The Morning Brew

Software

• NuGet 1.5 Released! – Phil Haack announces the release of NuGet Version 1.5. The new release brings with it changes to both server and client, along with improvements to the adding of references, exclude file support in NuSpec files, the ability to include NuGet Packages in project templates, improved dependency handling on package removal, support for proxies which require authentication, and much more. It might be worth holding off updating though, as Phil announced on twitter that a problem with the release had been found.
• .NET Micro Framework 4.2 RC2 Now Released – Pete Brown highlights the release of the second Release Candidate release of the .NET Micro Framework 4.2
• MiniBuss on Codeplex – Johan Danforth announces the first beta release of MiniBuss, a micro framework implementation of a Service Bus framework backed onto MSMQ. The release is available on NuGet and CodePlex, and the CodePlex project page has a short getting started guide.
• Announcing PostSharp 2.1 RC 1 – Gael Fraiteur announces the first release Candidate of PostSharp 2.1. This release brings with it the finalized version of the Architecture Validation, Project Properties page for Visual Studio, Compatibility with Code Contracts 4.0 and Silverlight 5, and much more.

Information

• Don’t Execute A Backbone.js Route Handler From Your Code & Don’t Limit Your Backbone Apps To Backbone Constructs – Derick continues his series of posts on the Backbone,js client side framework with a discussion of a seemingly simple set of requirements which actually prove to be tricky to implement, illustrating some important lessons along the way, and Derick also discusses the importance of having good example applications to learn from.
• Adding sparklines to your MVC site using the Google Chart API & Using the .NET Chart API to add sparklines to your MVC site – Brian Ritchie has been exploring te options for implementing SparkLines, those small line graphs which are used to indicate trends, exploring the use of Google Chart API and .NET Chart API to implement them in your ASP.NET MVC sites.
• 3 Ways to update the Application Tile Content in Mango – Michael Crump takes a look at the different techniques for updating the graphical content of the Windows Phone Application Tiles in your Mango Applications.
• T4 Metadata and Data Annotations Template – Dan Wahlin explores the use of T4 Templates and Data Annotations to generate metadata classes for an existing Entity Framework Model, discussing his solution and sharing his efforts on CodePlex.
• GIT Cheat Sheet (and some version control best practices too on page 2) – Greg Duncan highlights a nice simple looking Git cheat sheet which also supplements the one page o GIT command information with a page of best practices for working with Git and more generally with any Version Control System.

Community

• SQLRelay: Manchester – The UK SQL Server community goes into overdrive between the 3rd and 5th October (following straight on from SQLBits) with the SQL Relay Usergroup events kicking off in 13 local usergroups. Events are happening in Manchester, Kent Brimingham, Surrey, London, Bristol,Hatfield,Leeds,Southampton,Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Exeter
• On tour – Mark Rendle announces details of his Scottish Tour, taking place in early October where he will be delivering sessions at usergroups in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.

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Software

• Python Tools for Visual Studio – Somasegar highlights the release of the Python Tools for Visual Studio, released yesterday over on CodePlex. The Version 1.0 gives an integrated development environment for Python Development inside Visual Studio 2010, supporting both CPython, IronPython, PyPy nd Jython including refactorings, intellisense, debugging and profiling.
• Sho 2.0.5, IronPython 2.7, and Python Tools for Visual Studio – The Sho Team highlight their latest release which brings some minor features improvements and bugfixes, along with compatibility with the newly release IronPython 2.7
• Just Released: Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games Version 1.0 – Windows Azure – Site Home – MSDN Blogs – The Windows Azure Team highlight the release of the Windows Azure Tookit for Social Games Version 1,0. This updated release offers improvements to performance and scalability as well as many enhancements to the sample game ‘Tankster’

Information

• Installing and Running node.js applications within IIS on Windows – Are you mad? – Scott Hanselman discusses the work that has been done to bring Node.js support to the Windows Platform with iisnode, giving some background on what node is all about and why you might be interested in running it on Windows, and walking through getting it setup and running.
• Asynchronous scalable web applications with real-time persistent long-running connections with SignalR – Scott also explores the use of SignalR for building web applications which use long running connections to communicate with a backend server
• Build an Earthquake Application with Bing Maps WPF Control (Beta) – Brian Lagunas takes a look at building a WPF application using the Bing Maps API, grabbing and processing XML data on Earthquakes and plotting them onto the map.
• MSDN Magazine September Issue Preview – Michael Desmond gives a taste of what is to come in the September 2011 edition of the MSDN Magazine, due out imminently
• Immutable collections with mutable performance – Andrew Arnott continues his discussion of immutable collections which have performance which is similar to that of mutable collections, hinting that there will be a CTP release of these collections at some time soon.
• Designing C# Software With Interfaces – David Berry takes a look at the use of Interfaces in C# software development, exploring the problems that they help to avoid in areas of coupling, exploring with an example.
• Sourcepack (indexing PDB files with source archive file) – ‘lowleveldesign’ highlights the SourcePack PowerShell script which alters PDB files to point at your own location for the source files allowing you to debug into libraries when the source for the library is not where it was when the library was built.
• What is this thing you call a "type"? Part one – Eric Lippert kicks off a series of posts looking at the definition of a ‘Type’, a term which is widely used and accepted, but what does it actually mean?
• NerdDinner being updated to MVC3 with Razor, HTML5, GeoLocation, EF CodeFirst, jQuery Mobile, YepNope and Modernizr and a fixed Mobile Device Capabilities ViewEngine – Scott Hanselman highlights the community efforts to keep the MVC Nerd Dinner sample application up to date with the latest versions of the various libraries upon which it depends, along with adding mobile, geolocation and much more.

Community

• Belfast – 1 Oct 2011 – Vote for Sessions – The voting for the sessions you want to see at Developer Developer Developer Belfast has opened this weekend, and this is your opportunity to shape the agenda for tey day by choosing amongst the excellent sessions proposed.
• DDD North – Vote for Sessions – Similarly, Developer Developer Developer North has opened the session voting, giving prospective attendees the ability to express which sessions they are interested in seeing at the event on 8th October.
• Community For MVC.Net – The Community For MVC.Net have their August Live Meeting event tomorrow (Wednesday 31st August) at 1PM CST where David Ebbo will be giving an introduction to the Razor Generator Tool which enables you to generate code at design time using the Razor template engine.

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Monday is a public holiday here in the UK (our last one before Christmas!) and as is the usual Morning Brew tradition I will be skipping publishing on Monday, returning on Tuesday. Have a fun weekend everyone.

Software

• Updated SDL Tools Available – The Security Development Lifecycle – Monty LaRue of the SDL Team announces the latest update to the SSL Tools – Threat Modeling Tool gets an update to v3.1.8 which includes changes from an extensive beta process, MiniFuzz updates to v1.5.5 and now supports TFS Server and has had work done on its stability, and RegExFuzz hits v1.1.0 which provides tooling to ensure that the regular expressions used in your applications are not exponential in the time taken to evaluate, a source of DOS attack.
• What features do you want to see in Visual Studio? – Visual Studio UE Blog – Site Home – MSDN Blogs – Michael Alberts highlights the Visual Studio UserVoice site, a place for you to give feedback on the Visual Studio Product line, and suggest features you would find useful in the IDE.

Information

• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Five Easy Sequence Aggregators – James Michael Hare continues his C#/.NET Little Wonders series continuing exploring some of the LINQ extension methods, exploring aggregations in this post, taking a look at the Sum, Min, Max, Average and Aggregate methods.
• Fiddler In Action – Part 2 – Mehdi Khalili shares the second half of his series on the Fiddler HTTP Debugging Proxy, taking a look at some of the more advanced uses of the tool, showing how you can debug HTTP traffic with break points, use the proxy to serve fake responses, filter the output and make use of FiddlerCap.
• Learning about Progressive Enhancement – Supporting Mobile Browsers with CSS3 Media Queries – Scott Hanselman discusses how he and Jeremy Kratz have added good support for mobile browser users on his new look blog, discussing the use of CSS Media Queries to target styling and implementing navigation for Mobile devices.
• CSS Tricks and the Alternate Universe of Graphics Primitives – K. Scott Allen discusses the fun that can be had with CSS and simple div elements allowing us to create circles, triangles, and highlights a great page about creating all manner of shapes using only HTML elements and CSS.
• Test-Driven JavaScript – Jesse Miller gives a nice introduction to developing JavaScript code with tests, showing how jQuery, John Resig’s Simple JavaScript Inheritance library, and QUnit can be combined to allow you to test and mock out ajax calls.
• Very High Quality Image Resizing in .NET – Keyvan Nayyeri explores three different techniques for resizing images in .NET each with different quality factors. Sample source code is provided along with the article.
• Mixing some Dynamic-ness with IronJS in .NET 4 – Chris Pietschmann discusses the use of IronJS from C#, giving a little background on its use, and looks at combining IronJS with a .NET 4’s dynamic type support.
• Further Down the Rabbit Hole: PowerShell Modules and Encapsulation – Michael Sorens guides us through the creation of Modules in PowerShell to help improve the reusability and maintainability of your PowerShell Code, discussing how it provides encapsulation, and sharing best practices for the creation of modules.

Community

• Dimecasts Episode #200 is Launched – Many congratulations to Derik Whittaker on reaching the 200 episode milestone with his DimeCasts Project. Over the past 200 editions Derek and his supporting cast of screencast authors have published some excellent screencasts on a wide range of topics in their 10 minute format.
• In The Brain of Jon Jagger: Cyber Dojo – On the evening of Thursday 10th November Skills Matter host an interesting event under the banner of their ‘In the Brain of’ series. The event sees Jon Jagger introduce the concept of a CyberDojo and run one with the session participants.

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