Umbraco 4.6 Beta (JUNO )

It’s almost Five years has passed since Umbraco was introduced. Over the years we have visualized different versions of Umbraco and its enhancements each year. Now here comes Umbraco 4.6 Beta aka “JUNO”. It has the following features

•Improved installation experience and getting started process for newbie
•Enhanced Starter kits and dashboard driven help resources
•Introduced Robust Skinning engine which helps to create Umbraco skins
•Additional developer features like the introduction of INode, IMacroEngine and ILog interfaces with a vision of extending Umbraco.
•Updated User control wrapper with support for XML return types
•Support for Microsoft’s Razor syntax
•Support for Microsoft’s SQL CE 4.0 database

Visual Studio Test Professional 2010

Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 is an integrated testing toolset from Microsoft which provides a complete plan-test-track workflow for in-context collaboration between testers and developers. We know that the goal of a Software development company would be to maintain optimum quality of the product and maintain high productivity in testing. QA team is a key element of every Software development life cycle. So there always exists a requirement for a good collaborative working environment for QA as well in the company.

As we know Microsoft had started delivering testing related IDEs since 2005 with the Visual Studio Team System. With an enhanced product in mind with rich capabilities, Microsoft has released Visual Studio Team Professional 2010. It has the following features such as

•Align testing efforts to the application lifecycle
Visual Studio Test professional is being integrated with the Team Foundation Server which provides collaborative enhanced environment for testers as well.

•Embrace manual testing
Test professional provides a rich interface for performing manual testing, records each an every step and data used, bugs found. Easy to file from test interface.

•File detailed and actionable bugs
It has a new IntelliTrace feature which helps to file a rich and actionable bugs easily.

•Re-use manual test recordings
With Fast Forward for Manual Testing, you can record test steps in a sequential order, then playback and pause the recording as if you were performing the test steps manually. You can reuse the resulting recording in regression testing of the same test case.

•Improve your test process
Visual Studio Test Professional 2010 helps to create test plans, test suites, and test cases with nesting capabilities, and organize tests in the most effective and logical way. It helps Test leads to begin test planning as early as the architecting and designing stages.

Please browse for download and more details at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/test-professional

SharePoint 2010 – Core functional areas

As we know it’s almost three years have passed with the introduction of SharePoint 2007. Now we have SharePoint 2010 which has been released on May last year. SharePoint 2010 is divided into 6 different core functional areas. Let’s have a glance at the diagram as given below

In SharePoint 2010, we have the above depicted 6 core functional areas. Let’s now jot down briefly on the different points as follows.

• Sites – managing sites.
In SharePoint 2010, they have enhanced the building and managing of internal and external sites. Here they have enhanced the content authoring/editing experiences, multi lingual support for websites, enhanced organizing and categorizing of content, compliance with Web standards , improved search via FAST Search , Web Analytics integration , improved personalization and enhanced cross browser support.

• Communities – enhanced social collaboration
As we know currently a large number of users are focused on Social networking even its been included in work places as well. It’s tough to see users without a Facebook or Twitter account, blogging etc. So we have observed a latest trend that every Software is released with a Social collaboration in mind. So here we have SharePoint 2010, create enhanced user profiles, tools for sharing blogs, wikis, RSS feeds etc, creation of communities, social tagging/book marking etc and enhanced My Sites.
• Content – manage documents/information/records

With SharePoint 2010, they have enhanced the overall content management. For an organization we have mainly two types of contents such as Documents/Information and Records. They have enhanced it to collaborative environment from a mere document storage.

• Search :
SharePoint 2010 has two levels of search: the built in functionality which is greatly improved from SharePoint 2007 and FAST Search, offering additional functionality.

• Insights: focused on Business Intelligence enhancements.
Here SharePoint 2010 comes with enhanced Business intelligence capabilities. Improved Excel services, BDC and integrated Performance Point Server capabilities.

• Composites: integrate business systems
SharePoint 2010 has introduced capabilities for integrating different business systems onto SharePoint, fetch or update data onto different databases from SharePoint platform itself. They have introduced the Business Connectivity Service (BCS).

Execution Model Overview – Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 execution model describes the life cycle of the applications running on Windows Phone from launching an application till its terminations. The aim of designed execution model is that it ensures a fast and responsive experience to the end users. In order to implement this model prioritize the foreground applications and terminates all background applications. Also it provides enhanced user navigation to and forth across the application screens. To implement this seamless navigation Windows phone activates and deactivates the applications dynamically.
When we talk about the Windows Phone execution model, we come across a lot of keywords such as

Tombstoning : Scenario where OS terminates an application when the user navigates away from the application. Here OS maintains the state information.
Page state: This refers to the visual state of the application page.
Application state: The state of the application that is not associated with a specific page.
Persistent data: Data that is shared by all instances of an application.
Transient state: Data that represents a single instance of an application.

Now let’s walk through on the life cycle of an application, All events related to the life cycle of a Windows Phone Application are members of the PhoneApplicationService class. We have the following events.

• Launching:
An application is said to be launched when the user starts by taping the Start button and not by hitting the back button to return to a previously started application. Here a new instance of an application is started. Launching event is raised.

• Running:
After the Launching event is handled, an application starts running. While an application is in this state, it manages its own state as the user navigates through the application’s pages.

• Closing:
One possibility is that the user presses the hardware Back button to navigate backwards through the pages of the application, past the application’s first page. When this occurs, the Closing event is raised and the application is terminated.

• Deactivating:
This state is reached when a running application is replaced in foreground by a another application, then the first application will get deactivated.

• Activating:
When the user returns to a tombstoned application, it is reactivated and the Activated event is raised. In this event, an application can read values from the State dictionary in the PhoneApplicationService class to reestablish the state of the application that the user experienced before the application was deactivated.

Silverlight or XNA framework: Windows Phone

When you begin developing Windows Phone applications, you need to choose a framework one from Silverlight or XNA framework. Let’s list down a comparison based on different scenarios which can help one to differentiate on what to choose.

Silverlight	XNA
XAML based event driven application framework	High performance game framework
Create a rapid , rich internet application – UI has more importance	Multi screen 2D and 3D games
You need to use Windows Phone controls	You want to manage art assets such as models, meshes, sprites, textures, effects, terrains, or animations in the XNA Content Pipeline.
Embed video inside your application
Use HTML web browser control

.NET Framework Class Library for Silverlight contains a comprehensive list of classes, interfaces, and value types that are included in Silverlight. It also contains a list of Silverlight features that are supported in Windows Phone. XNA Framework Class Library contains a list of classes, interfaces, and value types that are included in XNA Game Studio.

Windows Phone – Application platform

Windows phone application platform helps to develop interactive consumer applications in Windows phones. The major attraction over here is that you can use existing Microsoft tools and technologies such as Visual studio, expression blend, Silverlight and XNA framework.

Here we have two frameworks for developing applications on Windows phone such as

• Silverlight framework for event driven , XAML based application development
• XNA framework for fun gaming and entertainment experiences

The Windows Phone Application Platform helps developers to create applications by providing:

• A familiar and inexpensive toolset.
• A cohesive and well designed managed API set.
• An isolated sandbox for each application.
• Runtime services on devices that can be used to access web services in the cloud such as Xbox LIVE®, Windows Azure, location, and notification services. Access to 3rd party Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Representational State Transfer (REST) services across the web is also supported.
• The Windows Phone Marketplace to distribute their application.

Windows Phone 7 – Mobile OS

Now I feel that I should start writing something on Windows Phone 7 being a techie working on Microsoft products. Recently I have started learning Android, so thought I should not miss WP7 as well.
Windows Phone 7 is the latest version of Windows Mobile Operating System developed by Microsoft which is a successor to its Windows Mobile Platform. Windows Phone 7 is a rebranding of Microsoft’s old mobile OS called Windows Mobile. Before the official announcement of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft began to refer to devices running Windows Mobile as “Windows Phones”.

Let’s list the features of WP7 as follows

• Windows Phone has a new user interface code named as “Metro”. The home screen (called the "Start screen") is made up of "tiles", which by default are links to important features, such as phone, music and videos, email, office, and contacts.

• Enhanced virtual keyboard

• Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 allows the user to maintain a list of favorite web pages and show a tile linking to a web page on the Start screen. The browser supports up to 6 tabs, which can all load in parallel.

• Contacts are organized via “people hub”

• Setup support Hotmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and other email services and also features support for POP and IMAP accounts.

• Zune for Windows Phone 7 is an application providing entertainment and synchronization capabilities between PC and Phone. Xbox Live on Windows Phone 7 brings Console-like gaming experience to phones by displaying the user's avatar in a 3D fashion. Via "Games Hub", the users are able to interact with the avatar, view gamer score and leader boards, message Xbox Live friends, and Spotlight.

• Bing Maps on Windows Phone 7 provides satellite imagery and real-time traffic information and also generates directions between two point locations and well as from the current location.

• The "Office hub" organized all Microsoft Office programs and documents. Microsoft Office Mobile provides operability between Windows Phone 7 and the desktop version of Microsoft Office.

Software and OS updates in Windows Phone 7 will be delivered to Windows Phone users via Microsoft Update, as they are for desktop Windows users. The software component, called Windows Phone Update, exists both on the phone (for smaller updates, over-the-air) and in the Zune PC software (for larger updates, via USB connection).
Windows Phone 7 applications will be based on Silverlight, XNA and .NET Compact Framework. Windows Phone 7 will only run applications that have first been approved by Microsoft and made available via the Windows Phone Marketplace.

But still we have few limitations for WP7 such as does not support copy or paste / multi tasking for 3rd party applications etc.