Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED - Here's 13 videos to learn new features!

Jason Zander announced today that Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 is RELEASED to web. The .NET Web Tools Team (the team I'm on) has coverage on their blog as well. I thought I'd showcase some Tiny Happy Features that the team worked on just because it made life better. Some are large some are small, but all are tiny happy features.

I'll continue for a few more Tiny Happy Features over the next few weeks but this last week I took some time and recorded 13 (ya, thirteen, oy) short videos to show you guys these features in action. These are SHORT videos that are at most 4 to 6 minutes. It's hard to watch 60 to 90 minute screencast so I did these little one-take quick shots so you could watch them at lunch.

If you watch all these videos it will take you less than an hour and you'll have a good practical idea of what's new in Web Development and Tools with Visual Studio 2012. This is by no means exhaustive, but it's a lot.

Watch all the videos here

Visual Studio 2012 RTW (Release To Web)

Visual Studio 2012 is now released to the web. Please visit Jason Zander’s Blog for detailed announcement. This page lists what’s new in ASP.NET 4.5 and Visual Studio for Web.
We are updating the Visual Studio 2010 publish experience as well to align with the features available in Visual Studio 2012 RTW. The bits are inside Windows Azure SDK for .NET which can be downloaded in https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/.
Also, we are releasing the following at the same time:

• ASP.NET MVC 4 for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and Visual Web Developer 2010 SP1
• ASP.NET Web API OData preview on NuGet
• ASP.NET Web API Help Page preview on NuGet
• ASP.NET Web API Tracing preview on NuGet

Read full article here

Windows 8 available from tomorrow, for some at least

Tomorrow will be an exciting day for some people, who will finally have access to Windows 8 via MSDN & TechNet subscriptions. We've added in the release timeline as a reminder, because the release isn't limited to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, there are other ways to get it before the retail launch on October 26th.

• August 15th: Developers will be able to download the final version of Windows 8 via your MSDN subscriptions.
• August 15th: IT professionals testing Windows 8 in organizations will be able to access the final version of Windows 8 through your TechNet subscriptions.
• August 16th: Customers with existing Microsoft Software Assurance for Windows will be able to download Windows 8 Enterprise edition through the Volume License Service Center (VLSC), allowing you to test, pilot and begin adopting Windows 8 Enterprise within your organization.
• August 16th: Microsoft Partner Network members will have access to Windows 8.
• August 20th: Microsoft Action Pack Providers (MAPS) receive access to Windows 8.
• September 1st: Volume License customers without Software Assurance will be able to purchase Windows 8 through Microsoft Volume License Resellers.

Are you one of the lucky ones with access tomorrow, or can you get it (legally) by other means before October 26th? Let us know in the comments.

Source : Neowin

Introduction to Telerik RadBulletGraph

When you install RadControls for Metro two files are placed on your desktop. One is the QSF for HTML/JavaScript and the other is for XAML/C#. Not only will these samples demonstrate how powerful the controls are, the code in the sample applications can serve as an excellent learning tool.

In this blog post, I will tease out of the QSF for XAML the fundamentals of creating a RadBulletGraph. A bullet graph is a very concise way to convey a primary measure (e.g., current revenue) compared to one or more other measures (e.g., a target revenue) in the context of qualitative ranges (e.g, poor, good, excellent), as illustrated in figure 1 taken from this article on bullet graphs in Wikipedia.

Read full article here
You can download the RadControlsForMetro here.
Download the complete source code for this posting here
Credit goes to Jesse Liberty

Store the access to files/folders instead of using a picker each time

In a Metro Win8′s style app you have full access to the local, roaming and temp folder of the app. The app can also access the libraries(documents, videos, pictures, …) if the correct capabilities are declared in the package manifest.

If the app needs to retrieve any other file or folder, it has to ask the user through a picker. This is a one-time UI which gives you access to the desired item only if the user is OK with that.

It can be boring (and it is) for the user to give you access to a file each time you need it. In this post we will discuss the solution proposed by the WinRT Framework.

This is in fact as easy as managing a list of strings !

Read full article here

Creating A Sticky AppBar in Win8

In talking with other developers, there seems to be a growing fear that creating an AppBar for Windows 8 is somehow difficult or complex. Nothing could be further from true; creating an AppBar is quite straight forward.

To illustrate this, I’ve created an application that creates a simple app bar and adds a ToggleSwitch to turn on and off the IsSticky attribute.  When IsSticky is off (the default) you can dismiss the AppBar by clicking anywhere in the application off the AppBar.  When IsSticky is set to true, however, you must make the same gesture you made to get the AppBar to appear (swiping from top down or bottom up) to make it disappear.

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Windows 8 WriteableBitmap Pixel Arrays in C# and C++

Sometimes I thiink of myself as a scientist who studies operating systems. Although these operating systems form the structure and foundation of the natural world in which I exist, for the most part I can't study the internals. I'm pretty much limited to the external physical manifestion of this world, ie, the API. But that's often enough. APIs can be poked and prodded. Experiments can be performed, and conclusions drawn. Like a real scientist I sometimes develop hypotheses about how these API worlds work, and then I must write some code to test if these hypotheses are valid.

And sometimes I jump the gun — at least in my own head. I stumble upon something that I just know will make a great article or blog entry. If I don't have time to work on it right away, I start mentally coding the programs I'll need to demonstrate the concept, and I'll be writing the article in my head, and even graciously acknowledging the accolades that are sure to follow.

Read full article here