On November 5th, Google released Closure Compiler for Javascript optimization. The strongest part of the Closure Compiler is that it does not only remove whitespace but also rewrites Javascript Code to make it smaller. It also optimizes your Javascript code to perform better. You can find more details and all of its features on my previous article: Closure Compiler – Javascript Compiler by Google.

During my tests, Closure Compiler reduced Javascripts more than 60%. Considering, the size of Javascript files that modern websites have and the reduction before HTTP compression, Closure Compiler is really useful.

Closure Compiler comes with a Java based command line tool and a RESTful API.  RESTful API works great and very fast. API can be used with a MSBuild or NAnt script to automatically compress Javascript files.

Read more: BLOGGING DEVELOPER

Note: this analysis was done in summer 2008, when we first began scoping work for DVCS support in Google Code.
Introduction

This document summarizes the initial research for adding distributed version control as an option for Google Code. Based on popularity, two distributed version control systems were considered: Git and Mercurial. This document describes the features of the two systems, and provides an overview of the work required to integrate them with Google Code.
Distributed Version Control

In traditional version control systems, there is a central repository that maintains all history. Clients must interact with this repository to examine file history, look at other branches, or commit changes. Typically, clients have a local copy of the versions of files they are working on, but no local storage of previous versions or alternate branches.

Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) use a different structure. With DVCS, every user has their own local repository, complete with project history, branches, etc. Switching to an alternate branch, examining file history, and even committing changes are all local operations. Individual repositories can then exchange information via push and pull operations. A push transfers some local information to a remote repository, and a pull copies remote information to the local repository. Note that neither repository is necessarily “authoritative” with respect to the other. Both repositories may have some local history that the other does not have yet. One key feature of any DVCS system is to make it easy for repositories to unambiguously describe the history they have (and the history they are requesting). Both Git and Mercurial do this by using SHA1 hashes to identify data (files, trees, changesets, etc).

DVCS’s provide a lot of flexibility in developer workflows. They can be used in a manner similar to traditional VCS’s, with a central “authoritative” repository with which each developer synchronizes. For larger projects, it is also possible to have a hierarchy of server repositories, with maintainers for each repository accepting changes from downstream developers and then forwarding them upstream. DVCS’s also allow developers to share work with each other directly. For example, two developers working on a new feature could work on a common branch and share work with each other independent of an “authoritative” server. Once their work was stable, it could then be pushed to a public repository for a larger audience.

Read more: Google Code

 Choose from long list of Source code/Version control system and compare them on one page

Official site: Version control systems comparison

Let’s look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories:

Windows 7 SP1 beta rumored by end of 2009, RTM summer 2010: Windows 7 may be out, but Microsoft is of course still hard at work improving the operating system. Rumor has it that SP1 for Windows 7 will come sooner than it did for Windows Vista.

Will Messenger finally get tabbed conversations?: Will Windows Live Messenger finally get the most-requested feature from its users, tabbed conversations? Early indications shows it’s probable, though nothing is set in stone.

Microsoft Office Accounting dies on November 16, 2009: Microsoft is killing off its whole Office Accounting product line on November 16, 2009.

Microsoft cleans up MSN, integrates Facebook, Twitter: Microsoft is previewing its latest version of the MSN webpage. The changes are significant, both visually and in terms of features.

SkyDrive Explorer: exactly what you’d expect: SkyDrive Explorer is exactly what you’d expect: a plugin that puts the Windows Live SkyDrive service (25GB of free online storage) right in your Windows Explorer.

Read more: ars technica

Microsoft has a secret, although it’s not completely secret. They are getting ready to offer a new open source content management application code named Orchard.

The project, which will be discussed at next week’s TechEd Europe, is a “new effort to produce free, open source, reusable components and a full-featured CMS application built on these components to produce a variety of different types of web sites.”

It’s hard to tell from the session description if this project is already well underway or just getting kicked off at the conference. The session includes an interactive discussion that allows developers to get “in on the ground floor”.

ZDNet’s Mary Joe Foley tried to get more details from Microsoft, but they remain mum on the subject, even ignoring the question of whether Orchard is just a new name for Oxite, the open source Web CMS Microsoft announced back in December last year.

Read more: CMS WiRE

Have you ever wished that you could bind properties to your WPF controls without using string literals to identify property names? This article describes how to use the T4 (Text Template Transformation Toolkit), which is built into Visual Studio 2008, and the Visual Studio automation object model API, to generate member and type information for an entire project. Generated metadata can then be applied to such things as dispensing with string literals in XAML binding expressions and overcoming the INotifyPropertyChanged property name string code smell, or indeed any place you need to refer to a property, method, or field by its string name. There is also experimental support for obfuscation, so member names can be retrieved correctly even after obfuscation. I’ve also ported the template to VB.NET, so our VB friends can join in on the action too.

Introduction

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately on my latest series of Calcium articles (I am in the process of porting Calcium to Silverlight), but this week I confess that I got a little sidetracked. I have discovered the joys of generating code with T4, and I have used it to build a metadata generator for your Silverlight and Desktop CLR projects (C# and VB.NET). It can be used as a replacement for static reflection (expression trees), reflection (walking the stack), and various other means for deriving the name of a property, method, or field. It can also be used, as I will demonstrate, to replace those nasty string literals in XAML path binding expressions, with statically typed properties; allowing the detection of erroneous binding expressions at compile time rather than at runtime.

Read more: Codeproject

Real business applications are completely different from samples that can be found in the Internet. The real applications have many layers because all architects are going to divide an application into them to decrease complexity and improve readability of the source code.

Any Silverlight application is a client application. It means the compiled code of such an application runs on the client tier and it has to have access to data that hosted on the server (middle) tier.

There are many ways to get data from the client tier:

    * Web Services (Asp.Net web services, Wcf etc)
    * Ado.Net Data Services
    * .Net Remoting
    * .Net Ria Services

Last one was developed specially for rich internet applications (Ria) and provides methods and framework to link client and middle tiers.

.Net Ria Services library adds new kind of Visual Studio project templates “Ria Services Class Library” which allows to create N-tier class libraries.

Also, .Net Ria Services has build-in abilities to use secure connection to protect important data like logins, passwords etc.

Building an application on the Ria Services basis has some tricks, that are not described, because mentioned technology is pretty new and it is available as Preview version (Jul 2009). So, I am going to unlock secrets of building real business applications based on .Net Ria services and Ria services Class Library.
Background

In my opinion, any silverlight business application must have following features:

    * Separate tiers (middle, client) and data transfer between them;
    * Access to data tier (database);
    * Authentication;
    * Data transfer between tiers via secure connection.

.Net Ria Services and .Net Ria Services Class Library allow to implement all features above. Demo application has all mentioned features and can be use as a skeleton for all other silverlight business applications.
Technical requirements

Following software was used:

    * Windows XP SP3/IIS 5.1
    * VS 2008 SP1
    * .Net 3.5 SP1
    * Microsoft Silverlight Projects 2008 Version 9.0.30730.126
    * Silverlight 3.0.40818.0
    * Silverlight Toolkit July 2009
    * Silverlight 3 Developer Package
    * Silverlight 3 SDK
    * .NET RIA Services (Jul 2009 Preview)
    * SelfSSL tool from IIS Resource Kit
    * MS SQL Server 2005
    * Web Development Helper 0.8.5.1 (IE plug-in)

Getting started

This article is concentrated on the back-end rather than the front-end part of the Silverlight applications. So, we can start developing the application based on Business Application project template. This template contains several predefined views, Login and passwords controls. Also, this template contains a couple of services (Authentication, Registration) that can be called from the client tier via Ria services mechanism.

Note: Business Application project template is available if you have installed .Net Ria Services framework (see below for details).

Read more: Codeproject

  It’s still early days for Google Wave but already there are a large number of Gadgets and Robots being developed. If you don’t know the difference, Gadgets are local, client-side (as in they run on your computer), Javascript and HTML. Robots run remotely on another server.

  Gadgets change how you interact with waves, whereas robots process your input in some way or pull in data from another service (such as Twitter or Wikipedia). Robots are generally more powerful, but Gadgets are more fun.

  This article is all about Gadgets. There will be another one on Robots soon: you folk that want to aggregate your Twitter and RSS feeds into Wave will have to wait a little longer! It’s surprisingly hard to find good gadgets for Wave at the moment, so hold onto this guide even if you’ve not yet been invited to the beta.

   Note: You should bear in mind that these are all ‘beta’ gadgets. A lot of them work just fine but you might hit some bugs along the way. The ‘direct import links’ might also change at any time, so feel free to report any broken links!

1. Napkin

The first thing you notice with Wave is that everything is collaborative. Sure, you could write a gadget that only displays things locally… but then why use Wave? So if you can think of something that needs to be done collaboratively — say brainstorming, or planning a trip — then Wave is perfect. It will be the closest you can get to someone without actually meeting in real life.

2. Ribbit  — VoIP calls and conferencing
3. 6rounds — 1-on-1 video/audio conferencing
4. Suduku — Collaborative time-waster
(more…)

Read more: DownloadSquad

Sean McNally created a resume that looks like a role player’s character sheet.

Read more: SuperPunch

Do you have a solution that can dazzle the experts? Create a demo that shows off your solution and you could win a 12-Day Galapagos Islands Adventure or a Smart Car!

A group of industry experts will review demo submissions and select the top three most technically sophisticated and unique solutions.

So get started today! Enter your solution now and you’ll automatically be entered in the People’s Choice category. Then create a demo that showcases the power and uniqueness of your solution, and come back to add a link to your demo so you’re officially entered in the Judges’ Choice category!

Read more: MyDotNetStory

As Dave Caolo told TUAW readers a few days ago, Fortune named Apple CEO Steve Jobs “CEO of the Decade” for his phenomenal leadership at Apple and how he has remade four industries (music, movies, mobile telephones, and computing) in the past ten years.

Part of the Fortune article was a collection of rarely seen photographs of Steve Jobs. From the early days with Steve Wozniak, to his recent battles with pancreatic cancer, the photos chronicle the life of the iconic CEO.

Two of my personal favorites in the gallery are a photo taken in 1982 of Jobs and the Mac team having a working lunch as they hammer out the design of the first-generation Mac, and another of a barefoot Jobs meeting with Bill Gates at the Jobs home in Palo Alto to talk about the future of computing for Fortune.

Read more: tuaw

Many people doubt it’s real, especially as the images of it are renderings, but along with the protestations on the blog, there is other circumstantial proof that, even if it doesn’t end up as a shipping product, there seems to be an actual prototype.

The press release talks about a launch at the OpenOffice conference. There was indeed a session about the mouse, and if you suspect that even the conference was faked, there are (a very few) pictures. Then there’s the discussion of the mouse on the OpenOffice.org mailing lists. Perhaps this is enough to convince the true sceptic, but for me, it’s enough: someone really wants to ship this.

Read more: notes.husk.org

Your computer’s data is very critical and losing it can can occur due to variety of reasons. A complete (or even partial) backup of your system is always a good idea. SBackup is a tool that’ll help you backup and restore data on your Ubuntu machine with utmost ease.

SB Backup

SBackup is a simple backup solution for the Ubuntu desktop. It allows you to backup selected files and directories, define the file size limit, use regular expressions to exclude files and folders, and much more. These backups can then be saved locally, on removal media or even on remote directory. Let’s see how to install and configure SBackup for creating a backup and restore solution for an Ubuntu machine.

Install SBackup

Type the following command to install SBackup on your Ubuntu machine:

    sudo apt-get install sbackup

Read more: How-to-geek

Being a blogger, I often find design elements on the web for my posts or my blog in general. It’s becoming a very common experience for bloggers to know a thing or two about web design. I’m guessing it is the web that taught us to be quasi-designers by offering us lots of easy-to-use tools that help us create just about everything we need: photo-editing, widgets, logos, buttons, and yes, fonts as well. Fonts are a big focus of the Web2.0 era—they are now bigger, cleaner and smoother, especially when it comes to logos.

myFontbook is an online font viewer and manager based on the font available on your computer. It allows you to organize your font collection and gives you all the tools you need to do so. Once you open the demo, myFontbook will render all the fonts in your computer, and display them together in an easy to view mode. While all the files are actually open, it makes it easier to browse through them and see the fonts in several sizes. You can also make lists of fonts, tag & favorite the fonts that you like best. The font viewer renders your entire font library super fast. Just compare the rendering time to other font management tools. And there’s nothing to install—it works from your browser. If you want to save all your activities for later use, you’ll need to register. But don’t worry, it’s free.

Read more: TechCrunch

Official site: myFontbook
Official site: BetterFonts
Official site: Fawnt
Official site: MyFonts
(more….)

BitLocker is an encryption feature available in Ultimate and Enterprise versions of Windows 7 and Vista, but requires a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on the system. Not all systems include TPM and today we take a look at how to bypass it so you can use BitLocker.

Enable BitLocker

You can use BitLocker to encrypt an entire fixed drive, such as the local drive Windows is installed on or an internal data drive. For removable flash or external USB drives you can use its younger brother, BitLocker To Go. First let’s take a look at how to enable BitLocker on a local hard drive.

To encrypt an entire drive, simply right-click on the drive and select Turn on BitLocker from the context menu.

Read more: How-to-geek