The long-awaited 6th edition of Programming Windows is scheduled to be published by Microsoft Press in November 2012, but you can purchase the ebook direct from the O'Reilly website today: ... more ...
One of the biggest performance changes for developers using Silverlight in Mango (WP 7.5) is off-thread input for ListBox. In a nutshell this basically means that all any flick or pan a user makes on a ListBox is handled by a dedicated thread, the [..]
A few colleague evangelists are doing a series on MSDN Webcasts on building Windows 8 Metro style apps.. Catch the whole series and get a very concise, yet comprehensive introduction to building Metro style apps.. See below [..]
If all goes according to plan, in one week, on May 17, 2012, you will be able to purchase a preview ebook of Programming Windows, 6th edition, for just $10. For that one-time payment of $10, you will also get the second preview ebook a couple [..]
In an earlier post we looked at how we can gain broad insight into an application scenario’s memory characteristics and how the graph and markers drew our attention to ranges of execution for further analyses. Recall that in the memory leak [..]
Today we released a minor update to Silverlight 5. The 32 and 64 bit update version number is 5.1.10411.0. (The documentation said 5.2 at first, but this has been fixed.) This will be rolled out to everyone. We throttle large updates of [..]
Two weeks ago, we announced an all day training for those Building metro style apps with C++.. Event sold out within a few days, and we got a lot of requests for it to be recorded (or broadcasted live).. I am happy to announce [..]
We homeschool our two children. Ben, is kindergarten age, Abby is pre-school age. My wife does, by far, most of the work there, including trucking them to specialized classes (art, music, gymnastics, karate, our homeschool group single day [..]
The Windows Phone Browser team has a goal of delivering the best web browsing experience on a smartphone. This goal has many components within our team: from the UI of the browser, compatibility with a wide array of website layouts, and of course [..]
On April 24th I helped run the patterns & practices Symposium 2012 Online on Channel 9. All of the videos are currently up and viewable on-demand. As part of the event, I gave a talk on the .NET Micro Framework. I had a ton of fun doing [..]
Here’s some links to posts and stories about the 15 new Windows Azure achievements added to Visual Studio Achievements: Visual Studio Adds Windows Azure Achievements Neowin Azure Gamified - More Badges! I Programmer Visual Studio [..]
Today I’ll outline the latest steps we’re taking in our ongoing effort to keep the quality bar high in our rapidly growing Marketplace. I know most of you share our goal of a great shopping experience and already go out of your way to follow our [..]
I wanted to make sure you saw the Windows Phone consumer blog today, because my colleague Mazhar highlights two changes to the Marketplace shopping experience that developers should be aware of. First, we’re removing the option to browse and buy [..]
The fourth of the four principles I mentioned in Optimizing Apps for Lower Cost Devices is Respond to User Input. A responsive UI is a basic expectation that users have of apps. Failing to respond to user input can frustrate users and can [..]
The ByRef in the title should give you a hint that this is about legacy VB.NET code. One of my duties at my new job is to maintain our legacy VB.NET codebase until we deploy our WPF software. When I use the term legacy it should not be taken in a [..]
Join the Microsoft Visual C++ and Windows teams in Redmond on May 18, 2012 for a free, all-day event focused on building Windows 8 Metro style apps with C++. Whether you are a new C++ developer ready to learn about the writing Metro style [..]
If you've been following my blog, you know that for the past few months I've been working on the 6th edition of Programming Windows, which focuses on writing Metro style applications for Windows 8 using C# and XAML. ... more ...
The Maker Geek Roundup aggregates information of interest to makers everywhere. Topics include .NET Micro Framework, Arduino, AVR and other MCUs, CNC, 3d Printing, Robotics, Microsoft Robotics Studio, Electronics, General Maker stuff, and more. [..]
Tuesday, the Windows Store blog announced that in the next significant Windows 8 preview release they will be expanding their global coverage with 33 additional app submission locales for developers. As Antoine Leblond alluded to in the [..]
Synopsis: The WPF/Silverlight TextBox control lacks the TextTrimming property. Use a control template to add TextTrimming to TextBox. Want more Silverlight tips and tricks? Watch my Silverlight 5 Essential Training course We’ve all [..]
This statistic, seemed unbelievable. Only one out of ten MSDN subscribers is using their free Azure benefits. According to Microsoft, MSDN subscribers get a boatload of free services each year (~$3700.00 USD) I’m not talking about [..]
It is said that “A point of view is worth 80 IQ points”; the meaning perhaps being that if we can look at things in different ways then we might understand them better. The Memory Profiler that ships with the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 provides, in its [..]
I love NoSQL, except when it comes to reporting. Then I miss those handy SQL aggregation calls. I recently had a situation where I needed to look at a whole bunch of JSON files stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage and aggregate values from [..]