Latest Microsoft Blogs

It should be quite obvious: drawing requires constant visual feedback. Why is it then that we still draw with code in so many situations? Of course it’s because the low-level APIs always come first, and design tools are built after and on top of those. Existing design tools also don’t typically include complex UI elements such as buttons. When we launched our Touch Display module for Netduino Go! , we naturally built APIs that made it easy to draw on the screen from code, but very soon, we felt the limitations and tedium of drawing in code. In particular, any modification requires a modification of the code, followed by compilation and deployment. When trying to set-up buttons at pixel precision, the process is not optimal. On the other hand...

Netduino Go is designed for much more than toy projects, but one has to recognize that toy projects are fun and also great learning experiences. Today, I want to take you through the process of reproducing the behavior of a famous toy that you will surely recognize. That toy, that has helped many of us realize what poor motor skills we possess, has two knobs that control the horizontal and vertical coordinates of a pen that draws into the dust on the back of a simple screen. It’s a great mechanical device that is part of western culture. Our version will use two potentiometers , a 320x240 LCD display , a button to erase the screen, and of course a Netduino Go . The hardware setup looks like the following: We connected the button to port 2 (but...

Wouldn’t it be great if you could build your own stuff? Microcontrollers let you do that, but they usually require dealing with a lot of complexity and unknowns. If you’re a software developer, chances are you don’t really know how to use a capacitor, or how a transistor works, even though it is at the heart of all computers. Well there is a way now to develop awesome hardware projects without knowledge of electronics, just by connecting modules together. Netduino Go is a platform that allows for that without constraining the types of projects you can build. Today the number of available modules is still limited (the platform was released only last Wednesday), but it is expected to grow fast. In this post, I’ll introduce you to the platform...

TL;DR: I’m leaving Microsoft to found my own company . My involvement in Orchard continues unchanged. It’s been almost nine years. Nine years at Microsoft, first as a developer, and then as a program manager. I’ve worked on ASP.NET versions 2.0 to 4.0, ASP.NET Ajax, Ajax Control Toolkit, then on integrating jQuery into the Microsoft developer’s toolbox, and of course, on Orchard. I’ve made mistakes, errors of judgment, but I like to think I’ve learned a lot along the way, that my blog has helped many who were learning or struggling with the technology, and that I’ve built a few really cool things. Most of all, I’ve changed. When I got hired by Scott Guthrie et al. , Microsoft was for me the Mecca of software development, the place where the...