Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day: 05/01/2011

Friday, May 06, 2011

HTML5 Compendium - Think, "What HTML5 features do the top browsers support" Compendium

"Welcome to the MediaLoot HTML5 compendium! The purpose of this page is to be a consistently updated reference for web designers and developers who want to start using the new features of HTML5.

Let’s face it, it’s difficult to keep up with all the new changes to the language, and there’s a lot of pressure for designers to start using HTML5 and CSS3 too — both of which can be overwhelming at first.

The W3C specs for HTML5 and CSS3 are also incredibly long and practically unreadable, not to mention unfinished - so it’s easy to see why a lot of designers choose to hold off on taking the effort to learn the new languages, however it’s really not that hard to start using both languages today, there doesn’t need to be a lot of pressure either because the beauty of adopting early is that you can work your way into it slowly and the only thing you actually need to know if you’re already using XHTML/HTML4 and CSS2 is what’s new and how can it benefit you.

...

..."

Thought this an interesting resource for now and hopefully into the future.

(via {quicklycode} - HTML5 Compendium)

Catchup concept from Microsoft Research, think "Meeting DVR's" (or more likely, "Sorry, I was sleeping... what did you just say?" device)

FastCompany - If You Doze During A Meeting, Microsoft's Got Your Back

"The new conferencing system will get you up to speed so fast you can pick up the thread of the meeting even as it drones on, and on, and on...

...

Do you have low-grade narcolepsy, or a low threshold for boredom? Do you want to keep your job? Then Microsoft has just the thing for you.

Of course, snoozing through meetings is a time-honored business tradition, and it's why we've evolved meeting minutes. But what if you really didn't mean to nod off during a particular meeting--and you want to get up to speed so quickly that you can participate in what's left of it?

"We developed an Accelerated Instant Replay (AIR) Conferencing system for videoconferencing that enables users to catch up on missed content while the meeting is ongoing," Microsoft Research announces today (with my italics), together with a study evaluating the system.

..."

Microsoft Research - Catchup: a useful application of time-travel in meetings

"People are often required to catch up on information they have missed in meetings, because of lateness or scheduling conflicts. Catching up is a complex cognitive process where people try to understand the current conversation without access to prior discussion. We develop and evaluate a novel Catchup audio player that allows "time-travel". It automatically identifies the gist of what was missed, allowing people to join the meeting late and still participate effectively. In a lab study, we evaluated people"s understanding of meetings they had partly missed, by asking questions about meeting content. We tested whether providing Catchup gist overcomes the potential disadvantage that people must join even later - because catching up takes time. Catchup users understood meetings 70% better than controls who simply joined late. They were more confident of their understanding and indicated a positive attitude towards the tool. We are currently exploring more general applications of the time-travel approach. " [GD:Description leached in full]

ZOMG... I'll take three... :P

Snaps from the PDF;

Thursday, May 05, 2011

HTML 4 to 5 Cheat sheet, see what's new and removed for Tags and Attributes.

HTML-5.com - HTML Cheat Sheet for Transition to HTML 5

"How To Code HTML, What's New and Obsolete HTML Tags and Attributes

A great quick reference for the transition from HTML 4 to HTML 5. Designed to help authors create polyglot HTML documents, this can also help in creating HTML 4 and XHTML documents, in addition to upgrading to HTML 5. Most HTML cheat sheets, usually based on the technical specifications for a specific version of HTML, show only the valid features in that version of the HTML specs. In contrast, this one helps developers transition from earlier versions of HTML by indicating new features in HTML 5 with a "New" flag and using a strike-through font to indicate the tags and attributes previously used in HTML 4, XHTML 1 and earlier versions that are now obsolete in HTML 5.

For a quick reference of HTML character entities, see the HTML character codes reference.

Required or recommended HTML attributes for the HTML tags are shown in bold.

...

..."

Something about this format that I really liked. Simple, straight forward, informative and easy to grok...

Right click DMP your Windows Explorer - Creating file association and context menu for WinDbg

Where in the API is Andrew Richards? - WinDbg File Association and Explorer Context Menu

"For a long time now I've had a registry file to make context menu entries for WinDbg. The entries allow you to select the x86 or x64 debugger. Internally at Microsoft, I have another version of the registry file that contains two more context menu entries for the private symbol server. You can see all 4 options I add internally in this screenshot.

Note, the registry file assumes WinDBG is installed in c:\debuggers_x86 and c:\debuggers (for the x86 and AMD64 debuggers respectively). FYI: The reason you need to install the debugger twice is the lack of architecture agnostic support in some extensions - yes, SOS.DLL I'm looking at you. The multiple entries give you a quick way of jumping between the two architectures.

..."

The level of dev-ness to this just tickles my fancy...

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

"Climbing Mt PowerShell" comic now available

Born to Learn - Visual Content (Comics, etc.) - Visual Content - Download the "Climbing Mt. PowerShell" Comic Book!

"Download the "Climbing Mt. PowerShell" Comic Book!

Today we're posting the full "Climbing Mt. PowerShell" technology comic book for download. We also have the final 8 pages.

We really think this is the most fun and useful comic with Zach, Leah and Squishy. We're proud to be releasing it to the public. Scroll on down for the download, or keep reading pages individually by clicking on the thumbnails.

Remember: If you need to repeat it, you need to script it with Windows PowerShell.

..." [GD: Click through for the download link, I don't want to leach their traffic, etc]

Ahh...nothing like a little PowerShell learning delivered comic style for a Wednesday... ;)

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

NTrace v2 now available (think Managed VS2010/.Net 4 Event Tracing for Windows)

CodePlex - NTrace - High Performance Tracing for .NET Applications

“Project Description

NTrace is a library that provides flexible, high-performance, and zero-config trace logging for your C# applications.
NTrace is currently 100% C#.

What is NTrace?
NTrace is a combination of a runtime framework and a code preprocessor that provides an API for using Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) in your managed code. In practice, it's a lot like the Windows Trace Preprocessor (WPP).
Why would I want to use NTrace?
There are two high-level reasons why you'd want to use NTrace. The first is that it allows you to have trace instrumentation that can be enabled and disabled at runtime without having to modify any configuration files. The second is that the tracing capabilities provided by the ETW subsystem are very efficient and flexible. We've tried to preserve as much of the simplicity of using Trace.WriteLine while providing access to all of the features of WPP/ETW. The end result is that you have a great way to troubleshoot your code when it's out in the field.
Requirements
In order to use NTrace, your code needs to meet the following criteria:

You must be using the .NET 2.0 (or later) runtime

You must be using Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Studio 2010

Your code must be C# (VB support still eludes us due to differences in the NRefactory parsers)

…”

NTrace - High Performance Tracing for .NET Applications - NTrace v2.0.118.0

“…

At long last, NTrace 2.0 has been released! Many new features are included in this release:

Native support for the .NET 4.0 framework

Ability to modify the list of trace flags and levels, including Intellisense support for the new values

Visual Studio 2008/2010 integration so that you may edit your provider ID, trace helper class name, and the lists of flags and levels offered by your ETW provider

Better error reporting by the preprocessor, including file name, line and column information when available

Various bugfixes found in the field

…”

Good to see this project is still alive and breathing…. :)

(via Patrick Wellink - Ntrace is available for Visual studio 2010)

An oldie but a goodie… Bart De Smet presents MinLINQ - The Essence of LINQ

“Before reaching the catharsis in the “More LINQ with System.Interactive” series over here, I wanted to ensure a solid understanding of the essence of LINQ in my reader base. Often people forget the true essence of a technology due to the large number of auxiliary frameworks and extensions that are being provided. Or worse, sometimes a sense for the essence never materialized.

Searching for essence is nothing other than a “group by” operation, partitioning the world in fundamentals and derived portions. One succeeds in this mission if the former group is much smaller than the latter. In this post, we’ll try to reach that point for the IEnumerable<T> and IObservable<T> LINQ implementations, illustrating both are fundamentally similar (and dare I say, dual?). You can already guess much of the essence lies in the concept of monads. By the end of the post, we’ll have distilled the core of LINQ, which I refer to as MinLINQ since small is beautiful.

…

Conclusion

Boiling down LINQ to its core essence can be fun and a great eye-opener to many users of the technology. While optimizations often mandate a lower degree of layering, it’s good to have an idea of the conceptual layering of various operators to see which ones are essential and which ones are not so much. If kids can build castles out of Lego blocks, sure every self-respecting developer should be able to exploit the expressive power a few primitive building blocks to create great libraries and applications. Choosing the right set of primitives can get you a long way in such a design, as illustrated in this post. Readers who can’t get enough of essential primitives and the composition thereof are cordially invited to have a go at another Crazy Sunday post titled Unlambda .NET – With a Big Dose of C# 3.0 Lambdas (and many others in that category).

In the continuation of my “More LINQ with System.Interactive” series we’ll get back to less academic stuff with System.Interactive. And before I forget: a happy 2010!”

Originally posted 1/1/2010 (yes, 2010), but just republished today on DZone (The Essence of LINQ – MinLINQ); seeing that I hadn’t referenced it then and that Bart’s one of my favorite posters, I thought it easily worth a post. Never hurts to get a review in every now and then…

Visual Studio go faster! Faster!… (Well okay, maybe just phone home and tell Microsoft you’re feeling a little slow…) - Visual Studio PerfWatson

Visual Studio Gallery - Visual Studio PerfWatson

“Would you like your performance issues to be reported automatically? Well now you can, with PerfWatson extension! Install this extension and assist the Visual Studio team in providing a faster future IDE for you.

We’re constantly working to improve the performance of Visual Studio and take feedback about it very seriously. Our investigations into these issues have found that there are a variety of scenarios where a long running task can cause the UI thread to hang or become unresponsive. Visual Studio PerfWatson is a low overhead telemetry system that helps us capture these instances of UI unresponsiveness and report them back to Microsoft automatically and anonymously. We then use this data to drive performance improvements that make Visual Studio faster.

Here’s how it works: when the tool detects that the Visual Studio UI has become unresponsive, it records information about the length of the delay and the root cause, and submits a report to Microsoft. The Visual Studio team can then aggregate the data from these reports to prioritize the issues that are causing the largest or most frequent delays across our user base. By installing the PerfWatson extension, you are helping Microsoft identify and fix the performance issues that you most frequently encounter on your PC.

To allow PerfWatson to submit performance reports to Microsoft, please make sure that Windows Error Reporting (WER) is enabled on your machine, please see how to configure WER setting session. PerfWatson employs the WER service to send the collected data to Microsoft.

Using PerfWatson

PerfWatson is an automatic feedback service. Once it is installed, all you need to do is use the product, and it will automatically create an error report for every UI delay you experience in the product. It stores these error reports in%LOCALAPPDATA%\PerfWatson. This data is then submitted to Microsoft on next Visual Studio launch.

If your Windows Error Reporting permissions are set to Automatically check for solutions and upload data, the performance reports will be submitted to Microsoft automatically. Otherwise, PerfWatson will prompt the user for permission to send the collected data. This prompt can be disabled by checking “Do not show this dialog again. Report problems automatically” on the dialog.

…”

IMHO Microsoft has a good reputation with the handling data like this. They seem to act on it and it doesn’t seem to leak or contain “badness”. So I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and let my VS phone home when its not feeling well…

(via Ginktage - A Plugin that helps deliver a faster Visual Studio 2010 Experience)

Monday, May 02, 2011

My cool found API call of the X: StrFormatByteSize (convert file size into human readable text)

VB Helper - Make extension methods to convert file sizes into strings giving sizes in KB, MB, etc. in Visual Basic .NET

"Title: Make extension methods to convert file sizes into strings giving sizes in KB, MB, etc. in Visual Basic .NET

Description: This example shows how to make extension methods to convert file sizes into strings giving sizes in KB, MB, etc. in Visual Basic .NET.

...

This example defines two extension methods for converting a file size in bytes into a value ending with an appropriate size such as KB, MB, or GB.

The first method uses the StrFormatByteSize API function.

..."

Funny the stuff you learn. I've got a code snip that I use everywhere for converting file sizes into a short human readable string. Any until today never knew there was a Windows API call, that's been available since Win2000, that does the same thing, StrFormatByteSize(A, W, EX, 64)

"Converts a numeric value into a string that represents the number expressed as a size value in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes, depending on the size. ...

The first parameter of this function has a different type for the ANSI and Unicode versions. If your numeric value is a DWORD, you can use StrFormatByteSize with text macros for both cases. The compiler will cast the numerical value to a LONGLONG for the Unicode case. If your numerical value is a LONGLONG, you should use StrFormatByteSizeW explicitly

532 -> 532 bytes
1340 -> 1.3KB
23506 -> 23.5KB
2400016 -> 2.4MB
2400000000 -> 2.4GB

..."

LTL (Love To Learn :)

Windows Phone 7 Design Stencil (as in really… a stencil…)

Microsoft Feed - UI Stencils for Windows Phone 7

“The Windows Phone 7 Stencil Kit allows you to mock-up app ideas with ease. … Do check out our previous post about 20 free prototyping, sketching, mockup and wireframing resources for Windows Phone and official Download for Windows Phone 7 Buttons.

…”

UI Stencils - Windows Phone 7 Stencil Kit

“

The Windows Phone 7 Stencil Kit allows you to mock-up app ideas with ease. Use the precision cut stainless steel stencil to let the ideas flow. Perfect for doodling user interface, user experience, app flows and wireframe ideas.

This kit was co-developed by the Windows Phone internal design team at Microsoft.
It features the current Metro design language and iconography.

The kit comes with:
- Stainless steel stencil
- Zebra mechanical pencil
- Plastic protector
- 2 UI Stencils stickers

…

”

That seems so old school that it’s awesome. :)

You’re probably also going to want their Windows Phone Sketch Pads to go with this…

A Plethora Parallel Programming PDF’s - 12 Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4 articles for download

Microsoft Downloads - Articles on Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4

“A set of articles that provide information on parallel programming with the .NET Framework 4.

OptimizingUsingConcurrencyVisualizer.pdf 2.1MB

ParallelProgramsinNET4_CodingGuidelines.pdf 964KB

ParentChildTPLTasksRelationship.pdf 787KB

PerformanceCharacteristicsOfSyncPrimitives.pdf 800KB

PerformanceCharacteristicsOfThreadSafeCollection.pdf 682KB

PLINQOrderingModel.pdf 1.0MB

TPLOptionsTour.pdf 1.1MB

Using Net4ToAchieveDataParallelism.pdf 925KB

UsingCancellationinNET4.pdf 1.1MB

UsingPLINQinOfficeAddins.pdf 761KB

WhenToUseParallelForEachOrPLINQ.pdf 527KB

WorkflowAndParallelExtensionsinNET4.pdf 648KB

Quick Details

Version: 1.0

Date Published: 4/26/2010

Language: English

The .NET Framework 4 includes extended support for writing parallel applications, through enhancements to the CLR itself as well as through new libraries commonly referred to as "Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework." The set of articles available in this download provides detailed information on Parallel Extension, including the Task Parallel Library (TPL), Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), and a set of new coordination primitives and thread-safe data structures. These articles provide insights into performance characteristics, usage patterns, best practices, integration of parallelism with other programming frameworks, and more.

…”