The Morning Brew

Update: Fixed the Link to ‘Updated NUnit Plugin for VS11 Released’ - thanks to Scott Peterson for letting me know via the comments

Software

• Updated NUnit Plugin for VS11 Released - Peter Provost highlights the announcement from Charlie Poole of an updated NUnit Test runner adapter for Visual Studio 11 Beta, allowing you to successfully run tests written using NUnit from inside VS11
• Babel Obfuscator 5.5 Released - Alberto Ferrazzoli announces the release of Babel Obfuscator 5.5 with added support for Windows 8 Developer Preview and the Visual Studio 11 Beta, Silverlight 5, along with a stack of improvements to the Obfuscator implementation.
• API Improvements made in SignalR 0.5 - David Fowler highlights the 0.5 release of SignalR and discusses some of the API changes made since previous versions.
• Introducing Humanizer - Mehdi Khalili introduces his latest project, a library which takes strings, enums and dates and turns them into human readable strings, dealing with things such as the naming styles for BDD tests.
• Announcing YUI 3.5.1 - The Yahoo! YUI team announces the release of YUI 3.5.1, available as download or via the CDN, and providing a number of bugfixes over the previous 3.5 release.
• Sample Browser v5.1–a small refresh with support of Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Jialiang Ge announces the latest release of the All-In-One Code Framework Samples Browser which adds support for running it on Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows Server 8 Beta.

Information

• GUID guide, part three - Eric Lippert continues with his discussion of the Global Unique Identifier discussing the privacy concerns with using location and time as a factor in GUID generation, rounding off the series with a nice summary of key take aways about GUIDs.
• The perils of conditional mutability - Jon Skeet discusses some investigation into performance issues with the test for his Noda Time project discussing how some issues with invarient culture and mutability of types caused issues.
• A look at the CLR 4.5, Improved Large Object Heap Allocator, Server GC Background Mode and Auto NGen - Greg Duncan highlights a nice article on some of the improvements in .NET 4.5 for the Kernel - large object heap, and garbage collection, and which also discusses the automatic NGen performed on Windows 8 for assemblies in the GAC, helping to improve application performance.
• JavaScript for the C# Guy: The Global Object - Shawn Wildermuth continues his series looking at JavaScript Development from the point of view of a C# .NET Developer, discussing the concept of the global object in JavaScript.
• Simple.Data and complex types: one to many & PetaPoco: Mapping related objects - Christiaan Baes and Eli Weinstock-Herman continues their respective series looking at the implementation of data access using the micro ORMs Simple.Data and PetaPoco.
• WCF Data Services, now with more releases! - The WCF Data Services Team discusses the recent changes to their development practices and methodology which has lead to more rapid releases, the adoption of semantic versioning, and distribution via Nuget.

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Monday is a Bank Holiday here in the UK, so inkeeping with Morning Brew tradition there will be no edition on Monday, with normal service resuming on Tuesday - Enjoy the long weekend.

Information

• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Enumerable.Repeat() Static Method - James Michael Hare continues his Little Wonders series looking at less well known parts of the .NET Framework and C# language. This part takes a look at the Enumerable.Repeat method to take single values and turn them into sequences.
• .Net Implementation of a Priority Queue (aka Heap) - Carl Nolan looks into implementing a priority queue data structure using a heap, sharing his implementation, and comparing it to types available in the .NET framework.
• Subterranean IL: The ThreadLocal type - Simon Cooper continues his Subterranean IL series looking at the internal implementation of certain types in the .NET Framework, exploring the ThreadLocal type in this part.
• Help! How Do I Detect When a Client Thread Exits? - Mike Hadlow is also making use of ThreadLocal and is looking at how he can clean up these resources when the thread ends. Be sure to check out the linked StackOverflow question in the comments for further discussion.
• Less Than Dot - Blog - Simple.Data and complex types: many to one - Christiaan Baes presses on with his series looking at the use of the Simple.Data MicroORM for working with data from VB.NET, digging into the Many to One relationship.
• Unit Test a project having external dependency(WCF Proxy) using Fakes & Visual Studio 11 Beta - Atul Verma works through using the new Visual Studio 11 Beta Fakes functionality to create unit tests for a project which takes an external dependency on a WCF Proxy.
• From Code-Behind to MVVM, a three part series… - Greg Duncan highlights a nice series of posts over on CodeProject from Shenwei Liu looking at how you can take your development of WPF and Silverlight applications to the next level by making the jump from Code-Behind to MVVM
• Coding guidelines for HTML and CSS - Jens O. Meiert shares Google’s latest public coding style guide for HTML and CSS, a useful and lightweight style guide for these often forgotten about types of ‘code’
• HTML5 Development For ASP.NET Developers - Burke Holland introduces a new series of posts and videos looking at development using HTML5 for ASP.NET based developers, with the first part being posted up today (giving you something to enjoy over the long weekend)

Community

• WPUG presents WPBarCamp - The London based Windows Phone User Group are running a 6 hour all day Saturday Bar camp event on Saturday 19h May, aimed at the more experienced Windows Phone Application Developer. The event is running using the bar camp style, where attendees are encouraged to present, and the agenda will be decided on the day by the participants.
• Skills Matter : In The Brain of Phil Trelford: F# for Commodities Trading - Phil Trelford will be presenting an ‘in the brain of’ session at Skillsmatter on Monday 14th May, looking at the use fo F# in finance.
• NxtGenUG - Event: EF5 Preview - New Features - The NxtGenUG in Hereford welcome Geoff Lombardi for a session on the new features included in Entity Framework 5, in a session aimed at those who have previously used EF which will explore Enum Support, Code First Migrations, Spatial Data Types, and table valued functions.

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Information

• Task Parallel Library and Servers, Part 4: TaskHelpers - Brad Wilson presses on with his series looking at the use of the Task Parallel Library (TPL) from server based applications written particularly in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web API. In this part Brad discusses the use of the TaskHelpers class to help make the use of tasks easier in code.
• MSDN Magazine: May 2012 - The May edition of MSDN Magazine is now available online, with articles integrating media in Windows Phone applications, HTML5 based Windows Phone apps using Apache Cordova, Web sockets, Mobile Development in ASP.NET MVC 4 and much much more.
• PragPub for May, 2012 - The Pragmatic Bookshelf announce the release of PragPub Magazine’s May 2012 edition, as usual available in a variety of electronic formats. This month sees articles on Scala, the storage of data structures, professionalism in email, command line applications, along with the usual columns.
• More PetaPoco: Id’s and Multi-POCO queries - Eli Weinstock-Herman digs deeper in his exploration of the PetaPoco micro ORM, following the themes laid out by Christiaan Baes is in his exploration of Simple.Data. In this article Eli takes a look at adding columns and tables and querying across multiple objects.
• Interested in the dirty depths of Windows 8? Check out this 83 page Windows 8 Forensic Guide - Greg Duncan highlights an 83 page guide to a variety of aspects of Windows 8 features from Amanda Thompson, looking under the hood at folder structures, registry values that underpin the functionality.
• Kata - The only way to learn TDD - Peter Provost discusses learning to develop in a Test Driven Development (TDD) way, discussing the role of the Kata exercises in getting a handle on doing TDD, and highlighting a number of Kata exercises in detail, and providing links to further ones.
• Connecting to WCF RIA Services in a Windows 8 Metro Style App using Upshot.js and Knockout.js - Dave Isbitski looks at creating a Metro stile application using Upshot.js and Knockout.js to present data retrieved from a WCF RIA Services based service
• Setting Up an Offline Production Debugging Environment - Sasha Goldshtein discusses creating a complete offline environment for debugging production issues, useful if you work in a restricted environment. In the article he looks at the tools and set up required to build a fully working debugging environment.
• From Zero to Proficient with MEF - Tim Corey gives an introduction to the Managed Extensibility Framework in this CodeProject article, looking at how you can create extensible applications and extend existing applications using MEF.
• More fun with DateTime - Jon Skeet discusses more fun and games with dates and times in your code, discussing the effect timezone changes, daylight savings, and conversions of time can result in.

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Information

• A New Look for CodePlex - Mark Groves discusses the work the CodePlex team have been doing, and announces the release of a new look site, styled in the new Metro Look and feel.
• Entity Framework 4.3.1 Migrations and non English locale - Simone Chiaretta discusses an issue he ran into working with Entity Framework Migrations when using a non-English locale, sharing a workaround for the issue.
• ASP.NET MVC3 Using Code First Entity Framework Without Database Generation - Phil Fresle discusses the use of Entity Framework Code First in situations where you are not generating the database from the model, and in the updates to the post discusses tooling which can help if you are working in this way.
• Introducing Workspace Reloader - A Visual Studio AddIn to save your open files across project reloads - Scott Hanselman creates his first Visual Studio Add-in to scratch an itch the StackOverflow guys were having with project file edits outside the environment (from Version control) causing the project to reload and lose all their open windows.
• Query Optimizer Deep Dive - Part 4 - Paul White wraps up an interesting series of posts looking at the SQL Server Query Optimizer, and based around his presentation on the subject. This is well worth reading if you deal with SQL Server.
• F# for game development: Portable Class Libraries: Are they worth the trouble? - Joh discusses the Portable Class Libraries discussing some of the difficulties he’s having getting his code to work as a portable library, and wondering if it is worth the effort.
• More Simple.Data with VB.Net: adding fields and tables - Christiaan Baes continues digging into the Simple.Data MicroORM library looking at further columns and tables, and creating relationships between objects.
• Persisting enumeration classes with NHibernate - Jimmy Bogard discusses the use of Enumeration classes in C# and looks at how NHibernate provides hooks to allow persisting them to the database, and how the convention can be applied across your code base.
• ASP.NET MVC: Adding aria-required attribute for required fields - Stuart Leeks - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - Stuart Leeks discusses how you can extend ASP.NET MVC to provide additional helpers which customize the markup generated further, looking at how you can apply the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) attributes to inputs.

Community

• Event Exclusive: DDD Reading Announced - Sara Allison shares an announcement from Dave Sussman that the next DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper event to be held at Microsoft’s Reading campus will be held on Saturday 1st September.

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A rather late, and rather minimal edition today….sorry eveyone

Information

• GUID guide, part two - Eric Lippert continues his latest series of posts exploring the magical world of the GUID (Global Unique Identifier), in this post diving deeper into the make up of a GUID and some of the factors which make them unique.
• Modern Web Development - Part 9 - Shawn Wildermuth continues is Modern Web Development series taking a look at the current face of web development. This post takes a look at making your web pages mobile friendly, looking at the three ways of making pages for mobile use.
• Using Shims in Visual Studio 11 to test untestable code. - Ricci Gian Maria takes a look at using Shims one of the new features of Visual Studio 11 to hepl test code which previously was difficult / impossible to test.
• An introduction to ASP.Net MVC 4.0 - Nikolaos Kantzelis walks through the creation of a small ASP.NET MVC 4 application, discussing how the framework allows ou to build clean HTML and URL structures.
• Need get a GW-Basic fix? Here’s GW-Basic running in Silverlight - Greg Duncan highlights a fine retro port bringing GW-BASIC to Silverlight, allowing you to reminisce of the simpler days of programming.
• Multi Threading Insanity - (Humour) Ayende highlights a famous Einstein quote, and suggests that Einstein didn’t do enough multi threaded programming!
• Introducing the jQuery Mobile Metro Theme - Colin Eberhardt discusses the new jQuery Mobile Metro Theme which brings allows you to style your jQuery mobile based applications in a Metro look and feel. In the article Colin looks at how you can detect the device being used and serve the suitable styleing to make the application feel native.

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Information

• April 27th What’s Happening Around Visual Studio - Jason Zander gives another of his updates on what is going on in the Visual Studio World, highlighting the Async Targeting Pack for VS11, a number of great blog articles, and highlighting the availability of session recordings from the STAREAST testing conference.
• Using Nightly ASP.NET Web Stack NuGet Packages - Henrik F Nielsen discusses how you can now get the latest and greatest ASP.NET Web Stack NuGet packages which are generated from nightly builds of the Open Source project, showing how you can configure your system to use these cutting edge packages.
• A XAML Guy digs into ASP.NET MVC4 (Part 1 of ?) - Michael Crump kicks off a new series of posts taking a look at ASP.NET MVC4 from the point of view of a XAML Silverlight / Windows Phone / WPF developer. This first post gets you up and running and introduces some of the ASP.NET MVC fundamentals.
• Using Razor V2 in ASP.NET MVC 3 - Imran Baloch takes a look at how you can make use of the Razor V2 engine, which ships with ASP.NET MVC 4 and web Pages 2, from within your ASP.NET MVC 3 applications.
• GZip/Deflate Compression in ASP.NET MVC - Rick Strahl revisits GZip compression of web page output, looking at the best way of adding this capability in a controllable fashion to your ASP.NET MVC applications via ActionFilters.
• Learn MVC (Model view controller) Step by Step in 7days - Day 3 - Shivprasad koirala picks up this series of posts again posting day 3 of the series to CodeProject , taking a look at the use of partial views, the Razor View Engine, Data Annotation validation, and the use of Windows Authentication in your applications.
• The Present and Future of Using JSON in WebForms - Carl Bergenhem of the Telerik ASP.NET AJAX Team discusses the use of JSON data in your ASP.NET Web Forms applications, looking at the current WebService approach, and discussing some of the new features coming in ASP.NET 4.5
• The Case of The Unquoted Command Line: Process Monitor and MPGO.EXE - Sasha Goldshtein highlights MPGO.EXE, a tool which is included in the ,NET Framework which provides improved optimization managed assemblies. In this post Sasha takes a look at using process monitor to investigate an issue he was having with its use.
• Simple.Data and VB.Net the beginning & Seeing the sql Simple.Data generates - Christiaan Baes kicks off a series of posts looking at the use of the Simple.Data Micro ORM library from VB.NET, taking you through the setup and simple use of Simple.Data, and looking at the generated SQL it produces.
• Playing with PetaPoco - Eli Weinstock-Herman follows suit and takes a look at the use of PetaPoco (in C#), again exploring the getting started story, and looking at some simple examples.
• JSIL - The IL to JS transformation project (Yes it takes .Net IL assemblies and generates JavaScript from them) - Greg Duncan highlights JSIL, a compiler which takes .NET applications and libraries and ‘compiles ‘them into cross browser JavaScript, outputting code which is surprisingly well written, making it easier to debug.
• Celebration! 120′000 downloads for #mvvmlight, 2 copies of Expression Studio to win - Laurent Bugnion celebrates 120000 downloads of his MVVMLight framework, with a give away of two copies of Expression Studio, along with a discussion of some of the history of MVVM Light.

Community

• Event: Free UK Windows Azure Bootcamp: Online - Planky highlights plans to run a version of the Windows Azure Bootcamp (which will be running in person in London and Liverpool in May) as a Lync online session to make it available to a wider range of people.
• Upcoming developer events in Edinburgh - So what is a developer experience anyway? - ’stephencl123456789′ highlights two developer events being held up in Edinburgh, the first an all day event looking at Windows 8 for developers tomorrow (1st May), and the second a half day exploring Visual Studio 11 ALM features on 13th June.

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Software

• Async Targeting Pack for Visual Studio 11 now available for .NET 4 and Silverlight 5 - The BCL team announce the release of the Async Targeting Pack for Visual Studio 11 which addresses an incompatibility between the Compiler in VS11 and the Async CTP release, allowing you to target .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 5.
• MS Open Tech JQuery Mobile’s Metro - Greg Duncan highlights the release of a Windows Phone Metro theme for jQuery Mobile from Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. and Sergei Grebnov

Information

• ASP.NET Web API Updates - April 27 - Henrik F Nielsen highlights some of the changes to the ASP.NET Web API which are now available in the source code, and will eventually become part of the official release. The changes surround the wiring up of Message Handlers, access to progress notification for upload and download, and further support for Multipart messages.
• Back to Basics: Moving beyond for, if and switch - Scott Hanselman resumes his Back To Basics series looking at how modern languages allow you to move beyond the standard for, if and switch statements allowing you to write more expressive and shorter code.
• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Enumerable.Range() Static Method - James Michael Hare also continues his series on the little wonders available in the C# language and .NET Framework with a look at the use of the Enumerable.Range() method in a couple of scenarios.
• "Virtual method call from constructor" What Could Go Wrong? - Peter Ritchie discusses a common code analysis warning about calling overridable methods in constructors which while syntactically correct can result in unexpected behaviour.
• ASP.NET MVC: Resolve or Inject? That’s the Issue - Dino Esposito discusses the difference between dependency resolving using a service locator and dependency injection in ASP.NET MVC web applications.
• Auto-scaling Azure with WASABi - From the Ground Up - Greg Oliver discusses the process of setting up WASABi to provide auto scaling of Windows Azure, looking at how you can test the setup using the compute emulator

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Software

• Json.NET - Download: Json.NET 4.5 Release 4 - The Json.NET team announce the release of Json.NET 4.5 Release 4. This release adds a Portable Class Library build, further customization of the JsonConverter, improved error messages in Json Reader and Serializer, along with some new attributes for controlling serialization and the usual fixes.

Information

• Visual Studio Fakes Part 2 - Shims - Peter Provost continues his series looking at the Visual Studio 11 support for Fakes, in this part discussing the use of Shims to allow you to control code your code under test relies on but which cannot be injected, looking at how Shims allow you to create tests of this type of code, allowing you to eventually refactor the dependency out into something manageable.
• Bringing CLR’s Power to non .NET languages - Part 1 - Dorian Corompt kicks off what looks to be an interesting series of posts looking at consuming .NET CLR based code in non .NET languages like C++, Java, PHP, etc, looking at the use of C++ to create a bridge between the non .NET language and the CLR.
• Obsoleted Types, Methods and Migration Guide and more for .Net 4.5 (Beta) - Greg Duncan highlights s selection of resources (with some help from Wriju) which discuss the many changes in .NET 4.5, the types and members which have been marked as obsolete, migration documentation, and discussion of dependencies of the different .NET versions.
• Windows Azure Storage for the ASP.NET Developer - Adam Hoffman shares his latest installment of s series of posts from Adam, Rachel Appel, and Peter Laudati looking at Azure for Web Developers. In this post Adam discusses the different storage options available on Windows Azure, ranging from relational SQL Server data stores to blots and queues.
• Top 7 Concerns of Migrating an ASP.NET Application to Windows Azure - Peter Laudati’s latest part of the series is also available, where he discusses the 7 most common concerns and decisions you need to make when moving an existing ASP.NET application to the cloud.
• Get Started Building Data Driven Apps with Windows Azure and SQL Axure - Rachel Appel also has her latest article in the series available, looking at the use of SQL Azure to create a data driven application.
• ‘Task List’ and comments - Amar Nityananda reminds us of the ability to customize the tokens that the Visual Studio Task List uses to identify tasks in code, allowing you to identify custom markers in code via the task list.
• 6. Sequences - Being lazy is allowed - Dorian Corompt continues this series on F#, discussing the concept of laziness in sequences, their role in programming and dealing with infinite sequences, and how you can use them in F#.

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