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Weekly Poll Results

This week's survey: Do you customise or upgrade your computer(s)?

Most popular new articles

• Events and Delegates Simplified - Meysam Mahfouzi
  
• Changing Your Life and Well-Being - VectorX
  
• RaptorDB - the Document Store - Mehdi Gholam
  
• Classical Encryption Techniques - Omar Gamil
  
• Editable GridView in ASP.NET 2.0 - Ashrafur Rahaman
  

Latest Additions

116 articles overall. 30 new, 86 updated.

New articles added

ASP.NET

• Skinny controller in ASP.NET MVC 4 - thangchung
  Applying best practices for ASP.NET web applications.
  
  
• Introduction to Entity Framework - Alex_Xia
  A simple introduction for beginner to jump start on Entity Framework. The Model and query language are explained.
  
  
• Partial Stubs and Detours with Microsoft Moles - Andrew Stoute
  Getting started with Stubs and Detours in Microsoft Moles
  
  

C#

• Understanding Generic Dictionary in-depth - Ofir Makmal
  A deep-dive of what is going on under the hood.
  
  

Database

• Configuring Database Mirroring Part1 - Kareem.S
  This article describes about database mirroring feature of SQL Server
  
  

Hardware Reviews

• Intel Ultrabook - Why You Should Get One - simsam77
  
  
  

Libraries

• Profiling Entity Framework 5 in code - Tom Cook (UK)
  Hook SaveChanges and see exactly what T-SQL is hitting your database without attaching a profiler
  
  

LINQ

• LINQ and dictionaries - Anders Gustafsson, Cureos
  Convenience methods for creating dictionaries with LINQ
  
  

Product Showcase

• How to Build a Powerful Document Imaging Workflow - Accusoft
  Using ImageGear Professional and Barcode Xpress.
  
  
• Ten Ways to Ensure Windows Azure-Based Applications Are Architected for Success - Douglas Chrsytall, Neil Mackenzie, Shay_Yannay
  This whitepaper describes the top ten issues that arise when deploying to SQL Database and explains how to mitigate these issues.
  
  

Ultrabooks

• Working With the Intel Ultrabook - Daniel Egan
  Back in September I wrote about my first impressions of the Ultrabook I received from Intel. It has now been a couple of months and so I thought I would give a follow up on how it has been holding up.
  
  
• Intel Ultrabook–Wrapup - JesseLiberty
  In a previous posting I described the IvyBridge Ultrabook I was given to review. This is the third and final review.
  
  
• 2012 Rocking the Windows 8 Sensors on the Intel IvyBridge Ultrabook - John_Papa
  2012 Rocking the Windows 8 Sensors on the Intel IvyBridge Ultrabook .
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• WPF Layout to Layout Transitions - Yuriy Zanichkovskyy
  Layout to layout transitions made easy
  
  
• WPF Growl Notifications - Ivan Leonenko
  Lightweight growl notifications for WPF project.
  
  
• WCF in a stateful application (WPF/Silverlight) - David J Rundle
  Handling the Faulted state and Closure of a WCF service when being used in a stateful application.
  
  

Articles updated

.NET Framework

• PVS.AVPlayer - Peter Vegter
  MCI wrapper class library for .NET developers
  
  

Ajax

• HTTP Push from SQL Server — Comet SQL - CoperNick
  This article provides an example solution for presenting data in "real-time" from Microsoft SQL Server in an HTML browser. The article presents how to implement Comet functionality in ASP.NET and how to connect Comet with Query Notification from SQL Server.
  
  

Algorithms & Recipes

• Classical Encryption Techniques - Omar Gamil
  Implementation of famous Ciphering algorithms
  
  

ASP.NET

• ASP.NET MVC 3 plug-in architecture using Griffin.MvcContrib - jgauffin
  How to create a flexible plugin system with Griffin.MvcContrib.
  
  

ASP.NET Controls

• Editable GridView in ASP.NET 2.0 - Ashrafur Rahaman
  This article will give you an overview of how to use an ASP.NET GridView completely, and how to use RowEditing, RowUpdating, RowDeleting, RowCommand, RowDataBound, RowCancelingEdit, and Pagination in a DataGrid. From this article, you will have a clear view of GridView data inserting, deleting, and
  
  

C / C++ Language

• Windows Development in C++, working with menus - Espen Harlinn
  Windows API, menus, c++ lambda expressions, std::enable_shared_from_this
  
  
• Rendering text with Direct2D & DirectWrite - Espen Harlinn
  Direct2D, DirectWrite, Windows API, C++, std::shared_ptr and more
  
  
• Windows Development in C++, COM API clients - Espen Harlinn
  Using the Facade Pattern to simplify development with COM based APIs'
  
  
• ESS: Extremely Simple Serialization for C++ - Jerry Evans
  An article on persistent C++ objects. Includes several console mode test apps and an MFC GUI demo.
  
  
• Stopwatch - Espen Harlinn
  Benchmark C++ std::vector vs raw arrays, move assignable/constructable & copy assignable/constructable
  
  
• A C++ String class - Espen Harlinn
  A fast, reference counted, copy-on-write string class - performance tests and an unexpected benefit related to /Qpar (Auto-Parallelization)
  
  

C#

• Events and Delegates Simplified - Meysam Mahfouzi
  This article shows you how to design events for your classes.
  
  
• How does it work in C#? - Part 2 - Mohammad A Rahman
  How does throw, rethrow and where, select clause of Enumerable class work in C# programming language.
  
  
• A short identifier using base 36 in C# - Paul C Smith
  How to generate shorter, more readable, unique values for general-purpose identifiers.
  
  
• Working with Sockets in C# - Houssem Dellai
  This article shows how to use sockets to send messages
  
  
• NHook - A .NET debugger API for x86 - Nicolas Dorier
  Debugger API, explore and modify running program easily
  
  
• SqlDependency with Entity Framework 5.0 - Rick Bassham
  This article will show you how to subscribe to data changes using Entity Framework 5.0.
  
  
• Bulk Data Management - Srinivasu Pemma
  This is the best way to handle or manage bulk data insert to sql server taken from my technical blog http://www.srinetinfo.com/2012/11/bulk-data-management.html
  
  
• Add Most Recently Used Files (MRU) List to Windows Applications - Adib Saad
  A .NET4.0 alternative for "Add Most Recently Used Files (MRU) List to Windows Applications"
  
  
• MATPaint - Simple App with Simple Features - Zaid Pirwani, Maaz Ahmed
  MATrix Paint - A simple app with many C# and mostly Windows Forms features for a class project.
  
  
• Data Accessing Independent From Database And Entity With ADO.Net - Halil Ibrahim Kalyoncu
  This tutorial aims to show a basic approach for designing a data access layer independent from databases and entities.
  
  

Cryptography & Security

• PL/I Tutorial – An example of basic Encryption - Palavos
  A tutorial of PL/I basic concepts based on an encryption example
  
  

Database

• RaptorDB - the Document Store - Mehdi Gholam
  NoSql, JSON based, Document store database with compiled .net map functions and automatic hybrid bitmap indexing and LINQ query filters (now with standalone Server mode, Backup and Active Restore, Transactions, Server side queries, MonoDroid support)
  
  
• Configuring Database Mail in SQL Server - Kareem.S
  This is an enterprise solution for sending mails from the SQL Server database engine to SMTP servers.
  
  

Design and Architecture

• Dependency Inversion Principle and the Dependency Injection Pattern - Munir Hassan
  Dependency Inversion Principle and the Dependency Injection Pattern
  
  

Desktop Gadgets

• Mouse Control via Webcam - abumusab, saadhafeez, Anas Hashmi, Sajjad Idrees
  Control your mouse using hand gestures.
  
  

Files and Folders

• Rendering PDF Documents with Mupdf and P/Invoke in C# - wmjordan
  Converting PDF into Bitmaps without installing extra components.
  
  
• C# - Using Rijindael Algorithm and Recursion to Implement a File Encrypting\Archiving Tool - Mr.DDD Ibraheem AlKilanny
  Demonstrating the use of the System.Security.Cryptography.Rijindael class to powerfully encrypt strings and files along with basic file archiving method.
  
  

Grid & Data Controls

• Dynamic Type Description Framework for PropertyGrid - Mizan Rahman
  A framework that allows you to customize your class for PropertyGrid at design-time and/or run-time. Using this framework your can control what properties PropertyGrid shows, how the properties are shown, and when it shows them.
  
  

Hardware & System

• Simulating and controlling GE Color Effects Lights with Arduino - Keithsw
  Simulating and Controlling GE Color Effects Lights with Arduino
  
  
• Simple Windows Service in C++ - Mohit Arora
  An article that shows how to create a simple Windows service in C++.
  
  

HTML / CSS

• HTML5, JavaScript, Knockout, JQuery, Guide for Recovering Silverlight/WPF/C# Addicts. Part 1 - JavaScript and DOM. - Nick Polyak
  JavaScript/DOM basics for WPF/Silverlight/C# developers
  
  

Internet / Network

• Building a WebServer using C# - rockdino
  How to make a simple web server which supports GZIP compression, applications, and sessions.
  
  
• Apolyton FastJSON - Aron Kovacs
  This is an alternative for "fastJSON"
  
  

Office Development

• Outlook add-in integrating Skype - Cristian Amarie
  Outlook add-in integration for Skype IM: Skype events, Outlook Skype ribbon, and more.
  
  

Product Showcase

• Secure your Saas applications with Visual Guard - Novalys
  Are you creating a security system for a SaaS application? Visual Guard is here to help! This article will list the important questions to ask during your project and the answers that Visual Guard provides to avoid security breaches or functional limitations that will hold you back.
  
  

Scrapbook

• Changing Your Life and Well-Being - VectorX
  How to stay healthy and fit, while working a career that requires you to sit for long periods of time.
  
  

Threads, Processes & IPC

• Lock-Free Single-Producer - Single Consumer Circular Queue - KjellKod.cc
  How to make a wait-free, lock-free CircularFifo using C++11
  
  

Tools and IDE

• CodeDOM Classes for Solution and Project Files (Part 5) - KenBeckett
  CodeDOM objects for VS Solution and Project files.
  
  
• Object-Oriented Parsing: Breaking With Tradition (Part 4) - KenBeckett
  A non-traditional method of parsing languages in an extensible way.
  
  

Tree Controls

• Drag and Drop Persisting TreeView Control (VB.NET) - Tom John
  Extending the TreeView control to support drag and drop and persistance.
  
  

Ultrabooks

• Roller Coaster - Rover2341 - Mark Dickinson
  Build and ride roller coasters on Windows 8. Use your Ultrabook to play the game using touch.
  
  
• Transport Tracker - Joe Brock
  A unified transport tracking application for Windows 8 which utilises sensors and a server-side transport network aggregation component.
  
  
• Engineering Calculator VOLTA-2013 - DrABELL
  Productivity software package VOLTA-2013 developed as HTML5 web application and converted into desktop installable one using Intel’s AppUp encapsulator. Application extension Jobrica-2013 utilizes geolocation/GPS service and Bing map technology to find Job Agencies in search area.
  
  
• Sumerics - Florian Rappl
  Creating a touch enabled sensor numerical application for the latest generation of Ultrabooks.
  
  
• Edumatter M12: School Math Calculators and Equation Solvers - DrABELL
  Educational software package for Microsoft Windows® contains “5-in-1” School Math Calculators and Equation Solvers applications, intended for public/private school (K-12) and college students, educators, and self-paced education/homeschooling
  
  
• Celerity: Sensory Overload - Adam David Hill
  Sensor-controlled XNA Tunnel Game with VR Head-Tracking
  
  
• FloTiles: An Innovative Metro Game - Ratish Philip
  A Windows 8 Metro App showcasing an innovative jigsaw puzzle game while utilising the powerful features of an Ultrabook.
  
  
• You're gonna go Ballastic! - linkedPIXEL
  A game of ball swinging, elastic snapping chaos.
  
  
• Quizzee! - Tarun Y Mangukiya
  A Quiz game for Windows 8 And Ultrabook
  
  
• Bixi Application Proposal for Windows 8 Ultrabooks - Yani Ioannou
  Bixi app proposal for Windows 8 Ultrabooks.
  
  
• Mobile Pro - chgijk
  Tracking time and resources for onsite consulting
  
  
• Switch To SMS/Text Event Reminders When Your Ultrabook is in Suspend Mode #1 - simsam77
  Send a text/sms message to your phone when your Ultrabook is in Sleep/Standby mode via a service like Twilio or Nexmo by using Smart Connect or an accelerometer/gyroscope
  
  
• All Axis Camera - Windows 8 Desktop App for Ultrabook - Mahendra India
  Adding all axis to panoramic photography with Ultrabook
  
  
• T-Kara Puzzles - thetairon
  New version of touch friendly puzzle game.
  
  
• MoneyBag - An Awesome MoneyManager - hisureshkumarg
  MoneyBag is an elegant money manager which provides simple and easy ways to enter and track all the financial transactions and at the same time empower the user to understand their spending and savings patterns over a period of time, so that they can take corrective actions to improve their financia
  
  
• TasksBox - An Intelligent TaskManager - sarmaghi
  TasksBox is an Intelligent Task Manager which elegantly manages all your tasks and can also sync your tasks across multiples machines by utilizing the power of cloud services.
  
  
• GPS Treasure hunt - PeterFJorgensen
  "GPS Treasure Hunt" is a game played out in the nature using a Ultrabook PC with GPS and other sensors
  
  
• Piano - sarmaghi
  Piano is a awesome musical app that brings the musical instrument to your Ultrabook by leveraging the power of touch in the Ultrabook.
  
  
• Weather - Live Weather for you. - Vj_in
  Weather is a great utility app for everyone who needs a simple and elegant way to keep notified of the weather updates.
  
  
• LocalView - Area-specific desktops - Tim Corey
  A utility to change your desktop background and lock screen automatically based upon where you are currently.
  
  
• Xapp Collaboration Application - Muralidharan Anantharaman
  An application which will enable the user to annotate what they see on their Ultrabook screens using various tools such as freehand drawing
  
  
• Notes - Simple & Elegant - Sarah_G
  Notes is simple app to keep your notes organized in a simple and elegant user interface. Taking Notes becomes a lot easier with Notes app.
  
  
• Amazon Deals - sarmaghi
  Amazon Deals is an awesome app for accessing content, news, articles and other details related to deals.
  
  
• Switch to SMS/Text Event Reminders When Your Ultrabook is in Suspend Mode #2 - simsam77
  This is a follow-on article from my first on the topic of sending text messages as event reminders.
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• Global Shortcuts in WinForms and WPF - GeekBond
  This article shows how to register and manage System-Global hotkeys in WinForm and WPF applications and performing some keyboard manipulation from your app and has a custom hotkey control.
  
  
• WPF TabControl: Turning Off Tab Virtualization - Ivan Krivyakov
  This is an alternative for "Persist the Visual Tree when switching tabs in the WPF TabControl (optimized)".
  
  
• Smart WPF Login Overlay (Windows 8 Style) - DotNetMastermind
  Login Overlay for WPF applications with a styling similar to the Windows 8 Login Screen.
  
  

New Tips and Tricks added

C / C++ Language

• Single precision floating point and double precesion floating values operations in SSE optimization - Shahadat Hossain Mazumder
  Single precision floating point and double precesion floating values operations in SSE optimization
  
  

C#

• MVVM ICommand , Lambda Expression for Can Execute Changed - Yasser Moradi DNP
  Parse Can Execute to detect when Can Execute Changed should called
  
  

Database

• Simple Way To Use Pivot In Sql Query - Maksud Saifullah Pulak
  Transforming data from row-level data to columnar data.
  
  

SharePoint Server

• Squadron Empty List Add-in - Jean Paul V.A
  A new add-in inside the Squadron for SharePoint 2010 tool.
  
  
• Change site collection URL in SharePoint 2010 - TexaWeb
  How to change the name of a SharePoint site in URL
  
  

String handling

• Using not nullable string wrapper with DTO - MoTamas
  How to identify if the given string can be null in the client side for a WCF server client application
  
  

Validation

• PAN Card Number Validation - ravindra5233
  Sample script for PAN card number validation.
  
  

Tips and Tricks updated

Algorithms & Recipes

• Math Parser .NET C# - kirnbas
  This is light, fast and simple to understand mathematical parser designed in one class, which receives as input a mathematical expression (System.String) and returns the output value (System.Double)
  
  

Applications & Tools

• How to Search Information from TFS based on Change Set and Comment - efero
  How to search information from TFS based on Change Set and comment.
  
  

ASP.NET

• An enhanced WebMatrix Bakery template - Gianmaria Gregori
  How to add a random sliding effect to the Bakery home page
  
  

C / C++ Language

• Splitting Up Class Template Declarations and Definitions - Gareth Jensen
  Tips on how to declare a class template in a header file and define a class template in a source file.
  
  
• Serialization implementation in C++ - Gilad_Rozban
  C++ Serialization implementation
  
  

C#

• killing a process using MainWindowTitle - Tarek Elqusi
  How I used the MainWindowTitle property to close a running program by killing the associated process
  
  

Database

• Checksum for Database - Paulo Buchsbaum
  A simple way to generate checksum for tables and databases.
  
  

Date and Time

• JavaScript Date Validation - Ed Nutting
  JavaScript Date Validation
  
  

Internet / Network

• YouTube Downloader Using C# .NET - akramKamal
  Full C# code to download videos from YouTube in any quality.
  
  

Java

• Argument Parser - Nagy Vilmos
  A simple method to parse an argument list as a name value pair
  
  

Libraries

• MEF in .NET 4.5 - Milan Raval
  Advancements in MEF in .NET 4.5.
  
  

PHP

• Creating multi-page gzip-compressed sitemap with sitemap index for Google Webmaster Tools - Andrew Zan
  This article is intended for people who are planning to develop sitemap for a site with large amount of pages.
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• Closing View from ViewModel - Fun@learn
  Lightweight approach to close view from viewmodel command
  
  

New Technical Blogs added

Client side scripting

• How to create a tic tac toe game with web standards (Part 5-Final) - Member 8292021
  How to create a tic tac toe game with web standards.
  
  

Mobile Development

• A Mobile Application Served From CouchDB - Keyhole Software
  A mobile application served from CouchDB.
  
  

Programming Tips

• Getting console output within a unit test - Vasil Trifonov
  Today I needed to test a method which writes to the Console to validate the ouput. It is not hard to change the default console output and check the result. However you may forget to return the original output at the end. So let's take a look at my solution.Let say we have the following class we wan
  
  
• How to configure local Nuget Repository - Vasil Trifonov
  After my last posts about Nuget packaging I wanted to share another useful experience with Nuget.You can create a local repository to store all the packages you need and not to download those every time.To do this I have created a folder C:\NugetConfig\Repo and I have copied there the Newtonsoft.Jso
  
  

Tabs & Property Pages

• Retrieve the LoaderException property for more information… - Ivan Krivyakov
  Here’s the exception I received today: System.Reflection.ReflectionTypeLoadException. Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information. Isn’t it lovely? Do the authors think I have a little leprechaun sitting on the user machi
  
  

Uncategorised Technical Blogs

• In GAC we Trust - Ivan Krivyakov
  I am writing a plugin-hosting WPF application. For variety of reasons I have to put plugin-ins into their own app domains. To name just a few: - plugin unload is required - each plugin has its own config file - plugins may be located anywhere on the disk I am having serious troubles due to [...]
  
  

Work Issues

• Why Great Teams Build Great Products - Zac Gery
  Placing the five brightest or fastest developers on a team does not guarantee a "dream team" with unbounded productivity.
  
  

Technical Blogs updated

Android

• Drawing in Android - Serge Desmedt
  2D Drawing in Android
  
  

C#

• ReaderWriterSlimLock: Conquering Mismatched Enter and Exit Calls - Daniel Vaughan
  The ReaderWriterLockSlim class is used to protect a resource that is read by multiple threads and written to by one thread at a time.
  
  

Client side scripting

• Create animated character - Member 8292021
  In this tutorial you will be shown the creation of an example of an animated character using web language.
  
  
• A generic text escape tool done in JavaScript - Alex Fotios
  A generic text escape tool done in JavaScript.
  
  

Database

• Working with legacy databases in NHibernate Part 1 - Compound foreign keys - Pete Sutcliffe
  If there's anything worse than working with legacy code, it's working with Legacy databases. At least with legacy code if you're lucky you can ring-fence it off and ignore it when not working on it, but poorly designed databases can infect a whole system and create a situation where your new code st