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…
Alan Turing’s computer-generated music gets restored after 65 years
Alan Turing is considered to be one of the fathers of computer science. He played a crucial role in World War II counter intelligence and worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. He was also responsible for breaking a large number of Nazi ciphers, including the German Enigma code. After the war, Turing continued his work as a pioneer computer engineer, and developed what’s considered to be one of the first designs for a stored-program computer. But it seems code breaking wasn’t Turing’s only talent. Now…
Custom editor render for Xamarin on iOS
In Xamairin the Editor component doesn’t have a border on iOS. If you want to add one in the iOS project just added the following code. using UIKit; using WordBankEasy.iOS.Renderers; using Xamarin.Forms; using Xamarin.Forms.Platform.iOS; [assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(Editor), typeof(CustomEditorRenderer))] namespace PSC.iOS.Renderers { public class CustomEditorRenderer : EditorRenderer { protected override void OnElementChanged( ElementChangedEventArgs<Editor> e) { base.OnElementChanged(e); if(Control != null) { Control.Layer.BorderColor = UIColor.FromRGB(204, 204, 204).CGColor; Control.Layer.BorderWidth = 0.5f; Control.Layer.CornerRadius = 3f; } } } } Happy coding!
Preserve data when deploying Xamarin.Android app
By default all your data from your previous runs is deleted when you’re deploying an Xamarin.Android app. In many cases you don’t want the data to be deleted. Visual Studio To preserve data go to Tools -> Options -> Xamarin -> Android Settings and check “Preserve application data/cache on device between deploys”. Xamarin Studio To preserve data go to Tools -> Options -> Android and check “Preserve data/cache between application deploys”. Happy coding!
“System.IO.FileNotFoundException” using controls from another assembly in Xamarin Forms on iOS.
I was building a Xamarin solution with my components like that: All my components (PSC.Xamarin.Controls.*) are working fine in other solutions.Always fine for Windows or UWP solutions. A problem was born when I started to deployed my solutions on iOS. When on the app I opened a page with my controls I always received an error like: System.IO.FileNotFoundException: Could not load file or assembly ‘PSC.Xamarin.Controls.BindablePicker’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. I can check my references and deployment settings in all ways, it turns…
Google opens Chromebooks to Android store
Google’s Chromebook update will allow the inexpensive laptops to run apps from the Android store opening them up to apps from Microsoft Word to Quicken.
What is the difference between Xamarin.Form’s layout options?
In Xamarin.Forms every View has the two properties HorizontalOptions and VerticalOptions. Both are of type LayoutOptions and can have one of the following values: LayoutOptions.Start LayoutOptions.Center LayoutOptions.End LayoutOptions.Fill LayoutOptions.StartAndExpand LayoutOptions.CenterAndExpand LayoutOptions.EndAndExpand LayoutOptions.FillAndExpand Apparently it controls the view’s alignment on the parent view. But how exactly is the behavior of each individual option? And what is the difference between Fill and the suffix Expand? Theory The structure LayoutOptions controls two distinct behaviors: Alignment: How is the view aligned within the parent view? Start: For vertical alignment the view is moved to…
Android required permissions
In Visual Studio 2015 if you checked same permissions on your project properties and when reopen it, your checks are disappeared, you have two ways: Is the manifest file marked as ‘read only’ in Windows Explorer? You have to select the Properties directory and un-tick ‘read only’ for the entire folder. Add manually in AndroidManifest.xml file same new rows: <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?> <manifest xmlns:android=”https://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android”> <uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion=”15″ /> <application android:label=”$safename$”> <meta-data android:name=”com.google.android.maps.v2.API_KEY” android:value=”yourcode” /> </application> <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.INTERNET” /> <uses-permission android:name=”com.google.android.providers.gsf.permission.READ_GSERVICES” /> <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE” /> <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION” /> <uses-permission android:name=”android.permission.ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION” /> <uses-permission…
All Windows 10 PCs will get Windows Holographic access next year
Windows 10 users will be able to dive into mixed reality starting next year, with an update planned that can let any “mainstream” Windows 10 PC run the Windows Holographic shell the company first revealed in January 2015. The update will allow users to multi-task in mixed reality environments, which combine traditional 2D Windows 10 apps with immersive, 3D graphical environments. These will be enabled via a range of “6 degrees of freedom devices,” input devices that add positional tracking to other more traditional forms of input, like clicking and…
Custom ContextAction with Xamarin Forms
I using a Xamarin Forms ListView and I want to enable or disable the Context Actions based on a certain binding or in the code behind. The way I found is to use BindingContextChanged in a ViewCell. I show you an example <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?> <ContentPage xmlns=”https://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms” xmlns:x=”https://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml”> <ContentPage.Content> <StackLayout> <ListView x:Name=”listDictionaries” ItemsSource=”{Binding DictionariesList}” IsVisible=”{Binding ShowList}” HorizontalOptions=”FillAndExpand” VerticalOptions=”FillAndExpand” HasUnevenRows=”true” IsPullToRefreshEnabled=”true” RefreshCommand=”{Binding Refresh}” SeparatorVisibility=”Default” ItemTapped=”OnItemTapped” IsRefreshing=”{Binding IsBusy, Mode=OneWay}”> <ListView.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <ViewCell BindingContextChanged=”OnBindingContextChanged”> <ViewCell.View> <StackLayout> <Grid Padding=”10″ ColumnSpacing=”10″> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height=”*” /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width=”Auto” /> <ColumnDefinition Width=”*” /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>…
Android.Content.Res.Resources+NotFoundException: Resource ID #0x0
I’ve just created a simple MasterDetailPage and in the code I inserted an icon for the left page with: public MainPage() { InitializeComponent(); BackgroundColor = Color.FromHex("#007acc"); Icon = "settings.png"; } I tried to deploy my app on an Android emulator but I can’t deploy it because Android.Content.Res.Resources+NotFoundException: Resource ID #0x0. I checked everthing and evething seemed fine. The problem is the icon! You have to remove Icon from the code and in the XAML page type the following code: <ContentPage.Icon> <OnPlatform x:TypeArguments=”FileImageSource”> <OnPlatform.iOS>settings.png</OnPlatform.iOS> </OnPlatform> </ContentPage.Icon> Happy coding!
Visual Studio updates Xamarin
When you open Visual Studio 2015 and there is a pop windows to invite you to click on it for updating Xamarin and you click, nothing happends. There is a bug but clicking the update available popup was fixed in one of the recent releases. You can manually update in the Options menu under Tools. As for the errors, I get those all the time. Support packages can often be a problem. Update to the latest XF package. Try deleting bin, obj, and the contents of packages folders and rebuild.
Start Edge Animate when is in the screen
I’ve come across a few sites that will tie window scrolling with animation. When used in a subtle, small fashion, this is kind of cool. When used to change large portions of the view or really screw with scrolling, I detect it. Like most things, it all comes down to how you use it I suppose. But I was thinking recently – how can we do this with Edge Animate? Change edgePreload.js In a file calles something_edgePreload.js you find a line similar to the follow: if (AdobeEdge.bootstrapLoading) { signaledLoading =…
Microsoft REST API Design Guidelines
Microsoft is publishing its “REST API Design Guidelines” to the API community: https://www.GitHub.com/microsoft/api-guidelines/. These guidelines represent a multi-year, cross-company, collaborative process aggregating the collective experience of hundreds of engineers designing, operating, and running global scale cloud services from across Microsoft; and listening to feedback on our APIs from customers and partners. We have attempted to incorporate those learnings along with industry best practices in the API space to create guidelines that API teams across Microsoft use on a daily basis. Our hope in publishing these guidelines to the greater API…
Continuous: C# and F# IDE for the iPad by Frank A. Krueger
Continuous gives you the power of a traditional desktop .NET IDE – full C# 6 and F# 4 language support with semantic highlighting and code completion – while also featuring live code execution so you don’t have to wait around for code to compile and run. Continuous works completely offline so you get super fast compiles and your code is secure. Continuous gives you access to all of .NET’s standard library, F#’s core library, all of Xamarin’s iOS binding, and Xamarin.Forms. Access to all of these libraries means you won’t…
How to update the data in listview in Xamarin.Forms?
First you add a new class as a ViewModel like: public class RoomViewModel : BaseViewModel { [here following code] } If you don’t have BaseViewModel try to download from nuget Refractored.MvvmHelpers. Then in your class define an observable collection like public ObservableCollection<RoomRecommandation> _roomSuggestionList = new ObservableCollection<RoomRecommandation>(); public ObservableCollection<RoomRecommandation> Recommendations { get { return _roomSuggestionList; } } In your ContentPage add a listview like: <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding Recommendations}"> <ListView.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <ViewCell> <Grid Padding="10" RowSpacing="10" ColumnSpacing="10"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <controls:CircleImage…