appears to be over 700 sessions of content covering all aspects of the Microsoft world.
• NxtGenUG - Event: Making Windows Store Dance - The Birmingham NxtGenUG welcome Christopher Myhill for a session on building applications for the Windows Store, sharing key lessons learnt when crafting your application for the store. The event takes place the evening of Tuesday 18th June

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Software

• Web Developer Checklist - the Chrome extension - Mads Kristensen announces the release of a Web Developer Check List Chrome Extension which also automates a large part of the check list as it is able to review the loaded page content. The extension is available via the Chrome webstore, and as its open source you can also get the source code from GitHub
• IIS Express GUI and Visual Studio 2010 integration - Matteo Tontini discusses the use of IIS Express and shares a nice simple utility for managing the sites configured in IISExpress, available from the projects CodePlex site.
• Portable Compression and HttpClient Working Together - .NET Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - Immo Landwerth announces the release of two new beta NuGet packages for the HttpClient implementation which add in compressions support to this portable library

Information

• Knockout.js Troubleshooting Strategies - Ryan Niemeyer shares some great debugging and troubleshooting techniques when working with Knockout.js, discussing logging, the use of the console, catching and working with exceptions and also a number of common problems.
• How to delete Open or Insecure Wi-Fi HotSpots from Windows 8: Wifi.exe Command Line Utility with Source - Scott Hanselman follows on from his recent Hanselminutes podcast with Troy Hunt where wireless security was one of the topics they covered, with a look at how you can remove the remembered networks from your Windows 8 installation.
• T4 - The Insource Code Monkey - Nick Harrison discusses one of the more unsung heroes in the Development, the code generation possible using T4 Templates, discussing how you probably are using them without even knowing, looking at motivations for uses in your own applications, and exploring how to go about it.
• ACID 2.0 in action - Jimmy Bogard continues his discussion of getting rid of two phase commit in messaging applications, and takes a look at ACID 2.0, a new version of the ACID acronym which aims to provide guidelines to allow a data model to provide high throughput without traditional locking.
• LINQ for JavaScript - Kamyar Nazeri takes a look at implementing LINQ functionality in the JavaScript language, sharing implementations for 30 LINQ operations in JavaScript - great if you need this kind of functionality in JavaScript or are curious about the implementation of such functions.

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I had a really nice evening presenting at the ChesterDevs Usergroup last night – thanks to the organiser and attendees for being so welcoming and also for asking some really good pertinent questions. If you are anywhere nearby I encourage you to check the group out, and what better way to do so than at their next meeting on 3rd July where ‘Friend of the Brew’ Mark Rendle will be giving a session on TypeScript.

Software

• First look at Windows 8.1 (Video) - Rob Margel shares the video from Jensen Harris’ TechEd session which demonstrates some of the new features and improvements coming in Windows 8.1

Information

• Clean Code Cheat Sheet - Urs Enzler shares an updated and enhanced Clean Code Cheat Sheet. Available in PDF form, this 4 page cheat sheet details all the key concepts which back the Clean Code idea
• VS 2013 round tripping - Brian Harry shares some more Visual Studio 2013 news, this time relating to the very important round tripping support which allows 2013 to work with 2010 and 2012 solutions and projects without conversion.
• PragPub with Elixir; Updated Raspberry Pi - The Pragmatic Programmers highlight their latest edition of PragPub magazine which features articles on a variety of development platforms and languages. This month includes Rails, Elixir and Knockout.
• See the Intermediate Language for C# Code - Dave Kerr shares an article on Codeplex which details the creation of a Visual Studio addin which allows you to highlight code, and see the IL that represents the code. The extension is available to download, so can also be added to your tool belt easily.
• Unity – Part 4: Extensions - Development With A Dot - Ricardo Peres continues discussion of the Unity Framework, with a 4th part which looks at extending the functionality of Unity, looking at the registration and configuration of extensions.
• Celebrating an Energy Efficient Browser on World Environment Day - The Microsoft Green Blog celebrate the news that Internet Explorer 10 is the most eco-friendly browser in terms of its energy efficiency, meaning both good things for your battery life and for the planet.

Community

• DareDevs: TDD, where did it all go wrong - DareDevs, formerly the Manchester NxtGenUG group, welcome Ian Cooper for a session on Test Driven Development on the evening of Wednesday 19th June.
• NxtGenUG - Event: Cross platform apps and games. - The Coventry NxtGenUG welcome Simon Jackson for a session on creating games and applications which work across multiple platforms, inculding a look at MonoGame and Xamarin Studio on the evening of Monday 17th June.

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Update: As highlighted in the comments (thanks James) I’m speaking tonight at the ChesterDevs Usergroup, giving a session on Web Sockets and SignalR. I believe all the spaces are taken for the event and have been for a while, which is why I’ve not really mentioned. Really looking forward to it - now if only I can convince the Windows Phone 8 emulator to work correctly on my laptop for one of the demos.

Update2: Yes, I broke the HTML, and everything went bold, should all be back to normal now

Software

• SQL Server 2014 - Another of the TechEd announcements this week was the announcement of the next version of SQL Server. SQL Server 2014 will include improved performance and availability over 2012 and will add in memory database capabilities along with improved backup and disaster recovery features
• dotTrace 5.5 EAP: Introducing Subsystems - The team over at JetBrains announce another Early Access Preview programme, this time for dotTrace 5.5. This new version includes subsystem analysis, bookmarking functionality, improved hotspot identification and integration with ReSharper 8 EAP. Check it out, and give feedback to the team.
• What’s New in Fiddler 2.4.4.5 - Eric Lawrence has been working away on Fiddler and announces the release of version 2.4.4.5 which contains some significant performance improvements, some useful improvements to the session list and timeline tab, Web Sockets support and much more.

Information

• An integer division identity - Eric Lippert takes a look at an algebraic identity, which is true in mathematics, and explores if that is the case in performing the same with integer arithmetic in C#, discussing some of the immediate possible failure cases, before looking at a specific case.
• The Top 10 Things to Know When Running SQL Server Workloads on Windows Azure Virtual Machines - Roger Doherty discusses the use of the Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks for running SQL Server instances, sharing a number of important things to be aware of when planning and working with SQL Server in such an environment.
• Building an HTML5 Web Sockets Server with Node.js - Dan Wahlin shares a look at the Node.js Web Sockets server capabilities, constructing a sample which sees a webpage calling to a node based Web Sockets server to retrieve images from Flickr.
• Barbarian Meets Knockout: Knockout.js Observables - Jaime González is on part 2 of a 13 part series looking at the various aspects of using the Knockout client side MVVM framework. This part digs into the use of the Observable type within knockout.
• Scripting .NET Applications with IronPython - Jerome Terry explores adding scripting capabilities to your applications using IronPython as the scripting language, looking at hosting the script engine and running scripts inside an application in this CodeProject article.
• Bing it on, Reactive Extensions! – story, code and slides - Andrei Rinea walks through the creation of the demo app from his recent talk on using the Reactive Extensions, providing a nice introductory sample, along with sharing the completed code and slides from his session.
• Keeping sensitive config settings secret with Azure Websites and GitHub - Phil Lee shares a technique for keeping configuration settings secret when working with GitHib hosted projects which are deployed to Windows Azure Websites

Community

• Skills Matter : Progressive .NET Tutorials May 2013 29-05-13 - All the session recordings from the Progressive .NET Tutorials are now available online, giving you access to some excellent sessions from some great speakers covering all aspect of the cutting edge development technologies, with a focus on single page applications.
• Build and Deployment - CraftyCoders - The CraftyCoders usergroup based in Bromsgrove are hosting an event on the evening of Thursday 20th June, where there will be three mini-sessions from group members sharing how they go about the build and deployment process.

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Software

• Visual Studio 2013, ALM, and DevOps & Visual Studio 2013, ALM, and DevOps - Somaseagar and Brian Harry announced Visual Studio 2013 at TechEd yesterday. This new relaese will be available as a preview at the //build conference, and will be shipping late this year. There is a significant focus on agile, TFS and DevOps in this new version
• dotCover 2.5 EAP is Open: Now with Hot Spots View` - JetBrains announce the openign of the Early Access Programme for dotCover 2.5, their code coverage tooling. This is a great opportunity to get hold of the newest features, and try them out, while being able to give feedback to the team.
• Windows Azure: Announcing New Dev/Test Offering, BizTalk Services, SSL Support with Web Sites, AD Improvements, Per Minute Billing & Windows Azure: Announcing Major Improvements for Dev/Test in the Cloud - Scott Guthrie serves up a double helping of new Windows Azure goodness, with a bunch of new features such as SSL on Websites, Active Directory improvements, along with account related things like per minute billing for running Virtual Servers and and improved free trial offer, and significantly a reduced rate to allow testing with MSDN licensed software in the cloud.

Information

• Why unhandled exceptions are useful - Simon Cooper discusses the up side of an unhandled exception in one of your applications, as an opportunity to improve your understanding of the problem, and address an assumption you have made in your code.
• (Un) Reliability in messaging: idempotency and de-duplication - Jimmy Bogard follows on from his discussions on ditching 2 phase commit with a look at some of the common strategies for dealing with unreliable messaging to ensure your application can cope in instances where what you send may not always get processed.
• Pushing ETW events through SignalR - Pablo M. Cibraro shares some code which works with the Event Tracing for Windows OS functionality, and allows you to hook messages and transmit them to a client using SignalR
• Loupe Agent for Entity Framework (Beta) - Also on the subject of logging, Kendall Miller discusses how the new logging hooks in Entity Framework have allowed them to create a nice integration for their Loupe product which can capture entity framework events.
• Using Web Platform Installer on a server without internet access - Benjamin Perkins takes a look at how you can still use the Web Platform Installer when your server does not have internet access.
• Supporting only JSON in ASP.NET Web API - the right way - Filip W. takes a look at two different techniques for creating JSON only services in ASP.NET Web API

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Update: Alois Kraus’ link today should have referred to Enterprise Library and not Entity Framework - thanks to Davide for letting me know via the comments.

Software

• jQuery 1.10.1 and 2.0.2 released - Dave Methvin announces the release of jQuery 1.10.1 and 2.0.2 which are bugfix releases which address issues with relative animations in the previous release
• A Sneak Peek at Internet Explorer 11 - Infragistics DevToolsGuy highlights some of the things which may be forthcoming in Internet Explorer 11, including improved touch support in desktop Internet Exploer and possible changes to the User Agent.
• Now on IE and Firefox: Debug your mobile HTML5 page remotely with weinre (WEb INspector REmote) - Olivier Bloch highlights the work carried out by the community to add support for Web Inspector Remote for Internet Explorer and Firefox

Information

• Taking Baby Steps with ScriptCS - Jan Van Ryswyck discusses his desire for a simpler .NET development story and looks at how ScriptCS may provide just that, showing how easily you can get up and running with the ScriptCS environment, and looking at spinning up NancyFx within it.
• MSDN Magazine June Issue Preview - Michael Desmond gives a taste of what is to come in this month’s MSDN Magazine, with publication to occur today (3rd June) at some point.
• Semantic Tracing For .NET 4.0 - Alois Kraus highlights the semantic logging support which has been made available in Entity Framework 6 Enterprise Library, looking at working with the Event Tracing for Windows functionality to get an understanding of what your application is doing under the hood.
• Hijacking the Visual Studio Build Process - Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi takes a look at how you can replace out the standard build process in Visual Studio with a custom MSBuild, sharing an example from some recent work on a Chrome extension
• Creating a Basic CRUD Application with Backbone.js Starter Kit (part 2) - Kazi Manzur follows on from his earlier post with more exploration of buildin a basic application using his Backbone.js starter template
• Thoughts on Queue Centric Workflow Design - Jason Short shares a collection of thoughts and experiences from working with enterprise customers on queue centric workflow pattern based systems
• How to troubleshoot Windows Azure Mobile Services - Jeff Sanders shares a number of useful tips to help in debugging issues with Windows Azure Mobile Services

Community

• Windows Phone Events - Mike Taulty highlights an event taking place this Saturday (8th June) in Shoreditch which will provide support in porting existing Windows Phone 7 applications to Windows Phone 8, and a second event on Saturday 15th June at Nokia, Paddington, London whcih focuses on getting new developers working with the Windows 8 platform.

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Shorter edition than planned today…I was slightly hampered in production by video driver crashes and the associated blank screen every 30 seconds, all followed by my first Windows 8 RTM blue screen of death!

Software

• WCF Data Services 5.5.0 Release - The WCF Data Services team announce the offical release of the WCF Data Services 5.5.0, released via NuGet. The release includes a major re-enhancements of the URL Parser, and implementation of Public Data Providers, as well as over 40 bugfixes
• ReSharper 8 EAP Build: JIT Edition - With just days to spare on the expiry of the last EAP the JetBrains team announce their latest EAP edition of ReSharper, featuring more refactorings, XAML Grid inspection and refactorings and much more.
• EF6 Beta 1 Available - Rowen Miller announces the availability of the first beta release of Entity Framework 6, with runtime available via NuGet and tooling as a download from the Download Center, and a significant number of enhancements and changes since the early alpha releases.

Information

• Getting up to speed with Katana - Jon Galloway discusses the basics of OWIN and Katana before diving into why these are significant and exciting things for Web Developers, highlighting resources to learn more including whitepapers Channel 9 content.
• What the meaning of is is - Eric Lippert explores the is operator in C#, discussing some of the slightly stranger aspects of its behaviour with nulls, and looking at what the operator actually means.
• A typical effect of setting CopyLocal = true - Patrick Smacchia discusses the default CopyLocal=true on assembly references in the Visual Studio project structure, looking at why he considers it to be somewhat evil
• Code Review Checklist and Guidelines for C# Developers - Mohammed Hameed shares a good list of things we as developers should be checking in our code reviews. I would argue that a many of these should probably be checked by the developer working on te code prior to code review too.
• How to debug silent crashes in .Net - Samual Jack takes a look at how you can go about debugging and diagnosing serious crashes in .NET applications where your application level error handling is not able to catch the error

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Software

• Download Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 RC 2 - Microsoft Downloads have the second release candidate of the Visual Studio 2012 Update 3 available for download now. This RC is a ‘go-live’ release and includes improved agile planning tooling for TFS along with a number of bugfixes across the whole product.
• Get /httpclient/rtm - 200 OK - Immo Landwerth announces the RTM release of HttpClient 2,1 available as a stable NuGet package and for production use. This release’s main feature is the ability to use HttpClient in Portable Class Libraries

Information

• Edge.js - Running Node.js and .NET in One Process - Shiju Varghese takes a look at the exciting world of Edge.js which brings together Node.js and .NET code, providing a powerful bridge between the two environments and allowing hybrid applications to be created
• The State of Entity Framework and NHibernate - Ricardo Peres discusses two of the main competitors for ORM functionality on the .NET Framework, looking at how they differ as projects, and possible advantages for Entity Framework by being backed as a part of the framework, with a dedicated team.
• NancyFX - Hosting with OWIN - Phillip Haydon takes us on a walkthrough of getting NancyFX up and running on a OWIN host
• Understanding XSS - input sanitisation semantics and output encoding contexts - Troy Hunt takes a look at Cross Site Scripting, one of the OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities discussing some of the techniques which can help you to protect your applications (and yourself) from such attacks.
• Flight Mode - Libraries - Aaron Powell continues this interesting series looking at the options for offline storage in web applications, exploring some of the wrapper libraries which put a wrapped API on top of the different storage APIs.
• NuPattern is a tool that helps you build tools… Don’t repeat manual, automate! - Over on the Coding For Fun blog, Greg Duncan takes a look at NuPattern, exploring how it can help you to build tooling for inside Visual Studio, exploring some of the resources for getting you up and running with NuPattern
• Planning the Next Rhino Mock - Mike Meisinger starts to outline the plans for Rhino Mocks now that he has taken over as project lead

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