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The Top 10 Visual Studio Magazine Articles of 2013

In the spirit of "shameless Top-10 year-end articles that you know you'll click on because it has a number in it and you can't help yourself," I herewith present the 10 most popular Visual Studio Magazine articles from 2013. These are the ones you liked best.

10: Modeling Neuron Behavior in C#. This was the debut of Dr. James McCaffrey's "Neural Network Lab" column, a high-level yet accessible tour of complex software design.

9: Building a Chat Web App With Signal R, Part 2. This was the second part of a "C# Corner " column on creating a real-time Web data entry form with ASP.NET MVC, KnockOutJS and SignalR.

8: Handle Many-to-Many Relationships in Entity Framework and ASP.NET MVC. In his "Practical .NET " column, Peter Vogel took a single -- and common -- problem and found ways solve it, from getting the data design correct through handling updates and finishing with a UI built in ASP.NET MVC.

7: The Windows Runtime Media API. The first in a 3-part series in which Eric Vogel showed how to use the Windows Runtime media API to play music and video files in a Windows Store app.

6: Working with the HTML5 Data Attributes Using jQuery. jQuery support for the new HTML5 data attributes may not be everything a developer could want -- but it's very close. And, more important, it's the perfect solution for handling transactional data.

5: iOS Development with Xamarin.iOS and Visual Studio. iOS and Android development is of intense interest to .NET developers right now, and Wally McClure and Greg Shackles are giving it thorough coverage in their "Cross-Platform C#" column, which also debuted in 2013.

4: A Best Practice for Authenticating Users in ASP.NET MVC 4. Proof that developers really do care about security!

3: Building Web Apps with SignalR, Part 1. Gee, do you think .NET developers have an interest in communications? This is the only multi-part series to have both articles make the Top 10.

2: Why You Shouldn't Comment (or Document) Code. Oh my, did this article set off a firestorm. It's the most-commented item ever on visualstudiomagazine.com. It also spawned several sequels.

1: The Observer Pattern in .NET. Readers love the "Pattern" articles that Eric Vogel writes. This one, in which he uses the Observer Pattern to build an email application, topped the list as our most-read article of 2013.

So, those were the most popular articles of the past year. Was one of these your favorite, or did you have another? Let us know in the comments below.

Posted by Keith Ward on 12/24/2013


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