Canadian Developer Connection

How do I use HTML5 in Visual Studio 2010?

Susan Ibach — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

In this post, I’ll share what I learned about how to get started writing HTML5 code in Visual Studio 2010.

HTML5 seems to be everywhere these days! I started trying it myself a few months back and I quickly decided that if possible, I wanted to play with it in Visual Studio. I’ve been working with Visual Studio for years, it’s got to be simpler to keep working with the developer tool I already know and love rather than moving to a new tool. Besides I want to be able to incorporate HTML5 into ASP.NET applications! It took me a bit of messing about to get up and running with HTML5 the way I know there will be greater support for HTML5 in Visual Studio 11. But for now I am working with Visual Studio 2010. I thought I would share what I learned so hopefully it will be easier for you.

Here’s what you want to do:

Add HTML5 validation and intellisense
Create an HTML5 project
Set up for <video> and <audio>
Play!

Add HTML5 Validation and Intellisense

You will definitely want to make sure you have Service Pack 1 installed! By installing Service Pack 1 you get both intellisense (can’t live without that anymore) and validation for HTML5. Don’t forget after you install Service pack 1 to go to Tools | Options | Text Editor | HTML | Validation and set the validation to HTML5 or XHTML5 or the HTML5 validation won’t work.

First of all there is a really great blog by Burke Holland on how to use the MVC HTML5 template for Visual Studio 2010 here.

Create an HTML5 project in Visual Studio

You have a couple of choices here.

Modify an existing template to be HTML5 or create your own template. There is a great blog describing how to do that here.
Download the MotherEffin ASP.NET MVC HTML5 template that Jacob Gable was kind enough to post on the VisualStudio Gallery.
Download the mobile ready ASP.NET MVC HTML5 template that Sammy Ageil was kind enough to post on the Visual Studio Gallery

Set up for <video> and <audio>

The first tags I started playing with in Visual Studio were the video and audio tags. I immediately had problems getting an actual video to display on my web page it was really frustrating. Here is what I had to do to get everything working. The basic problem was with the MIME types. When a .avi, or .MP3 file was used on my website, the web server didn’t recognize that those were video and audio files. To get it working I had to edit my web.config file and make sure I had IIS express running in the development environment instead of the development server built into Visual Studio to ensure that my web.config file was being used to figure out the MIME types. You need to do this for the WOFF fonts as well.

Install IIS Express

Specify the mime types you will be using in your web.config file. Here’s an example:

    <system.webServer>
      <staticContent>
        <mimeMap fileExtension=".mp4" mimeType="video/mp4" />
        <mimeMap fileExtension=".m4v" mimeType="video/mp4" />
        <mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="application/x-woff" />
        <mimeMap fileExtension=".webm" mimeType="video/webm" />
        <mimeMap fileExtension=".ogg" mimeType="video/ogg" />
        <mimeMap fileExtension=".ogv" mimeType="video/ogg" />
      </staticContent>
    </system.webServer>

Change the project settings, by right clicking on the project and changing the settings to Use IIS Express when debugging in Visual Studio.

Play!

Once you have it up and running you can start exploring the world of HTML5. There are some great resources on learning HTML5 here. Make sure you read up on feature detection since different browsers will support different HTML5 features and because you will need this for backwards compatibility as well!

If you want to experiment with <video>, I found it handy to just download Big Buck Bunny since you can get it in multiple formats so it’s great for experimenting with the fallback features of HTML5 <video> for different browsers.

Since a big part of HTML5 is the cross browser support, make sure you try it out in different browsers, or use the F12 developer tools in Internet Explorer to test how your code will work in different browsers or older browsers.

Most of all have fun!

Your FREE Trial is Actually FREE, Now…

Jonathan Rozenblit — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 03:42:00 GMT

Too often I get asked whether the Windows Azure trial is actually FREE because you have to enter a credit card when signing up. With the introduction of Spending Limits, yes, yes, it is.

Here’s the situation – you’ve been following the Canadian Developer Connection, my blog, or wherever you get your updates on what’s new and exciting in the developer world. You’re sitting down to give Windows Azure a try (check out the Windows Azure Challenge for a fun way to get started with Windows Azure). You go to create your free Windows Azure trial and boom – it asks you for a credit card. You scratch your head and say: “If I put my card in there, I’m going to get charged – but it’s a free trial…”

The truth is that, up until recently, it was technically possible to get charged for your Windows Azure usage if you went over the resources that come with the free trial. But now – no more. Your FREE trial is actually FREE because of a new feature that was added to Windows Azure called a Spending Limit, and the nice thing is that it is enabled automatically to ensure that you’re protected!

Now when you sign up for a new trial subscription and deploy applications to Windows Azure, the spending limit, which is by default set to $0 (meaning you don’t want to spend any money) will prevent you from being charged! If and when your usage exceeds the monthly amounts included in your subscription, Windows Azure will disable your service for the remainder of that billing month, which includes removing any apps you have running (though your data in your storage accounts and databases will be accessible as read-only). At the beginning of the next billing month, your subscription will be re-enabled and you will be able to re-deploy your Windows Azure apps and have full access to your storage accounts and databases. Perfect for ensuring that you are not charged for playing around and getting comfortable with Windows Azure.

Here’s what you’ll see as you approach the limit of your subscription:

and then when you’ve reached the limit, rather than charging your credit card, the subscription is disabled:

No more worries of being charged

With spending limits in place, there are not more excuses as to why you can’t give Windows Azure a try. Here are two great ways to do so:

	Windows Azure Camp Challenge Downloads the tools and a hands-on lab to complete on your own computer. You can then reward yourself with a few drinks on us. Go >>

	Basics of Application Development for Windows Azure on TechDays Online Use our virtual environments to complete the lab. You won’t have to download or install the tools. Just the remote viewer. Go >>

Join the Conversation

I’d love to hear all about your first experiences with Windows Azure – what compelled you to give it a try? What was your first time like? Did you have any “ah-ha” moments? Did you come to any realizations? Did you make any sort of conclusions about Windows Azure? Once you’ve gone through one of the above (and/or the many other hands-on labs on TechDays Online), join the conversation about first experiences in Canadian Developer Connection group on LinkedIn.

Mobile screen != PC screen. Raise your hand if you knew that.

Paul Laberge — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:06:26 GMT

Ok, I admit it. The headline was a bit of link bait given how obvious it is. That being said, it’s surprising how often the mistake is made by app developers to add more features and screen activity than is necessary. This is especially true of developers porting a PC app to the mobile form factor. It’s actually really easy to fall into the trap of making an app busier than it needs to be. Good mobile app design is more than an appealing UI. It’s even more important to understand the purpose of the app and how it will be used. Take your cues from that and your app will be more usable to the masses. This post is the first in a five-part series on creating awesome mobile UIs and creating your app with mobility-first in mind. The second post will be on placement of controls in your UI to be most effective for frequent use. The third post will be on the size of UI assets on the screen and why it is important. The fourth post will be on when to use an app bar vs. populating controls on your app’s screens. The fifth and final post will be on implementing gestures and animations to make them useful to the app.

A little while back, I wrote a 5-part Metro Primer blog post series that has received some pretty great reviews (thanks to those who shared your feedback on this series!). The intent of this series was to introduce you to Microsoft’s Metro Design Language if you hadn’t yet seen it as an app developer and if you had seen Metro before, to help you craft great Metro experiences. Metro is powerful and expressive and you can really create amazing and artful experiences for your apps with it. Like any other user interface paradigm, however, it’s just as easy (actually, maybe even easier) to create truly horrible experiences that ultimately hurt your app’s chances of being adopted.

This series of 5 blog posts (the others will be posted throughout the next few days on the Canadian Mobile Developers blog) is meant to be a companion to the Metro primer in that its purpose it to provide some good practices to use for your apps’ screens so that they are effective, intuitive and make your users come back to the app. Even if you never read the Metro Primer series, you might want to read this series as I will dive into tips that will make you think critically about how to build the UI for your app. And a little hint here – a lot of what I’ll talk about is actually platform agnostic. So if you are an Android developer, iOS developer or any other mobile platform developer, this content could be very useful to you.

The Smartphone is not a PC

Again, duh. Clearly they are not the same. Even the smallest of laptops are distinctly different from mobile devices. Yet many app developers make the fatal mistake of assuming a mobile app is just:

A scaled-down desktop
A smaller screen
A PC with less computing power.

In the back of our heads, we all innately understand the concept that mobile devices and PCs are fundamentally different. But when we make the mistakes like the ones listed above (and trust me, app marketplaces across all platforms are littered with examples), it becomes clearer that the issue is not as cut and dry as it first seems.

Let’s face it. Even app developers that are currently in high school have earned a pedigree in understanding their way around a computer. In many cases, that history with PCs is long and full of experience building technology solutions that target PCs. When we make the change to becoming mobile app developers, we have a bias (whether or not we are aware of it) towards building apps that adhere to traditional PC software design principles, at least in part. Children in grade school are seeing a very different technological reality. Their first experiences in technology are just as likely to be on a mobile device (phone or tablet) than on a PC-form factored device.

If you take a look at the PC, it is a true workhorse tool capable of doing almost infinite things. It also has a lot of power behind it. It also has the ability to provide a huge amount of screen real estate. Mobile devices are by nature almost the opposite. They are capable of doing amazing things, but the use case is generally much more limited than that of a PC. Likewise, the power of the device, while equivalent in modern smartphones to PCs even just 5 years ago, is limited and the intent is to have it untethered from power sources for much larger amounts of time. Finally, screen real estate is generally fixed and often small.

As developers of traditional PC or web solutions, our mindset must change from creating apps that are scaled down versions of PC apps. That just doesn’t work. And believe me, it’s tough to remove yourself from a PC mindset when designing a mobile app. Instead, try to watch grade school children use mobile technology and try to understand the patterns they employ to get tasks done on those devices. The activities that grade school children do on mobile devices are much more pure to the spirit of the mobile form factor as they have no real past history on the PC form factor and provide hints as to how to best implement functionality in your mobile app.

Designing for motion

The last point I will bring up in this post is to always keep in mind that we need to design for motion. By motion, I don’t mean crazy animation on the screen (that’s a topic for the fifth post in this series). I mean we have to design our app with the understanding that our users are always in motion. Your app will be used by someone that is just as likely to be walking to an elevator or shifting in the cold waiting for a bus as someone who is sitting at his/her desk.

In other words, this is what we think mobile experiences are like:

When, in fact, mobile experiences are more like this:

Busy user interfaces on mobile apps simply don’t work in truly mobile conditions. Users are not going to pay 100% attention to your app if they are on the move, so designing the user interface to take this in mind will make your app exponentially better to your users.

Awesome tools you can use to build your next HTML5 website or application

Frédéric Harper — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:55:00 GMT

Even if the actual version of HTML as been discussed for a couple of years now, it is fairly new. We see a lot more enthusiasts around this new version of this Web standard, and trust me; it's just a beginning. If you have already started to give a closer look to the new features and elements, you probably asked yourself where are the tools to help you build your next amazing HTML5 website or application?

We are starting to see more and more IDE (Integrated Development Environment) adding HTML5 support to their existing tool. When we talked about support of HTML5, most of the time we talked about syntax helper. You don’t have to always remember all elements from a programming language so these tools will help you create your code easily. As the usage of HTML5 is growing considerably, we will see soon more IDEs that will help us create the UI without coding. Let me introduce you some of them, that you may or may not know:

WebMatrix

WebMatrix is my IDE of choice when I do HTML5. It’s a simple free tool that let you code some HTML5 magic with some IntelliSense help. The IntelliSense will help me find the right element I was trying to use, but also close the tag for me. Even if you are a HTML5 pro, sometimes your memory needs some help. What is great with this tool too is that I can easily publish, direct from the interface, to my FTP account: no need of a thirs party application.

Expression Web

If you are looking forward to use something with UI preview, Expression Web in the next tool in my Web developer weapon list. It’s a great software that also has IntelliSense for HTML5 and CSS3, but it let you preview directly in the tools your masterpiece with the SuperPreview feature. It’s not just about Internet Explorer 9; you can see the rendering of your website on other browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Safari. You can try it for free.

Visual Studio

If you are a .NET developer, you already know this tool, so it’s easier for you to use a tool you already know. You can choose between more than one version, but we also have a free version for you: Visual Web Developer 2010 Express. With this tool, you can easily build your HTML5 website or application with all the benefits of this amazing software. If you already use another Visual Studio version, you can also install the Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1 that adds CSS3 support and updates the HTML5 IntelliSense and validation, including new JavaScript API's.

Notepad

I’m serious. You can even use Notepad. In fact, you can use any text editor as HTML5 is a markup language, so you don’t need any compiler. The applications I showed you before are there to help you code more quickly and easily, but you have the freedom to use anything you want!

I know there are more tools available on the Web, but I wanted to introduce you to the tools we have at Microsoft. I really think that we are doing great stuff with this three IDEs, but let me tell you something that is not a secret: these tools will get better and better with their new releases, so keep on eyes on them! Did you use WebMatrix, Expression Design or Visual Studio for your HTML5 needs? What is your IDE, Microsoft or not, of choice? Share your thoughts!

Canada Does Windows Azure: Agile Business Cloud

Jonathan Rozenblit — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:32:00 GMT

I believe that the best way to learn is to learn from each other, so I’m always on the search for stories of Canadian developers who have either built new applications using Windows Azure services or have migrated existing applications to Windows Azure. This is the story of Agile Business Cloud Solutions.

Key Points

[01:36] HTML5 and Windows Azure
”We use real-time graphs where we connect to our WCF service, which pumps all the data to our client. That data is stored in [Windows Azure] Table Storage.” [Before the interview, Jaime also shared that they are working to get this done via HTML5’s WebSockets to get better performance with the “real-time” requirement for graphing. The graph is constantly querying the backend services to feed it updated data.]
[02:10] The Architecture of the Solution
”Primarily, right now, our workload is on web roles, which are Windows Azure Compute instances. Most of our data is stored in Windows Azure Table storage. We use that because it is really great for the type of data that logging data is – it is fairly flat but we hold all the data within it to get a model. Straightforward.”
[02:45] Rationale for Using Windows Azure as the solution’s infrastructure
”We started down this path primarily because of the idea of scale and just being able to guarantee uptime. Windows Azure gives us a lot of different possibilities around scale and also guarantees an [financially-backed] SLA that we’re comfortable with. Those things really helped us move to the platform, and we really see it as very positive thus far on the platform.”
[03:33] Getting Started with Windows Azure as .NET Developers
”We found lots of useful help on MSDN and in communities that support Azure developers, so finding the right amount of information to get on the platform isn’t that challenging. Also the integration within Visual Studio and the tools that we were most familiar with made it extremely easy to get on there and start testing, and deploying, and seeing what Azure is all about.”
[04:28] Getting Started with Windows Azure as Node.js Developers
”When they released the Node.js SDK for Windows Azure, I dove right into it, followed the directions, and within 3 hours, I had an instance talking to table storage. No problem. [Literally that easy? Three hours and you’re good to go?] Absolutely.
[05:00] Moving Existing Applications to Windows Azure
”We’ve worked with other companies too for ASP.NET and SQL Server, traditional hosted websites and help get them on Windows Azure and we typically find that, you know, within 2, 3, 4 hours, we can have their site running on Azure. … It gives you a good sense, like a prototype, where you get to see if there are any issues with your application – get to really test it out through and through. But the best part of moving applications to Azure, in my mind, is looking at all of the new and interesting benefits that your application can gain from being there.”
[05:56] Hurdles and Gotchas or Things to Wrap Your Head Around
”One of the big ones is to make sure that your web app is stateless – you need to do that because you’re going to be running more than one web server so you’re definitely going to have what you would traditionally think of as a web farm. It’s things like that you definitely need to be aware of and start thinking about when you are moving applications to Azure. I think that a lot of these things that Azure makes you do, that might be initial gotchas, it’s really best practice kind of mentality. There’s a lot of help on the Internet about statelessness is and also specifically Azure – what are the problems you can encounter there. … For me, moving into Table Storage (I’ve been obviously pretty heavy into SQL – MySQL, SQL Server, whatever it is, relational data model) is quite different. I find that it is a lot more simple, but there are a few things that you need to think about when you’re designing what a table looks like. It’s a lot flatter of a structure and you have less ways to represent data so you have to think about that up front. [For Jaime] From a Node.js perspective, I think I ran into one little hurdle where you would have your NPM modules in a certain place, but you just end up packaging it in the same directory and you’re good to go. But that’s pretty much it. Everything else is pretty awesome.”
[08:10] Is It Just that Easy?
”I think the tooling around it, if you’re using Visual Studio, and you’re used to ASP.NET, I think that the tooling makes it really easy to start running your application and testing it. You can do that with the set of emulators also – so you can just do it on your desktop, you don’t necessarily have to upload it to Azure. Obviously you’ll gain more experience and benefit from when you actually get your application on Azure. The communities around technologies like PHP and Node.js and things like that are really growing, and they’re really helpful in moving Node.js to Azure or working with Java or PHP on Azure.”
[09:00] The Easiest Way to Learn This Stuff is By Diving In: The Experience
”… We do things locally and we also do things in Azure. I guess initially when I first started doing work within Azure, I was writing an application that was very straight forward, it was like a Windows Service with a SQL Azure backend, and it was just really easy to port the Windows service to Azure. The big thing, though, that I came away from that was looking at all of the other ways to integrate with Azure – starting to think about Table Storage, starting to think about Caching, or starting to look at Traffic Manager. There’s a lot of different technologies there that you can then leverage.”
[10:16] Approach to Moving Applications/Skills to Windows Azure
”It’s good to look at Azure – the overview of what the technologies are that are there – and then depending on what kind of data you have or what your workloads are like, you can start targeting the ones that really make sense. I think that something like Caching, most people can see the benefit of that right away and might be naturally drawn to, and over time, you’ll get more and more of those items on your tool belt and you’ll be able to make extremely robust applications.”

Relevant Architecture Points

Windows Azure Compute to host WCF services used by remote clients.
HTML5/JavaScript for application front end interacting with WCF service.
Windows Azure Table Storage for storage of logging data, as well as prepared/compiled reporting data for real-time graphing on the front end.

Joël Hébert on Building an ASP.NET Security Skeleton

Jonathan Rozenblit — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:31:48 GMT

From Episode 3 – Securing .NET Applications | February 1, 2012

ASP.NET MVP Joël Hébert had one of the most attended sessions at TechDays 2011. In the session, he walked through creating a template that can be re-used in every ASP.NET-based application to protect against common security vulnerabilities and attacks. The full session is available on-demand on TechDays Online. Here, Joël explores a common software architecture document and discusses the need to document threats and mitigations right from the design phases of an application. He then provides an overview of his ASP.NET security skeleton and recommends tools used to test for threats in applications.

Join the Conversation

How are you currently securing your applications? Are you using any frameworks to do so? How are you testing the security of your applications? Join the conversation on LinkedIn.

Joël Hébert

Joël Hébert is the Director and Chief Architect at Opulent ASP Development Inc. where he works as a consultant specializing in ASP.NET Enterprise Architecture/Development. He has developed large-scale web applications and Computer Aided Audit Tools for CaseWare-IDEA and is currently working on federal government projects. He is passionate about web application security and enterprise applications patterns.

D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE
In case you haven't heard about the show, Developers, Developers, Developers: LIVE & INTERACTIVE (D³) is a monthly show hosted by Jonathan Rozenblit. The show airs live every first Wednesday of the month at 12:00 PM ET and features the latest updates on what's new and exciting in the world of development; featured presentations; and guests. LIVE and INTERACTIVE means that you'll be part of the show – You're invited to interact with us; ask questions and get them answered; and share your thoughts and opinions.

Join the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group
Follow @devsdevdevs
Like D³ on Facebook
Subscribe to podcasts via iTunes, Zune, or RSS

More D³: LIVE & INTERACTIVE >>

Because There’s Always More To Learn…

Jonathan Rozenblit — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:48:52 GMT

The title of this post is “Because there’s always more to learn.” Where’s that from? You know it… That’s right – TechDays. But wait… time to talk about TechDays 2012 already? Not quite. But it is time to talk about TechDays Online!

Whether you were able to attend Tech·Days 2011 (or even 2010!) or not you’ll find it all on Tech·Days Online. It looks like many of you have already been perusing the training content that’s up there, so it’s definitely looking like TechDays Online is how Canadian Developers, like you, are staying on top of the latest technologies and innovations, as well as connecting with the developer community at large.

So what’s available on TechDays Online?

From Hands-On Labs to session videos to articles, and more, TechDays Online has the technical training that you need to grow your career:

Session Videos. Watch all of the sessions from Tech·Days 2011 and 2010 across all of the different tracks and technologies.
Hands-On Labs. Try the technology for yourself with step-by-step instructions and virtual machines that are already set up and ready for you.
Blogs and Articles. See what your peers and industry experts have to say on the latest issues with up-to-date blogs and featured articles.

But wait, there’s more – Introducing TechDays TV

Starting the end of this month, TechDays TV will air brand new TechDays sessions (exclusive to TechDays Online). The experts will be LIVE and INTERACTIVE which means that throughout the session, as well as after the session, you’ll be able to post your questions via chat or Twitter and have them answered in real-time. You’ll be connecting to technical folks as if they were right there with you at a TechDays tour location.

Clear your calendar and save the dates – every other Tuesday at 12:00 PM ET, starting February 28.

So…

Visit Tech·Days Online now to drive your technical skills into the future—at your own pace and your own convenience and stay tuned for more on TechDays TV.

What the heck is Responsive Web Design?

Frédéric Harper — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:43:00 GMT

As a Web developer, we need to think about many devices, screen sizes and orientations. It’s not enough now to build our application or website to target only desktop screens: you need to keep in mind that your visitors will come to your site with their smartphones, their netbooks, their tablets, their slates and even their living room TV. We need to give them a good experience.

Instead of creating a specific version for the most common screen resolution or for specific mobile experience, Responsive Web Design is all about creating an experience that will keep in mind the user’s needs instead of ours. Flexibility is the keyword as we adapt to various devices' capabilities, instead of configurations.

How many times did you tried to see a website that is not mobile-friendly? Everything is too big for the size of the screen. You have to zoom-in, zoom-out, and it’s very frustrating. With a fixed-width design, the owner will have to create a version for each device that their customers use.

So what is really this Responsive Design thing? It’s base on three technical aspects:

Media queries
A flexible grid-based layout
Flexible images and media

Media Queries

Media queries are like having if statement in your CSS. You can define which CSS stylesheet will be loaded depending on different criteria, like the size of the screen. Everything is managed by the browser and there is no need to do like we did in the past with some JavaScript and page reloading. Here are some examples:

<link href="mobile.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen and (max-width:480px)“ type="text/css" />

(max-width: 1024px)“ type="text/css" />

<link href="laptop.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen and (min-width:1025px)“ type="text/css" />

A flexible grid-bases layout

Everybody loves pixels. We used pixels for a long time in the Web, and Designer loves them too. The problem is that the screen representation of a pixel is different on every device or screens. The answers in using a flexible grid-bases layout reside in percentage or em for sizing. The idea is to use relative size for text, width and margins.

Flexible images and media

The last part, but not the less important is about your media. The images and videos needs to be flexible too. It’s a basic principle that allows you to scale or shrink your media with CSS. You can also use a technique with alternate version of the media or sometimes, when it makes sense, no media at all.

If you want to see Responsive Web Design in action, you can go to http://mediaqueri.es/ that list some great examples. Use your smarthphone, your tablet or resize your desktop Web browser: you will see the magic of Responsive Web Design. This blog post is a good start to understand the idea behind it, but if you have an interest in this topic, I will be more than happy to make other blog posts to dive deeper into the subject. For those of you that can’t wait, one of the best book out there is the one from A Book Apart. Oh and if you are in Montreal, I’ll do a presentation on Responsive Web Design (in French) at HTML5mtl next week.

Do you think Responsive Web Design is the way to go? Do you already use it? Did you see amazing implementation of this technique on the Web? Share your thoughts.

Creative Commons image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/5818096043/

Hello Inspector, We Have Been Awaiting You

Tommy Lee — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:50:06 GMT

As you may know, we have had 4 Platform Previews for Internet Explorer 10. But how do you make sure that existing apps won’t break or be incompatible with it without exhaustive testing? An easy way is to use the IE10 Compat Inspector.

Simply insert the script before other scripts in each page you want to test:

Then in the corner of your page you will see something similar to the image below where you can click on it to get the details of any incompatibilities.

Read the article about the Internet Explorer 10 Compat Inspector for more details and get prepared for the epic-ness of IE 10!

“Open” for business: using OData in Windows Phone apps

Paul Laberge — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:37:43 GMT

Everyone who has used a modern smartphone knows that with very few exceptions, apps that have the most value to its users are those that are connected to services. Standalone apps just don’t cut it anymore. With that being said, finding data sources through web-based services can be difficult and even when you find them, the format those services return data in can be messy. OData (short for Open Data Protocol) is a service format that has received the backing of many major and public data source providers as a way to standardize the way apps consume data. This standardization allows developers like you to deliver great app experiences on a number of client form factors while not having to worry about how the data gets to your app. This is also true for apps built on Windows Phone that use OData – it works great with our mobile platform and you can build amazing, data driven apps using it! This purpose of this post shows you how easy it is to integrate OData feeds into your Windows Phone app. If you’ve built an OData-driven Windows Phone app, feel free to share a link to it by commenting!

Open Data Protocol (OData for short) is a standardized way of getting information from web-based services and is growing in popularity as a way for apps to consume data from the web, regardless of their form factor. They are lightweight (meaning the extraneous, non-content data is kept to a minimum) which is ideal for mobile scenarios over carrier networks where data usage fees are involved.

Basically, OData is built on existing web communication technologies, including HTTP, AtomPub and JSON, which means that it makes use of methods you may already be familiar with. For more info on how to develop using OData, you should check this subsite out.

To build a Windows Phone app using OData, you need to first download and install the free Windows Phone developer tools and SDK. If you’re new to Windows Phone development, I strongly encourage you to take a look at our Windows Phone Developer Resources Page that provides you with a number of great places to start learning Windows Phone development.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to download and install the OData client library for Windows Phone, which you can get here. Then, once you’ve done that, you need to generate a stub file for the OData service that you want to consume. The way you do this is to get the URL for your data service (for example, http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/ or http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/) and then you go to the command prompt and type in a command similar to the following:

DataSvcutil.exe /uri:http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/ /DataServiceCollection /Version:2.0 /out:netflixClientTypes.cs

This command will create a C# file (“netflixClientTypes.cs” in this example) for the OData service specified in the URI parameter (in this example, the URI is http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog). In essence, this C# file is a description of the service in class format, meaning your app can make use of the service via classes and object-oriented programming rather than parsing through XML.

Once this file has been generated, you need to add the file to your Visual Studio project (right-click on the Visual Studio project you built in the Solution Explorer, select “Add” from the context menu that appears and then select “Existing Item” from the sub-menu that appears from there – see image below).

At this point you may wish to build the solution so that the intellisense will pick up the classes and entities inside those classes from the stub file.

Once that is done, you should be able to programmatically access the classes in the stub file within your app and you can use the data from the feed programmatically to data bind content to controls and the like.

For an example of how to do this with the Netflix OData feed that was mentioned in this post, you should read this MSDN article as it goes through what I have discussed as well as how to implement and databind controls to the content in the feed within your Windows Phone app. If you are looking for code, you should check out this great OData feed example (it’s a zipped up Visual Studio project) from Mark Arteaga of Redbit Development where he uses the City of Edmonton data feed to create a Windows Phone app listing historical buildings found in the city.

As always, happy coding!

Why we love our MVP’s

Paul Laberge — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:24:00 GMT

The Microsoft MVP programme is an award programme that recognizes individuals who are active in online and local communities that show the value of Microsoft products and the Microsoft platform in general. The individuals who receive this designation are some of the most hard-working and knowledgeable technology professionals in Canada. If you have followed a tutorial on a Microsoft product or read a blog post about a Microsoft technology, there is a good chance that at least one MVP is involved in with it, either by delivering the content or adding to the conversation around it. If you’re an MVP, feel free to comment on this post on what the MVP programme means to you. If you’re interested in becoming an MVP, read on for more information!

I have had the great pleasure in meeting and working with some amazing people in my career. Certainly, my co-workers are people I count in that group, but there is an extended family of technology professionals that I also count in that group as well – the Canadian Microsoft MVP community. The men and women in this group not only know their craft inside out, but also share that knowledge with Canadians interested in technology at-large. In fact, many have garnered global recognition and are sought after for speaking engagements in every province in Canada and many countries around the world.

They also provide their knowledge to you online through a number of channels including their blogs, Twitter feeds, LinkedIn groups, video tutorials and pretty much every other online media type available. They are great resources for you if you’re learning a new technology or if you know a technology inside out but you’re running into a brick wall trying to solve something.

So what exactly is a Microsoft MVP anyway?

Glad you asked. The best place to learn about the MVP programme is here. This site basically answers the What, Who and How of the MVP programme. In essence, an MVP is someone who is active in the community that helps others understand Microsoft technologies and how to use them. An MVP is not a Microsoft employee – they are technology professionals that use Microsoft technologies everyday and are therefore in a position to provide you with not only an objective opinion on the good and the bad of the technology, but chances are if you’re having a problem with a given technology, an MVP in that technology expertise has probably already been there and knows the answer how to fix it.

Who are the Canadian MVPs?

The list of Canadian MVPs can be found here (it’s the first page of 5 – just click through the pages to see them all). This is a dynamic list and will change over time. As you can see, each MVP has an area of expertise. Every MVP has demonstrated leadership in their area of expertise and has been recognized by Microsoft not only for their knowledge but also their willingness to share that knowledge with others.

What benefits do MVPs receive?

When you become an MVP, Microsoft sends you a letter telling you that you have been accepted into the MVP programme, along with a plaque or trophy that you can adorn your home trophy case (or work shelf) with.

You also receive an MSDN (for developer-focused MVPs) or TechNet (for IT Pro-focused MVPs) subscription for the duration of your tenure as an MVP (some MVPs have been in the programme for over 10 years!).

In addition to this, you get an invite to the exclusive and very prestigious MVP Summit. The MVP Summit is an annual event that happens in Redmond where only MVPs attend and are invited to sit in on sessions given by product groups talking about the future of various technologies. Better yet, the product teams are looking for your input as an MVP given your expertise in using these technologies in real-life situations. You actually can get a say in how the products might be shaped!

But most importantly, as an MVP you are recognized in the community as a leader in your chosen field of expertise and that recognition can create new and strong relationships with others in the community, which can be both personally and professionally rewarding.

I want in. How do I become an MVP?

As you might imagine, becoming an MVP is not a particularly easy journey, but it is a rewarding one. If you would like to nominate yourself or someone else, you should visit this page.

There are several considerations that Microsoft reviews and assesses each MVP nomination against. Some of them include:

Proven technical expertise in a specific Microsoft product or platform
Strong track record in presenting in front of the community on your technology area
Consistent and positive community engagement on your area of technical expertise
Strong online presence across social networking and blogging, specifically talking about your area of technical expertise
Willingness to share your expertise with others and an openness to discussion with others on your experience
Sharing tangible experience with others, in the form of materials like tutorials, forum/blog posts and the like

If you are an MVP, why not share your experiences on being a Microsoft MVP and what it means to you by posting a comment on this blog post? If you are interested in becoming an MVP, why not share your reasons why here as well?

Or better yet, why not join the conversation on LinkedIn?

How to get up to speed with a new technology

Frédéric Harper — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 17:12:20 GMT

You are in front of your computer, wanting to learn a new technology for your job, or because you have this awesome idea on what will be the next Angry Birds. Whether you are a professional, a student or a hobbyist, learning a technology is sometimes a challenge. Where to start? In this blog post, I will give you my tips around getting up to speed with a new technology.

Before your start

If you are not limited to a specific technology, like someone who has to learn the next programming language for their work, you may ask yourself, which one fit the best my needs. A good way to see what the industry is using or what is the thoughts about this new HTML5 thing you saw on the Web last day, online community is the best place to start. I go often to a place call Stack Overflow. It’s really a good place for technical and sometimes, more high level discussion/questions. You can also go to places like LinkedIn.

I know which programming language I want to learn

Now you know what you want to learn. Personaly, I'm still a fan of book, or in a digital world, eBook. You can buy great books on site like Amazon or directly from the publisher like O’reilly or Microsoft Press. You can also go on a site like the MSDN blog to find great resources. If you are ready to invest some money, you can use website like Lynda.com that gives you a lot of tutorial for a monthly fee. Furthermore, never underestimate good music for the learning process!

I want to go further

If you want to learn more, you can also go to conference or users group. There are so many conferences about technology that you have plenty of choices. Just in the top of my head for the next month, I can suggest you PrairieDevCon for Calgary people, Confoo for Montreal people or Le Web à Québec for French people. OK, I know more conferences from Quebec since I’m living there, but search the Web, and you will find a lot more. Don’t forget user groups: there are so many that offer top quality presentation for free or a minimal fee. Here is a list to start.

Prove your knowledge

What happening after I learn the technology? For sure, you will use it for the project or the work you had in mind, but there are more ways to test your competencies. You can take a certification exam or participate in some competitions, hackfests or even take advantage of things like the Developer Movement. A great way to build your next idea, have some fun, be creative, win some prize and for sure, validate your learning process.

It’s not a big step by step process, but these are my tricks to get up to speed with a new technology, what are yours? How do you start the learning process?

Image Creative Commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jitze1942/4292084185/

Chat with Gladstone Grant on the Developer Opportunity

Jonathan Rozenblit — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:55:13 GMT

From Episode 3 – Securing .NET Applications | February 1, 2012

Following his presentation at the East of Toronto .NET User Group (@easttorontoug), Gladstone Grant (@gladstonegrant) takes on my questions as well as some from the viewers about the opportunities developers have working with the Microsoft platform.

[01:52] Directions of IT: The Developer Opportunity Recap
[04:15] What in your mind is the game changer? What’s different now for developers who have worked on the platform for many years already? What’s going to make developers change the way they look at the platform?
When you think about the game changer, the market’s really changed. The landscape has evolved over the last couple of years. You think about the number of devices just proliferating everywhere with the entry of new smartphones, the entry of new tablet devices, gaming consoles, entertainment devices, all being connected to the Internet – that’s all really new opportunities for the developer to think about how to really bring these all together. In combination with that, you really have the phenomena of a lot of these devices being connected by Cloud services. Cloud services becomes the glue that really lights up a lot of these devices and gives that consistent and seamless experience across all of the different screens. When you think about what makes those devices interesting, it's the applications that developers are building that really will ensure that the end users are taking advantage of that. Quite the phenomenon that we see happening is that its really consumer scenarios that is propelling this growth as more and more consumers adopt these new devices – the opportunity becomes a lot larger. So if you contrast a few years ago when developers were creating applications for our platform vs. now, the number of different devices, endpoints to which your applications, as developers, could be given to consumers, is rapidly changing. It’s all about applications.
[6:25] Of the 9 identified opportunities for developers, what would you say is the one that makes the platform, the Microsoft opportunity, unique from all of our competitors?

When you think about what makes us unique, it is by far, is the ability to monetize on a lot of the development skills and expertise that each developer has. Let’s look at our competitors for a second. When you think of the last year or so, last 18 months or so, the number of devices that have been shipped by our competitors – let’s take iOS, 152 million devices that were shipped, look at Android, 247 million devices. You say “wow, there’s opportunity there!” Now let’s look at the Windows side of the world. We’ve got 500 million during the same time of the year - 500 million Windows devices that were shipped. So the opportunity is significant for developers and as we get into reimagining Windows and looking at the future, this is only going to continue to grow. The number 1 take-away is that the Microsoft platform, leveraging the device proliferation that’s happening, coupled with the investments that we’re making in Cloud services in the back end. makes it easier and quicker for developers today who have a lot of expertise on our platform, leveraging those existing skills, to be able to create those applications that go across all of the devices.
[08:04] Interesting that you mentioned “leveraging existing skills.” Is that, from a direction perspective, what developers need to keep in the forefront of their minds? Just because all of these new technologies are available, you’re still using what you already know…
Exactly. Microsoft is always investing in the best developer tools – many of you use our tools today and would agree – the notion is, let’s not have you go out and make you learn a new language, learn new environments – we’ll use your existing skills. If I go back to the decision that we made when we launched Windows Phone just over a year ago, that’s exactly what we did. We said let’s look at what is it that a lot of developers are familiar with, how do we make sure that they get up and running quickly to create these really cool applications for the Windows Phone platform – and that’s what we did. We said let’s base it on Silverlight and let’s move forward. So that’s a general view and approach from Microsoft - to make developers much more productive and help them to be successful.
[09:16] Question from MisterJames in the chat regarding Windows 8…
That’s a good question and I wish I can answer that question. Just to let this audience know – currently as we speak, Windows 8 still in developer preview. It has not been handed off to the field [that’s us] yet to really speak to and start answering questions around Windows 8. The forums – if you go to http://dev.windows.com – and the Development Center are there where you can submit specific questions around Windows 8. Likely in the next couple of months, as we move more out of beta, is that when it will be handed off to the field and we’ll be in the position to really start driving, and helping each of you, as developers here in Canada, to create your applications for Windows 8. Sorry, at this point I can’t comment. It’s strict guidelines to make sure that only the Product Teams, who know and can comment on the direction of the Windows 8 product, are able to respond.
[11:38] Gladstone’s Thank You
I’d like to thank all the viewers, and everyone who is really supporting the Microsoft platform. We thank you for that. Continue to give us the feedback on how we can help you – continue to help you – be successful with Microsoft.

Have questions for Gladstone or myself about the Developer? Start a conversation.

After you’ve had a chance to watch and listen to the interview, if you have additional questions, start a new conversation in the Canadian Developer Connection group on LinkedIn or join existing conversations around the topic. As always, we’re members of the group as well and will be more than happy to answer them for you.

GLADSTONE GRANT

Software is an “innovate or die” business. It’s the kind of business that attracts restless, positive people like Gladstone Grant. As VP of Microsoft’s Developer and Platform Group, Gladstone has the enviable job of being focused on the future, on what’s next, on the things most of us haven’t even dreamt of yet. After nearly 20 years in the technology industry and more than 12 years with Microsoft Canada, Gladstone’s passion for technology, for learning, for new challenges and for competition are stronger than ever. When Gladstone turns his attention to the present, rather than the future, he indulges his passions for sport and home renovation.

D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE
Just in case you haven’t heard about the show, Developers, Developers, Developers: LIVE & INTERACTIVE (D³) is a monthly show hosted by yours truely. The show airs live every first Wednesday of the month at 12:00 PM ET and features the latest updates on what's new and exciting in the world of development; featured presentations; and guests. LIVE and INTERACTIVE means that you'll be part of the show – You're invited to interact with us; ask questions and get them answered; and share your thoughts and opinions.

Join the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group
Follow @devsdevdevs
Like D³ on Facebook
Subscribe to podcasts via iTunes or RSS

More D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE >>

Security requires a prison not a fortress

Susan Ibach — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Rob Labbe, Senior Security Program Manager at Microsoft challenges us to think about security in a new way: does it matter if someone gets in to your system if you stop them from taking anything out?

One of the best parts of doing webcasts is people often ask you questions you hadn’t quite thought about, or make you think about issues in different ways. I just finished recording a security webcast on .NET Rocks with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell and it got me thinking. Shame they never warned me I’d have to think.

The information security “industry” has turned out thousands of security products, tools, methodologies, processes, you name it… some of it is even pretty good. Given all that innovation, why is it, at a macro level it appears we’re not getting any better as an IT industry or as developers in security our systems and preventing large scale compromise?

It can’t be a lack of tools, platforms and processes can it? Given the huge advances in all those areas, I think it is pretty safe to say we have the tools in our toolbox to be more secure. So, if it isn’t the tools, could it be us? Could it be that as developers and IT pros we’re simply looking at security the wrong way?

Since the beginning of time, when we have something of value we try to protect it by ensuring the bad guys can’t get to it. We build castles, moats, and walls… Banks build vaults, we bury important military installations in the middle of mountains or solid chunks of granite. All that thinking carried over to our IT systems. We focus on firewalls to keep the bad guys out, intrusion detection to let us know if they find a way in, and all manner of systems and technologies to do it. We’re building a big, digital vault to keep our company crown jewels locked up. In theory it’s a great plan. If we keep all the bad guys out, then there is no way they can steal our stuff.

Before we have a chance to finish our perfect, high security vault, we get a wrinkle, one I like to call “The Business”. They have requirements, they want to let people into our vault. All sorts of people. Good people, bad people, people we don’t even know about. By the time we’re finished poking holes in our vault for all the services and users want, a complex system can have thousands upon thousands of endpoints, holes and possible entry points.

I think we need a new analogy. Rather than building a vault or fortress, perhaps we need to design our networks as prisons. Classify our applications and data according to their sensitivity (minimum security right through super max) and flip a lot of our security and detective controls inward. Lets focus on controlling the known, our data, and relatively few users and systems that are within our span of control. Time has proven that we can’t prevent the determined human adversary from finding some foothold in, however we can make great strides in limiting that impact. Does it matter who gets in, if the important data doesn’t get out?

For IT Pros, most of this comes down to doing a really good job with hygiene tasks: Keeping machines patched, doing a good job with identity management (particularly privileged Identity) and you’re 90% of the way there. For developers, again it is partly hygiene, but we need to remember that our applications need to be installed on systems, so we need to work with the IT pros to ensure least privilege, and intelligent encryption and data protection for data based on the risk and data classification.

For Developers, to enable good application security hygiene we need a good Security Development Lifecycle. A good SDL will help you build that prison for your key data, help you identify the key assets, identify risks and design security controls to protect those key assets. Regardless of what is going on “out there” the SDL will help you manage and identify those places you need to work with IT to come up with one big plan.

Over the next several guest blog posts, I’m going to walk through the SDL from a developer’s perspective, using the prison as the analogy, we’ll look at how following good SDL practices will help us not only build a more secure application, but also do it in a way that has minimal impact on the project budget and schedule. It should be a fun ride, stay tuned!

The Which, the When, and the How of Windows Azure Services: Social Apps and Games

Jonathan Rozenblit — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:15:00 GMT

Windows Azure is a platform with many different services that you, the developer can piece together to create your solutions. But when do you use which service and how? In this blog series, you’ll discover the answer to that by using different scenarios used by developers working with Windows Azure today.

I’ll never forget this one time (at band camp? LOL) I was doing a presentation and after a full 2 hours of going through the Windows Azure platform, a developer at the back of the room stood up and said to me “Jonathan, now that I understand what Windows Azure is, what do I use when?” I took a minute to reflect on the question – to understand exactly what he was asking me. I thought he was joking at first, but after thinking about it for a bit, the question made sense. It’s very easy to understand what each individual service does, but it is a bit harder to piece together how all the different services work together.

In the next few posts, I’ll go through some scenarios that I see often being used today and will endeavour to highlight how different services can be used to meet certain requirements.

Previous Posts

If you need a crash course or a refresher on the Windows Azure platform, check out my Azure Camp Online series or visit an Azure Camp in a city near you.

This week, we’ll talk about social apps and games. Just to make sure that we’re on the same page, let’s define them first:

A social application is an application that centers around the communication and interaction between several people. Further, one might argue that social applications are the same as social networks. There is no clear cut definition, so for the purposes of this discussion, let’s consider them as either/or. Facebook, Twitter, and FourSquare are all examples of social networks, all of which have front ends that are the social applications.
A social game is a game that, similar to social applications, centers around the interaction between people. Notice I say people rather than players who may actually be computer simulated players.

Attributes of Social Apps and Games

Before going to into the which, the when, and the how of Windows Azure services for social apps and games, let’s take a moment to understand some of their key attributes:

Centered around the communication and interaction between people
This attribute is self-explanatory. Where it gets interesting, however, is when you look at the number of people that are involved in the communication or interaction. This number could be in the single digits or in the millions, either way, the architecture of the app/game and its infrastructure need to be able to handle it.
Potential of Viral Growth
Chances are that if you’re thinking of creating a social app/game, you’re thinking of either building it to be accessed from existing social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others or creating a new social network between those that will use your app. Especially in the case of the former, where you’re integrating into existing networks, those networks have millions of users that may potentially want to use your app/game. All it takes is a few people who really like it to share with their friends, followers, connections, etc. and your app/game goes viral in no time.
Expectations of Immediacy
When we think social, we think shared experiences. When we think shared experiences, we think of real-time or immediate interactions. Unlike email where you send and eventually expect a response back, social apps and games are all about what’s happening now. If you’re playing a game, like Tankster, with someone, you’re going to expect that when he or she makes a move, you immediately know about it. If you’re updating your status or posting something in your social app, you’re not only going to want people to see it on their end right away (because whatever you’re talking about is happening now), but when they respond, you’re going to want to see their responses right away. Social apps and games are all about the now.

In addition, when integrating with established social networks, they’ve set the bar for performance. When you integrate, you simply must meet or exceed that bar in order for your users to be happy. For example, say you build a Facebook application. Someone accesses your application from their Facebook profile. They’re going to expect it to respond just as fast, if not faster, than Facebook itself did.
Connections from anywhere
Not only can your app/game go viral easily, the likeliness of your users to be in one geographic location is quite low. Most use social experiences like apps and games to bridge the distance that exists when people are all over the world.

There are definitely more, but we’ll focus on these for this discussion.

Mapping Attributes to Services

Now that we know the above, we can map these attributes to Windows Azure services:

Let’s look at centered around the communication and interaction between people and the potential of viral growth first. Similar to websites, the ability to react to increased demand relates to scale. Scale is achieved by using more than one Windows Azure Compute instances. The more compute instances you add, the more “horse power” your app/game will have and therefore the more it will be able to take on. This increases the speed at which the app/game will respond to requests, and more importantly, its ability to handle the traffic that comes to it by sharing the work across the multiple instances.

If you’re social app/game is device-based or even PC-based, scale will refer to the backend services that support you app/game – i.e. the services that the app/game connect to and work with. In this case, those would be deployed to the compute instances and would get the additional “horsepower”. (More about this in the devices discussion)
Expectations of immediacy actually breaks into a few areas and consequently has different services that address them:

Performance – Performance is addressed with Windows Azure Compute instances as mentioned above. In addition to Windows Azure Compute instances, the Caching Service can increase the performance of your app/game by temporarily storing information in memory (within the service), saving you the trip back to relatively slower data mediums, such as Storage Services or SQL Azure (it can also reduce the costs associated with transactions against those services).

Latency - Latency is the amount of delay your application can tolerate between requesting a resource and receiving a response. The most basic thing you can do to ensure low latency is host your app/game or backend services in a datacenter that is geographically close to your users. Choosing where to deploy your compute instance(s) is a feature that comes out of the box with Windows Azure. There are also two additional services that can assist with reducing latency. Traffic Manager takes care of intelligently routing requests from users to a datacenter that is closest to where the user is located based on rules that you can define. For example, if you have your app/game/backend services deployed to one of the Windows Azure North American datacenters and to one of the European data centers and a user is using accessing the app/game from Asia, Traffic Manager can route the user to the European data center. The European data center is physically closer, thereby reducing the length of the trip, and getting the data back to the user as fast as possible. For content such as graphics, app/game data, and other binary data, you’ll want to use the Content Delivery Network (CDN) to geographically distribute those storage objects, placing copies in “edge nodes”, or cache nodes around the world. These copies would then be physically closer to application requests, reduce the distance the storage objects have to travel, and ultimately increase the responsiveness of your app/game.
The connections from anywhere attribute is addressed by the services mentioned above.

Using the attributes of social app/games applications as a guide, we’ve now been able to map Windows Azure services to meet the requirements of each.

Next Steps

If you’ve read the previous posts in this series, you know what I’m going to say - as with everything in technology, there is always more than one way of achieving the same result, but one way will work better than another for the requirements of your particular application. The best way to figure out which one is best, is to try it out yourself.

If you’re thinking of developing social apps and/or games, you can download the Windows Azure Toolkits for Social Games that, through its core libraries and samples, will show you how to build the components you would need for real-time, scalable social apps and games. The toolkit contains native libraries in different languages, samples that you can peruse and learn from, project templates, and of course, documentation.

Keep In Mind

Testing with the emulators that are included with the Windows Azure SDK (while it is definitely something you should do before deploying)will not give you as accurate of an idea as testing with the live production environment. In order to truly determine what will work best, you’ll definitely want to test with Windows Azure itself.

If your social app/game is going to be deployed to Windows Azure, you’ll want to test it with the Compute emulator first to make sure that everything is working as expected. Once that’s done, deploy it to Windows Azure, test the app/game in the staging environment, and then finally, deploy it to the production environment.
If you’re social app/game is going to deployed outside of Windows Azure but will be communicating with services deployed to Windows Azure, you’ll want to first test the services themselves running in instances of the Compute emulator. Then test with your app/game, pointing it to the services at the address provided by the emulator. Once that’s done, deploy the services to Windows Azure and test the app/game connected to the Staging URL. Once that’s done, test the app/game connected to the production URL.

If you’re an MSDN, MPN, or BizSpark member, you have Windows Azure benefits included with your subscription that give you ample resources with which to test Windows Azure. If you’re not a member, you can use the 90 day free trial which also gives you ample resources with which to test. The only difference is that you’ll have 90 days to do it in. For most scenarios, 90 days is sufficient to do the necessary testing.

TIP: You can now set usage limits on your Windows Azure deployments. This will help you ensure that you don’t go over the resources that are included with the trial or MSDN, MPN, and BizSpark memberships. This will then prevent any unwanted charges going on your credit card.

Get a Conversation Going

Do you have any questions about Windows Azure as it relates to social apps/games? Have you already tried different services and architectures for your solution and learned a few things along the way? Start a conversation on LinkedIn and ask or share with others.

Disclosure

As I mentioned above, there is more than one way to do anything mentioned above and different scenarios will call for different architectures. What’s mentioned in this post is just A way of architecting the solution. Don’t take this post to mean that it is the only way or the best way.

Canadian students get a chance to strut their stuff at Imagine Cup

Susan Ibach — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:11:18 GMT

Microsoft Canada is hosting Canadian finals this year for the Imagine Cup, a worldwide technology competition for students. Do you know someone who might be interested?

Have you heard about Imagine Cup? This is the worldwide competition organized by Microsoft where students from around the world use technology to try and solve some of the worlds problems. Students choose the problem they want to solve.

Could text recognition software on a windows phone help someone with dyslexia?
Can we build a stronger First Nations community with Kinect sensors and cameras connecting different bands?
Can we help the local food bank spread the word on what they need restocking on their shelves with an Azure service that can be accessed by phone applications or screen displays at the local grocery stores?
Can we find an easier way to determine if water is safe to drink?
Can we predict the spread of malaria through mosquitos so we can take preventive measures?

The world is faced with so many problems, big and small, and we have a world of technology at our fingertips. Technology that in the past was only available in high end research labs is now accessible to all of us through smart phones and Kinect! Now we ask students to use this incredible technology to solve a problem and this year, we’re going to shine the spotlight brighter than ever on Canadian students with our Canadian Imagine Cup!

Last year 400 students from 70 countries participated in the WorldWide Finals. This year Canada will be one at the World Finals in Sydney, Australia! The top 3 Canadian teams who enter the Software Design Competition will travel to Toronto for the Canadian finals. They will present their projects on stage and a panel of judges will be faced with the difficult task of selecting a team to move forward to the WorldWide Finals in Australia. The top 3 Canadian teams in the Game Design: Phone competition will also be brought to Toronto for the finals to showcase their games and could win mentorship opportunities, windows phones, and if selected by the international judging committee they too could attend the world finals (we can’t choose who goes to world finals in this category, that’s just how it works). Although they are not part of our Canadian Imagine Cup there are additional categories for the WorldWide Imagine Cup as well: Game Design Xbox/Windows, Kinect Fun Labs, Windows Metro Style Challenge, Windows Phone, and more! So many opportunities for Canada and the world to discover what students can do! If you know a student, an instructor, or a professor, make sure they don’t miss out on the opportunity to be a part of Imagine Cup Canada! The deadline for submitting ideas for Windows Phone Game is February 14th and for Software Design is March 13th.

To really get a feel for the excitement, check out this short video from last years Imagine Cup finals in New York City. These students are going to make a difference!

Winning on the Marketplace: Tips on getting promoted

Paul Laberge — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:02:46 GMT

Once you have built your app or game and have published it into the Windows Phone Marketplace, you’re likely going to want to monitor the uptake of your app via download and (potentially) revenue statistics. You are also going to want to find ways to market your app to people who may not know about it. There are several ways of doing this, some more costly than others. One of the most effective ways of marketing your app is actually completely free – have the Windows Phone Marketplace showcase your app! It sounds easy but there are a few things you need to do to increase the chances of this happening and that is what this post focuses on.

One of the more effective ways of marketing your app is being chosen for promotion in the Windows Phone Marketplace. We’ve seen how being promoted in the Marketplace can materially affect the download numbers of you app in a positive way. The Windows Phone Marketplace offers a great number of different ways your apps can be promoted as well, which we will talk about, but first here is a graphic that shows the different ways you can be promoted and how each type of promotion increases your downloads (based on averages from apps that have been promoted on the Windows Phone Marketplace in similar ways in the past):

In essence, there are 3 types of promotion available on the Marketplace and the graphic above shows those ways. Each has value and being featured in any of those buckets can mean good things to the adoption of your app or game. Each type of promotion is unique and their values are described below:

Panorama Placement: Panorama placement is the premiere placement for promotion on the Windows Phone Marketplace. In essence, the when a user opens the Marketplace app on his/her phone, that user will be greeted by a panaroma image of your app (this is the panorama image that you included with your app upon its submission for certification). The value of this placement is immense as we have seen a 2000% increase in downloads for an app (on average) that is featured in panorma mode.
Featured Icon Placement: Being promoted as a featured icon is the second best way to be featured on the Marketplace. Your app/game will be seen on the very left portion of the screen of the panorama of the Marketplace (i.e.: if you flip the screen left by one full phone screen). Your tile is prominently shown as is the app name, basically enticing users to tap on it and explore what your app entry on the Marketplace says. Apps that get Featured Icon Placement on average see an 800% increase in app/game downloads during their time being featured.
Featured List: The third mode of getting featured in the Marketplace is the Featured List. In this list, your app will be featured alongside a number of other apps. Featured List apps appear in the list of apps in the categories of the Marketplace. While your app is not as prominently visible compared to the other two methods, it does return an average of a 150% increase in app/game downloads.

As you can see, being featured is very much worth your while. While your app is featured (usually for a period that lasts anywhere from 3 to 5 days), you will likely see a noticeable uptick in your app downloads which you can then amplify through any other marketing methods you choose to use throughout your app’s lifecycle.

So how do I get promoted?

So you’re sold on the whole featured app thing and want in. How exactly do you get your app featured? While there is no specific steps that will guarantee your ability to be featured, the featured apps process is implicitly a fair one (the best, most popular apps will bubble up to the top). If you feel you have a great app or game, you should read the following sub-sections to get a better understanding of how the Marketplace team assesses quality apps.

Functionality

A functional app is more than one that passes the Marketplace certification. Think of a functional app as a contract between yourself and the user. When a user downloads your app or game, they are likely doing so either from the description of your app on the Marketplace, it’s screenshots or by recommendation from friends or other users (including ratings). In any case, they expect your app to have an experience that is consistent with any of those inputs. If it’s not, then the app is likely to be less popular and as a result, be less likely to be promoted.

Utility

An app that shows utility is one that thoughtfully includes features that take advantage of the Windows Phone platform. Features like Live Tiles, Search Extras, multi-tasking and the like. It also refers to apps that differentiate themselves with amazing user interfaces that are both visually appealing as well as intuitive and productive. The Marketplace team also look at the stickiness of the app, which is another way of saying “is this an app that users will use often?”.

Delight

The final area of differentiation that the Marketplace team will look at in apps and games is how the app will delight users. This is where most featured apps really, really shine. If the app shows a “wow factor” (a decidedly unscientific term for sure, but you generally know it when you see it), if it is really unique and has something that no other app or game has, then that is a way that your creation will delight users.

A must for the delight factor is proper and effective use of Metro, the Windows Phone Design language. This is more than just square tiles and lots of text. To implement Metro properly, you need to take into account a number of principles of the Metro design language (see here and here). If your app follows these principles properly, your app will look amazing on Windows Phone and have a truly awesome experience on the platform.

As you can see, you need to think hard about the quality of your app if you hope for it to be featured. That said, the payoff of getting featured might very be worth the effort you put in.

I have just one last tip for you before this blog post series on Marketplace success strategies is finished: When looking at apps to build, sometimes being featured is a numbers/statistics game. If there are categories within the Marketplace that are currently underserved compared to other categories (for example, as of the publication date of this post, the Politics section is light in apps compared to other categories like Entertainment and Sports), then your chances of getting featured are that much greater. Just food for thought…

This post was the fifth and final post in a series of five posts on strategies for being successful on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The first post (publishing in the right geographies) is here. The second post (trial mode and the art of the upsell) is here. The third post (finding the pricing sweet spot) is here. The fourth post (the differentiation game) is here.

Canada Does Windows Azure: Epilogger

Jonathan Rozenblit — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:01:00 GMT

Key Points

[01:42] (Rationale behind using Windows Azure for storage)
”We needed some place that was not hosted by us because we have a limited amount of disk space, where we can store tons of photos, and that we can access them quickly. So the great thing about Windows Azure is that we put them all up there, we get a URL back that we can use our own domain name on, and when we serve images back on the website, they come straight from Windows Azure. They don’t even come off our own web server, so we don’t have to worry about traffic that way.“
[04:14] (Moving large databases to SQL Azure, sharding, and a limitation of Table Storage)
”SQL Azure is limited to 10GB [NOTE: With the latest updates to the SQL Azure platform, the maximum database size is currently 150GB], so we would have to shard that … table across a whole bunch of databases. That’s one thing we’ve thought about. We’ve also looked at simple Table Storage, which gave us the functionality of the mass amount of data, but didn’t necessarily give us the ability to do aggregate functions – at least right now – to be able to report on that data.”
[04:50] (Examples of workloads possible to move to Windows Azure)
”… we do eventually want to scale beyond that server, so if we have all of these processes, we could throw those processes on Windows Azure – like the worker processes and have them run all the time.”
[05:40] (Continued rationale behind using Windows Azure Storage)
”We just didn’t want to manage that many photos and having to manage the storage of that many photos. Having hundreds and hundreds of gigs [to manage] and who knows how many and when it will ever stop. We also wanted that archive to be permanent, so we didn’t want to have to setup a whole backup strategy on our main server just for the images so they could be permanent, as well as serve them if that server is down. With Windows Azure we’ve thrown them all up there, they’re replicated all over, they are accessible quickly – it’s a win-win.”
[06:29] (Learning curve for a .NET developer to work with Windows Azure)
”As a .NET developer, I didn’t find it difficult at all. The blob storage is dead simple. You drop in the SDK (you download it, you install it), you reference the libraries, a few lines of code, you’re storing blobs, you’re getting back URLs, everything is good. Really really easy, really straight forward. Simple table storage was a little bit different. It took a little bit of time to wrap your head around the NoSQL thing and how to access entities and how to put entities up. It took a long time to figure out how to do aggregate stuff [functions and queries] because it wasn’t a function that was provided like you’re used to in SQL, like count of records or average of these rows.”
[07:40] (Learning resources)
”The code samples were all right there in the SDK. That’s it. Just http://microsoft.com/azure, download the SDK, videos, code samples.”
[08:21] (Managing hybrid – traditionally hosted components access/consuming Windows Azure services – solutions)
"[Do you find it difficult?] No, not at all.”

Relevant Architecture Points

Hybrid solution – traditionally hosted components accessing/consuming Windows Azure services.
Use of Windows Azure Storage for mass amounts of data, scalability, and performance.
Use of Windows Azure platform to remove need for infrastructure management
No need for backup or high availability strategies as a result of using Windows Azure (out of the box capabilities with Windows Azure)

A Vision Needs a Roadmap

Jonathan Rozenblit — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:25:27 GMT

You know the projects you’re currently working on and the technologies you use to get them done. But what about future projects? What would they be using? The people that can answer that are the developers and architects that not only keep themselves up to date with technologies of today, but that also know what’s coming tomorrow and how to get there.

On February 22, you’ll have the opportunity to be one of those developers and architects. Join me in the Developer and Software Architect track as I take you through an exploration into the many new ways your investment in Microsoft technologies can drive innovation, productivity, efficiency, and potential cost savings. We’ll talk about what you’re doing, your challenges, and your needs, and answer any business or technical questions you may have.

Here’s what the event will look like:

8:00 - 8:30am	Registration and Breakfast
8:30 - 9:00am	Keynote- Microsoft's Enterprise Vision
9:00 - 9:15am	Windows Devices Showcase
9:15 - 9:30am	Break
9:30 - 10:15am	The Public Cloud, Windows Azure™, and Your Enterprise Discover when and how you can use Windows Azure™, Microsoft’s public cloud platform, as part of your enterprise solutions. You’ll take a look at the parts that make up the platform and scenarios where you can leverage them. The discussion will then dive deeper, focusing on the key architectural elements that need to be taken into consideration when moving to Windows Azure.
10:15 - 11:00am	Enterprises Go Mobile with Windows Phone 7 In this session, you’ll explore how enterprises can improve employee productivity by using Windows Phone. You’ll learn how Windows Phone helps enterprises get employees access to their information while mobile, how to extend/build LOB applications to use mobile devices, and how the integration with Microsoft Server products and services leads to a smooth deployment of Windows Phone across the workforce. Case studies of how customers are using mobile devices in the Enterprise will also be shared.
11:00 - 11:15am	Break
11:15 - 12:00pm	In the Real World When looking to make decisions that will impact the direction of your solutions, enterprise standards, infrastructure, tooling, etc, there are always many questions to ask. To get the best possible answers, it is best to ask those who have experience architecting, developing, testing, and implementing solutions in the “real world”. This interactive discussion will give you an opportunity to ask experts, those who have “real world” experience, your questions. You’ll hear about enterprise scenarios they have encountered, problems they have solved, and the benefits and hurdles they encountered along the way.
12:00 - 12:15pm	Thank you

Register Today

There’s no charge to attend so make sure you register today.

Some more details

If you’re interested, you can also attend other tracks – you’ll just have to register for those separately. Here’s the information you need for those:

I look forward to seeing and connecting with you there,

**Please note that this is an NDA event. If your organization does not have a signed Non Disclosure Agreement in place please contact your account manager to make the proper arrangements

Learn, then Drink to Celebrate!

Jonathan Rozenblit — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:44:49 GMT

Even though it hasn’t really been a typical winter for many areas across the country, it’s still cold enough for most of us to want to stay inside. The question is, what are you doing with your indoor time? If you’re like me, this is the time to catch up on the latest and greatest, taking the time to sit and learn something new.

If you’ve had a chance to watch the D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE special with Paula Rainford, Current IT Market Conditions and Hiring Trends in 2012, you know that the need for developers with Cloud Computing knowledge and skills is increasing. So, take that as a sign, or a forcing function if you will, and try out something new, expand your skill base and become either a Hero in your current company or more attractive for new companies.

If you’re wondering why Cloud Computing and Windows Azure skills and knowledge are being sought after by companies of all sizes, watch the Windows Azure Camp Online videos that teach you all about Windows Azure and what you can do with it. If you prefer to learn in-person with an instructor, look for a Windows Azure Camp in a city near you.

If the industry demand or the things you can do with Windows Azure aren’t enough to get you interested in getting the jump on your skills adjustment and checking out what the Windows Azure platform can do, how about I sweeten the deal for you? The title of this post is Learn, then Drink to Celebrate for a reason right?

Learn

I believe the best way to learn is by trying. Here’s what you’ll do:

Download the Introduction to Windows Azure hands-on lab.
Follow the steps in the lab manual to complete the lab. If you prefer to work backwards, you can start from the completed solution (also included) and look at the code to understand what’s going on.
When you’ve completed the entire lab, take two screenshots like those below, showing the complete DNS name of your hands-on lab and all of the instances running in production.
Send your lab’s DNS name (something.cloudapp.net), your mailing address, and the two screenshots to cdnazure@microsoft.com.

That’s it! I do recommend watching the Getting Started with Windows Azure video, but that’s entirely up to you.

Drink to Celebrate

So why bother doing all of the above? Seeing how easy it is to start using Windows Azure with your existing applications, of course! Aside from that, I’ll be sending you a gift card for about 5 drinks so that you can reward yourself for learning something new. You’ll be on your way to becoming the Cloud guru at your company in no time.

IMPORTANT: Make sure that you don’t stop or delete your deployment until you hear from me. I have to verify that you completed the lab, so your lab needs to be accessible at the DNS name you submit.

(By the way, the drinks are from a famous Canadian coffee retailer whose name rhymes with Jim Morton’s. What kind of drink did you think I was talking about?)

So…

Don’t Delay – I’ve only set aside a certain number of cards. Once they are gone – they are gone! And before anyone asks – this offer is valid and available to Canadian developers who deploy their hands-on labs to their Windows Azure accounts. Those accounts can be Windows Azure trial accounts (you can get a free one for 90 days), MSDN, BizSpark, or MPN Windows Azure benefit accounts as long as you don’t have any other deployments in the account^*.

Enjoy!

^*Offer good only in Canada and is available to the first 200 individuals, including residents of Quebec, who complete the hands-on lab, are verified by the Microsoft Canada Team, and have received a verification email from cdnazure@microsoft.com. Limit one gift per person. The gift is a $10 Tim Horton's gift card. The offer is non-transferable and cannot be combined with any other offer. Due to government gift and ethics laws, government employees are not eligible to participate. This offer is valid until all 200 gifts have been awarded. Any gift returned as non-deliverable will not be re-sent. Please allow up to 3 weeks for verification and 6-8 weeks for delivery of your gift which will be provided to you via mail. We reserve the right to substitute a gift of equal or greater value.

Ok. Let’s Start from the Beginning.

Tommy Lee — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:28:32 GMT

One of my favorite things to do is to check and see what folks are talking about on that Internet thing and one of the people I enjoy reading is the handsome and dapper Martin Beeby who we lovingly refer to as “The Beebs”. He is a developer evangelist for Microsoft and loves HTML5 just like me, but because he is on the other side of the world, he tends to see things before I do (grrr!).

The past few days, it has been interesting that folks have been asking me about how to get up-to-speed on HTML5. Like The Beebs wrote today, I ran into kids this weekend (I was at a way cool gaming hackathon event) and was asked multiple times how to get started with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. What I enjoyed was that they were not ashamed to say they didn’t know something. It is too bad that grown ups feel like they have to know everything.

Now, everyone typically has their stock answer, but I am always intrigued by new ways to learn and have been trying to find good material that actually have some design sensibilities as most of the good stuff looks like it was designed by a monkey with finger paints harkening back to web design circa 1997. But I digress…

As I am always looking for new things to help folks design or build amazingly brutal web apps, I have found a few things I am going to review and start recommending for those new to the web world.

Based on text: A Beginners Guide to HTML and CSS

This website is nicely done with good typography and a clean layout. Even the ampersands are beautiful. Shay Howe does a great job of describing the fundamentals while not doing to typical element by element linear way of teaching, but organizing it in a coherent way.

Based on book: HTML & CSS -- design and build websites

Unfortunately, it isn’t hip these days to actually read printed paper. Hipsters will proclaim “I am all digital bro”. Fine. But then I saw HTML & CSS in a beautiful and colorful format and I just had to order it. Mine should arrive tomorrow and promise that at some point I will write a book report about it.

Do kids in school do book reports still? Let me know in the comments. Oops, I digress…

Based on video: Treehouse

Treehouse is a video website that teaches a variety of web design and development subjects and uses a badging system to keep you engaged and motivated. It is a monthly sign-up which gives you access to a wide coverage of topics including the fundamentals.

What Now?

You can consume all of the content there is on the planet about HTML and CSS, but that does not mean that you will become an expert. The number one way to learn is to DO IT! I recommend folks not only find good content like those provided above, but to then take that knowledge and apply it to an app that you would like to build. Also, feel free to create experiments as you may be surprised at what you will learn.

How did you learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS? Let us know below!

Windows Phone links for the week

Paul Laberge — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:48:42 GMT

A good number of us from the team are in Redmond this week on our annual pilgrimage to the mothership (Microsoft Headquarters) for training, so content from me will be a little lighter than usual.

As a result, I wanted to share with you a set of links and resources that are new to help you learn more on Windows Phone development and also a reminder of some older links that you might want to bookmark as well.

Happy coding!

Five-Part Series on Metro Design Part 1: Unlocking the motivation of your mobile app user Part 2: My app has principles – understanding the Metro design principles Part 3: Isn’t “tile” just another word for “icon”? Infography vs iconography explained. Part 4: Going with the flow… Using Metro to control the experience Part 5: Making users awesome in the moment	A five-part series on Metro design for Windows Phone.
31 Weeks of Metro Design for Windows Phone	An in-depth discussion on the topic of Metro for Windows Phone by Arturo Toledo (Senior User Experience Designer for Windows Phone). A weekly post series currently in motion.
Five-Part Series on Succeeding on the Windows Phone Marketplace Part 1: Publishing in the right geographies Part 2: Trial mode and the art of the upsell Part 3: Finding the pricing sweet spot Part 4: The differentiation game Part 5 (Yet to be posted): Getting promoted by the Marketplace	A five-part series on strategies you can use to increase the adoption and downloads of your app/game on the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Webcast: A lap around Windows Phone 7.5	Link to a 3 hour webcast I presented on implementing features of Windows Phone 7.5 in your apps today.
Microsoft Canada Windows Phone Developer Resources Page	A page outlining a number of great resources to get you started on Windows Phone development and resources that can help you after you’ve become familiar with Windows Phone development.

D³ Special Edition: Current IT Market Conditions and Hiring Trends in 2012

Jonathan Rozenblit — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:29:33 GMT

On this D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE special, the D³ crew goes on location, visiting the East of Toronto .NET User Group where Paula Rainford, Account Manager at TEKSystems in Mississauga, ON speaks about industry trends as they relate to the .NET development community. Paula shares specific networking and job hunting techniques to assist in landing that next opportunity. Plus: Paula zeros in on what employers are looking for in candidates and what should be expected out of recruitment firms.

Highlights

[02:24] Current IT market conditions in Canada
[04:50] The debate of going into contracting or full time permanent positions
[05:00] Outlook for 2012
[06:36] Top skills sets desired in 2012
[06:57] Huge demand for mobile development
[07:20] Developers with Microsoft skills are high in demand
[08:00] Increase in the use of Microsoft development to convert legacy systems over Java
[08:38] The need for user experience designers
[09:23] #2 top skill: Security
[09:41] #3 top skill: Data warehouse/business intelligence
[10:19] #4 top skill: Networking
[10:46] #5 top skill: Business analysis/project management
[11:20] #6 top skill: IT Pro
[11:53] What employers are looking for
[13:26] Q: Can you elaborate on “soft skills”?
[14:30] Bad hires are due to attitudinal reasons
[15:26] Q: You said that one of the biggest challenges is attracting new people. Is that because the bar is set too high?
[17:10] Q: What are employers defining “emotional intelligence” as?
[17:49] Job hunting skills: networking
[18:44] Importance of referrals
[19:26] Working with recruitment firms to land an opportunity
[20:42] Using LinkedIn as your social network
[23:00] Job hunting using Twitter
[23:47] Other avenues you can use to locate opportunities
[25:10] What to expect from recruiting firms
[27:09] Q: How do recruiting firms work with people who have experience, just not Canadian experience?
[28:20] Q: What are you seeing happening so far in 2012?
[28:54] Q: What’s your take on certification?
[29:21] Q: Do employers still require college or university degrees to get jobs?
[30:23] Q: What are companies doing to attract talent?
[31:50] Q: Are people who move around jobs a lot more marketable than those who stick around for longer periods of time?
[33:03] Q: What are you looking for in resumes?
[33:35] Common employer resume frustrations
[34:18] Q: Is it true that resumes should only be two pages?
[34:51] Q: How many resumes do employers look at for positions?

Paula Rainford
Paula is a tenured Account Manager with TEKsystems with a background in recruiting. She manages the relationship between corporations and TEKsystems and is dedicated to spending time to develop an understanding of a company's culture, hiring practices, upcoming business priorities and IT project and resources needs. She is actively involved in networking and recruiting the top IT talent and assisting technical professionals in their career search.
Contact >>

TEKSystems
TEKsystems is North America's leading technology staffing and services company. Combining a proven track record of superior performance, a quality focused approach to service delivery and the highest calibre technical professionals in the market, TEKsystems helps our clients successfully plan, build, and run their critical technology initiatives. With more than 25 years of experience, we annually deploy 70,000 technical professionals from 90 locations through North America, Europe and Asia.

East of Toronto .NET User Group

The mission of the East of Toronto .NET Users Group is to provide advanced, interesting information about the Microsoft .NET Framework. It serves the need of developers to receive the best .NET programming information, and fill their desire to be informed about developments of revolutionary importance as early as possible. The group serves the needs of programmers who are currently working with or interested in the .NET platform.

Join the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group
follow @devsdevdevs, or
like D³ on Facebook.

More >>

Special thanks to Paula and the East of Toronto .NET User Group for inviting D³ and allowing us to share this special with developers nationwide.

Do you hate SharePoint? Part 3 of 4

Susan Ibach — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:51:19 GMT

If the answer is yes, could your hatred be caused by your local implementation? In this blog series we look at four common problems with SharePoint implementations and how you can address them.

We continue our series by Neil McIsaac, SharePoint MCT, for putting this together. Happy reading! If you missed it you can still read Part 1 and Part 2 of the series

SharePoint is an interesting platform and as it grows as a product and with its already incredible adoption, it is an important cornerstone for many organizations. But ask the people that work with it, and you will find a divided love it or hate it passion for the product.

Why hate it?

It’s my experience (which dates back to the site server/dashboard days), that many customers have difficulty handling the product and I mean this a number of ways. Here’s the issue:

SharePoint will amplify your problems.

So why do we hate it? I would hate anything that made my problems larger. But did SharePoint create the problem? That would be like blaming the carpenters hammer for building a crooked house. The problems are our own doing in the majority of cases. In my experience, the most common problem SharePoint seems to amplify are the following;

Information Management
Project Management
Information Security
Business Intelligence

This week we look at Information Security.

3. Information Security

SharePoint has a confusing security architecture. A friend of mine continually jokes that you can do anything in SharePoint, as long as you know the 6 strategically placed security settings you need to set to allow users to interact with your content. I like to keep things simple. I always start addressing security by asking these 3 basic questions;

What are the requirements?

This question is pretty straight forward and we do it relatively well. Who gets access, and who doesn't.

How do we know we meet the security requirements?

This is one area where SharePoint poses some difficulty, since it lacks any worthwhile reporting tools and has enough security layers that are hidden in the UI that it feels like finding an answer to this question is akin to finding the meaning of life itself. Paired with the products inability to properly handle security inheritance and the lack of a proper method to deny permissions and you are on a never ending hunt for individualized permissions. Yuck. Unfortunately the best security reporting tools are third party. Your team needs to sit down and address how your organization will address security reporting and auditing.

When is the last time we checked?

Security audits are often checked at implementation, but rarely checked afterwards. Permission elevation happens for various reasons such as troubleshooting, making it necessary to schedule our audits. If running an audit is painful because we haven't properly addressed the above question, then scheduling it will hurt that much more. Again, get a good security tool.

Information Security Tips

Here are a few tips on implementing security in SharePoint to help make things a little more manageable.

Libraries/Lists are for security

I am not a fan of the Shared Documents Library which comes as a default. If you have ever heard me talk on the subject, you know I get a bit worked up about it. I am a fan of lists/libraries in SharePoint and I completely understand Microsoft's position in adding it. It was a necessary evil. The problem that I have with it is what most people put in it. It goes against pretty much every information management principal that we have. Many organizations use this library and why not? It says "Shared" and I want to share my stuff, so why not? The reasons are many, but at a simple level, you will end up with a folder structure that mimics your old file shares, and make it work by placing individual permissions on folders and files to compensate for your lack of proper architecture. If you think of lists and libraries as containers, which if you were paying attention in the previous blog post when I ranted about the importance of structure, you can shape these containers to better store its information. You can change the shape (think 'content types'), and you can change the behaviour (think 'workflows' and 'views') to better aid the end user in the task they have at hand (think 'Use Cases'). Coming back to permissions, if we have a container with similar information in it, we can control permissions to all of its content by controlling permissions to the container. In other words, permissions in SharePoint are best handled at the list and library level and not at the folder or file/item level. Which brings me to a solid point: If you are not sure how many libraries you should have, look at the common permissions to your content. If a group of people need read access to one type of content but not to another type of content, then the content should be in the same list/library and we can control permissions to the content by setting the permissions once on the list or library. So how many lists or libraries should you have? The answer is in how many groups of content with the same permissions you have. This is not always the answer, but it is a good starting point.

Use SharePoint groups as functional roles

SharePoint groups are best used to reflect functionality rather than entity. Since we typically use Active Directory groups, adding the AD groups to our SharePoint groups to reflect the same group would be redundant. For example, having a Sales group in AD, which we mimic and create a Sales group in SharePoint usually offers little benefit. Having a group in SharePoint that reflects their ability is preferred. For example, I can create a group in SharePoint called Sales Lead Generators that can better reflect what anyone in that group can 'do' rather than who they are. Not only does it simplify security administration, it makes audit reporting a lot easier to read and verify.

Use Information Rights Management

Information Rights Management has been around for some time now. Surprisingly, most organizations that want to secure documents rely on securing the folder or physical media where the file is stored. The problem is that this security simply doesn't follow the document where ever it goes. IRM on the other hand, does! You just have to ask someone if their documents are just as secure after an employee that has proper permissions to the file copies it to a thumb drive, or inadvertently emails it to the wrong person. SharePoint and IRM integrate very well. You can check out more about IRM here.

Next week, part 4 business intelligence…

On the Next D³: LIVE & INTERACTiVE – Securing .NET Applications

Jonathan Rozenblit — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:28:41 GMT

February 1, 2012 | 12:00 PM ET | Add to Outlook >>

Next week on Developers, Developers, Developers: LIVE & INTERACTiVE: Developer security experts and TechDays speakers Joël Herbert and Steve Syfuhs will be will be on the show to chat about securing .NET applications easily and effectively.

Plus: Gladstone Grant, VP of Microsoft Canada’s Developer & Platform group, will be talking about the directions of IT and the opportunities developers have working with Microsoft platform. Watch Gladstone’s Directions of IT: The Developer Opportunity, then tune in, and ask him your questions.

All LIVE and INTERACTiVE.

Connect with D³

Follow @devsdevdevs

Like D³ on Facebook

Join the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group

Developers, Developers, Developers Home >>

Only a week to go before the next D³, so make sure to save the date and time (you can use the Add to Outlook link above)!