PoppaString

Leap Motion with Windows

Mark Downie — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:44:25 GMT

There are literally millions of PCs and Macs with few options for a modern touch experiences, one of these antiquated devices just happens to sit in my office. I am seriously considering giving Leap Motion a try, it is very small device that tracks hand movements (without touch) in the same way that a Kinect tracks your entire body. You can Pre-order Leap Motion today for $79.99 and it should ship in late July, I am actually interested what developers can really do with this nascent device.

Using MVC patterns in Web Forms

Mark Downie — Tue, 14 May 2013 01:28:02 GMT

In spite of extensive exposure to ASP.NET MVC I still tend to solve problems by first using ASP.NET Web Forms. Shallow criticisms aside, Web Forms provides a powerful mechanism for quickly creating complex user interfaces. That said, I still feel guilty about not pushing the MVC pattern just a little further when the opportunity arises. A valid criticisms of Web Forms development is its lack of support for test driven development, however, if you have started a Web Forms project and still want to integrate the MVC pattern, I would submit that ASP.NET Web API is one way to do that.

Web API

ASP.NET Web API is a framework that makes it easy to build building RESTful (uses the HTTP protocol) applications on the .NET Framework. Creating these services provides the opportunity to move code from “code behind” files into an API controller. Accessing the controller is done via AJAX which can allow for a more responsive UI. To start begin by installing the Web API package as follows:

Install-Package WebApi.All -Version 0.6.0

This install will allow you to Add->New Item->Web API Controller Class, and this is what you will get by default:

public class EmployeeController : ApiController
{
    // GET api/<controller>
    public IEnumerable<string> Get()
    {
        return new string[] { "value1", "value2" };
    }

    // GET api/<controller>/5
    public string Get(int id)
    {
        return "value";
    }

    // POST api/<controller>
    public void Post([FromBody]string value)
    {
    }

    // PUT api/<controller>/5
    public void Put(int id, [FromBody]string value)
    {
    }

    // DELETE api/<controller>/5
    public void Delete(int id)
    {
    }
}

The new controller shows off some of the coding by convention inherent to Web APIs, for example, the “Post” method will be called whenever a page is posted back to the server, to create other POST methods you can decorate said method with the [HttpPost] attribute. I will leave you to do the heavy lifting of deciding what code would be transferred to the API Controller and how you validate.

Routing

After creating your controller the next step is to create a routing rule that lets the application know which URIs are configured and what controllers will respond to those requests. In the following example routeTemplate we have defined a url that will redirect to our API Controller given the following format http://www.PoppaString.com/api/Employee/1.

using System.Web.Routing;
using System.Web.Http;

namespace WebApplication1
{
    public class Global : HttpApplication
    {
        void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute(
                    name: "ActionApi",
                    routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}",
                    defaults: new { Controller = "Employee" }
                );
        }

With this URIs exposed it becomes a trivial task to start plugging AJAX directly into the webpages and calling these endpoints directly. Hopefully this kind after the fact change will assuage our collective Web Forms guilt.

Using Windows Phone Overseas

Mark Downie — Sat, 04 May 2013 02:00:43 GMT

During a recent trip home I had the opportunity to visit Paris, I opted not to bring my laptop and simply relied on my smartphone and iPad. Best in breed apps have been done to death for both the iPhone and iPad and so I thought I would provide a list of the Windows Phone apps that served me well during my jaunt, so here goes:

Data Sense

This is not so much an app as it is a feature of Windows Phone (currently a Verizon exclusive). It allows you to make the most of your plan, It tracks how much data you’ve used, how much you have left, optimizes your web browser, and helps you find nearby Wi-Fi hotspots. This was of critical importance for me as I purchased a 100MB data plan for the two week trip and this help me track my data consumption precisely and even provided defense against overages.

BabBel

The people of Paris I encountered were mostly bilingual and extremely friendly, however, I made a decision to learn as many French terms as possible. Babbel is a fantastic app that offers a multi-media approach to teaching phrases and terms (13 languages). You can actually focus on a particular topic like transportation, shopping or hotels. I had the app for about 4 weeks prior to the trip and was able to speak French with enough clarity to get by.

Network Dashoard

The whole juggling between Airplane Mode, and needing to connect to available Wi-Fi networks can get you doing some pretty repetitive actions. Network Dashboard provides a quick, at a glance view into the network status on your Windows Phone. A simple tap on a tile and you can quickly change the settings. Tap and hold a tile and you can pin it to the Start menu for quick and easy access!

PhotoSynth

While you are on vacation in a great city and manage to catch a quiet moment in or near a monument then I advise all budding photographers to capture and share a Photosynth. They provide an interactive view of your location that can you Geotag and share with friends. Photosynth is the acknowledged leader in mobile panorama creation. It is the only app available on Windows Phone that allows you to capture 360 degrees horizontally and vertically, making a perfect “sphere."

Translator

Bing Translator is your companion when you need to overcome the language barrier. You can use your camera, voice or keyboard to enter text you want to translate. I used Bing Translator on-the-go, even when I didn’t have an Internet connection (download language packs before hand). I used this to translate signs and menus (especially in museums) or any printed text with my camera.

Here Drive

HERE Drive (aka Nokia Drive+) with true offline, turn-by-turn voice navigation optimized for drivers. With turn-by-turn, voice-guided directions and an interface built with drivers in mind, HERE Drive Beta helps you get there safely, even without a data connection. I would have loved to see this app function for pedestrians in big cities but this app got me reoriented on several occasions. On a related topic I was surprised at the lack of support for Here Transit in Paris. It just seems like the Paris Metro system was designed for such an app.

United

The United Airlines app provided helpful features during the six flights I was forced to negotiate. I could Check-in and get mobile boarding pass storage. Once your travel is booked, you can access your reservations, change seats, add to your device calendar or send your itinerary via email.

The Weather Channel

This is a solid app and one I use for day to day checks on weather. I love the fact that you can pin as many cities as you like to your home page and quickly dive into detail weather updates on any given region.

Search Engine Optimization Toolkit

Mark Downie — Fri, 03 May 2013 01:52:28 GMT

I have been collecting and utilizing tools that I can use to help non-profits and startups succeed on the web, and in the two relatively new Windows Stores (Windows and Windows Phone). My latest addition is the Search Engine Optimization Toolkit! The toolkit, once installed, shows up as a Management option within IIS and provides utilities for “Site Analysis”, “Sitemaps and Sitemaps Indexes”, and also “Robots Exclusion”.

Thus far I have executed several Site Analysis’ and the tools really helps discover issues that the classic ASP.NET developers probably would not think much about. My 8 year old blog (which started on a different platform) took about 4.5 minutes to analyze and highlighted about 10,000 violations. In my defense most of these violations were a function of a poorly designed dasBlog template but all the violations add up to a death by a thousand cuts when your site is reviewed by a search engine.

The importance of knowing what problems exists cannot be overstated, but knowing exactly how to mitigate said problems is also critical. Thankfully the SEO Toolkit provides “Recommended Action” which explains the best course to take in plain English.

Needless to say I have work to do!

Making asynchronous calls from Background Tasks

Mark Downie — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 02:58:58 GMT

Windows Store Background Tasks, as the name suggests, runs in the background when your app is not active. They provide the perfect opportunity for you to send toasts, update live tiles or update the users lock screen. I pulled this particular feature into my app immediately as I saw a couple of use cases for this exact idea. The plan was to check a couple of services and based on the result send a toast to the user, providing a non to subtle reminder that the service I am providing has additional information for immediate consumption. So here goes…

Create your IBackgroundTask

namespace BGTasks
{
    public sealed class ToastNotifier : IBackgroundTask
    {
        public void Run(IBackgroundTaskInstance taskInstance)
        {
            var results = await client.MyStuffAsync();
        }
    }
}

DeclarAtions

Registration

Registration should occur as soon as the app starts, consider using App.xaml.cs. In this example I register the background task to trigger on the Internet Available trigger.

private void RegisterBackgroundTask()
{
    BackgroundTaskBuilder btb = new BackgroundTaskBuilder();
    btb.Name = "ToastNotifier";
    btb.TaskEntryPoint = "BGTask.ToastNotifier";
    btb.SetTrigger(new SystemTrigger(SystemTriggerType.InternetAvailable, false));

    BackgroundTaskRegistration task = btb.Register();
}

So I completed all the above task and started to call my service and met an immediate road block during testing, apparently calling asynchronous methods from Background Tasks will cause “unexpected behavior” (just stops, no exceptions). In order to get around this we have to update Run method to an async call and also declare which part of the Run method will contain the asynchronous call by using BackgroundTaskDeferral as follows:

public async void Run(IBackgroundTaskInstance taskInstance)
{
	BackgroundTaskDeferral _deferral = taskInstance.GetDeferral();
	var results = await client.MyStuffAsync();
	_deferral.Complete();

}

It is that easy!

Mophie Juice Pack Air

Mark Downie — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 01:52:24 GMT

The Achilles heal shared by all smartphones is the limitation to less than a single day of active use. The push for smartphone manufacturers continues to be increase in speed, screen size and clarity, however for the last 4 years we have only seen very modest gains in the time devices last between charges. One of the responses to this lag has been the growth of third party battery packs. Effectively you carry some device that holds charge in a portable fashion and you connect your phone at the appropriate time.

My favorite device for this has become Mophie Juice Pack Air. It doubles as both a phone case and a battery pack without *completely* compromising the design, feel or weight of your phone. It advertises as providing an extra 80% of charge which gets you fully into day two, you can opt to use the Juice packs full charge first and then switch to your phones battery or vice-versa. It is currently available for iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy SIII. Check it out!

Await

Mark Downie — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 03:19:40 GMT

One of the wonderful things about the new Windows Runtime is that it provides a comprehensive means for accessing the native Windows platform while avoiding the very real usability issues most of us found when using the traditional Platform Invoke. Thankfully the .NET framework can share the Windows Runtime features exactly, and it makes accessing devices like cameras, storage, NFC, or simply getting access to the internet, consistent and easy. One of my favorite keywords by far is await here is an example:

private async Task GetPageBody()
{
	// From System.Net.Http namespace.
	HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
	Task<string> getBodyTask = client.GetStringAsync("http://www.PoppaString.com");
	string body = await getBodyTask;
}

The above method is an example of an async method and this example contains a single await expression (could contain more). You apply the await operator to an operand in an asynchronous method or lambda expression to suspend execution of the method until the awaited task completes. An await expression never blocks the thread upon which it is executing, it causes the compiler to treat the balance of the asynchronous method as a continuation of the awaited task. Control returns to the caller of the asynchronous method, but when the task completes it invokes the continuation, and executes the balance of the asynchronous method.

Fast and fluid! I have started using this everywhere!

Basic Authentication using WebRequest

Mark Downie — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:13:19 GMT

Every once in a while I get asked to design systems that require passing a simple user id and password to authenticate (aka basic authentication) as defined here. This is the simplest type of authentication one can imagine (short of having none at all) and is easy to implement using System.Net.WebRequest. Here is a rudimentary example:

public void SetBasicAuthCredentials(WebRequest requst, String user, String password)
{
    string auth = user + ":" + password;
    auth = Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.Default.GetBytes(auth));
    requst.Headers["Authorization"] = "Basic " + auth;
}

The thing to remember with the above code is that encoding is not the same as encryption and the user id and password are essentially being passed in clear text over the network. In scenarios where you are accessing resources using basic auth you are obligated, at minimum, to secure the transport layer using SSL.

Code.org

Mark Downie — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 02:54:47 GMT

Code.org is a non-profit foundation dedicated to growing computer programming education. They have the noble goal of giving every student in every school the opportunity to learn to code. Further more they believe that computer science and computer programming should be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra. This may be one of those causes that we should all consider helping with.

Computers play an increasingly larger role in all fields of science; they're helping us explore outer-space and our solar system. Whether you want to become a doctor or an astronaut, it would help to learn the basics of computer programming. - Leland Melvin, Astronaut, NASA Education Administrator

Browser Development Tools Basics

Mark Downie — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 06:16:00 GMT

For a period of about 18 months I was involved in the initial design and deployment of an ASP.NET project that included an interesting hybrid of both Web Forms, MVC, and jQuery templates. Having previously worked exclusively in the world of Web Forms the Visual Studio was really all I needed to confirm the veracity of my code. In this new world of AJAX, jQuery and dynamic templates it is almost impossible to do all of this within the confines of Visual Studio. So I wanted to share some of the basics of using the browser development tools for Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Just hit F12

Many folks, developers included, do not realize that all of the major web browsers come with a set of development tools that allow you to look beneath the facade of the HTML page and inspect exactly what powers your experience. For the sake of this post I will focus the examples around Chrome (because of its increasing market share) and Internet Explorer (because of its inertia). So when you hit F12 with either of these browsers you see the following:

Elements/HTML tab

By default both Chrome and IE gives you a view of the html, this really becomes powerful when your start editing the markup and see the changes immediately rendered within the main browser. Additionally both tools provide direct access and manipulation of the CSS associated with the elements.

Inspect Element/CTRL-B

In some really complex pages you can still have literally thousands of lines to parse and finding the exact location where dynamically rendered code has been output can be tricky. The fastest way to do this is by “inspection”. In Chrome you can simply right click within the browser and select the “Inspect Element”, alternately you can hit CTRL-B in IE and then select the element your are curious about and effectively have the same thing.

Resources/CSS tab

There are some fairly stunning tricks that I see executed within the browser that at were previously only possible within windows forms and I am now finding that CSS has opened my eyes to ever more variant features that are actually easier to express within CSS. Using the Resources/CSS tab you can have a complete view of all the secrets of your favorite site.

Network

For me the most useful tab is Network, it provides a view of all the URIs that needed to be accessed in order to compile and render the page. It also gives details of the method, results and time taken for each of the request/response pairs. You can also punch down even further and see the specific contents of the requests and responses.

There are other great features like JavaScript debugging, consoles, and browser compatibility, that are quintessential to the contemporary web developer success, Check out Chrome developer tools in more detail here, and Internet Explorer developer tools here.

Sharing OneNote documents with iOS

Mark Downie — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 18:50:59 GMT

I just completed the sufficiently maddening experience of attempting to share a OneNote document to multiple people on multiple devices (Windows 8, iOS, Android, Windows Phone). By definition this should have been a rather straight forward process and considering Microsoft’s recent focus of services everywhere I found myself a little less than impressed.

In truth, what I failed to realize was that in order to share a One Note document with an iPad, or any device, you need to ensure that you share the folder that the OneNote Document is shared from (I am sure there is a reason but it still seems arbitrary to me).

Visit SkyDrive and create a folder and share it appropriately.

Create a new OneNote document within said folder and share it.

I am really eager for the apps on the various platforms to provide these abilities inherently. You currently are only able to manage permissions and sharing from within the Windows 8 Desktop application.

Bing Rewards for Xbox Live

Mark Downie — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 04:39:02 GMT

I am a veracious Xbox user, I spend time playing games, watching movies, browsing for useful YouTube videos, catching up with sports events and listening to music. The Xbox, years after purchase, remains the center of my living room entertainment.

In order to offset the cost I have been really pushing and using Bing. Wait, wait I know it is a Microsoft service that is simply not as good as Google, blah, blah, blah. In some cases I would completely agree with the detractors, although recently most people who tested search services side by side in a legitimate blind test seemed to prefer Bing results (2 to 1). Either way I am not here to really advocate Bing search as such, I am here to laude the related Bing Rewards program which lets you redeem rewards for searches you perform everyday.

Currently every two searches within Bing yields a single reward credit up to a maximum of 15 search credits a day. This enables you to get approximately 500 credits in 33 days. Those 500 credits provides enough value to get about $5 worth of stuff, there is a decent enough variety of rewards to redeem, for me the Xbox live points provide the greatest value. Think about it as a free movie every month. Sign up here!

Here is a sampling of the rewards that can be redeemed:

Truly Random

Mark Downie — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 02:38:04 GMT

One of the apps I have been working on recently required that I present the user with a truly random sequence of values. The concept of being random is actually a bit more complicated than one would assume, in fact the idea of randomness is based in mathematics (which I will not get into here).

The following code represents a cryptographically sound random name generator. It takes advantage of the System.Security.Cryptography namespace which provides secure encoding and decoding of data, as well as hashing, and random number generation. Additionally I copped some code from Michael Giagnocavo, who helps resolve the problem of converting the bytes produce by the service into a Base32 string. Please see my notes in line.

public sealed class RandomValue
{
    //This value determines how long the random number will be (every 5 bytes produces 8 characters) 
    //... the bigger the better
    private const int FOLDERNAME_BYTES = 20;

    private RandomValue() { }

    public static string GenerateValues()
    {
        //This provider fills an array with a cryptographically strong sequence of random byte values. 
        RNGCryptoServiceProvider rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();
        byte[] buffer = new byte[FOLDERNAME_BYTES];
        rng.GetBytes(buffer);

        //Convert the byte value into a string using "Base32"
        return Base32.ToBase32String(buffer);
    }
}

public sealed class Base32
{
    // the valid chars for the encoding ... 
    // the order and the values can be changed e.g. 0,1,O,I ... 
    // but it still needs to be 32 characters.
    // Standard base32 encoding uses A-Z and six digits 2-7 
    // (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base32).
    private static string ValidChars = "QAZ2WSX3" + "EDC4RFV5" + "TGB6YHN7" + "UJM8K9LP";

    /// <summary>
    /// Converts an array of bytes to a Base32-k string.
    /// </summary>
    public static string ToBase32String(byte[] bytes)
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();         // holds the base32 chars
        byte index;
        int hi = 5;
        int currentByte = 0;

        while (currentByte < bytes.Length)
        {
            // do we need to use the next byte?
            if (hi > 8)
            {
                // get the last piece from the current byte, shift it to the right
                // and increment the byte counter
                index = (byte)(bytes[currentByte++] >> (hi - 5));
                if (currentByte != bytes.Length)
                {
                    // if we are not at the end, get the first piece from
                    // the next byte, clear it and shift it to the left
                    index = (byte)(((byte)(bytes[currentByte] << (16 - hi)) >> 3) | index);
                }
                hi -= 3;
            }
            else if (hi == 8)
            {
                index = (byte)(bytes[currentByte++] >> 3);
                hi -= 3;
            }
            else
            {
                // simply get the stuff from the current byte
                index = (byte)((byte)(bytes[currentByte] << (8 - hi)) >> 3);
                hi += 5;
            }
            sb.Append(ValidChars[index]);
        }
        return sb.ToString();
    }
}

Adobe CS2 for free!

Mark Downie — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:36:38 GMT

I am all about free software (legitimate of course) and so I was extremely surprised to see Adobe make CS2 available for free, this includes a valid serial number. While CS2 was released in 2005 I can almost guarantee any freeware design software you are currently using is not better than this.

The Standard Edition includes:

Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Bridge
Adobe InDesign
Adobe Version Cue

I assume Adobe figures that any real designer will eventually upgrade. Enjoy!

Workstations to Ultrabooks

Mark Downie — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 23:10:20 GMT

I was handed a brand new workstation last week and I am simply flawed at the size and weight of the thing compared to my current laptop, and especially compared to my Ultrabook.