Jack @ ASP.NET

As a software engineer, I focus on .NET, especially asp.net, C#, WCF and so on, and I am also very interested in Search Engine Optimization.

Entries for the ‘News’ Category

VS 2010 Webinar Session Overviews

Visual Studio 2010 is set to be released in April.  Microsoft has made significant investments to improve the “Testing”, “Architecture”, and “Developer” tools within Visual Studio to make it an even more powerful productivity solution.

VS 2010 Webinar Session Overviews:

TITLE DESCRIPTION
Full Testing Experience: Professional QA with Visual Studio 2010 Join us as we demonstrate the testing and quality assurance lifecycle using Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server. We’ll dive into the testing tools and testing process you can use to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your QA and Test efforts. You’ll see the Microsoft Test and Lab Manager (MTLM) in all its glory as we explore how to manage your test environment, organize test suites, test cases, requirements and bugs, and how to manage both automated and manual test runs. In addition, you’ll see how to easily create an automated test from an existing manual test run. Finally, and most importantly, you’ll discover how insanely easy it is to create bugs that can be simply and reliably reproduced by developers – VS 2010 is that powerful.
Improving Development Practices with  Visual Studio 2010 This is an overview of the new development and database tools in Visual Studio 2010. New capabilities of historical debugging, code analysis, profiling and the new test impact analysis will be demonstrated. Working with Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010, gated-check-in will be discussed as well as the tester/developer collaboration experience. The new architect tools will be demonstrated to facilitate a better understanding of how modeling is a part of the development experience.
Lab Manager – The Ultimate “No More No Repro” Tool Designing, building and testing code is a hard job. A job made even harder by the fact that most organizations don’t have development and test environments that are clean, easily reset and similar to the production environment. Enter virtualization…and Lab Manager. Lab manager allows you to define, configure and create complete development or test environments as needed. It can coordinate both physical and virtual environments, and comes with an incredibly powerful suite of effective tools that make managing environments simple and cost effective. Attend this webcast event to see Lab Manager in action!
Managing Requirements with Team Foundation Server 2010 Requirements management is a struggle for many organizations. A distinction must be drawn between requirements elicitation, requirements documentation and requirements management. Team Foundation Server provides rich capabilities for managing requirements and can easily be integrated with your preferred tools for documenting requirements. Best practices of requirement elicitation, documentation, management and traceability will be discussed in the context of the requirement lifecycle and how TFS 2010 and third party tools can maximize your overall requirements management process.
Overview of Visual Studio 2010 ALM Tools This overview of Visual Studio 2010 highlights the difference between Team System 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. Emphasis will be put on what migration steps need to be taken to maximize new features including testing tools, version control, work item tracking and build enhancements. As a basis for demonstration, the development processes and practices used to create Notion Tools for Team System will be shown, including branching models, build and deployment automation, custom reporting and workflows.
Streamlining Testing with  Visual Studio 2010 ALM Tools This Visual Studio 2010 overview features Visual Studio Test Elements 2010 testing tools including using the new Microsoft Test and Lab Manager to manage and automate your UI testing. The use of Test Lab will be discussed as a means of automating the creation of virtual environments for testing purposes. Deploying to VM environments during build will be demonstrated and facilitate a robust developer/tester lifecycle. For a taste of real-world use, the test plans and test process used to perform multi-platform testing of Notion Tools for Team System will be shown.
Using Team Foundation Server 2010 for Non-Windows Development This is an overview of best practices for utilizing Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and the Teamprise Client Suite for development activities beyond Microsoft and the Windows platform. This webcast shows development teams using mixed and non-Microsoft platforms how to effectively leverage TFS 2010 to adopt work item tracking, version control, and automated build and test technologies.
Visual Studio 2010 Quality Tools for Developers This webcast event will demonstrate how developers use Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server to create high quality code, reliably reproduce and efficiently fix reported bugs, and truly work with the testing team. We’ll demonstrate the use of several important tools, such as test impact analysis, IntelliTrace, and other tools that help you understand your code, pinpoint bugs and efficiently fix them. Let’s face it – fixing bugs is both tedious and hard. VS 2010 provides the tools to both you and the tester to make finding, reproducing and fixing bugs dramatically simpler.
What’s New in Visual Studio 2010 Why you should consider Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2010. We’re going to discuss the specific business value of the Visual Studio ALM tools now and later. Free webinar event to learn how to get the most out of the Visual Studio investments that your organization has made. You owe it to yourself to learn how this new solution will help you be a more productive in your role!
  • Digg
  • DZone
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Delicious
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • SmakNews
  • Jumptags
  • Ping
  • Share/Bookmark

Team Foundation Server (TFS) Power Tools 2010 Release Candidate are Available!

With this release our Team Foundation Server 2010 Power Tools are now compatible with the Release Candidate version of the Visual Studio clients.

Changes from Beta2

· Fixes to customer reported bugs

· Team Members is now enabled

· Extended rules for the RC Best Practice Analyzer

The following are the Power Tools supported in this release.

  • Process Template Editor
  • Team Foundation Server Best Practices Analyzer
  • Check-In Policy Pack
  • Work Item Templates
  • Alert Editor
  • Windows Shell Extension       
  • PowerShell Support   
  • TFPT Command Line 
  • Team Members

For detailed information, please go to http://7e4f200f.linkbucks.com

  • Digg
  • DZone
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Delicious
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • SmakNews
  • Jumptags
  • Ping
  • Share/Bookmark

.NET Development for the iPhone

Until recently your only choice for developing applications for Apple’s iPhone was to jump into the Apple development ecosystem. This means being willing to write Objective-C code in the XCode IDE. For many developers, learning Objective-C was seen as a huge barrier-to-entry. This is especially true for many .NET developers whom have never had to worry about memory management, pointers, and other C language responsibilities that they are unfamiliar with.

All this has changed with the introduction the MonoTouch framework, a part of Novell’s Mono Project. The Mono Project is an open-source implementation of Microsoft .NET Platform. It allows you to run .NET applications on nearly any platform, including Apple, FreeBSD, Linux, Unix, and others. MonoTouch, which is a new part of the Mono Project, allows you to write applications using C# with .NET platform that run on the iPhone.

The intent of this article is to provide a solid introduction to the MonoTouch platform, where to find all the necessary pieces, the limitations of it, and how to build a basic application.

How does it Work?

When building MonoTouch applications, most of the non-UI .NET 3.5 stack is either already available, or is in the roadmap to be included. This allows you to write applications using many of the .NET Framework Technologies that you’re already familiar with, including Windows Communication Framework (WCF), Workflow Foundation (WF), etc. It also includes nearly all of the Base Class Library (BCL) including things like Garbage Collection, Threading, Math Functions, System.Net, Cryptography, etc. For a list of available standard .NET assemblies see http://monotouch.net/Documentation/Assemblies. This is accomplished through a MonoTouch-specific set of base .NET libraries, similarly to how Silverlight and Moonlight work.

This means that you can compile standard .NET 3.5 code libraries using the MonoTouch core assemblies and use them in your application. So if, for example, you have a specialized library that does advanced math functions for engineering problems that you use for other applications, you can simply include the code library in your MonoTouch solution, and reference it. When you build your solution, it will compile it using the MonoTouch libraries, and it will then be available in your application.

MonoTouch also includes wrappers to the native iPhone APIs such as Location (GPS), the accelerometer, address book, etc. It also gives you the ability to bind to native Objective-C libraries that are not wrapped, so you can interop directly with existing Objective-C code.

How do I Distribute My Apps?

MonoTouch applications are distributed the exact same way that traditional iPhone applications are distributed, either via the Apple App Store, or Enterprise deployment.

The App Store is an online repository that allows users to pay for applications (if they’re not free), and download them. It is available from within iTunes, or directly from the iPhone itself. In order to get a license to distribute via the App Store, you must register with Apple, and pay $99/year.

Enterprise deployment is for those wishing to develop internal applications for a company, and distribute them to employees, etc., without listing them with the App Store.

What is the Licensing Model?

Unlike Mono, MonoTouch is not open source and is a commercial product. That means if you want to do anything useful with it you have to purchase a license. MonoTouch comes in three flavors and prices:

  • Professional ($399) – A single personal developer license that allows you to develop applications and distribute them via the Apple App-Store.
  • Enterprise ($999) – A single corporate developer license that allows you to develop applications and distribute via the App-store, or enterprise deployment.
  • Enterprise, 5 Seat ($3,999) – The same as the Enterprise license, but includes 5 seats.

All three options include a year of free updates.

There is also an evaluation edition that allows you deploy to the simulator only. For the purposes of this introduction, that is all we’ll need.

  • Digg
  • DZone
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Delicious
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • SmakNews
  • Jumptags
  • Ping
  • Share/Bookmark

VS 2010 and .NET Improvements

VS 2010 and .NET 4 bring a huge number of improvements and additions. They include big advances for ASP.NET web development, WPF and WinForms client development, SharePoint development, Silverlight development, data development, parallel computing development, and cloud computing development.  VS 2010 also delivers a ton of improvements in the core IDE, code editors, programming languages, and enterprise design, architect, and testing tools. 

TFS 2010 is now easy to install (only 20 minutes to setup source control, bug and work item tracking, build automation, and continuous integration), can be installed on both servers as well as client OS and domain controller machines, and is now included with all MSDN subscriptions of Visual Studio.

VS 2010 Product Line SKU Simplifications

With VS 2010 we are simplifying the product lineup and pricing options of Visual Studio, as well as adding new benefits for MSDN subscribers.  With VS 2010 we will now ship a simpler set of SKU options:

  • Visual Studio Express: Free Express SKUs for Web, VB, C#, and C++
  • Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN: Professional development tools as you are used to today with the addition of source control integration, bug tracking, build automation, and more. It also includes 50 hours/month of Azure cloud computing.
  • Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: Premium has everything in Professional plus advanced development tools (including richer profiling and debugging, code coverage, code analysis and testing prioritization), advanced database support, UI testing, and more.  Rather than buying multiple “Team” SKUs like you would with VS 2008, you can now get this combination of features in one box with VS 2010. It also includes 100 hours/month of Azure cloud computing.
  • Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: Ultimate has everything in Premium plus additional advanced features for developers, testers, and architects including features like Intellitrace (formerly Historical Debugging), the new architecture tools (UML, discovery), test lab management, etc.  It also includes 250 hours/month of Azure cloud computing.
Side by Side Support with VS 2008

VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 can be installed side-by-side on the same machine as VS 2008 and .NET 3.5.  You can install the Beta 2 version on a machine and it will not impact your existing VS 2008 / .NET 3.5 development.

Go-Live License Available

.NET 4 and VS 2010 Beta 2 include a “go-live” license which means you can start using the products for production projects. 

  • Digg
  • DZone
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Delicious
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • SmakNews
  • Jumptags
  • Ping
  • Share/Bookmark

Microsoft released IIS Media Services 3.0

Microsoft just released IIS Media Services 3.0, a set of extensions for Internet Information Services 7 (IIS) that provide an integrated HTTP-based media delivery platform.

This includes the new IIS Live Smooth Streaming and the separate IIS Advanced Logging package.

In addition, Microsoft released the beta of the Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, which allows developers to easily create Smooth Streaming experiences using Silverlight.   Supported features include PlayReady, DVR controls, instant replay, slow motion, multiple camera angles, alternate audio tracks, content protection, ad integration, in-stream data feeds, and more.

Since April, 2009, key broadcasters around the world have used beta versions of IIS Media Services 3.0 to successfully broadcast some of the world’s premier live events.

These include the Tour de France and the Roland Garros 2009 International French Open Tennis Tournament on France Télévisions; the IAAF Athletics World Championships and FINA Swimming World Championships on both France Télévisions and RAI; the FIFA Confederations Cup South Africa 2009 on RAI; and Champions League Soccer on BSkyB; as well as events such as the Michael Jackson Memorial on Sympatico/MSN inMusic and SKY News.

In a combined effort with Microsoft, NBC Sports and others, Wimbledon Live delivered more than 6,500 minutes of live and on-demand Smooth Streaming video via a high-definition (HD), interactive online video experience.  Each Sunday this Fall, NBC and Microsoft are broadcasting Sunday Night Football on-line in HD, utilizing live DVR controls, multiple camera angles, slow motion, ad integration, analytics, and other cutting-edge features.  26 such trial deployments are currently highlighted on the Smooth Streaming Showcase.

What’s available now:

With this release, the key elements of the IIS media server platform now include:

· Smooth Streaming, adaptive streaming of media over HTTP

· Live Smooth Streaming, for live adaptive streaming of broadcast events

· Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit, for creating custom clients

· Bit Rate Throttling, meters the speed that media is delivered to a player

· Web Playlists, secure sequencing of media content

· Advanced Logging, with real-time client- and server-side logging

· Application Request Routing (ARR), providing HTTP proxying and caching

Download the latest IIS Media offerings

You can download all of the IIS media server platform components, and the Smooth Streaming PDK, using the Web Platform Installer button on the IIS Media page (http://www.iis.net/media).

  • Digg
  • DZone
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Delicious
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • SmakNews
  • Jumptags
  • Ping
  • Share/Bookmark

URL Routing with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

URL routing was a capability we first introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, and which is already used within ASP.NET MVC applications to expose clean, SEO-friendly “web 2.0” URLs.  URL routing lets you configure an application to accept request URLs that do not map to physical files. Instead, you can use routing to define URLs that are semantically meaningful to users and that can help with search-engine optimization (SEO).

for more detail, go URL Routing with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series) .

  • Digg
  • DZone
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Delicious
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • SmakNews
  • Jumptags
  • Ping
  • Share/Bookmark