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Visual Studio 2012 and .NET 4.5 Release Candidates are now available for download.
Windows has made also available a Windows 8 Release Preview. Please visit the Building Windows 8 blog for the official announcement by Steven Sinofsky. You can download the Windows 8 Release Preview bits here.
The complete list of Visual Studio 2012 RC features is available on MSDN, and you can get a summary of new features from Announcing the Release Candidate (RC) of Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5.
One of the new features that you may want to use in your line of business application is local storage. We can store data locally or use cookies.
localstorage provides a way to persist data on the client side without using cookies. The localStorage attribute provides persistent storage areas for domains. It allows Web applications to store nearly 10 MB of user data, such as entire documents or a user's mailbox, on the client for performance reasons.
localstorage
This code uses both Modernizr and jQuery—Modernizr to let us know whether we need to support cookies instead of local storage and jQuery to insert HTML into the DOM to show that our local storage worked.
According to its Website, “JQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.” And it is true.
jQuery makes it possible for your code to get an HTML element and do something cool with it. In the example, I’ll show how you can show and hide sections inside your page. But there are plenty more things you can do.
In this next section, I want to be able to provide a map of my business location. Because not all browsers support Canvas, I’ll use Modernizr to help out. Modernizr will let me know if Canvas is supported, and if not it will allow me to call a polyfill.
But first, let’s draw something.
I can do this using <canvas> tag in HTML5. The HTML5 Canvas element is an HTML tag similar to the <div>, <a>, or <table> tag, with the exception that its contents are rendered with JavaScript.
Canvas is a simple graphics API that draws pixels and nothing more. Hence, there's no way to change an existing drawing or react to events, such as a click, on a particular part of your drawing. You can respond to button events and then update the Canvas image by redrawing it.
Modernizr is a small JavaScript library that you can use for feature detection, browser compatibility using polyfills, and quick JavaScript loading. I’ll take each one in turn.
It detects the availability of native implementations for next-generation web technologies, i.e. features that stem from the HTML5 and CSS3 specifications. Many of these features are already implemented in at least one major browser (most of them in two or more), and what Modernizr does is, very simply, tell you whether the current browser has this feature natively implemented or not.
Once you do the feature detection for your browser, you can then do polyfill. Polyfills is a term coined by Remy Sharp to describe JavaScript shims that replicate the standard API found in native features of new browsers for those without such features – are a way of helping us achieve this.
And by using Modernizr.load, you can load your CSS and JavaScript resources side-by-side with Modernizr. It’s optional in your build, but if you are loading polyfills, there’s a good chance it can save you some bandwidth and boost performance a bit.
Modernizr.load
Citrix Systems Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp., Progress Software, SAP AG and WSO2 are proposing an Open Data Protocol (OData) Technical Committee (TC) in the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), an international open standards consortium.
iVoteSports Baseball Edition makes you part of the action of a live Major League Baseball game using your iPhone or Android device.
ISV Video: iVoteSports Brings Social Networking for Sports Fans on Azure
In this video, iVoteSports CEO and co-founder, Dennis Peters, speaks with Microsoft Principal Architect Evangelist Brian Loesgen. Dennis discusses how iVoteSports delivers a consumer-oriented interactive social networking experience for sports fans while watching or attending sporting events, which creates a more engaging experience for fans.
The final product lineup and specifications for the next release of Visual Studio has been announced on the Visual Studio blog. The announcement was made in the posting A look ahead at the Visual Studio 11 product lineup and platform support.
Get insight on recent and future pricing and licensing changes.
In Part 1, I just got some HTML code written as a skeleton to get me started. In Part 2, I wanted to build out my development environment so I got a trial copy of Visual Studio 11, and Expression.
First of all, I want to place place the text and stylize. I want to build out the blocks and place them on the screen. And I’ll add Modernizr and those features later.
The goal is not to teach you CSS, but to show off some of the possibilities of what you can do to get started.
Early-bird registration has opened for SharePoint Conference in November 12-15, 2012 in Las Vegas, NV. Register before June 29 for early-bird registration rate. Save $400(US).
Register now to give yourself a competitive edge and get the inside scoop about 'SharePoint 15' while learning how to better use SharePoint 2010. Get informed with the best in the field: Engineers who built the product, Microsoft Certified Masters, and MVPs. Gain invaluable knowledge to increase your productivity and stay ahead of the game through hundreds of focused breakout sessions, hands-on lab environments, and instructor-led lab scenarios.
I have a new project that I wanted to do in HTML5. I wanted the user to be able to register on Windows Phone and other phones and in browsers and in Windows 8.
In Getting Started on Line-of-Business HTML5 App -- Part 1 Starting Up With New Semantic Tags, I got a quick view of some of the new HTML5 tags. But if I want to go further, I need a good solid development environment.
I can use NotePad. I can use whatever editor I need.
But what are the set of technologies? And what tools will help me develop my app?
And where can I get the cool stuff that Microsoft offers for little or no charge, like Visual Studio? And what about jQuery, Modernizr, CSS, and Canvas?
When MOC1 Solutions wanted to move their applications supporting automotive dealerships to the cloud, they chose Windows Azure.
In this video, Software Development Manager Alex Hatzopoulos and Architect Greg Cannon speak with Microsoft Principal Architect Evangelist Brian Loesgen. In this wide ranging conversation, they cover their experiences in ramping up their team, setting up their environments, and share other first-hand application migration experience gained while moving their flagship Wireless Service Advisor™ (WSA™) product to Windows Azure.
ISV Video: MOC1 Solutions Brings Wireless Service Advisor To Windows Azure, Streamlines Auto Service Experience
I have an idea for an app. I want my app to be able to run in the Web on multiple browsers. But I also want to be able to turn my code into an app that runs on Windows 8, Windows Phone, iPhone, and Android. My answer seems to be HTML5.
So what is this HTML5 all about?
In this series of posts, I’ll describe what you need to know to build a line of business application. I’ll provide code samples, and I’ll post my example code so you can have a starting point with each features.
The Windows Azure team has announced a new event, MEET Windows Azure. Whether you’re just getting started or are a long time customer, you’ll definitely want to tune-in.
For details, see the announcement at Mark Your Calendar—MEET Windows Azure Event Streamed Online June 7th.
Most consumers are unaware of the extent of publicly available, online exposures of their information – including phone numbers, current and past addresses, birth dates, home values, income level, religion, and relative names (including mother's maiden name) – all of which can easily be used for identity theft and other cybercrimes.
Like an antivirus for consumer privacy, PrivacyCentral exposes privacy threats to consumers, provides analysis and reports via a risk profile and risk score, and then empowers consumers with the ability to remove detected threats and monitor for future threats.
ISV Video: Privacy Central Protecting Your Data Using Ruby on Windows Azure
New source code has been published that lets you meter tenant-level consumption of various Windows Azure resources such as bandwidth, storage, SQL Azure, and compute.
The Cloud Ninja Multi-Tenant Metering Block (CNMB) tenant-level meters, application level aggregates, rich query model based on OData, extensibility to implement customer meters. It comes with out-of-box meter providers for bandwidth, storage, SQL Azure, and compute.
A few months back the Channel 9 team created Visual Studio Achievements which has inspired more than 80,000 downloads. Developers see achievement badges as a fun way to socially share the accomplishments they earn in what can sometimes be the lonely act of writing code.
New badges are available today, so now developers can unlock new achievements when using Visual Studio to write code for Windows Azure. Badges can be earned for proper cloud development usage, mobile+cloud scenarios, social gaming scenarios, or a dozen other developer-related accomplishments.
Windows Azure Diagnostics enables you to collect diagnostic data from an application running in Windows Azure. You can use diagnostic data for debugging and troubleshooting, measuring performance, monitoring resource usage, traffic analysis and capacity planning, and auditing. After the diagnostic data is collected it can be transferred to a Windows Azure storage account for persistence. Transfers can either be scheduled or on-demand.
My colleague, Greg Oliver, describes how to do your diagnostics in a blog post entitled, Windows Azure Diagnostics–From the Ground Up.
Code samples are developers’ favorite asset. In partnership with MSDN Samples Gallery team, we just released a new Sample Browser applications - a new way for developers to search, download and enjoy 3500 code samples at their fingertips.
The 3500 code samples are from MSDN Samples Gallery, including 800+ Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework samples, 480+ official Windows 8 Beta samples, 150+ official Windows Azure samples, 600+ WPF, ASP.NET, Windows Phone 7, Silverlight samples, and more. We hope that this new Sample Browser would ease the way that developers discover and use samples.
Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure for will host ten companies for a three month deep emersion program focused on building businesses that take advantage of the cloud. Through this program, Microsoft and TechStars will help entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators to bring to life a wide range of business ideas that leverage the limitless possibilities enabled by Windows Azure.
Microsoft System Center 2012 is now available for evaluation and purchase, to create private clouds. The announcement was made by Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson at Microsoft Management Summit this week. He discussed how IT professionals can evolve their roles with cloud computing to help their businesses be more competitive.
Windows Azure Media Services simplifies the creation, management, and delivery of media to almost any device including Microsoft Xbox, Windows Phone handsets and Windows PCs, as well as non-Microsoft platforms such as smart TVs, set-top boxes, MacOS, iOS, and Android.
Content providers and media partners can take advantage of the cost benefits and cloud capacity found with Windows Azure, and provide customers massive amounts of digital media in the variety of formats they require, when they require it.