Jason N. Gaylord - microsoft

What came first? The baby or the app

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:00:50 GMT

So today is the big day where my wife is being induced with our fourth child. Given the past, today’s experience should last between 6-10 hours. Knowing I’ll be hearing monitors in the background, I figured I should do some work. Since I haven’t spent the time to complete an app for Windows Phone yet I figured I would challenge myself. I’ll be live blogging this experience today and am up against mother nature. My goal is to see what comes first: my new baby boy or my new Windows Phone app. Wish me luck (on both fronts)!

Current Update:
Bryce Liam was born just before 3pm (my 3pm update was premature). Someone from the Azure Mobile Services team is checking my issue with the app. So, Bryce won the prize (rightfully so as my app definitely is not as good lucking is the little guy), but I’ll still be publishing the application soon. Thanks to everyone that followed today.

3pm At this point, the baby is going to win. I still cannot get Azure Mobile
Services working properly. I’ll update everyone later this evening.

2pm Lisa’s status hasn’t changed since 8am. I’m getting bonus time now at
the expense of my wife. I have a few things that I came across to blog
about after the app is further along. Stay tuned.

1pm I decided to take a lunch break. Nothing is changing on either front.
The fire alarm at the house is going off again.

12pm Lisa is still hanging in there. Doc hasn’t been in the room in awhile so
I’m sure we’ll get an update soon. Most of the application style has been
set. There’s no data as I’ll need to build that out after the fact.

11am As time is passing, I get a phone call from my house. The fire alarm is
          going off. As the alarm is going off, my mother-in-law proceeds to ask
          me to hold on so she can answer the phone. There goes 30 minutes of
          development time. However, I have something compiling (but without
          data). I’m getting an error when including Azure Mobile Services about
          referencing System.Runtime.

10am Lisa is doing well. She’s continuing to press on. I’m sure things will speed
up shortly. I have 3 tables defined on paper and am starting to update
Azure with the columns. I’m having issues with mobile services.

9am Lisa has contractions around 4 minutes apart. My aunt (doc) still has a 9am
surgery. I have my mobile service created in Azure and the logo, tile icons,
and general layout mocked out in VS Express for Phone.

8am Lisa is now 3cm. I have a logo for the app and the app project started.

7am It’s beginning – I have an idea on paper. Notice the attention to detail.

Professional ASP.NET 4.5 in C# and VB

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:03:37 GMT

On May 3rd, Wrox Press released Professional ASP.NET 4.5 in C# and VB. I co-authored this book with two Microsoft employees (Pranav Rastogi and Scott Hanselman)as well as two Microsoft MVPs (Christian Wenz and Todd Miranda). The book is packed with the most current information about ASP.NET 4.5. It is also the only book I am aware of that explains One ASP.NET. The foreword for this book is written by Scott Hunter of the ASP.NET team.

There are ten parts, 35 chapters, 7 appendixes, and nearly 1500 pages in this book. Here’s the table of contents for the book:

Part 1: ASP.NET Fundamentals

Chapter 1: One ASP.NET
Chapter 2: HTML5 and CSS3 Design with ASP.NET
Chapter 3: ASP.NET Web Forms Structure

Part 2: Controls

Chapter 4: ASP.NET Server Controls
Chapter 5: ASP.NET Web Server Controls
Chapter 6: Validation Server Controls
Chapter 7: User and Server Controls

Part 3: Data Access

Chapter 8: Data Binding
Chapter 9: Model Binding
Chapter 10: Querying with LINQ
Chapter 11: Entity Framework
Chapter 12: ASP.NET Dynamic Data
Chapter 13: Working with Services

Part IV: Providers

Chapter 14: Introduction to the Provider Model
Chapter 15: Extending the Provider Model

Part V: ASP.NET Features

Chapter 16: Working with Master Pages
Chapter 17: Site Navigation
Chapter 18: Personalization
Chapter 19: Membership and Role Management
Chapter 20: Security

Part VI: Application State

Chapter 21: State Management
Chapter 22: Caching

Part VII: Client-Side Development

Chapter 23: ASP.NET AJAX
Chapter 24: AJAX Control Toolkit
Chapter 25: jQuery
Chapter 26: Real-time Communication
Chapter 27: Developing Websites with Mobile in Mind

Part VIII: Application Configuration and Deployment

Chapter 28: Configuration
Chapter 29: Debugging and Error Handling
Chapter 30: Modules and Handlers
Chapter 31: Asynchronous Communication
Chapter 32: Building Global Applications
Chapter 33: Packaging and Deploying ASP.NET

Part IX: Additional ASP.NET Technologies

Chapter 34: ASP.NET MVC
Chapter 35: ASP.NET Web Pages and Razor

Part X: Appendixes

Appendix A: Migrating Older ASP.NET Projects
Appendix B: COM Integration
Appendix C: ASP.NET Ultimate Tools
Appendix D: Administration and Management
Appendix E: Dynamic Types and Languages
Appendix F: ASP.NET Online Resources
Appendix G: Visual Studio Extensibility with NuGet

You can pick up a copy at Amazon by visiting http://jasong.us/amzn-aspnet45. If you do pick up a copy, be sure to post a review of the book on your own blog, on Amazon, or via the forums on Wrox.com.

Samsung Focus to Windows Phone 7.8 to Straight Talk

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 04:38:54 GMT

Recently, we made the decision to change one of our Verizon Wireless plans. The plan was a family share plan that has existed for quite some time now. Both phones on the plan were “dumb” phones and the near $130 price point for up to 1400 minutes and no data seemed way too steep. When evaluating other Verizon Wireless plans, the price would increase even more for the two devices plus taxes.

After some discussion, we realized that Verizon Wireless plans just didn’t make sense for these two devices. I had a Samsung Focus v1.3 phone that I received from Microsoft when Windows Phone was first released. The phone still had Windows Phone 7.1 installed on it.

Upgrading the Samsung Focus to Windows Phone 7.8

Before deciding to upgrade to Straight Talk, I took to the Internet to see what issues others have been experiencing. One of the issues had to do with MMS messaging and the Samsung Focus. For some reason, there was some issue with the software installed on the Focus. After some searching, I finally found a tutorial to upgrade the phone to Windows Phone 7.8. The best part of this process was that the phone would look like a Nokia Lumia 800 device.

Before we begin, the following will be needed:

Zune software installed on your machine
Application to unzip .rar files such as 7-zip
DarkForcesTeam MAGLDR Installer
Samsung Focus 1.3 Image (note: save this as SamsungFocus.rar when downloading)

In preparation for the install, I found it easiest to copy all files to a common folder on my machine. I used 7-zip to expand the .rar file and extract the files contained within. An example of what these look like can be found below:

Next, I followed the step-by-step process outlined in this great video by Leapy Tech on Youtube. If this process works for you, definitely click the their name in the previous sentence and give them a shout out on Twitter.

Here is the step-by-step process to getting the ROM loaded:

Enabling Straight Talk on our Samsung Focus

Between the upgrade of OS and the switch in provider, the provider switch was definitely the more trying process. I’ll end with these pain points in hopes that someone who cares at Tracfone (the technical partner of Straight Talk) actually pays attention.

There were a bunch of steps required for this to work:

We needed to order a SIM card for the phone. These are best to be acquired directly through Straight Talk. Click on the Shop menu option and choose SIM cards. For the Samsung Focus to work, the phone must be unlocked. This is extremely important. If you are coming off your contract, your provider, most likely AT&T, should help to unlock the device.
In my case, I had to port my number from Verizon Wireless. To do this, you must call Straight Talk using the phone number on the SIM card paper. You will be transferred to at least one other rep that can better assist you. You will be required to have your account number and password or PIN. In the case of Verizon Wireless, it is the PIN that you’ll need. You’ll be told that this will take up to 72 hours to migrate, but it actually takes around 15 minutes. Calling into the phone will take longer. This may take up to 4 hours to complete. I would recommend removing the battery and placing it back in every so often to completely reset the phone.
Update the APN settings for the web and MMS to work. This was painful, but I finally have it working. I’ll break this down further below.

Before attempting to update the APN settings in the Cellular menu option in Settings, be sure to read this. Nokia has a great app that has full APN capabilities. The app is called Network Setup and can be downloaded in the Marketplace:

After it’s installed, find it in your app listing:

Next, open up the app. Once you’re in the app, you’ll notice that you can edit an APN or add a new one. Add a new one called Straight Tal (note the name only allows so many characters.)

Since I already have it added, I’ll choose Edit so you can see all of the settings:

Now, reboot your phone. It may take a bit for your phone to realize that the MMS settings are correct. I had issues receiving MMS messages. However, after approximately 6-8 hrs of the phone sitting, everything worked.

My Complaints about Straight Talk

I have several. Rather than boring you with details, here are the most important ones:

Straight Talk seems to use T-Mobile in our area. In our neighborhood in Northeastern PA, there are very few 3G areas. Verizon Wireless has full 4G service. So, we tend to drop to a very slow connection. For most picture messages or downloads, we connect the phone to our wireless.
The Straight Talk SIM cards are horrible. There are plenty of horror stories on the Internet. They’re mostly true. The cards aren’t that reliable and tend to drop signal. I’m not sure if it’s a programming issue or a short in the card. Regardless, it’s painful.
Support? What support? Be prepared for offshore support. If it’s not documented (and you have access to all of the documentation) they don’t know it. In fact, they contradict themselves telling you one thing, then later saying “don’t do that.” They even told me that Windows Phones don’t work on Straight Talk. I’m hoping that the service gets better because if not, we’ll realize that we’re getting what we’re paying for.
The “bring-your-own-phone” process is also poor. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have the need for this post. We’re struggling to find out how to setup voicemail. I’m only hoping that visual voicemail works. However, I have my doubts.

Overall, I can’t say anything much more critical about the service yet. We’re still testing the waters. I do know that the one phone we needed, we were able to save over $50. That’s $1200 over the normal two year commitment by Verizon Wireless and we’re not locked into a contract.

If you have any additional feedback, please leave me a comment.

How the Web has Changed–As witnessed through the Webby Awards

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:31:00 GMT

Earlier today, the Webby Awards and Internet Explorer teams announced a joint project to showcase the Webby Award winners since the awards were handed out in 1997. This new website is built on Web standards which are truly emphasized in Internet Explorer 10. I’ll have a post in the future to highlight Web standards and the modern Web. However, if you’re too anxious to wait, feel free to check it out on the IE team’s Modern.IE website. In fact, the IE team seems to be so pumped up about the Webby Awards that they released an updated version of the Modern.IE website along with some cool offers such as a special offer for Mac developers.

You can check out this new Webby Awards at http://winners.webbyawards.com/.

It’s great to see how the Web has changed over the years. These days, gamers spend a lot of time playing games such as Halo or Call of Duty, yet back in the day, many of us played You Don’t Know Jack (1997 Games winner):

While a lot has changed, some things haven’t. Most of us still use Amazon for purchasing products online. Unlike social media companies such as Facebook or Twitter, Amazon has been around for quite some time. In fact, they won a Webby award in 1999:

Also, we didn’t need to hear Mitt Romney’s opinion of Sesame Street being cancelled. In fact, that idea was probably derived from this Webby award winner in 1998 (though I have no facts to back this up):

But, enough about the 1799 Webby award winners since 1997. The Web has changed drastically in this time. Let’s take a look at a few charts based on the data the Webby award site has collected.

First, the world is growing. In a period of 15 years, we added nearly 20% more people in the world. In contrast, the number of Internet users in the world has also grown, but at an increased pace. In fact, it’s estimated that in 1997, only 1% of the world were considered Internet users. However, in 2012, nearly 34% of the world surfed the World Wide Web.

Another interesting bit of information to consider is the number of web pages in existence. Back in 1997, only 1.6 million pages existed. In 2012, it was estimated to be 633 million pages. That’s an increase of nearly 400 times! What’s quite astonishing is the fact that although the “.com boom” helped bring many companies online, the upswing in websites really didn’t occur until 2005 and have more than doubled between 2010 and 2012. The “.com bust” in the early 2000’s halted growth for a year or so, but overall had little effect on where we’re at today.

To help put this into perspective, I wanted to examine the number of Internet users per web page. In 1997, there were 41 Internet users per web page. Just last year, this dropped to 3.8 users per page. Blowing this out to a more grand scale, In 1997, there were 3483 people worldwide per page. Again, this dropped to just over 11 people per page worldwide.

Seeing these numbers is crazy. It makes me wonder if we’ll ever see more web pages than people. At the current trends, this should happen by 2015.

Getting the Shutdown Dialog in Windows 8

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:24:49 GMT

One of the tasks that seem awkward in Windows 8 is the shutdown and restart process. One of my co-workers, Mark Beleski, had discovered a nice keyboard shortcut today. It’s nothing new, but something that I rarely used.

Alt + F4

If you’re in an application, this usually closes out of the app (in desktop or the start menu modes). However, if Windows Explorer has focus (such as clicking on the task bar), you can press this key combination to get the shutdown dialog box:

On the Surface, the Marketing Stinks Already!

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:26:16 GMT

Tonight, February 9th, Microsoft is releasing their second tablet, the Surface Pro. Besides the Microsoft diehards, such as myself that will be ordering one within the first few minutes possible, I’m concerned that the masses are unaware. So, to solve my curiosity, I set out to see if I could find the answer for sure.

Stop 1: The Sunday Newspaper Advertisements

My first stop was to check out the Sunday advertisements found in my local newspaper for the week of February 3rd, 2013. Knowing that both Best Buy and Staples will be selling these devices, I assumed that I would at least see a notice stating that the Surface Pro is “coming this Saturday” on the front page. The advertisements contain upcoming video games and other technology products.

I came across the Staples ad first and found this:

So, let’s evaluate what was contained on the front page: an advertisement for the $199 Google Nexus, a $329 HP laptop, paper deals, Turbo Tax, 99 cent earbuds, and a price for the Office 365 Pro subscription. That’s it. Next, I ventured through the pages of the advertisement. Surely I should find something about it tucked inside somewhere. I panned through and found nothing about the Surface Pro. However, I did stumble across a small 1.5” listing for the Surface with Windows RT (which also sported the old Microsoft logo) on the third page which also contained the other Windows 8 machines.

Disappointed, I continued on. The Best Buy advertisement was next. After a scan through this advertisement, neither Surface version was found or even mentioned. Rather, the cover showed 3 Android phones and advertised Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and AT&T.

Stop 2: Super Bowl Advertisements

Each year, the Super Bowl attacks more than 100 million viewers across the United States alone. This year was no different with over 108 million viewers. Knowing that a good portion of those viewers pay more attention to the commercials rather than the game, and with rumors swirling on sites such as Neowin about a potential Microsoft commercial, I was at the edge of my seat looking for a surprise commercial about the Surface Pro. Nothing arrived. Microsoft just lost out on the single largest conduit to informing customers about these new tablets/ultra-books that they have to offer.

My Psuedo Solution

Without a solution from Microsoft to explain the differences between Pro and RT, I decided I needed to help.

Click here to download a very basic, single page explaining the two tablets/ultra-books.

UPDATE

2/8/2013 11:54 PM – The MicrosoftStore.com website now has the Microsoft Surface Pro listed for sale. However, Best Buy and Staples still do not. Best Buy lists the products as Coming Soon, but does not provide specifics. Staples does not list it online.

Microsoft Surface Hard Drive Size Is Not An Issue

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:03:00 GMT

Yesterday, there have been numerous reports discussing the hard drive size of the Microsoft Surface Pro. I’ll be getting mine when they come out and will be getting the 128 GB size. Most of the world recognizes that 1 GB is 1024 MB and that 1 MB is 1024 KB and so on and so forth. But, in the hard drive manufacturer world, 1 KB is 1000 bytes. Strange right? Think about your last PC. Remember that 1 TB drive you though you had? Funny thing, it was actually just over 900 GB of useable space. There’s a great post that already calculated the math found at http://jasong.us/VmEBMW.

So, back to the Microsoft Surface Pro. We’ll cover the 128 GB machine. Before Microsoft even touched the drive, subtract the 9 GB for the manufacturer “rounding.” According to the estimates by Microsoft , we should be subtracting 12 GB. This will take us to 116 GB. My 240 GB SSD is similar:

The Windows 8 RT operating system plus pre-installed apps and recovery partition are estimated to take up 13 GB on the RT model. Windows 8 Pro on my laptop is currently occupying 21 GB:

Keep in mind that the libraries necessary to run traditional Windows applications are not included in the RT model. So, once I subtract that from the space mentioned earlier, I’m down to 96 GB. The reported useable space is 83 GB meaning that there is still 13 GB unaccounted for. After we consider the recovery partition size (which can be deleted) at an estimated 8-10 GB, the remaining 3-5 GB are for the preinstalled apps. Rumor has it that 3.5 GB of this amount includes a trial version of Office 2013.

As always, gurus always try to compare this to Apple and to the iPad. In this case (Surface Pro), that’s difficult. Think of an iPad but running Mac OS X instead of iOS. There are plenty of people out there that peg OS X to be between 16 GB – 20 GB on a fresh install.

Fixing the Storage Concerns of the Microsoft Surface

Let’s reverse the storage concerns. We’ll start with the 83 GB. Start by removing the recovery partition. We don’t need it. If we really wanted to, we could create a recovery USB drive using that old thumb drive we have laying around. Remember, it’s rare to find a recovery partition on other, non-Microsoft tablets. This should get us back to the 91-93 GB range. Then, let’s remove the unnecessary software and Windows features (if there are any). Let’s also remove any trial software. Instead, spend the $6 a month on a personal Office 365 account. You can download the full-fledged software, get 20GB in extra SkyDrive storage, and use the web version of the apps. We should approach 95 GB and may be closer to the 100 GB mark. At this point, we are stuck. It’s a full OS will backwards compatibility of most of our applications. I know that first hand as I have a Visual Basic 6 application that still runs fairly flawlessly on Windows 8.

We can still grow our storage space. Remember that the Surface Pro has a full-size USB 3.0 port. It also has a microSDXC card slot that supports up to a 64 GB card. The full USB 3.0 can support any size USB drive. Currently, you can purchase a 32 GB nano USB drive. Full size drives can be purchased well over 1 TB.

My Host: Cytanium

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 03:45:00 GMT

So I’m asked quite often who I use for hosting. There was a time when I hosted my own stuff and co-owned a small, regional hosting firm. In fact, at one point, I think we had nearly 50 business customers. However, time has passed and the hosting space became way too competitive for us. We didn’t have a multi-location infrastructure and the most complex load-balancing method we used was DNS load balancing. Even though we started to back off from business hosting, I still hosted my own site. That is, until one of my good friends, Brad Kingsley, had approached me about testing out a new service they were going to be providing.

If you don’t know Brad, he is the founder and CEO of Orcsweb. Even though companies such as Rackspace or GoDaddy are more recognizable, Orcsweb has still found a way to succeed and host some really popular websites and web applications.

Cytanium is a service that Brad’s team had developed a few years ago. It is a Windows shared hosting service that offers reliable Windows hosting at a reasonable price. In fact, you can get Windows hosting for as cheap as $2.50 per month! You can also get VPS hosting through them. I’d definitely recommend checking them out.

Weather.com Drops Support for Internet Explorer 7

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:17:40 GMT

Earlier this evening, I visited weather.com to find the following:

I’m quite surprised that IE7 is being dropped especially on such a popular website. However, I commend them on moving forward. IE7 is now over 6 years old and estimates are that less than 3% of users are still using IE7. That’s less than Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, Chrome 22, Firefox 15, Firefox 16, and even Internet Explorer 6 – which is slowly dying off, but not fast enough.

As a reminder, if you’re using Windows 7, you can download Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview here.

Syncing “Application Installations” Across Windows 8 Machines

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:12:29 GMT

Windows 8 has done a great job with syncing settings across machines. So good in fact that you can even see what you’ve “purchased” from the Windows Store and what you’ve “purchased” that is not installed. I’m using the term “purchased” loosely as this infers that you’ve downloaded and includes free apps.

So, how do we sync theses application installations? Quite easily.

Go into the Windows Store, right click or swipe down) and choose the item at the top that says “Your Apps”.

When that loads, you’ll notice a drop down that shows Apps not installed on this PC. If you choose it, you’ll see all of the Windows 8 machines that are tied to your Microsoft Live account.

You can choose any of these machines to see what’s installed on that machine, select all of the apps that you’d like to install, and install them to the current machine.

So far, the only caveat that I’ve found (though I’m sure there’s someway to do it), is that my start menu items and groups are not sync’d between machines. If I could get that, this would be a huge win. Until then, cheers!

Dropping MS SQL Tables that have a Prefix using T-SQL

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:43:29 GMT

How many times have you wanted to drop a selection of Microsoft SQL Server tables that have begin with some common characters? I have many times especially when I’m testing certain web applications, such as Orchard CMS, and using different database prefix values to switch between instances. Thanks to Curt Hagenlocher over at a StackOverflow post, I now can.

This can easily be updated to include views, stored procedures, and functions.

Being a Microsoft MVP for 10 Years

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 02:37:22 GMT

First of all, thanks to all who are involved with the Microsoft MVP program for acknowledging the technical community. It is much appreciated.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 10 years since I first became a Microsoft MVP. I still remember where I was 10 years ago.

Since that time, I feel that I’ve grown as a community leader and have become a better developer. I think I’ve learned that our user group, .NET Valley, will always have peaks and valleys. Even though we haven’t had consistent attendance, we’ve still managed to observer over 20 IT professionals and developers successfully secure jobs through user group networking at our events. When someone’s livelihood has been positively affected, it’s worth it.

To find out more about the MVP program and similar programs in the technology community, be sure to read my blog post about the MVP program at http://jasongaylord.com/blog/microsoft-mvp-2012.

Finally, I can’t take all of the credit. Besides coworkers and other friends in the technology community, I have to thank my wife, Lisa. She’s tolerated my late nights writing articles, prepping for talks, answering community forums, and traveling to events. Even in all of her spare time, she’s pitched in and helped stuff giveaway grab bags for our TECHbash and NEPA GiveCamp events.

I can only hope that I can continue to help out the technology community for the next 10 years with as much success as I have the first 10 years.

Microsoft Stack for Startups

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 02:44:56 GMT

One of the questions I’ve been getting asked lately at user group meetings, advisory board meetings, and lunch discussions about technology is “What startups are using Microsoft technology?” The perception is that building on top of the Microsoft stack costs money, much more than using LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP). Let’s see what Microsoft can offer as of today.

Microsoft BizSpark

Many startups aren’t aware of BizSpark. BizSpark is very similar to WebSpark (for web developers) and DreamSpark (for students) in that businesses can have access to Microsoft software and services and partner expertise during a three year time period. At that time, participants “graduate” and get to keep everything that they’ve used during the time period as well as receive steep discounts on future software. To qualify, startups must be less than five years old, be privately held, have less than $1 million in revenue and be developing software. If you’re a student, you can even participate in the annual ImagineCup competition. Looking for some VC funding? Bing Fund is a potential place to check out. You can find out more about the BizSpark program by visiting the website or by downloading the fact sheet.

Since I’m based in Pennsylvania, I wanted to show my user group members the following in our area and surrounding areas. I think this graphic is pretty telling:

Mono Tools

So, let’s assume that you’re worried that Windows and Windows Server will cost way too much down the road. However, you love Visual Studio and .NET. For many years, there has been a toolset that allows you to build .NET applications and deploy them to Linux. The toolset is called the Mono Project. The Mono Project is a port of functionality based on the CLR and specifically C# to Linux. Currently, it covers C# through version 4.0. A commercial product, called Mono Tools, allows developers to have a more seamless integration of the Mono Project within Visual Studio. Mono also has an increasingly large community and you can find out more by reading the Monologue.

One of the major sponsors of the Mono Project is a company called Xamarin. The company’s founder, Miguel de Icaza, was the primary force behind the Mono Project before Novell had shut it down. Miguel’s company Xamarin has continued development on the Mono Project and two other interesting projects: monotouch and mono for Android. The monotouch product allows developers to write C# applications for iOS while the mono for Android product allows the same for Android devices. If you’re interested in learning more about either, check out the following books written by Wally McClure:

Other Free Microsoft Resources

If I were to research and list all of the free resources that Microsoft has for startups, I may never stop typing. So, below is an incomplete list of resources. If you are aware of others, feel free to leave them as a comment and I’ll try to keep this list as complete as possible.

Visual Studio 2012 Express Products – Please don’t look at the term Express and think that these products are not feature rich. These products include most of what a startup would need if not everything. If you do need a full version of Visual Studio, look at the Spark programs. If you don’t, you have access the following products:
- Express for Web – For web development
- Express for Windows 8 – For WindowsRT design style applications
- Express for Windows Desktop – For traditional desktop applications
- Express for Windows Phone – For Windows Phone applications
- Team Foundation Server Express – For source code management for small teams. If TFS Express isn’t your cup of tea because you use GitHub, you can always consider GitHub for Windows by the GitHub team which is also free.
SQL Server Products
- SQL Server Express 2012 – This is a great way to start off with creating a database that will eventually grow up to and beyond 10 GB. SQL Server Express databases can be migrated over to full blown SQL databases and clustering. Click here for a full comparison.
- SQL Server 2012 Compact Edition – SQL Server Compact is not full featured, but is a free, embedded database that can be used with applications. If you’re just looking to store some core data and not looking to do lots with your data, this is perfect. However, you can always use WebMatrix (mentioned next) to convert the database later on if you made the “wrong” choice.
WebMatrix – This tool is phenomenal. It’s a great lightweight tool for creating web applications. It has been optimized for open source and allows developers to spin up Wordpress and other popular open source applications. It also includes IIS Express (mentioned next)
IIS Express – IIS Express is a free version of the IIS Web Server that can be installed and setup to point to any directory. This is a great tool during the development process. Oh, and this is also bundled with WebMatrix and Visual Studio.
Azure Cloud Services – So this one is tricky. It’s not really free. There is a 90 day trial and the team frequently offers free services for a limited time when they offer new features or products. However, if you don’t want to pay for hardware, this is a great way to host your entire business (or parts of it). Active Directory (for authentication), Exchange (for email), SQL Azure, etc. are all part of the same service.
Outlook.com Email – Outlook.com is the new Hotmail. One of the cool features is that if you already own a custom domain name, you can set it up with Outlook.com for email. Check out http://domains.live.com for more information.
Open Source Projects – There are too many to name them all. However, check out these resources that highlight Microsoft supported and community open source projects on the Microsoft stack:
- ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web API, and Razor
- Microsoft Open Source Directory
- Orchard CMS – A CMS system for developing feature rich web applications.
- Outercurve Foundation
- CodePlex and GitHub

Startups Currently Using the Microsoft Stack

Much like the free resource listing above, this list is (very) incomplete. If you are aware of a startup that is using the Microsoft stack, please let me know in the comment section and I’ll try to keep this up to date. Microsoft also has an incomplete listing on their website.

StackOverflow and the entire StackExchange network
Woot!
Several companies at nebraskaGlobal
Axosoft
Watt Metrics
Digital Folio
EventDay
ZocDoc
Adzerk
PlumReward.com
Plenty of Fish
Market Invoice
EffectCheck
GoEleven
InDxLogic
And of course, numerous first time applications that have come first to Windows Phone or Windows 8 such as Rowi.

Special thanks to: Scott Hanselman, Julie Lerman, Kathleen Dollard, Jonathan Goodyear, Dave Ward, and many others for contributing to this initial list of startups.

So, hopefully you have a better idea as to what the Microsoft Stack can do for your startup. If you have any suggestions for items you’d like to see added, be sure to let me know in the comments of this post.

Embed JavaScript in Custom ASP.NET Server Controls

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 05:54:26 GMT

As ASP.NET evolves, using ASP.NET WebForms is still the most popular way to serve up ASP.NET. One of the biggest benefits of ASP.NET WebForms is the fact that we can use re-usable code in several ways including in a compiled server control. What you may not know is that server controls can be quite powerful and can allow referencing JavaScript files. But, if you’re distributing your controls or do not have the means to host your JavaScript files on a content delivery network (CDN), you may want to package the files with your control.

So, let’s start from the beginning. Let’s assume that we’re building a sample web application to test our control output. We’ll create a brand new solution in Visual Studio 2012 along with an ASP.NET Empty Web Application. After the project is created, we’ll add another new project: an ASP.NET Server Control project called ‘OurSuperCoolControlSuite’.

After our server control project has been added, we’ll see a .cs file (or .vb file if we are using Visual Basic) named ServerControl1.cs. For this example, let’s rename this to GreetingControl.cs. I then have updated my GreetingControl.cs to include a basic input text element that calls some custom JavaScript when the input element loses focus to show a Greeting alert. Here’s what the GreetingControl.cs looks like:

GreetingControl.cs

   1: using System;   2: using System.Collections.Generic;   3: using System.ComponentModel;   4: using System.Linq;   5: using System.Text;   6: using System.Threading.Tasks;   7: using System.Web;   8: using System.Web.UI;   9: using System.Web.UI.WebControls;  10:    11: namespace OurSuperCoolControlSuite  12: {  13:     [DefaultProperty("Text")]  14:     [ToolboxData("<{0}:GreetingControl runat=server></{0}:GreetingControl>")]  15:     public class GreetingControl : WebControl  16:     {  17:         [Bindable(true)]  18:         [Category("Appearance")]  19:         [DefaultValue("")]  20:         [Localizable(true)]  21:         public string Text  22:         {  23:             get  24:             {  25:                 String s = (String)ViewState["Text"];  26:                 return ((s == null)? "Jason" : s);  27:             }  28:    29:             set  30:             {  31:                 ViewState["Text"] = value;  32:             }  33:         }  34:    35:         protected override void OnPreRender(EventArgs e)  36:         {  37:             Page.ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptResource(typeof(GreetingControl), "OurSuperCoolControlSuite.Scripts.Greeting.js");  38:             Page.ClientScript.RegisterStartupScript(typeof(Page), "ControlFocus", "document.getElementById('" + this.ClientID + "').focus();", true);  39:         }   40:    41:         protected override void RenderContents(HtmlTextWriter output)  42:         {  43:             output.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Div);  44:             output.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Type, "text");  45:             output.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Id, this.ClientID);  46:             output.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Name, this.ClientID);  47:             output.AddAttribute(HtmlTextWriterAttribute.Value, this.Text);  48:             output.AddAttribute("onBlur", "greetMe(this.value);");  49:             output.RenderBeginTag(HtmlTextWriterTag.Input);  50:             output.RenderEndTag();  51:             output.RenderEndTag();  52:         }  53:     }  54: }

Next, we’ll add a Scripts folder to this same project. We don’t have to, but this allows us to organize our JavaScript files better. So, if you look in the code snippet above, you’ll notice on Line 37, we’re using ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptResource. This method takes two attributes: a type and a string of the resource. For the type, it’s best to use the class name of the control you are building. The reasoning behind this is that if you are sharing the same script across multiple controls, you may run into some strange behavior as the embedded resource will be shared between all of the controls using the same type. This means that if your end users are using two different controls that use the same resource on the same page and that resource contains a variable to store a value, the value is used between both controls. The second attribute is our JavaScript file. Now, in a minute, we’ll add Greeting.js to our Scripts folder. But, we can have multiple Greeting.js files in our application. So, to clarify which one we would like to use, we need to specify the assembly name, folder structure, and JavaScript file name. In this case, our default namespace and assembly are both OurSuperCoolControlSuite. The folder structure is just Scripts. We’ll separate these using periods to get OurSuperCoolControlSuite.Scripts.Greeting.js.

Let’s add that JavaScript file now and change the Build Action of the file in the properties window to ‘Embedded Resource’.

Greeting.js

   1: function greetMe(value) {   2:     alert('Welcome, ' + value);   3: }

We’re almost there. We have our JavaScript embedded into the binary and we’re looking to register the script file in our control, but at this point we haven’t specified that this resource is available to the Web. So, just to keep all of our assembly information together in AssemblyInfo.cs by adding the following to that file (found in the Properties folder):

[assembly: WebResource("OurSuperCoolControlSuite.Scripts.Greeting.js", "text/javascript")]

Now, let’s compile our server control project OurSuperCoolControlSuite.

Going back to our ASP.NET Web project, let’s add a new ASP.NET WebForm called default.aspx. We’ll switch to design mode as this refreshes the Toolbox window. We should now see our control appear at the top of the toolbox as shown below:

Finally, let’s drag our control to the designer. We’ll leave all of the default values of the control and simply run our Web application to see what we’ve done. When we leave the input control, we’ll get our JavaScript alert like we’re expecting:

So, let’s check out the rendered markup:

   1:     2:     3: <!DOCTYPE html>   4:     5: <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">   6: <head><title>   7:     8: </title></head>   9: <body>  10:     <form method="post" action="default.aspx" id="form1">  11: <div class="aspNetHidden">  12: <input type="hidden" name="__VIEWSTATE" id="__VIEWSTATE" value="ujUKHFd/M66UGv4J0cHNpTYhArBWf9fbtT2EnoPIeBCTvKsxnv8RhqWiclz4isaDVA5RGAq34QhgzP1u00nUnc2G+uo9cHBXO93wo4KVt0g=" />  13: </div>  14:    15:    16: <script src="/WebResource.axd?d=-P4RDcgXkNOn_YBSzQs9QnlpUkuyKvL9dN_aN24z9gNtNbp8N0RegRa0qyC9MB1-76d6lcsPvf-em95iFJrp2hesCfrTWRkCgd7vEMF3yI3Rfc_Eyywc7m9bEtxaWp_rVl_WDYbyF97Ehy42Q0Z1WQ2&amp;t=634880155251801752" type="text/javascript"></script>   1:     2:     <div>   3:        4:         <span id="GreetingControl1"><div>   5:     <input type="text" id="GreetingControl1" name="GreetingControl1" value="Jason" onBlur="greetMe(this.value);" />   6: </div></span>   7:        8:     </div>   9:       10:    11: <script type="text/javascript">  12: //<![CDATA[  13: document.getElementById('GreetingControl1').focus();//]]></script>  17: </form>  18: </body>  19: </html>

Notice that in Line 16, we have a script reference. This reference is using an HttpHandler named WebResource.axd. Our JavaScript file has been referenced through this URL.

What’s cool about this is that we now have a self-contained server control that has an embedded JavaScript file.

So, if you’d like to skip right to the demo without building it yourself, feel free to download the solution using the link below.

Enjoy!

Download

Windows Store is Missing Enterprise Capabilities

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 15:45:45 GMT

The Windows Store is great. Seriously, it is. There are some minor issues with it that I’d like to see such as a way to track “recommended apps” by either your friends or by Microsoft and a way to sort Games by “Xbox” titles. However, the biggest thing the Windows Store is missing is a way for businesses to handle it.

IT professionals have never had to deal with this in the way they do now. Windows design style applications are coming out to accomplish so much and a lot of business functionality is moving to these types of applications. Although, iPads and the rest of the “iParade” could have connected to the network, the Apple world has generally been considered a “separate” network from the traditional machines. The question is, how would an enterprise level store work? Well, I have some recommendations:

The most obvious is the Group Policy update for enabling and disabling the Windows Store. However, when SalesForce or Microsoft CRM comes out with an app for the Start menu, we cannot disallow the Sales staff from installing it. That’s one of the reasons they like to use iPads now.
Allow corporate sponsored applications to be deployed to Windows 8 devices. All Windows 8 devices. See, I’m a developer. And I know we’ll have WindowsRT devices in our organization. And I know I compile apps for x86 and x64. But, there has to be a way that Microsoft can decompile my .NET apps back into IL and allow for deployment to WindowsRT devices. I’m not that well versed in the deep inner-workings of the CLR, but I’m sure that there can be some magic there.
Allow businesses to add apps to a custom store feed per OU or User. I’m sure this would cause a lot of work to be done and Microsoft would want to charge for it so it sounds like a great addition to System Center. I mean, how cool would it be to open up all games for the IT staff but leave only the Skype app for all other users? Keeping it real, there’s no reason why different departments can’t have different available apps through their store and can install the apps on demand.

Hopefully we’ll see something official from Microsoft in the next 12 months if not sooner. Some of us like the idea of early adoption, but an all or nothing store doesn’t help us out.

What are your thoughts?

UPDATE – Partially Solved

Apparently, in the first quarter of 2013, there will be an update for System Center to include a Self-Service Portal (confusing name) that is very similar to a private Windows Store for enterprises (explained more at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/2-104). This still doesn’t solve an issue for Small Businesses unless Microsoft is going to offer a Self-Service Portal Express version.

Did Acer hurt the chances of the Microsoft Surface?

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:28:00 GMT

Remember back in August when Acer’s JT Wang suggested that if Microsoft priced the Surface with Windows RT at $199 that it would negatively impact it’s partners and vendors? So now that the Apple event is over and we heard Apple announce the iPad Mini at $329, here’s where the Microsoft Surface with Windows RT stands in terms of price:

The Price Case Against the Microsoft Surface

So, the argument many have used thus far is that the Surface with Windows RT doesn’t fit in this group above. Well, they’re right. I’m placing the Surface with Windows RT in this group as it’s the lowest model of the Surface available today. If the Surface with Windows RT is targeting the consumer crowd that is cost conscious, it’s a bold move for Microsoft to say they are at a competitive price point. Therefore, let’s evaluate them against the 10” tablet leaders with 32 GB drive:

	Microsoft Surface with Windows RT	Apple iPad with Retina Display	Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Processor	Quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3	Dual-core A6X with quad-core graphics	1GHz dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2
Memory	2GB RAM	1 GB DDR2 RAM	1 GB
Screen	10.6”	9.7”	10.1”
Resolution	1366 x 768	2048 x 1536	1280 x 800
Battery	up to 8 hrs	up to 10 hrs	up to 9 hrs
OS	Windows 8 RT	iOS 6	Android Honeycomb
Price	$499	$599	$429 (started at $499)
Keyboard?	Yes, $119	Sort of (Wireless), $69	Yes, $79

When looking at the specs above, the Microsoft Surface doesn’t look bad at all. The price seems fairly normal. However, the original rumors were that the Surface would include the type cover (without additional charges) and Office 2013 (not just the Office 2013 Home and Student Edition).

The Case For Windows 8

Despite everything, I’m still interested in the Microsoft Surface and Windows 8 application developer. For enterprise users, Windows 8 seems to be the best of both worlds, something that arguably Apple still can’t capture. During Apple’s press conference today, they mentioned that they have 125 million documents in the cloud. They also announced that they’ve sold over 100 million iPads. This means that there’s just over 1 document in the cloud per person. That’s not too impressive. The other thing they mentioned is that developers made over $6.5 billion (with a ‘b’) on applications in the App Store. However, they failed to mention that this also translates to $2.79 billion that Apple themselves have pocketed for developers hard earned dollars. Microsoft is changing the game, slightly, for developers by offering an 80/20 split after the application has made $25,000 in the Microsoft Store.

To begin to learn how to develop for Windows 8, download Visual Studio Express here and visit Generation App, a 30-day training plan for developing a Windows 8 application.

Windows 8 Pre-Orders Prevalent

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 03:01:00 GMT

With Windows 8 just 3 days away from being officially released to consumers, manufacturers are pushing machines out to distributors everywhere. Don’t wait in line or miss out on the machine you’re looking for. Pre-order from one of the following websites today:

I’ve been using Windows 8 for quite some time now on a Samsung Series 7 tablet, Dell Precision M6500 laptop, virtual machine in Virtual Box, several virtual machines in Hyper-V, and two desktops.

I’m very anxious to see the Microsoft Surface Pro which should be released no later than January 26th, 2013 (based on the 3mo rule).

Although, this Vizio machine may have to do:

Windows 8 Color Palette

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:55:52 GMT

So Windows 8 has a new custom Start screen that allows live tiles to be displayed and rearranged on a per user basis. They also allow complete customization of the new Start screen. This includes a few backgrounds that are updated based on the color choice the user selects. Each color choice comes with two colors – a default color for the live tile and a background color for the start menu.

The color choices resemble the following image:

As a developer, you may want to use one of these colors within your application. Rather than pulling the code from the file using a tool such as Adobe Photoshop, you can get the codes from here. I’ve taken the liberty of gathering these colors:

Windows 8 Palette	Background (Outside) Color Live Tile (Inside) Color
	#252525 #f4b300
	#252525 #78ba00
	#252525 #2773ed
	#252525 #ae113e
	#311600 #632f00
	#550004 #b11d01
	#4f023a #c1004f
	#2e0251 #7200ad
	#1d0065 #4617b5
	#00214f #006ac0
	#00485e #008387
	#004900 #189900
	#17992c #00c140
	#e66b1b #ff991d
	#b91d1e #ff2e13
	#b31a6a #ff1d77
	#681cb4 #aa3fff
	#1957ba #20aeff
	#599be5 #57c5ff
	#00a8a8 #00d8cd
	#82ba1b #91d100
	#d39d09 #e1b700
	#e165bb #ff76bc
	#686868 #00a4a5
	#686868 #ff7d23

Hope this helps you build a stylish, Windows 8 themed application. If there are any changes or suggestions, please let me know

Marking Code as Deprecated in .NET

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:15:38 GMT

Do you work on a team that shares code libraries? Have you ever wanted to implement a new method to replace an old one (with a differing signature) and simply deleted the old method? You can handle these situations easier by using an attribute on a class or method. The attribute is called Obsolete. This allows you to gracefully mark code as deprecated as shown below:

C#

   1: [Obsolete("This class has been deprecated.")]   2: public class Test   3: {   4:     [Obsolete("This method has been deprecated.")]   5:     public void FooBar () { }   6: }

VB

   1: <Obsolete("This class has been deprecated.")>   2: Public Class Test   3:     <Obsolete("This method has been deprecated.")>   4:     Public Sub FooBar()   5:     End Sub    6: End Class

However, in the code above, both of these instances will only show a warning in the compiler. To throw an exception, you can add another property to the code to pass in a Boolean value to throw an exception as shown below:

C#

   1: [Obsolete("This class has been deprecated.", true)]   2: public class Test   3: {   4:     [Obsolete("This method has been deprecated.", true)]   5:     public void FooBar () { }   6: }

VB

   1: <Obsolete("This class has been deprecated.", True)>   2: Public Class Test   3:     <Obsolete("This method has been deprecated.", True)>   4:     Public Sub FooBar()   5:     End Sub    6: End Class

I'm a Microsoft MVP... Again

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 15:21:12 GMT

So, I’ve been officially renewed as a Microsoft MVP again.

Too often, I’m asked about the MVP program. I’m asked what it is, what it means to get it, and how I was nominated and won.

What is the MVP Program?

The MVP program was designed for individuals that make contributions to technical communities including, but not limited to, blogs, forums, books, user groups, and speaking engagements. Microsoft recognizes these individuals in more than 90 countries.

Over the years, I’ve met some really interesting people through the program. I’ve got a chance to meet developers that build products I work with every day as well as authors that I’ve looked up to throughout the years.

What it means to get it

It’s always exciting to receive the award. This year has been my ninth straight year. Although the award is very flattering, I find it exhilarating to teach others about technology, especially in the Northeastern Pennsylvania region. This area has so much to offer young people and the only way it can continue to grow is by teaching and spreading tech goodness all over. I’m sure other MVPs feel the same way.

How to become nominated

Each year I wonder if I’ve done enough to deserver such honor. Looking back, it’s amazing to see what goes into receiving an award. A few things that you can do to become eligible are:

Start a blog or blog more about technology
Post to forums (such as asp.net) or respond to questions on websites like StackOverflow.com
Look for individuals needing help on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media networks
Create some sort of goodie like a free application or community-based website. Also consider contributing to open source projects. There are quite a few that can be found at CodePlex.com or GitHub.
Speak at a user group in your area then visit other nearby user groups providing the same or different talk. There are groups for everything in technology
If you can’t find a user group for your technical expertise, start one. Chances are others have the same technical background as you. Remember, a successful user group doesn’t need to have 500 attendees at meetings. It’s a success when it’s attendees are learning something.
Write a book (trust me, this one is the most time consuming)

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a champion for yourself. Find an MVP or Microsoft employee and explain how you’re helping the community. If you’re not sure where to begin, these are also great people to talk to. As a user group leader, I know that user groups can always use more help organizing events and assisting with the day-to-day nuances of running a user group.

You can find out more about becoming an MVP by visiting the Microsoft MVP website at http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpbecoming. If you know someone that you’d like to nominate for the MVP program, check out http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/gp/mvpnominate.

Other Organizations with MVP-like Awards

As I said earlier, it’s nice receiving this. But, let’s face it. There are probably more anti-Microsoft-ies than Microsoft-ies in this world. So, let’s assume that you’re not a Microsoft-ie and you’re about to write some “why are you so pro Microsoft blah” type comment. That doesn’t mean you can’t find a community to fit your interests. Here are others (that I know of and is not a complete list):

If there are others I’m missing, let me know and I’ll be sure to add them. I’ll update our user group website to include a more current list as I receive suggestions.

If you’re still looking for additional help, reach out to me on Twitter @jgaylord. I’ll be glad to help provide some advice. Whether its this program by Microsoft or another program by another company, help spread the knowledge of technology. It’s the only way tech can improve in years to come!