Canadian Developer Connection

Certification Jump Starts

Jonathan Rozenblit — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:49:47 GMT

You’ve seen many posts in the past about the value of certification, so I won’t get into it here. Bottom line, as far as I am concerned, certifications are one of the best ways to differentiate yourself amongst other developers. If you think about how much time you invest in the technologies you work with and learn about, wouldn’t you want a way to show others that investment? I would.

But learning is one thing and taking exams are other. There’s always that fear of what exactly will be on the exam, what areas it will cover, or whether you know enough to be able to write the exam. To help you feel more comfortable, Microsoft Virtual Academy has recently added a whole slew of Jump Start courses that roughly follow the criteria of the different certification exams. Though there’s no guarantee that these Jump Starts will ensure that you pass your exam, they are an excellent study companion to help you go through the content and ensure that you know and understand the key concepts.

Here’s what’s available today (Note: there are some that are not yet available on-demand. If you register and tune in on the scheduled dates, you can take the opportunity to interact with the trainers and ask questions!):

Windows Store – C#

Programming in C# Jump Start (Exam 70-483: Programming in C#)
This developer training course covers C#, Microsoft’s managed C-style language for the .Net Framework. In typical Jump Start fashion, this session will be engaging and demo rich. It provides sample after sample to show simple and complex techniques you can take back to your workplace. This course loosely follows the criteria for exam 70-483, it is tailored for intermediary to seasoned developers looking to bulk up on C# or for a refresher on core concepts and features.
Essentials of Developing Windows Store App Using C# Jump Start (Exam 70-484: Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using C#)
This Jump Start covers Developing Windows Store Apps using C#. In typical Jump Start fashion it will be filled with lots of demos and fun. It provides sample after sample to show simple and complex techniques you can take back to your workplace. This course loosely follows the criteria for exam 70-484, it is tailored for intermediary to seasoned developers looking to create Windows Store Apps. It will provide an overview on creating the User Interface layout and structure using XAML, how to implement the AppBar and layout controls, how to deploy a Windows Store app to the Windows Store or an enterprise store, and much more…
Advanced Windows Store App Development using C# Jump Start (Exam 70-485: Advanced Windows Store App Development Using C#)
May 23, 2013 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM PT

This Jump Start is an accelerated overview of Advanced Windows Store App Development Using C#. It is an intermediate to advanced event to help prepare learners for Microsoft exam 70-485.

Windows Store – HTML5/CSS

Developing in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Jump Start (Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3) This course provides an accelerated introduction to HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript and helps students learn basic HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript programming skills. It focuses on using HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript to implement programming logic, define and use variables, perform looping and branching, develop user interfaces, capture and validate user input, store data, and create well-structured applications. This course uses Visual Studio 2012, running on Windows 8.
Developing Windows Store Apps with HTML5 Jump Start (Exam 70-481: Essentials of Developing Windows Store Apps using HTML5 and JavaScript)
How different is Windows 8? What is the rush to build apps for the Windows 8 platform and why are developer communities reacting differently to Windows 8? This Windows Store App Development Jump Start is the second in a series introducing HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript and helps students learn HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript programming skills. This course is an entry point into both the Web application and Windows Store apps and helps learners prepare for Microsoft exam 70-481.
Advanced Windows Store App Development with HTML5 Jump Start (Exam 70-482: Advanced Windows Store App Development using HTML5 and JavaScript)
Looking to create Windows 8 apps? This fast-paced Jump Start dives deeper into the advanced programming skills and techniques required to optimize Windows Store apps, so that your apps can stand out from others in the Windows Store. We’ll combine both design and development skills, and you’ll learn about supporting the apps you’ve published to the Windows Store.

Web Exams

Building Web Apps with ASP.NET Jump Start (Exam 70-486: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications)
This Jump Start is tailored for experienced application developers interested in leveraging ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2012 to offer modern apps that target modern browsers. Three of Microsoft’s most seasoned ASP.NET speakers provide an accelerated introduction to building web applications development with ASP.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET MVC 4 targeting key scenarios like building mobile ready websites, social web applications, and much more.

Windows Phone

Building Apps for Windows Phone 8 Jump Start (Exam 70-599: Pro: Designing and Developing Windows Phone Applications)
This Windows Phone app development course is tailored for developers looking to leverage C#/XAML to build cool apps and games for Windows Phone 8. This platform is another leap forward in Microsoft’s overall mobile strategy and the developer community has taken notice. Now is the time to embrace your opportunity and start building Windows Phone apps. If you’re a developer or architect who needs to move beyond the hype and come face-to-face with what’s real, you will love this experience.
Build Apps for Both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Jump Start (Exam 70-599: Pro: Designing and Developing Windows Phone Applications)
This session compares and contrasts Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 with a focus on understanding how developers can maximize code reuse when building for both platforms ("code sharing"). This Windows 8 Jump Start training targets developers with some experience developing for the Windows Phone and want to develop apps for both Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8. Through engaging demos, Ben dives into guidance, best practices, patterns and techniques that will help developers deliver apps for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 with maximum code reuse.

Application Lifecycle Management Exams

Applying ALM with Visual Studio 2012 Jump Start (Exam 70-498: Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management)

This Jump Start targets application development teams interested in leveraging Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) to improve their development processes and deliver continuous value with Visual Studio 2012. This fast-paced course is tailored for seasoned developers looking to put these skills to use right away. Additionally, this course follows the criteria for exam 70-498 and will provide accelerated preparation for this important exam in the MCSD: ALM track.
Software Testing with Visual Studio 2012 (exam 70-497) Jump Start
May 28, 2013 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM PT

Improve how your team manages test coverage to better mitigate issues throughout your organization’s development process. You can leverage the tools built into Visual Studio 2012 to track back work items and test cases to business goals and measurable requirements to make testing a valuable part of your application lifecycle management (ALM). This course follows the criteria for exam 70-497 and will provide accelerated preparation for this important exam in the MCSD: ALM track.
Administering Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 (exam 70-496) Jump Start
May 29, 2013 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM PT

Learn how to make Team Foundation Server (TFS) better serve your team processes and the ways you communicate. For the person who sets up and customizes TFS infrastructure, you will learn how to better define the types of work items available and their attributes to fully leverage the TFS platform for application lifecycle management (ALM). This full day of training will provide numerous examples, scenarios and demos. This course follows the criteria for exam 70-496 and will provide accelerated preparation for this important exam in the MCSD: ALM track.

Join the Conversation

Given that this is a new type of learning content that is being made available, I’d love to hear from those of you who have participated in one of these live Jump Starts or watched them on-demand what you thought of the format and whether they have, indeed, made you feel more comfortable to go and write your exam. Start a new conversation in the Canadian Developer Connection group on LinkedIn or share your thoughts in an existing conversation.

#DevMov: The Developer Movement Grand Finale Party

Jonathan Rozenblit — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:55:06 GMT

It’s been a great year for the Developer Movement. We’ve seen a ton of new Windows 8 apps published by hundreds of Canadian Developers. Nice work everyone! The Developer Movement program winds down at the end of June, but it’s not over yet! To celebrate the Grand Finale and the Developer Movement Final Challenge, join us for the #DevMov Twitter party – an hour of tweeting, Q&A, prize giveaways, and more.

More importantly, do you want to find out what the Developer Movement Final Challenge is before everyone else does? Be there.

Here’s everything you need to know in order to participate:

WHEN: Sunday, May 12 at 8:00pm – 9:00pm ET (7:00pm – 8:00pm CT, 6:00pm – 7:00pm MT, 5:00pm – 6:00pm PT)
HOST: @cdndevs
HOW TO JOIN IN – Follow the hashtag #DevMov and use it in your tweets
RSVP: Head over to the #DevMov Plancast page and leave your Twitter handle as a comment! That’s it!

The Prizes

We can’t have a party without giving away prizes! So here they are:


Beats Headset	External Drives	Games

and of course Developer Movement T-shirts!

Spread the Word

Help us spread the word to fellow developers and app builders across Canada! The more the merrier! Tweet about the #DevMov party. Here are some sample tweets you can use or, of course, you can create your own (just make sure that you include #DevMov):

Just RSVPd for #DevMov Twitter party http://aka.ms/DevMovParty 5/12 Final Challenge news, Q&A, prizes #DeveloperMovement	Tweet
#DeveloperMovement's having a party http://aka.ms/DevMovParty 5/12 ... prizes, Q&A, final challenge news. Be there. #DevMov	Tweet

Stay connected after the party

Since this party is all about social, this would be a great time to also invite you to:

‘LIKE’ our new Microsoft Developer page on Facebook
Follow @msdev on Twitter - your resource for development tips, tricks, research, case studies...Everything you need to develop apps that users love.
Follow @cdndevs on Twitter – your one-stop for Canadian developer news, events, discussions, and more.
Subscribe to the Canadian Developer Connection Events Hub on Plancast to be notified of developer events happening online and offline throughout the country as soon as they are announced!

Rules and Regulations

Of course, with every contest, there are rules and regulations. Check them out here.

Not sure what the Developer Movement is?

Come out to the party! It’ll be a good opportunity for you to learn more about the Developer Movement.

In a nutshell, though, the Developer Movement is Canada’s app building rewards program. As you build Windows Store and/or Windows Phone apps, backed by Windows Azure services, you earn points that you can use towards rewards such as gizmos and gadgets, home theatre systems, laptops, and others. You can also earn additional points by participating in Developer Movement challenges. If you’re not already a member of the Developer Movement, join today! (You actually start earning reward points simply by signing up.)

April Showers Lead to May Flowers…and an Updated Windows Store App

Jonathan Rozenblit — Wed, 01 May 2013 21:57:32 GMT

I don’t know about you, but I’m so excited that May is upon us… it’s about time! The winter was starting to feel like it was never going to end! But it did give us an opportunity to use those not-so-great-weather days to get some updates done on the Canadian Developer Connection Windows Store app, which has now been updated in the Windows Store.

Here are the updates we’ve made:

Updated Layout

We’ve updated the layout to make it easier to access the different posts, events calendar, on-demand shows and sessions. Now you get the latest of everything right there, and everything else can be accessed via the “Show All >>” button. Same great content just less clutter.

More information on on-demand content

The on-demand content pages have been updated to include a description of the content.

Now you’ll know the details of what you’re watching as the content is loading.

More frequent updates

Outfitted with a background task, the app now automatically gets the latest blog posts, events, and on-demand content when it is made available, rather than having to go into the app and check yourself if there’s something new. Now you can rest assured that you’re not missing anything.

Know what’s new right from your Start screen

With the automatic updates, you now also get updated Live Tiles that will alternate, showing the latest posts, videos, and more. These will keep you up to date right from your Start screen.

Event reminders

Using Toast Notifications, the app now reminds you of upcoming developer events – another way to make sure that you aren’t missing anything. If you wish, of course, you can turn these notifications off, as well as customize how far in advance you’d like to receive the notification.

Underneath the covers

Last but not least, we’ve also made several tweaks that you can’t see, but as a result, you’ll get a much better and faster experience as you use the app.

Download the app

So if you haven’t done so already, head over to the Windows Store and download the Canadian Developer Connection.

Have Suggestions? Encounter a bug?

Since we want to make sure that the Canadian Developer Connection is one of your favourite apps, if you think of something that the app is missing or can do better, please let us know – start a new conversation in the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group with your thoughts. With a conversation going on LinkedIn, you can inspire others to contribute their feedback as well.

Hope you enjoy using the app as much as we’ve enjoyed making (and updating it)!

Special thanks to Sébastien Lachance for his continued work on the app

Sébastien Lachance is a software developer who specializes in Windows Store and Windows Phone app development. When he’s not in front on a computer, he’s playing bridge (he’s even written an app for that), biking, and reading technical books.

More apps by Sébastien >>

Photo credit: isstudio

Canada Does Windows Azure–TopThat

Jonathan Rozenblit — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:00:00 GMT

I believe that the best way to learn is to learn from each other, so I’m always on the search for stories of Canadian developers who have either built new applications using Windows Azure services or have migrated existing applications to Windows Azure. This is the story of TopThat, a BizSpark startup.

TOPTHAT

TopThat's competitive network lets people upload and tag their best images and videos capturing life's random moments, crazy stunts and top performances and pit them against others to see who can TopThat! It boasts a responsive design making it available on any mobile device through a web app or via the traditional desktop experience. TopThat delivers a platform for SMBs to host competitive participatory marketing campaigns. In turn these competitions provides them the perfect opportunity to develop brand lyalty and increase a brand/business' social presence. For their consumers, it increase engagement and creates brand promoters out of them as they use their social graphs to promote their entries and thus your brand.

BRANDON CARUANA

With over 10 years of development experience, Brandon is a knowledgeable and skilled professional. He has extensive experience using a number of industry standard legal, financial, social networks and user generated content systems and developing software to integrate those systems together seamlessly. Enthusiasm, commitment, organized, team work skills and leadership qualities are some of the characteristics recognized by past employers and colleagues; all of which have been demonstrated by an exceptional quality of work in his career history.

BIZSPARK

BizSpark is for startups who are developing software! So if that's you, and you've been doing so for less than 5 years, made less than a million in revenue per year, have less than 10 employees and are privately owned then welcome to BizSpark! What do you get? Free software, cloud hosting and more. More >>

Visual Studio ‒ It Just Keeps Getting Better

Marc Gagné — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:48:00 GMT

With Visual Studio Update 2 the IDE of choice for many developers just keeps getting better and better. I'm already a big fan of Visual Studio, it's pretty much the best IDE for a number of platforms and with these recent updates it's just that much more awesome. As someone who's worked on the MS stack for quite some time as well as having first joined Microsoft back in 2006 I cannot tell you just how exciting it is to see these frequent releases. I'm a big fan of agile and iterative development and seeing a large organization such as Microsoft's Developer Division embrace this model is very exciting stuff! Speaking of agile, it's at the forefront of this update.

Kanban support

Within this update Team Foundation Server (TFS) has been extended with a number of improvements for the agile folks. A big request has been for Kanban support which I'm happy to see has been added. I'm also happy to see that this new Kanban board can be customized to fit your team's needs.

Custom tagging

Another small but in my opinion significant addition is the ability to tag work items in TFS. This makes it a whole lot easier to not only segment items & find them quicker, but opens up the possibility for more flexible reporting and analysis. Why is this interesting? Because you can use tagging to see the types of work items that affect burn down rates but also which types of items result in the most bugs, or when you are sizing a work item, you can find similar ones to see how long they took. All this from simply adding some meta-data to a work item!

Browser Based Test Cases

TFS got a lot of love in this update including the ability to access test cases from the browser. Why is this important? Well not only can manage your test cases via the browser, but you can also run them and see the list of steps for a given test. As you proceed through the test you can check each step off and indicate which step failed and record your observations right there without having to switch tools. When you indicate a step has failed a bug is created and the information is automatically populated, which having worked with various QA teams, I can tell you is going to make a lot of people very happy.

Windows Phone Unit Testing

I know many of you Windows Phone developers have been asking for this feature so here it is. You can now write Unit Tests for Windows Phone in C# by creating a new “Windows Phone Unit Test App” project under Visual C#/Windows Phone. Tests are executed on the target device by installing the Unit Test app on the phone. What about automated testing and what if you don't want to launch the tests manually from Visual Studio? No worries, they thought about that too. Since Phone UT is designed as an adapter to unit testing platform, you can use vstest.console.exe to execute unit tests from command line.

But wait, there's more!

There's so much goodness in this update that the above only scratches the surface. So if you'd like to learn more check out this great Channel 9 Video that discusses this update, or check out Soma's blog post on the topic. Or for the truly hardcore check out the entire list of changes right here.

Let us know...

What's your favorite new feature? Let us know in the comments below or on twitter.

Building Secure Windows Phone 8 Apps – APIs and Techniques

Jonathan Rozenblit — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 03:39:40 GMT

Security on the Brain

Security is something we all know is important, but is it something that we always do? Most likely, not always. That’s partially because security is complex and takes time to implement. Many of you, these days, don’t have that time (it’s all about shortest time-to-market, right?) to think about security. You make sure that minimal security checks and balances are there, but that’s about it. Totally understand.

But security doesn’t have to be complex to implement once you know what you have already available to you in the frameworks and products that you use every day. Over the course of the next few weeks, check back often as we’ll be demystifying different aspects of application security, simple things you can do to protect your applications, how to use the tools and frameworks you’re already using as your lines of defense against hacking, and more.

Feel free to start or join discussions in the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group to give and receive thoughts and feedback on these or any other topics from fellow Canadian developers and experts.

In continuation of his post from yesterday, Building Secure Windows Phone 8 Apps – The Platform, in this Mark Arteaga goes over some of the APIs and techniques that can help you secure your apps and give your users a safe feeling when using your apps.

Guest post by Mark Arteaga, Microsoft MVP

Building Secure Windows Phone 8 Apps (Part 2 of 2) – APIs and Techniques

In my previous post, I covered some of the security features from a platform level available with Windows Phone 8. In this post, I’ll go through some of APIs available to help secure your applications, what Windows Phone gives you out of the box and also various ways to secure your applications.

Secure Sockets Layer

SSL certificates allow you to connect securely to a backend webserver by encrypting the communication channel using the HTTPS protocol. Depending on your use case, you may want to implement an SSL certificate in your backend web services to make it difficult to intercept and decipher the data being sent by your app.

For example, if are building a game and have a leader board in the backend, you may want to encrypt this channel to prevent someone from submitting some false data.

As a developer, there is nothing special you have to do in your code when accessing a secure URL other than making sure you use the HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP which is not secure. For example

You should be aware that not every SSL certificate will work on Windows Phone and you should verify the certificate authority

I buy my certificates form K-Software which is a reseller of Comodo (but a lot cheaper) and have not had a problem with these. But whatever you buy, verify with the lists above.

User Authentication

Some applications may want to authenticate and authorize users to allow access into certain features of their app. Some methods I have used in the past are

Basic Authentication
Authentication via a web service
Forms Based Authentication

Although I don’t have sample code, these can easily be accomplished using a combination of HttpWebRequest, HttpRequestHeader and the WebHeaderCollection classes. Whenever using these types of authentication, you should use the HTTPs protocol to secure the communication channel. If you don’t, user information gets sent in plain text or Base64 encoded in the case of Basic Authentication.

Encrypting Local Data

Most Windows Phone apps will store some kind of data locally and whether you are saving files or a database to isolated storage. In some circumstances you may want to protect the data by encrypting the files or database.

Encrypting a Database

Encrypting a database is pretty straight forward and all you essentially have to do is provide a password in your connection string as follows

You should be aware, that if someone should decompile your code, they may get access to the password and be able to decrypt the database. With the Windows Phone platform security features put in place, this will be more challenging, but you may still want to not hardcode this password and possibly use the users “hashed username” or some other mechanism as the database password instead.

Data Protection API

In the past, using the classes in System.Security.Cryptography was how developers could encrypt their data when saved to Isolated Storage. If you implemented this by hardcoding your salt and password inside your code, then whatever you saved to isolated storage was not really secure as the salt and password could still be obtained.

The Data Protection API or DPAPI helps solve this by generating and storing a cryptographic key by using a combination of the user and device credentials. This key is in turn used to encrypt and decrypt any data you pass it. Also, every key that is created is unique to every app, so these keys cannot be interchanged.

Using DPAPI is pretty straight forward and you will find it under System.Security.Cryptography.ProtectedData class and using the Protect and Unprotect methods. Here is an example use for encrypting some data

Push Notifications

Sending push notifications are a great way to stay engaged with your users and get them to keep opening your app, especially if the app revenue model is ads. MSDN covers how to send push notifications for Windows Phone extensively but when your app goes production, it is recommended you use an authenticated web service to send push notifications to Windows Phone over HTTPS and not just HTTP. Not only is it more secure, but non-authenticated web services are rate limited to 500 push notifications per subscription day whereas authenticated web services are not throttled at all.

Conclusion

In the previous post I went over some of the platform security features available on Windows Phone to help protect users and a Windows Phone developers work. In this article I described some of the APIs and techniques available on Windows Phone to help secure your applications such as HTTPs, database encryption and cryptography.

Again, these posts do not cover everything on security but it should be enough to get your started on securing your apps or if you have not thought about it before to start thinking about it. Be sure to read over Building Secure Windows Store Apps as those techniques and concepts are definitely valid on Windows Phone.

As always, if you have any specific questions or concerns about Windows Phone app security, how to implement any of these, or if you read something that you want to find more about, feel free to start a new discussion in the Canadian Developer Connection LinkedIn group. Mark, community experts, and your fellow Canadian developers are there to answer and share.

This post is cross-posted from Mark Arteaga’s blog.

Building Secure Windows Phone 8 Apps – The Platform

Jonathan Rozenblit — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:02:00 GMT

It would not be right of us to talk about how to build secure Windows Store apps and not do the same for Windows Phone apps. In this first of two guest posts, Mark Arteaga explores the security features that are built right into the Windows Phone platform.

Guest post by Mark Arteaga, Microsoft MVP

Building Secure Windows Phone 8 Apps (Part 1 of 2) – The Platform

Application security for developers is a very large topic, but Windows Phone does make adding security to an app easier for developers and also to help keep an end users data safe. With an article recently published on Building Secure Windows Store Apps, pretty much all of those concepts can be used on Windows Phone 8. I thought it fitting to describe some of the security features available on Windows Phone that developers get for free and what is available to use within their apps.

Trusted Boot & Code Signing

Windows Phone 8 is based on the ARM version of Windows 8 so a lot of the security features available on the desktop come for free on the phone such as Trusted Boot and Code Signing. What are these for? Basically these features help protect the phone boot process and operating system from malware attacks (ie rootkits) by making sure only validated software components execute. The Trusted Boot technology validates Windows Phone firmware images and all boot components have digital signatures that are cryptographically validated. This helps ensure that only authorized code can execute to initialize the device and load the operating system, Windows Phone.

This helps protect the integrity of the phone and also the end user from potential malware.

App Platform Security

As the Windows Phone platform is pretty well protected with Trusted Boot and Code Signing, there is still the opportunity for other forms of malware that could make its way to the end users phone that could potentially disclose or capture user’s data or even corporate data. There are a few things Microsoft does to prevent this which developers should be aware of.

Chambers - Introduced with Windows Phone 7 security model, you can think of a chamber as your app running within its own sandbox or silo not having any access to other apps chambers. Every app, including Microsoft apps, OEM Apps and Third Party Apps will run in their own chamber and have to declare their capabilities.
Capabilities - A chamber will disclose what operating system capabilities an app is required to use to function. A capability can be accessing user location using GPS, camera access, sensor access, and microphone access as well as others.

The following is a list developers should know when developing for Windows Phone:

If an app attempts to use an operating system capability without declaring it, an exception will be thrown at runtime.
If you are building multiple apps, you won’t be able to communicate between the applications or share data between the apps unless you use the cloud.
If you are building multiple apps and you want to get a device ID using Windows.Phone.System.Analytics.HostInformation.PublisherHostId, this will return a different value in each app.
If you are building web apps, Internet Explorer also runs in its own chamber preventing web apps from accessing other app resources or operating system features.

Protecting Your IP

As developers, we work hard to create our software and want to make sure it’s protected when users start downloading it and using it. Once your app passes certification requirements, the app will be digitally signed on behalf of the developer and made available in the Windows Phone store.

To help protect a developers hard work, a valid license that is issued by the Windows Phone Store must be present on the users phone to be able to run. So if someone does figure out how to download the app and load it onto their phone, Windows Phone will not allow the app to run since the license is not available.

As a developer this is great as it helps curb someone pirating your app and since all XAP files are encrypted, it helps prevent a lot of casual snooping of your app code files but things to remember are:

Obfuscate your code if you are using .NET to make it harder to decompile your app
Use C++ to make it more difficult to hack your app or protect critical pieces of code
Use Windows Phone Enterprise Distribution if it’s an enterprise type application

Links and Resources

Here are a list of resources used for this article which contain more information

Windows Phone 8 Security Overview - Trusted Boot, Code Signing and App Platform Security as well as other security features available in Windows Phone,
Windows Phone 8 Security Deep Dive – Slideshare presentation by David Hernie.
Security for Windows Phone

What’s Next?

This is not an exhaustive list of the security features available in Windows Phone 8, but this introduction and resources should get you started if you want to learn more about it.

In part 2 of this post, I’ll go over some of the APIs and techniques to help secure your apps and help your users feel safe when using your apps.

This post is cross-posted from Mark Arteaga’s blog.

Canada Does Windows Azure: Icicle

Jonathan Rozenblit — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:45:35 GMT

Architecture Summary

Multi-user cloud-based system.
ASP.NET MVC4 (Razor) based frontend hosted in multiple instances of Web Roles (Cloud Services).
Windows Azure SQL Database-based backend.
Built to scale seamlessly to meet user demand and support multiple geographic locations while ensuring maximum performance.

BURTON SOFTWARE/ICICLE

Icicle is a cloud-based software system that enables food-related companies to develop and maintain HACCP food safety plans and undertake inspections in order to ensure safe products. It is designed for use by business involved in any aspect of food or food-related industries that require food safety plans or inspections. Icicle supports data acquisition and automatically generates food safety plans at the click of a button. Changes to individual ingredients, materials, processes or packaging are automatically propagated throughout the system, insuring that generated plans are current and fully synchronized across many product lines produced at multiple plants. Icicle assures transparency and accountability by enabling inspections to be designed and recorded electronically by in-house personnel, consultants, second or third-party auditing groups. It extends the traditional food safety paradigm by enabling other types of certifications, such as kosher and organic to be managed from within the same system.

STEVE BURTON

Steven is a software creator who helps companies become more effective by developing new software technology. He has a wide range of industry experience and has developed systems both domestically and abroad. Steven’s strong business acumen and exceptional technical knowledge enables him to quickly grasp the essential nature of businesses and develop solutions that solve problems using innovative technologies. Prior to founding Burton Software, Steven held positions VP of Research and Development, CTO, and Chief Software Architect. He has developed applications for organizations such as BC Hydro, the BC Ministry of Education, and the Anaesthesiologist Society of BC.

Git’ing It On with Team Foundation Service

Jonathan Rozenblit — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 21:18:54 GMT

Guest post by Adam Gallant

I’m meeting a lot of developers who are targeting multiple platforms, particularly folks building mobile applications, and a common mode of managing source control and/or contributing to projects when people are working together across distances has been using Git.

Another offering that has been growing in popularity is the Team Foundation Service! It’s free for the first five users, so go and sign up now at http://tfs.visualstudio.com! You can use the service to do agile planning (including SCRUM/Kanban), solicit and track user feedback, track bugs, manage version control, do automated builds/ continuous integration, and even do continuous deployment to Windows Azure.

All of these things from a number of different developer tools and project tools like Visual Studio, Eclipse (through Team Explorer Everywhere), and even through Microsoft Project and Microsoft Excel.

I did a webcast called “ALM as a Service” a little while ago. You can watch the video, on demand, here. And now, the Team Foundation Service has integrated Git for version control as an option! It’s a full-fledged, 100% compatible implementation of Git. See some more of the capabilities explained here .

The important points are:

You get a choice of traditional Team Foundation version control or Git when creating projects
Both version control types have a bright long term future
Visual Studio client support is provided currently through normal client-side Git implementations
You can use common Git techniques to work with your source code
You can interact with common Git repositories online
Support for Git for on-premise. TFS is not currently available, but is in the works for a future release!

To get a better understanding of all the capabilities available to software teams of all sizes in Visual Studio 2012 ALM, check out the Visual Studio Dev Centre. There’s tons of great information, videos, links, whitepapers, and other stuff to give you the info you need. You can also check out my blog for more information.

The merging of the Team Foundation Service and Git bring together the most comprehensive ALM capabilities available and one of the most common repositories.

Join the Conversation

Are you explored or are planning to explore this functionality? I’d love to hear feedback – start a new conversation on the Canadian Developer Connection Group on LinkedIn and let us know what you think.

App Building Made Easier–Step 3

Jonathan Rozenblit — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:37:00 GMT

In the last few posts, hopefully I’ve been able to plant a seed in your head about training – learning new technologies and skills – as a hobby rather than trying to do it through work (unless you can, of course, which would make it that much more efficient!). I talked about training through real experiences and how building and publishing apps is a means by which you can gain those real experiences but also how published apps act as your ongoing resume to show people what you can do. I promised you that I would do my best to make all of that as easy and as efficient (fast) as possible to do. Here’s one towards that promise. Enjoy.

By now, hopefully you’ve had a chance to watch the various sessions of the Developer Movement DevCamps (see Apps Made Easier – Step 1 and Apps Made Easier – Step 2: Choose Your Own Adventure) and started working on your app (or two, or more…). As you’re building, remember, if you run into some obstacles or have any questions on how to do something, Developer Mentors are available and ready to help. All you have to do is let us know you need one (here’s how).

When you have something to demo, it’s time to setup a time to have your app reviewed by a Microsoft Expert. That’s step 3 – Windows Store App Labs. Booking 1 on 1 time at a Windows Store App lab gives you an opportunity to review the design and function of your app with a Microsoft technical expert, troubleshoot any issues or potential certification problems, and lastly, test your app on various Windows 8 devices.

Getting Ready for Your Review

The best advice I can give you for getting ready for your review and ensuring that you get the most out of it is to be prepared. The best way to be prepared is to know exactly what to expect, so who better to tell you that than one of the experts that run the Windows Store App Labs:

A Windows Store App Lab (WSAL) is a lot more than a chance to test your app on a range of Windows 8 devices. It is your opportunity to meet with a Windows 8 Development expert who will assess your current Modern App progress. This assessment will result in two types of feedback covering two important perspectives:

Developer: As a developer, you want to hear another developer tell you precisely how it is. No sugar-coating, subjectivity, no maybes! If your loading is slow, you want to know why. If your navigation is broken, you need to know how to fix it. If your template is a mess, you have to change your styling to reflect the correct alignment. This type of feedback is very heavy on finding technical issues and enforcing MSDN guidelines and recommendations.

User: It’s not just about you or what you think is right. It’s also about your end user. And what better way to get a sense of how you should create a better experience for your user than to have someone objectively play the devil’s advocate and tell you precisely what a user might expect.

In a typical WSAL, we begin with you doing a quick demo of what you have right now and what you’re planning on adding before the final release. We identify common UX and technical issues and dig deeper into issues that apply specifically to your app. We’ll give you recommendations straight out of the MSDN UX guidance that you may just not have enough time to cover in its entirety. We close off with a review of the certification requirements to reduce your publishing time from submission to your app appearing in the Store as much as possible.

To take full advantage of your WSAL time, be sure to bring the APPX of your app or a prototype. Generally speaking, a project that is at least 80% done will take full advantage of the WSAL time. If you wish to troubleshoot some of technical issues that you might have, bringing the source code will help. If you have a web service or so some external dependency that your app requires to function, make sure that it is accessible from outside of your development environment.

We’ll have a number of devices of various form factors ready, so if you can’t bring your own development/testing machine, a USB key with your APPX is just as good!

Booking Your Review

In Canada, Windows Store App Lab reviews are offered in three locations: Launch Academy in Vancouver, MaRS Discovery District in Toronto and Notman House in Montreal. If you’re not located near any of these locations, you can also book a virtual review (email us at cdnwsal@microsoft.com to request a virtual app lab. Please indicate if you'd prefer to use Skype or Lync to conduct the app lab. One day prior to the app lab we'll need the APPX of your app to install on our test devices to conduct the lab.).

Once you know where you want to have your review:

Go to Windows Store App Labs registration system and click on Find an App Lab Now.
Click on your desired location on the map and then click on View Events.
Find a date and time that is convenient for you and click on Register.
You’ll then be asked to fill in your app’s profile. Ensure that you’re as specific as possible when filling out the app profile so that the technical expert that reviews the app with you can be best equipped to help you during your scheduled time.

And the best part…

Let me guess, you thought I was going to say that the best part is that it the Windows Store App Lab reviews are FREE. While that is true, that’s not the best part. The experts that you’re going to be meeting with, Microsoft Canada, and of course, yours truly, want to see your app(s) be the best that it (they) can be. As such, the best part of the Windows Store App Labs is that if you need more than one review for your app to be the best that it can be, so be it! We’re to here to help! After each review, you can go ahead and schedule another based on what you discuss and agree with your reviewer.

Join the Conversation

If you’ve been to a Windows Store App Lab review, start a new conversation in the Canadian Developer Connection Group on LinkedIn and share how you prepared for your Windows Store App Lab review, what the review was like, and what you think others can do to best utilize their time at their Windows Store App Lab review.