Software

  • Introducing Microsof Visual Studio LightSwitch – Jason Zander announces LightSwitch, a standalone Visual Studio Product to enable the easy creation of Line Of Business Applications to run on the desktop or in the cloud using C# or VB.NET providing easy creation of data capture and display screens. Jason runs through a ‘File > New’ use showing the tool in operation to make a simple application
  • MonoTools 2 for Visual Studio has been released – Miguel de Icaza announces the release of MonoTools 2 for Visual Studio which now supports Visual Studio 2010 along with 2008, improves the deployment transfer, adds soft debugger support, along with general improvements to the tools.
  • Prism 4.0 CTP Available on Codeplex – Blaine Wastell highlights the Patterns and Practices release of a CTP release of Prism 4.0 focusing on MVVM implementation guidance and help using MEF for modularity, with new and updated quick starts and reference implementation, along with documentation.
  • MvcSiteMapProvider 2.1.0 released! – Maarten Balliauw announces an updated version of the MvcSiteMapProvider which provides an MVC implementation of the standard ASP.NET Site Map Provider. This release targets the ASP.NET MVC 2, and this release includes interoperability with other site map controls and extensibility features.
  • Netduino – .NET Micro Framework, open source, electronics platform, free (software), code walk though, cool… – Greg Duncan highlights a new Open Source electronics platform based on the .NET Micro Framework. Netduino is influenced by the Arduino hardware platform, but allows development using Visual Studio on the Micro Framework platform

Information

  • Introducing LightSwitch – rapid development of LOB applications – Eric Nelson discusses the LightSwitch announcements, talking briefly about its origins in 4GL and looking at how it fits in with the WebMatrix release as a part of the .NET based development offerings.
  • Visual Studio LightSwitch 2010 – Chris Eargle shares his thoughts on LightSwitch, discussing the appropriateness of this new tool for certain tasks, and how integrates well with existing technologies and leaves the more complex applications to the full development tools.
  • A short take on Microsoft.Data – David Ebbo talks about the community reaction to the Microsoft.Data functionality discussed over the past few days, attempting to refocus the discussion away from ‘using Raw SQL is wrong’ and back onto making development easier and safer for those who do choose to use Raw SQL.
  • Microsoft.Data and Positioning – Ayende discusses what the new ‘simpler’ tools releases from Microsoft may mean for the wider professional .NET developer community
  • Using EF "Code First" with an Existing Database – Scott Guthrie takes a look at the use of the new Entity Framework Code First support for working with existing databases, taking a step by step approach to building mappings for the NorthWind sample database using the Code First features.
  • The short example about EF4 CTP4 using DataAnnotation configuration – Context is King – Thang Chung takes a look at using the DataAnnotation attributes for mapping entities to the database using Entity Framework 4 CTP4, illustrating with an example mapping a 8 entity class model.
  • Quick Access Extension – Weston Hutchins talks about the new Quick Access Extension which was included in the latest update to the Visual Studio Productivity Power Tools, and canvases for opinion on tools which should be added or improved.
  • Windows Phone 7: Free eBook – Sekna Khanafer highlights the latest update to Charles Petzold’s book on Programming Windows Phone 7, with the first 11 chapters now available as a free e-book, with the completion of the book (and availability for free) due in time for PDC in October
  • How do You Stress Test Your Web Application? – Mike Hadlow crowd sources Stress Testing application suggestions from his Twitter followers aggregating their suggestions and opinions on tools into this useful post.
  • MVP In Silverlight/WPF: The Sample – Davy Brion continues his series on MVP in Silverlight and WPF with an introduction to the sample application he will show the implementation of to illustrate his preference for MVP over MVVM
  • DynamicDuck: Duck Typing in a Dynamic World – Brian Ritchie discusses Duck Typing with the new .NET Dynamic support, and shares an updated DuckTaper library for making duck typing work in .NET which he has added support for dynamic to.
  • Container-friendly domain events – Jimmy Bogard looks into Domain Events, discussing the standard implementation pattern for Domain Eventing, and explaining how it prevents some of the more advanced uses of IOC Containers, and shares his thoughts on an implementation which allows better control.
  • Optimizing Regular Expression Performance, Part II: Taking Charge of Backtracking – Ron Petrusha continues his three part series on Regular Expression Performance Optimisation with a detailed look at the control of Backtracking in your regular expressions, sharing tips for keeping backtracking to a minimum to improve your RegEx performance.
  • A high performance ProgressBar for Windows Phone – Jeff Wilcox shares a solution to the performance issues in the Progress Bar template for Silverlight on Windows Phone 7 when operating in indeterminate mode, providing a simple drop in solution and answering questions about its implementation.