The Windows Shell is essentially the Windows environment we all know and love. In layman’s terms, it gives us access to system elements and objects necessary for running applications, and houses features such as the Taskbar, Start Menu, Desktop and more. Currently, the Windows Shell is different depending on the version of Windows 10 you’re using. For example, Mobile is using a different Windows Shell than desktop; but Microsoft is working to change and streamline that. Microsoft is building an "adaptive shell" into Windows 10 that’ll work across PCs and…
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)
Microsoft’s Channel 9 introduces .Game, a new series focused on game development using .NET
Microsoft has introduced a new show to its Channel 9 video platform aimed at teaching and showing off Microsoft’s products and services. The new show is called .Game and aims to teach people how to develop games using .NET. In this new series, viewers will be able to watch along and discover how game development works and how to do it themselves. The first episode of the show is already available and focuses on the basics with Unity, a popular game engine. The above video introduces the .Game show. Stacey…
Microsoft’s new service turns FAQs into bots
Finding customer service help online can be a pain. Filtering through a knowledge base to find the right answer to your question can be an exercise in fighting with nested frequently asked questions documents. Microsoft is aiming to help by making it easier for companies to create intelligent bots that can answer common questions. The QnA Maker, launched in beta on Tuesday, will let users train an automated conversation partner on existing frequently-asked-questions content. After that information is fed in, the service will create a bot that will respond to…
How do I extract text that lies between two strings?
My initial problem was to extract from a SQL string generated by MySql, all fields. I had a string like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 INSERT INTO `inventoryapp`.`inventory_keys` (`Id`, `PropertyId`, `AppointmentId`, `SectionType`, `KeysDescription`, `FobsWorking`, `EntryCodes`, `AlarmCodes`, `Notes`, `Version`, `CreatedDate`, `CreatedBy`, `UpdatedDate`, `UpdatedBy`, `IsDeleted`) VALUES (<{Id: }>, <{PropertyId: }>, <{AppointmentId: }>, <{SectionType: }>, <{KeysDescription: }>, <{FobsWorking: }>, <{EntryCodes: }>, <{AlarmCodes: }>, <{Notes: }>, <{Version:…
Amazon just launched a cashier-free convenience store
Amazon just unveiled a grocery store without lines or checkout counters. Amazon Go, a 1800-square-foot retail space located in the company’s hometown of Seattle, lets shoppers just grab the items they want and leave; the order gets charged to their Amazon account afterwards. Amazon Go works by using computer vision and sensors to detect what items you’re taking out of the store. You start by scanning an app as you enter the Amazon Go shop. You do your normal shopping, and the sensors throughout the store identify the items in…
It’s a Good Day to Be a C# Developer
Recently at Connect(), Microsoft made a slew of new announcements. First, the public availability of Visual Studio 2017 Release Candidate. This just isn’t a new version of the signature developer tool, it also includes the latest bits for C# 7.0. Second, Google announced they were joining the .NET Foundation. This means that Google, technically a competitor of Microsoft, wants to be actively involved in the evolution of .NET (and indirectly C#). Third, the first public release of Visual Studio for Mac. As a native environment, Visual Studio for Mac will…
Migrate SQLite to MySQL
I’m developing a huge app made with Xamarin Forms in my company. A problem was to create all tables in the device with SQLite to the main database MySql. I found a way to create all tables quickly with a tool called SQLite to MySQL. SQLite-to-MySQL is a powerful and reliable tool to convert SQLite databases to MySQL, MariaDB or Percona format. The program has high performance due to direct connection to source and destination databases (it does not use ODBC or any other middleware software). Command line support allows…
Microsoft’s Home Hub ambitions aim to crush Google Home and Amazon Echo
In what might be the most exciting part of this whole project, Microsoft is working on bringing the connected "smart home" to Windows 10 with Home Hub. The goal is to make Windows 10 the central hub for all your smart home devices, including lights, doors, locks and more. With Cortana integration allowing you to use your voice to toggle and control the smart devices in your home, the picture for Home Hub becomes complete: it brings Windows 10 to the center of your entire home. Microsoft is building a…
Microsoft is working on a new design language for Windows 10 codenamed Project NEON
Microsoft has made several adjustments to its design language over the last few years, starting with Windows 8 and evolving into what we now know as "Microsoft Design Language 2" or MDL2 in Windows 10. With MDL2 being the current design language used throughout Windows 10, Microsoft has plans to begin using a much more streamlined design language with Redstone 3, codenamed Project NEON. A Metro 2.0? Cassim Ketfi at Numerama.com confirms our information and has heard Project NEON called "basically Metro 2". That designation refers to the first Metro…
Satya Nadella: Microsoft building the ‘ultimate mobile device’
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has again reaffirmed the company’s commitment to developing smartphones. Unfazed by its market share dropping beneath 1 percent, Nadella said Microsoft is planning a revolutionary “ultimate mobile device.” Nadella made the comments during an interview with the Australian Financial Review. He visited Sydney last week to address a local developers conference about Microsoft’s cognitive computing systems and Azure cloud services. Nadella outlined his plans for Microsoft’s future involvement with smartphones. He suggested the company has stopped trying to rival the established leaders in the field. Instead,…
Xamarin Forms and Google Mobile Ads for iOS: update
In my previous post I explaind how to add on your application advertising. In those days Xamarin has removed from the Component Store the component called Google Mobile Ads for iOS. Now you have to install another component called Firebase AdMob for iOS. After installed this component you can see in your Output window a similar info without see an advert in your app: 2016-11-18 11:28:14.853 WordBankEasy.iOS[11103:2250070] <Google> You must set the rootViewController property of <GADBannerView: 0x1034702c0; frame = (-10 0; 320 50); clipsToBounds = YES; layer = <CALayer: 0x174e39d40>>…
Microsoft delivers test builds of Visual Studio for Mac, Visual Studio 2017 for Windows
Visual Studio for Mac is not a port of Visual Studio for Windows; it’s a rebranded version of Xamarin Studio integrated development environment (IDE) that will work on the Mac. (Microsoft bought mobile-tool vendor Xamarin in February 2016.) Visual Studio for Mac is available as of today as a preview for download. Visual Studio 2017 is the official name of the product Microsoft has been calling "Visual Studio Next" and/or codename "VS ’15’." As of today, a near-final Release Candidate version of that product is available to testers. The RC…
Store and Ads to Deliver $189 Billion to Publishers in 2020
Apps are increasingly becoming the go-to resource for communication, entertainment, shopping, productivity and more. As a result, the time consumers spend in apps has exploded. Coupled with the growth of the global installed base of smartphones and tablets, this will set the stage for significant revenue growth. This expanding revenue opportunity will not be exclusive to the top apps and categories, but will be more widely spread across the app economy. In order to fully capitalize on the app economy’s exceptional growth, publishers need to anticipate future market opportunities when…
Xamarin Forms Components
Hello guys! From today on Nuget there are 4 new components for Xamarin Forms created by me. MVVM Helpers Bindable Picker EnumBindable Picker TabControl Happy coding!
Windows switching to differential patching in the Creators Update
Major Windows 10 updates, including this summer’s Anniversary Update and next year’s Creators Update, are distributed as essentially full operating system installs. The downloads are around 4GB, and installing them performs a complete in-place upgrade to Windows. That is set to change as Microsoft rolls out what it calls its Unified Update Platform (UUP). Major upgrades will be shipped as differential updates, where only the differences between the currently installed version and the newly installed version need to be downloaded. The company estimates that this will result in major version…
Microsoft takes on Slack with its new Microsoft Teams app
Microsoft today announced a major new app at its Office event in New York City. The company’s new service, Microsoft Teams is its own take on the popular team communication tool, Slack. We reported about Microsoft Teams just 2 months ago, and Microsoft is officially launching it in a limited preview for Office 365 users today. Microsoft, however, is calling Teams a group chatting software which will be accessiblefrom the Web, Windows PC, Mac, iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. Firstly, let’s get the basics covered: Microsoft Teams lets you share…
AWS public cloud is twice as big as Microsoft, Google, IBM combined
Amazon Web Services is utterly dominating the competition, taking 45 percent of worldwide revenues for public cloud services, according to a new analysis. Microsoft and Google might be increasing public cloud revenues faster than AWS, but they’ve also got a long way to go to come close to catching up, a new analysis from Synergy Research Group shows. The combined revenues from Microsoft, Google, and IBM amount to less than 20 percent of worldwide infrastructure-as-a-service, or IaaS, revenues in Q3 2016, compared with AWS’s 45 percent, the research firm reports.
Microsoft is building a quantum computer that may never work
Microsoft is working on a quantum computer that uses what are called “non-abelian anyons,” a quasiparticle that physicists aren’t sure even exist. Quantum computers promise to perform calculations at unfathomably faster rathes than today’s computers. Although other companies are using more realistic, proven materials in their work to create the machine, Microsoft is hopeful that its unique approach will pay dividends as the resultant machine should be less susceptible to external interference. The company has nearly 40 people working on the project, as quantum computing is seen as well worth…
Convert Hex Color Code to Brush/SolidColorBrush in XAML App
To set the background color of an object in .NET XAML, you will need to set the Brush object type. To create a Brush object from a hexadecimal color code, use the following. //input ex: #dcdcdc public static Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.SolidColorBrush GetColorFromHex(string hexaColor) { return new Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.SolidColorBrush( Windows.UI.Color.FromArgb( 255, Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(1, 2), 16), Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(3, 2), 16), Convert.ToByte(hexaColor.Substring(5, 2), 16) ) ); } Happy coding!
Nadella: ‘Windows is the most open platform there is’
When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he asked what the company’s place in the world is, and how it could make the biggest contribution. What he kept coming back to was that the company builds things that empower people to build their own things. When he looked at Microsoft, he saw software that could be a force to "democratize and empower people." Nadella articulated what that vision means for the future of Azure, Windows, Office, Cortana, Linkedin, and more during his keynote address – on a telepresence…
Microsoft research works on “touching” virtual reality objects
Microsoft Research has presented a new way to interact with virtual reality by touch. As haptic solutions for virtual reality, NormalTouch and TextureTouch 3D haptic shape controllers are able to explore the virtual space with just your finger. Currently, the controller only supports the index finger, but who knows what else could be developed with further innovations. The 3D objects are tracked in virtual reality with the Optitrack system and presented through the Oculus Rift headset. The NormalTouch renders the surface of virtual objects by using a flat platform that…
Microsoft warns iOS isn’t as secure as you think
Microsoft has warned customers that iOS is no more secure than Android, contradicting commonly held beliefs about the relative security of the two platforms. The company said that recent attacks targeting iOS prove it’s as vulnerable as Android. Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for enterprise and client mobility, set out his views in a company blog post last week. He used the Pegasus iOS spyware, revealed last month, as an example of severe vulnerabilities present in iOS. Pegasus is capable of monitoring everything a user does on their device,…
Microsoft to launch new Surface PC at October 26th event
Microsoft is holding a special Windows 10 and Surface event in New York City later this month. The software giant has started emailing out invites to an event on October 26th, and Microsoft is expected to make some Xbox-related announcements at the event, alongside new Surface hardware and some details on the company’s next Windows 10 software update. Microsoft’s event isn’t expected to be as large, or involve as much hardware. Surface-branded keyboards and a mouse have started leaking ahead of Microsoft’s event, and the company is widely expected to…
$.ajax No ‘Access-Control-Allow-Origin’ header is present on the requested resource with WebAPI
I want to get data from a WebAPI with jquery $("#btnSend").click(function () { $("#sending").show(); $.ajax({ type: ‘GET’, url: ‘/Report/SendEmail?quote=18’, crossDomain: true, success: function (msg) { if (msg == ‘True’) { alert(‘Email sent to the client’); } $("#sending").hide(); }, error: function (request, status, error) { $("#sending").hide(); } }); }); and it produce ‘No Access-Control-Allow-Origin’ header is present on the requested resource error. The solution is to add in the result of the WebAPI the following code: Response.Headers.Add(“Access-Control-Allow-Methods”, “GET, POST”); Response.Headers.Add(“Access-Control-Allow-Headers”, “accept, authority”); Response.Headers.Add(“Access-Control-Allow-Credentials”, “true”); Happy coding!
Multi Step Form with Progress Bar using jQuery and CSS3
Got long forms on your website ? Break them up into smaller logical sections and convert it into a multi-step form with a cool progress bar. Could work for lengthy processes like registration, checkout, profile fillups, 2-factor authentication logins, etc. The form has 3 fieldsets containing the 3 different sections of the form. The fieldsets are absolutely positioned and only the first one is visible by default. Moving to the next section fades out the current fieldset using jQuery .animate() and brings in the next fieldset from the right. The…