What is Windows Azure?

Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft datacenters.

Windows Azure is a flexible platform that supports multiple languages and integrates with your existing on-premises environment. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft Visual Studio expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards, protocols and languages including SOAP, REST, XML, Java, PHP and Ruby. Windows Azure is now commercially available in 40 countries.

Windows Azure is a Microsoft Cloud Computing Platform to build, deploy, manage applications through a global network of Microsoft. You can build a application in any platform, and you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment. It allows you to build applications in different languages, tools or frameworks.

Features:

•           Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform

•           Windows Azure delivers a 99.95% monthly SLA

•           Enables you to use any language, framework, or tool to build applications.

•           Unlimited servers. Unlimited storage.

•           Powerful Capabilities.

Windows Azure Platform

“The Windows Azure platform is a flexible cloud–computing platform that lets you focus on solving business problems and addressing customer needs. Learn more about the Windows Azure Platform.”

The windows Azure platform makes it easy for startups to get a production ready solution up and running quickly so you can pursue the things that matter. Windows Azure offers a simple, comprehensive, and powerful platform for the creation of web applications and services. Windows Azure enables Start-ups to focus on their business logic, as opposed to operational hurdles, in creating compelling products. Windows Azure platform frees up time required for deploying, configuring, maintaining, updating and fixing systems by automating a bulk of these asks and providing solution to historically painful issues like:

      Geo location of hosting servers

Real time backup and failover for databases

Deploying from staging to production environments

Shared memory caches

         Windows Azure improves productivity and lowers up-front capital costs while providing a scalable infrastructure to start up your business quickly and efficiently. Windows Azure based cloud services costs are driven by compute hours, data transfers, service bus connections, access control transactions and database storage.

Microsoft Silverlight is a free web-browser plug-in that enables interactive media experiences, rich business applications and immerse mobile apps.

Windows? Check. Mac? Check. Linux? Check. Silverlight works on all major OS’s plus all major browsers, including Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, and yes, how can we forget the very own Microsoft browser Internet Explorer.

What is Microsoft Silverlight?

Microsoft Silverlight is a powerful tool for creating and delivering rich Internet applications and media experiences on the Web. Silverlight 5 builds on the foundation of Silverlight  4 for building business applications and premium media experiences. Silverlight 5 introduces more than 40 new features, including dramatic video quality and performance improvements as well as features that improve developer productivity.

While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, current versions support multimedia, graphics and animation, and give developers support for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight is also one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone.

It is combination of different technologies into a single development platform that allows you to select tools and the programming language you want to use. Silverlight integrates seamlessly with your existing JavaScript and ASP.NET AJAX code to complement functionality which you have already created.

Microsoft Silverlight aims to compete with Adobe Flash and the presentation components of Ajax. It also competes with Sun Microsystems’ Java FX, which was launched a few days after Silverlight.

Silverlight has upto now have had 5 versions. I am only mentioning the features of the current version Silverlight 5 (5.0.61118.0)

Features of Silverlight 5 (5.0.61118.0)

• Improved media support.
• Improved Text support.
• Silverlight 5 performance improvements.
• Silverlight 5 performance improvements.
• Silverlight 5 extends features of the “Trusted Application” model.
• Tools improvements
• Building next-generation business applications.

To get to know more in detail about these features you may visit the following link :

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink?linkid=229308

How Silverlight has change the Web?

•  Highest Quality Video Experience
•  Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser
•  Developers and Graphic Designers can play together!
•   Cheaper
•  Support for 3rd Party Languages Cross-Platform, Cross-Browser Remote Debugging
•  The best development environment on the planet
•  Silverlight offers copy protection
• Extreme Speed

Supported Platforms

Desktop computers

Silverlight requires a processor with Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) support. Supported processors include the Intel Pentium III and up, and the AMD Athlon XP and up.

This image below will show you the wide support of Silverlight.

Mobile devices

Silverlight is the primary development environment for Windows Phone and is based on Silverlight 4.

Now that you have read about Silverlight and its various other aspects. You must be tempted to start using and develop application using this Microsoft Technology.

Here below is some prerequisite software and tools you need to begin with the application development.

Getting Started With Silverlight

In order to start with following tools required.

Microsoft Silverlight Runtime:

The runtime required to view Silverlight applications created with .NET Microsoft. The current version on is Silverlight 5 (5.0.61118.0). To download it click Here

Developer Tools:

If you don’t have a preferred development tool installed already, install

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Web Express

The next thing you require is Add on for Visual Studio and i.e.  Silverlight 5 Tools for Visual Studio . This is required to create Silverlight application with Visual Studio 2010.

Designer Tools

Expression Studio 4.0

The latest offering from Microsoft to create Silverlight content

Software Development Kits (SDK’s)

Microsoft Silverlight Software Development Kit: Download this SDK to create Silverlight Web experiences that target Silverlight 5.0. The SDK contains documentation, tools, Silverlight ASP.NET controls and the libraries needed to build Silverlight applications.

For those who need to verify the version of Silverlight plug-in installed on their browser click here Verify Install.

For other download related to Silverlight Visit the Download Centre of Silverlight Website for other useful tools, toolkits, and SDKs related to Silverlight 5.

So what are you waiting for …?

Get Silverlight 5

LINKS:

You must be thinking any further reference links.

As you review Microsoft Silverlight, please feel free to consult any of the many additional resources provided. More information can be found at the following locations:

• Microsoft Expression Home Page
• Microsoft Silverlight Community
• Silverlight Blog
• Silverlight Resources

Courtesy:

Image: – Wikipedia, Microsoft

Content: – Wikipedia, Microsoft

Happy Silverlight Development.

Regards

Akrati Gupta

]]> http://blog.akratigupta.com/microsoft-silverlight.html/feed 0 http://blog.akratigupta.com/win-free-com-domains-hosting-for-one-year-giveaway.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=win-free-com-domains-hosting-for-one-year-giveaway http://blog.akratigupta.com/win-free-com-domains-hosting-for-one-year-giveaway.html#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:35:16 +0000 Akrati http://blog.akratigupta.com/?p=81 Seobloggingtips.com organized one cool giveaway few days ago and gave away domain name to winners, well guess what, its even bigger now. This year end they are giving away 2 domain names (.com) for free and a Free Hosting Account from them for one full year.

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For the other details please visit seobloggingtips.com

Hope you win the contest and get the prize !!

Happy Blogging,

Regards

Akrati Gupta

The web application development is more than just reaching or providing users with the desired information. Present day customers are more demanding and they have high expectations from applications they access on the web.
The customers want to move from just reading the text from the web to writing and contributing information on it. They want the web applications to be more intutive, fast and to have all the features possible in the desktop application. They also want these applictions to be highly interactive with respect to User Interface (UI). All these requirements are fullfilled by the next genereation applications, named Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). RIAs can be developed using Microsoft WPF and Silverlight Technologies.

Introduction to RIAs
RIAs provide the look and feel of a desktop application. Unlike traditional Web applications that allow users to only read information, RIAs allow users to contribute information, such as knowledge articles, pictures, music, videos, and much more. In addition, the web has become an integral part of business organizations to interact with customers, peers, and suppliers and manage their business more effectively and efficiently.

Features of RIA
A Rich UX (Rich User eXperience) is achieved through:

• Rich user interface: Information on the Web pages is presented with a rich, attractive, and intuitive look and feel.
• Highly interactive websites: Websites contain sliders to change data, calendar gadgets to schedule tasks, and media players to watch videos and slide shows.
• Dynamically responsive Web applications: Websites provide quick response to users actions.
• Wide reach: Web applications can be accessed by desktops, Web browsers, and mobile devices.

Benefits of RIAs
RIA-based applications provide the following benefits to the users:

• RIA is rich: It contains interactive components.
• RIA is quick: It is more responsive than a traditional Web application.
• RIA reduces network traffic: It provides reduced network traffic because the data is processed at the client-end.
• RIA is asynchronous: It provides asynchronous communication with server that enables the continuous interaction of user with the Web application.
• RIA is cross-browser and cross-platform: It can run on multiple Web browsers and on different operating system platforms.

The following table explains the differences between a traditional Web application and RIA.

Developing RIA
Rich Internet Applications are getting more popularity compare to traditional HTML based internet applications due to enhanced user experience. Although they run in any browser, on any platform and they have features and functionalities of a desktop application.

Technologies used to develop RIAs are:

• Microsoft WPF
• Silverlight

Tools available to develop the WPF and Silverlight applications are:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 : It allows you to write the functional (programming) part for the WPF and the Silverlight applications.
• Expression Blend: It is an interactive What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) front-end tool for designing eXtended Application Markup Language (XAML) based interfaces for the WPF and the Silverlight applications.

In My next post I will be coming up with “Building a Simple RIA Application…..“

Windows Mobile 7 development is done using the .NET framework. The .NET framework is a software framework created by Microsoft for use in creating Windows applications. Programmers write applications using one of the several languages supported by the .NET framework, like C#, and the applications then execute inside of a runtime environment called the Common Language Runtime. For Windows Phone 7, there are two distinct development approaches you can take when creating your application.

The first approach is to use Silverlight for Windows Phone. Silverlight was originally envisioned as a way for developers to create rich internet applications. It has seen a sharp increase in market adoption in recent years, driven mostly by the fact that Netflix uses Silverlight to stream videos and NBC used Silverlight for its online broadcast of the Olympic games. A Silverlight application combines declarative markup (called XAML) to construct the user interface and code written in a .NET framework language to control an application’s behavior. If you’re developing a data driven application for Windows Phone 7, you should probably use Silverlight.

Alternatively, you can use the XNA framework to develop your Windows Phone 7 app. XNA is Microsoft’s game development framework and has been used in recent years to create both Windows and Xbox 360 applications. If you’re creating a game for Windows Phone 7, you’ll likely use the XNA framework. The XNA framework is quite powerful, but that power comes with a considerable learning curve and longer development cycles.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and download the file named VM_BOOT\vm_web.exe. Once the file has downloaded, double click on it to install the complete Windows Phone Developer Tools package. The package includes:

• Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone
• Windows Phone Emulator
• Silverlight for Windows Phone
• XNA 4.0 Game Studio

Your computer will likely restart at least once while the tools are being installed. After you’ve installed the developer tools on your system, you are ready to get started.

Opening Visual Studio

The application you’ll create in this tutorial is a simple one. It displays a simple button that you can tap. When you tap it, the button rotates around the phone’s interface. We’ll develop this application using Silverlight for Windows Phone. It should take less than 10 minutes to create.

To begin, open Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone. The easiest way to find it is to open the Start menu and begin typing “Visual Studio.” The application should show up in your search result list, similar to the following:

Click on the Visual Studio 2010 item to open up the development environment. If this is your first time opening the application, it may take a few minutes to start as Visual Studio will initialize some settings for you.

Creating Your Project

When you open Visual Studio, you’ll be greeted with the application’s start page. There is a lot of content on this page, including development tips, recent news, and project related actions. It is sometimes helpful to browse the content here to learn more about the platform, but for now just click on the “New Project…” link in the left sidebar.

A dialog box will pop up that guides you through creating your new project. Make sure the “Windows Phone Application” item is selected as your project template. Then, give your project a name. For this tutorial, I recommend calling your project “Rotating_Button.” Finally, confirm that the “Create directory for solution” checkbox is selected. This helps to organize your development efforts. Your settings should match mine:

Click “OK” to create your new project.

Navigating the UI Editor

The template that you’ve selected provides you with a completely working application. To see it in action, simply press CTRL+F5 to compile the application and launch it in the Windows Phone Emulator. The emulator launches with a single page containing an application title and a page title.

That default UI just won’t do for our application, so let’s make some modifications. Visual Studio should have opened the file MainPage.xaml for editing when you created the project. If not, double click the file’s name in the Solution Explorer to open it.

You should see a split screen view. On one side of the development environment you can see how the current file will look when your application is run. This is design mode. On the other side you have the XAML markup that declares how your interface should look. Any changes you make on one side will be represented on the other. This is similar to a WYSIWYG HTML editor like Dreamweaver.

The first thing we want to do is delete everything inside of the layout grid so we can provide our own markup. You should see a Grid tag named LayoutRoot. Delete everything inside this tag. You’ll end up with the following code:

1. <Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot” Background=”{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}”>
2.   </Grid>

The design mode view should show a blank screen at this point.

Creating Your Application’s Layout

You now need to add the UI for your application. Our application consists of a single button that will rotate around a grid. The grid is 2×2, so let’s go ahead and declare that the layout grid should have two rows and two columns. Change your layout grid markup to the following:

                <Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot” Background=”{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}”>

                    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                    <Grid.RowDefinitions>

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                    </Grid.RowDefinitions>

                </Grid>

Adding the Button

After you’ve defined your layout grid, it is time to create the button that will be tapped by your users. You want the button to start in the upper left box of the grid, so you’ll declare that it goes in Row 0 and Column 0.

In XAML, you tell an element to place itself within a grid by declaring the element and then assigning it the appropriate row and column indices. Inside of your layout grid, add a button using the following markup:

                <Button

                    Grid.Column=”0″

                    Grid.Row=”0″

                    Content=”Tap Me!”

                    HorizontalAlignment=”Stretch”

                    VerticalAlignment=”Stretch” />

This markup says the button should position itself in column and row 0, should stretch both horizontally and vertically within the grid cell it occupies, and that it should have the text “Tap Me!”

Your application’s UI code should now resemble the following:

                <Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot” Background=”{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}”>

                    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                    <Grid.RowDefinitions>

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                    </Grid.RowDefinitions>

                    <Button

                        Grid.Column=”0″

                        Grid.Row=”0″

                        Content=”Tap Me!”

                        HorizontalAlignment=”Stretch”

                        VerticalAlignment=”Stretch”  />

                </Grid>

At this point, you can fire up your application and see that your UI is in place. Just like earlier, press CTRL+F5 to compile and launch your application in the Win

The first thing we want to do is delete everything inside of the layout grid so we can provide our own markup. You should see a Grid tag named LayoutRoot. Delete everything inside this tag. You’ll end up with the following code:

1. <Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot” Background=”{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}”>
2.   </Grid>

The design mode view should show a blank screen at this point.

Creating Your Application’s Layout

You now need to add the UI for your application. Our application consists of a single button that will rotate around a grid. The grid is 2×2, so let’s go ahead and declare that the layout grid should have two rows and two columns. Change your layout grid markup to the following:

                <Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot” Background=”{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}”>

                    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                    <Grid.RowDefinitions>

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                    </Grid.RowDefinitions>

                </Grid>

Adding the Button

After you’ve defined your layout grid, it is time to create the button that will be tapped by your users. You want the button to start in the upper left box of the grid, so you’ll declare that it goes in Row 0 and Column 0.

In XAML, you tell an element to place itself within a grid by declaring the element and then assigning it the appropriate row and column indices. Inside of your layout grid, add a button using the following markup:

                <Button

                    Grid.Column=”0″

                    Grid.Row=”0″

                    Content=”Tap Me!”

                    HorizontalAlignment=”Stretch”

                    VerticalAlignment=”Stretch”

                    />

This markup says the button should position itself in column and row 0, should stretch both horizontally and vertically within the grid cell it occupies, and that it should have the text “Tap Me!”

Your application’s UI code should now resemble the following:

                <Grid x:Name=”LayoutRoot” Background=”{StaticResource PhoneBackgroundBrush}”>

                    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                        <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” />

                    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                    <Grid.RowDefinitions>

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                        <RowDefinition Height=”*” />

                    </Grid.RowDefinitions>

                    <Button

                        Grid.Column=”0″

                        Grid.Row=”0″

                        Content=”Tap Me!”

                        HorizontalAlignment=”Stretch”

                        VerticalAlignment=”Stretch”

                        />

                </Grid>

At this point, you can fire up your application and see that your UI is in place. Just like earlier, press CTRL+F5 to compile and launch your application in the Windows Phone emulator. If you’ve done everything correctly, you’ll see a button in your emulator nested firmly in the top left corner.

You can tap the button by clicking it with your mouse, but nothing will happen. We’ll remedy that next by adding some event handling code.

Adding Event Handling

Go back to Visual Studio and make sure that you’ve got MainPage.xaml open in design/code mode. You need to add an event handling attribute to the button that you’ve created. Modify the button declaration, adding a ManipulationStarted attribute. Make sure you allow Visual Studio to create an event handling function for you. Your button markup should now look like this:

                <Button

                    Grid.Column=”0″

                    Grid.Row=”0″

                    Content=”Click Me!”

                    HorizontalAlignment=”Stretch”

                    VerticalAlignment=”Stretch”

                    ManipulationStarted=”Button_ManipulationStarted” />

Now, open the code behind file for MainPage.xaml. It is named MainPage.xaml.cs and you can find it in the Solution Explorer by clicking the arrow next to MainPage.xaml.

Inside of MainPage.xaml.cs you’ll see the event handler that Visual Studio created. Visual Studio has most likely named it Button_ManipulationStarted and, for the purposes of this application, that should be just fine. Change your function declaration to the following:

                private void Button_ManipulationStarted(object sender, ManipulationStartedEventArgs e)

                {

                    Button b = sender as Button;

                    int col = Grid.GetColumn(b);

                    int row = Grid.GetRow(b);

                    if (col == row)

                    {

                        Grid.SetColumn(b, ++col % 2);

                    }

                    else

                    {

                        Grid.SetRow(b, ++row % 2);

                    }

                }

The first thing this method does is create a new variable of type Button and assigns it a reference to the sender variable. This is important because Button derives from UIElement and the next few operations require a UIElement object as the parameter. Next, the method gets the current column and row index by using a static method of the Grid class. Finally, the method uses a simple algorithm to determine where to move the button and change the row or column index as appropriate. You know that if the row and column indices are the same, then the column needs to change. If the row and column indices are different then the row needs to changes. In either case you use another static method of the Grid class to set the button’s row or column. The appropriate index is determined using some simple math.

At this point, we’re done with the sample application. Press CTRL+F5 to compile and launch your application and then try clicking your button. You’ll see it move around the grid each time you click. Try using the emulator’s controls to change the phone’s orientation and you’ll see that the application adapts with no problems at all.

Here is a video which would help you understand more about WP7 development.

So Happy Programming on WP 7.

Regards

Akrati Gupta

Timeline of Windows Phone related events

The name ‘Windows Phone’ is a re branding 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”. Microsoft at first announced its new platform as “Windows Phone 7 Series” which initially came under criticism as being too wordy and difficult to say casually. Responding to this, on April 2, 2010 Microsoft announced that the “Series” would be dropped from the name, leaving the platform named Windows Phone 7. The official statement on the matter was:

“Customers want a simpler way to say and use the name consistently. The important thing is keeping the focus on the Windows Phone brand, which we introduced in October and will continue investing in through Windows Phone 7 and beyond.”

Features

• User interface

Windows Phone features a new user interface, based upon Microsoft’s Windows Phone design system, codenamed Metro. Several features of Windows Phone are organized into “hubs“, which combine local and online content via Windows Phone’s integration with popular social networks such as Facebook, Windows Live, and Twitter. From the Hub, users can directly comment and ‘like’ on social network updates. The other built-in hubs are Music and Video (which integrates with Zune), Games (which integrates with Xbox Live), Windows Phone Marketplace, and Microsoft Office

Windows Phone uses multi-touch technology. The default Windows Phone user interface has a dark theme that prolongs battery life on OLED screens as fully black pixels don’t emit light.

• Text input

Users input text by using an on-screen virtual keyboard, which has a dedicated key for inserting emoticons, and features spell checking and word prediction. Users may change a word after it has been typed by tapping the word, which will invoke a list of similar words. Pressing and holding certain keys will reveal similar characters. The keys are somewhat larger and spaced farther apart when in landscape mode. Phones may also be made with a hardware keyboard for text input.

• Messaging

Windows Phone combined messaging through “threads”. Threads allow the Windows Phone user to engage with their contacts through Windows Live Messenger and Facebook Chat as well as traditional text messages. Text message can also be composed through voice recognition. Voice recognition allows speech to be converted to text message and also allows text message to be converted to speech which can be read aloud.

• Web browser

Windows Phone 7.5 features a version of Internet Explorer Mobile with a rendering engine that is based on Internet Explorer 9.Internet Explorer on Windows Phone allows the user to maintain a list of favorite web pages and tiles linking to web pages on the Start screen. The browser supports up to 6 tabs, which can all load in parallel

• Contacts

Contacts are organized via the “People hub“. Contacts can be manually entered into contacts or imported from Facebook, Windows Live Contacts, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A “What’s New” section show news feed and a “Pictures” section show pictures from those social networks made by the contacts. A “Me” section show the phone user’s own social networks status and wall, allow the user to update his status, and check-in to Bing and Facebook Places. Contacts can be added to the home screen by pinning them to the start. The contact’s “Live Tile” displays his social network status and profile picture on the homescreen and the contact’s hub displays his Facebook wall as well as all of the rest of his contact information and information from his other social networks.

• E-mail

Windows Phone supports Hotmail, Exchange, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail natively and supports many other services via the POP and IMAP protocols. For the native account types, contacts and calendars may be synced as well. Users can also search through their e-mail by searching in the subject, body, senders, and receivers. Emails are shown in threading view and multiple e-mail inboxes can be combined or kept separate.

• Multimedia

Zune for Windows Phone is an application providing entertainment and synchronization capabilities between PC and Phone. Windows Phone multimedia experience is divided in to two distinct hubs, Music + Videos hub and Pictures hub, both of which are similar in appearance and functionality to that of the Zune HD.

The “Pictures hub” displays the user’s Facebook and Windows Live photo albums alongside photos taken with the phone’s camera. Users can also tag and upload photos to social networks and comment on online photos directly from the Pictures hub. Multi-touch gestures permit zooming in and out of photos.

• Games

Xbox Live on Windows Phone provides some Xbox 360 features on Windows Phone devices 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. Multiplayer (turn-based) gaming with live multiplayer is also released. Some key features of Xbox Live on Windows Phone include ability to be signed in simultaneously on the console and phone, send and receive messages between Console and Phone, unlock unique gamer points only available by purchasing the gaming title on the phone, etc.

• Search

Microsoft’s hardware requirements stipulate that every Windows Phone must have a dedicated Search button on the front of the device that performs different actions. Pressing the search button while an application is open will allow users to search within applications that take advantage of this feature.

Windows Phone also has a voice recognition function, powered by TellMe, which allows the user to perform a Bing search, call contacts or launch applications by speaking. This can be activated by pressing and holding the phone’s Start button.

Bing is the default search engine on Windows Phone handsets due to its deep integration of functions into the OS (which also include the utilization of its map service for location-based searches and queries).

• Office suite

Microsoft Office Mobile on Windows Phone

The “Office hub” organizes all Microsoft Office apps and documents. Microsoft Office Mobile provides interoperability between Windows Phone and the desktop version of Microsoft Office. Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, OneNote Mobile, and SharePoint Workspace Mobile allow most Microsoft Office file formats to be viewed and edited directly on a Windows Phone device.

Microsoft Office files from SkyDrive and Office 365, as well as files stored locally on the phone, can be accessed through the Office Hub. Office files are sorted by tiles: Word documents (blue tile), Excel spreadsheets (green tile), PowerPoint presentations (red tile), and OneNote documents (purple tile).

• Multitasking

In Windows Phone 7, multitasking is limited to bundled apps. Starting with Windows Phone 7.5, a card-based task switcher can be accessed by pressing and holding the back button. The screenshot of last five open app are shown as cards. Apps can be kept running even when out of view through “Live Agents”. In other cases, apps are suspended and can be quickly resumed.

• Sync

Zune Software manages the contents on Windows Phone devices and Windows Phone can wirelessly sync with Zune Software. In addition to accessing on the Windows Phone devices, Zune software can also access the Zune Marketplace to purchase music, videos, and all apps for Windows Phone. While music and videos are both stored locally on the PC and on the phone, apps are only stored on the phone even if purchased from the Zune Software. Zune Software can also be used to update all Windows Phone devices. Although Zune Software is unavailable on Mac OS X operating system, Microsoft has released Windows Phone Connector which allow Windows Phone devices to sync with iTunes for Mac and iPhoto.

• Advertising platform

Microsoft has also launched an advertising platform for the Windows Phone platform. Microsoft’s General Manager for Strategy and Business Development, Kostas Mallios, said that Windows Phone will be an “ad-serving machine”, pushing advertising and brand-related content to the user. The platform will feature advertising tiles near applications and toast notifications, which will bring updating advertising notifications. Mallios said that Windows Phone will be able to “preserve the brand experience by going directly from the web site right to the application”, and that Windows Phone “enables advertisers to connect with consumers over time”.Mallios continued: “you’re now able to push information as an advertiser, and stay in touch with your customer. It’s a dynamic relationship that is created and provides for an ongoing dialog with the consumer.”

• Bluetooth

Windows Phone supports the following Bluetooth profiles:

1. Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP 1.3)
2. Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP 1.0)
3. Hands Free Profile (HFP 1.5)
4. Headset Profile (HSP 1.1)
5. Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP 1.0)

So I suppose now you must have got familiar with Windows Phone 7 OS. If you like to see which Handsets Supports the OS, just check out the Links section below the post to view the Handsets. Stay tuned as in my next post i would be discussing about WP 7 Development and some Hands on Lab for WP 7.

Links :-

Buy the Phone – http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/buy/7/default.aspx

MVC design pattern

MVC is a standard design pattern that many developers are familiar with. Some types of Web applications will benefit from the MVC framework. Others will continue to use the traditional ASP.NET application pattern that is based on Web Forms and postbacks. Other types of Web applications will combine the two approaches; neither approach excludes the other.

The MVC framework includes the following components:

• Models. Model objects are the parts of the application that implement the logic for the application’s data domain. Often, model objects retrieve and store model state in a database. For example, a Product object might retrieve information from a database, operate on it, and then write updated information back to a Products table in a SQL Server database.

In small applications, the model is often a conceptual separation instead of a physical one. For example, if the application only reads a dataset and sends it to the view, the application does not have a physical model layer and associated classes. In that case, the dataset takes on the role of a model object.

• Views. Views are the components that display the application’s user interface (UI). Typically, this UI is created from the model data. An example would be an edit view of a Products table that displays text boxes, drop-down lists, and check boxes based on the current state of a Product object.
• Controllers. Controllers are the components that handle user interaction, work with the model, and ultimately select a view to render that displays UI. In an MVC application, the view only displays information; the controller handles and responds to user input and interaction. For example, the controller handles query-string values, and passes these values to the model, which in turn might use these values to query the database.

The MVC pattern helps you create applications that separate the different aspects of the application (input logic, business logic, and UI logic), while providing a loose coupling between these elements. The pattern specifies where each kind of logic should be located in the application. The UI logic belongs in the view. Input logic belongs in the controller. Business logic belongs in the model. This separation helps you manage complexity when you build an application, because it enables you to focus on one aspect of the implementation at a time. For example, you can focus on the view without depending on the business logic.

The loose coupling between the three main components of an MVC application also promotes parallel development. For example, one developer can work on the view, a second developer can work on the controller logic, and a third developer can focus on the business logic in the model.

Support for Test-Driven Development

In addition to managing complexity, the MVC pattern makes it easier to test applications than it is to test a Web Forms-based ASP.NET Web application. For example, in a Web Forms-based ASP.NET Web application, a single class is used both to display output and to respond to user input. Writing automated tests for Web Forms-based ASP.NET applications can be complex, because to test an individual page, you must instantiate the page class, all its child controls, and additional dependent classes in the application. Because so many classes are instantiated to run the page, it can be hard to write tests that focus exclusively on individual parts of the application. Tests for Web Forms-based ASP.NET applications can therefore be more difficult to implement than tests in an MVC application. Moreover, tests in a Web Forms-based ASP.NET application require a Web server. The MVC framework decouples the components and makes heavy use of interfaces, which makes it possible to test individual components in isolation from the rest of the framework.

When to Create an MVC Application

You must consider carefully whether to implement a Web application by using either the ASP.NET MVC framework or the ASP.NET Web Forms model. The MVC framework does not replace the Web Forms model; you can use either framework for Web applications. (If you have existing Web Forms-based applications, these continue to work exactly as they always have.)

Before you decide to use the MVC framework or the Web Forms model for a specific Web site, weigh the advantages of each approach.

Advantages of an MVC-Based Web Application

The ASP.NET MVC framework offers the following advantages:

• It makes it easier to manage complexity by dividing an application into the model, the view, and the controller.
• It does not use view state or server-based forms. This makes the MVC framework ideal for developers who want full control over the behavior of an application.
• It uses a Front Controller pattern that processes Web application requests through a single controller. This enables you to design an application that supports a rich routing infrastructure. For more information, see Front Controller.
• It provides better support for test-driven development (TDD).
• It works well for Web applications that are supported by large teams of developers and for Web designers who need a high degree of control over the application behavior.

Advantages of a Web Forms-Based Web Application

The Web Forms-based framework offers the following advantages:

• It supports an event model that preserves state over HTTP, which benefits line-of-business Web application development. The Web Forms-based application provides dozens of events that are supported in hundreds of server controls.
• It uses a Page Controller pattern that adds functionality to individual pages. For more information, see Page Controller.
• It uses view state on server-based forms, which can make managing state information easier.
• It works well for small teams of Web developers and designers who want to take advantage of the large number of components available for rapid application development.
• In general, it is less complex for application development, because the components (the Page class, controls, and so on) are tightly integrated and usually require less code than the MVC model.

Features of the ASP.NET MVC Framework

The ASP.NET MVC framework provides the following features:

• Separation of application tasks (input logic, business logic, and UI logic), testability, and test-driven development (TDD). All core contracts in the MVC framework are interface-based and can be tested by using mock objects, which are simulated objects that imitate the behavior of actual objects in the application. You can unit-test the application without having to run the controllers in an ASP.NET process, which makes unit testing fast and flexible. You can use any unit-testing framework that is compatible with the .NET Framework.
• An extensible and pluggable framework. The components of the ASP.NET MVC framework are designed so that they can be easily replaced or customized. You can plug in your own view engine, URL routing policy, action-method parameter serialization, and other components. The ASP.NET MVC framework also supports the use of Dependency Injection (DI) and Inversion of Control (IOC) container models. DI enables you to inject objects into a class, instead of relying on the class to create the object itself. IOC specifies that if an object requires another object, the first objects should get the second object from an outside source such as a configuration file. This makes testing easier.
• Extensive support for ASP.NET routing, which is a powerful URL-mapping component that lets you build applications that have comprehensible and searchable URLs. URLs do not have to include file-name extensions, and are designed to support URL naming patterns that work well for search engine optimization (SEO) and representational state transfer (REST) addressing.
• Support for using the markup in existing ASP.NET page (.aspx files), user control (.ascx files), and master page (.master files) markup files as view templates. You can use existing ASP.NET features with the ASP.NET MVC framework, such as nested master pages, in-line expressions (<%= %>), declarative server controls, templates, data-binding, localization, and so on.
• Support for existing ASP.NET features. ASP.NET MVC lets you use features such as forms authentication and Windows authentication, URL authorization, membership and roles, output and data caching, session and profile state management, health monitoring, the configuration system, and the provider architecture.

By default you get MVC 2 in VS 2010 (All Versions)

To get MVC 3 you require Microsoft Web Platform Installer. Click  Here

Courtesy :- MSDN

Regards
Akrati Gupta

Introduction

When the first CSS specification was published, all of CSS was contained in one document that defined CSS Level 1. CSS Level 2 was defined also by a single, multi-chapter document. However for CSS beyond Level 2, the CSS Working Group chose to adopt a modular approach, where each module defines a part of CSS, rather than to define a single monolithic specification. This breaks the specification into more manageable chunks and allows more immediate, incremental improvement to CSS.

Since different CSS modules are at different levels of stability, the CSS Working Group has chosen to publish this profile to define the current scope and state of Cascading Style Sheets as of late 2010. This profile includes only specifications that we consider stable and for which we have enough implementation experience that we are sure of that stability

SOURCE – W3C

What is it?

If you work in web development, you’re likely well-versed in CSS3, the latest and greatest standard that’s all the rage with modern websites and the browsers we use to view them. The rest of us may have heard the buzz about CSS3 — but do you know what it is, how it works and why it matters? Read on to find out.CSS3 offers a huge variety of new ways to create an impact with your designs, with quite a few important changes. This first tutorial will give you a very basic introduction to the new possibilities created by the standard.

What Does It Offer?

Because of its modular structure, CSS3 allows developers to build content-rich web pages with relatively lightweight code requirements. That means fancier visual effects, better user interfaces and most importantly, cleaner pages that load faster than ever before. Simply put, CSS3 is the presentation layer of a web page that leads the charge for all of the other technologies buried within.

CSS3 finally brings the promise of desktop-style layout to web pages, complete with graphic elements such as drop shadows, gradients, border effects, multi-column layouts and much more.

Where Did It Come From?

All three CSS specifications fall under the jurisdiction of the World Wide Web Consortium (also known as W3C), one of many international standards organizations who keep things in check for the internet we all know and love. The W3C itself was founded in late 1994, which is actually when the precursor to CSS first reared its head.

Cascading HTML Style Sheets (CHSS) was the name of that earliest variation, which first introduced web developers to the concept of creating a consistent approach to how pages were styled that HTML alone was incapable of. By 1997, CSS had its own development board, the CSS Working Group, chaired by one of W3C’s own.

CSS Through the Years

The first iteration of CSS was published in late 1996, offering support for font properties (including typeface and emphasis), colors for text and backgrounds as well as alignment of text, images, tables and other web elements. CSS2 was introduced in 1998, bringing additional capabilities such as absolute, relative and fixed positioning of elements before being usurped by CSS 2.1 in 2005.

First published in 1999, CSS3 takes the foundation laid by the first two generations and divides up feature set into separate documents known as modules, with each module capable of adding its own new functionality or features while generally maintaining backwards compatibility with CSS2.

A Look at Modules

Part of the problem with the first two generations of CSS was that the specification became too large and complex to update frequently. Rather than continue down that path, the W3C created the module system for CSS3, so that individual components can be updated and refined in pieces over time.

There are currently over 40 CSS modules published through the CSS Working Group, including Selectors, Namespaces, Color and Media Queries, with Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome leading adoption of the standard in recent years.

Who Supports CSS3?

To get a grasp of how much CSS3 has influenced web development, look no further than Microsoft’s own adoption of the markup language with the new Internet Explorer 9 released in March. Prior versions seemingly ignored most of what CSS3 brought to the table, but with IE9, all of the major browsers (not to mention the software used to design pages in the first place) finally embrace the technology — allowing designers to at last show off their best efforts, regardless of platform.

Of course, users on older computers and browsers won’t be able to take full advantage of this advance without upgrading — but as time goes on, we’ll all be using CSS3-compliant browsers and many of the old, complicated methods of developing websites will start to fade at long last.

To check which all properties does your browser supports visit vhttp://fmbip.com

To compare all the properties of all other browsers with yours visit http://www.findmebyip.com/litmus

To check CSS3 properties of browser in realtime visit http://tools.css3.info/selectors-test/test.html

New LOGO FOR CSS3

At this point you have some choices of how to use the CSS, either internally or externally.

Internal Stylesheet

First we will explore the internal method. This way you are simply placing the CSS code within the <head></head> tags of each (X)HTML file you want to style with the CSS. The format for this is shown in the example below.

[css]

[/css]

With this method each (X)HTML file contains the CSS code needed to style the page. Meaning that any changes you want to make to one page, will have to be made to all. This method can be good if you need to style only one page, or if you want different pages to have varying styles.

[css]<strong>External Stylesheet</strong>[/css]

Next we will explore the external method. An external CSS file can be created with any text or HTML editor such as “Notepad” or “Dreamweaver”. A CSS file contains no (X)HTML, only CSS. You simply save it with the .css file extension. You can link to the file externally by placing one of the following links in the head section of every (X)HTML file you want to style with the CSS file.

[css]<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href=<em>"Path To stylesheet.css" </em>/>[/css]

Or you can also use the @import method as shown below

[css]<style type="text/css">@import url(<em>Path To stylesheet.css</em>)</style>[/css]

Either of these methods are achieved by placing one or the other in the head section as shown in example below.

[css]<head>

<title><title>

<em><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"href="style.css" /></em>

</head>

<body>[/css]

or

[css]<head>

<title><title>

<style type="text/css"> <em>@import url(Path To stylesheet.css)</em>

</style>

</head>

<body>[/css]

By using an external style sheet, all of your (X)HTML files link to one CSS file in order to style the pages. This means, that if you need to alter the design of all your pages, you only need to edit one .css file to make global changes to your entire website. Here are a few reasons this is better.

[css]</pre>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>Easier Maintenance</li>
<li>Reduced File Size</li>
<li>Reduced Bandwidth</li>
<li>Improved Flexibility</li>
</ul>
<pre>
<strong>Inline Styles</strong>[/css]

I have not mentioned them until now because in a way they defeat the purpose of using CSS in the first place. Inline styles are defined right in the (X)HTML file along side the element you want to style. See example below.

<p style=”color: #ff0000;”>Some red text</p>

Some red text

Inline styles will NOT allow the user to change styles of elements or text formatted this way

So, which is better?

So with all these various ways of inserting CSS into your (X)HTML files, you may now be asking well which is better, and if I use more than one method, in what order do these different ways load into my browser? All the various methods will cascade into a new “pseudo” stylesheet in the following order:

1. Inline Style (inside (X)HTML element)

2. Internal Style Sheet (inside the <head> tag)

3. External Style Sheet

As far as which way is better, it depends on what you want to do. If you have only one file to style then placing it within the <head></head> tags (internal) will work fine. Though if you are planning on styling multiple files then the external file method is the way to go. Choosing between the <link related=> & the @import methods are completely up to you. I will mention that the @import method may take a second longer to read the CSS file in Internet Explorer than the <link related=> option.

CSS Syntax

The syntax for CSS is different than that of (X)HTML markup. Though it is not too confusing, once you take a look at it. It consists of only 3 parts.

selector { property: value }

The selector is the (X)HTML element that you want to style. The property is the actual property title, and the value is the style you apply to that property. Each selector can have multiple properties, and each property within that selector can have independent values. The property and value are seperated with a colon and contained within curly brackets. Multiple properties are seperated by a semi colon. Multiple values within a property are sperated by commas, and if an individual value contains more than one word you surround it with quotation marks. As shown below.

[css]Body

{

background: #eeeeee;

font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, serif;

}[/css]

As you can see in the above code I have seperated the color from the font-family with a semi-colon, seperated the various fonts with commas and contained the “Trebuchet MS” within quotations marks. The final result sets the body color to light grey, and sets the font to ones that most users will have installed on there computer. I have changed the way I layout my code, but you can arrange it in one line if you choose. I find that it is more readable if I spread each property to a seperate line, with a 2 space indention.

Inheritance

When you nest one element inside another, the nested element will inherit the properties assigned to the containing element. Unless you modify the inner elements values independently. For example, a font declared in the body will be inherited by all text in the file no matter the containing element, unless you declare another font for a specific nested element.

body {font-family: Verdana, serif;}

Now all text within the (X)HTML file will be set to Verdana. If you wanted to style certain text with another font, like an h1 or a paragraph then you could do the following.

h1 {font-family: Georgia, sans-serif;}

p {font-family: Tahoma, serif;}

Now all <h1> tags within the file will be set to Georgia and all <p> tags are set to Tahoma, leaving text within other elements unchanged from the body declaration of Verdana. There are instances where nested elements do not inherit the containing elements properties.

For example, if the body margin is set to 20 pixels, the other elements within the file will not inherit the body margin by default.

body {margin: 20px;}

Combining Selectors

You can combine elements within one selector in the following fashion.

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6

{

color: #009900;

font-family: Georgia, sans-serif;

}

As you can see in the above code, I have grouped all the header elements into one selector. Each one is seperated by a comma. The final result of the above code sets all headers to green and to the specified font. If the user does not have the first font I declared it will go to another sans-serif font the user has installed on there computer.

Comment tags

Comments can be used to explain why you added certain selectors within your css file. So as to help others who may see your file, or to help you remember what you we’re thinking at a later date. You can add comments that will be ignored by browsers in the following manner.

/* This is a comment */

You will note that it begins with a / (forward slash) and than an * (asterisks) then the comment, then the closing tag which is just backward from the opening tag * (asterisks) then the / (forward slash).

Deploying to a shared hosting site requires technologies such as FTP, which can be slow. In addition, you must manually perform tasks such as running SQL scripts to configure a database and you must change IIS settings, such as configuring a virtual directory folder as an application.

In an enterprise environment, in addition to deploying the Web application files, administrators frequently must modify ASP.NET configuration files and IIS settings. Database administrators must run a series of SQL scripts to get the application database running. Such installations are labor intensive, often take hours to complete, and must be carefully documented.

Visual Studio 2010 includes technologies that address these issues and that let you seamlessly deploy Web applications. One of these technologies is the IIS Web Deployment Tool (MsDeploy.exe).

Web deployment features in Visual Studio 2010 include the following major areas:

• Web packaging
• Web.config transformation
• Database deployment

One-click publish for Web applications

The following sections provide details about these features.

Web Packaging

Visual Studio 2010 uses the MSDeploy tool to create a compressed (.zip) file for your application, which is referred to as a Web package. The package file contains metadata about your application plus the following content:

IIS settings, which includes application pool settings, error page settings, and so on.

The actual Web content, which includes Web pages, user controls, static content (images and HTML files), and so on.

SQL Server database schemas and data.

Security certificates, components to install in the GAC, registry settings, and so on.

A Web package can be copied to any server and then installed manually by using IIS Manager. Alternatively, for automated deployment, the package can be installed by using command-line commands or by using deployment APIs.

Visual Studio 2010 provides built in MSBuild tasks and targets to create Web packages.

Web.config Transformation

For Web application deployment, Visual Studio 2010 introduces XML Document Transform (XDT), which is a feature that lets you transform a Web.config file from development settings to production settings. Transformation settings are specified in transform files named web.debug.config, web.release.config, and so on. (The names of these files match MSBuild configurations.) A transform file includes just the changes that you need to make to a deployed Web.config file. You specify the changes by using simple syntax.

The following example shows a portion of a web.release.config file that might be produced for deployment of your release configuration. The Replace keyword in the example specifies that during deployment the connectionString node in the Web.config file will be replaced with the values that are listed in the example.

Database Deployment

A Visual Studio 2010 deployment package can include dependencies on SQL Server databases. As part of the package definition, you provide the connection string for your source database. When you create the Web package, Visual Studio 2010 creates SQL scripts for the database schema and optionally for the data, and then adds these to the package. You can also provide custom SQL scripts and specify the sequence in which they should run on the server. At deployment time, you provide a connection string that is appropriate for the target server; the deployment process then uses this connection string to run the scripts that create the database schema and add the data.

In addition, by using one-click publish, you can configure deployment to publish your database directly when the application is published to a remote shared hosting site.

One-Click Publish for Web Applications

Visual Studio 2010 also lets you use the IIS remote management service to publish a Web application to a remote server. You can create a publish profile for your hosting account or for testing servers or staging servers. Each profile can save appropriate credentials securely. You can then deploy to any of the target servers with one click by using the Web one-click publish toolbar. With Visual Studio 2010, you can also publish by using the MSBuild command line. This lets you configure your team build environment to include publishing in a continuous-integration model.