June, 2010

If you’ve decided to learn HTML 5 and are looking for a good introduction, I can’t think of a better starting point than Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML 5 . If Mark’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because you’ve heard of his books Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility . As you can see, he’s taken a theme and he’s running with it. Dive Into HTML 5 covers a number of topics, including: A quite...

Peter-Paul “ppk” Koch writes in his blog, QuirksBlog (which lives on his site, QuirksMode ): In the past few days I’ve been revising the CSS compatibility table with information about the latest crop of browsers. There’s no doubt about it: this is IE9’s show. It just supports nearly everything. No hassle, no buts. … Microsoft has finally taken the big leap forward we’ve been waiting for ever since...

By now, you’ve probably seen my article covering the new, faster, even more standards-compliant Platform Preview 3 of Internet Explorer 9 . From hardware acceleration to a speed-boosted JavaScript engine with support for new ECMAScript 5 language features to support for SVG, <audio> , <video> and <canvas> tags, IE9 is shaping up to be a great browser for an open web. Before there...

If you’re developing (or thinking of developing) on the .NET platform, you should make the .NET Rocks! show part of your regular podcast listening. Hosted by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell , .NET Rocks! has nearly 600 episodes going all the way back to 2002 covering all sorts of .NET development topics for all sorts of developers, from newbie to grizzled veteran. This week, .NET Rocks! is doing...

Want some hardcore training from a developer who’s been doing Windows Phone 7 development since the tools were released in March? Then you’ll want to check out DevTeach’s Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp , taking place late this summer in Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto. The Windows Phone 7 Bootcamp is an intense two-day training session run by indie training conference organizers DevTeach and will...

As announced in yesterday’s posting, Platform Preview 3 of Internet Explorer 9 is out, and it’s faster than snakes on ice. Some of the credit goes to “Chakra”, the new JavaScript engine, and some of it goes to IE9’s hardware acceleration, which bypasses the layers of abstraction between your web app and the “metal” (namely, your browser, and then the underlying OS). Download Squad have posted a video...

And now, a word from Damir, who's hard at work getting TechDays 2010 up and running... One of my favourite parts of being the “face of TechDays ” in all communications is that I also get the opportunity to reply to every email that is sent to the td_can@microsoft.com email alias.  I get lots of emails – over 1000 at last count – and I reply to each one.  Keep them coming – I really love reading...

Back in March, when the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 9 was released at the MIX10 conference, the IE9 team promised to release new previews of the browser about every eight weeks. Eight weeks after MIX10, they kept their promise and released Platform Preview 2. It featured improved JavaScript performance and better adherence to HTML5/CSS/JavaScript standards. Eight weeks has passed since...

A conference devoted to devices that run iOS might be the last place you’d think you’d see a Microsoft developer evangelist, but here I am! I’m at iP3 Forum , “a one-day event that will explore the changing mobile landscape and the business opportunities associated with Apple's Touch Platform (iPhone, iPad and iPod touch), as business models adapt to a market where people are always connected.” It...

Checklists To put it into programmer-speak, checklists are unit tests for everyday life. Like unit tests, checklists appear to be additional make-work that take valuable time away from performing the task at hand. However, when done right, checklists save time by helping ensure you’re doing everything you need to do and can even function as a sort of specification for the task (in fact, like unit tests...

Behind the Scenes: Windows Phone 7 Microsoft Vice President Terry Myerson gets a look at a prototype Windows Phone circuit board that Qualcomm built with an all-new chip that had just started rolling off the manufacturing line. Photo by Ina Fried. In her article Behind the Scenes: Windows Phone 7 , Ina Fried pays a visit to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond to see what the Windows Phone team is up...

I got prodded by Steve Syfuhs– as to what ever happened to the Audio recordings my team created during NerdsOnATrain / Make Web Not War event. In case you missed it – Make Web Not War is an event that Microsoft put on last week in partnership with the PHP community, partners and individuals in Montreal as part of MonDev – an open source week of events. Part of the activities associated...

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy , I love Windows 7 . Simply put, it is the best operating system I've used. (And, believe me; I've used my fair share.) Windows 7 is fast; Windows 7 is simple; Windows 7 is exactly what I want on my PC. Now, putting my experience as a user aside, there's another reason why I love Windows 7 : It's an incredibly powerful and feature-rich platform for developers...

The best antidote for a day full of meetings in boardrooms in a suburban office park is to finish it in different surroundings. So when my last meeting on Friday ended with a couple of hours of business day to spare, I made a beeline for one of my favourite “field offices” – Cafe Novo , located across the street from High Park , and a very short walk from home. The photo above was the view from my...

Windows Phone 7 is coming soon, and we’re holding a couple of full-day workshops to show you its underlying architecture, walk you through its development frameworks, show you how to build apps with Visual Studio Express and sell them in the Marketplace, and then hold a codefest – and yes, it’s free-as-in-beer to attend! We’re holding two of these workshops, which Yours Truly along with Paul Laberge...

Earlier this week, I was asked to make a short video that would be shown during a round table discussion on a hot topic: HTML5 vs. proprietary rich internet app technologies, such as Flash and Silverlight. My video was supposed to take the “RIAs complement HTML” side of the debate, while someone else would produce a video taking the “HTML5 trumps RIAs” side. My own personal belief is that HTML5 – actually...

GovCamp in Toronto! First came GovCamp in Ottawa (May 31st – June 1st), and now GovCamp is coming to Toronto ! GovCamp is an “Open Government” or “Goverment 2.0”   unconference with these two goals: For governments to become more open, transparent, participatory, innovative, efficient and effective For citizens to become more connected to each other around their civic passions in the place they...

Windows Server 2008 R2 is the latest version of Windows Server, which runs all sorts of goodies from ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC, SharePoint, Exchange and SQL Server, as well as PHP. Right to Play is an organization whose goal is to improve the lives of children in some of the world’s poorest areas by using sports and play to promote development, health and peace. Microsoft and Right to Play have put together...

Just as i18n is shorthand for “internationalization” – it’s made by taking the first and last letters of the word and replacing the 18 letters in between with the number 18 – a11y is shorthand for “accessibility”. That’s why the accessibility unconference taking place at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow, June 8th, at the University of Guelph is called A11yCamp . ...

I remember the days when Microsoft had announced they were introducing a set of design tools to help customers and partners build .NET-based solutions that were both visually appealing and focused on user experience.  In those early days, we introduced the tools with enigmatic yet interesting codenames like Sparkle (which became Expression Blend), Acrylic (Expression Design) and Quartz (Expression...

Me and Ballmer at the Microsoft Town Hall in Toronto, October 2009. David “DHH” Heinemeier Hansson recently wrote in the excellent blog Signal to Noise (add it to your reading list if it isn’t there already) that he’d never work for Ballmer. Since he’s DHH , he doesn’t have to – he’s a principal at the development firm 37signals , whose web apps I like to cite as examples to follow, and the creator...

Last night at a gathering of Toronto digital marketing and social media types held by TheBizMedia – I’m not sure I qualified for an invite, but hey, free beer! – Scott Stratten , president of UnMarketing , gave a very entertaining, funny and insightful presentation in which he talked about the lessons he learned as an online marketer. I shot a five-minute video snippet of his presentation, where he...

If you’re a developer out in the Maritimes , you might want to check out Derek Hatchard’s Maritime Dev Con , which takes place on June 18th in Moncton . It’s a single-afternoon, two-track conference – which means you should be able to take time out to attend it – covering a number of topics including: .NET and ASP.NET Java iPhone development Ruby Python Groovy NoSQL and MongoDB “Rockstar Estimating...

Pictured above is Reza Alirezaei giving a presentation on SharePoint at last year’s TechDays conference in Toronto. Reza’s one of our go-to guys for SharePoint, and I’m pleased to announce that a book he co-authored has just been published by Wrox : Professional SharePoint 2010 Development . I don’t have the book just yet, but here’s the publisher’s blurb: Learn to leverage the features of the newest...

What Types of Apps are People Downloading? The surveying company Nielsen recently posted some mobile app figures from its report, the App Playbook , whose data is based on a survey of 4,200 people who downloaded a mobile phone application in the past 30 days. Here’s their chart showing the downloaded apps by category: I reworked the chart to list the categories from least to most downloaded (I also...