The Morning Brew

Software

• Announcing TypeScript 0.8.1.1 – TypeScript – Jonathan Turner highlights the release of the latest update to TypeScript, a bugfix release which addresses reported issues with source-map debugging.
• Announcing Reduced Pricing for Windows Azure Storage – Steven Martin announces further price cuts to the Windows Azure Storage offerings, giving a further reduction of up to 28% from 12th December, along with reiterating the investment that Microsoft are making in the Azure Storage platform.
• Visual Studio and Internationalization – Somasegar discusses the commitment that the Visual Studio Teams made to Internationalization support in Visual Studio 2012, shipping the main release and Update 1 in 10 languages, and highlights the community language packs or other languages.

Information

• Windows 8 Development Tip #1: Choosing XAML or HTML – &
• Tip #2: Get to know Microsoft design style – Brent Schooley kicks off a series of posts looking at some key areas of Windows 8 development, and some fo the critical decisions you have to make when developing on the platform, initiallty looking at the language choice and design language for Windows 8 applications.
• PragPub for December, upcoming Holiday Treats – The Pragmatic Bookshelf announce the release of the December Edition of PragPub Magazine, featuring articles on Haskell, migrating to the cloud, Agile, threading, and productivity tips.
• Reflection optimization techniques – Ajay Jain discusses a variety of techniques for improving the performance of your Reflection based code, exploring a number of reflection operations and looking at code generation and caching as options to improve the performance.
• MSDN Subscribers – Don’t forget to activate your Pluralsight training benefit – The South Africa Developer and Platform Group remind everyone that the deadline for redeeming the Pluralsight training benefit for your MSDN Subscription is 11 December – If you have a full MSDN subscription and haven’t done this yet your really should – lots of great content.
• Messaging semantics: names and verbs – Jimmy Bogard discusses a naming convention for Message names in message passing systems, and ensuring that the names are consistent with what the message does.

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Software

• NETMF 4.3 Released – .NET Micro Framework – Colin Miller highlights the RTM release of version 4.3 of the .NET Micro Framework, which includes support for Visual Studio 2012 including the Express Desktop Edition, improved deployment diagnostics, and a whole host of bugfixes and some performance improvements.
• iOS Support with Windows Azure Mobile Services – now with Push Notifications – Scott Guthrie announces an improved version of the Windows Azure Mobile Services SDK for iOS, which now includes support for push notification via Apple Push Notification Services, sharing a walk through of the use of this new feature, along with a channel9 video.

Information

• Why are braces required in try-catch-finally? – Eric Lippert picks up on his new blog where he left off on his Microsoft one, with a look at the requirements for braces in try catch finally, discussing how the finally part is actually implemented behind the scenes.
• Web API alternative – self hosting HTTP services in native C++ code – Filip W abandons the safe world of ASP.NET Web API and C# and takes us on a journey in C++ exploring how you can host HTTP based services in your own process, looking at the use of the Casablanca library
• Designing a simple and secure app package – APPX – Jack Davis discusses the creation of the APPX package format used for packaging up Windows Store applications, discussing the motivation to create the format, the aims of this type of package, and a look at the implementation.
• Entity Framework 5 Code First: Enabling Migrations in a Real Project – Matteo Tontini takes a look at working with Entity Framework Code First Migrations in real world projects, walking through the setup of the project and discussing the various helper commands in the package manager console introduced by the Entity Framework Code First package
• 4 JavaScript Minifiers Compared – Jeff Minatel compares and contrasts some JAvaScript Minifiers, exploring YUI Compressor, Google Closure in detail and comparing to JS Min and Packer.
• "Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012" eBook (Think Story based approach to presenting "Testing for Continuous Delivery") – Greg Duncan highlights the publication of a Patterns and Practices eBook, available to download which takes a look at the changing world of testing and the impact that continuous deliver practices have made to testing.

Community

• Porting iOS apps to Windows 8 – Online Session Sat 8th Dec – Lee Stott highlights a completely free online workshop event taking place between 10am-12pm on Saturday 8th Dec which covers the common areas of concern for developer looking to migrate iOS based applications to Windows 8

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Information

• MSDN Magazine – The December 2012 edition of MSDN Magazine is now available online, with articles covering Windows 8 and Web Sockets, Speech technology in Windows Phone, the C# Memory Model, and HTML5 along with the regular columns.
• MS Open Tech Contributes Support for Windows ETW and Perf Counters to Node.js – Claudio Caldato highlights another contribution to the Open Source Software world by the folks at MS Open Tech. The team have contributed performance counter integration in Node.JS back to the community, allowing you to work with performance counters and Event Tracing for Windows.
• Encrypting and Decrypting Web.config Sections in .NET 4.0 – Rostyslav Yaremchuk shares a step by step look at the encrypting of Web.Config sections, allowing you to protect sensitive portions of your configuration from prying eyes.
• Weak References in .NET 4.5 :: BlackWasp Software Development – Richard Carr takes a look at the implementation of WeakReferences in .NET 4.5, exploring the new generic version of Weak Reference, building on an earlier post which looked at the original non-generic version.
• Share Nuget packages between solutions: Part 1 & Part 2 – Vasil Trifonov takes a look at how NuGet packages get duplicated in multiple solutions, and shares a technique which will allow them to be shared between a collection of solutions
• SQL Advent 2012 Day 3: Sargable Queries – SQLDenis shares a useful query optimisation technique to help ensure that your queries make the most effective use of indexes when performing queries which include clauses which are expressions or function calls.
• Manage cookies using Web API – Ugo Lattanzi takes a look at working with Cookies in ASP.NET Web API applications, discussing the reading and writing of cookies and the consumer view of managing cookies with requests.
• Wanted: Windows Phone / Windows 8 developers for 2Day ! – Jeremy Alles is looking for some fellow Windows Phone (or similarly experienced) developers to help ouit with his pet project 2Day, a successful ToDo list application.

Community

• Sheffield .NET User Group – December 2012 – I included a link to this event in yesterday’s edition, however the page I linked to had an incorrect venue, so here is the official sign up page for the event with the correct venue details.

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