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A Basic Guide to Building Chrome Extensions

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:33:51 GMT

Google Chrome has come a long way since it's early days. I am a big fan of the Chrome Developer tools and use it in my day to day development. There are also loads of great tools and extensions that are on offer at the Chrome store, and most are available to download for free. Depending on your requirements, creating a Chrome extension is really quick and easy - all it requires is a little knowledge of JavaScript and HTML. In this post, I am going to run through a tutorial that shows you how to create a small Chrome extension that allows you to display the top 5 posts on this blog from the RSS feed in a popup. It is a pretty basic example, but will give you a good understanding of Chrome extension development.

Ten features I like about Coffeescript

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:22:22 GMT

Karl Seguin shares ten features he likes in Coffeescript. A great list for anyone learning Coffeescript, or anyone who isn't yet familiar with Coffeescript.

Setting up a CI server using Jenkins, MSBuild and GitHub on a Windows

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:31:40 GMT

In this post I've described how to use Jenkins, GirHub and MSBuild to setupa CI server on Windows Server.

Agile is a Sham

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:02:50 GMT

Agile is a Sham. Thats SCRUM and TDD and all the rest; it is all those new ways of managing development projects and being super-productive and modern and buzzword-compliant; all the sprints, scrums, playing cards crass commercial nonsense.

Token Based Asynchronous Socket Server On .NET 4

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:53:26 GMT

An asynchronous token based socket server, which means that server and client will use token exchange as a handshake to confirm that all of the messages were correctly delivered.

HTML5 Native Video Streaming With WebRTC

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:39:20 GMT

A short introduction to using the getUserMedia API in the newest builds of Chrome Dev channel and Canary.

Kinect for Windows Now Available

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:07:01 GMT

On January 9th, Steve Ballmer announced at CES that Microsoft would be shipping Kinect for Windows on February 1st. Today version 1.0 of the SDK and runtime were made available for download, and distribution partners in twelve launch countries are starting to ship Kinect for Windows hardware.

How To Build a Modern Website in 2011

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 20:10:43 GMT

Over the past 12 months I've been on a self-imposed quest for knowledge. We're at a changing - almost revolutionary - point with the web as I (start) writing this on November 1st, 2011. Here's why

Hostile code bases

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:09:26 GMT

I don't like calling code bases legacy. The word "legacy" makes people think of Ivy League schools, vintage leather couches, and Dad's old bottle of Scotch. It rarely elicits the kind of feeling of pain and despair one normally gets when dealing with old code. So instead, I prefer to call crusty old code Hostile.

8 Things clients need to learn about software development

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:55:45 GMT

Software developers always have to do everything they can to deliver good software, lot's of books have been written on the subjects of quality assurance, requirements management, agile, etc. Something that deserves its own book however are the rules you as a client should obey when starting a new software project. The biggest problems are the fact that most customers want their software to be as cheap as possible, the ever changing requirements and the lack of communication.

Windows PowerShell: Meet the New Shell

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 19:02:37 GMT

The new Windows PowerShell is coming. Actually, Microsoft has just launched a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Windows PowerShell version 3, although the final version 3 probably won't ship until it comes out with Windows 8. It also will be available for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Better Git with PowerShell

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:53:00 GMT

If you do any work with Git on Windows, you owe it to yourself to check out Posh-Git. In fact, there's also Posh-HG for mercurial users and even Posh-Svn for those so inclined. Once you have Posh-Git loaded up, your PowerShell window lights up with extra information and features when you are in a directory with a git repository.

The rise and rise of JavaScript

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:28:26 GMT

I've been using JavaScript for a while now, but only really programming in anger with it during the last year. I've found it in turns frustrating and enlightening, ridiculous and brilliant. I have never felt so empowered by a language and its ecosystem, so I thought I'd take some time to write about why that is. I'm starting with a ramble through the history of JavaScript, or rather my undoubtedly inaccurate understanding of it, to provide some context for where and how I've been using it.

Duke Nukem, unhappy marriages, and the Anna Karenina principle

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:57:30 GMT

Successful projects all have common reasons for success; failed projects each fail in their own unique, spectacular way.

Confused about Microsoft's online branding?

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:20:42 GMT

Chris at LiveSide pulls together a series of posts that try to put people straight on the whole MSN/Live branding thing that's going on at the moment.

Joost's Dev Blog: The lamest bug we ever encountered

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:08:58 GMT

Yesterday we resolved by far the lamest 'bug' I have ever encountered. We spent almost two whole days with the entire programming team (5 coders) trying to find it, and once we discovered what was happening, it felt so incredibly lame, that I figured it would be a nice story to share. So here's what happened!

Why we need even more programming languages

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:26:46 GMT

Upgrading existing, popular languages to support new features is a lot harder than you might think

Responsive Web Design: A Means To Something

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:33:33 GMT

A designer's take on responsive web design.

Map for Microsoft Application Development Platform

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:50:35 GMT

Here is an initial map of the Microsoft Application Platform from a topics, features, and API perspective. You can use the idea to build your own maps.

Microsoft is in trouble

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:47:32 GMT

Is Microsoft really in trouble? Here is one bloggers comments from a consumer point of view over the Thanksgiving holidays. Cheap computers, under-rated phones, and lack of advertisement compared to competitors have some worried.

5 screens and a cloud

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 09:16:13 GMT

Microsoft talk about 3 Screens and a cloud... My Question, why not 5?

OData Binding for Navigation Controls (ASP.NET AJAX)

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:31:32 GMT

For those familiat with Telerik, OData is a protocol that exposes your data to the web in a simple, RESTlike manner. A consumer can query the data via set of URL parameters and receive a response in the JSON format, which is native for the web. In the Q3 2011 release the navigation controls (for now - RadTreeView, RadMenu, RadListBox, RadComboBox) can be bound to OData services that return JSON feed.

Home Security with Kinect, Azure Service Bus, and SignalR

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:54:08 GMT

Suppose you had a some scary-looking hoodlum walking around your house when you were out? You'd want to know about it, wouldn't you? Take one Kinect, mix in a little Windows Azure Service Bus, sprinkle in some SignalR, and mix it all together with some elbow grease, and you could watch in near-real-time as sinewy folks romp through your living room. Here's how.

ExportFactory in MEF 2

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:27:32 GMT

In MEF 2 Preview 4 new support has been added to enable a finer grained control over the lifetime and sharing of parts. The export factory allows us to create new instances of dependencies and control the lifetime of the created parts.

The trouble of finished software

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:04:35 GMT

I think that there is a very important question, and that is the question of what constitutes a finished software. Well, that might seem easy. It should just work as specified.