How To


6 Top Tips for Visual Studio 2013

Visual Studio 2013 has many new features; which ones are the most important? Here are the first six that promise to improve your productivity the greatest (more coming next month!)

Offloading Work from Your Application with a Queue

Sometimes you can improve your application's response time by shunting some activities to offline processing -- sending an e-mail response, for instance. Here's how to use Microsoft Message Queue (available on both your development and production computers) to simplify the process.

Using SQLite with Modern C++

Incorporate the free database library with these easy, step-by-step directions.

Creating Custom ASP.NET MVC Filters

ASP.NET MVC filters can be defined once and used in multiple places. Because ASP.NET MVC also provides the ability to create custom filters, it's good practice to learn how to make them and use them in your own projects.

Regular Expressions, Part 2: Positioning and More

Like riding a bike, knowledge of regular expressions will stay with you forever, allowing you to manipulate text quickly and easily. In this part of the series, Ondrej focuses in on groups, positioning and tools.

Strategies and Code for Creating Fluent APIs

There are numerous ways to implement a fluent API, depending on the degree of control you want to maintain over the API, how many classes you want to be able to use it with, and how you want to extend your API. Here are your options.

Xamarin How-To: Controls for Navigating Between Screens in iOS

Wally walks you through the two controls you can use to easily navigate your iOS apps.

Integrating the Client and the Server with TypeScript

Peter walks through a simple Web page that retrieves and updates data on the server to summarize his best practices for creating the client-side portion of an ASP.NET application.

How To Standardize Data for Neural Networks

Understanding data encoding and normalization is an absolutely essential skill when working with neural networks. James McCaffrey walks you through what you need to know to get started.

Tracking Your Windows Phone App Analytics with VSO's Application Insights

Nick Randolph walks through adding analytics to your Windows Phone application using Application Insights for Visual Studio Online.

Regular Expressions: Not as Tricky as They May Seem

Regular expressions are like power tools: They may look scary, but are easy to use once you understand their basic building blocks.

Best Practices for Designing a Fluent API

You can't "grow" a fluent API; you need to understand how developers will need (and expect) to use your API. Here's a case study of what the design process for a fluent API looks like.

Managing Client-Side Objects Using TypeScript: It's a Breeze

Once you've delivered server-side objects to your client, you're going to need to manage them. Here's how to integrate a powerful client-side (and server-side) object manager into your application using TypeScript.

HTTP Basics for REST-Based App Development

Go inside the protocol that's the backbone for today's modern, cloud-based applications.

Creating Useful Naming Conventions: Business Considerations

Peter continues to look at the value of imposing naming conventions on developers; but this time, he looks at the benefits related to understanding the business problem, as well as why flexibility is crucial.

JavaScript Unit Testing with Visual Studio

Mark Michaelis walks you through the Visual Studio tooling and project setup you'll need to get the most out of your JavaScript unit testing.

Neural Network Training Using Particle Swarm Optimization

Although mathematically elegant, back-propagation isn't perfect. Instead consider using particle swarm optimization (PSO) to train your neural network; here's how.

Take Advantage of iOS 7's New Features

Apple's latest mobile operating system is chock full of developer goodies. Learn about some of the best ones, and how to build them with C# and Xamarin.

Long Filenames in Windows 8

Do you hate the 259-character filename limit in some Windows file systems? So does Kenny. Here's a way to eliminate it and free your application and users from the restriction.

Static Code Analysis in Visual Studio 2013: What's New

Mickey looks at the changes to static code analysis since Visual Studio 2010.

K-Means Data Clustering Using C#

Learn how to cluster your numeric data using the k-means algorithm in this step-by-step guide.

Implementing a Fluent Interface

Here's how to implement a fluent API for a single class that supports the goals of fluent interfaces.

8 New Things To Check Out in Visual Studio 2013

From Peek Definitions to scroll bar customization, here are eight of the most helpful features you'll want to explore in Visual Studio 2013.

The Template Method Pattern in the .NET Framework

Learn how to process CSV files using the Template Method Pattern in a sample C# application.

Binding a TypeScript ViewModel to HTML Using Knockout

It's great building objects in TypeScript, but it isn't much good unless you can tie those objects into a Web page. Here's how to integrate TypeScript with Knockout (and a warning about where test driven development seems to stop).

Subscribe on YouTube