The Morning Brew

Software

• Welcome to Windows 8! – Paul Laberge highlights the official release of Windows 8, available right now. I shall be attempting to get my official copy this evening.
• Chutzpah – Chutzpah 2.2 with TypeScript support – Matthew Manela announces the release of Chutzpah 2.2 his Open Source Java Script test runner. This release brings with it support for the TypeScript super-set of JavaScript along with addressing some reported issues, and support for reference folders.
• AspectMap Is Now Open Source! – Chris Surfleet announces the open sourcing of AspectMap, with the project hosted on CodePlex this moves this aspect oriented programming framework built on top of the StructureMap IoC framework into the next stage of its life.
• CoffeeScript 1.4.0 Released, No Sign of Source Maps – Chris Smith highlights the release of CoffeeScript 1.4.0, a release which removes annoying deprecation warning messages when used with node.js, and improves handling of Microsoft UTF-8 BOM marked files.
• Introducing Unfold – Thomas Van Machelen introduces Unfold, a deployment solution for .NET applications which is implemented in PowerShell. The project is similar in many ways to Capistrano, and as such builds on PowerShell, PSake and PowerShell Remoting. In this post Thomas gives an overview of the use of this system.

Information

• .NET 4.5 now supported with Windows Azure Web Sites – Scott Guthrie announces the completion of the roll out of .NET 4.5 to the Windows Azure Web Sites clusters, allowing the publication of ASP.NET 4.5 based sites and applications to Azure Websites hosting.
• ASP.NET 4.5 on Windows Azure Web Sites – Nathan Totten also highlights this news, sharing a simple hello world example which illustrates the use of async . await on the Windows Azure Websites platform.
• Design patterns in the test of time: Builder – Ayende continues his series of posts re-looking at the Gang of Four design patterns with a look at the Builder pattern, discussing its purpose, use and discussing an example of how its is used within NHibernate.
• Caveats with the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests in IIS 7/8 – Rick Strahl discusses the use of runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests within IIS7 and 8 to allow ASP.NET to intercept all requests through the IIS Site, looking at other related settings which help control where requests go.
• Not a Windows 8 machine, but you do want to start creating Store Apps – the possibilities. – Clemens Reijnen shares two useful alternatives if you are interested in having a go at Window 8 Development, but aren’t able to take the leap to running Windows 8 on your own hardware.

Community

• patterns & practices Symposium 2013 – Eugenio Pace highlights the 2013 Patterns and Practices Symposium, taking place in Redmond, WA between the 15 and 17th January. This 3 day event looks to be packing in a lot, and with early bird pricing until 9th November of $398 ($498 full price) is pretty good value.

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Software

• Announcing Public Availability of Service Bus for Windows Server (Service Bus 1.0) – Todd Holmquist-Sutherland makes the official announcements of the first release of Service Bus 1.0, providing enterprise class messaging for on-premise which matches the capabilities of the Azure Service Bus.
• Announcing the Public Availability of Workflow Manager 1.0 – Similarly Jürgen Willis makes the official announcement of the release of Workflow Manager 1.0, which allows the hosting and management of long running workflows on Windows Server
• CSLA 4 version 4.5 released with support for WinRT – Rockford Lhotka announces the release of his CSLA 4 application framework version 4.5 bringing support for .NET 4.5, WinRT, .NET 4 and Silverlgiht 5, available via NuGet or as a direct download. This release also includes support for async/await via the Async Targeting Pack, and offers improvements to the Business rules ending engine and to Windows Forms support.

Information

• Cryptographic Improvements in ASP.NET 4.5, pt. 3 – Levi Broderick returns for the final part of this series looking at the various changes, new features and improvements to Cryptographic related features in ASP.NET 4.5. This part discusses usage, and also answers a number of common questions.
• Getting user information on Azure Mobile Services – Carlos Figueira takes a look at how you can get more than just authentication from the Azure Mobiles Service authentication, looking at how you can access additional user information from the various providers.
• Typescript – a real world story of adoption in TFS – Brian Harry discusses how the TFS team were an early adopter of TypeScript to help them work with their JavaScript heavy Web Application Interface, discussing some of the areas which TypeScript help address issues, and also sharing some of the techniques used to help aid the introduction.
• Using Jasmine To Test JavaScript – Joel Ross takes an introductory look at using the Jasmine framework to test JavaScript Code, sharing a getting started example.
• Getting Started with SASS for Microsoft Developers – Jason Roberts takes a look at how us Microsoft Developers can get up and running with Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets), exploring the options for tooling, looking at the language, and seeing how Sass can be used to help with things like responsive design.
• Design patterns in the test of time: A modern alternative to Abstract Factory–filtered dependencies – Ayende continues his look at the original Gang of Four design patterns, taking a look at how modern language features allow us to create a better implementation of the Abstract Factory pattern.
• Technology Radar – The team over at ThoughtWorks have released the latest edition of the ThoughWorks Technology Radar, where they share their opinions on what state various technologies are in – well worth checking out, and seeing how what you use compares.

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Software

• Windows Identity Foundation Tools for Visual Studio 2012 RTM – Vittorio Bertocci announces the RTM release of the Identity and Access Tools for Visual Studio 2012, along with a refresh of all the Windows Identity Foundation samples. In the post Vittorio walks through the release notes, and sows some of the tooling in action.
• Idera pluses PowerShell by freeing PowerShell Plus v4.6 – Gren Duncan highlights the news that Idera -have made PowerShell Plus v4.6, their interactive console, script editor, debugger and learning centre, available for free
• Introducing Icenium – an Integrated Cloud Environment for Hybrid Mobile App Development – The taem over at Telerik announce the general availability of Icenium, their tooling to help you build mobile applications to run acorss multiple platforms, utilising the cloud to make the product lightweight, and remove the need to install all the various SDKs locally – certainly looks interesting.
• The Truth about NuGet and its Future – Phil Haack discusses the future of the NuGet package manager, sheds light on the ownership of the project, Microsoft’s involvement, and clarifies the difference between the open source version and the version that is integrated in Visual Studio.

Information

• Cryptographic Improvements in ASP.NET 4.5, pt. 1 & pt. 2 – Levi Broderick discusses the various improvements to the cryptographic related features in ASP.NET 4.5 in the first 2 parts of a three part series, discussing the use of the various generated keys, pipeline improvements, viewstate MAC, plugability of encryption, and backwards compatibility with previous versions.
• Design patterns in the test of time & Design patterns in the test of time: Abstract Factory – Ayende kicks off a new series of posts looking back at the design patterns included in the original work on design patterns, looking at the uses and abuses of the patterns we have seen over the past 18 years
• Access to an ASP.NET website via multiple authentications – MonkeyTennis takes a look at the use of Windows Identity Foundation in ASP.NET appplications, exploring the ability to customise and extend the authentication adding additional steps if required.
• Feature branches and toggles – Jimmy Bogard discusses feature branches, the potential problems as outlined by Martin Fowler, and shares his experiences of working with feature branches
• Clean up your Web API controllers with model validation and null check filters | StrathWeb – Filip W. takes a look at the use of Filters in WebAPI to take away the need for some of the common boiler plate code that many service APIs have like the checking for null or required arguments.
• Isolating database data in integration tests – Jimmy Bogard takes a look at some techniques for ensuring that your integration tests data is correctly isolated from each other allowing the same database to be used for multiple tests

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