January 2011 - Posts
Scott Guthrie and the ASP.NET group have been busy this week with many new releases. The most anticipated release is ASP.NET MVC 3 which is a framework built on top of ASP.NET that provides the developer features that can simply their code and provide deeper extensibility. One exciting new feature is a new view-engine option called Razor giving developers a more code-focused way of building templates used in HTML generation.
Microsoft also released IIS Express 7.5, a free version of IIS 7.5 that is optimized for developer scenarios. More about it here.
Personally, the one I am interested in diving into is WebMatrix 1.0. This new development tool is free and provides an easy ramp-up to individuals new to Web development. This tool takes care of many of the common tasks and procedures allowing Web sites to be build quickly and easily but without restricting the more advanced developer's ability to extend the built-in functionality. For more, see here and here.
Hanselman has a great blog posting on these new tools as well.
Download and Enjoy!
Anything that makes my life easier is a welcome thing. Jesse Liberty, who we were privileged to have develop our inaugural Visual C# course before he went off to Microsoft, came up with a list that in my opinion is as about as good as it gets. The only comparable tools list would be Scott Hanselman's Ultimate Tool List.
Check them out!
12 Absolutely and Insanely Essential Utilities For Programmers
12 MORE Insanely Essential Utilities For Programmers
Enjoy!
New technologies that developers can take advantage of is emerging at the speed of a fire hose and developers are constantly having to reanalyze and retool year after year. But what technology vehicles do you jump on and commit to? What technologies are in it for the long haul? And what is just a fad and will quickly be replaced?
One technology that Microsoft is getting injected into nearly everything is WPF and XAML. What started out more as a cool, new user interface technology that let you push the limits of how application interact with users (or as some people put it; giving the developer more rope to hang themselves with), has become more and more a requirement for developers. To wear the cap of an official Microsoft developer today, you now need to know how to develop in WPF/Silverlight. Take a look at where Microsoft is going--mobile development, Cloud computing, Surface 2.0, Windows 8--and you see how these skills are quickly becoming the way of the land.
AppDev is keeping up with the curve. Those that have been with us for many years have witnessed our AppDev Learning Engine (ALE) go through a transformation into Silverlight where our student user interface is now 100% XAML-based. We have already enjoyed the freedom we get with XAML allowing us to create new user controls that greatly enhance the usability of our learning tools. But there is much more to be done and we are constantly trying out new features and enhancements to make your learning experience better.
How are you using WPF?