Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Using the ASP.NET Membership API with SQL Server / SQL Azure: The new “System.Web.Providers” namespace

Using the ASP.NET Membership API with SQL Server / SQL Azure: The new “System.Web.Providers” namespace


Using the ASP.NET Membership API with SQL Server / SQL Azure: The new “System.Web.Providers” namespace

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 02:48 AM PDT

The Membership API came in .NET 2.0 and was a huge enhancement in building web applications with users, managing roles, permissions etc., The Membership API by default uses SQL Express and until Visual Studio 2008, it was available only through the ASP.NET Configuration manager screen (Website – ASP.NET Configuration) or (Project – ASP.NET Configuration) and for every application, one has to manually visit this place to start using the Security and other settings. Upon doing that the default SQL Express database aspnet.mdf is created to store all the user profiles. Starting Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0, the Default Website template includes the Membership API controls as a part of the page i.e. When you create a "File – New – ASP.NET Web...(read more)

Getting ready for the Windows Phone 7 Exam 70-599 (Part 3)

Posted: 21 Jun 2011 12:52 AM PDT

This is the third part of my article series to prepare you for Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 exam which will be available starting July 14th. For a short introduction and overview of the exam as well as a list of general learning materials please take...( read more )...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 16 - How to Create a WP7 Alarm Application?

Posted: 20 Jun 2011 10:30 AM PDT

Windows Phone 7.1 now supports scheduled tasks which runs even the application is not running. We can now schedule a task and when the bell hits, it starts executing the said task. In this chapter of the tutorial series, we will explore this using the...( read more )...(read more)

Monday, June 20, 2011

Fuel Tracker sample application for WP7 now in Visual Basic

Fuel Tracker sample application for WP7 now in Visual Basic


Fuel Tracker sample application for WP7 now in Visual Basic

Posted: 20 Jun 2011 01:39 PM PDT

I'm happy to report that the Fuel Tracker sample is now available in Visual Basic. Additionally, we have fixed several small issues that various people have reported, one of which prevented the application from working correctly when running under the...( read more )...(read more)

XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 13 - Mango (2)

Posted: 20 Jun 2011 04:42 AM PDT

Are you interested in creating games for Windows Phone 7 but don't have any XNA experience? Then sign up for a 3-day Online Training Course delivered by CompletIT and Peter Kuhn ! Check the course agenda NOTE: On June 30, 10 am PST Peter will deliver...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for June 19, 2011 -- #1109

Posted: 19 Jun 2011 08:27 PM PDT

In this Issue: Kunal Chowdhury ( -2- ), Oren Gal , Rudi Grobler , Stephen Price , Erno de Weerd , Joost van Schaik , WindowsPhoneGeek , Andrea Boschin , and Vikram Pendse . Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Multiple Page Printing in Silverlight4 - Part 3...( read more )...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 15 - Detecting Device Information

Posted: 19 Jun 2011 10:30 AM PDT

In our last chapter of Windows Phone 7 Tutorial, we learnt about detecting network information using the static class called DeviceNetworkInformation. We also demonstrated it with a small demo application.   In this new chapter of the tutorial series...( read more )...(read more)

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Windows Client Developer Roundup 073 for 6/19/2011

Windows Client Developer Roundup 073 for 6/19/2011


Windows Client Developer Roundup 073 for 6/19/2011

Posted: 19 Jun 2011 08:32 AM PDT

The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Silverlight , Visual C++ , XNA , Expression Blend , Surface , Windows 7 , Windows Phone , Visual Studio, WCF RIA Services , Netduino...( read more )...(read more)

Windows Client Developer Roundup 073 for 6/19/2011

Posted: 19 Jun 2011 08:32 AM PDT

The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Silverlight , Visual C++ , XNA , Expression Blend , Surface , Windows 7 , Windows Phone , Visual Studio, WCF RIA Services , Netduino...( read more )...(read more)

Weekly News Digest @SilverlightZone - 12-June-2011 to 18-June-2011

Posted: 18 Jun 2011 10:30 AM PDT

During the week 12th June to 18th June, we posted 63 new article links at Silverlight-Zone.com which consists of Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch, XAML and Blend.   In this weekly news digest, I am going to share the popular 5 posts of the...( read more )...(read more)

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Prototyping Windows Phone 7 Applications using SketchFlow

Prototyping Windows Phone 7 Applications using SketchFlow


Prototyping Windows Phone 7 Applications using SketchFlow

Posted: 18 Jun 2011 08:16 AM PDT

  I should actually say "Prototyping Windows Phone 7 / 7.1 Applications using SketchFlow" since let it be ver. 7 or 7.1, The way we are going to do prototyping will remain the same. What is Prototyping and SketchFlow and why to use that? : Those...( read more )...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 14 - Detecting Network Information of the Device

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 10:30 AM PDT

User can now detect the mobile operator and other network information's in Windows Phone 7.1 Mango devices programmatically. The new APIs to detect these information will help you to identify the mobile operator, availability of network, Wi-Fi access...( read more )...(read more)

NuGet 1.4 Released

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 04:42 PM PDT

The moon goes around the earth and when it comes up on the other side, Hark! There's a new release of NuGet! Well, this time it was more like one and a half revolutions, but I'm happy nonetheless to announce the release of NuGet 1.4 . A big thank you goes out to the many external contributors who submitted patches to this release! Your enhancements are much appreciated! I've written up much more details about what's in this release in the NuGet 1.4 Release Notes , but I'll highlight a few choice things in this blog post. NuGet Self-Update Notification Check One thing you may notice immediately if you're running NuGet 1.3 today is that the NuGet dialog notifies you itself that there's a new version of NuGet. Note : The check is only made if the...(read more)

Friday, June 17, 2011

Daniel Moth: Blazing-fast Code Using GPUs and More, with C++ AMP

Daniel Moth: Blazing-fast Code Using GPUs and More, with C++ AMP


Daniel Moth: Blazing-fast Code Using GPUs and More, with C++ AMP

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 02:50 PM PDT

You have lastly read in this blog about the C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP) [1]. Yesterday, those who couldn't attend the AMD Fusion Developer Summit had the chance to watch on demand Herb Sutter's keynote where C++ AMP was introduced and some demos were shown [2].

Now Daniel Moth points us to his C++ AMP introductory session on channel9 which includes slides and also promises more code samples in the future.

[Watch Daniel Moth's "Blazing-fast code using GPUs and more, with C++ AMP"]

 

References

  1. Introducing C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP).
  2. Herb Sutter: Heterogeneous Computing and C++ AMP (AFDS Keynote)

I’m About to Start Teaching Ten 9-Year Olds Computer Programming

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 10:00 AM PDT

Next week, the Fairfax Computer Camp will open in my home.  As I work from home, I have a bit of flexibility in scheduling my working hours, so I'm attempting an exciting new challenge – how to teach my son Alex computer programming in a fun environment...( read more )...(read more)

Filtering an ASP.NET GridView control with jQuery

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 09:35 AM PDT

As I've been swimming in the great jQuery lake I discovered the jQuery QuickSearch Plugin, As WebForms developers we often display lots of data using a gridview control. I though it would be neet to set up using the jQuery QuickSearch plugin with the Gridview. Here's how it works. Ihave a GridView wired to some [...] Read More......(read more)

Weekly Links– 2010_22 (50 for Web Devs & Other Geeks)

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 06:32 AM PDT

Software Developer Links of the Week. 10 things that will annoy the hell out of your Web site visitors Inserting Video Media into a Web File via Expression Web 4 Adding messages to Windows 7′s logon screen Converting from Webforms view engine to Razor–Some Tips Video from the WWDC 2011 keynote. Structure of an HTTP [...] Read More......(read more)

Update on Bulletin MS11-025

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 07:00 AM PDT

A while back Microsoft had released security bulletin MS11-025 that addressed a publicly disclosed vulnerability in certain applications built using the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) Library. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a legitimate file associated with such an affected application, and the file happened to be located in the same network folder as a specially crafted library file.

Soon after the release, we discovered some issues with the bulletin some of which we talked about here. Microsoft has just issued an update to the bulletin that addresses the previously discussed issues and a few more:

 

  • For International customers (with localized apps) certain parts of MFC applications resources appeared non-localized.  This was due to an incorrect resource loading operation in the MFC libraries.  Specifically, the API used (FindActCtxSectionString) requires a structure to be passed in (ACTCTX_SECTION_KEYED_DATA) whose cbSize member is already initialized.  The size was not initialized, so depending on the memory content, the API could fail.
  • Some customer's applications were broken on Windows 2000 because of the previous patch.  This was because the fix in the patch used an API (FindActCtxSectionString) that is not supported on the Windows 2000 platform.  The new update will not be automatically offered through Microsoft Update but the affected customers can download it from the bulletin.
  • Patch did not install on users with Windows 7 + Windows 7 SDK on X64 architecture.
  • Executable size of some applications which link to MFC statically had grown when rebuilt using the patch.  This was caused by the fact that some new code was placed in a source module whose object was not normally linked into an application that did not use MFC Feature Pack controls.  When the new code was moved to a source module whose object was already being linked into a statically-linked MFC application, the extra link dependencies were eliminated and the size of the application reverted to the expected size.
  • Visual C++ 2005 SP 1 Redistributable Package revision number was smaller than the previous release.

 

The new bulletin reoffers the update for the following products:

  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1.
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.
  • Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package.
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Service Pack 1 Redistributable Package.

 

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you
Visual C++ Team

Visual Studio 2010 Web Standards Update

Posted: 17 Jun 2011 06:12 AM PDT

Over the last several months the "new wave" of web standards have been  moving at an accelerated pace, All the popular browsers are pushing the envelope including Microsoft's own IE9 and the new standard open up exciting new opportunities for developers. Microsoft at large and the ASP.NET and Visual Studio teams are heavily invested in [...] Read More......(read more)

Silverlight Cream for June 16, 2011 -- #1108

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 10:36 PM PDT

In this Issue: René Schulte , Rajat Jaiswal ( -2- ), Peter Kuhn , Colin Eberhardt , Kunal Chowdhury ( -2- ), Beth Massi , Michael Crump , Daniel Vaughan , Chris Rouw , WindowsPhoneGeek , and Jesse Liberty . Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Cubelicious -...( read more )...(read more)

SQL Server Replication Explorer

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 12:43 PM PDT

SQL Server Replication Explorer is a client tool for browsing through Microsoft SQL Server replication topology. It can also be used for troubleshooting and monitoring of the Microsoft SQL Server replication.

Atlanta Code Camp - I'll Be There

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 12:29 PM PDT

URL : http://www.atlantacodecamp.org/default.aspx Atlanta Code Camp is almost here. It will be a fun time to learn and co-mingle with Atlanta's development community. If you're not familiar with code camps, i'll quote the website: If you're not...( read more )...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 Tip: Showing and Hiding onscreen keyboard in Emulator

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 12:26 PM PDT

If you are developing any Windows Phone 7 application form and using the Emulator to run the app, you may find this tip very useful. A first time user who feels very annoying to click the mouse button to enter text using the phone emulator can hide the...( read more )...(read more)

Introducing System.Web.Providers - ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Membership, Roles and User Profile on SQL Compact and SQL Azure

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 03:47 PM PDT

I always like to remind folks of the equation ASP.NET > (ASP.NET MVC + ASP.NET WebForms). The whole "base of the pyramid" of ASP.NET has lots of things you can use in you applications. Some of these useful bits are Session State, Membership (Users), Roles, Profile data and the provider model that underlies it. Using these isn't for everyone but they are very useful for most applications, even ones as large as the ASP.NET site itself. Today the Web Platform and Tools team (WPT) is  releasing an Alpha of the ASP.NET Universal Providers that will extend Session, Membership, Roles and Profile support to SQL Compact Edition and SQL Azure. Other than supporting additional storage options, the providers work like the existing...(read more)

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Just Released: Kinect for Windows SDK Beta

Just Released: Kinect for Windows SDK Beta


Just Released: Kinect for Windows SDK Beta

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 01:56 PM PDT

image

Following the announcement made a day ago about C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP), now Microsoft Research released the Kinect for Windows SDK beta: a programming toolkit for application developers that enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

This SDK includes the following features:

  • Raw sensor streams
    Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.

  • Skeletal tracking
    The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.

  • Advanced audio capabilities
    Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.

  • Sample code and documentation
    The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.

  • Easy installation
    The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets).

This SDK is designed for non-commercial purposes only; a commercial version is expected to be available at a later date.

The SDK is documented and code walkthroughs are provided here. Enjoy!

Herb Sutter: Heterogeneous Computing and C++ AMP (AFDS Keynote)

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 12:02 PM PDT

Introducing C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP)

We announced yesterday C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP), an initiative thought to become an open standard in order to leverage the computing power of APUs like Graphic Processing Units (GPUs).

Now you can watch "Heterogeneous Parallelism at Microsoft", the keynote where Herb Sutter, Principal Architect with the Visual C++ team, introduced this technology with code and graphic demos. There's another session yet to be posted where Sr. Program Manager Daniel Moth goes deeper into the details. We'll update this post to reflect that when it happens.

 

[Watch AFDS session "Heterogeneous Parallelism at Microsoft"]

Implementing Mutually Exclusive CheckBoxes with jQuery

Posted: 16 Jun 2011 07:30 AM PDT

The ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit contains a control extender for making a set of ASP.NET CheckBoxes mutually exclusive [ See HERE ]. In this post I'll demonstrate implementing Mutually Exclusive CheckBoxes with jQuery. ASP.NET Checkboxes are, of course, server-side controls. If you've been following along with this series, or you using ASP.NET WebMatrix or MVC instead of [...] Read More......(read more)

Windows Phone 7 (Mango) Tutorial - 13 - What is Tombstoning?

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 10:30 AM PDT

Mobile phones have very limited resource as compared to a desktop PC and hence it is very difficult to run multiple applications simultaneously. Also, suppose if multiple resources run simultaneously, it will eat up the battery life and make your phone...( read more )...(read more)

Announcing HTML5 & CSS3 support for Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 05:09 PM PDT

Since the last few months it feels like web standards are moving at pace that we would really like them to move. Every browser is pushing the envelope ahead including our very own IE9. For the first time it feels like web is getting the extra freedom of expression that it deserves and we want to contribute to that. ASP.NET developers have been asking for HTML5 & CSS3 support all the time and today we are super excited to announce the public availability of Visual Studio Web Standards Update which brings a ton of HTML5 & CSS3 support to Visual Studio 2010 SP1 . VS Web Standards Update is a free extension available for anyone who is using Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and it provides HTML5 & CSS3 support based on current W3C specifications...(read more)

Announcing the Web Standards Update - HTML5 Support for the Visual Studio 2010 Editor

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 04:59 PM PDT

Folks have been asking "When will VS2010 support HTML5?" I've been saying, jokingly, that the answer is "yesterday" as there's nothing keeping you from creating HTML5 in Visual Studio or ASP.NET today. However, there's no intellisense and there's lots of squiggly lines that make people uncomfortable. Combine all that with the fact that HTML5 is a moving target, and it's unclear. We've said before that the next version of Visual Studio will have better support HTML5, but what about today? Today, a rogue faction of the Web Platform and Tools team, spearheaded by Mads Kristensen , is pleased to announce the Visual Studio Web Standards Update . This adds better support for HTML5, CSS3 and new JavaScript...(read more)

Web Standards Update for Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 01:52 PM PDT

  The Web Platform and Tools team is very pleased to announce the first Web Standards Update for Visual Studio SP1 . It updates the HTML5 intellisense and validation to reflect the latest W3C specifications and fixes some bugs bugs in the current SP1 support for HTML5. Also JavaScript intellisense it updated to reflect many of the new browser capabilities such as Geolocation and DOM storage. Finally, this update adds comprehensive CSS3 intellisense and validation based on the latest specifications from W3C. As the HTML5 and CSS3 specifications mature we will make updates available accordingly to ensure that ASP.NET web developers always have the latest standards to work with. This is at the same time an invitation to report any bugs or...(read more)

Replacing the ACT PagingBulletedList with the jQuery ListNav Plugin.

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 03:32 PM PDT

The Ajax Control Toolkit includes a control extender [ The Paging Bulleted List Control Extender ] that lets you create a list that the user can filter by clicking on an index indicator. This can be very useful, especially when your list is very large. The jQuery ListNav Plug-In lets you do this with any unordered [...] Read More......(read more)

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

jQuery versus the Ajax Control Toolkit–Why should I use jQuery Instead ?

jQuery versus the Ajax Control Toolkit–Why should I use jQuery Instead ?


jQuery versus the Ajax Control Toolkit–Why should I use jQuery Instead ?

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 11:23 AM PDT

I recently received this email from an MSJoe blog reader. Hi Joe, thanks for the posts about jquery..   I'm now wondering, we are using the ms ajax toolkit. I like the simple use of it. Now doing jquery you will have to write javascript, which will have the advantage that all cpu cycles are [...] Read More......(read more)

Introducing C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP)

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 10:30 AM PDT

A few months ago, Herb Sutter told about a keynote he was to delivered today in the AMD Fusion Developer Summit (happening these days). He said by then:

"Parallelism is not just in full bloom, but increasingly in full variety. We know that getting full computational performance out of most machines—nearly all desktops and laptops, most game consoles, and the newest smartphones—already means harnessing local parallel hardware, mainly in the form of multicore CPU processing. (…) More and more, however, getting that full performance can also mean using gradually ever-more-heterogeneous processing, from local GPGPU and Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) flavors to "often-on" remote parallel computing power in the form of elastic compute clouds. (…)"

In that sense, S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President of the Developer Division made this morning the following announcement:

"I'm excited to announce that we are introducing a new technology that helps C++ developers use the GPU for parallel programming. Today at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit, we announced C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism (C++ AMP). (…) By building on the Windows DirectX platform, our implementation of C++ AMP allows you to target hardware from all the major hardware vendors. (…)"

C++ AMP, as Soma tells in his post, is actually an open specification. Microsoft will deliver an implementation based on its Windows DirectX platform (DirectCompute, as Sr. Program Manager Daniel Moth specifies in a later post a few minutes ago).

Daniel added that C++ AMP will lower the barrier to entry for heterogeneous hardware programmability, bringing performance to the mainstream. Developers will get an STL-like library as part of the existing concurrency namespace (whose Parallel Patterns Library –PPL- and its Concurrency Runtime –ConcRT- are also being enhanced in the next version of Visual C++) in a way that developers won't need to learn a different syntax, nor using a different compiler.

 

Both Soma and Daniel finish by telling that these sessions at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit are being recorded and will be published later this week on Channel 9. We'll provide here some updates when those videos are live –you can also register here to see the rest of the summit live.

Pedal to the metal, let's go native at full speed!

 

References:

  1. S. Somasegar's announcement: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2011/06/15/targeting-heterogeneity-with-c-amp-and-ppl.aspx
  2. Daniel Moth's blog post: http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/C-Accelerated-Massive-Parallelism.aspx
  3. Herb Sutter about his keynote at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit: http://herbsutter.com/2011/04/06/fusion/
  4. AMD Fusion Developer Summit Webcasts: http://developer.amd.com/afds/pages/webcast.aspx

Proposing a new RelayCommand snippet for MVVM Light V4

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 07:39 AM PDT

In MVVM Light V4, I am proposing a new RelayCommand snippet, making it easier to declare and initialize a RelayCommand. I came up with a syntax that allows having the RelayCommand and its initialization in one convenient location. I am looking for feedback...( read more )...(read more)

Podcast – Cyra Richardson, Principal Program Manager Lead, Server & Tools On-Line

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 06:24 AM PDT

Cyra Richardson is a Principal Program Manager Lead in Microsoft's Server & Tools On-Line group and is primarily responsible for driving the strategy for almost all of Microsoft Developer and ITPro community properties. In this episode I talk with Cyra about the challenges and direction of Microsoft's on-line communities. I once described Cyra as the [...] Read More......(read more)

Orchard 1.2 Released

Posted: 15 Jun 2011 06:03 AM PDT

Version 1.2 of Orchard is now officially available. You can find the download and release notes here: http://orchard.codeplex.com/releases/view/65184 This release is mainly about bug fixes and performance improvements, but it is also introducing a couple of nice features. Creation date is now the date that we use for everything in the front-end, which should bring [...] Read More......(read more)

Silverlight Cream for June 14, 2011 -- #1107

Posted: 14 Jun 2011 10:13 PM PDT

In this Issue: Kunal Chowdhury , Stephen Price , Mark Heath , Oren Gal , Jesse Liberty , and Laurent Duveau . Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Implicit Data Template in Silverlight 5" Laurent Duveau WP7: "Fast Application Switching Made Easy" Jesse Liberty...( read more )...(read more)

Windows Phone Developer Contests and Promotions

Posted: 14 Jun 2011 06:16 PM PDT

Microsoft is trying hard to get developers to make apps and games for Windows Phone 7, and this means opportunities for developers. This is a rundown of the promotions I know of, if you know of more please let me know in the comments and I'll update the...( read more )...(read more)

A Solution for Binding Silverlight DataGrid Columns to 2nd Level Collection

Posted: 14 Jun 2011 10:30 AM PDT

Supreet Tare posted a thread on MSDN Forum to help him binding a 2nd Level Collection in Silverlight DataGrid control. As he didn't find any good solution there, he asked me on Twitter to give a solution to him for the same. I did a small investigation...( read more )...(read more)