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Site News

Our AppInnovation contest draws to a close and our thousands of registered entrants have worked themselves into exhaustion getting over a hundred applications completed. Around 300 Ultrabooks have been sent around the world, the first 50 entrants to get their apps in the AppUp store have been awarded their $1,000 prizes, and Judging is now underway and the final seven $10,000 category prizes and the overall $20,000 grand prize.

Someone's going to have a great Christmas.

Have you ever wanted to know what your fellow developers think about something?

Each week we run a straw poll on the homepage and I'm always after ideas. If there's something you've wanted to ask then email your ideas to webmaster@codeproject.com. Wondering what languages people are using? Their favourite IDE? Whether they too have pair-programming foisted on them? Anything goes!

cheers,
Chris Maunder

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Weekly Poll Results

This week's survey: Is HTML5 a good choice for mobile application development?

Most popular new articles

• fastJSON - Mehdi Gholam
  
• Commands in MVVM - Dave Kerr
  
• Visualizing the Mandelbrot set - Andy Bantly
  
• FTP Client Class - otom
  
• XMLFoundation - Brian Aberle
  

Latest Additions

109 articles overall. 34 new, 75 updated.

New articles added

.NET Framework

• Understanding Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) 4.5 - mohamad halabi
  Explains Claims-Based Architecture, Supporting Protocols, and WIF
  
  

Design and Architecture

• Composable Data Validations. Func delegates everywhere. - Member 3531622
  How to combine type based validation rules with other validations. How to compose them and apply them in different scenarios, adding/removing validations when applied on concrete instances, combining objects of different types and implementing one validation strategy on all.
  
  

Edit Controls

• CueProvider - cigwork
  VB.NET version of Ravi Bhavnani's CueProvider.
  
  

HTML / CSS

• Emerging Specs: Exploring Device Orientation and Motion - Jacob Rossi, Abu Obeida Bakhach
  Emerging Specs: Exploring Device Orientation and Motion
  
  
• Modernize Your HTML5 Canvas Game Part 2: Offline, Drag-and-Drop, and File APIs - David Rousset
  Modernize Your HTML5 Canvas Game Part 2: Offline, Drag-and-Drop, and File APIs
  
  
• Optical Zooming: How to Correct Legacy Document Modes Problems with Fonts - Ted_Johnson
  Optical Zooming: How to Correct Legacy Document Modes Problems with Fonts.
  
  
• Using the Windows 8 Simulator & VS 2012 to Debug the IE10 Touch Events & Your Responsive Design on the Web - David Rousset
  Using the Windows 8 Simulator & VS 2012 to debug the IE10 touch events & your responsive design on the web.
  
  

Microsoft BizTalk Server

• BizTalk Static and Dynamic FTP Send Port Sample - Shrilata Ellaboina
  A BizTalk static and dynamic FTP Send Port sample.
  
  

Product Showcase

• Starting Speech Recognition on Device Events - Plantronics
  Starting Speech Recognition on device events.
  
  

SharePoint Server

• SharePoint 2010 State Machine Workflows with Custom Task Forms (InfoPath) using VS 2010 - Part 3 of 3 - Rupesh Tarwade
  Building Custom SharePoint 2010 Workflow with InfoPath Task Form
  
  

SQL Reporting Services

• Print button & Date picker in SSRS Reports for Non IE Browsers(Chrome,FF,etc.) - Shashidhar Rao Nellutla
  This article will show you how to implement print functionality and jquery datepicker in non IE browsers.
  
  

Ultrabooks

• Does an Ultrabook Make a Good Dev Machine? My Final Thoughts on the Intel IvyBridge Ultrabook - Jon Gallant
  Does an Ultrabook Make a Good Dev Machine? My Final Thoughts on the Intel IvyBridge Ultrabook.
  
  
• Working with Ivy Bridge Ultrabook Sensors - Steve Smith
  In this last write-up, I wanted to go a little bit deeper into the sensors that come with the device.
  
  

Windows 8 Design

• Get Started with Push Notifications in Mobile Services - Windows Azure Dev Center
  This topic shows you how to use Windows Azure Mobile Services to send push notifications to a Windows Store app.
  
  
• Common Windows Store Certification Errors: 6.5 App Must Be Localized - Jennifer Marsman
  This week, I am writing a blog post series explaining the most common certification failures when submitting an app to the Windows Store.
  
  
• Common Windows Store certification errors: 4.1 Your App Must Comply with Privacy Requirements - Jennifer Marsman
  This week, I am writing a blog post series explaining the most common certification errors when submitting an app to the Windows Store.
  
  
• Common Certification Errors When Submitting to the Windows Store - Jennifer Marsman
  This post kicks off a blog post series on common certification failures when submitting an app to the Windows Store.
  
  
• Windows 8 Notifications: Push Notifications via Windows Azure Web Sites (Part 2) - Jim_O'Neil
  In this post, I’ll cover what’s required to outfit my Windows Store Boys of Summer application to receive toast notifications.
  
  

Articles updated

.NET Framework

• Get a User's Full Name - jabit
  Use .NET 3.5's DirectoryServices namespace to quickly and easily get at a user's full name.
  
  

Algorithms & Recipes

• Visualizing the Mandelbrot set - Andy Bantly
  Visualizing the Mandelbrot set using multiple threads of execution.
  
  
• Arabic Soundex - Tammam Koujan
  An article about an Arabic version of the Soundex algorithm.
  
  
• TDD the Anagrams Kata - Richard A. Dalton
  A worked example of Test Driving the anagrams kata
  
  

Android

• Android: How to communicate with .NET application via TCP - Ondrej_Uzovic
  Simple example showing how to communicate between Android and .NET application.
  
  

ASP.NET

• Expandable Rows in GridView - phil2415
  Add expandable rows to a GridView for master/detail view.
  
  

Audio and Video

• How to convert between (most) audio formats in .NET - Mark Heath
  A comprehensive guide to decoding and encoding audio files in .NET using NAudio.
  
  
• Easy AVI - Andy Bantly
  A class to aid in creation of AVI files
  
  

C / C++ Language

• MFC D3D Application: Direct3D Tutorial: Part I - hector.j.rivas
  Yet another Direct3D framework, this time for MFC apps, with a step by step tutorial
  
  
• Strings Obfuscation System - Michael Haephrati מיכאל האפרתי
  A string obfuscation system that integrates in a Visual Studio C++ solution
  
  
• 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)
  
  
• Reference counted smart pointer - orouit
  This article presents a solution to manage pointers in C++ in a similar way as COM.
  
  

C#

• C# and VB.NET Code Searcher - Using Roslyn - woutercx
  A fast C# and VB.NET code searcher using Roslyn.
  
  
• Understanding Generic Dictionary in-depth - Ofir Makmal
  A deep-dive of what is going on under the hood.
  
  
• Scalar Data Visualization Part 2 - I_gO_tO_schoOl_by_scoOter
  This article will describe the line contouring section in more detail
  
  
• Reflection optimization techniques - Jain, Ajay
  The article presents some .net techniques for using reflection optimally and efficiently.
  
  
• A Beginner's Tutorial on Basics of Delegates, Anonymous Functions and Lambda Expressions in C# - Rahul Rajat Singh
  This article talks about the delegates and how to write delegate handlers using functions, anonymous functions and Lambda expressions.
  
  
• Await Tasks in C#4 using Iterators - Keith L Robertson
  Write synchronous-looking asynchronous methods without async/await in Visual Studio 2010.
  
  
• Global Positioning Device Software - Naveed Ahmed
  A C# based application to trace the location of a GPS Device.
  
  
• Getting info from .NET applications in production environments - Amit Bezalel
  Get simple debug info from a tray icon.
  
  

Client side scripting

• JavaScript Date Format - hector.j.rivas
  A fast VB-like date format function in JavaScript (requires JScript 5.5+).
  
  

Cryptography & Security

• Encrypting a dataset using AES, including compression - Mika Wendelius
  Article describes how to encrypt a dataset using AES. Optionally the dataset is compressed before the encryption.
  
  

Database

• MySqlBackup.NET - MySQL Backup Solution for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET - adriancs
  Unicode, UTF8 character backup and restore of MySQL database in C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET
  
  
• Transfer data or script between two SQL Server databases - csharpbd
  Data transfer tools to transfer data and database scripts between two SQL Server databases.
  
  
• Remove Skype Chat History for Single Contact - lkgamage
  A small C# utility to clear a single contact chat history, since Skype by default only deletes full chat history.
  
  

Dialogs and Windows

• Drag and Drop in a Dialog - jibesh
  Simple Drag and Drop Facility in a Dialog
  
  

General Graphics

• Fast, Windowed 3D Graphics on the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer - _beauw_
  This article takes up the challenge of rendering 3D graphics on the Color Computer, a seemingly limited device which does have some interesting capabilities.
  
  
• GPGPU image processing basics using OpenCL.NET - Ilya Suzdalnitski
  Image processing basics on the GPU using OpenCL.NET.
  
  

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

• Home Automation via XBEE modules - Shayan Ali Bhatti
  Wireless Home Automation via XBEE Modules
  
  

HTML / CSS

• Anatomy of HTML5/JavaScript Single Page Application in Samples (basics, navigation, composition, communications with the server) - Nick Polyak
  Describes Single Page Applications and a new BPF Framework that helps to develop SPAs.
  
  

Internet / Network

• fastJSON - Mehdi Gholam
  Smallest, fastest polymorphic JSON serializer (with Silverlight4 and MonoDroid support)
  
  
• FTP Client Class - otom
  A non-MFC class to encapsulate the FTP protocol.
  
  
• Building a WebServer using C# - rockdino
  How to make a simple web server which supports GZIP compression, applications, and sessions.
  
  

Microsoft Exchange

• How to extract exchange attachments using Exchange Web Services and VB.NET - Robert E Campbell
  This article demonstrates how to extract attachments from Exchange using VB.NET.
  
  

Office Development

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

SharePoint Server

• SharePoint 2010 State Machine Workflows with Custom Task Forms (InfoPath) using VS 2010 - Part 1 of 3 - Rupesh Tarwade
  A tutorial on SharePoint 2010 Custom State Machine Workflows with Custom Task forms in InfoPath 2010. An example based tutorial, where I simulate the Recruitment Process of an organization.
  
  
• SharePoint 2010 State Machine Workflows with Custom Task Forms (InfoPath) using Visual Studio 2010: Part 2 of 3 - Rupesh Tarwade
  A tutorial on SharePoint 2010 Custom State Machine Workflows with custom task forms in InfoPath 2010. An example based tutorial where I simulate the recruitment process of an organization.
  
  

String handling

• Expand string CAML queries via lambda expressions with Camlex.Net - sadomovalex
  Shows how using reverse engineering feature developers may add new conditions into string CAML queries using lambda expressions.
  
  

Tools and IDE

• Accessing Assembly Metadata with Reflection or Mono Cecil (Part 6) - KenBeckett
  Loading type metadata from assemblies with Reflection or Mono Cecil.
  
  

Ultrabooks

• 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.
  
  
• Celerity: Sensory Overload - Adam David Hill
  Sensor-controlled XNA tunnel game with VR head-tracking.
  
  
• 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
  
  
• Facebook Album Viewer UltraBook App - Roshan D
  Facebook album viewer is a WPF application used to manage facebook albums. The user can view , create or upload pictures. Also can make use of Ultrabook capabilities in this app.
  
  
• Brick Ball Game : WPF C# Game - @AmitGajjar
  This is not a simple brick ball game but we need to concentrate on two balls at a time.
  
  
• Rev Warrior - An automobile performance helper - Jason Gleim
  An application to help gear-heads tune their rides
  
  
• 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
  
  
• T-Kara Puzzles - thetairon
  New version of touch friendly puzzle game.
  
  
• 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.
  
  
• Flick Pong - Steven Holding
  This article details my game entry for the AppInnovation Contest
  
  
• 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.
  
  

Uncategorised Technical Blogs

• Automating the Reporting of Critical Errors in Your Program - zexspectrum
  How to automate collecting information about critical errors occurring in your program to greatly simplify your life in sense of bug analysis and troubleshooting
  
  

Usability

• How to Build Powerful Search Forms - Xomega Team
  A design pattern and implementation example for building advanced search forms
  
  

Windows Presentation Foundation

• Commands in MVVM - Dave Kerr
  A consistent approach to Commands, Asynchronous Commands, and Events-to-Commands for WPF, Silverlight, and WP7.
  
  
• Visual Studio 2012 Metro Styles for WPF - Winfried Lötzsch
  Black Metro Styles for Button, ListBox, Menu, ScrollBar, TabControl, TextBox, ComboBox, DataGrid and GroupBox
  
  
• Smart WPF Login Overlay (Windows 8 Style) - DotNetMastermind
  Login Overlay for WPF applications with a styling similar to the Windows 8 Login Screen.
  
  

Windows Runtime

• Recording and playing PCM audio on Windows 8 (VB) - ljw1004
  How to record and play PCM audio on Windows 8 in .NET.
  
  

XML

• XMLFoundation - Brian Aberle
  As the name suggests it provides a foundation for XML support in an application, however this is much more than just another XML parser. It applies a unique approach to handling XML that allows your application code to focus on the application rather than traversing DOM or subscribing to SAX events
  
  

New Tips and Tricks added

Algorithms & Recipes

• Shunting Yard in C# - Søren Gullach
  An implementation of the Shunting yard algorithm.
  
  

ASP.NET

• ASP.NET MVC - Controller Level Default Action - Rajesh Jinaga
  Change default action at individual controller level in ASP.NET MVC.
  
  

LINQ

• Get LINQ GetCommand Parameters - moosa pourghafari
  Get LINQ GetCommand parameters.
  
  

VB.NET

• VB.net - Drag & Resize a Borderless Form - begi21
  This Code allows to Drag-move a Borderless Form and also to Resize it!
  
  

Windows API

• DNS resolving and Parsing IP Address in Metro Style Applications (WinRT) - Tyronne Thomas
  DNS resolving and Parsing IP Address in Metro Style Applications (WinRT)
  
  

Tips and Tricks updated

ASP.NET

• Validating User Input Containing HTML tags in ASP.NET MVC - Daniel Killewo
  If you need that validation message saying: “Input field should not contain html...” than this short tip is for you!
  
  
• Custom serialization for ExpandoObjects in ASP.NET WebAPI - arnab_pal
  Using dynamic or ExpandoObject is a breeze to dynamic data WebAPIs, but when serializing to XML, it can cause a brain damage sometimes :)
  
  

Client side scripting

• Perfomance of for loop - Sebastiaan Meijerink
  Lots of for loops are coded wrong causing a potential performance issue.
  
  

Database

• SQL - Converting a varchar parameter to a table - Glagace_7763
  Create a table from a Varchar list value
  
  
• Microsoft SQL System View Version Map - Paw Jershauge
  MS SQL system views, mapped over version.
  
  

Date and Time

• NYC Exchange Holidays - xibao
  Code to produce holidays for NYC Stock Exchange.
  
  

General Graphics

• Reading a 16 color 32x32 bitmap - hexgear
  Reading a 16 color 32x32 bitmap file and displaying it in a picturebox.
  
  

Programming Tips

• Understand Lambda Expressions in 3 minutes - Ronaldo jer
  Lambda expressions short tutorial.
  
  
• Proper Way of Releasing COM Objects in .NET - wmjordan
  Fully release resouces engaged by COM objects
  
  

Testing and QA

• Unit Testing Using NUnit - Ravindra T C
  Unit testing using NUnit.
  
  

New Technical Blogs added

Applications & Tools

• Building a LOB Gamification Service with ASP.NET Web API, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and KnockoutJS – Part 1 - DapperDanH
  I have been working on a gamification service that I intend to blog about as it takes form. This is just part 1.
  
  

C#

• Object Factory in Unity 2.x - Ivan Krivyakov
  A couple of days ago I spent some time trying to find how to make Unity call a factory method when user requests an object. Then I forgot about it, and tried to Google it again. This stuff is surprisingly hard to find, especially given the fact that the method used in Unity 1.x (StaticFactoryExtensi
  
  
• Poor Man's IOC - Robert Hoffmann
  No IOC library, no dependencies ..and I'm really really happy now.
  
  
• The lambdas, the anonymous and the events - Leonardo Paneque
  The subscribe/unsubscribe behavior.
  
  

Client side scripting

• jQuery Floatbox - Member 8292021
  A jQuery floatbox.
  
  

Combo & List Boxes

• Building Vagrant Boxes with VeeWee on TravisCI - Keyhole Software
  (Pro Tip: you can safely skip the first 3 paragraphs) We’ve all been there: You push some .travis.yml commits and your clone gets parachuted into VM Land – only to find that things don’t go quite as expected. As the credits roll, you can’t help but feel a little anger towards
  
  

Custom Controls

• Working with legacy databases in NHibernate Part 2 - Fixed length strings and custom NHibernate types - Pete Sutcliffe
  Simple one this but it drove me crazy for a while. For some reason *cough* incompetence *cough* the technical manager at my previous company had a penchant for using fixed-length fields for data that wasn't, um, fixed length. So if you looked through the application code you'd find .Trim() statement
  
  

Design and Architecture

• Simplified Feature Branching - Source control done right - Tom Janssens
  Source control done right.
  
  

Java

• Very Fast Sin Function for Java - alex turner
  A very fast Sin function for Java.
  
  

Web Services

• SoapExtensions: A Bad Day with HTTP 400 Bad Requests - newkie
  You may have found this post if you were searching for: HTTP 400 Bad Request web service Response is not well-formed XML web service System.Xml.XmlException: Root element is missing web service SoapExtension impacting all web services
  
  

Work Issues

• The Myth of the Lone Hacker - Ashton Kemerling
  The myth of the lone hacker is a strong faith in the power of individual hackers to affect large scale change.
  
  

Technical Blogs updated

.NET Framework

• Topshelf’s Windows Service and try-finally - Sebastian Solnica
  I recently needed to diagnose an interesting problem with one of our Topshelf’s Windows Services. The service ended in a StopPending state and we needed to kill it in order to make it work again. But before killing the service … Continue reading →
  
  

Mobile Development

• Applying MVC Architecture to Titanium Mobile Apps - Phil Sweeney
  Applying MVC architecture to Titanium mobile apps.
  
  

Programming Tips

• Testing private methods with Visual Studio - Vasil Trifonov
  When writing unit tests in most of the cases we have to test private methods. Let's see how this can be achieved using Visual Studio.
  
  
• How to configure local Nuget Repository - Vasil Trifonov
  How to configure a local Nuget repository.
  
  
• Share Nuget packages between solutions: Part 2 - Vasil Trifonov
  Share Nuget packages between solutions.
  
  
• Share Nuget packages between solutions: Part 1 - Vasil Trifonov
  How to share Nuget packages between solutions.
  
  

Windows Communication Foundation

• Securing WCF Service with self signed certificates programmatically - Vasil Trifonov
  Securing a WCF Service with self signed certificates programmatically.