The Morning Brew

Software

• ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 (Release Candidate) – Scott Hanselman announces the release candidate of the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update, an update of that released at Build earlier this year. This brings with it SignalR as a part of the ASP.NET Stack, extensionless webforms, additional tooling and templates, updates to WebAPI, and much more

Information

• Custom MVC 4 Template Walkthrough – Ian takes a look at the support for packaging up ASP.Net MVC Templates in VSX packages, to make sharing an installation easier, a new feature of the 2012.2 update.
• Prism on .NET 4.5 and the road to Windows 8 apps – Blaine Wastell discusses Patterns and Practices plans to build a guidance package for building Line of Business Windows 8 Applications using .NET 4.5 with Prism
• Powering Presentations, Productivity Power. A peek at the VS 2012 Productivity Power Tools PresentOn/PresentOff – Greg’s Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day – Greg Duncan highlights a post from Nathan Totten discussing the Productivity Power Tools and a useful feature for those who present which allows easy toggling of IDE settings for presentation mode.
• Nancy and VB.Net: testing your modules. – Christiaan Baes continues his exploration of working with Nancy using VB.NET with a look at testing your modules using the Nancy.Testing package
• Knockout JS mappings – Marco Franssen discusses the use of Knockout.JS’s mapping which allows the easy conversion of JSON objects to Knockout Observables.Update: Linked the article directly to the original on Marco’s own blog
• Collection Of Puzzles For Programmers – SQLDenis shares a collection of fun programming problems which are both interesting to solve, and great practice

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Software

• NuGet 2.2 – The NuGet Team announce the release of NuGet 2.2, including integration with the Visual Studio 2012 Quick Launch, inclusion of support for adding whole directories of files in package contents, , fixes for issues when working with F# Projects in the package manager console.

Information

• Asynchronous Streaming in ASP.NET WebApi – Andrés discusses the streaming of data from ASP.NET WebAPI using async and await to retrieve data
• Windows Phone StringFormat Binding And Blend – Matthias Shapiro continues looking at StringFormat in Binding expressions, looking at how you can work with them using Blend
• A Course on Win8 App Development with HTML5 and JavaScript – Sanjeev Dwivedi kicks off a video training course for Windows 8 Store application development using HTML5 and JavaScript. This first post includes the first instalment, an introduction.
• Sharing from your app – Ishita Kapur discusses the background and intended uses of the Windows 8 Sharing functionality, outlining why you should consider including it in your applications, and looking at it in use with a sample application
• Nancy and VB.Net: the razor view engine – Christiaan Baes continues with his exploration of the Nancy Framework in VB.NET with a look at working with the Razor View Engine.

Community

• NxtGenUG – Event: MVC4 Real World – Harvey Kandola will be joining the Hereford NxtGenUG for a session looking at real world MVC4, including lessons learnt from building their first product using it on Monday 14th January 2013.

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Software

• EF6 Alpha 2 Available on NuGet – Rowan Miller announces the availability of Entity Framework 6 Alpha 2, outlining the changes since the Alpha 1 release, looking at the general new bits in EF6 and discussing what the teams next steps are.

Information

• Entity Framework 6: Alpha2 Now Available – Scott Guthrie also highlights the release of the Second Alpha of Entity Framework 6, and give a peek at some of the new features, sharing short discussions of async support, custom conventions, and the community involvement in this project.
• Comparing two techniques in .NET Asynchronous Coordination Primitives – Scott Hanselman discusses the benefits of getting code reviewed, and discusses some lessons learned about coordinating access to critical sections of code.
• Taking responsibility – Eric Lippert discusses the use of the fixed keyword to inform the garbage collector that it is not allowed to move a certain block of memory around, discussing its role in working with unmanaged code, and some of the considerations in its use
• Hello world, with Knockout JS and ASP.NET MVC 4! – Amar Nityananda takes us on a step by step worked example looking at the use of ASP.NET MVC4 with Knockout.JS and Entity Framework to create a sample application demonstrating some of the capabilities of Knockout.
• Running SignalR on Mono – Filip Ekberg works through the process of getting up and running with SignalR on the Mono Platform with Apache
• Nancy and VB.Net &Nancy and VB.Net: getting data in your page – Christiaan Baes follows on from previous explorations of other Web Platforms taking a look at NancyFX for building web applications using VB.NET, getting up and running with a hello world example before moving on to look at retrieving data into the page.
• Complete Guide to Windows Phone StringFormat Binding – Matthias Shapiro shares a post looking at the use of StringFormat expressions in your data binding on the Windows Phone platform, showing a number of common use cases which demonstrate its usefulness in both the creation and formatting of output.

Community

• F# Londoners Meetup Tomorrow – Don Syme does Informal Deep Dive into the Freebase Type Provider – Don Syme highlights an event tonight (Wednesday 12th Decemeber) at Skills Matter where he will be giving an informal session on the Freebase Type Provider, looking at its features, looking at the implementation, and showing it used in Try F#, Mono, and as part of a data layer in Web and Windows 8 applications.
• NxtGenUG – Event: The return of the Gadgeteer – The Southampton NxtGenUG welcome one of their own (Steven Johnston) for a session looking at the .NET Gadgeteer, and some festive cheer this Thursday (13th December)

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