On announcing the release of GIMP 2.8 the developers claimed that the update introduced ‘important changes to the user interface’. Is this the case or are there still issues to be found?
Programming
There has been a fair amount of research that tells us that 80-90% of the time spent loading web pages is spent on the “front-end” (browser pulling in external resources like css, javascript and images) and only 10-20% of the time for a typical page is spent on the back-end.
Spring Data JPA 1.1.0 GA comes with CDI integration, new query keywords, declarative locking and a ton of bug fixes and improvements.
Consider Secure Delivery Center for your organization, if…You’ve had a project break because the right version number of a development tool wasn’t used. Or maybe a project fell apart because a developer on your team used a different set of tools they thought were better than what was required. Maybe you’re sick of writing wikis or lengthy emails in hopes that your team follows the instructions to a tee. Or, you want an easy to view marketplace of all the tools you use in-house along with OSS and with the ability to track usage among team members. SDC is all that, and more. Plus you can download and try it today for 30 days free. **Get the technical specifics at the jump**
Programmers, designers, and sysadmins doing real good for humanity and the world in their spare time
I’ve been at Microsoft for a little over two years now, working in groups that focused primarily on publishing online content for developers. In addition to the obvious things, there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes in creating and maintaining content – maintaining and improving existing content, planning content for unreleased platforms and products, handling dozens of spoken languages and several programming languages, etc. It’s been a pleasure working with some real professionals. I’ve also enjoyed working in a small but dynamic group that’s focused on the developer community. during that time I had two excellent bosses, Scott Hanselman and Pete Brown. both really made it fun to show up to work every day. Well, I work from home, but still.
I’m excited about my new position in the Windows Azure technical evangelist team.
Wait, what? Azure?
Yep, Azure. Let me explain why.
Azure Application Platform Team includes ASP.NET, IIS, etc.
First, you’ll recall that Scott Guthrie heads the Azure Application Platform team, and that group includes ASP.NET and IIS. In the year since that transition, I’ve been really happy with where I’ve seen Microsoft’s web platform going. the ASP.NET team has been cranking out some great stuff for the ASP.NET 4.5 / ASP.NET MVC 4 / ASP.NET Web Pages 2 wave (easier to just call it ASP.NET vNext). oh, and they just open sourced a whole lot of code. so if anyone was concerned that ASP.NET would stall out in this new organization, I think this past year would allay that fear.
Azure as a good influence on Microsoft
And in fact, it seems like the influence of running Azure as a hosting platform has opened Microsoft’s web development horizons a good amount. We’ve got people like Glenn Block working with Node.js, Microsoft shipping code on GitHub (all the Azure sdk’s are on GitHub), Hadoop support on both Azure and Windows Server, etc. so if anything, Azure is really broadening Microsoft’s perspective on web development. I hadn’t expected that at all.
Azure future
Well. All I can say here is that I’m extremely excited about where Azure is going as a platform. as Scott Guthrie said in MSDN Flash recently, “You will see even more significant updates and features in Windows Azure in the months ahead.” There are a lot of things coming together here that are making Azure very interesting for me as a developer, and I want to be in on it. Stay tuned.
Windows Azure Technical Evangelist team
This is an cool team. I’m helping (new Microsoft employee) Brady Gaster with this summer’s Web Camps, learning some interesting Windows 8 dev from Nick Harris, got to meet up with Nathan Totten (I’d used his Facebook SDK in the past), and I’m just getting started. oh, and Cory Fowler just joined up too, focusing on the open source community on Azure including PHP and Node.js. and lots of other smart folks, all focusing on different applications of Azure and the Azure application platform. James Conard has put a really good team together, and it’s really energizing to be a part of it.
Nick and Nate just took over the Cloud Cover show on Channel 9 and interviewed me, along with the other three new team members: Cloud Cover – Episode 76 – Meet our new additions to the Windows Azure Technical Evangelist Team (I’m on around 14:40).
What’s new for Jon
I’ll be continuing to focus on ASP.NET as a platform. I like ASP.NET, and I like helping other people who are using it. Azure is a good place to put ASP.NET apps, so more ASP.NET apps helps Azure. so that means I’ll continue to do thing’s I’ve been doing in the past – blogging, speaking, writing, tutorials, screencasts about ASP.NET. but with more options for scale, travel budget, opportunities for collaboration with other groups, etc.
For example, I’ll be speaking at a Web Camp in Boston on may 10 as part of the Web Camps tour that Brady’s putting together. Brady invited me on Web Camps TV to help introduce Web Camps 2012:
Jon Galloway Helps Introduce Web Camps 2012
I’ve been doing some behind the scenes work on the ASP.NET site to make content easier to find and consume (e.g. HTML5 video support, input on responsive design). I also help with content for ASP.NET releases, like edits and publishing the ASP.NET MVC release notes, setting up things like the ASP.NET Web API content area, etc. that won’t change.
So my focus stays on ASP.NET as a platform – whether you host it on Azure, IIS, or wherever else you crazy kids decide to put it.
But, as I said, I joined the Azure evangelist team because I’m excited abou it, so of course I’ll be using it and talking about it as I do. For intstance, I’m thinking there are a lot of opportunities to spin up sample apps and services in Azure to show what I’m talking about.
I’ve joined the Windows Azure technical evangelist team
The first of a series of post that introduce MongoDB and PHP; this one focuses mainly on the installation of MongoDB.
This blog post describes how to use Cloudinary to automatically deliver all static images of your Ruby on Rails web application through a CDN. Allowing you to improve site’s performance without any code changes.
It also explains how to perform image transformations using your CSS or Sass files, e.g., for displaying Responsive Images for different devices.
Kirk Knoernschild is one of the leading experts when it comes to the OSGi community. DZone recently had a chance ot interview him about his thoughts on modularity in 2012 and his new book is “Java Application Architecture: Modularity Patterns with Examples Using OSGi.” The book introduces 18 patterns that will help you design more modular software.
In my previous blog I talked about how in Visual Studio 11 we have eliminated the need to convert your Visual Studio 2010 C++ projects in order to adopt the new IDE. the blog also mentioned that you can build your projects using Visual Studio 2010 compiler (tools and libraries) from within Visual Studio 11 using the multi-targeting feature. this means while you adapt to using the new compiler and while your 3rd party vendors provide you with binaries compatible with the Visual Studio 11 compiler (tools and libraries) you can leverage the new Visual Studio 11 IDE without disrupting your ship cycle. Just set the platform toolset property to v100 in the property pages (requires Visual Studio 2010 to be installed side-by-side with Visual Studio 11). Since no upgrade of your project file is necessary you can continue to load the project/solution in Visual Studio 2010 as well.
We have recently received feedback from a number of customers about the inability to build binaries that run on Windows XP with the Beta version of the Visual Studio 11 compiler and libraries. this is because the C++ compiler and libraries in Visual Studio 11 Beta leverages platform capabilities only available in Windows Vista and higher. However, if support for Windows XP targeting is important to you, then you can use Visual Studio 11 Beta’s multi-targeting capability described above in order to employ the Visual Studio 2010 compiler and libraries to build applications and libraries than execute on Windows XP. this enables you to enjoy the new features of the Visual Studio 11 Beta environment without sacrificing backward compatibly in your applications!
Target Windows XP in Visual Studio 11 Beta using the Visual Studio 2010 compiler and libraries