Blogs|Jun 28, 2014

Dependency Injection Explained via JavaScript

When learning a new framework I often find it is useful to examine the source, use the framework, then go into a separate project and build the functionality from scratch to better understand the motivation behind the framework and what it may be saving me by using it. Angular is no exception. There are many…
Read More→
wintellect-blogs|Jun 26, 2014

WebSockets in Windows Store Apps

The WebSockets protocol provides full-duplex communication on top of a TCP connection that is initiated by an HTTP handshake. The fact that it runs over existing HTTP and HTTPS ports allows it to pass easily through most existing firewall configurations. The Windows Runtime provides a powerful set of networking APIs that includes components specifically designed…
Read More→
Blogs|Jun 19, 2014

Programming the Windows Runtime (WinRT) by Example

In 2011 I heard the first rumors about Windows 8 and knew immediately what my next book would be about. Unlike Designing Silverlight Business Applications that captured years of experience writing Line of Business (LOB) apps in Silverlight, this book would be an introduction to an entirely new platform. My goal was to take what…
Read More→
Blogs|May 31, 2014

Convert a Windows Store App to the Web in Under 10 Minutes

Microsoft held an event called re//build in Atlanta and I had the opportunity to speak about what’s new with WinJS. The event used a lightning talk format so with only 30 minutes to present, I decided to make the presentation itself the demo. I wrote the re//build WinJS Windows Store app by starting with the…
Read More→
Blogs|May 29, 2014

An Introduction to Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser WinJs

In case you missed the big announcement, Microsoft has open sourced their Windows Library for JavaScript, otherwise known as WinJS. Many of you may not have noticed this because, like me, you assumed WinJS was just a shim for accessing the Windows Runtime from JavaScript. If this blog were one year older, that would be…
Read More→
Blogs|May 23, 2014

Enterprise Typescript

This past Thursday I had the pleasure of presenting for the Linked In .NET Users Group. The topic was TypeScript. My goal was to show how well TypeScript works to solve common problems in the enterprise to tackle it from the perspective of Return on Investment and how it scales teams, improves productivity, increases quality…
Read More→
Blogs|Apr 24, 2014

Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Explained

The purpose of this post is to provide an introduction to the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern. While I’ve participated in lots of discussions online about MVVM, it occurred to me that beginners who are learning the pattern have very little to go on and a lot of conflicting resources to wade through in order to try…
Read More→
Blogs|Apr 24, 2014

10 Reasons Web Developers Should Learn AngularJS

There is no doubt that AngularJS – the self-proclaimed “superheroic JavaScript framework” – is gaining traction. I’ll refer to it frequently as just “Angular” in this post. I’ve had the privilege on working on an enterprise web application with a large team (almost 10 developers, soon growing to over 20) using Angular for over half…
Read More→
wintellect-blogs|Apr 24, 2014

Silverlight: Where Do We Go From Here?

Silverlight made its debut in 2006 with the confusing acronym WPF/E (that’s Windows Presentation Foundation, Everywhere). Indeed the original dream was that a slimmed down version of the .NET Framework could run as a plugin in any browser (including smart phones) and enable developers to wield their weapons of XAML, data-binding, and C# to write…
Read More→
javascript|Apr 23, 2014

Video: A JavaScript Feed Reader in Under 10 Minutes Using Angular JS

An important component of the decision to use a framework should be the amount of ceremony and ritual involved. You must carefully weigh what it takes to ramp up on the technology and how common tasks are performed. It does no good to adopt a library that forces you to solve a problem with more…
Read More→
Blogs|Apr 8, 2014

Handling Extremely Large Data Sets in Silverlight

While writing Chapter 14 of my book, Designing Silverlight Business Applications: Best Practices for Using Silverlight Effectively in the Enterprise (Microsoft .NET Development Series) I focused on an area that is quite common with line of business applications: extremely large data sets. In the example I generated almost 1,000,000 contact rows to illustrate how they…
Read More→
Blogs|Apr 8, 2014

Hosting HTML in Silverlight (not Out of Browser)

Some Silverlight projects may require that you render HTML content – perhaps a non-Silverlight control or web page. Unfortunately unless the project runs Out of Browser (OOB) the WebBrowser control isn’t an option. What can you do? While there is no easy solution to truly embed HTML inside of the Silverlight rendering engine, it is…
Read More→