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• Identity Claims Encoding for SharePoint

  - by Shawn Cicoria

  Just to remind myself, the list of claim types and their encodings are listed here at the bottom. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg481769.aspx Where for example: i:0#.w|contoso\scicoria ‘i’ = identity, could be ‘c’ for others # == SPClaimTypes.UserLogonName . == Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.String Table for reference: Table 1. Claim types encoding Character Claim Type ! SPClaimTypes.IdentityProvider ” SPClaimTypes.UserIdentifier # SPClaimTypes.UserLogonName $ SPClaimTypes.DistributionListClaimType % SPClaimTypes.FarmId & SPClaimTypes.ProcessIdentitySID ‘ SPClaimTypes.ProcessIdentityLogonName ( SPClaimTypes.IsAuthenticated ) Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.PrimarySid * Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.PrimaryGroupSid + Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.GroupSid - Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Role . System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Anonymous / System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Authentication 0 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.AuthorizationDecision 1 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Country 2 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.DateOfBirth 3 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.DenyOnlySid 4 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Dns 5 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Email 6 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Gender 7 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.GivenName 8 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Hash 9 System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.HomePhone < System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Locality = System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.MobilePhone > System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Name ? System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.NameIdentifier @ System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.OtherPhone [ System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.PostalCode \ System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.PPID ] System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Rsa ^ System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Sid _ System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Spn ` System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.StateOrProvince a System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.StreetAddress b System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Surname c System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.System d System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Thumbprint e System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Upn f System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Uri g System.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimTypes.Webpage Table 2. Claim value types encoding Character Claim Type ! Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Base64Binary “ Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Boolean # Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Date $ Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Datetime % Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.DaytimeDuration & Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Double ‘ Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.DsaKeyValue ( Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.HexBinary ) Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Integer * Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.KeyInfo + Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Rfc822Name - Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.RsaKeyValue . Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.String / Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.Time 0 Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.X500Name 1 Microsoft.IdentityModel.Claims.ClaimValueTypes.YearMonthDuration

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• F# &ndash; Immutable List vs a Mutable Collection in Arrays

  - by MarkPearl

  Another day gone by looking into F#. Today I thought I would ramble on about lists and arrays in F#. Coming from a C# background I barely ever use arrays now days in my C# code – why you may ask – because I find lists generally handle most of the business scenario’s that I come across. So it has been an interesting experience with me keep bumping into Array’s & Lists in F# and I wondered why the frequency of coming across arrays was so much more in this language than in C#. Take for instance the code I stumbled across today. let rng = new Random() let shuffle (array : 'a array) = let n = array.Length for x in 1..n do let i = n-x let j = rng.Next(i+1) let tmp = array.[i] array.[i] <- array.[j] array.[j] <- tmp array   Quite simply its purpose is to “shuffle” an array of items. So I thought, why does it have the “a’ array'” explicitly declared? What if I changed it to a list? Well… as I was about to find out there are some subtle differences between array’s & lists in F# that do not exist in C#. Namely, mutability. A list in F# is an ordered, immutable series of elements of the same type, while an array is a fixed-size zero based, mutable collection of consecutive data elements that are all of the same type. For me the keyword is immutable vs mutable collection. That’s why I could not simply swap the ‘a array with ‘a list in my function header because then later on in the code the syntax would not be valid where I “swap” item positions. i.e. array.[i] <- array.[j] would be invalid because if it was a list, it would be immutable and so couldn’t change by its very definition.. So where does that leave me? It’s to early days to say. I don’t know what the balance will be in future code – will I typically always use lists or arrays or even have a balance, but time will tell.

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• Book Review: Getting Started With Window 8 Apps By Ben Dewey

  - by Tim Murphy

  When O’Reilly gave me an opportunity to review this book I was excited.  It gave me a reason to finally put some time into this new platform and what developers will need to learn in order to be successful. This book by Ben Dewey is only 92 pages long, so if you were looking for an in-depth treatment of Windows 8 development you will need supplemental materials.  It is also due for an update from the perspective of recent changes made by Microsoft prior to the final release of the OS and tools.  This causes a few issues if you try to run the code samples because of namespace changes. I was encouraged by the fact that the author didn’t do the typical “hello world” app.  He uses a lot of pattern based development techniques and hits many of the main topics including: Application lifecycle Charms integration Tiles Sensors The lifecycle is critical for anyone who hasn’t done mobile development before.  Limited resources on these devices mean that the OS can suspend or kill your app altogether if it decides it needs to.  He covers tombstoning which is the key to Windows 8 and Windows Phone lifecycle management. He also dedicates a chapter to marketing and distributing the application you build.  From my experience with Windows Phone development this is crucial information.  You need to know how to test your application so that it is going to pass certification and present your app so that it is going to get noticed amongst thousands of other apps. The main things that I wish had been in the book explanations of more of the common controls and more complete explanation of patterns that were implemented. In the end this book is a good foundation getting exposure to the concepts that underlie this new version of the Windows platform and how it effects developers.  It isn’t a book that I would suggest for someone just getting into development with no understanding of pattern based development. del.icio.us Tags: Windows 8,O'Reilly,Ben Dewey,Book Review,Review

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• Review of ComponentOne Silverlight Controls (Free License Giveaway).

  - by mbcrump

  ComponentOne has several great products that target Silverlight Developers. One of them is their Silverlight Controls and the other is the XAP Optimizer. I decided that I would check out the controls and Xap Optimizer and feature them on my blog. After talking with ComponentOne, they agreed to take part in my Monthly Silverlight giveaway. The details are listed below: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of ComponentOne Silverlight Controls + XAP Optimizer! (the winner also gets a license to Silverlight Spy) Random winner will be announced on March 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump and @ComponentOne http://mcrump.me/fTSmB8 ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit ComponentOne because they made this possible. MichaelCrump.Net provides Silverlight Giveaways every month. You can also see the latest giveaway by bookmarking http://giveaways.michaelcrump.net . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark: The Live Demos of the Silverlight Controls is located here. The XAP Optimizer page is here. One thing that I liked about the help documentation is that you can grab a PDF that only contains documentation for that control. This allows you to get the information you need without going through several hundred pages. You can also download the full documentation from their site.  ComponentOne Silverlight Controls I recently built a hobby project and decided to use ComponentOne Silverlight Controls. The main reason for this is that the controls are heavily documented, they look great and getting help was just a tweet or forum click away. So, the first question that you may ask is, “What is included?” Here is the official list below. I wanted to show several of the controls that I think developers will use the most. 1) ComponentOne’s Image Control – Display animated GIF images on your Silverlight pages as you would in traditional Web apps. Add attractive visuals with minimal effort. 2) HTML Host - Render HTML and arbitrary URI content from within Silverlight. 3) Chart3D - Create 3D surface charts with options for contour levels, zones, a chart legend and more. 4) PDFViewer - View PDF files in Silverlight! That is just a fraction of the controls available. If you want to check out several of them in a “real” application then check out my Silverlight page at http://michaelcrump.info. This brings me to the second part of the giveaway. XAP Optimizer – Is designed to reduce the size of your XAP File. It also includes built-in obfuscation and signing. With my personal project, I decided to use the XAP Optimizer by ComponentOne. It was so easy to use. You basically give it your .XAP file and it provides an output file. If you prefer to prune unused references manually then you can prune your XAP file manually by selecting the option below. I went ahead and added Obfuscation just to try it out and it worked great. You may notice from the screenshot below that I only obfuscated assemblies that I built. The other dlls anyone can grab off the net so we have no reason to obfuscate them. You also have the option to automatically sign your .xap with the SN.exe tool. So how did it turn out? Well, I reduced my XAP size from 2.4 to 1.8 with simply a click of a button. I added obfuscation with a click of a button: Screenshot of no obfuscation on my XAP File   Screenshot of obfuscation on my XAP File with XAP Optimizer.   So, with 2 button clicks, I reduce my XAP file and obfuscated my assembly. What else can you want? Well, they provide a nice HTML report that gives you an optimization summary. So what if you don’t want to launch this tool every time you deploy a Silverlight application? Well the official documentation provided a way to do it in your built event in Visual Studio. Click the Build Events tab on the left side of the Properties window. Enter the following command in the Post-build event command line: $Program Files\ComponentOne\XapOptimizer\XapOptimizer.exe /cmd /p:$(ProjectDir)$(ProjectName).xoproj In the end, this is a great product. I love code that I don’t have to write and utilities that just work. ComponentOne delivers with both the Silverlight Controls and the XAP Optimizer. Don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win a set of the controls! Subscribe to my feed

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• Does HTML 5 &ldquo;Rich vs. Reach&rdquo; a False Choice?

  - by andrewbrust

  The competition between the Web and proprietary rich platforms, including Windows, Mac OS, iPhone/iPad, Adobe’s Flash/AIR and Microsoft’s Silverlight, is not new. But with the emergence of HTML 5 and imminent support for it in the next release of the major Web browsers, the battle is heating up. And with the announcements made Wednesday at Google's I/O conference, it's getting kicked up yet another notch. The impact of this platform battle on companies in the media and advertising world, and the developers who serve them, is significant. The most prominent question is whether video and rich media online will shift towards pure HTML and away from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. In fact, certain features in HTML 5 make it suitable for development for line of business applications as well, further threatening those plug-in technologies. So what's the deal? Is this real or hype? To answer that question, I've done my own research into HTML 5's features and talked to several media-focused, New York area developers to get their opinions. I present my findings to you in this post. Before bearing down into HTML 5 specifics and practitioners’ quotes, let's set the context. To understand what HTML 5 can do, take a look at this video of Sports Illustrated’s HTML 5 prototype. This should start to get you bought into the idea that HTML 5 could be a game-changer. Next, if you happen to have installed the beta version of Google's Chrome 5 browser, take a look at the page linked to below, and in that page, click on any of the game thumbnails to see what's possible, without a plug-in, in this brave new world. (Note, although the instructions for each game tell you to press the A key to start, press the Z key instead.). Here's the link: http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara As an adjunct to what's enabled by HTML 5, consider the various transforms that are part of CSS 3. If you're running Safari as your browser, the following link will showcase this live; if not, you'll see a bitmap that will give you an idea of what's possible: http://webkit.org/blog/386/3d-transforms Are you starting to get the picture (literally)? What has up until now required browser plug-ins and other patches to HTML, most typically Flash, will soon be renderable, natively, in all major browsers. Moreover, it's looking likely that developers will be able to deliver such content and experiences in these browsers using one base of markup and script code (using straight JavaScript and/or jQuery), without resorting to browser-specific code and workarounds. If you're skeptical of this, I wouldn't blame you, especially with respect to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. However, i can tell you with confidence that even Microsoft is dedicated to full-on HTML 5 support in version 9 of that browser, which is currently under development. So what’s new in HTML 5, specifically, that makes sites like this possible?  The specification documents go into deep detail, and there’s no sense in rehashing them here, but a summary is probably in order.   Here is a non-authoritative, but useful, list of the major new feature areas in HTML 5: 2D drawing capabilities and 3D transforms. 2D drawing instructions can be embedded statically into a Web page; application interactivity and animation can be achieved through script.  As mentioned above, 3D transforms are technically part of version 3 of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) spec, rather than HTML 5, but they can nonetheless be thought of as part of the bundle.  They allow for rendering of 3D images and animations that, together with 2D drawing, make HTML-based games much more feasible than they are presently, as the links above demonstrate. Embedded audio and video. A media player can appear directly in a rendered Web page, using HTML markup and no plug-ins. Alternately, player controls can be hidden and the content can play automatically. Major enhancements to form-based input. This includes such things as specification of required fields, embedding of text “hints” into a control, limiting valid input on a field to dates, email addresses or a list of values.  There’s more to this, but the gist is that line-of-business applications, with complicated input and data validation, are supported directly Offline caching, local storage and client-side SQL database. These facilities allow Web applications to function more like native apps, even if no internet connection is available. User-defined data. Data (or metadata – data about data) can easily be embedded statically and/or retrieved and updated with Javascript code. This avoids having to embed that data in a separate file, or within script code. Taken together, these features position HTML to compete with, and perhaps overtake, Adobe’s Flash/AIR (and Microsoft’s Silverlight) as a viable Web platform for media, RIAs (rich internet applications – apps that function more like desktop software than Web sites) and interactive Web content, including games. What do players in the media world think about this?  From the embedded video above, we know what Sports Illustrated (and, therefore, Time Warner) think.  Hulu, the major Internet site for broadcast TV content, is on record as saying HTML5 video does not pass muster with them, at least not yet.  YouTube, on the other hand, already has an experimental HTML 5-based version of their site.  TechCrunch has reported that NetFlix is flirting with HTML 5 too, especially as it pertains to embedded browsers in TV-based devices.  And the New York Times’ Web site now embeds some video clips without resorting to Flash.  They have to – otherwise iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users couldn’t see them in the Mobile Safari browser. What do media-focused developers think about all this?  I talked to several to get their opinions. Michael Pinto is CEO and Founder of Very Memorable Design whose primary focus has been to help marketing directors get traction online.  The firm’s client roster includes the likes Time, Inc., Scholastic and PBS.  Pinto predicts that “More and more microsites that were done entirely in Flash will be done more and more using jQuery. I can also see slideshows and video now being done without Flash. However if you needed to create a game or highly interactive activity Flash would still be the way to go for the web.” A dissenting view comes from Jesse Erlbaum, CEO of The Erlbaum Group, LLC, which serves numerous clients in the magazine publishing sector.  When I asked Erlbaum whether he thought HTML 5 and jQuery/JavaScript would steal significant market share from Flash, he responded “Not at all!  In particular, not for media and advertising customers!  These sectors are not generally in the business of making highly functional applications, which is the one place where HTML5/jQuery/etc really shines.” Ironically, Pinto’s firm is a heavy user of Flash for its projects and Erlbaum’s develops atop the “LAMP” (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl) stack.  For whatever reason, each firm seems to see the other’s toolset as a more viable choice.  But both agree that the developer tool story around HTML 5 is deficient.  Pinto explains “What’s lost with [HTML 5 and Javascript] techniques is that there isn’t a single widely favored easy-to-use tool of choice for authoring. So with Flash you can get up and running right away and not worry about what is different from one browser to the next.“  Erlbaum agrees, saying: “HTML5/Javascript lacks a sophisticated integrated development environment (IDE) which is an essential part of Flash.  If what someone is trying to make is primarily animation, it's a waste of time…to do this in Javascript.  It can be done much more easily in Flash, and with greater cross-browser compatibility and consistency due to the ubiquity of Flash.” Adobe (maker of Flash since its 2005 acquisition of Macromedia) likely agrees.  And for better or worse, they’ve decided to address this shortcoming of HTML 5, even at risk of diminishing their Flash platfrom. Yesterday Adobe announced that their hugely popular Deamweaver Web design authoring tool would directly support HTML 5 and CSS 3 development.  In fact, the Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 HTML5 Pack is downloadable now from Adobe Labs. Maybe Adobe is bowing to pressure from ardent Web professionals like Scott Kellum, Lead Designer at Channel V Media,  a digital and offline branding firm, serving the media and marketing sectors, among others.  Kellum told me that HTML 5 “…will definitely move people away from Flash. It has many of the same functionalities with faster load times and better accessibility. HTML5 will help Flash as well: with the new caching methods you can now even run Flash apps offline.” Although all three Web developers I interviewed would agree that Flash is still required for more sophisticated applications, Kellum seems to have put his finger on why HTML 5 may nonetheless dominate.  In his view, much of the Web development out there has little need for high-end capabilities: “Most people want to add a little punch to a navigation bar or some video and now you can get the biggest bang for your buck with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.” I’ve already mentioned that Google’s ongoing I/O conference, at the Moscone West center in San Francisco, is driving the HTML 5 news cycle, big time.  And Google made many announcements of their own, including the open sourcing of their VP8 video codec, new enterprise-oriented capabilities for its App Engine cloud offering, and the creation of the Chrome Web Store, which the company says will make it easier to find and “install” Web applications, in a fashion similar to  the way users procure native apps on various mobile platforms. HTML 5 looks to be disruptive, especially to the media world.  And even if the technology ends up disappointing, the chatter around it alone is causing big changes in the technology world.  If the richness it promises delivers, then magazine publishers and non-text digital advertisers may indeed have a platform for creating compelling content that loads quickly, is standards-based and will render identically in (the newest versions of) all major Web browsers.  Can this development in the digital arena save the titans of the print world?  I can’t predict, but it’s going to be fun to watch, and the competitive innovation from all players in both industries will likely be immense.

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• Lazy Evaluation &ndash; Why being lazy in F# blows my mind!

  - by MarkPearl

  First of all – shout out to Peter Adams – from the feedback I have gotten from him on the last few posts of F# that I have done – my mind has just been expanded. I did a blog post a few days ago about infinite sequences – I didn’t really understand what was going on with it, and I still don’t really get it – but I am getting closer. In Peter’s last comment he made mention of Lazy Evaluation. I am ashamed to say that up till then I had never heard about lazy evaluation – how can evaluation be lazy? I mean, I know about lazy loading and that makes sense… but surely something is either evaluated or not! Well… a bit of reading today and I have been enlightened to a point – if you do know of any good articles explaining lazy evaluation please send them to me. So what is lazy evaluation and why is it useful? Lazy evaluation is a process whereby the system only computes the values needed and “ignores” the computations not needed. I’m going out on a limb here, but with this explanation in hand, imagine the following C# code… public int CalculatedVal() { int Val1 = 0; int Val2 = 0; for (int Count = 0; Count < 1000000; Count++) { Val1++; } return Val2; }   Normally, even though Val1 is never needed, the system would loop 1000000 times and add 1 to the current value of Val1. Imagine if the system realized this and so just skipped this segment of code and instead did the following…. public int CalculatedVal() { int Val1 = 0; return Val2; }   A massive saving in computation and wasted effort. Now I am pretty sure it isn’t as simple as this but I think this is the basic idea. For a more detailed explanation of lazy evaluation in c#, Pedram Rezei has a wonderful post on lazy evaluation and makes some C# comparisons. I am not going to take any thunder from him by repeating everything he said since I think he did such a good job of explaining it himself. What I am interested in though is how in F# do you tell something to have lazy evalution, and how do you know if something will be eager or lazy by looking at it. I found this post was useful. From reading around F# by default uses eager evaluation unless explicitly told to use lazy evaluation. One exception to this is sequences, which are lazy by default. Now reading about lazy evaluation has helped me understand more about F# coding… From my understanding of F# because of its declarative nature, most of the actual code you are declaring properties and rules – very little code is actually saying do this right now - but when it comes to a “do this” code section, it then evaluates and optimizes code and applies the rules. So props to lazy evaluation and its optimizations…

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• Rouen Business School builds its entire back office UI with Visual WebGui

  - by Webgui

  Two years ago, Rouen Business School (AMBA accredited institution located in Rouen, Normandy, France) decided to develop and implement a proprietary information system in-house. The objective was to administer all the data encompassed by a classic 3500 Students business school: from on-line application forms to the registration system including financial information, scheduling, grades management, etc. The development team at Rouen Business School chose Visual WebGui for the UI. “When we tested the Visual WebGui solution we were really amazed and enthusiastic. It was exactly the kind of solution we were looking for… The great performance of the solution allows us to manage a large amount of information with no delay with a very positive feedback at the user end,” said Stéphane Henry the IT Project Manager of the school.   As a result of the fast development, easy deployment, performance, and professional design that the team experienced with Visual WebGui, the entire back office of Rouen Business School information system was chosen to be developed with the Visual WebGui framework “and after two years we do not see any reason to change this,” commented Stéphane Henry who added that “all the original requirements were satisfied using Visual WebGui.” You can read the full Case study here >

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• Local Events | Azure Bootcamp

  - by Jeff Julian

  Coming to Kansas City April 8th and 9th is the Microsoft Azure Bootcamp. This event looks very promising for those developers who are looking into Azure for themselves or their companies. It covers the wide range of topics required to understand what Azure really is and is not. Space is limited so if you are considering Azure, register for this event today.Agenda:Module 1: Introduction to cloud computer and AzureHow it worksKey ScenariosThe development environment and SDKModule 2: Using Web RolesBasic ASP.NETBasic configurationModule 3: Blobs: File Storage in the cloudModule 4: Tables: Scalable hierarchical storageModule 5: Queues: Decoupling your systemsModule 6: Basic Worker RolesExecuting backend processesConsuming a queueLeveraging local storageModule 7: Advanced Worker RolesExternal EndpointsInter-role communicationModule 8: Building a business with AzureUsing Azure as an ISV or a partnerAdvantages to delivering valueBPOSPricingModule 9: SQL AzureSetting it upSQL Azure firewallRemote managementMigrating dataModule 10: AppFabricService BusAccess Control SystemIdentity in the cloudModule 11: Cloud ScenariosApp migration strategiesDisposable computingDynamic scaleShuntingPrototypingMultitenant applications (This is my second attempt at this post after MacJournal decided to crash and not save my work. Authoring tools all need auto-save features by now, that is a requirement set in stone by Microsoft Word 97) Related Tags: Azure, Microsoft, Kansas City

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• Increase Font Size of CHM files

  - by Rohit Gupta

  This may be the way to do it: 1. From the CHM Menu click Options 2. Click Internet Options 3. From Internet Options window click Accessibility button 4. Check box Ignore font styles specified on Web pages 5. Check box Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages 6. Click OK 7. Click Fonts button and select the font you want 8. Click OK That's it.

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• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging  - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with  > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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• Silverlight Cream for May 05, 2010 -- #856

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Jeremy Alles(-2-), Kunal Chowdhury, anand iyer, Yochay Kiriaty(-2-, -3-), Max Paulousky, David Kelley, smartyP, Tim Heuer, and Dan Wahlin. Shoutout: Tim Heuer provides links for all the Ways to give feedback on Silverlight From SilverlightCream.com: [WP7] Bug when using NavigationService in Windows Phone 7 Jeremy Alles has blogged about a bug he found using the Navigation service in WP7. He gives the steps to reproduce and a couple possible workarounds. [WP7] Using the camera in the emulator Jeremy Alles is also digging into the camera functionality in the emulator. He has code demonstrating launching a camera task, and a list of other tasks available. Silverlight Tutorials Chapter 3: Introduction to Panels Kunal Chowdhury has Chapter 3 of his Silverlight 4 Tutorial series up and he's talking about Panels this time out. Push Notifications in Windows Phone 7 developer tools CTP April Refresh anand iyer is discussing the Push Notifications, only from a code perspective. Good information and good additional links to follow. Windows Phone Application Life Cycle Yochay Kiriaty talks with Tudor Toma and Jaime Rodriguez about the WP7 application lifecycle on Channel 9. Understanding Microsoft Push Notifications for Windows Phones Yochay Kiriaty has a 2-part post up on WP7 Push Notifications. The first part is explaining what Push Notifications are and why we need them... as a developer and as an end user viewing Toast or Tile notifications. Understanding How Microsoft Push Notification Works – Part 2 In the 2nd part of his Push Notification series, Yochay Kiriaty discusses how the Push Notification works under the covers. To Remember: Deployment of Silverlight Applications With Wcf Ria Services Max Paulousky has a post up for reference on what to look into when you get "Load Operation Failed" in WCF RIA services. Launching a URL from an OOB Silverlight Application David Kelley has a quick post up on launching URLs from an OOB app. If you haven't tried it, you may be surprised as he was at first. Creating a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game in Landscape Orientation smartyP is looking at recreating a landscape WP7 game in XNA and is detailing some of the issues he's been dealing with, and is also sharing a project file. New Silverlight 4 Themes available–get the raw bits Tim Heuer provided 'raw' versions of 3 new themes. Read his post to see exactly what he means by 'raw' ... they're definitely good looking, and are going to get a lot of play. Handling WCF Service Paths in Silverlight 4 – Relative Path Support Dan Wahlin shares his technique for avoiding the pain involved with ServiceReferences.ClientConfig by using Silverlight 4 relative path support. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Release Management as Orchestra

  - by ericajanine

  I read an excellent, concise article (http://www.buildmeister.com/articles/software_release_management_best_practices) on the basics of release management practices. In the article, it states "Release Management is often likened to the conductor of an orchestra, with the individual changes to be implemented the various instruments within it." I played in music ensembles for years, so this is especially close to my heart as example. I learned most of my discipline from hours and hours of practice at the hand of a very skilled conductor and leader. I also learned that the true magic in symphonic performance is one where everyone involved is focused on one sound, one goal. In turn, that solid focus creates a sound and experience bigger than just mechanics alone accomplish. In symphony, a conductor's true purpose is to make you, a performer, better so the overall sound and end product is better. The big picture (the performance of the composition) is the end-game, and all musicians in the orchestra know without question their part makes up an important but incomplete piece of that performance. A good conductor works with each section (e.g. group) to ensure their individual pieces are solid. Let's restate: The conductor leads and is responsible for ensuring those pieces are solid. While the performers themselves are doing the work, the conductor is the final authority on when the pieces are ready or not. If not, the conductor initiates the efforts to get them ready or makes the decision to scrap their parts altogether for the sake of an overall performance. Let it sink in, because it's clear--It is not the performer's call if they play their part as agreed, it's the conductor's final call to allow it. In comparison, if a software release manager is a conductor, the only way for that manager to be effective is to drive the overarching process and execution of individual pieces of a software development lifecycle. It does not mean the release manager performs each and every piece, it means the release manager has oversight and influence because the end-game is a successful software enhancin a useable environment. It means the release manager, not the developer or development manager, has the final call if something goes into a software release. Of course, this is not a process of autocracy or dictation of absolute rule, it's cooperative effort. But the release manager must have the final authority to make a decision if something is ready to be added to the bigger piece, the overall symphony of software changes being considered for package and release. It also goes without saying a release manager, like a conductor, must have full autonomy and isolation from other software groups. A conductor is the one on the podium waving a little stick at the each section and cueing them for their parts, not yelling from the back of the room while also playing a tuba and taking direction from the horn section. I have personally seen where release managers are relegated to being considered little more than coordinators, red-tapers to "satisfy" the demands of an audit group without being bothered to actually respect all that a release manager gives a group willing to employ them fully. In this dysfunctional scenario, development managers, project managers, business users, and other stakeholders have been given nearly full clearance to demand and push their agendas forward, causing a tail-wagging-the-dog scenario where an inherent conflict will ensue. Depending on the strength, determination for peace, and willingness to overlook a built-in expectation that is wrong, the release manager here must face the crafted conflict head-on and diffuse it as quickly as possible. Then, the release manager must clearly make a case why a change cannot be released without negative impact to all parties involved. If a political agenda is solely driving a software release, there IS no symphony, there is no "software lifecycle". It's just out-of-tune noise. More importantly, there is no real conductor. Sometimes, just wanting to make a beautiful sound is not enough. If you are a release manager, are you freed up enough to move, to conduct the sections of software creation to ensure a solid release performance is possible? If not, it's time to take stock in what your role actually is and see if that is what you truly want to achieve in your position. If you are, then you can successfully build your career and that of the people in your groups to create truly beautiful software (music) together.

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• My New BDD Style

  - by Liam McLennan

  I have made a change to my code-based BDD style. I start with a scenario such as: Pre-Editing * Given I am a book editor * And some chapters are locked and some are not * When I view the list of chapters for editing * Then I should see some chapters are editable and are not locked * And I should see some chapters are not editable and are locked and I implement it using a modified SpecUnit base class as: [Concern("Chapter Editing")] public class when_pre_editing_a_chapter : BaseSpec { private User i; // other context variables protected override void Given() { i_am_a_book_editor(); some_chapters_are_locked_and_some_are_not(); } protected override void Do() { i_view_the_list_of_chapters_for_editing(); } private void i_am_a_book_editor() { i = new UserBuilder().WithUsername("me").WithRole(UserRole.BookEditor).Build(); } private void some_chapters_are_locked_and_some_are_not() { } private void i_view_the_list_of_chapters_for_editing() { } [Observation] public void should_see_some_chapters_are_editable_and_are_not_locked() { } [Observation] public void should_see_some_chapters_are_not_editable_and_are_locked() { } } and the output from the specunit report tool is: Chapter Editing specifications    1 context, 2 specifications Chapter Editing, when pre editing a chapter    2 specifications should see some chapters are editable and are not locked should see some chapters are not editable and are locked The intent is to provide a clear mapping from story –> scenarios –> bdd tests.

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• Using the Static Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio (Premium/Ultimate) to find memory leakage problems

  - by terje

  Memory for managed code is handled by the garbage collector, but if you use any kind of unmanaged code, like native resources of any kind, open files, streams and window handles, your application may leak memory if these are not properly handled.  To handle such resources the classes that own these in your application should implement the IDisposable interface, and preferably implement it according to the pattern described for that interface. When you suspect a memory leak, the immediate impulse would be to start up a memory profiler and start digging into that.   However, before you follow that impulse, do a Static Code Analysis run with a ruleset tuned to finding possible memory leaks in your code.  If you get any warnings from this, fix them before you go on with the profiling. How to use a ruleset In Visual Studio 2010 (Premium and Ultimate editions) you can define your own rulesets containing a list of Static Code Analysis checks.   I have defined the memory checks as shown in the lists below as ruleset files, which can be downloaded – see bottom of this post.  When you get them, you can easily attach them to every project in your solution using the Solution Properties dialog. Right click the solution, and choose Properties at the bottom, or use the Analyze menu and choose “Configure Code Analysis for Solution”: In this dialog you can now choose the Memorycheck ruleset for every project you want to investigate.  Pressing Apply or Ok opens every project file and changes the projects code analysis ruleset to the one we have specified here. How to define your own ruleset  (skip this if you just download my predefined rulesets) If you want to define the ruleset yourself, open the properties on any project, choose Code Analysis tab near the bottom, choose any ruleset in the drop box and press Open Clear out all the rules by selecting “Source Rule Sets” in the Group By box, and unselect the box Change the Group By box to ID, and select the checks you want to include from the lists below. Note that you can change the action for each check to either warning, error or none, none being the same as unchecking the check.   Now go to the properties window and set a new name and description for your ruleset. Then save (File/Save as) the ruleset using the new name as its name, and use it for your projects as detailed above. It can also be wise to add the ruleset to your solution as a solution item. That way it’s there if you want to enable Code Analysis in some of your TFS builds.   Running the code analysis In Visual Studio 2010 you can either do your code analysis project by project using the context menu in the solution explorer and choose “Run Code Analysis”, you can define a new solution configuration, call it for example Debug (Code Analysis), in for each project here enable the Enable Code Analysis on Build   In Visual Studio Dev-11 it is all much simpler, just go to the Solution root in the Solution explorer, right click and choose “Run code analysis on solution”.     The ruleset checks The following list is the essential and critical memory checks.  CheckID Message Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1001 Types that own disposable fields should be disposable No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182172.aspx CA1049 Types that own native resources should be disposable Only if the pointers assumed to point to unmanaged resources point to something else  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182173.aspx CA1063 Implement IDisposable correctly No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244737.aspx CA2000 Dispose objects before losing scope No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182289.aspx CA2115 1 Call GC.KeepAlive when using native resources See description  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182300.aspx CA2213 Disposable fields should be disposed If you are not responsible for release, of if Dispose occurs at deeper level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182328.aspx CA2215 Dispose methods should call base class dispose Only if call to base happens at deeper calling level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182330.aspx CA2216 Disposable types should declare a finalizer Only if type does not implement IDisposable for the purpose of releasing unmanaged resources  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182329.aspx CA2220 Finalizers should call base class finalizers No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182341.aspx Notes: 1) Does not result in memory leak, but may cause the application to crash   The list below is a set of optional checks that may be enabled for your ruleset, because the issues these points too often happen as a result of attempting to fix up the warnings from the first set.   ID Message Type of fault Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1060 Move P/invokes to NativeMethods class Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182161.aspx CA1816 Call GC.SuppressFinalize correctly Performance Sometimes, see description http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182269.aspx CA1821 Remove empty finalizers Performance No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264476.aspx CA2004 Remove calls to GC.KeepAlive Performance and maintainability Only if not technically correct to convert to SafeHandle http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182293.aspx CA2006 Use SafeHandle to encapsulate native resources Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182294.aspx CA2202 Do not dispose of objects multiple times Exception (System.ObjectDisposedException) No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182334.aspx CA2205 Use managed equivalents of Win32 API Maintainability and complexity Only if the replace doesn’t provide needed functionality http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182365.aspx CA2221 Finalizers should be protected Incorrect implementation, only possible in MSIL coding No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182340.aspx   Downloadable ruleset definitions I have defined three rulesets, one called Inmeta.Memorycheck with the rules in the first list above, and Inmeta.Memorycheck.Optionals containing the rules in the second list, and the last one called Inmeta.Memorycheck.All containing the sum of the two first ones.  All three rulesets can be found in the  zip archive  “Inmeta.Memorycheck” downloadable from here.   Links to some other resources relevant to Static Code Analysis MSDN Magazine Article by Mickey Gousset on Static Code Analysis in VS2010 MSDN :  Analyzing Managed Code Quality by Using Code Analysis, root of the documentation for this Preventing generated code from being analyzed using attributes Online training course on Using Code Analysis with VS2010 Blogpost by Tatham Oddie on custom code analysis rules How to write custom rules, from Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog

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• Sevensteps and I are joining forces

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  As of today, I will be partnering with Sevensteps when it comes to developing great Surface, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 7 Touch applications. Below you’ll find the press release we sent out today. I am looking forward to this partnership and expect great things coming from us both in the future!   Dennis Vroegop, Microsoft MVP, joins Sevensteps partner network 1 March 2011, Seattle / Amersfoort Today Dennis Vroegop and Bart Roozendaal, both Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Microsoft Surface, announce the joining of Dennis Vroegop to the Sevensteps partner network. Dennis and Bart already worked together very closely through the Microsoft MVP connection, but decided to combined their efforts to make the new Microsoft Surface and our solutions for it, a success. Dennis will join the other Sevensteps partners in creating state of the art solutions for Microsoft Surface, Windows Phone 7 and Windows 7 Touch. Dennis brings a vast amount of knowledge about these technologies, as well as his network in the Dutch developer community. With Dennis joining the Sevensteps partner network we bring unique expertise, power and insight in the platforms, that no other company worldwide can offer. This step brings our goal of Sevensteps being the knowledge hub for Microsoft Surface of choice a whole lot closer. About Dennis Vroegop Dennis is a Microsoft MVP for Microsoft Surface and chairman of the Dutch dotNed user group. He has a long history promoting Microsoft Surface in the developer community. Dennis is a regular speaker at local and international conferences and a frequent writer of articles, including but not limited to Microsoft Surface. Dennis has a bachelor’s degree in computer sciences and has spent all of his professional life writing software for the Microsoft platform. About Sevensteps For more information about Sevensteps and Bart Roozendaal please point to http://www.sevensteps.com Tags: surface,wp7,windows touch

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• Silverlight Cream for June 03, 2010 -- #875

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Ben Hodson, Fons Sonnemans, SilverLaw, Mike Snow, John Papa, René Schulte, Walt Ritscher, and David Anson. Shoutouts: René Schulte announced a whole batch of new features for WriteableBitmap that are now available: Filled To The Bursting Point - WriteableBitmapEx 0.9.5.0 Check out John Papa's Sticky Seesmic Desktop Plugin ... download it, play with it... he's going to blog about building plugins later Tim Heuer reported a Silverlight 4 minor update–June 2010 Erik Mork and Crew have a new Podcast up: This Week in Silverlight: Redmond Exodus? From SilverlightCream.com: Tutorial for Configuring Silverlight 4, Entity Framework and WCF RIA Services in Separate Component Assemblies (DLL’s) Ben Hodson is a new author(to me) that submitted his post at SilverlightCream.com... this is a good-looking tutorial on configuring separate component assemblies for all your project pieces. SpiralText in Silverlight 4 Fons Sonnemans had a good time playing with the PathListBox in Blend and produced a demo of text on a Spiral... you can run it right on the post, then grab the code. How To: Starting A Storyboard Not Before The Application Has Completed Loading - Silverlight 4 SilverLaw takes a look at the problem of having a Storyboard start too early, and demonstrates code to avoid the problem. Silverlight Tip of the Day#27 – Displaying Special Characters in XAML Mike Snow's latest Tip of the day is on encoding 'special' characters for use in XAML... simple looking at it, frustrating to debug if you don't do it right. Diving into the RichTextBox (Silverlight TV #31) John Papa talks about the RichTextBox with Mark Rideout in this edition of Silverlight TV. Mark provides a great video tutorial for the control. Push and Pull - Silverlight Webcam Capturing Details Boy, René Schulte doesn't slow down does he?... his latest is (in his words from a section heading) "Silverlight Webcam 101" ... and he means it... this is one to save to OneNote or as a PDF! Looking for Silverlight BiDi or RTL? Use the FlowDirection property If you need RTL or BiDi in Silverlight and you haven't checked it out yet, Walt Ritscher has a nice intro up on using the FlowDirection property, with demos and code. How to: Show text labels on a numeric axis with Silverlight/WPF Toolkit Charting David Anson has another charting puzzle resolved on his site... putting text labels on the dependent axis. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: Rolling with Razor in MVC v3 Preview

  - by mbridge

  Razor is an alternate view engine for asp.net MVC.  It was introduced in the “WebMatrix” tool and has now been released as part of the asp.net MVC 3 preview 1.  Basically, Razor allows us to replace the clunky <% %> syntax with a much cleaner coding model, which integrates very nicely with HTML.  Additionally, it provides some really nice features for master page type scenarios and you don’t lose access to any of the features you are currently familiar with, such as HTML helper methods. First, download and install the ASP.NET MVC Preview 1.  You can find this at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=cb42f741-8fb1-4f43-a5fa-812096f8d1e8&displaylang=en. Now, follow these steps to create your first asp.net mvc project using Razor: 1. Open Visual Studio 2010 2. Create a new project.  Select File->New->Project (Shift Control N) 3. You will see the list of project types which should look similar to what’s shown:   4. Select “ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Application (Razor).”  Set the application name to RazorTest and the path to c:projectsRazorTest for this tutorial. If you select accidently select ASPX, you will end up with the standard asp.net view engine and template, which isn’t what you want. 5. For this tutorial, and ONLY for this tutorial, select “No, do not create a unit test project.”  In general, you should create and use a unit test project.  Code without unit tests is kind of like diet ice cream.  It just isn’t very good. Now, once we have this done, our brand new project will be created.    In all likelihood, Visual Studio will leave you looking at the “HomeController.cs” class, as shown below: Immediately, you should notice one difference.  The Index action used to look like: public ActionResult Index () { ViewData[“Message”] = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } While this will still compile and run just fine, ASP.Net MVC 3 has a much nicer way of doing this: public ActionResult Index() { ViewModel.Message = “Welcome to ASP.Net MVC!”; Return View(); } Instead of using ViewData we are using the new ViewModel object, which uses the new dynamic data typing of .Net 4.0 to allow us to express ourselves much more cleanly.  This isn’t a tutorial on ALL of MVC 3, but the ViewModel concept is one we will need as we dig into Razor. What comes in the box? When we create a project using the ASP.Net MVC 3 Template with Razor, we get a standard project setup, just like we did in ASP.NET MVC 2.0 but with some differences.  Instead of seeing “.aspx” view files and “.ascx” files, we see files with the “.cshtml” which is the default razor extension.  Before we discuss the details of a razor file, one thing to keep in mind is that since this is an extremely early preview, intellisense is not currently enabled with the razor view engine.  This is promised as an updated before the final release.  Just like with the aspx view engine, the convention of the folder name for a set of views matching the controller name without the word “Controller” still stands.  Similarly, each action in the controller will usually have a corresponding view file in the appropriate view directory.  Remember, in asp.net MVC, convention over configuration is key to successful development! The initial template organizes views in the following folders, located in the project under Views: - Account – The default account management views used by the Account controller.  Each file represents a distinct view. - Home – Views corresponding to the appropriate actions within the home controller. - Shared – This contains common view objects used by multiple views.  Within here, master pages are stored, as well as partial page views (user controls).  By convention, these partial views are named “_XXXPartial.cshtml” where XXX is the appropriate name, such as _LogonPartial.cshtml.  Additionally, display templates are stored under here. With this in mind, let us take a look at the index.cshtml file under the home view directory.  When you open up index.cshtml you should see 1:   @inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage 2:  @{ 3:          View.Title = "Home Page"; 4:       LayoutPage = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; 5:   } 6:  <h2>@View.Message</h2> 7:  <p> 8:     To learn more about ASP.NET MVC visit <a href="http://asp.net/mvc" title="ASP.NET MVC     9:    Website">http://asp.net/mvc</a>. 10:  </p> So looking through this, we observe the following facts: Line 1 imports the base page that all views (using Razor) are based on, which is System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage.  Note that this is different than System.Web.MVC.ViewPage which is used by asp.net MVC 2.0 Also note that instead of the <% %> syntax, we use the very simple ‘@’ sign.  The View Engine contains enough context sensitive logic that it can even distinguish between @ in code and @ in an email.  It’s a very clean markup.  Line 2 introduces the idea of a code block in razor.  A code block is a scoping mechanism just like it is in a normal C# class.  It is designated by @{… }  and any C# code can be placed in between.  Note that this is all server side code just like it is when using the aspx engine and <% %>.  Line 3 allows us to set the page title in the client page’s file.  This is a new feature which I’ll talk more about when we get to master pages, but it is another of the nice things razor brings to asp.net mvc development. Line 4 is where we specify our “master” page, but as you can see, you can place it almost anywhere you want, because you tell it where it is located.  A Layout Page is similar to a master page, but it gains a bit when it comes to flexibility.  Again, we’ll come back to this in a later installment.  Line 6 and beyond is where we display the contents of our view.  No more using <%: %> intermixed with code.  Instead, we get to use very clean syntax such as @View.Message.  This is a lot easier to read than <%:@View.Message%> especially when intermixed with html.  For example: <p> My name is @View.Name and I live at @View.Address </p> Compare this to the equivalent using the aspx view engine <p> My name is <%:View.Name %> and I live at <%: View.Address %> </p> While not an earth shaking simplification, it is easier on the eyes.  As  we explore other features, this clean markup will become more and more valuable.

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• Changing Focus on my Blog

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I try to limit these types of blog posts – the ones where I communicate some change as if I have a loyal subscriber base that will be somehow affected. Still, I think its of worth if for nothing else than to document for myself an acknowledgement that my career is evolving. For the last who knows how long, I’ve had this as my banner: It’s funny how technology focuses change over time. 3.5 – 4 years ago I was wanting to immerse myself in BizTalk. Then I shifted, focussing on Silverlight. I even started a short-lived Silverlight user group here in Winnipeg that had, IMO, one of the *best* UG logos ever (do a Google search for the old school Winnipeg Jets logo if you don’t catch the reference)… And even how I identified myself – as a Developer – isn’t really accurate anymore as I’ve shifted more into an architect/analyst role at Online Business Systems as well as getting much more involved in business development. So I’m switching the focus of this blog a bit. Nothing too great, but you’ll find my posts aren’t necessarily tied to a technology or platform. Instead I’ll be focussing on current passions and interests. Solution Architecture Before a line of code is written, a solution is envisioned. The process of performing solution analysis and architecture is an intriguing process that encompasses negotiation and interpersonal skills as much as technical knowledge. Business & Entrepreneurship Creating things, building things, and working with others – business is fascinating and exciting! Entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship, are growing trends that I’ve been exploring over the last few years through my conference (www.prairiedevcon.com) and within Online. Microsoft At Online one of my roles is “Microsoft Practice Lead” and my entire career has been built around the Microsoft stack of technologies. That focus won’t change here on my blog, and there’s tonnes of exciting new products and technologies coming out of Redmond. Adoption This is a very personal subject that’s extremely close to my heart. I’m not talking about technology adoption, I’m talking about human adoption. Almost three years ago we adopted our first daughter, Sadie, and two years ago we adopted our second daughter, Skylar; an amazing new chapter in my life as I became a “parent”. Adoption is very much misunderstood, and many people have questions about it. Hopefully I can shed some light into our experiences and provide some guidance for those that are looking into it. So come along with me as I start chronicling the next phase of my career and life.

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• Visual Studio ALM MVP of the Year 2011

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  For some reason this year some of my peers decided to vote for me as a contender for Visual Studio ALM MVP of the year. I am not sure what I did to deserve this, but a number of people have commented that I have a rather useful blog. I feel wholly unworthy to join the ranks of previous winners: Ed Blankenship (2010) Martin Woodward (2009) Thank you to everyone who voted regardless of who you voted for. If there was a prize for the best group of MVP’s then the Visual Studio ALM MVP would be a clear winner, as would the product group of product groups that is Visual Studio ALM Group. To use a phrase that I have learned since moving to Seattle and probably use too much: you guys are all just awesome. I have tried my best in the last year to document not only every problem that I have had with Team Foundation Server (TFS), but also to document as many of the things I am doing as possible. I have taken some of Adam Cogan’s rules to heart and when a customer asks me a question I always blog the answer and send them a link. This allows both my blog and my understanding of TFS to grow while creating a useful bank of content. The idea is that if one customer asks, all benefit. I try, when writing for my blog, to capture both the essence and the context for a problem being solved. This allows more people to benefit as they do not need to understand the specifics of an environment to gain value. I have a number of goals for this year that I think will help increase value in the community: persuade my new colleagues at Northwest Cadence to do more blogging (Steve, Jeff, Shad and Rennie) Rangers Project – TFS Iteration Automation with Willy-Peter Schaub, Bill Essary, Martin Hinshelwood, Mike Fourie, Jeff Bramwell and Brian Blackman Write a book on the Team Foundation Server API with Willy-Peter Schaub, Mike Fourie and Jeff Bramwell write more useful blog posts I do not think that these things are beyond the realms of do-ability, but we will see…

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• Why Standards Only Get You So Far

  - by Tim Murphy

  Over the years I have been exposed to a number of standards.  EDI was the first.  More recently it has been the CIECA standard for Insurance and now the embattled document standards of Open XML and ODF. Standards actually came up at the last CAG meeting.  The debate was over how effective they really are.  Even back in the late 80’s to early 90’s people found they had to customize these standards to get any work done.  I even had one vendor about a year ago tell me that they really weren’t standards, they were more of a guideline. The problem is that standards are created either by committee or by companies trying to sell a product.  They never fit all situations.  This is why most of them leave extension points in their definition.  Of course if you use those extension points everyone has to have custom code to know how to consume the new product. Standards increase reliability but they stifle innovation and slow the time to market cycle of products.  In this age of ever shortening windows of opportunity that could mean that a company could lose its competitive advantage. I believe that standards are not only good, but essential.  I also believe that they are not a silver bullet.  People who turn competing standards into a type of holy war are really missing the point.  I think we should make the best standards we can, whether that is for a product so that customers can use API, or by committee so that they cross products.  But they also need to be as feature rich and flexible as possible.  They can’t be just the lowest common denominator since this type of standard will be broken the day it is published.  In the end though, it is the market will vote with their dollars. del.icio.us Tags: Office Open XML,ODF,Standards,EDI

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• Caching NHibernate Named Queries

  - by TStewartDev

  I recently started a new job and one of my first tasks was to implement a "popular products" design. The parameters were that it be done with NHibernate and be cached for 24 hours at a time because the query will be pretty taxing and the results do not need to be constantly up to date. This ended up being tougher than it sounds. The database schema meant a minimum of four joins with filtering and ordering criteria. I decided to use a stored procedure rather than letting NHibernate create the SQL for me. Here is a summary of what I learned (even if I didn't ultimately use all of it): You can't, at the time of this writing, use Fluent NHibernate to configure SQL named queries or imports You can return persistent entities from a stored procedure and there are a couple ways to do that You can populate POCOs using the results of a stored procedure, but it isn't quite as obvious You can reuse your named query result mapping other places (avoid duplication) Caching your query results is not at all obvious Testing to see if your cache is working is a pain NHibernate does a lot of things right. Having unified, up-to-date, comprehensive, and easy-to-find documentation is not one of them. By the way, if you're new to this, I'll use the terms "named query" and "stored procedure" (from NHibernate's perspective) fairly interchangeably. Technically, a named query can execute any SQL, not just a stored procedure, and a stored procedure doesn't have to be executed from a named query, but for reusability, it seems to me like the best practice. If you're here, chances are good you're looking for answers to a similar problem. You don't want to read about the path, you just want the result. So, here's how to get this thing going. The Stored Procedure NHibernate has some guidelines when using stored procedures. For Microsoft SQL Server, you have to return a result set. The scalar value that the stored procedure returns is ignored as are any result sets after the first. Other than that, it's nothing special. CREATE PROCEDURE GetPopularProducts @StartDate DATETIME, @MaxResults INT AS BEGIN SELECT [ProductId], [ProductName], [ImageUrl] FROM SomeTableWithJoinsEtc END The Result Class - PopularProduct You have two options to transport your query results to your view (or wherever is the final destination): you can populate an existing mapped entity class in your model, or you can create a new entity class. If you go with the existing model, the advantage is that the query will act as a loader and you'll get full proxied access to the domain model. However, this can be a disadvantage if you require access to the related entities that aren't loaded by your results. For example, my PopularProduct has image references. Unless I tie them into the query (thus making it even more complicated and expensive to run), they'll have to be loaded on access, requiring more trips to the database. Since we're trying to avoid trips to the database by using a second-level cache, we should use the second option, which is to create a separate entity for results. This approach is (I believe) in the spirit of the Command-Query Separation principle, and it allows us to flatten our data and optimize our report-generation process from data source to view. public class PopularProduct { public virtual int ProductId { get; set; } public virtual string ProductName { get; set; } public virtual string ImageUrl { get; set; } } The NHibernate Mappings (hbm) Next up, we need to let NHibernate know about the query and where the results will go. Below is the markup for the PopularProduct class. Notice that I'm using the <resultset> element and that it has a name attribute. The name allows us to drop this into our query map and any others, giving us reusability. Also notice the <import> element which lets NHibernate know about our entity class. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <import class="PopularProduct, Infrastructure.NHibernate, Version=1.0.0.0"/> <resultset name="PopularProductResultSet"> <return-scalar column="ProductId" type="System.Int32"/> <return-scalar column="ProductName" type="System.String"/> <return-scalar column="ImageUrl" type="System.String"/> </resultset> </hibernate-mapping>  And now the PopularProductsMap: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2"> <sql-query name="GetPopularProducts" resultset-ref="PopularProductResultSet" cacheable="true" cache-mode="normal"> <query-param name="StartDate" type="System.DateTime" /> <query-param name="MaxResults" type="System.Int32" /> exec GetPopularProducts @StartDate = :StartDate, @MaxResults = :MaxResults </sql-query> </hibernate-mapping>  The two most important things to notice here are the resultset-ref attribute, which links in our resultset mapping, and the cacheable attribute. The Query Class – PopularProductsQuery So far, this has been fairly obvious if you're familiar with NHibernate. This next part, maybe not so much. You can implement your query however you want to; for me, I wanted a self-encapsulated Query class, so here's what it looks like: public class PopularProductsQuery : IPopularProductsQuery { private static readonly IResultTransformer ResultTransformer; private readonly ISessionBuilder _sessionBuilder;   static PopularProductsQuery() { ResultTransformer = Transformers.AliasToBean<PopularProduct>(); }   public PopularProductsQuery(ISessionBuilder sessionBuilder) { _sessionBuilder = sessionBuilder; }   public IList<PopularProduct> GetPopularProducts(DateTime startDate, int maxResults) { var session = _sessionBuilder.GetSession(); var popularProducts = session .GetNamedQuery("GetPopularProducts") .SetCacheable(true) .SetCacheRegion("PopularProductsCacheRegion") .SetCacheMode(CacheMode.Normal) .SetReadOnly(true) .SetResultTransformer(ResultTransformer) .SetParameter("StartDate", startDate.Date) .SetParameter("MaxResults", maxResults) .List<PopularProduct>();   return popularProducts; } }  Okay, so let's look at each line of the query execution. The first, GetNamedQuery, matches up with our NHibernate mapping for the sql-query. Next, we set it as cacheable (this is probably redundant since our mapping also specified it, but it can't hurt, right?). Then we set the cache region which we'll get to in the next section. Set the cache mode (optional, I believe), and my cache is read-only, so I set that as well. The result transformer is very important. This tells NHibernate how to transform your query results into a non-persistent entity. You can see I've defined ResultTransformer in the static constructor using the AliasToBean transformer. The name is obviously leftover from Java/Hibernate. Finally, set your parameters and then call a result method which will execute the query. Because this is set to cached, you execute this statement every time you run the query and NHibernate will know based on your parameters whether to use its cached version or a fresh version. The Configuration – hibernate.cfg.xml and Web.config You need to explicitly enable second-level caching in your hibernate configuration: <hibernate-configuration xmlns="urn:nhibernate-configuration-2.2"> <session-factory> [...] <property name="dialect">NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2005Dialect</property> <property name="cache.provider_class">NHibernate.Caches.SysCache.SysCacheProvider,NHibernate.Caches.SysCache</property> <property name="cache.use_query_cache">true</property> <property name="cache.use_second_level_cache">true</property> [...] </session-factory> </hibernate-configuration> Both properties "use_query_cache" and "use_second_level_cache" are necessary. As this is for a web deployement, we're using SysCache which relies on ASP.NET's caching. Be aware of this if you're not deploying to the web! You'll have to use a different cache provider. We also need to tell our cache provider (in this cache, SysCache) about our caching region: <syscache> <cache region="PopularProductsCacheRegion" expiration="86400" priority="5" /> </syscache> Here I've set the cache to be valid for 24 hours. This XML snippet goes in your Web.config (or in a separate file referenced by Web.config, which helps keep things tidy). The Payoff That should be it! At this point, your queries should run once against the database for a given set of parameters and then use the cache thereafter until it expires. You can, of course, adjust settings to work in your particular environment. Testing Testing your application to ensure it is using the cache is a pain, but if you're like me, you want to know that it's actually working. It's a bit involved, though, so I'll create a separate post for it if comments indicate there is interest.

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• What personality is that blog --- typealyzer

  - by Rohit Gupta

  Came across this interesting site that tells the personality of the blog. The site is : http://typealyzer.com/index.php?lang=en Here is what it said about my blog :

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• Microsoft Report Viewer 2010 Redistributable&hellip;

  - by Dave Noderer

  Ok, honestly, I’m posting this so I can find it when I need it but Visual Studio 2010 uses a new report viewer that is compatible with .net 4.0. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A941C6B2-64DD-4D03-9CA7-4017A0D164FD&displaylang=en Bill McCarthy has some complaints (and a work around): http://msmvps.com/blogs/bill/archive/2010/04/19/upgrading-report-applications-to-4-0.aspx

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• It seems another season of previews is upon us

  - by Enrique Lima

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/enriquelima/archive/2013/06/26/it-seems-another-season-of-previews-is-upon-us.aspxThe past couple of weeks have been packed with teasers and updates. But here they go. Visual Studio Update 3: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=39305 Visual Studio 2013 and TFS 2013 Preview: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/eng/2013-downloads SQL Server 2014 CTP1 : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dn205290.aspx Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dn205286.aspx Windows 8.1 : http://preview.windows.com

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• Virtual Brown Bag Recap: FancyHands, CanCan, 1KB XMas Tree, YouTube Yuks

  - by Brian Schroer

  At this week's Virtual Brown Bag meeting: Claudio has some one-month Evernote premium accounts to give away Claudio & George talked about FancyHands, the 4-hour work week, and paying people to do the stuff you don't want to JB shared more Ruby gems: cancan and open and talked about insert and other Ruby Enumerable functions We looked at the winner of the 1KB JavaScript Christmas contest and some fun YouTube videos For detailed notes, links, and the video recording, go to the VBB wiki page: https://sites.google.com/site/vbbwiki/main_page/2010-12-23

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