Here’s a simple but maybe not so obvious tip. In Visual Studio 2010 the HTML Designer is not enabled by default. This can easily be re-enabled by knowing where to go in your Visual Studio Options.
Simply go into Tools > Options > HTML Designer and check “Enable HTML designer”.
That’s it! After that restart Visual Studio and you’re good to go. You now have the HTML Designer back and ready for use if you need it.
Last year my co-worker and I ordered Electric Imp developer boards and came up with an iPhone powered Coffee Pot. We setup a website showcasing our little project and got quite a bit of feedback and even some interviews to be in some online articles about what we’ve done.
I recently discovered that we were mentioned in a case study on Electric Imp’s website about our little project, which I thought was pretty cool. I never would have thought that we would have gotten so much interest about a project that was actually pretty simple for us to create.
I hope to have more time to tinker with my Electric Imp board in the near future and to see what other fun projects we can come up with. I’m thinking something with my garage door opener may be next!
Recently while viewing the Pluralsight course Single Page Apps with HTML5, Web API, Knockout and jQuery I came across three handy tools for testing web sites in different mobile browsers. Each tool works slightly differently but all serve the same general purpose, helping web developers (like me) quickly get an indication of how their responsive site will look on the most popular devices.
It means designing your website to adapt to the user’s viewing environment (mobile, tablet, laptop etc.). It does this through the use of media queries, and other clever technology.Ethan Marcotte wrote the original article about it, and a pretty handy book.
A free web based tool made by Tama Pugsley and Andy Hovey. You can use it from their site directly or via a bookmarklet they provide. Provides simulations for the following devices:
Being a heavy keyboard only user in many instances and having written desktop applications that focus heavily on keyboard tab order, hot keys, etc., I really enjoyed reading Scott Hansleman’s latest blog post about the web being the new terminal and how many web applications now are building in support for keyboard shortcuts and hot keys. I definitely see this being a trend that will continue to gain popularity, enabling people to be much more efficient while using web applications that are part of their daily lives (like Gmail).
Take for example all of the keyboard shortcuts that you could be using today in Gmail while reading your mail.
I’ve known about a few of these and have tinkered with them in the past. Seeing just how much you can do with it and having spent a little more time on it recently, I am definitely going to make an effort to use the keyboard as much as possible from now on in Gmail.
This article does a great job at showing you a simple example of how to use local browser web storage in conjunction with ASP.NET web methods to save and retrieve the data from a server side database. Even if you aren’t interested in using this functionality in an application you have now, it’s worth reading to know what HTML5 brings to the table as far as storing your data down at the client.
Need to get the .com, .us, .biz, etc. part of the domain name in .NET?
Here’s how:
Dim root As String root = Right(Request.Url.Host, (Request.Url.Host.Length) - InStrRev(Request.Url.Host, ".")) |
What is Code Metrics Viewer? – Matthias Friedrich highlights his Visual Studio 2010 Code Metrics Viewer extension which plugs into VS 2010 Professional and uses the Code Metrics Power Tool to provide code metrics information to the IDE. Matthias is blogging a number of posts on this project blog which look at the various features of the viewer and I encourage you to check those other posts out too.
Great article to check out!
Ajax-based data loading using jQuery.load() function in ASP.NET – Hajan Selmani takes a back to basics look at using jQuery to load partial chunks of HTML from a page using Ajax and insert them into the current page, providing a nice way of lighting up a web application with an ‘Ajax’ feel whilst easily maintaining non-ajax support.
The official Microsoft Kinect SDK beta is now out and available for download! Covered by Channel Nine Live Media, Microsoft Scientist Anoop Gupta made the announcement himself that after the long wait, users may now go to the official SDK website to download the latest software development kit for the Kinect camera.
Here are the features that will come with the Kinect SDK (taken from Microsoft SDK website):
“The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.
The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
Raw sensor streams
Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.
Skeletal tracking
The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.
Advanced audio capabilities
Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.
Sample code and documentation
The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.
Easy installation
The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets).
This SDK is designed for non-commercial purposes only; a commercial version is expected to be available at a later date.”
Additional details about the SDK is that it is currently in beta, meaning it is not yet the actual finished product. Rather, Microsoft wants the opinion of the Kinect hackers/developers in finalizing the product. By keeping it in beta, Microsoft will then ask users to give their feedback concerning the SDK with the eventual hope of releaseing a Kinect SDK built for and with Kinect hackers.
There is also a commercial version coming out. Details are not yet final as to what the difference would be between the two versions of the Kinect.
Source: kinecthacks.com
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