Latest Microsoft Blogs

According to TechRepublic ...... 1: One of the “Big Three” (.NET, Java, PHP) 2: Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) 3: Web developmentWeb 4: Web services (REST, SOAP, JSON, XML) 5: Soft skills 6: One dynamic and/or functional programming language 7: Agile methodologies 8: Domain knowledge 9: Development “hygiene” 10: Mobile development You can read the whole article [ HERE ] Read More...

We launched the Windows Web Application Gallery at MIX on 3/18 with 10 open source and community applications, including DotNetNuke, DasBlog, Umbraco and Subtext. We are now experiencing thousands of application downloads per week! Are you working on a community/open source application ? Why don't you join the Web App Gallery? To get started: 1. Review the Web App Gallery Principles to get a sense of how we keep a common baseline for user experience. 2. Create manifest files to add to your ZIP package at using the Application Packaging Guide . 3. Submit your application. (You’ll have to log in with a LiveID first.) We’ll then check out your submission to see if it follows the Web App Gallery Principles . Once it does, your application will...

Mehfuz Hossain (a Microsoft MVP) has been working on [ Creating Custom LINQ Providers ] and has built a [ LINQ-to-Twitter ] provider. Man our MVP's are the BEST !! Read More...

If you read my blog by now you know I'm a big fan of the Microsoft Patterns and Practices Team !! Well, my buddy Carl Franklin just did a .NET Rocks episode on the new Application Guide 2.0 Check out .NET Rocks show #426, Rob Boucher on Application Architecture Guidance . It's an in-depth interview with Rob Boucher from our Microsoft patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide 2.0 project . It's a behind the scenes look at the making of the guide and you get to know Rob along the way. There's a lot of insight about the structure of the guide, as well as the approach we used in the guide. There's also a lot of inside information on the design intentions and usage scenarios. It ROCKS ! Read More...

REALLY distributed architectures are playing a bigger and bigger role in application development these days and Azure is an exciting bit of "Cloud" based technology. Check out ..... SQL Data Services Microsoft® SQL Data Services (SDS) offers highly scalable and Internet-facing distributed database services in the cloud for storing and processing relational queries. SDS can help you develop and provision new applications quickly with REST and SOAP based web protocols. The services are built on robust SQL Server database and Windows Server technologies, providing high availability and security. Get Started Visit the Dev Center Try the SDS Public CTP Read More...

You know the Expression Suite ! Tools for building the UI "experience". Well know there is a gallery of designs created by YOU ! Check them out here..... http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/ Read More...

Infragistics has made the Quince UX patterns explorer available for free to the development community. Quince is an online repository of the world's most useful and usable UX patterns focused on creating superior user experiences where you can go to enhance your own UX designs. Free and open, anybody can contribute to Quince and grow the UX pattern body of knowledge. It is all about giving you the UX pattern resource you need to create great UX designs for your end users. http://www.infragistics.com/hot/quince.aspx http://quince.infragistics.com Read More...

J.D. and the very smart folks over in the Patterns and Practices group have been at it again and have published another GREAT development resource. Patterns & Practices Application Architecture Knowledge Base Authored by .... - J.D. Meier , Alex Homer, David Hill, Jason Taylor , Prashant Bansode , Lonnie Wall, Rob Boucher Jr, Akshay Bogawat . It's downloadable as a PDF file and is a simply incredible Application Architecture Guide. Now if I could just get it for my Kindle ! http://www.codeplex.com/AppArch/ Read More...

The Azure Services Evangelism team is pleased to announce the release of the Azure Issue Tracker sample application. The Azure Issue Tracker demonstrates a real-world ISV scenario where you want to create and host a SaaS application for your consumers. This sample is being released in two versions: Standard and Enterprise. The Standard version allows ad-hoc users to use Windows LiveID federation with the .NET Access Control Service and authorize other Windows LiveID users. This allows small groups of users to quickly provision projects and issue tracking capabilities while using the rich claims-based authorization model and flexible entity storage. The Cloud is the NEW SOA :) http://www.codeplex.com/azureissuetracker Read More...

Now available for download: Release Candidate of IIS PowerShell Snap-in The Release Candidate of the IIS PowerShell Snap-in now available. A lot of work was done between Tech Preview 2 and now. The team focused mainly on augmenting the PowerShell Provider with almost 70 task-oriented cmdlets useful for day-to-day administrative tasks. Here is a quick categorization of the task-oriented cmdlets: Mangement of Sites/Apps/Vdirs/AppPools (create/start/stop/remove/convert/recycle) Management of site bindings (add/change/remove) Management of Handlers and Modules/Managed Modules (add/change/remove) Enablement of Request Tracing Backup and Restore of IIS configuration Locking/unlocking of sections/elements/attributes Getting file system path for config...