I have been spending some time recently working with the Windows Phone 7 development tools and thought I’d start blogging more about writing applications for the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform. I was asked a question this morning about how you might...

Since SQL Server 2005 we have had the ability to write User Defined Types (UDT's) and User Defined Aggregates (UDA's) etc. that are then executed by the .net framework within the SQL Server process. Given that the .net framework 4.0 introduced a new version...

CodePlex.Snippets is a collection of code snippets for C# developers that enhances the core code snippets developers use today to ensure that they conform, where appropriate, to static code analysis and StyleCop rules. CodePlex.Snippets also provides...

Within the Windows Phone 7 marketplace there are more than 12,000 applications and one such application is the Stopwatch that I published sometime ago, the free version is one of the most popular health and fitness applications. Initially the user interface...

Windows Phone Stopwatch 4.4 is now Released to Marketplace (RTM) and within this blog post I thought I’d give an overview of this application that has steadily become the most popular stopwatch on Windows Phone 7 . Starting / Pausing the Stopwatch With...

A couple of years ago wrote a blog post entitled Visual Studio 2010 – Darker Shades of Blue Theme where I posted a custom settings file for Visual Studio 2010 . With the release of SQL Server 2012 you can also import and export settings and this morning...

Visual Studio Snippets is an open source collection of code snippets for the C# programming language, providing StyleCop compliant versions of the 38 code snippets that ship within Visual Studio along with 44 additional StyleCop compliant snippets. You...

Updated 10/24 with final book cover design. “Picking up a tablet PC with Windows 8 makes an iPad feel immediately out of date.” – Tom Warren /via @verge Windows 8 Review It is an exciting time to be a Windows developer.  The arrival of Windows 8...

Since SQL Server 2005 we have had the ability to write User Defined Types (UDT's) and User Defined Aggregates (UDA's) etc. that are then executed by the .net framework within the SQL Server process. SQL Server 2012 now uses version 4.0 of the CLR although...

Visual Studio 2010 provides 38 code snippets for the C# developer, while Visual Studio Snippets provides enhanced versions of those base snippets along with 31 additional code snippets in the October 2010 Visual Studio Snippets Release . Within the Visual...

Updated for Windows Phone 7.5 , formerly known by the codename “Mango”, Windows Phone Stopwatch 5.1 has been Released to Marketplace (RTM) and so I thought I’d give an overview of this latest release and some of the new features. With 100,000 downloads...

Windows Internet Explorer 9 , launched in San Francisco on September 15th, enables users to experience a more beautiful Web using the full power of today’s PC. We would love for your site to be part of this more beautiful Web and to help get you started...

Imagine you have just generated some code using a code generation technique, wouldn’t it be really cool to then programmatically call the C# language compiler and generate assemblies from the generated code? Let’s imagine we used an Xslt transformation...

At the BUILD conference last year Microsoft provided attendees with a Developer Preview of Windows 8 running upon a touch-based Samsung PC. In this blog post we’ll walk through the upgrade of this PC to the Windows 8 Release Preview . You’ll want to begin...

Windows Phone Stopwatch 4.4 using the Windows Phone 7 Advertising SDK While writing Windows Phone 7 applications is cool, writing Windows Phone 7 applications that earn money for you is really cool! Why Monetize Windows Phone 7 Applications? Microsoft...

Steven Sinofsky, President, Windows and Windows Live Division, announced today from Japan’s Windows 8 Dev Days that the Windows 8 Release Preview will be available during the first week of June. /via @BuildWindows8 As always, if you’re interested in more...

Since the beginning of flight school I have been a little bit of a weather nerd and so as soon as I saw this weather phenomenon from my backyard today I had to run back inside and get the camera, hopefully you’ll agree that this is one cool cloud. I initially...

I have been an active user of Internet Explorer since its initial release and recently I have been exploring the Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview , designed to allow developers to kick the tires and see how the next version of Internet Explorer...

In early 2004 while searching the Internet for a tool that would assist our team in performing peer code reviews I stumbled upon a compare and merge application that has since become an integral part of the developer experience for me and many developers...

Visual Studio 2010 uses T4 text templates for code generation and within this blog post we’ll examine the anatomy of a text template and see how easily code and other text can be generated. Let’s take a look at an example in Visual Studio, we’ll create...

While it is possible to have developers agree on many things, a discussion on coding style is likely to produce seriously contentious debate. Visual Studio provides static code analysis capabilities to ensure that the IL, contained within assemblies,...

Any developer will tell you that debugging applications in production environments presents them with some unique challenges and applications on Windows Phone are no different.  With the new version of the AppHub developers portal debugging exceptions...

I have been asked several times recently for the color scheme I use within Visual Studio 2010 and so if you like the theme below you can find the .vssettings file here .

KINECT for Windows is coming to a PC near you beginning February 1, 2012! How will you change the world with KINECT on your PC? According to the KINECT for Windows blog , the KINECT for Windows hardware will be available in limited quantities at first...

While on vacation in Florida with my family I attended the NASA Astronaut Training Experience with my dad and was able to do two things that I have wanted to do since watching the movie Space Camp in 1986, ride the multi-axis trainer and fly a full size...