Microsoft is modernizing its Office icons as part of a broader focus on design for its various Office apps. It’s the first time the Office icons have changed in five years, and they’re designed to be more simple and modern to span across multiple devices and platforms. Office now exists on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, and Microsoft has been building a single core codebase to make rapid monthly improvements to the apps. These icons are designed to reflect how Office has changed recently, with new AI features, more collaborative…
Author: Enrico
My greatest passion is technology. I am interested in multiple fields and I have a lot of experience in software design and development. I started professional development when I was 6 years. Today I am a strong full-stack .NET developer (C#, Xamarin, Azure)
Google hints shutting down Google News over EU’s implementation of Article 11 or the “link tax”
Last week, The Guardian reported that Google may shut down Google News in Europe if the “link tax” is implemented in a way that the company has to pay news publishers. According to the “link tax” or Article 11, news publishers must receive a fair and proportionate remuneration for their publications by the information society service providers. The vice president of Google News, Richard Gingras expressed his concern regarding the proposal and told The Guardian that the discontinuation of the news service in Europe will depend on the final verdict,…
Connect ASP.NET MVC 4.6.2 project to IdentityServer4
I have a website running on ASP.NET MVC 4.5.2. I have an IdentityServer4 server running but when I try and authenticate against it I get an: invalid_request I googled a bit but I can’t find a solution. Finally, I found the way. First, in your IdentityServer4 you have to create a new client: public static IEnumerable GetClients() { return new List<client> { new Client { ClientId = “yourid”, AllowedScopes = new List<string> { “openid” }, AllowedGrantTypes = GrantTypes.Hybrid, RedirectUris = new List { “https://yoururl/signin-oidc” }, } } } When you…
Create a well formed URI using UriBuilder class with C#
You can use System.UriBuilder class to build a new well-formed URI. You need to set some property of UriBuilder object’s, like Scheme, Port, Host, Path etc… You can get generated URI using AbsoluteUri Method. // Generate a new URI. UriBuilder objUri = new UriBuilder(); objUri.Scheme = “http”; objUri.Port = 80; objUri.Host = “www.microsoft.com”; objUri.Path = “en-us/default.aspx”; Response.Write(“Genereted URI: ” + objUri.Uri.AbsoluteUri); Happy coding!
The Last Slice: challenge
Beat challenge 1 (download the game, change the code) here. Then beat challenge 2. First five to beat challenge 3 win $10,000 USD each. No joke. Challenge 1 This is the first of three challenges for The Last Slice: A retro 8-bit video game that’s currently impossible to beat. Clone or download the code, install the prerequisites on your Windows 10 PC, open TheLastSlice.sln file with Visual Studio and run the game. You have the source code…change it any way you’d like to beat the game. The Prerequisites Here’s what…
Gravatar Tag Helper for .NET Core 2.1
A tag helper is any class that implements the ITagHelper interface. However, when you create a tag helper, you generally derive from TagHelper, doing so gives you access to the Process method. In your ASP.NET Core project, create a folder to hold the Tag Helpers called TagHelpers. The TagHelpers folder is not required, but it’s a reasonable convention. Now let’s get started writing some simple tag helpers. Tag helpers use a naming convention that targets elements of the root class name (minus the TagHelper portion of the class name). In…
Amazon’s Fire TV Cube is a set top box crossed with an Echo
Amazon just added another model to its increasingly crowded selection of living room offerings. There’s bound to be some consumer confusion around the line, but the Cube differentiates itself by bridging the gap between Fire TV and Echo. Sure, past set top offerings have incorporated Alexa control, but this latest addition folds in the full smart speaker experience. In fact, the Cube looks like a big, square Echo Dot. It’s not much to look at, honestly, but the familiar design elements are all there, including the four Echo buttons on…
Microsoft snaps up GitHub for $7.5 billion
As we anticipated yesterday, Microsoft has reached an agreement to buy GitHub, the source repository and collaboration platform, in a deal worth $7.5 billion. The all-stock deal is expected to close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval in the US and EU. Decade-old GitHub is built on Git, the open source version control software originally written by Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Git is a distributed version control system: each developer has their own repository that they make changes to, and these changes can be propagated between…
Microsoft has reportedly acquired GitHub
Microsoft has reportedly acquired GitHub, and could announce the deal as early as Monday. Bloomberg reports that the software giant has agreed to acquire GitHub, and that the company chose Microsoft partly because of CEO Satya Nadella. Business Insider first reported that Microsoft had been in talks with GitHub recently. GitHub is a vast code repository that has become popular with developers and companies hosting their projects, documentation, and code. Apple, Amazon, Google, and many other big tech companies use GitHub. Microsoft is the top contributor to the site, and…
Deferring Processing of Azure Service Bus Messages
Sometimes when you’re handling a message from a message queue, you realise that you can’t currently process it, but might be able to at some time in the future. What would be nice is to delay or defer processing of the message for a set amount of time. Unfortunately, with brokered messages in Azure Service Bus, there is no built-in feature to do this simply, but there are a few workarounds. In this post, we’ll look at four separate techniques: let the lock time out, sleep and abandon, defer the…
London launches world’s first contactless payment scheme for street performers
Here’s a casualty of the cashless society you might not have previously thought of: the humble street performer. After all, if more of us are paying our way with smartphones and contactless cards, how can we give spare change to musicians on the subway? London has one solution: a new scheme that outfits performers with contactless payment terminals. The project was launched this weekend by the city’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, and is a collaboration with Busk In London (a professional body for buskers) and the Swedish payments firm iZettle (which…
Microsoft Buys Conversational AI Company Semantic Machines
In a blog post, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of AI & Research David Ku announced the acquisition of Berkeley, California-based conversational AI company Semantic Machines. The natural language processing technology developed by Semantic Machines will be integrated into Microsoft’s products like Cortana and the Azure Bot Service. On its website, Semantic Machines says that existing natural language systems such as Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana and Google Now only understands commands, but not conversations. However, Semantic Machines’ technology understands conversations rather than just commands. Some of the…
Microsoft turns SharePoint into the simplest VR creation tool yet
Microsoft is sticking with its pragmatic approach to VR with SharePoint spaces, a new addition to its collaboration platform that lets you quickly build and view Mixed Reality experiences. It’s a lot like how PowerPoint made it easy for anyone to create business presentations. Sharepoint spaces features templates for things like a gallery of 3D models or 360-degree videos, all of which are viewable in Mixed Reality headsets (or any browser that supports WebVR). While they’re certainly not complex virtual environments, they’re still immersive enough to be used for employee…
Given, When, Then
Given-When-Then is a style of representing tests specifying a system’s behavior. It’s an approach developed by Dan North and Chris Matts as part of Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). It appears as a structuring approach for many testing frameworks such as Cucumber. You can also look at it as a reformulation of the Four-Phase Test pattern. The essential idea is to break down writing a scenario (or test) into three sections: The given part describes the state of the world before you begin the behavior you’re specifying in this scenario. You can…
7 Popular Unit Test Naming Conventions
Following are 7 popular unit tests naming conventions that are found to be used by majority of developers and compiled from above pages: MethodName_StateUnderTest_ExpectedBehavior: There are arguments against this strategy that if method names change as part of code refactoring than test name like this should also change or it becomes difficult to comprehend at a later stage. Following are some of the example: isAdult_AgeLessThan18_False withdrawMoney_InvalidAccount_ExceptionThrown admitStudent_MissingMandatoryFields_FailToAdmit MethodName_ExpectedBehavior_StateUnderTest: Slightly tweeked from above, but a section of developers also recommend using this naming technique. This technique also has disadvantage that if…
MongoDb example
Simple example for MongoDB. Save and retrieve data from Azure Cosmos DB. Create an Azure Cosmos Db as MongoDb For creating a new MongoDb on Azure, search from the list of resources, Azure Cosmos Db. Then Add a new database and you see the following screen. Overview When you created a new MongoDb, you see an Overview where there are general information about how many queries the database did (split on insert, update, cancel, query, count, others). Under Connection String you have the connection to use in your application. In…
Never give up!
Surface phone: is it the real time?
Surface Phone Rumors: Microsoft to Finally Unveil Mythical Device at the MWC 2018. While some people are resigned to the fact that the long-rumored Surface Phone is nothing more than a figment of the imagination, new reports claim that the long-rumored mythical Microsoft device may finally be unveiled at next month’s MWC (Mobile World Congress). Rumors about the Surface Phone have been in existence for two years now, but no one outside Microsoft cannot really confirm if the device is in the pipeline. However, according to recent reports, the wait…
First AngularJs example
If you are looking around for a new job as .NET developer, all companies are asking you AngularJs. Then I’m starting to learn it and I share with you the secret of this framework. I’m assuming you are a .NET developer like me and you want to learn AngularJs and then I won’t explain you the basis of HTML. Open Visual Studio and create a new solution with ASP.NET Empty web Site. Now you have your project. Add from NuGet AngularJS.Core. Done. We start now with a little complicate example.…
Add a macOS project to your existing solution
With the new version of Xamarin, we can create apps for macOS. But how can I add a macOS project to my solution? I explain step by step what we have to do. Add new project The first step is to add a new project for macOS in your solution. Right-click on your solution and select Add New project… Now select from the list App under Mac and then Cocoa App. Then name your project, usually, we call this project with yourprojectname.macOS.
Get the Most Out of iOS 11 with Visual Studio Tools for Xamarin
Join Craig Dunn explains what’s new in iOS 11 and how to take advantage of the latest updates – from drag-and-drop for iPad to machine learning and more – 100% in .NET and Visual Studio. Whether you’re building new or updating existing Xamarin.iOS apps, you’ll see how to implement new frameworks, APIs, and UI features, walk-through code samples, get expert tips and tricks, so you can start shipping iOS 11-ready apps to your users. In this webinar, you’ll: Explore iOS 11 UI changes, including adapting to the iPhone X form…
What Singleton Pattern is in C# and its implementation
In another post I discussed how to implement Inversion of Control Pattern in C#. In this post I should explain what a singleton is. The singleton pattern is one of the best-known patterns in software engineering. Essentially, a singleton is a class which only allows a single instance of itself to be created and usually gives simple access to that instance. Most commonly, singletons don’t allow any parameters to be specified when creating the instance – as otherwise, a second request for an instance but with a different parameter could…
How To Append ‘st’, ‘nd’, ‘rd’ or ‘th’ To Day Numbers in Dates
For a new project, my client required to output date strings in a format that included the two letter suffix added to the day number, like in British date (“January 1st 2018” as opposed to “January 1 2018”). The solution makes use of the custom formatting capabilities in the framework whereby it is possible to implement the IFormatProvider and ICustomFormatter interfaces to provide custom string formatting for use with methods that support formatting such as String.Format() or Console.WriteLine(). I decided to extend the existing DateTime format provision in the framework…
Xamarin Forms: TranslateY (or other properties) for platform
Sometimes you need to change a value for a specific platform and this value is a Double, for example. I spent a couple of minutes to find a working code. <Label> <Label.TranslationY> <OnPlatform x:TypeArguments=”x:Double” Android=”-10″ /> </Label.TranslationY> </Label> Happy coding!
The Invoke Smart Speaker Brings Microsoft’s Cortana AI to Your Living Room
Cortana virtual assistant already integrates into Windows 10, works on iOS and Android, and will start showing up in cars soon, it’s ready for your home with Invoke. It’s good for work, good for play, even has a cool name. The new Invoke speaker, made by Harman Kardon, is more or less a direct copy of the Amazon Echo – a tall, cylindrical speaker with a blue light at the top that glows when the speaker is listening to you. It can control some of your smart-home devices, set reminders,…