Interesting Microsoft's Facts

Microsoft Press MCTS Self Paced Training Kit Exam 70-515

Microsoft Press MCTS Self Paced Training Kit for Exam 70-515 was released on 16 December. To download this book free of cost click here.

Programing for Windows 7

Windows 7 Taskbar introduces many new feature such as:

Overlay Icons makes your application provide contextual status information to the user even if the application’s window is not shown. The user doesn’t even have to look at the thumbnail or the live preview of your app – the taskbar button itself can reveal whether you have any interesting status updates

Jump List feature is designed to provide you with quick access to the documents and tasks associated with your applications. You can think of Jump Lists like little application-specific Start menus. Jump Lists can be found on the application icons that appear on the Taskbar when an application is running or on the Start menu in the recently opened programs section. Jump Lists can also be found on the icons of applications that have been specifically pinned to the Taskbar or the Start menu.

Taskbar Progress Bar makes your application can provide contextual status information to the user even if the application’s window is not shown. The user doesn’t even have to look at the thumbnail or the live preview of your app.

Thumbnail toolbars are another productivity feature that gives us the ability to do more without actually switching to another application's window. A thumbnail toolbar is essentially a mini remote-control that is displayed when you hover over the application's taskbar button, right beneath the application’s thumbnail.

With these great features that windows 7 offer, we will have to switch our programing skill towards Windows 7 Programing. Stay tuned for tutorials about Windows 7 programing.

Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework

The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is a free, centralized code sample library provided by the Microsoft Community team. Its goal is to provide typical code samples for all Microsoft development technologies. It can be downloaded from: http://1code.codeplex.com/.

Create Multiboot DVD or CD

I had a 200 KB ISO image which i burned to a 700 MB CD so all the 699 MB was wasted. Wouldn't it be good if we could make a multiboot CD. I found an excellent utility named XBoot which can burn multiple ISO into single USB or DVD so we can utilize the complete space of single physical drive.

The images are added via drag and drop into the program window and to each we can assign a name and category for easy identification. We will also see the space occupied by each and the combined total space, so that we can make sure to keep the total time below the maximum offered by our unit.

Also, we have an option to verify checksums, which adds extra safety always necessary when burning images that are downloaded from the web. Then only remains for us to click on the button “Create ISO” to start recording XBoot.

Download: XBoot

Microsoft Web Camps

Microsoft's Web Camps are events that allow you to learn and build websites using ASP.NET MVC, WebMatrix, OData and more... The best thing about these are that they are FREE TRAINING from Microsoft for us. For more information see: http://www.webcamps.ms/. Jordan and Pakistan also have Web Camps planned. These will get listed. There is a FREE training kit also for the web camps which you can get from the above mentioned link.

The Essential Guide to HTML5

Hi to all. I am back with a book about HTML5. The return of Mauhib :). My last post had some information about HTML5. For those who want to start with HTML5, this is the essential guide for them. To download this guide free of cost, go to this link.

HTML5 - An evolutionary technology

More than two decades after HTML was introduced, we’re still asking questions about what the web is, and what it might become. What kinds of features and applications would we, as users, find fun, useful or even indispensable? What tools do developers need in order to create these great sites and apps? And finally, how can all this goodness be delivered inside a web browser?

These questions led to the evolution of the latest version of HTML known as HTML5, a set of capabilities that gives web designers and developers the ability to create the next generation of great online applications. An example of this can be the introduction of the video tag. Before the video tag, for displaying any kind of video on a HTML page needed separate APIs or Plug-ins. All the goodness of flash and silverlight and many other softwares is combined into HTML5.

All the web browsers are now upgrading to HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript as these have become the new standards of the modern web. The new versions of these browsers can be downloaded from here:

Internet Explorer 9: http://windows.microsoft.com/ie9
Google Chrome: http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/beta/
Firefox 4: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/
Opera 11: http://www.opera.com/download/get.pl?id=33307&thanks=true&sub=true
Safari 5: http://www.apple.com/safari/

Now, for developers who are interested in developing websites in HTML5, there is an excellent video which can be found here. The presentation used in the video can be downloaded from here. The source code in the video can be downloaded from here. For any queries feel free to contact me at mauhib_iqbal@live.com.

At this time, there are very few tools for designing websites for HTML5. Some of these are:
HTML 5 Intellisense for Visual Studio 2010 and 2008
SVG Intellisense schema for Visual Studio 2010 and 2008
Modernizr
Ai2Canvas Exporter

Developers can use this website to validate their markup.

Some great websites designed in HTML5:
http://joydefinesthefuture.com/
http://agent8ball.com/

Resources for Bloggers

There are many resources available for active bloggers. Some of these resources are:

Google Adsense:
it could be described in the following 4 points:
•Get paid for displaying targeted Google ads on your site.
•Customize ads to match your site's look and feel.
•Track your success with online reports.
•It's free!

To sign up click here

Google Analytics:
It is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. It proves very useful for bringing traffic to your website. To sign up click here

Microsoft Broadcaster:
Get relevant content from Microsoft for your blogs, newsletters and user groups for free. You can set your keywords and then you can embed content on your blog. To sign up, go to the following link: http://www.microsoftbroadcaster.com/

Resources from Microsoft FREE

Now days many people ask me that from where can I get Visual Studio 2010 and other developer tools free just for learning purposes. If you are a student so you can register for Microsoft dreamspark and get all the developer tools free.

These days there is a common question that how can I get a powerful anti virus free of cost. The answer is Microsoft Security Essentials. It is a free anti virus from Microsoft which helps you stay secure at home and at office. If you are a genuine windows user then you can download it free by clicking here.

Other free resources include:


click the picture for a larger view

Positive Approach

Visual Studio 2010 IDE New Features

How Do I: Quick Lap Around the Visual Studio 2010 IDE New Features

This video demonstrates several of the new IDE enhancements provided by Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, including Intellisense Completion Mode, Highlight References, Quick Search (and Navigate To), Generate From Usage, Zoom Box Selection, Call Hierarchy, S

Text to Speech Application

Today we will make a text to speech application which will read aloud the the text we enter.

We will start by opening a new project in Visual Studio 2010(or previous versions). We will name our project "TextToSpeech" as shown in the picture below.


We will now add a Label, Text box and a button. Change the text property of label to "Please enter text and I will Speak it for you". Change the multiline property of the text box to true and change the text of the button to "Speak".
Now go to project menu and click Add Reference. Now navigate to the COM tab of the add reference dialog box and select "Microsoft Speech Object Library". Click OK.
Double click on the button to generate a default event handler. Now right code.

VB.net
Dim speech As New SpeechLib.SpVoice
speech.Speak(TextBox1.Text, SpeechLib.SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault)

C#
SpeechLib.SpVoice speech = New SpeechLib.SpVoice;
speech.Speak(TextBox1.Text, SpeechLib.SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault);

Now Debug the the program to make sure it works properly. write any thing in the text box and click the speak button and the computer will speak what you enter.

Silverlight 5 announced - Silverlight Firestarter 2010

Silverlight Firestarter 2010 Keynote with Scott Guthrie

Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform, unveils Silverlight 5, further advancing capabilities in the areas of premium media experiences and business applications at the Silverlight Firestarter 2010 event in Redmond, WA on Dec 2nd 2010

Visual Studio Loadfest

On 4th December many developers of karachi gathered at FAST-National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences for Visual Studio Loadfest. This event was a series of Informative Sessions. It was about the new IDE(Integrated Development Environment), Visual Studio 2010.

Agenda:

What’s New in VS 2010 Ultimate - Adil Ahmed Mughal:
This session was about the new features of Visual Studio 2010 such as Extensiblity, Navigation options, multi-targeting and WPF Editor.





Application Life cycle Management - Jibran Jamshed:
It started with what an application needs to diliver in order to be successful. The sesssion then focused on TFS(Team Foundation Server).





Better Debugging with Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Munir Usman:
This was about the advance debuging options and techniques built in Visual Studio 2010.

In the end I would like to thank all the speakers for their time and knowledge they shared with us. All of the sessions included demos which resulted in a better understanding of the topics.

Recording of my interview

This is the recorded version of my interview conducted by Metro one TV Channel. The interview was conducted because I became MCTS(Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) and MCP(Microsoft Certified Professional) of .NET framework 4.0. Please give comments and Suggestions.

The download-able version of the video can be downloaded from here: http://www.multiupload.com/GHN25BW2DR

Microsoft Surface Toolkit

Microsoft has released Microsoft Surface Toolkit. This toolkit includes controls, APIs, templates, documentation, and sample code for WPF on Windows Touch applications and a way for developers to prepare for the next version of Microsoft Surface. This toolkit can be downloaded from this link.
Do not forget to watch the video tutorial on channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/blogs/larrylarsen/surface-toolkit-for-windows-touch.

6 Amazing Programing Themes

I wanted to share 6 awesome computer programming wallpapers for windows 7. All of these are prepared by me.
You can download them using this link: Themes

ASP.net MVC Tutorial

I was just surfing the internet when i found an excellent tutorial on asp.net MVC. The tutorial is about making an online asp.net MVC Music store. It teaches the basics of ASP.net MVC. Do check it out.
Click Here to download the tutorial.

Business Times FM Interview

Business Times FM is going to conduct my interview which will be broadcast-ed live online on e-radio: http://www.businesstimesfm.com/ on Saturday, 4th December 2010 at 11:00 AM PST.