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  • ObjectStorageHelper now available via nuget

    - by jamiet
    One of my numerous little side projects has recently been ObjectStorageHelper, a library that makes it easy to read/write files in WinRT (aka Windows 8) applications. This is a short post to let you know that ObjectStorageHelper is now available in the nuget gallery and hence can easily be added to your WinRT applications by running the following command in the nuget Package Manager Console: Massive thanks to Scott Lovegrove (@scottisafool) for helping me with this making this happen. To read more about ObjectStorageHelper and what it can do for you please visit Generic Object Storage Helper for WinRT on Codeplex. I know of four apps in the Windows Store that are currently making use of ObjectStorageHelper, they are: myScoreboard pro BO2 Create-a-Class MW3 Create-a-Class Ctrl-Alt-Del The following code shows how easy it is to store files using ObjectStorageHelper: and subsequently retrieve them: @Jamiet

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  • ObjectStorageHelper now available via nuget

    - by jamiet
    One of my numerous little side projects has recently been ObjectStorageHelper, a library that makes it easy to read/write files in WinRT (aka Windows 8) applications. This is a short post to let you know that ObjectStorageHelper is now available in the nuget gallery and hence can easily be added to your WinRT applications by running the following command in the nuget Package Manager Console: Massive thanks to Scott Lovegrove (@scottisafool) for helping me with this making this happen. To read more about ObjectStorageHelper and what it can do for you please visit Generic Object Storage Helper for WinRT on Codeplex. I know of four apps in the Windows Store that are currently making use of ObjectStorageHelper, they are: myScoreboard pro BO2 Create-a-Class MW3 Create-a-Class Ctrl-Alt-Del The following code shows how easy it is to store files using ObjectStorageHelper: and subsequently retrieve them: @Jamiet

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  • C#/.NET &ndash; Finding an Item&rsquo;s Index in IEnumerable&lt;T&gt;

    - by James Michael Hare
    Sorry for the long blogging hiatus.  First it was, of course, the holidays hustle and bustle, then my brother and his wife gave birth to their son, so I’ve been away from my blogging for two weeks. Background: Finding an item’s index in List<T> is easy… Many times in our day to day programming activities, we want to find the index of an item in a collection.  Now, if we have a List<T> and we’re looking for the item itself this is trivial: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // can find the exact item using IndexOf() 5: var pos = list.IndexOf(64); This will return the position of the item if it’s found, or –1 if not.  It’s easy to see how this works for primitive types where equality is well defined.  For complex types, however, it will attempt to compare them using EqualityComparer<T>.Default which, in a nutshell, relies on the object’s Equals() method. So what if we want to search for a condition instead of equality?  That’s also easy in a List<T> with the FindIndex() method: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // finds index of first even number or -1 if not found. 5: var pos = list.FindIndex(i => i % 2 == 0);   Problem: Finding an item’s index in IEnumerable<T> is not so easy... This is all well and good for lists, but what if we want to do the same thing for IEnumerable<T>?  A collection of IEnumerable<T> has no indexing, so there’s no direct method to find an item’s index.  LINQ, as powerful as it is, gives us many tools to get us this information, but not in one step.  As with almost any problem involving collections, there are several ways to accomplish the same goal.  And once again as with almost any problem involving collections, the choice of the solution somewhat depends on the situation. So let’s look at a few possible alternatives.  I’m going to express each of these as extension methods for simplicity and consistency. Solution: The TakeWhile() and Count() combo One of the things you can do is to perform a TakeWhile() on the list as long as your find condition is not true, and then do a Count() of the items it took.  The only downside to this method is that if the item is not in the list, the index will be the full Count() of items, and not –1.  So if you don’t know the size of the list beforehand, this can be confusing. 1: // a collection of extra extension methods off IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item in the collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // note if item not found, result is length and not -1! 8: return list.TakeWhile(i => !finder(i)).Count(); 9: } 10: } Personally, I don’t like switching the paradigm of not found away from –1, so this is one of my least favorites.  Solution: Select with index Many people don’t realize that there is an alternative form of the LINQ Select() method that will provide you an index of the item being selected: 1: list.Select( (item,index) => do something here with the item and/or index... ) This can come in handy, but must be treated with care.  This is because the index provided is only as pertains to the result of previous operations (if any).  For example: 1: // assume have a list of ints: 2: var list = new List<int> { 1, 13, 42, 64, 121, 77, 5, 99, 132 }; 3:  4: // you'd hope this would give you the indexes of the even numbers 5: // which would be 2, 3, 8, but in reality it gives you 0, 1, 2 6: list.Where(item => item % 2 == 0).Select((item,index) => index); The reason the example gives you the collection { 0, 1, 2 } is because the where clause passes over any items that are odd, and therefore only the even items are given to the select and only they are given indexes. Conversely, we can’t select the index and then test the item in a Where() clause, because then the Where() clause would be operating on the index and not the item! So, what we have to do is to select the item and index and put them together in an anonymous type.  It looks ugly, but it works: 1: // extensions defined on IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // finds an item in a collection, similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: // if you don't name the anonymous properties they are the variable names 8: return list.Select((item, index) => new { item, index }) 9: .Where(p => finder(p.item)) 10: .Select(p => p.index + 1) 11: .FirstOrDefault() - 1; 12: } 13: }     So let’s look at this, because i know it’s convoluted: First Select() joins the items and their indexes into an anonymous type. Where() filters that list to only the ones matching the predicate. Second Select() picks the index of the matches and adds 1 – this is to distinguish between not found and first item. FirstOrDefault() returns the first item found from the previous clauses or default (zero) if not found. Subtract one so that not found (zero) will be –1, and first item (one) will be zero. The bad thing is, this is ugly as hell and creates anonymous objects for each item tested until it finds the match.  This concerns me a bit but we’ll defer judgment until compare the relative performances below. Solution: Convert ToList() and use FindIndex() This solution is easy enough.  We know any IEnumerable<T> can be converted to List<T> using the LINQ extension method ToList(), so we can easily convert the collection to a list and then just use the FindIndex() method baked into List<T>. 1: // a collection of extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // find the index of an item in the collection similar to List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: return list.ToList().FindIndex(finder); 8: } 9: } This solution is simplicity itself!  It is very concise and elegant and you need not worry about anyone misinterpreting what it’s trying to do (as opposed to the more convoluted LINQ methods above). But the main thing I’m concerned about here is the performance hit to allocate the List<T> in the ToList() call, but once again we’ll explore that in a second. Solution: Roll your own FindIndex() for IEnumerable<T> Of course, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method for IEnumerable<T>.  It would be a very simple for loop which scans for the item and counts as it goes.  There’s many ways to do this, but one such way might look like: 1: // extension methods for IEnumerable<T> 2: public static class EnumerableExtensions 3: { 4: // Finds an item matching a predicate in the enumeration, much like List<T>.FindIndex() 5: public static int FindIndex<T>(this IEnumerable<T> list, Predicate<T> finder) 6: { 7: int index = 0; 8: foreach (var item in list) 9: { 10: if (finder(item)) 11: { 12: return index; 13: } 14:  15: index++; 16: } 17:  18: return -1; 19: } 20: } Well, it’s not quite simplicity, and those less familiar with LINQ may prefer it since it doesn’t include all of the lambdas and behind the scenes iterators that come with deferred execution.  But does having this long, blown out method really gain us much in performance? Comparison of Proposed Solutions So we’ve now seen four solutions, let’s analyze their collective performance.  I took each of the four methods described above and run them over 100,000 iterations of lists of size 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 and here’s the performance results.  Then I looked for targets at the begining of the list (best case), middle of the list (the average case) and not in the list (worst case as must scan all of the list). Each of the times below is the average time in milliseconds for one execution as computer over the 100,000 iterations: Searches Matching First Item (Best Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 0.0003 Select 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 0.0005 ToList 0.0002 0.0003 0.0013 0.0121 Manual 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001 0.0001   Searches Matching Middle Item (Average Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0004 0.0020 0.0191 0.1889 Select 0.0008 0.0042 0.0387 0.3802 ToList 0.0002 0.0007 0.0057 0.0562 Manual 0.0002 0.0013 0.0129 0.1255   Searches Where Not Found (Worst Case)   10 100 1000 10000 TakeWhile 0.0006 0.0039 0.0381 0.3770 Select 0.0012 0.0081 0.0758 0.7583 ToList 0.0002 0.0012 0.0100 0.0996 Manual 0.0003 0.0026 0.0253 0.2514   Notice something interesting here, you’d think the “roll your own” loop would be the most efficient, but it only wins when the item is first (or very close to it) regardless of list size.  In almost all other cases though and in particular the average case and worst case, the ToList()/FindIndex() combo wins for performance, even though it is creating some temporary memory to hold the List<T>.  If you examine the algorithm, the reason why is most likely because once it’s in a ToList() form, internally FindIndex() scans the internal array which is much more efficient to iterate over.  Thus, it takes a one time performance hit (not including any GC impact) to create the List<T> but after that the performance is much better. Summary If you’re concerned about too many throw-away objects, you can always roll your own FindIndex() method, but for sheer simplicity and overall performance, using the ToList()/FindIndex() combo performs best on nearly all list sizes in the average and worst cases.    Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Litte Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,Software,LINQ,List

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  • Customize Your WordPress Blog & Build an Audience

    - by Matthew Guay
    Want to quickly give your blog a fresh coat of paint and make it stand out from the pack?  Here’s how you can customize your WordPress blog and make it uniquely yours. WordPress offers many features that help you make your blog the best it can be.  Although it doesn’t offer as many customization features as full WordPress running on your own server, it still makes it easy to make your free blog as professional or cute as you like.  Here we’ll look at how you can customize features in your blog and build an audience. Personalize Your Blog WordPress make it easy to personalize your blog.  Most of the personalization options are available under the Appearance menu on the left.  Here we’ll look at how you can use most of these. Add New Theme WordPress is popular for the wide range of themes available for it.  While you cannot upload your own theme to your blog, you can choose from over 90 free themes currently available with more added all the time.  To change your theme, select the Themes page under Appearance. The Themes page will show random themes, but you can choose to view them in alphabetical order, by popularity, or how recently they were added.  Or, you can search for a theme by name or features. One neat way to find a theme that suites your needs is the Feature Filter.  Click the link on the right of the search button, and then select the options you want to make sure your theme has.  Click Apply Filters and WordPress will streamline your choices to themes that contain these features. Once you find a theme you like, click Preview under its name to see how your blog will look. This will open a popup that shows your blog with the new theme.  Click the Activate link in the top right corner of the popup if you want to keep this theme; otherwise, click the x in the top left corner to close the preview and continue your search for one you want.   Edit Current Theme Many of the themes on WordPress have customization options so you can make your blog stand out from others using the same theme.  The default theme Twenty Ten lets you customize both the header and background image, and many themes have similar options. To choose a new header image, select the Header page under Appearance.  Select one of the pre-installed images and click Save Changes, or upload your own image. If you upload an image larger than the size for the header, WordPress will let you crop it directly in the web interface.  Click Crop Header when you’ve selected the portion you want for the header of your blog. You can also customize your blog’s background from the Background page under Appearance.  You can upload an image for the background, or can enter a hex value of a color for a solid background.  If you’d rather visually choose a color, click Select a Color to open a color wheel that makes it easy to choose a nice color.  Click Save Changes when you’re done. Note: that all themes may not contain these customization options, but many are flexible.  You cannot edit the actual CSS of your theme on free WordPress blogs, but you you can purchase the Custom CSS Upgrade for $14.97/year to add this ability. Add Widgets With Extra Content Widgets are small addons for your blog, similar to Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7 or Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X.  You can add widgets to your blog to show recent Tweets, favorite Flickr pictures, popular articles, and more.  To add widgets to your blog, open the Widgets page under Appearance. You’ll see a variety of widgets available in the main white box.  Select one you want to add, and drag it to the widget area of your choice.  Different themes may offer different areas to place Widgets, such as the sidebar or footer. Most of the widgets offer configuration options.  Click the down arrow beside its name to edit it.  Set them up as you wish, and click Save on the bottom of the widget. Now we’ve got some nice dynamic content on our blog that’s automatically updated from the net. Choose Blog Extras By default, WordPress shows previews of websites when visitors hover over links on your blog, uses a special mobile theme when people visit from a mobile device, and shows related links to other blogs on the WordPress network at the end of your posts.  If you don’t like these features, you can disable them on the Extras page under Appearance. Build Your Audience Now that your blog is looking nice, we can make sure others will discover it.  WordPress makes it easy for you to make your site discoverable on search engines or social network, and even gives you the option to keep your site private if you’d prefer.  Open the Privacy page under Tools to change your site’s visibility.  By default, it will be indexed by search engines and be viewable to everyone.  You can also choose to leave your blog public but block search engines, or you can make it fully private. If you choose to make your blog private, you can enter up to 35 usernames of people you want to be able to see it.  Each private visitor must have a WordPress.com account so they can login.  If you need more than 35 private members, you can upgrade to allow unlimited private members for $29.97/year. Then, if you do want your site visible from search engines, one of the best ways to make sure your content is discovered by search engines is to register with their webmaster tools.  Once registered, you need to add your key to your site so the search engine will find and index it.  On the bottom of the Tools page, WordPress lets you enter your key from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to make sure your site is discovered.  If you haven’t signed up with these tools yet, you can signup via the links on this page as well. Post Blog Updates to Social Networks Many people discover the sites they visit from friends and others via social networks.  WordPress makes it easy to automatically share links to your content on popular social networks.  To activate this feature, open the My Blogs page under Dashboard. Now, select the services you want to activate under the Publicize section.  This will automatically update Yahoo!, Twitter, and/or Facebook every time you publish a new post. You’ll have to authorize your connection with the social network.  With Twitter and Yahoo!, you can authorize them with only two clicks, but integrating with Facebook will take several steps.   If you’d rather share links yourself on social networks, you can get shortened URLs to your posts.  When you write a new post or edit an existing one, click the Get Shortlink button located underneath the post’s title. This will give you a small URL, usually 20 characters or less, that you can use to post on social networks such as Twitter.   This should help build your traffic, and if you want to see how many people are checking out your site, check out the stats on your Dashboard.  This shows a graph of how many people are visiting, and popular posts.  Click View All if you’d like more detailed stats including search engine terms that lead people to your blog. Conclusion Whether you’re looking to make a private blog for your group or publish a blog that’s read by millions around the world, WordPress is a great way to do it for free.  And with all of the personalization options, you can make your it memorable and exciting for your visitors. If you don’t have a blog, you can always signup for a free one from WordPress.com.  Also make sure to check out our article on how to Start Your Own Blog with WordPress. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Your WordPress Blog Comments from Your Windows DesktopAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuOops! 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  • Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron

    - by Asian Angel
    Is the lack of an Image Properties listing in the Context Menu of your favorite Chromium-based browser driving you crazy? If you have been missing this extremely useful function, then the Image Properties Context Menu extension is here to save the day. As soon as you get the extension installed you can start enjoying access to image property information as seen here. Very nice! Image Properties Context Menu [via Shankar Ganesh (@shankargan)] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Never Call Me at Work [Humorous Star Wars Video] Add an Image Properties Listing to the Context Menu in Chrome and Iron Add an Easy to View Notification Badge to Tabs in Firefox SpellBook Parks Bookmarklets in Chrome’s Context Menu Drag2Up Brings Multi-Source Drag and Drop Uploading to Firefox Enchanted Swing in the Forest Wallpaper

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  • ROA on top of SOA

    - by Vaibhav Pujari
    I already have a stable Service Oriented Architecture for my application which exposes services as API calls. (the verbs) Now, I need to build a Resource Oriented Architecture to expose a RESTful API to interact with the application objects. (the nouns) What are the best practices to reuse the existing services: - without any persistence inside my new code. - without putting unnecessary logic into the REST layer i.e. it should ideally just leverage the services provided by SOA API. I want this layer to be as thin as possible. - without modifying the existing SOA API - allow easy extension of the REST API i.e. it should be easy to add more resources without changing the (yet to be written) core code. (I want to make resource names and their associated actions configurable so more contributors can easily add resources without a need to understand my module) Any advices/suggestions how to achieve this? Edit: Adding more info My Stack: My existing stacks is in Java. But since I plan to just use the services, I don't think that should affect the design of new REST code. I am planning to implement the new REST code in PHP. How well the services map to resources? Some services are mapped well i.e. there are services for creating, updating application objects. But for other application objects, there are no direct services available. More importantly, there are actions beyond just create, update etc. that apply to application objects. And I would like to provide some way for these actions to be exposed through REST. Since these are verbs, how do I deal with them? Where exactly I need help? I would appreciate any help towards high level design to accomplish the task along-with making the framework extendible. For instance, tomorrow there are some new services added to my SOA layer, I want to make sure it is easy for a fresh developer to write a REST call by simply registering a new resource (in a config file/db) and write code for connecting it with SOA calls. Just like plugin.

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  • SQL SERVER – Sharing your ETL Resources Across Applications with Ease

    - by pinaldave
    Frequently an organization will find that the same resources are used in multiple ETL applications, for example, the same database, general purpose processing logic, or file system locations.  Creating an easy way to reuse these resources across multiple applications would increase efficiency and reduce errors.  Moreover, not every ETL developer has the same skill set, and it is likely that one developer will be more adept at writing code while another is more comfortable configuring database connections.  Real productivity gains will come when these developers are able to work independently while still making their work available to others assigned to the same project.  These are the benefits of a centralized version control system. Of course, most version control systems could be used to store and serve files, but the real need is to store and serve entire ETL applications so that each developer’s ongoing work can immediately benefit from another developer’s completed work.  In other words, the version control system needs to be tightly integrated with the tools used to develop the ETL application. The following screen shot shows such a tool. Desktop ETL tool that tightly integrates with a central version control system Developers can checkout or commit entire projects or just a single artifact.  Each artifact may be managed independently so if you need to go back to an earlier version of one artifact, changes you may have made to other artifacts are not lost.  By being tightly integrated into the graphical environment used to create and edit the project artifacts, it is extremely easy and straight-forward to move your files to and from the version control system and there is no dependency on another vendor’s version control system.  The built in version control system is optimized for managing the artifacts of ETL applications. It is equally important that the version control system supports all of the actions one typically performs such as rollbacks, locking and unlocking of files, and the ability to resolve conflicts.  Note that this particular ETL tool also has the capability to switch back and forth between multiple version control systems. It also needs to be easy to determine the status of an artifact.  Not just that it has been committed or modified, but when and by whom.  Generally you must query the version control system for this information, but having it displayed within the development environment is more desirable. Who’s ETL tool works in this fashion?  Last month I mentioned the data integration solution offered by expressor software.  The version control features I described in this post are all available in their just released expressor 3.1 Standard Edition through the integration of their expressor Studio development environment with a centralized metadata repository and version control system. You can download their Studio application, which is free, or evaluate the full Standard Edition on your own hardware.  It may be worth your time. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • How to Restore Uninstalled Modern UI Apps that Ship with Windows 8

    - by Lori Kaufman
    Windows 8 ships with built-in apps available on the Modern UI screen (formerly the Metro or Start screen), such as Mail, Calendar, Photos, Music, Maps, and Weather. Installing additional Modern UI apps is easy using the Windows Store, and uninstalling apps is just as easy. What if you accidentally uninstall a built-in app? It can be easily restored with a few clicks of your mouse. To begin, access the Modern UI screen by moving your mouse to the extreme, lower, left corner of the screen and click the Start screen button that displays. NOTE: You can also press the Windows key to access the Modern UI screen. How Hackers Can Disguise Malicious Programs With Fake File Extensions Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer

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  • SQL SERVER – CSVExpress and Quick Data Load

    - by pinaldave
    One of the newest ETL tools is CSVexpress.com.  This is a program that can quickly load any CSV file into ODBC compliant databases uses data integration.  For those of you familiar with databases and how they operate, the question that comes to mind might be what use this program will have in your life. I have written earlier article on this subject over here SQL SERVER – Import CSV into Database – Transferring File Content into a Database Table using CSVexpress. You might know that RDBMS have automatic support for loading CSV files into tables – but it is not quite as easy as one click of a button.  First of all, most databases have a command line interface and you need the file and configuration script in order to load up.  You also need to know enough to write the script – which for novices can be extremely daunting.  On top of all this, if you work with more than one type of RDBMS, you need to know the ins and outs of uploading and writing script for more than one program. So you might begin to see how useful CSVexpress.com might be!  There are many other tools that enable uploading files to a database.  They can be very fancy – some can generate configuration files automatically, others load the data directly.  Again, novices will be able to tell you why these aren’t the most useful programs in the world.  You see, these programs were created with SQL in mind, not for uploading data.  If you don’t have large amounts of data to upload, getting the configurations right can be a long process and you will have to check the code that is generated yourself.  Not exactly “easy to use” for novices. That makes CSVexpress.com one of the best new tools available for everyone – but especially people who don’t want to learn a lot of new material all at once.  CSVexpress has an easy to navigate graphical user interface and no scripting or coding is required.  There are built-in constraints and data validations, and you can configure transforms and reject records right there on the screen.  But the best thing of all – it’s free! That’s right, you can download CSVexpress for free from www.csvexpress.com and start easily uploading and configuring riles almost immediately.  If you’re currently happy with your method of data configuration, keep up with the good work.  For the rest of us, there’s CSVexpress.com. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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  • Save Web Content Directly to Google Drive in Chrome [Extension]

    - by Asian Angel
    Are you looking for a quick and easy way to save images, documents, and more directly to Google Drive while browsing? Then you may want to grab a copy of the ‘Save to Google Drive’ extension for Chrome. Once you have installed the extension it is very easy to start saving all that wonderful web content to your Google Drive account via the Context Menu or the Toolbar Button as seen in the screenshot above. One thing to keep in mind is that the first time you use the extension you will be asked for permission to access your account as seen in the screenshot below. Here is a quick look at the options currently available for the extension… Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor How to Factory Reset Your Android Phone or Tablet When It Won’t Boot

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  • Marketplace to buy Templates for Twitter Bootstrap framework?

    - by Clay Nichols
    Are there any sites where I could buy a site template designed in Twitter Bootstrap (so that it's easy to modify)? I'm working on a site redesign and I think finding a template that looks close enough and modifying it is an economical way to go. (We're pretty niche so I don't need us to have a super cool website.) But folks I've talked to say that many of those templates are hard to modify. So I'm thinking that finding a template designed in a customizable framework would be easy to modify.

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  • Even EA's Have Bad Days - it's Time to Reset

    - by Pat Shepherd
    I saw this article and thought I'd share it because, even we EA's have bad days and the 7 points listed are a great way for you to hit the "reset" button. From Geoffrey James on INC.COM, here are 7 ways to change your view of things when, say, you are hitting a frustration point coordinating stakeholders to agree on an approach (never happens, right?) Positive Thinking: 7 Easy Ways to Improve a Bad Day http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/positive-thinking-7-easy-ways-to-improve-a-bad-day.html To paraphrase:          You can decide (in an instant) to change patterns of the past          Believe in (or even visualize) good things happening, and they will          Keep a healthy perspective on the work-life / life-life continuum (what things REALLY matter in the big scheme of things)                  Focus on the good (the laws of positive-attraction apply)

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  • Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix

    - by Rick Strahl
    originally published in CoDe Magazine Editorial Microsoft recently released the first CTP of a new development environment called WebMatrix, which along with some of its supporting technologies are squarely aimed at making the Microsoft Web Platform more approachable for first-time developers and hobbyists. But in the process, it also provides some updated technologies that can make life easier for existing .NET developers. Let’s face it: ASP.NET development isn’t exactly trivial unless you already have a fair bit of familiarity with sophisticated development practices. Stick a non-developer in front of Visual Studio .NET or even the Visual Web Developer Express edition and it’s not likely that the person in front of the screen will be very productive or feel inspired. Yet other technologies like PHP and even classic ASP did provide the ability for non-developers and hobbyists to become reasonably proficient in creating basic web content quickly and efficiently. WebMatrix appears to be Microsoft’s attempt to bring back some of that simplicity with a number of technologies and tools. The key is to provide a friendly and fully self-contained development environment that provides all the tools needed to build an application in one place, as well as tools that allow publishing of content and databases easily to the web server. WebMatrix is made up of several components and technologies: IIS Developer Express IIS Developer Express is a new, self-contained development web server that is fully compatible with IIS 7.5 and based on the same codebase that IIS 7.5 uses. This new development server replaces the much less compatible Cassini web server that’s been used in Visual Studio and the Express editions. IIS Express addresses a few shortcomings of the Cassini server such as the inability to serve custom ISAPI extensions (i.e., things like PHP or ASP classic for example), as well as not supporting advanced authentication. IIS Developer Express provides most of the IIS 7.5 feature set providing much better compatibility between development and live deployment scenarios. SQL Server Compact 4.0 Database access is a key component for most web-driven applications, but on the Microsoft stack this has mostly meant you have to use SQL Server or SQL Server Express. SQL Server Compact is not new-it’s been around for a few years, but it’s been severely hobbled in the past by terrible tool support and the inability to support more than a single connection in Microsoft’s attempt to avoid losing SQL Server licensing. The new release of SQL Server Compact 4.0 supports multiple connections and you can run it in ASP.NET web applications simply by installing an assembly into the bin folder of the web application. In effect, you don’t have to install a special system configuration to run SQL Compact as it is a drop-in database engine: Copy the small assembly into your BIN folder (or from the GAC if installed fully), create a connection string against a local file-based database file, and then start firing SQL requests. Additionally WebMatrix includes nice tools to edit the database tables and files, along with tools to easily upsize (and hopefully downsize in the future) to full SQL Server. This is a big win, pending compatibility and performance limits. In my simple testing the data engine performed well enough for small data sets. This is not only useful for web applications, but also for desktop applications for which a fully installed SQL engine like SQL Server would be overkill. Having a local data store in those applications that can potentially be accessed by multiple users is a welcome feature. ASP.NET Razor View Engine What? Yet another native ASP.NET view engine? We already have Web Forms and various different flavors of using that view engine with Web Forms and MVC. Do we really need another? Microsoft thinks so, and Razor is an implementation of a lightweight, script-only view engine. Unlike the Web Forms view engine, Razor works only with inline code, snippets, and markup; therefore, it is more in line with current thinking of what a view engine should represent. There’s no support for a “page model” or any of the other Web Forms features of the full-page framework, but just a lightweight scripting engine that works with plain markup plus embedded expressions and code. The markup syntax for Razor is geared for minimal typing, plus some progressive detection of where a script block/expression starts and ends. This results in a much leaner syntax than the typical ASP.NET Web Forms alligator (<% %>) tags. Razor uses the @ sign plus standard C# (or Visual Basic) block syntax to delineate code snippets and expressions. Here’s a very simple example of what Razor markup looks like along with some comment annotations: <!DOCTYPE html> <html>     <head>         <title></title>     </head>     <body>     <h1>Razor Test</h1>          <!-- simple expressions -->     @DateTime.Now     <hr />     <!-- method expressions -->     @DateTime.Now.ToString("T")          <!-- code blocks -->     @{         List<string> names = new List<string>();         names.Add("Rick");         names.Add("Markus");         names.Add("Claudio");         names.Add("Kevin");     }          <!-- structured block statements -->     <ul>     @foreach(string name in names){             <li>@name</li>     }     </ul>           <!-- Conditional code -->        @if(true) {                        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->        <text>         true        </text>;    }    else    {        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->       <text>       false       </text>;    }    </body> </html> Like the Web Forms view engine, Razor parses pages into code, and then executes that run-time compiled code. Effectively a “page” becomes a code file with markup becoming literal text written into the Response stream, code snippets becoming raw code, and expressions being written out with Response.Write(). The code generated from Razor doesn’t look much different from similar Web Forms code that only uses script tags; so although the syntax may look different, the operational model is fairly similar to the Web Forms engine minus the overhead of the large Page object model. However, there are differences: -Razor pages are based on a new base class, Microsoft.WebPages.WebPage, which is hosted in the Microsoft.WebPages assembly that houses all the Razor engine parsing and processing logic. Browsing through the assembly (in the generated ASP.NET Temporary Files folder or GAC) will give you a good idea of the functionality that Razor provides. If you look closely, a lot of the feature set matches ASP.NET MVC’s view implementation as well as many of the helper classes found in MVC. It’s not hard to guess the motivation for this sort of view engine: For beginning developers the simple markup syntax is easier to work with, although you obviously still need to have some understanding of the .NET Framework in order to create dynamic content. The syntax is easier to read and grok and much shorter to type than ASP.NET alligator tags (<% %>) and also easier to understand aesthetically what’s happening in the markup code. Razor also is a better fit for Microsoft’s vision of ASP.NET MVC: It’s a new view engine without the baggage of Web Forms attached to it. The engine is more lightweight since it doesn’t carry all the features and object model of Web Forms with it and it can be instantiated directly outside of the HTTP environment, which has been rather tricky to do for the Web Forms view engine. Having a standalone script parser is a huge win for other applications as well – it makes it much easier to create script or meta driven output generators for many types of applications from code/screen generators, to simple form letters to data merging applications with user customizability. For me personally this is very useful side effect and who knows maybe Microsoft will actually standardize they’re scripting engines (die T4 die!) on this engine. Razor also better fits the “view-based” approach where the view is supposed to be mostly a visual representation that doesn’t hold much, if any, code. While you can still use code, the code you do write has to be self-contained. Overall I wouldn’t be surprised if Razor will become the new standard view engine for MVC in the future – and in fact there have been announcements recently that Razor will become the default script engine in ASP.NET MVC 3.0. Razor can also be used in existing Web Forms and MVC applications, although that’s not working currently unless you manually configure the script mappings and add the appropriate assemblies. It’s possible to do it, but it’s probably better to wait until Microsoft releases official support for Razor scripts in Visual Studio. Once that happens, you can simply drop .cshtml and .vbhtml pages into an existing ASP.NET project and they will work side by side with classic ASP.NET pages. WebMatrix Development Environment To tie all of these three technologies together, Microsoft is shipping WebMatrix with an integrated development environment. An integrated gallery manager makes it easy to download and load existing projects, and then extend them with custom functionality. It seems to be a prominent goal to provide community-oriented content that can act as a starting point, be it via a custom templates or a complete standard application. The IDE includes a project manager that works with a single project and provides an integrated IDE/editor for editing the .cshtml and .vbhtml pages. A run button allows you to quickly run pages in the project manager in a variety of browsers. There’s no debugging support for code at this time. Note that Razor pages don’t require explicit compilation, so making a change, saving, and then refreshing your page in the browser is all that’s needed to see changes while testing an application locally. It’s essentially using the auto-compiling Web Project that was introduced with .NET 2.0. All code is compiled during run time into dynamically created assemblies in the ASP.NET temp folder. WebMatrix also has PHP Editing support with syntax highlighting. You can load various PHP-based applications from the WebMatrix Web Gallery directly into the IDE. Most of the Web Gallery applications are ready to install and run without further configuration, with Wizards taking you through installation of tools, dependencies, and configuration of the database as needed. WebMatrix leverages the Web Platform installer to pull the pieces down from websites in a tight integration of tools that worked nicely for the four or five applications I tried this out on. Click a couple of check boxes and fill in a few simple configuration options and you end up with a running application that’s ready to be customized. Nice! You can easily deploy completed applications via WebDeploy (to an IIS server) or FTP directly from within the development environment. The deploy tool also can handle automatically uploading and installing the database and all related assemblies required, making deployment a simple one-click install step. Simplified Database Access The IDE contains a database editor that can edit SQL Compact and SQL Server databases. There is also a Database helper class that facilitates database access by providing easy-to-use, high-level query execution and iteration methods: @{       var db = Database.OpenFile("FirstApp.sdf");     string sql = "select * from customers where Id > @0"; } <ul> @foreach(var row in db.Query(sql,1)){         <li>@row.FirstName @row.LastName</li> } </ul> The query function takes a SQL statement plus any number of positional (@0,@1 etc.) SQL parameters by simple values. The result is returned as a collection of rows which in turn have a row object with dynamic properties for each of the columns giving easy (though untyped) access to each of the fields. Likewise Execute and ExecuteNonQuery allow execution of more complex queries using similar parameter passing schemes. Note these queries use string-based queries rather than LINQ or Entity Framework’s strongly typed LINQ queries. While this may seem like a step back, it’s also in line with the expectations of non .NET script developers who are quite used to writing and using SQL strings in code rather than using OR/M frameworks. The only question is why was something not included from the beginning in .NET and Microsoft made developers build custom implementations of these basic building blocks. The implementation looks a lot like a DataTable-style data access mechanism, but to be fair, this is a common approach in scripting languages. This type of syntax that uses simple, static, data object methods to perform simple data tasks with one line of code are common in scripting languages and are a good match for folks working in PHP/Python, etc. Seems like Microsoft has taken great advantage of .NET 4.0’s dynamic typing to provide this sort of interface for row iteration where each row has properties for each field. FWIW, all the examples demonstrate using local SQL Compact files - I was unable to get a SQL Server connection string to work with the Database class (the connection string wasn’t accepted). However, since the code in the page is still plain old .NET, you can easily use standard ADO.NET code or even LINQ or Entity Framework models that are created outside of WebMatrix in separate assemblies as required. The good the bad the obnoxious - It’s still .NET The beauty (or curse depending on how you look at it :)) of Razor and the compilation model is that, behind it all, it’s still .NET. Although the syntax may look foreign, it’s still all .NET behind the scenes. You can easily access existing tools, helpers, and utilities simply by adding them to the project as references or to the bin folder. Razor automatically recognizes any assembly reference from assemblies in the bin folder. In the default configuration, Microsoft provides a host of helper functions in a Microsoft.WebPages assembly (check it out in the ASP.NET temp folder for your application), which includes a host of HTML Helpers. If you’ve used ASP.NET MVC before, a lot of the helpers should look familiar. Documentation at the moment is sketchy-there’s a very rough API reference you can check out here: http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/tutorials/asp-net-web-pages-api-reference Who needs WebMatrix? Uhm… good Question Clearly Microsoft is trying hard to create an environment with WebMatrix that is easy to use for newbie developers. The goal seems to be simplicity in providing a minimal development environment and an easy-to-use script engine/language that makes it easy to get started with. There’s also some focus on community features that can be used as starting points, such as Web Gallery applications and templates. The community features in particular are very nice and something that would be nice to eventually see in Visual Studio as well. The question is whether this is too little too late. Developers who have been clamoring for a simpler development environment on the .NET stack have mostly left for other simpler platforms like PHP or Python which are catering to the down and dirty developer. Microsoft will be hard pressed to win those folks-and other hardcore PHP developers-back. Regardless of how much you dress up a script engine fronted by the .NET Framework, it’s still the .NET Framework and all the complexity that drives it. While .NET is a fine solution in its breadth and features once you get a basic handle on the core features, the bar of entry to being productive with the .NET Framework is still pretty high. The MVC style helpers Microsoft provides are a good step in the right direction, but I suspect it’s not enough to shield new developers from having to delve much deeper into the Framework to get even basic applications built. Razor and its helpers is trying to make .NET more accessible but the reality is that in order to do useful stuff that goes beyond the handful of simple helpers you still are going to have to write some C# or VB or other .NET code. If the target is a hobby/amateur/non-programmer the learning curve isn’t made any easier by WebMatrix it’s just been shifted a tad bit further along in your development endeavor when you run out of canned components that are supplied either by Microsoft or the community. The database helpers are interesting and actually I’ve heard a lot of discussion from various developers who’ve been resisting .NET for a really long time perking up at the prospect of easier data access in .NET than the ridiculous amount of code it takes to do even simple data access with raw ADO.NET. It seems sad that such a simple concept and implementation should trigger this sort of response (especially since it’s practically trivial to create helpers like these or pick them up from countless libraries available), but there it is. It also shows that there are plenty of developers out there who are more interested in ‘getting stuff done’ easily than necessarily following the latest and greatest practices which are overkill for many development scenarios. Sometimes it seems that all of .NET is focused on the big life changing issues of development, rather than the bread and butter scenarios that many developers are interested in to get their work accomplished. And that in the end may be WebMatrix’s main raison d'être: To bring some focus back at Microsoft that simpler and more high level solutions are actually needed to appeal to the non-high end developers as well as providing the necessary tools for the high end developers who want to follow the latest and greatest trends. The current version of WebMatrix hits many sweet spots, but it also feels like it has a long way to go before it really can be a tool that a beginning developer or an accomplished developer can feel comfortable with. Although there are some really good ideas in the environment (like the gallery for downloading apps and components) which would be a great addition for Visual Studio as well, the rest of the development environment just feels like crippleware with required functionality missing especially debugging and Intellisense, but also general editor support. It’s not clear whether these are because the product is still in an early alpha release or whether it’s simply designed that way to be a really limited development environment. While simple can be good, nobody wants to feel left out when it comes to necessary tool support and WebMatrix just has that left out feeling to it. If anything WebMatrix’s technology pieces (which are really independent of the WebMatrix product) are what are interesting to developers in general. The compact IIS implementation is a nice improvement for development scenarios and SQL Compact 4.0 seems to address a lot of concerns that people have had and have complained about for some time with previous SQL Compact implementations. By far the most interesting and useful technology though seems to be the Razor view engine for its light weight implementation and it’s decoupling from the ASP.NET/HTTP pipeline to provide a standalone scripting/view engine that is pluggable. The first winner of this is going to be ASP.NET MVC which can now have a cleaner view model that isn’t inconsistent due to the baggage of non-implemented WebForms features that don’t work in MVC. But I expect that Razor will end up in many other applications as a scripting and code generation engine eventually. Visual Studio integration for Razor is currently missing, but is promised for a later release. The ASP.NET MVC team has already mentioned that Razor will eventually become the default MVC view engine, which will guarantee continued growth and development of this tool along those lines. And the Razor engine and support tools actually inherit many of the features that MVC pioneered, so there’s some synergy flowing both ways between Razor and MVC. As an existing ASP.NET developer who’s already familiar with Visual Studio and ASP.NET development, the WebMatrix IDE doesn’t give you anything that you want. The tools provided are minimal and provide nothing that you can’t get in Visual Studio today, except the minimal Razor syntax highlighting, so there’s little need to take a step back. With Visual Studio integration coming later there’s little reason to look at WebMatrix for tooling. It’s good to see that Microsoft is giving some thought about the ease of use of .NET as a platform For so many years, we’ve been piling on more and more new features without trying to take a step back and see how complicated the development/configuration/deployment process has become. Sometimes it’s good to take a step - or several steps - back and take another look and realize just how far we’ve come. WebMatrix is one of those reminders and one that likely will result in some positive changes on the platform as a whole. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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  • ObjectStorageHelper<T> now available for Windows 8 RTM

    - by jamiet
    In October 2011 I wrote a blog post entitled ObjectStorageHelper<T> – A WinRT utility for Windows 8 where I introduced a little utility class called ObjectStorageHelper<T> that I had been working on while noodling around on the Developer Preview of Windows 8. ObjectStorageHelper<T> makes it easy for anyone building apps for Windows 8 to save data to files. How easy? As easy as this: var myPoco = new Poco() { IntProp = 1, StringProp = "one" }; var objectStorageHelper = new ObjectStorageHelper<Poco>(StorageType.Local); await objectStorageHelper.SaveAsync(myPoco); Compare that to the plumbing code that you would have to write otherwise: var Obj = new Poco() { IntProp = 1, StringProp = "one" }; StorageFile file = null; StorageFolder folder = GetFolder(storageType); file = await folder.CreateFileAsync(FileName(Obj), CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting); IRandomAccessStream writeStream = await file.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.ReadWrite); using (Stream outStream = Task.Run(() => writeStream.AsStreamForWrite()).Result) {     serializer.Serialize(outStream, Obj);     await outStream.FlushAsync(); } and you can see how ObjectStorageHelper<T> can help save a Windows 8 developer quite a few headaches. ObjectStorageHelper<T> simply requires you to pass it an object to be saved, tell it where to save it (Roaming, Local or Temporary), and you’re done. Retrieving an object from storage is equally as simple: var objectStorageHelper = new ObjectStorageHelper<Poco>(StorageType.Local); var myPoco = await objectStorageHelper.LoadAsync(); Please check the homepage for the project at http://winrtstoragehelper.codeplex.com/ for (much) more info. A number of people have used and tested ObjectStorageHelper<T> since those early days and one of those folks in particular, David Burela, was good enough to report a couple of bugs: Saving Asynchronously Save fails when class is in another project As a result of David’s bug reports and some more extensive testing on my side I have overhauled the initial code that I wrote last October and am confident that it is now much more robust and ready for primetime (check the commit history if you’re interested). The source code (which, again, you can find on Codeplex at http://winrtstoragehelper.codeplex.com/) includes a suite of unit tests to test all of the basic use cases (if you can think of any more please let me know). If you use this in any of your Windows 8 projects then please let me know. I love getting feedback and I’d also love to know if this is actually being used anywhere. @Jamiet

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  • Announcing: Great Improvements to Windows Azure Web Sites

    - by ScottGu
    I’m excited to announce some great improvements to the Windows Azure Web Sites capability we first introduced earlier this summer.  Today’s improvements include: a new low-cost shared mode scaling option, support for custom domains with shared and reserved mode web-sites using both CNAME and A-Records (the later enabling naked domains), continuous deployment support using both CodePlex and GitHub, and FastCGI extensibility.  All of these improvements are now live in production and available to start using immediately. New “Shared” Scaling Tier Windows Azure allows you to deploy and host up to 10 web-sites in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment. You can start out developing and testing web sites at no cost using this free shared mode, and it supports the ability to run web sites that serve up to 165MB/day of content (5GB/month).  All of the capabilities we introduced in June with this free tier remain the same with today’s update. Starting with today’s release, you can now elastically scale up your web-site beyond this capability using a new low-cost “shared” option (which we are introducing today) as well as using a “reserved instance” option (which we’ve supported since June).  Scaling to either of these modes is easy.  Simply click on the “scale” tab of your web-site within the Windows Azure Portal, choose the scaling option you want to use with it, and then click the “save” button.  Changes take only seconds to apply and do not require any code to be changed, nor the app to be redeployed: Below are some more details on the new “shared” option, as well as the existing “reserved” option: Shared Mode With today’s release we are introducing a new low-cost “shared” scaling mode for Windows Azure Web Sites.  A web-site running in shared mode is deployed in a shared/multi-tenant hosting environment.  Unlike the free tier, though, a web-site in shared mode has no quotas/upper-limit around the amount of bandwidth it can serve.  The first 5 GB/month of bandwidth you serve with a shared web-site is free, and then you pay the standard “pay as you go” Windows Azure outbound bandwidth rate for outbound bandwidth above 5 GB. A web-site running in shared mode also now supports the ability to map multiple custom DNS domain names, using both CNAMEs and A-records, to it.  The new A-record support we are introducing with today’s release provides the ability for you to support “naked domains” with your web-sites (e.g. http://microsoft.com in addition to http://www.microsoft.com).  We will also in the future enable SNI based SSL as a built-in feature with shared mode web-sites (this functionality isn’t supported with today’s release – but will be coming later this year to both the shared and reserved tiers). You pay for a shared mode web-site using the standard “pay as you go” model that we support with other features of Windows Azure (meaning no up-front costs, and you pay only for the hours that the feature is enabled).  A web-site running in shared mode costs only 1.3 cents/hr during the preview (so on average $9.36/month). Reserved Instance Mode In addition to running sites in shared mode, we also support scaling them to run within a reserved instance mode.  When running in reserved instance mode your sites are guaranteed to run isolated within your own Small, Medium or Large VM (meaning no other customers run within it).  You can run any number of web-sites within a VM, and there are no quotas on CPU or memory limits. You can run your sites using either a single reserved instance VM, or scale up to have multiple instances of them (e.g. 2 medium sized VMs, etc).  Scaling up or down is easy – just select the “reserved” instance VM within the “scale” tab of the Windows Azure Portal, choose the VM size you want, the number of instances of it you want to run, and then click save.  Changes take effect in seconds: Unlike shared mode, there is no per-site cost when running in reserved mode.  Instead you pay only for the reserved instance VMs you use – and you can run any number of web-sites you want within them at no extra cost (e.g. you could run a single site within a reserved instance VM or 100 web-sites within it for the same cost).  Reserved instance VMs start at 8 cents/hr for a small reserved VM.  Elastic Scale-up/down Windows Azure Web Sites allows you to scale-up or down your capacity within seconds.  This allows you to deploy a site using the shared mode option to begin with, and then dynamically scale up to the reserved mode option only when you need to – without you having to change any code or redeploy your application. If your site traffic starts to drop off, you can scale back down the number of reserved instances you are using, or scale down to the shared mode tier – all within seconds and without having to change code, redeploy, or adjust DNS mappings.  You can also use the “Dashboard” view within the Windows Azure Portal to easily monitor your site’s load in real-time (it shows not only requests/sec and bandwidth but also stats like CPU and memory usage). Because of Windows Azure’s “pay as you go” pricing model, you only pay for the compute capacity you use in a given hour.  So if your site is running most of the month in shared mode (at 1.3 cents/hr), but there is a weekend when it gets really popular and you decide to scale it up into reserved mode to have it run in your own dedicated VM (at 8 cents/hr), you only have to pay the additional pennies/hr for the hours it is running in the reserved mode.  There is no upfront cost you need to pay to enable this, and once you scale back down to shared mode you return to the 1.3 cents/hr rate.  This makes it super flexible and cost effective. Improved Custom Domain Support Web sites running in either “shared” or “reserved” mode support the ability to associate custom host names to them (e.g. www.mysitename.com).  You can associate multiple custom domains to each Windows Azure Web Site.  With today’s release we are introducing support for A-Records (a big ask by many users). With the A-Record support, you can now associate ‘naked’ domains to your Windows Azure Web Sites – meaning instead of having to use www.mysitename.com you can instead just have mysitename.com (with no sub-name prefix).  Because you can map multiple domains to a single site, you can optionally enable both a www and naked domain for a site (and then use a URL rewrite rule/redirect to avoid SEO problems). We’ve also enhanced the UI for managing custom domains within the Windows Azure Portal as part of today’s release.  Clicking the “Manage Domains” button in the tray at the bottom of the portal now brings up custom UI that makes it easy to manage/configure them: As part of this update we’ve also made it significantly smoother/easier to validate ownership of custom domains, and made it easier to switch existing sites/domains to Windows Azure Web Sites with no downtime. Continuous Deployment Support with Git and CodePlex or GitHub One of the more popular features we released earlier this summer was support for publishing web sites directly to Windows Azure using source control systems like TFS and Git.  This provides a really powerful way to manage your application deployments using source control.  It is really easy to enable this from a website’s dashboard page: The TFS option we shipped earlier this summer provides a very rich continuous deployment solution that enables you to automate builds and run unit tests every time you check in your web-site, and then if they are successful automatically publish to Azure. With today’s release we are expanding our Git support to also enable continuous deployment scenarios and integrate with projects hosted on CodePlex and GitHub.  This support is enabled with all web-sites (including those using the “free” scaling mode). Starting today, when you choose the “Set up Git publishing” link on a website’s “Dashboard” page you’ll see two additional options show up when Git based publishing is enabled for the web-site: You can click on either the “Deploy from my CodePlex project” link or “Deploy from my GitHub project” link to walkthrough a simple workflow to configure a connection between your website and a source repository you host on CodePlex or GitHub.  Once this connection is established, CodePlex or GitHub will automatically notify Windows Azure every time a checkin occurs.  This will then cause Windows Azure to pull the source and compile/deploy the new version of your app automatically.  The below two videos walkthrough how easy this is to enable this workflow and deploy both an initial app and then make a change to it: Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and CodePlex (2 minutes) Enabling Continuous Deployment with Windows Azure Websites and GitHub (2 minutes) This approach enables a really clean continuous deployment workflow, and makes it much easier to support a team development environment using Git: Note: today’s release supports establishing connections with public GitHub/CodePlex repositories.  Support for private repositories will be enabled in a few weeks. Support for multiple branches Previously, we only supported deploying from the git ‘master’ branch.  Often, though, developers want to deploy from alternate branches (e.g. a staging or future branch). This is now a supported scenario – both with standalone git based projects, as well as ones linked to CodePlex or GitHub.  This enables a variety of useful scenarios.  For example, you can now have two web-sites - a “live” and “staging” version – both linked to the same repository on CodePlex or GitHub.  You can configure one of the web-sites to always pull whatever is in the master branch, and the other to pull what is in the staging branch.  This enables a really clean way to enable final testing of your site before it goes live. This 1 minute video demonstrates how to configure which branch to use with a web-site. Summary The above features are all now live in production and available to use immediately.  If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using them today.  Visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. We’ll have even more new features and enhancements coming in the weeks ahead – including support for the recent Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 releases (we will enable new web and worker role images with Windows Server 2012 and .NET 4.5 next month).  Keep an eye out on my blog for details as these new features become available. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • Toolbox Mod Makes the Wii Ultra Portable

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Given the social nature of most Wii games, modifying a toolbox to serve as a Wii briefcase to make toting it to a friend’s house easy is only fitting. Courtesy of tinker SpicaJames, we find this simple but effective toolbox modification. James originally started his search by investigating getting a Pelican case for his Wii and accessories. When he found the $125 price tag prohibitive (as many of us would for such a side project) he sought out alternatives. A cheap $12 toolbox, a little impact foam, and some handy work with a pair of tin snips to cut out shapes for the Wiimotes, and he had a super cheap and easy to pack and unpack Wii briefcase. Hit up the link below to check out the pictures of his build. Wii Briefcase (translated by Google Translate) [via Hack A Day] Can Dust Actually Damage My Computer? What To Do If You Get a Virus on Your Computer Why Enabling “Do Not Track” Doesn’t Stop You From Being Tracked

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  • What is the best solution for document archiving?

    - by Anders Wallenquist
    I'm looking for a utility that helps me (and my colleagues) to archive documents in a systematic manner (Like Zeitgeist but permanent). The utility have to clean-out old document from desktops and store them on a server (as automatic as possible and consistent) maybe from just a few locations (Document directory) Documents shall be stored on cheap large media for many years to come - hard disk and file system maybe? Easy to maintain and manage for a small organization. Documents have to be easy to find and restore One systematic manner could be a directory-structure by year, month, user or user, year, month. Its a plus if documents could be linked to a project, if documents could be search-able and if document could also be mail, IM-discussions not only OpenOffice traditional documents. Any ideas?

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  • International multi-OS keyboard layout for both coding and surfing?

    - by rassie
    So yes, the problem has been raised in parts multiple times already. Still I'm looking for a keyboard layout that has the following features: Easy on fingers (Dvorak-like layouts welcome) Easy for coding Includes german characters (typing ä with AltGr-p is not ok). Works well with web-browsing (Ctrl-t and Ctrl-w on one hand, left one very much preferred, since that's where my ex-CapsLock, now Ctrl lies) Works well with default Emacs bindings Works on both Windows and Linux (at least easily installable) I've looked at Dvorak and Neo, they both have a "shortcut problem", i.e. web-browsing and most frequent Emacs combinations use both parts of the keyboard. Using right Ctrl is usually not an option, since it'll give me RSI much faster than keeping QWERTY/Z. Funnily enough, mirroring the default Neo layout would probably be enough for me. So, any ideas?

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  • Ask the Readers: Favorite Web Clipping Tool?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Bookmarking is great if you want a link to visit later, but what if you want to save the page itself for later perusal? This week we want to hear all about your favorite web clipping tool and how you use it to read what you want, when you want it. Web clipping tools are simple tools (browser extensions, bookmarklets, etc.) that make it easy to clip text and multimedia elements from web pages in order to archive them and/or read them at a later date. Whether you clip to a bursting at the seams web-notebook or you clip to send to your Kindle, we want to hear about your favorite tools and how they fit into your reading workflow. Sound off in the comments and then make sure to check back on Friday for the What You Said roundup where we highlight popular picks and clever tips. HTG Explains: How Hackers Take Over Web Sites with SQL Injection / DDoS Use Your Android Phone to Comparison Shop: 4 Scanner Apps Reviewed How to Run Android Apps on Your Desktop the Easy Way

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  • Where did ULSTraceLog go to in the SharePoint 2010 Logging Database?

    The Logging Database is one of the many new concepts that will make the life of many SharePoint administrators quite a bit more enjoyable. In SharePoint 2007 the Unified Logging System (ULS) logged all of its data to text files, typically found on your SharePoint server in 12\LOGS. We still have that in SharePoint 2010, but besides those text files, ULS can also write the data to a database! The advantages are obvious: easy to query, one central location for all servers in the farm, easy to build...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Which web framework to use under Backbonejs?

    - by egidra
    For a previous project, I was using Backbonejs alongside Django, but I found out that I didn't use many features from Django. So, I am looking for a lighter framework to use underneath a Backbonejs web app. I never used Django built in templates. When I did, it was to set up the initial index page, but that's all. I did use the user management system that Django provided. I used the models.py, but never views.py. I used urls.py to set up which template the user would hit upon visiting the site. I noticed that the two features that I used most from Django was South and Tastypie, and they aren't even included with Django. Particularly, django-tastypie made it easy for me to link up my frontend models to my backend models. It made it easy to JSONify my front end models and send them to Tastypie. Although, I found myself overriding a lot of tastypie's methods for GET, PUT, POST requests, so it became useless. South made it easy to migrate new changes to the database. Although, I had so much trouble with South. Is there a framework with an easier way of handling database modifications than using South? When using South with multiple people, we had the worse time keeping our databases synced. When someone added a new table and pushed their migration to git, the other two people would spend days trying to use South's automatic migration, but it never worked. I liked how Rails had a manual way of migrating databases. Even though I used Tastypie and South a lot, I found myself not actually liking them because I ended up overriding most Tastypie methods for each Resource, and I also had the worst trouble migrating new tables and columns with South. So, I would like a framework that makes that process easier. Part of my problem was that they are too "magical". Which framework should I use? Nodejs or a lighter Python framework? Which works best with my above criteria?

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  • List of custom Launchers & Quicklists for Unity

    - by Nik
    Creating a custom launcher for Unity is simple. Quicklists provide an easy and efficient way to quickly access commonly used tasks for a specific application. NOTE: Starting with Ubuntu 11.10, this popup option has vanished. Launchers can now only be created by editing text files in your home folder. Creating a custom launcher is easy. Right-click on your desktop and click create a launcher. Edit the .desktop file using a text editor. (More information can be found here and here.) So, which custom launchers do you use on Unity? Note: Please limit yourself to one custom launcher per answer. Also, please provide a screenshot of it in action.

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