The Morning Brew

Software

• IE9 Coming to Windows Phone in 2011 – The IE for Windows Phone Team announce that Internet Explorer 9 will be coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform this year, and Dean Hachamovitch also discusses the announcement over on the Internet Explorer Team Blog in the post IE9 on Windows Phone

Information

• Nokia Simplifies the Mobile Landscape – Miguel de Icaza discusses the Microsoft / Nokia announcement, and looks at what this means for the future of Mobile operating systems, and how the .NET and Mono frameworks, associated libraries and the C# language can be applied across all current OSs
• An Ultra Light Windows Phone 7 MVVM Framework – Jeremy Likness discusses a lightweight implementation of the MVVM pattern which he is currently using for simple Windows Phone applications, sharing the code for the key components of the framework.
• A TaskScheduler that Limits the Number of Threads – ‘jader3rd’ takes a look at implementing a custom Task Scheduler for parallel code which controls the use of threads, limiting the number created to defined levels
• Mercurial workflow for personal projects (with a .net bias) – Leon Bambrick takes a look at using the Mercurial DVCS for .NET projects, discussing a little about working with Mercurial and .NET projects and sharing a tip which allows you to commit as a part of your build process meaning you always have a snapshot of the code for every successful build
• Inverse Mapped Collections and NHibernate’s Second-Level Cache – Alex Ullrich explores the use of inverse collection mappings in NHibernate, showing how they can be used, and sharing some of the benefits, along with discussing the difference between Loading and Getting entities with NHibernate, and the impact on the 2nd level cache
• Having Fun with Coding4Fun’s Windows Phone 7 Controls – Michael Crump takes a look at the Coding4Fun Tools for Windows Phone 7, a free and open-source collection of controls, examining the AboutBox, PhoneHelper, Value Converters, Input prompt and progress overlay.
• Using Generic TestFixtures To Run Tests In Multiple Browsers With WatiN – Davy Brion takes a look at using WatiN and creating generic test fixtures which allow you to run the same browser driven tests in different browsers easily, sharing a simple example of a test which utilises this technique.
• jQuery CSS Property Monitoring Plug-in updated – Rick Strahl updates his jQuery CSS Property Monitor Plugin which allows your jQuery code to monitor the values of CSS properties of elements and take actions when the values change, allowing elements to be moved, resized and updated (amongst other things) when another element is modified.
• What would Feynman do? – Fabulous Adventures In Coding – Site Home – MSDN Blogs – Eric Lippert takes a look at the 1990’s Microsoft Interview trend of ‘lateral thinking problems’ with an amusing look at what might of happened had Richard Feynman interviewed for Microsoft at the time.

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Software

• NuGet 1.1 Released! – Phil Haack announces the release of version 1.1 of NuGet, available via the Visual Studio Extension Gallery and CodePlex. This release is mainly a bug fix release but also adds a Recently used packages tab, progress bar and output window feedback during installation of packages,F# support and an updated dependency resolution algorithm. Phil also highlights potential installation problems (and a work around) if you have VS 2010 SP1 Beta installed.
• Sterling Object-Oriented Database 1.0 RTM – Jeremy Likness announces the V1.0 RTM release of his Sterling Object Oriented Database designed for use in Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 applications, giving a little history of its development and pointing to the release over on CodePlex
• FsUnit Now On NuGet Gallery – Daniel Mohl highlights the release of FSUnit 0.9 on NuGet, which combined with the NuGet 1.1 release supporting F# projects makes this the easiest way of getting unit testing set up in your F# projects.

Information

• Microsoft and Nokia announce plans for a broad strategic partnership on Windows Phone – M3 Sweatt shares the details of the Microsoft and Nokia Strategic Partnership which will see Nokia being heavily involved in the Windows Phone 7 platform’s evolution.
• Nokia and Microsoft Strategic Partnership: Announcement, Press Conference webcast replay, and more – Eric Ligman also highlights the announcement with links to further information and video clips from the press conference.
• Register your HTTP modules at runtime without config – David Ebbo looks at the ApplicationPreStart functionality added to ASP.NET in version 4 which allows you to perform setup code by decorating an assembly with the PreApplicationStartMethod attribute allowing you to do things like register your own HTTP modules.
• IE9 RC Minor Changes List – Eric Lawrance shares an updated list of minor changes in the Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate providing a very useful reference for anyone working on checking the compatibility of their applications with IE9.
• Running .NET applications in-process using AppDomains – Kirill Osenkov discusses the launching of other .NET applications within your own application making use of Application Domains to separate their running and to allow the memory from loading the application to be reclaimed.
• Code Contracts in .NET 4.0 & its Internals – Abhishek Sur continues his series looking at the implementation of .NET language features at the IL level. In this post, Code Contracts which were introduced to the core framework in .NET 4 come under the spotlight.
• Design Patterns. The Bridge. Another Look – Ed Guzman explores the use of the Bridge Pattern in application architecture discussing a use and showing an implementation of the bridge in this CodeProject article.
• On Bad Code – Mehdi Khalili discusses the issue of Code Quality, looking at if it is OK to write bad code, what you can do with bad code to improve it, and how bad code comes into being.
• Windows Phone 7 Performance Measurements – Emulator vs. Hardware – Colin Eberhardt takes a look at the performance of the Windows Phone 7 Emulator vs Actual device, sharing his performance testing code so you can try it on your own machine and device.
• Using Git alongside other version control systems – Mike Hadlow takes a look at using the Git version control system along side with other version control systems allowing you to take advantage of some of the features of Git whilst still sticking to company version control policy.

Community

• DDD Scotland – Vote for Sessions – The community voting for the sessions you want to see at DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper Scotland (which is on the 7th May 2011 in Glasgow) has now opened, and as is usual for these events there is an excellent range of sessions proposed – its going to be difficult to choose.
• Free Talk: TDD with JavaScript and Jasmine, by Damjan Vujnovic at Skills Matter Limited (Tuesday February 15, 2011) – SkillsMatter welcome Damjan Vujnovic tomorrow (15th Feb) for a JavaScript Test Driven Development workshop which will explore the use of Jasmine for test driving your JavaScript applications.
• Reflector 7 Giveaway – Dan Maharry has secured 50 Redgate Reflector 7 licenses to give away. All you have to do to enter is share your favourite use of Reflector (including illustrative screenshots) with the best being posted next month.

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Software

• Acting on Feedback: IE9 Release Candidate Available for Download – The Internet Explorer team announce the release candidate release of Internet Explorer 9, available in 40 different languages this release candidate has taken into account 17000 pieces of user feedback from the beta and CTP releases and represents the most standard compliant Internet Explorer ever with very nearly 100% of tests for HTML5, SVG 1.1, CSS3, DOM and JavaScript passing.
• Internet Explorer 9 RC – download, what’s new and get your sites ready – Katrien De Graeve blogs about the IE 9 RC release, discussing and linking to blog posts about key features of IE9
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate (RC) download & resources available – Eric Ligman pulls together a comprehensive list of resources about the Internet Explorer 9 RC release, including download links for the different platforms, guides for users and developers to the new features, links to the Administration Kits for IE9, along with videos from Channel 9 and the IE team.
• Fiddler and the IE9 Release Candidate – Eric Lawrence talks about 3 new features of Internet Explorer 9 which the Fiddler HTTP Debugging Proxy takes advantage of, looking at new connections per proxy settings, local host debugging, and information about why a HTTP request was made.
• NOW Available: Windows Azure AppFabric CTP February Release – The Windows Azure team announce their February CTP release of the Windows Azure AppFabric. This release adds support for dynamically setting either a 128MB or 256MB cache, a new Silverlight LABS portal, improved performance and diagnostics.

Information

• Optional arguments on both ends – Eric Lippert poses a puzzle about which overload the compiler would pick when there are a mix of non-optional and optional arguments available in the overload list, discussing why the compile chooses the one it does.
• Pull Request Changes, Multi-Selection in Advanced View, and Advertisement Changes – Matt Hawley announces the release of a new version of the CodePlex website platform which brings changes to how pull requests work, review of pull requests and improvements to advanced view filters for work items.
• FAQ about copy paste functionality in upcoming release – Jaime Rodriguez answers a number of common questions about the copy paste functionality coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform, discussing what this functionality will mean for developers of existing applications
• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The Concurrent Collections (1 of 3) – James Michael Hare continues his series of posts on lesser known parts of the .NET Framework with the first of three posts about the Concurrent Collections introduced in .NET 4. In this part he sets the scene looking at the history of the Concurent collections and looks at the ConcurrentStack and Concurrent Queue in use.
• Monads in C#-7. Turning our parser into a Monad – Mike Hadlow continues building on his series of posts developed to support his DDD9 presentation on Monads. In this part Mike looks at converting his parser implementation into a monad to make combining the parsers easier.
• Web Testing with Selenium Sushi: A Practical Guide and Toolset – Michael Sorens takes a detailed look at Selenium for web testing, and introduces Selenium Sushi, his extensions to Selenium designed to improve the experience of using Selenium RC and Selenium IDE making it easier to retarget to different browsers, different servers and reduce the amount of code in the tests.
• Developing for Windows Touch? Windows Touch Guidance Document Now Available – Pat Altimore highlights the availability of the Windows Touch Guidance document which includes design principles and guidelines, the details of the Windows 7 Touch API, the Windows Logo requirements, along with details of the developer support for touch and additional touch related resources for developers.
• Conditional Validation in ASP.NET MVC 3 – Simon Ince updates his Conditional Validation in MVC proof of concept to ASP.NET MVC 3 discussing the implementation and the changes required for the upgrade and providing full source to the sample.
• F# and Data Mining: Introducing Sho and using its libraries from F# – Yin Zhu takes a brief look at Sho and its libraries, discussing its use of IronPython and looking at interacting with Sho from F#
• Making Developing Windows Azure Applications Easier – One Resource At A Time – Jonathan Rozenblit highlights the Azure Design Patterns site from David Pallmann which covers patterns in in the key Azure related areas of Storage, Security, Relational Data, Compute, Communications and Network.
• NuGet for WPF and Silverlight Developers – Pete Brown reminds us all that NuGet is not just for Web Developers, highlighting the available of the Silverlight Toolkit on Nuget, and showing how you you can get started with NuGet for Silverlight and WPF projects.

Community

• mvcConf – Videos of sessions – Guilherme Cardoso highlights the availability of some videos of the sessions from mvcConf available on the Channel 9 mvcConf channel.

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