The high level projection available in C++ targeting WinRT make working with WinRT from C++ a much easier task. It handles error reporting, reference counting, string conversions etc for you. As an example let's consider the following high level C++ code...

The Windows 8 Bing map XAML control (as opposed to the javascript control which is an entirely different beast) has a slightly different API when compared to earlier Bing Map XAML controls. Previous XAML controls have all been written in managed code...

Win 8 xaml unfortunately does not supporting anything similar to TypeConverters to convert from strings to objects so some properties like Location end up being more verbose and less intuitive than in previous versions of Bing Maps xaml-compatible controls...

The recently released Bing Maps controls for Windows 8 (available in the Visual Studio Gallery ) actually contains two separate map controls to support the two types of Windows 8 applications. One is a port of our existing Javascript map control and is...

.NET assemblies contain a rich set of metadata for use by the run time, debugger, and compiler. This information is stored in the assembly whether it will be used or not which for certain types of shipping assemblies is unnecessary. Using CCI we can remove these attributes without affecting the rest of the code....

Bing Maps just shipped a tech preview of Streetside photos which overlays Flickr photos on Streetside to show where the photos were taken. The team worked hard to get it out the door and we're proud to share it with the rest of the world. Check it out...

Bing Maps Streetside just released a minor update that allows you to smoothly glide through streets like a first-person shooter or pacman. Try it out yourself, just hold down the Up key and turn with Left and Right. Faster connections give a more pleasant...

Ever have that awkward feeling like you don't know what actually gets executed as a result of your managed code? Visual Studio allows you to inspect the JITted code easily but does require a few tweaks first: First set your project to build in Release...

Consider the humble OutOfMemoryException and its most common usage. If it is thrown when the system is well and truly out of memory then how would the system allocate enough memory to create a new instance of OutOfMemoryException? Luckily this problem...

The Virtual Earth 3D setup program is a small executable that downloads and installs pre-requisites if they're not already installed and then the correct MSI for your OS flavor (32 or 64 bit). The pre-requisites are Windows Imaging Components and .NET...

On startup VE3D looks in the Plugins folder of the install directory (ProgramFiles\Virtual Earth 3D) and iterates through the assemblies in each subfolder of Plugins. A plugin named Sample would install itself as C:\Program Files\Virtual Earth 3D\Plugins...

To add objects to the VE3D world we need to create our own actor that knows how to render itself. Actors descend from Microsoft.MapPoint.Rendering3D.Steps.Actors. Actor and must override the Render method. When it comes time to render a frame, all...

With latest release of the Virtual Earth 3D release we now support loading plugins to perform additional functionality not implemented in the main product. Two new features of the release are even implemented as plugins (bird's eye photos and user created...

As a general rule the chance of your e-mail getting a response is inversely proportional to the number of people on the To and Cc lines. Let's take an example: You e-mail Bob a question. Bob now feels directly responsible for your question and promptly...

Virtual Earth released a new version this afternoon; read about the new features on the Virtual Earth blog .

Long strings can be a pain to examine in Visual Studio while you're debugging but in .NET projects you can easily write these to a file on the fly. If for example we want to examine the contents of string s , open up the Immediate Window ( Ctrl+I ) and...

The one Visual Studio tip that everyone should know is how to quickly open a file in a large solution without having to remember which folder or project it's in. Press Ctrl+Alt+A to open up the Command Window, then type open and the first few letters...

When Javascript execution speed matters consider using prototype instead of closures where possible. Even for a small closure the difference can be noticable when called hundreds of times. Consider the following example that implements a Pixel object...

Windbg, is there anything it can't do? CLR Profiler is great for getting an overview of memory allocations and usage for managed applications but it doesn't work for very large applications and can't be attached after the application has been running...

Windbg can be helpful for locking lock issues in managed code that seem to only happen on client machines when the moon is full and the stars are aligned just right. Windbg is a minimal installation and with managed code doesn't require debug symbols...

By default Windbg will break for access violations (or null reference exceptions as they're called in managed code). To get Windbg to break for managed exceptions use the sxe command. 0:004> sxe clr 0:004> g A little while later our program generates...

One of the great features of managed code is getting call stacks and proper class and member function names without debug symbols. We can examine the methods of a class and set breakpoints based on name. To see the methods on an object in Windbg we first...

Windbg (or wind bag as my friend calls it) is my one stop shop for almost everything debugging related. It's great for finding issues that only happen on a client machine and you don't want a full blown Visual Studio installation mucking up your repro...

By default web browsers will only open 2 simultaneous connections to a named website to be a good client. If you're loading several images this means you may hamstring your bandwidth usage and make your website load slower. Take the following HTML source...

You've got your website all set up but are experiencing slow load times for some customers, especially on slower connections. One possible cause is inefficient network usage because of serialized loading of external Javascript files. Static links in <head>...