The Morning Brew

Software

• Toastr 2.0.1 Released – John Papa announces the release of Toastr 2.0.1 a nice little JavaScript library which provides notifications within HTML based applications.

Information

• 30 Days of TDD: Day Two – A Review of Object Oriented Principles – James Bender continues this new series on Test Driven Development for beginners with a look at some of the key concepts of Object Oriented Programming which are important to be aware of before thinking about testing.
• Expression API Cookbook – Sacha Barber and Ian P Johnson share jointly written article on the use of the Expression API in .NET, a very powerful but complex part of the framework. The article looks at 7 different scenarios and exploes how to implement them using the expression API.
• Good Old F5 Experience With OwinHost.exe on Visual Studio 2013 – Tugberk Ugurlu takes us through the Visual Studio 2013 feature which gives you back the standard F5 to run and debug when working with OWIN hosted applications
• ASP.NET WebAPI Hosting Techniques – Ranjan.D takes us through the two different ways of hosting ASP.NET Web API applications, exploring how the Self hosting and Web Hosting work.
• Live tiles for pinned websites in Windows 8.1 – Ian Moulster takes a look at the improved website pinning functionality included in Windows 8.1 / IE 11, illustrating with an example, and highlighting a tool to build the code required to give your site the same functionality.
• Creating New Windows Azure Web Site from Visual Studio 2013 RC – Johni Sutanto walks through the improved Windows Azure Websites support in Visual Studio 2013 RC, looking at how easily you can now create Windows Azure Websites from within Visual Studio.
• Entity Framework Pitfalls – Deleting Detached Entities With Required References – Ricardo Peres continues his Entity Frameworks Pitfalls series with a look at at how under certain circumstances you are unable to delete entities without loading them first

Community

• Free online training event: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications Jump Start (Sep 17) – Jon Galloway highlights a free Virtual training event on ASP.NET MVC4 web applications running on 17th September which he is co-hosting with Christopher Harrison. The session will explore all aspects of ASP.NET MVC and also includes a look at Web API and what is coming in ASP.NET MVC 5
• NxtGenUG – Event: Windows Server 2012 for Devs – The Birmingham NxtGenUG group welcome Lakhveer Kallar for a sessions on Windows Server 2012 from a development slant, looking at PowerShell, Hyper V, and much more on the evening of Tuesday 17th September.

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Software

• Also out yesterday, 2012.4rc3 – TFS 2012 and Visual Studio 2012 Update 4 RC 3 – Greg Duncan highlights the release on Tuesday of the 3rd Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2012 Update 4, containing all the latest fixes and also including a go live license
• EasyNetQ: Big Breaking Changes in the Advanced Bus – Mike Hadlow gives an update on his EasyNetQ client API fpor RabbitMQ, discussing one aspect of the API he is now less then happy with, and how with some breaking changes he will be migrating to a better API.
• Exploring some fresh ReSharper plugins – Maarten Balliauw shares a look at some of the new, exciting and useful plugins available for ReSharper 8

Information

• PageObject – Martin Fowler discusses the theory and use of the PageObject pattern, a vital one for making web UI tests possible, in that it wraps up all the actions that can be taken on a page, allowing tests to only speak PageObject’ and leaving the PageObject to know about the actual page
• Creating a Clean, Minimal-Footprint ASP.NET WebAPI Project with VS 2012 and ASP.NET MVC 4 – CodeProject – John Atten discusses the creation of a WebAPI project template which contains only the core required parts, rather than the default standard version which includes quite a lot of dependencies.
• WCF Data Services for Windows Store Applications – Sebastien Pertus discusses the use of the WCF Data Services from Windows Store applications in both XML and JSON format as of version 5.6.0 , looking at the updated tooling and walking through a sample project
• Hosting A JavaScript Engine In .NET – K Scott Allen takes a look at how ClearScript enables the hosting of the V8 or Chakra JavaScript engines inside a .NET process allowing you to create scripting features which allow coding in JavaScript.
• Early versions of Aero Peek: Aladdin, Bat Signal, and Squeegee – Raymond Chen looks back in time to the introduction of the Aero Peek functionality, discussing (and highlighting video demos from old MIX videos) some of the early prototypes
• What is new in Browser Link with Visual Studio 2013 RC? – Reshmi Mangalore discusses the Browser Link functionality and associated API which is being introduced in Visual Studio 2013, taking a look at how you can make use of it.
• Windows 8.1 says,"Forget all that Design Stuff from Windows 8.0" – Jerry Nixon discusses some of the Windows Store application practical and tactical guidance which differs from the advice in Windows 8.0, discussing how some applications would now fail certification, and the reasons the guidance has evolved.

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Software

• Announcing the Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate – Somasegar kicks off a string of Visual Studio 2013 RC and .NET 4.5.1 RC Release announcement posts:
  • Announcing the .NET Framework 4.5.1 RC – The .NET Framework Team
  • Visual Studio 2013 &TFS 2013 RC is available – Brian Harry
  • Visual Studio 2013 RC available now! – The Visual Studio Team announce, and request that you continue to provide feedback on the RC
  • Visual Studio 2013 Release Candidate now available for download – Charles Sterling shares his top 10 reasons to try the RC out.
  • Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 RC – Xinyang Qiu gives the ASP.NET and Web Tooling view sharing a detailed look at some of their improvements.
  • Visual Studio 2013 RC for Web Developers – One ASP.NET, Browser Link, and our Direction – Scott Hanselman highlights the Visual Studio 2013 RC release, and looks at the ASP.NET features which support ‘One ASP.NET’ and the future of the ASP.NET platform.
• Download Windows 8.1 RTM, Visual Studio 2013 RC and Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM Today – Steve "Guggs" Guggenheimer highlights the news that Windows 8.1 RTM and Windows Sserver 2012 R2 are now available for MSDN Subscribers to download as well as the Visual Studio 2013 RC.

Information

• Verbatim identifiers – Eric Lippert takes a short look at the Verbatim Identifier syntax in C# which allows the use of keywords as identifiers for variables, and some of the problems that introducing new keywords to the language can cause with an example from the .NET 1.0 to 2.0 transition
• 30 Days of TDD: Day One – What is TDD and Why Should I Use It? – James Bender kicks off a new 30 part series looking at Test Driven Development, providing a good introduction for developers who have never tried it before.
• Hadoop for .NET Developers: Understanding Hadoop Streaming – Bryan C Smith continues his series looking at the use of Hadoop from a .NET Developers perspective with a look at how Hadoop Streaming allows for the use of .NET with the essentially Java based Hadoop.
• F# News: Ten F# one-liners to impress your friends – Jon Harrop shares 10 useful little snippets of code which do useful things in F#
• Fun with Favicons – Eric Lawrence takes us into the wonderful world of the FavIcon image, discussing how the format came about, some of its capabilities, and some of the improvements in Internet Explorer 11
• The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About – John Sonmez talks about an important issue which is not discussed enough, but occurs all too frequently in our industry. Read it, understand it, and make sure you aren’t part of the problem.

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