The Morning Brew

Software

• Caliburn.Micro 2.0.0-alpha2 Is Here - Rob Eisenberg announces the release of the first alpha of Caliburn 2.0, available as three NuGet Packages and featuring a number of changes, features, and lots of hard work from Nigel Sampson and Thomas Ibel
• Beta Updates to ReSharper 8 and .NET Tools - JetBrains announce a combined refresh of the beta releases of ReSharper, dotCover and dotTrace, with the RTM just round the corner this is the ideal opportunity to try out the new features.

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• 30 Days of TDD - Day 24 - Strictly Mocking - James Bender continues this series of posts looking at Test Driven development from a variety of aspects, in this post exploring how the tooling can support Test Eventually Development.
• ASP.NET Core Identity - K. Scott Allen discusses the new ‘Membership Framework’ included in Visual Studio 2013 ASP.NET, available in the NuGet package Microsoft.AspNet.Identity.Core. This post explores some of the key interfaces of the framework and looks briefly at the async nature of the framework.
• If you’re not cheating, you’re not… using these new Windows Runtime Network API cheat sheets - Greg Duncan highlights some useful cheat sheets for the WinRT APIs
• Opening Files from SkyDrive using .NET - Gaye Oncul Kok discusses the opening of files through SkyDrive and the new Windows 8.1 feature of ‘Smart Files’, looking at how you can work with them using the .NET API
• Minty: Writing The First Specs - Rob Connery continues his series looking at writing a blogging engine in Node.js from the ground up, with a look at writing specification tests and separating things from processes
• Just My Code for ASP.NET in Visual Studio 2013 - Patrick Nelson discusses the ‘Just MY Code’ option for debugging in Visual Studio 2013, highlighting the support now included for JavaScript making Web Developer’s lives easier

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• Viasfora v1.1 Published // Winterdom - Tomas Restrepo shares the latest version of Viasfora, a Visual Studio extension which provides a number of capabilities not present in the core IDE. This release addresses issues with Visual Studio 2013 and adds a new feature, Rainbow Parentheses which colour each matching set of parentheses a different colour making matching them up easier.
• Visual Studio Updates - Survey - Phil Lee, a Program Manager on the Visual Studio team invites you to give feedback on the quarterly updates to Visual Studio in this short survey.

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• Checking out the Helios IIS Owin Web Server Host - Rick Strahl highlights the Helios project, an OWIN Web Server host which sits directly on top of the IIS Native interfaces. In this post Rick takes a look at using it and how it performs.
• Debugging OWIN app or framework - .NET Web Development and Tools Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - Praburaj Thiagarajan takes a brief look at adding some error handling which reveals some debugging information using the Microsoft.Owin.Diagnostics package.
• Page Instrumentation in ASP.NET 4.5 - Imran Baloch explores the Page Instrumentation feature new in ASP.NET 4.5 which allows you to get some performance figures from various stages in your pages lifecycle.
• Why not use polling threads with ASP.NET web applications? - Gunnar Peipman takes a look at some of the considerations you need to make when considering using threads in an ASP.NET Application.
• Asynchronous action filters in ASP.NET Web API - FilipW takes a look at making actions filters asynchronous, exploring some concepts behind Async void and sharing an implementation of an action filter which is async.
• Node.js Development in Visual Studio - Life After Visual Node with Node Tools for Visual Studio
  - Bart Read takes a look at the new Node.JS features for Visual Studio that he was involved in the development of.
• Building a Node.js Web Site on Windows Azure using Node.js Tools for Visual Studio - Shiju Varghese also explores this new capability, walking through the process of getting a simple web application up and running.
• Starting with a Node.js webserver - Marco Franssen goes a little lower level taking a more detailed look at building your first web server application in Node.

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Software

• Windows Azure: General Availability Release of BizTalk Services, Traffic Manager, Azure AD App Access + Xamarin support for Mobile Services & Announcing the General Availability of Biz Talk Services, Azure Active Directory and Traffic Manager, and Preview of Azure Active Directory Premium - Scott Guthrie and Steven Martin announce the latest raft of update to the Windows Azure Platform with the general availability of a number of services, along with a new preview of Azure Active Directory Premium.
• Introducing node.js Tools for Visual Studio & Node.js Tool for Visual Studio - Scott Hanselman and Shaun Xu highlight the new Visual Studio tooling for Node.JS making Node development in Visual Studio even easier, including package management with NPM, project structure support and debugging capabilities
• Umbraco - Umbraco 7 - Niels Hartvig and the Umbracco Team announce he release of Umbracco 7, the latest generation of this content management system, which has been 18 months in the making.
• Set process memory limit with Process Governor - Sebastian Solnica shares a useful looking utility which allows you to constrain memory of a process.

Information

• Frameworkless JS - What jQuery did right - Rob Ashton presses on with his series on minimising the impact of JavaScript library use, exploring what jQuery is useful for.
• How to massively improve SQLite Performance (using SqlWinRT) - Andy Wigley takes a look at a number of scenarios where SQLite performance can be optimised, sharing a sample project to illustrate the concepts.
• Visual Studio 2013 ‘Could not evaluate Expression’ Debugger Abnormality - Rick Strahl takes a look at a change in the debugger in Visual Studio 2013 which caused him problems debugging older WebForms applications, highlight a solution via enabling the Managed Compatibility Mode on the debugger.

Community

• Azure Bootcamp (UK): Building out Windows Azure Infrastructures and Services (Saturday, 14th December 2013, Central London) - Planky highlights an all day Windows Azure event running in London from the UK Windows Azure User Group. The event takes place on Saturday 14th December at The Hub Westminster. Registration is required.

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• The Mature Optimization Handbook - Carlos Bueno shares the ‘Mature Optimization Handbook’ a free eBook from FaceBook available in ePub, Mobi and PDF formats. The book is based upon an internal FaceBook training class on performance and optimisation and is sure to be an interesting read.
• Declare Don’t Tell - Phil Haack continues his discussion of declarative code and reduction of control statements with a look at an example using the Reactive Extensions to perform a simple sounding use case which is elegant when solved in a reactive / functional way, and surprisingly difficult in procedural code.
• 30 Days of TDD - Day 23 - Mocking - FROM THE FUTURE! - James Bender presses on with his series looking at Test Driven Development from first principles. In this post James continues to look at mocking, and delves into some of the premium features of JustMock
• Collection Asserts with NUnit - Jakub Chodounsky takes a look at the collection assert capabilities of NUnit
• Unit tests for HttpClient using HttpMessageHandler - Abhishek Anand explores writing tests for HTTP Client based code, looking at using capturing the messages and preventing them going over the wire.
• Discovering .NET Open Source: up-for-grabs.net - Keith Dahlby shares a simple site which aims to collect together links for ‘up for grabs’ bugs and feature request from .NET Open Source Projects. These ‘up for grabs’ issues provide the ideal way for a developer to get started and get involved with an Open Source project.
• Hello Minty, Minty: The First Steps & Minty: Defining the Model - Rob Conery kicks off a new series looking at building a Node.JS based blogging engine, sharing his process as he goes. The source accompanying the series is available, and Rob is keen to get others involved in the project.
• Properties vs. Methods - Abhishek Anand explores some of the issues and considerations surrounding the decision to use properties or methods for a particular piece of functionality.
• How much data can you put on VSOnline? - Brian Harry discusses the amount of data which you can successfully manage within Visual Studio Online, sharing some numbers from some of the biggest tenants of the service.

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Software

• Time to get the WCF Data Services 5.6.0 RTM Tools - Glenn Gailey highlights the release of the WCF Data Services 5.6.0 RTM Tools, resolving an issue which prevented installation due to certificates, discussing why you should get the tooling in addition to the NuGet packages.
• Announcing FogJS for Windows Azure with Node.js - Daniel Mohl shares FogJS, a library based on Fog (for F#) which makes it easy to interact with the Windows Azure APIs for Blob Storage, Table Storage, and the Service Bus from JavaScript code.

Information

• Don’t trust the .NET web forms email regex validator (or most others) - Troy Hunt discusses the complexities of validating email addresses, looking at the default ASP.NET Web Forms Validation regular expression, and some possible improvements.
• Build your continuous delivery strategy - Mario Fontana highlights a white paper / eBook from Microsoft which looks at building a Release Pipeline using Team Foundation Server, and how that pipeline can be streamlined to give continuous delivery.
• Steps to Log all .net Exceptions to a Log file with Debug Diag 2.0 - Christopher Haun walks though the process of setting up DebugDiag to log all .NET exceptions, providing useful information when analysing problems.
• Lessons in Good Naming through Absurdity | DaedTech - Erik Dietrich discusses the art and science of picking good names, probably one of the hardest problems in software development.
• Frameworkless JS - encapsulation of views - Rob Ashton continues his series looking at frameworkless JavaScript development, exploring how much of a mess the view is in his sample project, and setting the scene for improving the mess.

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Software

• Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools 2013.1 for Visual Studio 2012 - The ASP.NET team announce the release of the ASP.NET and Web Tooling 2013.1 update for Visual Studio 2012, allowing developers using 2013 and 2012 to collaborate, and make use of ASP.NET MVC 5, WebAPI2, etc
• XUnit.PhantomQ v.1.2 Released - Tom DuPont announces the release of XUnit.PhantomQ 1.2, a NuGet package which allows your QUnit Tests in JavaScript to be run as though they were XUnit Tests.

Information

• RyuJIT .NET JIT compiler CTP1 FAQ - The .NET Team share a Frequently Asked Questions article on the RyuJIT Compiler, the new 64 bit JIT compiler for .NET
• Browser Link APIs in Visual Studio 2013 RTM - Reshmi Mangalore shares a detailed look at the BrowserLink functionality included in Visual Studio 2013, exploring the APIs which allow you to extend this functionality with your own custom behaviours.
• Managing the number of concurrent tasks using the TAP - Bill Wagner answers a customer question looking at controlling the number of tasks running at any given time using the Task Asynchronous Programming Model.
• Giving Clarity to LINQ Queries by Extending Expressions - Edward Charbeneau takes a look at making LINQ expressions more easily comprehended by adding your own extension methods which return queries.
• Disabling ARR’s Instance Affinity in Windows Azure Web Sites - Erez Benari takes a look at Azure’s use of Application Request Routing in and looks at some of the potential trouble spots in its use.
• Refactoring to Functional - Reducing and Flattening Lists - Hadi Hariri continues his series looking at refactoring code to a more functional programming style with a look at processing and working with lists.

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Software

• Expected Objects Custom Comparisons - Derek Greer shares the 1.1.0 version of is Expected Objects library which provides an easy means of using the Expected Objects pattern. This version adds in support for custom comparisons.
• Nokia Imaging SDK v1.0 RTW now available, officially a "boatload of new features and functionality" - Greg Duncan highlights the release of the 1.0 of the Nokia Imaging SDK which provides Windows Phone developers with a number (boat load!) of useful image processing related features.

Information

• 30 Days of TDD - Day 22 - When is a Test Not a Unit Test? - James Bender presses on with his series looking at Test Driven Development from first principles, and in this part casts the net a little wider and looks at some of the other forms of tests tjeat we should have in our test suites.
• Using IDisposable to scope dangerous behaviour
  - Elton Stoneman takes a look at using the IDisposable interface as a way of applying scope to configuration changes where there may be a danger of a setting being left set (or unset).
• Model binding with Headers in ASP.NET WebAPI - Benny Michielsen takes a look at reading parameters from HTTP headers and binding them into objects using Model Binding in ASP.NET WebAPI
• Enterprise Library 6: Developer’s Guide Released - Grigori Melnik highlights the Patterns and Practices Team’s Developer Guide for Entity Framework 6, available as PDF and EPUB for free download, and also Kindle and Paperback formats.
• "Community [e]Book of PowerShell Practices" September 2013 edition - Greg Duncan highlights this 25 page eBook which focuses on best practices for writing PowerShell scropts
• 10 ways to get more productive in Visual Studio - Johan Ohlin shares some simple productivity tips for Visual Studio. I suspect many will be familiar to you already, however it never hurts to be reminded of some of the useful ones again.

Community

• Legacy Code Retreat Tickets, Bromsgrove - The Crafty Coders are running an all day Code Retreat on Saturday 14th December in Bromsgrove. The topic of the event is Legacy code and the event is being run as a part of the Global Day of Code Retreat.

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• A practical use of multiplicative inverses - Eric Lippert takes a post out of his series on Mathematics from scratch to look at another useful use of Multiplicative Inverses to solve some common real world problems.
• Portable Class Libraries just got REALLY useful with new licensing changes - Scott Hanselman discusses the process of changing the direction of the ship, and reports on the recent progress on improving the portable class library functionality and licensing
• An Introduction to Windows Azure Table Storage - Mike Wood takes a detailed look at the use of Windows Azure Table Storage, walking through the process with an example application, from setting up the table storage service to a running sample, discussing the concepts along the way.
• Routes, Extensionless Paths and UrlEncoding in ASP.NET - Rick Strahl discusses the pain of URL Encoding, and takes a look at using Routing with WebForms to provide better URLs to access pages
• Frameworkless JS - but we *really* want to use Knockout for that bit - Rob Ashton continues his series looking at Frameworkless JavaScript Web Applications, exploring the thoughts on using libraries like Knockout as just a library (where you use it) rather than a framework which forces you to do things a certain way.
• Load testing with Visual Studio Online - Launching Commercial Preview - Manas Maheshwari highlights another of the new offerings released yesterday, the preview release of the ability to perform load testing with Visual Studio Online
• Azure Web Site now supports WebSockets - Gustavo Armenta Valdez takes a look at utilising the Web Sockets support on Windows Azure websites which was released earlier this month, walking through the setup and looking at the use of it with SignalR
• Introduction to WebSockets on Windows Azure Web Sites - Mark Brown also takes a more detailed look at the use of Web Sockets on Windows Azure, exploring their native use.

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