The April issue of Visual Studio Magazine will hit the Web (and most mailboxes) this Friday, and like the spring weather, the coverage in the upcoming issue is diverse.
The cover feature this month, written by Ben Day, explores a series of useful tips and practices for successful Model View View-Model (MVVM) development in Silverlight. Inside the issue, you'll find a feature by VSM Tools Editor Peter Vogel that dives into using the new Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and how it provides solutions to authentication issues at all levels of application development.
There are some significant changes in the Language Lab section of the magazine. New this month is the Practical .NET column, by Peter Vogel. Peter has for years written the Practical ASP.NET column for VSM on the Web and (occasionally) in print. Now he's broadening his horizons with a column that explores the full gamut of managed coding challenges under the .NET Framework. His first column looks into why so few developers seem to be using LINQ, and some of the best ways to take advantage of the compelling data access technology from Microsoft. Also look for a Web version of Peter's new column to run twice each month.
The other column debuting in this issue is Mobile Corner, by Nick Randolph, which focuses on the emerging arena of Windows Phone 7 development. Nick is author of Professional Windows Phone Application Development (WROX, 2010), and his first column walks through building a YouTube search app for the Windows Phone. You'll find Nick's deep dives into WP7 development both in our pages and twice monthly on our Web site. Finally, C# Corner author Patrick Steele is hard at work, showing how you can translate C# code into expression trees to eliminate strings, standardize parameter validations and interact with other data structures.
Among our other columns and departments, look for our review of the new WebMatrix ASP.NET application development environment for non-programmers, and for Stephen Chapman's early take on how Windows 8 might impact .NET developers. Also check out Andrew Brust's thoughts on the recent MVP Summit in Redmond, and why the interaction between Microsoft and its top developers is so important to the future success of .NET development.
The weather is finally changing here in my corner of the country, and it seems that Visual Studio Magazine is doing a little changing with it. Are there specific issues or topics you'd like to see covered in a future issue of Visual Studio Magazine? Email me at [email protected] or leave a comment below.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/28/20110 comments
A year ago, Microsoft's Scott Wiltamuth published an
informative blog post
that produced a lot of clarity around Microsoft's "co-evolution" strategy with C# and Visual Basic .NET. As product unit manager for Visual Studio Languages, Wiltamuth was able to provide a cogent breakdown of what Microsoft's commitment to its two flagship .NET languages really meant.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/21/201127 comments
Raf Los, Web application security evangelist at HP Software,
gave a presentation
at the
Black Hat Conference
in Barcelona, Spain, this week, about what he says is an emerging front in the area of application security. He says that as organizations harden their infrastructure against common attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting, the threat is moving up the stack.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/18/20112 comments
Last week Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1), adding a host of sought-after new features to VS2010, which shipped originally in April 2010. Dave Mendlen, senior director of Developer Marketing at Microsoft, said developers were particularly keen on IntelliTrace support for SharePoint and 64-bit development, as well as the new Silverlight performance optimizer. He also singled out SP1's added support for unit testing in .NET Framework 3.5. Microsoft at the same time released a pair of Feature Packs for Visual Studio.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/15/20110 comments
Like millions of others on the eastern seaboard of the US, I awoke this morning to discover that a massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake had struck off the northeast coast of Japan, producing a massive tsunami that has inundated sections of the Japanese coast and produced calamitous damage. It was among the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history, striking near one of the most densely populated nations on earth.
As reports roll in, my thoughts are with the people of Japan, who face an enormous challenge as they work to contain, assess and ultimately recover from the damage caused by this event. Most troubling, there is little doubt that the initial casualty figures, which numbers in the dozens as I write this, will skyrocket. This earthquake is, first and foremost, a human catastrophe whose true scale will not be known for days or weeks.
There will be a time in the days and weeks to come to consider the unique technological dynamics around this event. Japan is among the most urbanized, industrialized and information-savvy societies on the planet. It is also a nation with an infrastructure uniquely designed and prepared to weather the impacts of a strong earthquake.
Already, we are hearing reports that Internet access and communications stayed up even as land and cell phone networks failed -- a development that mirrored the experience of New Orleans-area residents during Hurricane Katrina. The availability of advanced information and communications systems is already playing a role in limiting the human toll of this calamity, as real-time data gathered from the vast network of so-called DART stations (for Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami) allow officials to track the progress and power of the tsunami as it travels across the Pacific Ocean. The network of 39 DART stations was finalized just three years ago--and now is getting a critical test.
For today, my concern is for the people directly impacted by this terrible catastrophe. This is an event of almost unimaginable proportions, and as much as I am hoping for the best, I am very much fearing the worst.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/11/20111 comments
Microsoft yesterday announced that it is launching the Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Web browser on Monday, March 14. The new browser will be available for download starting at 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time on March 14, according to the company's announcement.
IE9 marks a significant change in strategy for Microsoft, which has opted to aggressively support the HTML5 Web standard even at the expense of its Silverlight rich Internet application (RIA) platform. Notably, IE9 enables hardware-accelerated playback of HTML5-based audio and video, and is able to leverage a system's graphics processing unit (GPU) to maximize performance.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/10/20111 comments
For many Microsoft products, the first service pack is a right of passage. Many dev and IT managers don't consider a new OS or application mature until it has been updated with its first major service pack. By that metric, the
release today of Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1
is big news.
As ever, Microsoft cites customer feedback as the driving force behind this latest service pack. Features like extended IntelliTrace support for 64-bit and SharePoint development projects, an improved Help Viewer and fully integrated tooling for Silverlight 4 were all requested by Visual Studio customers, according to Microsoft's Jason Zander. There's also now unit testing support for Visual Studio 2010 projects targeting .NET Framework 3.5.
The list of updates, improvements and changes is long and definitely worth a look for anyone using, or thinking of using, Visual Studio 2010. You can find a detailed rundown on the Microsoft Support site.
What's interesting about Visual Studio 2010 SP1 is that it's not one of those "put out the fire" service packs that Microsoft has scrambled to produce in the past. By most accounts, Visual Studio 2010 has been impressively stable. As Directions on Microsoft Analyst Rob Sanfilippo told me the other day: "VS 2010 has been a solid, successful release. It has delivered on its promises and has been a stable environment, without the requirement of any major patches since it shipped."
Jason Beres, director of product management at component maker Infragistics, says his company has been doing design time testing with the SP, and that it fixed "some visual issues" that reduced the productivity of some developers.
Will you be updating to Service Pack 1? I'd like to learn what you find out when you do. Email me at
[email protected], or provide comment below.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/08/20116 comments
If you love someone, set them free. But if you want them to write apps for you, fence them in with razor wire. At least, that seems to be the guiding philosophy at Apple Computer, where some iPhone and iPad developers, again, face draconian rules in the Apple App Store.
As Keith Ward reported for our sister Web site Application Development Trends (Developers Unhappy with New Apple App Rules; Antitrust Investigation Possible), Apple recently instituted a new App Store Subscription policy that essentially ensures that App Store-based subscriptions will always be priced in parity with that of the same subscriptions offered through other channels.
The key language:
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/01/20110 comments
Well, it's snowing hard again in the Northeast, and that must mean we're getting ready to debut the next issue of Visual Studio Magazine. Just like last month, we're expecting a foot or more of the good stuff ahead of our issue hitting the streets. And
just like last month
, we've got a great lineup of how-to features, product reviews and developer insight to offer our readers. Look for the issue to hit
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/25/20110 comments
Earlier this month Embarcadero Technologies
released new Starter Editions
of its Delphi and C++Builder development tools. I corresponded with David Intersimone, vice president of developer relations and chief evangelist for Embarcadero Technologies, and asked him a question about the outlook for native C and C++ development going forward. He offered an insight response, which I've published here.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/22/20110 comments
Working developers are often forced to multitask. Whether it's banging out code or assessing new tools or managing teams of developers, the people who read this Web site and our magazine are doing a lot more than just programming for a living. The question I have is, what are you looking for from Visual Studio Magazine when it comes to these multi-faceted challenges?
Late last year we conducted our annual reader survey, which helps us understand who our readers are and what they are interested in. This survey confirmed a lot of standing assumptions and challenged a few others. For instance, despite VSM's deep roots in Visual Basic (going back to our Visual Basic Professional Journal days), only one-quarter of our readers actually code primarily in Visual Basic (another 4 percent report using VB6 or earlier). By contrast, just under half of survey respondents reported working mainly in C#. And nearly 10 percent said their primary programming language was C or C++.
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Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/17/201113 comments
Today's epic winter storm nothwithstanding, subscribers to Visual Studio Magazine should be receiving the February issue of the magazine. Coverage from the issue is also featured here on the VisualStudioMagazine.com Web site.
This month we lead with a collection of useful tips and advice from VSM Tools Editor Peter Vogel for ASP.NET developers considering a move to SharePoint (Developer Tips: Making the SharePoint Transition). As Vogel points out in his article, there are a lot of misconceptions about SharePoint and how it works. Clearing those up can go a long way toward helping you make the most of your SharePoint development projects.
Also featured this month is a how-to piece on developing apps for the Android mobile platform using MonoDroid (Introduction to MonoDroid), a Visual Studio 2010 plug-in that allows .NET developers to target the Android OS. You'll also find Patrick Steele's C# Corner column on Object Equality in C#, as well as Kathleen Dollard's Ask Kathleen column titled How to Generate Code from a UML Model in Visual Studio 2010.
Finally check out Alexandra Rusina's insightful look at the dynamic keyword and Dynamic Language Runtime in .NET Framework 4 (Understanding the Dynamic Keyword in C# 4). The feature starts off with an overview of the dynamic features in the current version of C# before diving into their workings with other language and framework features, such as reflection and implicitly-typed variables.
This month's issue also includes a pair of VS Toolbox reviews: Infragistics' NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization and the integrated Flash development tools Amethyst and WebOrb. The VS Insider column this month features guest columnist Al Hilwa, program director of Applications Development Software at research firm IDC, who looks at how Microsoft's support for the ARM processor could presage some interesting developments in the Windows Phone 7 space. Finally Andrew Brust, in his Redmond Review column, thinks Microsoft might do well to return to some old innovations to win a share of the fast-growing tablet space (Tablet Toast or Slate Salvation?).
Posted by Michael Desmond on 02/01/20115 comments