The Morning Brew

A couple of release announcements a few folk might have been waiting for today!

Visual Studio 2013 / TFS 2013 / .NET 4.5.1

• Visual Studio 2013 available for download – Somasegar kicks off the announcement posts of the Visual Studio 2013 and .NET 4.5.1 release to web.
• Visual Studio 2013 released to web! – The Visual Studio Team announce the release
• Announcing the Release of Visual Studio 2013 and Great Improvements to ASP.NET and Entity Framework – Scott Guthrie announce the release and takes a look at what is new in ASP.NET (SignalR, Browser Link, ASP.NET Scaffolding, Web API2, etc) and Entity Framework 6
• Announcing release of ASP.NET and Web Tools for Visual Studio 2013 – Xinyang Qiu makes he official announcement from the ASP.NET and Web Tools team.
• Visual Studio 2013 RTM Available – Brian Harry highlights the release
• Visual Studio 2013 Team Foundation Server version control and build – Andy Lewis focuses on the TFS aspect of the release with a look at version control and build.
• Visual Studio 2013 Available Now! – Eric Battalio over on the Visual C++ Team Blog gives an overview of the new features for C++ developers.
• Announcing Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2013 RTM Availability – Charles Sterling announces the release from a Team Foundation Server point of view and also has a useful collection of related links.
• .NET Framework 4.5.1 RTM =>; start coding – The .NET Team announce the release of .NET 4.5.1, looking at the substantial number of changes and improvements made

Windows 8

• Windows 8.1 now available! – Brandon LeBlanc announces the general availability release of Windows 8.1, shipping via the Windows Store application on your Windows 8 machines.
• Now ready for you: Windows 8.1 and the Windows Store – The Windows Apps Team also announce the release of Windows 8.1, along with opening the Windows Store to accepting Windows 8.1 applications
• Windows 8.1 Has Been Released – Garry Pilkington gives a nice overview of a few of the more desirable Windows 8.1 features.

Software

• Web Essentials 2013 RTM – Mads Kristensen announces the RTM release of Web Essentials 2013 which works with the RTM release of Visual Studio 2013 and brings a number of very useful features for web development to the IDE.
• TypeScript and the Road to 1.0 – Jonathan Turner gives an update on TypeScript, highlighting the inclusion of 0.9.1.1 as a part of Visual Studio 2013 and outlining the plans to the 1.0 release.

Information

• Math from scratch, part eight: integers – Eric Lippert continues with his series looking at the construction of basic mathematics support in C# using only the most basic of data structures. In this part Eric explores the implementation of an integer.
• Top things web developers should know about the Visual Studio 2013 release – Jon Galloway – Jon Galloway shares an excellent collection of FAQs, links, videos, pointers and recommendations relating to web development on Visual Studio 2013 and .NET 4.5.1
• Essential reading for Visual Studio 2013, MVC 5 and Web API 2 – Similarly Troy Hunt discusses some of the key components included in Visual Studio 2013 from a web development point of view.
• ASP.NET Web API 2 is out! Overview of features – StrathWeb – Filip W. dives into the new features included in ASP.NET WebAPI 2, released along with Visual Studio 2013, giving an overview of each feature along with links to further information.
• Updated sample .NET Framework detection code that works with the .NET Framework 4.5 and 4.5.1 – Aaron Stebner responds to the .NET 4.5.1 release by updating his .NET Framework Detection code to understand the new version.
• A Visual Studio Solution Cloner – Bill Hallahan shares a utility whcih will make a clean copy of a Visual Studio Solution (C++ / C#) allowing renames and also creating new GUIDs for all items.

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #1466

Software

• SQL Server 2014 | Microsoft – The Second Community Technology Preview (CTP) release of SQL Server 2014 is now available for download

Information

• NuGet is a .NET framework release vehicle – Alok Shriram of the .NET Team discusses how NuGet provides a great mechanism for the .NET team to release components of the .NET Framework, along with providing means to get preview releases out so they can get feedback. Its great to see the original aim of NuGet being embraced by such a significant part of the development platform.
• Package Restore and Consent Changes – Howard Dierking gives a reminder about the NuGet Package Restore Consent changes in NuGet 2.7, highlighting a known issue with Visual Studio 2013.
• .NET Memory Analysis Enhancements in Visual Studio 2013 – Andrew B Hall looks at further enhancements to the Visual Studio 2013 tooling for Memory Analysis of .NET processes included in the RTM release of Visual Studio 2013
• Switching to Managed Compatibility Mode in Visual Studio 2013 – Andrew Chan highlights the Managed Compatibility Mode for the Visual Studio Debugger which allows you to switch back to the old debugging engine if you need any of the feature which have not made their way into the new and improved debugging engine used by Visual Studio 2013 by default.
• Opening 64-bit Dumps of 32-bit Processes in Visual Studio 2013 &.NET Remote Symbol Loading Changes in Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 – Andrew Chan highlights the relaxing of a limitation on loading 64bit memory dumps taken with task manager, something which is now possible in VS 2013, and also discusses the changes to remote symbol loading behaviour when performing remote debugging.
• AngularJS vs Knockout – SPA Routing/History (8 of 9) – Eli Weinstock-Herman continues with his now extended series looking at the differences and similarities between Knockout and Angular. In this part Eli explores the enabling technology for Single Page applications in the form of routing and URL history suppport.
• Free Book from Microsoft – Testing for Continuous Delivery with Visual Studio 2012 – Tatworth highlights a free book from the Patterns and Practices team looking at the role of testing in Continuous Delivery, and looking at how Visual Studio 2012 features help with this process. The book is available to read online or as a free ebook download in PDF and ePUB format (and a printed copy is available for purchase too)
• 40 inappropriate actions to take against an unlocked PC – Troy Hunt reminds us that security begins with the basics by providing a list of amusing (and some less amusing if you are the victim) things that can be done to an unlocked PC (and a few for locked machines too).
• The somewhat super secret MSDN docs on EF6 – Julie Lerman highlights a number of somewhat hidden resources for Entity Framework 6 available on the MSDN site

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #1465

Software

• Portable Class Library (PCL) now available on all platforms – Rich Lander and the .NET Team announce the release of the .NET portable class library reference assemblies as a standalone release which can be used on any operating system bringing portable classes to the masses on platforms like Mono on Unix/Linux.
• Improving the state of the art in API documentation sites – Daniel Cazzulino shares NuDoq an new framework for creating documentation for the libraries contained in NuGet packages, providing baked in support for working with NuGet packages, fast indexing and searching, community discussions and contributed documentation via a Wiki interface

Information

• AngularJS vs Knockout – Automated Testing (7 of 8 ) – Eli Weinstock-Herman continues his series looking at the similarities and differences between two of the major Single Page Web Application frameworks, KnockoutJS and AngularJS with a look in this part at how you can go about writing automated tests against the code you write with the framework.
• Asynchronous Solution Load Performance Improvements in Visual Studio 2013 – Ben Bradley of the Visual Studio Team takes a look at one of the startup improvements in Visual Studio 2013 – project loading which can now occur asynchronously.
• Data Breakpoints – Brad Sullivan continues his series exploring the various types of Breakpoint available in Visual Studio with a look at the Data Breakpoint, a feature available to C++ developers which allows execution to break when a specific piece of memory is modified.
• Remotely accessing the Windows Azure Compute Emulator – Sandrino Di Mattia takes a look at exposing the Windows Azure Compute Emulator to virtual machines to allow for testing with things like the Modern.ie virtual machines.
• DROP/CREATE vs ALTER on SQL Server Stored Procedures – Colin Angus Mackay discusses the management of Stored Procedures using Migrations, and looks at the difference between a drop and recreate versus an alter.
• Grokking IQueryable – tilovell09 shares a number of hints and tips to help you better understand the role of IQueryable types in .NET
• ASP.NET Web API, CORS Authentication, SSL, and self signing certificate – Ilan Geller shares some experiences with getting CORS Authentication working with an IIS hosted self signed certificate when running Web API in this CodeProject article.

Community

• Black Marble Events – Visual Studio 2013 Launch – The Team over at Black Marble are running a Visual Studio 2013 Launch event running in parallel with the main New York event, with a stream of the live event on the afternoon of 13th November at their offices in Cleckheaton.

Comments Off on The Morning Brew #1464