The Morning Brew

…hopefully with fewer embarrassing typos today 🙂

Software

• Downloads for SharpDevelop 3.1 – SharpDevelop 3.1 has reached its official release, which from the look of the change log is pretty much the same as the RC2 release with an update to the version of NUnit and some fixes for NRefactory.
• XAML Power Toys v5 Published – Karl Shifflett releases Version 5 of his WPF and Silverlight XAML Power Toys. XAML Power Toys is a VS 2008 add-in which brings enhanced functionality for working with XAML to build line of business applications by having generations tools for data entry forms and common controls functionality
• Typemock Isolator 5.3.5 is out! – The TypeMock team announce the release of their latest edition of TypeMock Isolator. This updated version brings a new API for calling inaccessible methods and events along with support for custom verification along with the usual bugfixes.

Information

• Make It Easy To Refactor – Jak Charlton talks about some factors that can make a code base easier to refactor, just by making some sensible decisions in naming and style of coding/testing
• Tip/Trick: Increase your VS screen real estate by disabling HTML Navigation Bar – ScottGu shares a simple tip which can gain you back a couple of lines of screen space in the Visual Studio Editor when working with HTML documents
• Unit Testing with jQuery using FireUnit & QUnit – Elijah Manor gives a short introduction to testing JavaScript using FireUnit and QUnit in this 5 minute screencast.
• .NET University is Live – Charlie Calvert highlights two great learning resources for .NET Developers, the .NET University (from Doug Turnure and Mark Dunn) and Microsoft’s MyRampUp.com. Both offer a range of learning resources including slide decks, speaker notes, demos, labs sessions and webcasts.
• Update on the Next Microsoft .NET Services CTP – The .NET Services Team share some information on what will be included in their October CTP release
• Why do ref and out parameters not allow type variation? – Eric Lippert takes a look at Ref and Out parameters and looks at how they differ in allowing variation of the types in question to be supplied
• Mocks are not about isolation, but about responsibilities – Gojko Adzic sumarises a presentation by Steve Freeman at CITCON Europe about the use of mock objects, what they were intended for originally and how you should use them. Some interesting thoughts
• TDD: Tests that give us a false confidence of coverage – Mark Needham talks about some classes of test which do nothing to improve the confidence in the application due to the way the tests exercise the code but don’t actually check anything important is correct
• Download four free sample chapters from Visual Web Developer book – Mikhail Arkhipov of the Visual Web Developer Team highlights the availability of four chapters from Jim Cheshire’s book on Visual Web Developer 2008 which are available for free download
• A Developer’s Guide to the WCF REST Starter Kit – Aaron Skonnard highlights the availability of his latest MSDN whitepaper which takes the covers off the WCF REST Starter Kit and explores the various features of this new library

Community

• CodeCamp.pl – October 17th sees Cracow host the Polish CodeCamp, with a great line up of well known speakers covering a range of topics from .NET to Business Intelligence in English language sessions. The best bit is that the event is free to attend (registration required)
• Announcing a new kind of events: AltNetCrossTalks, this Friday at MRM! – Seb Lambla announces the first of a new type of cross technology event, the AltNetCrossTalk. This first instance is occurring this Friday and Ruby, Ruby on Rails and IronRuby are the topics

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