Developers Forum,Technical information

WHAT'S NEW?

I"ve had an iPhone since the 3GS (I have a 5S right now) but I"m always flirting with the Windows Phone. It"s just prettier than my iPhone, but my iPhone has a lot of apps...so I stay with it. Folks tease me at work and at conferences for not using a Windows Phone. I always say "when it"s an awesome phone platform, I"ll use it."

Man, Windows Phone 8.1 is definitely more than "point 1 better." Seriously.

It"s the platform Windows Phone should have been from the beginning. From a general functionality perspective, this 8.1 update brings the Windows Phone (finally) on par with my iPhone 5s, and in some cases, takes it beyond. It"s REALLY tempting now.

There"s a lot of new stuff, but a few things really grabbed my attention that my iPhone doesn"t have yet:

Notification Center - Finally. Swipe down from the top and get notifications in one place. Just like an iPhone you get quick access buttons for airplane mode, wireless, etc. Even better, those buttons are configurable. I added Internet Sharing to mine. You can also swipe down then press Settings as a fast way to get to the main settings page.
Transparent Live Tiles - You can use a background image for your whole start screen, and it will show through transparent tiles. It also has a nice parallax effect when scrolling. Check it out in the video below.
"Show more Tiles" on smaller resolution devices - The 1520 on the right has the 1080p screen, while the 920 is a lower resolution screen. Previously only high-res screens got the extra column of tiles. Now smaller screen devices can choose their start screen size and add LOTS more info to a single screen.
Pinnable Website Tiles - This one surprised me. I recently added support to my blog for IE11 Pinned Tiles, so you can pin this website to your start screen and get an updated Live Tile showing the latest stories. I talked to the front end developer at The Verge and he added the feature for theverge.com as well. His implementation is REALLY impressive. The surprise was that Windows Phone 8.1 now supports that same technique and I didn"t need to do anything. See on the 920 on the right, at the bottom, that"s a pinned flipped tile showing a story from my blog. Very nice.
Cortana Voice Assistant - You could say this is the Windows" Siri, but it"s more like Google Now with a personality. The voice recognition happens as you speak as opposed to after the fact, which is nice. You can ask questions like "How old is Oprah" and she (or he) just knows. You can say "Call my wife" and she"ll say "Who is your wife?" then associate a contact with that nomenclature.
Quiet Hours - I use Do Not Disturb on my iPhone. Quiet Hours takes this a little further with the concept of an "Inner Circle" and a more sophisticated series of configurable rules like "Don"t bother me at night on weekdays unless it"s these three people, and text everyone else back that I"m not answering calls."
Driving Mode - This was added in a Windows Phone 8 update but I love it. It knows you"re driving because you associate your cars" Bluetooth with it, then it will text folks "I"m driving, I"ll get back to you" if they text you. You can choose to never see the text until you stop. Very cool.
Keyboard Swiping - It"s built into the main keyboard now, no separate app. The predictive text has gotten better as well.
Battery Sense - The phone can tell you what apps are eating the battery, and when they are eating it. It"ll show if the battery is being used by apps in the background or in the foreground.

I recorded a video on a real phone (the 1520 above, in fact) and demonstrated a LOT of the new feature. Check it out as part of my Windows 8 YouTube video playlist, or embedded below. I used the Project My Screen app (MSI) and turned it on in Settings on the phone, connected with USB.

If you have a Windows Phone 8 now and want to get the preview of Windows Phone 8.1:

Go register free at http://appstudio.windowsphone.com.
Then go to "Windows Phone Preview for Developers" and install the "Preview for Developers" app.
Go to Settings, then System Update and update your phone. Depending on how up-to-date your phone is, this might take 2-3 visits. One of my phone needed just one update, another needed 3. It"ll take 10-15 min.

If you get the Preview today,your phone will update to the final version automatically, I"m told. Go check it out!

Security is hard

There"s been lots of articles about the recent OpenSSL "Heartbleed" bug. You can spend a day reading all the technical analysis, but one headline that stood out to me was "OpenSSL shows big problem with open source; underfunded, understaffed." A fundamental part of the fabric of The Internet Itself is mostly just one person plus a bunch of volunteers.

"The fascinating, mind-boggling fact here is that you have this critical piece of network infrastructure that really runs a large part of the Internet, and there’s basically one guy working on it full time."

Moreover, we don"t sing contributor"s praises for their hard work and success while their software work, instead we wait until a single line (albeit one of the more important lines) fails to live up to expectations. Darn that free stuff, mostly working, and powering our connected global network.

Open Source is largely a thankless job. Sometimes in the Microsoft .NET community, it feels more futile because it"s often hard to find volunteers. Many folks use the default stuff, or whatever ships with Visual Studio. With Rails or Node, while they have corporate backing, there"s a sense that the projects are community driven. The reality is in-between, but with open source projects built on the Microsoft stack volunteers may say "we"ll just use whatever the ship."

There"s anger around past actions by Microsoft, but as I"ve said publicly before, they"ve come a LONG way. I will keep pushing open source at Microsoft until I think I"m done pushing and can push no more. There"s a seismic shift going on inside. Mistakes get made, but it"s moving in the right direction. Everyone is learning.

Visibility is hard

Jeremy Miller"s team recently stopped active development on the "FubuMVC" open source .NET framework. In his exit blog post, the question of the viability of .NET open source comes up:

"Setting aside the very real question of whether or not OSS in .Net is a viable proposition (it"s largely not, no matter how hoarse Scott Hanselman makes himself trying to say otherwise), FubuMVC failed because we — and probably mostly me because I had the most visibility by far — did not do enough to market ourselves and build community through blog posts, documentation, and conference speaking."

It"s very true that in a large way visibility drives viability for many open source projects. Jeremy"s retrospective is excellent and you should read it.

I think it"s harder to bootstrap a large framework project that is an are alternatives to existing large frameworks because for many, it"s easier to use the default. Frameworks like FubuMVC, OpenRasta, ServiceStack, Nancy and others all "reimagine the default." They are large opinionated (in a the best way) frameworks that challenge the status quo. But it"s much more difficult to cultivate support for a large framework than it is a smaller library like Humanizer or JSON.NET.

Still, without these projects, we"d all still be using the defaults and wouldn"t be exploring new ideas and pushing limits as a community like the FAKE F# build system, or Chocolatey, or Boxstarter.

Microsoft can better support OSS projects not just with licenses and money, but with visibility. I"d propose dedicate Open Source tracks at all Microsoft conferences with speaking slots for open source community members. DotNetConf is a start, but we can go bigger.

Organizing is hard

OWIN is an example of a small, but extremely important project that affects the .NET world that is struggling with organization. Getting it right is going to be important for the future. There"s a small, but influential group of community members that having been trying for months to find middle ground and build consensus around a technical issue.

ASP.NET Web API and SignalR both build on top of an open source project called OWIN (Open Web Interface in .NET) that aims to decouple servers, frameworks, and middleware from each other.

There"s an issue open over on GitHub about what may seems like an obscure but important point about OWIN. The OWIN specification doesn"t include an interface called IAppBuilder, but IAppBuilder is used by default in most Microsoft examples. Can the underlying OWIN framework remain neutral? The issue is a long one, and goes off on a few tangents. It"s a complex problem that perhaps 20 people fully understand.

Scott Koon worked hard on a Governance document for OWIN and hasn"t seen any forward motion. He vented his frustration on Twitter, rightfully so. Under the often-used "Lazy Consensus" technique, if folks are silent or don"t reply in 72 hours, that is effectively consent and can change the direction of a project. Active involvement matters.

The fun part of open source is the pull requests and writing code, but before the code building, there"s the consensus building. Ownership is the most contentious part of this process. Ownership means control; control over direction. The key to finding control and working through ownership issues is by thoroughly understanding everyone"s differing goals and finding a shared vision that the community can rally around, then move forward.

This sausage making process is tedious, messy, but necessary. These discussions are as much a part of OSS as the code is. It takes equal parts patience and pushing.

Getting involved is hard

I get dozens of emails every week that all ask "how can I get involved in open source?" Everyone assumes my answer will be "write code" or "send a pull request," or sometimes, "help write documentation."

In fact, that"s not all you can do. What you can do is read. Absorb. Understand. Be welcoming, inclusive, and kind. Offer thoughtful analysis and ask questions. Avoid hyperbole and inflammatory language. Show code examples when commenting on issues. Be helpful.

Your blog posts are the engine of community, your open source commits, documentation, promotion, samples, talks, gists are important. But getting involved in open source doesn"t always mean "fork a project and send a giant pull request with your worldview." Sometimes it"s the important but unglamorous work of writing a governance document, organizing a conference call, or thoroughly reading a giant Github issue thread before asking a question.

Why do we do this? It"s not for the glamour or the money. It"s because we are Builders. I encourage you all to get involved. There"s lots to be done.

* photo by Sweet Chili Arts, used under CC

Sponsor: Big thanks to Novalys for sponsoring the blog feed this week! Check out their security solution thatcombines authentication and user permissions. Secure access to features and data in most applications & architectures (.NET, Java, C++, SaaS, Web SSO, Cloud...). Try Visual Guard for FREE.

SOURCE: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/OpenSourceIsAThanklessJobWeDoItAnyway.aspx

I"m a longtime Kindle fan. Love it. It"s not a tablet, not a computer, my Paperwhite Kindle represents books for me.

I have a first-generation Kindle Paperwhite and use it almost every day. It"s my go-to reading device. I originally gave it a mixed review but the game-changer was the addition of the magnetic cover, specifically the Kindle Paperwhite Leather Cover in Black. The Kindle turns on and off when it opens and closes, which is lovely, but the important point is the thickness it adds to the bezel. For my hands, a Paperwhite is an insubstantial thing that"s too small to hold comfortably. This cover adds just a fraction of an inch all around the Kindle and effectively the cover subsumes the Kindle. The cover melds with the Kindle in a firm and crisp way and you"ll never take it off. It"s perfectly sized, plus protected enough that I throw it in my bag without worry.

I recently came into possession of a second-generation Kindle Paperwhite and didn"t know what to make of it. It"s "one better" right? It"s the new version. It looks the same.

The main improvement they say is a clearer and higher-contrast display. Here are my 1st and 2nd gen Kindles next to each other, which is the Second Generation Paperwhite?

There"s a little glare here but the second gen has a whiter background and darker blacks.

The first gen has a fantastic screen...

But the second gen has darker blacks and crisper text.

The second generation is definitely faster, they say 25% faster. Turning pages is quicker and the screen updates faster. The new updated software also includes a fast "skim" ability so you can move WAY faster around a book to find your place.

They also added GoodReads (a social network for readers) integration directly into the Kindle. This is a fun way to discover new books and see what your friends are reading.

It also includes "Kindle Freetime," a special mode for kids where you can limit the books they see and tracks their reading time, as well as set goals for the number of minutes they read each day.

Upgrade your Kindle Software

Speed and clarity is nice but the most dramatic difference was the software. This new 2nd gen Kindle had a bunch of new software features that my 1st didn"t have. Unacceptable! ;) I checked, and I can get many of these new features by manually upgrading my Kindle"s software.

If you have a Kindle, head over to https://www.amazon.com/kindlesoftwareupdates and get updated. Most Kindles update themselves, but more and more I"m seeing that these updates roll out either slowly, or not at all. My first-gen was many versions behind.

It"s a basic process, just connect a USB cable and drag the update file into the ROOT (top) of the Kindle Directory. Disconnect and reboot and wait.

Now both my 1st and 2nd gen Kindle Paperwhite"s share the same software features!

Conclusion

It"s not a "must upgrade" but it"s a nice generational step. If you don"t have a Kindle reader, this is a great Kindle. If you"re a fan (as I am) and your partner needs a Kindle, get a new 2nd gen and pass the 1st gen along with updated software. Everyone wins.

Nicest Ad Ever

I particularly like the comment "nicest ad ever."

This extension also injects ads from "Yllix" when I"m on YouTube, and RevJet when elsewhere. Apparently if I set revjetoptout in my local storage, I can get around this. Very NOT intuitive. I saw no options for this extension exposing this.

Worse yet, every once in a while, Kim Kardashian shows up in my New Tab page. Again, there"s no way for non-technical relative to figure this out. And it"s pretty hard for technical me to figure it out. This is deceptive at best.

BxmVMpICUAA6lZq

Ugh.

Yes, I realize someone put work into this extension, and yes, I realize it was free. However, it wasn"t clear that it was going to randomly inject ads into any website without asking. It wasn"t clear that the ads were injected by this extension. There was/is no clear way for anyone without the ability to debug this to make it stop. Charge me a $1, but don"t reach into webpages I visit and mess with my content without telling me.

I recommend you check out chrome://extensions/ and give each enabled one a good hard look. Consider disabling or uninstalling extensions you may have forgotten about or ones you don"t explicitly trust. If you"re a dev, consider reading the code within the extensions and make sure you"re getting what you expect.

SOURCE: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CanYouTrustYourBrowserExtensionsExploringAnAdinjectingChromeExtension.aspx

German Lorenz cipher machine by Timitrius used under CC Attributin

ASP.NET Identity 2.0 was released last month and it"s got a number of significant updates and new features that are worth checking out. For historical context, read the "Introduction to ASP.NET Identity" article that includes a lot of background and information on why certain decisions were made, as well as an overview of some of the goals of ASP.NET Identity 2.0 like:

One Identity system for ASP.NET Web Forms, MVC, Web API, and Web Pages
Total control over user profile schema.
Pluggable storage mechanisms from Windows Azure Storage Table Service to NoSQL databases
Unit Testable
Claims-based Auth adds more choice over simple role membership
Social Logins (MSFT, FB, Google, Twitter, etc)
Based on OWIN middleware, ASP.NET Identity has no System.Web dependency

You can watch a video of Pranav Rastogi and I upgrading the ASP.NET Membership systems on an older ASP.NET application to the latest bits. There"s also migration docs in detail:

ASP.NET Identity is on CodePlex today (and soon to be open sourced...paperwork) at https://aspnetidentity.codeplex.com/ or access the NuGet feed for nightly builds.

Adding Two-Factor authentication to an ASP.NET application

I recently changed all my accounts online to two-factor auth, and I really recommend you do as well. Here"s how to add Two-Factor Auth to an ASP.NET application using Identity 2.0.

You"ll have a class that is a UserManager that handles access to users and how they are stored. Inside this manager there"s an IIdentityMessageService that you can implement to validate a user with whatever you want, like email, SMS, or a time-based token.

Send Verification Code

Here"s an example SmsService where I"m using Twilio to send text messages. Again, you can do whatever you want in your implementation.

public class SmsService : IIdentityMessageService
{
 public Task SendAsync(IdentityMessage message)
 {
 // Plug in your sms service here to send a text message.
 message.Destination = Keys.ToPhone; //your number here
 var twilio = new TwilioRestClient(Keys.TwilioSid, Keys.TwilioToken);
 var result = twilio.SendMessage(Keys.FromPhone, message.Destination, message.Body);

 return Task.FromResult(0);
 }
}

If I were sending an EmailMessage, I"d do something like this. Note it"s just another implementation of the same simple interface:

public class EmailService : IIdentityMessageService
{
 public Task SendAsync(IdentityMessage message)
 {
 string text = message.Body;
 string html = message.Body;
 //do whatever you want to the message 
 MailMessage msg = new MailMessage();
 msg.From = new MailAddress("scott@hanselman.com");
 msg.To.Add(new MailAddress(message.Destination));
 msg.Subject = message.Subject;
 msg.AlternateViews.Add(AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(text, null, MediaTypeNames.Text.Plain));
 msg.AlternateViews.Add(AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString(html, null, MediaTypeNames.Text.Html));

 SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient("smtp.whatever.net", Convert.ToInt32(587));
 System.Net.NetworkCredential credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential(Keys.EmailUser, Keys.EMailKey);
 smtpClient.Credentials = credentials;
 smtpClient.Send(msg);

 return Task.FromResult(0);
 }
}

In your IdentityConfig.cs you can register as many TwoFactorProviders as you"d like. I"m adding both Email and Sms here. They include token providers but again, everything is pluggable.

manager.RegisterTwoFactorProvider("PhoneCode", new PhoneNumberTokenProvider {
 MessageFormat = "Your security code is: {0}"
});
manager.RegisterTwoFactorProvider("EmailCode", new EmailTokenProvider {
 Subject = "SecurityCode",
 BodyFormat = "Your security code is {0}"
});

manager.EmailService = new EmailService();
manager.SmsService = new SmsService();

If a user tries to login you need to make sure they are a VerifiedUser. If not, get a valid two factor provider and send them a code to validate. In this case, since there are two providers to choice from, I let them pick from a dropdown. Here"s the POST to /Account/SendCode:

public async Task SendCode(SendCodeViewModel model)
{
 // Generate the token and send it
 if (!ModelState.IsValid)
 {
 return View();
 }

 if (!await SignInHelper.SendTwoFactorCode(model.SelectedProvider))
 {
 return View("Error");
 }
 return RedirectToAction("VerifyCode", new { Provider = model.SelectedProvider, ReturnUrl = model.ReturnUrl });
}

The sender of the two factor code depends on your implementation, of course.

public async Task SendTwoFactorCode(string provider)
{
 var userId = await GetVerifiedUserIdAsync();
 if (userId == null)
 {
 return false;
 }

 var token = await UserManager.GenerateTwoFactorTokenAsync(userId, provider);
 // See IdentityConfig.cs to plug in Email/SMS services to actually send the code
 await UserManager.NotifyTwoFactorTokenAsync(userId, provider, token);
 return true;
}

When it"s time to get the code from them, they need to have logged in with name and password already, and we"re now checking the code:

[AllowAnonymous]
public async Task VerifyCode(string provider, string returnUrl)
{
 // Require that the user has already logged in via username/password or external login
 if (!await SignInHelper.HasBeenVerified())
 {
 return View("Error");
 }
 var user = await UserManager.FindByIdAsync(await SignInHelper.GetVerifiedUserIdAsync());
 return View(new VerifyCodeViewModel { Provider = provider, ReturnUrl = returnUrl });
}

We can sign users potentially a number of ways, like with External Sign Ins (Twitter, etc) but here"s the TwoFactorSignIn

public async Task TwoFactorSignIn(string provider, string code, bool isPersistent, bool rememberBrowser)
{
 var userId = await GetVerifiedUserIdAsync();
 if (userId == null)
 {
 return SignInStatus.Failure;
 }
 var user = await UserManager.FindByIdAsync(userId);
 if (user == null)
 {
 return SignInStatus.Failure;
 }
 if (await UserManager.IsLockedOutAsync(user.Id))
 {
 return SignInStatus.LockedOut;
 }
 if (await UserManager.VerifyTwoFactorTokenAsync(user.Id, provider, code))
 {
 // When token is verified correctly, clear the access failed count used for lockout
 await UserManager.ResetAccessFailedCountAsync(user.Id);
 await SignInAsync(user, isPersistent, rememberBrowser);
 return SignInStatus.Success;
 }
 // If the token is incorrect, record the failure which also may cause the user to be locked out
 await UserManager.AccessFailedAsync(user.Id);
 return SignInStatus.Failure;
}

If you want this blog post"s sample code, make an EMPTY ASP.NET Web Application and run this NuGet command from the Package Manager Console

Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.Identity.Samples -Pre

Have fun!

Related Links

Adding ASP.NET Identity to an Empty or Existing Web Forms Project
Implementing a Custom MySQL ASP.NET Identity Storage Provider
Create an ASP.NET MVC 5 App with Facebook and Google OAuth2 and OpenID Sign-on
The tutorial uses the ASP.NET Identity API to add profile information to the user database, and how to authenticate with Google and Facebook.
Deploy a Secure ASP.NET MVC app with Membership, OAuth, and SQL Database to a Windows Azure Web Site
This tutorial shows how to use the Identity API to add users and roles.
Individual User Accounts in Creating ASP.NET Web Projects in Visual Studio 2013
Organizational Accounts in Creating ASP.NET Web Projects in Visual Studio 2013
Customizing profile information in ASP.NET Identity in VS 2013 templates
Get more information from Social providers used in the VS 2013 project templates

* Photo of German Lorenz cipher machine by Timitrius used under CC Attribution

Sponsor: Big thanks to Novalys for sponsoring the blog feed this week! Check out their security solution that combines authentication and user permissions. Secure access to features and data in most applications & architectures (.NET, Java, C++, SaaS, Web SSO, Cloud...). Try Visual Guard for FREE.

SOURCE: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AddingTwoFactorAuthenticationToAnASPNETApplication.aspx

I am a HUGE fan of Plex. Plex is a server you run combined with both a great HTML5 web app and some awesome native clients. Plex has clients for iOS, Windows Store, Windows Phone, and on and on. Best yet, the Plex Server can run not only on your spare computers, but also NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices like Synology, Netgear, Drobo, and more.

Last year, Plex came to the Synology DiskStation. I have a Synology 1511+ NAS and run everything on it from Minecraft Servers to Plex to using it as a giant 5TB NAS to storing my Time Machine backups and Windows 8 File History. I also run CrashPlan headless on my Synology.

Synology has an ersatz App Store that allows you to easily install all sorts of stuff to your Synology NAS, like phpBB, Plex, Git, and more.

However, I personally (and others) have found this feed of packages to be either updated not very often, or when it is updated, versions don"t line up.

If I can be slightly critical of Plex for a moment, they are fairly aggressive about keeping their client and server protocol versions in line. This means if you aren"t keeping your Plex Server reasonably up to date, one day you"ll startup your iPad Plex app or Windows Plex app and be told that server version is too old. It"s a little jarring.

The issue for me happens when I go to the Synology to update and there"s no new update. So the client is saying "you need version x+2" and all I see on the Synology feed is version x.

Plex example on a Microsoft Surface RT with Windows 8

Here"s the gotcha, and why I"m writing this up for you. You can use the Manual Install option (as seen in the top picture) then visit https://plex.tv/downloads and manually upload the .SPK file for Plex to your Synology server.

If you don"t uninstall Plex first - that"s the one that you install from Synology"s feed originally - then you can get yourself into some very weird versioning situations where Plex thinks one version is running and the Synology thinks another as seen in the screenshot below.

This has been discussed in the forums for almost a year now with no clear answer or solution.

Again, here"s what I did:

Uninstall Plex from the Synology Package Manager
Download Plex from https://plex.tv/downloads
Use Manual Install to install the new SPK to Synology

I hope this helps someone. Be sure to check out Plex, it"s a joy.

Sponsor: Big Thanks to Aspose for sponsoring the blog this week! Aspose.Total for .NET has all the APIs you need to create, manipulate and convert Microsoft Office documents and a host of other file formats in your applications. Curious? Start a free trial today.

SOURCE: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/FixedTheSynologyNASWithPlexServerAndMismatchedVersionNumbers.aspx

My new startup has data centers on three continents, utilizes global load-balancing, traverses networks with ease, has both an iPhone and Windows application, was written in a simple high level language, and enables an amazing scenario to help people get more done, faster.

But the real story - the real mindblower for me - was not the hours and hours of software that my partner and I wrote, it"s the years and years of software that we didn"t write.

We globally load balanced web sites and services across multiple servers in Europe, Asia, and the US. Windows Azure Traffic Manager handled that.

We sat our communication protocol on top of SignalR, an open source library using ASP.NET that hides the complexities of the real-time Web, handles NAT traversal for us, and basically removed the network for us as an issue. SignalR sits on stop of HTTP and Web Sockets, which sits on top of TCP/IP.

We used RayGun.io for our error management, and get complete stack dumps when a failure occurs in our application, this enables us to upgrade fast and often and give a good experience to our users

We used InnoSetup to install our application, it"s truly one of the most amazing applications I"ve ever used. Give him money.

We used the ZXing QRCode Open source library for creation of QR codes. We didn"t worry about the graphics details.

We used MahApps.Metro UI to make our Windows application look great. Added some controls, and it"s lovely.

And it all comes together using C# and the Xamarin set of tools. The iPhone app, the Windows app, and the cloud service, are all C#.

I"ve been in the software industry for over 20 years now and I remember when writing C was considered a rather high-level language. I generally understand the full stack from assembler all the way up to managed code and beyond to the cloud. It"s fantastic that today we think about managing VM clusters as much as we think about managing bytes.

Think about the giant shoulders that our application is standing on. Think about the shoulders that your application is standing on. Software abstraction has enabled us to do so much.

We can marvel at the abstraction layer that is Google. For many, that IS the internet. You type a question into a text box and push a button and the entire world opens up to you and a just a fraction of the planet truly appreciates the orchestration and history that makes it all happen.

Do I have a point here? Probably not. It just struck me today. Go listen to my chat with computer science legend Len Bass on this week"s podcast to get a feeling for the history and power that we exploit every day.

There is value in taking a moment to think about the deep and broad stack that your application sits on. Go thank and support the projects, both open source and not, that your application uses. Revel in the layers of abstraction that others have created and appreciate the ones that you have created. They make all the LEGO pieces you"re using just the correct size, and they make snapping them together a lot of fun.

It"s a great time to be a programmer. This blog post was dictated with the myEcho application.

SOURCE: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WeAreAbstractingOnTheShouldersOfGiants.aspx

Sometimes textmode is where it"s at. I"ve long blogged about tools and techniques that will make your Windows console experience better. Perhaps you"re a *nix person who is using Windows in your day job, or you wish the Windows PowerShell prompt was more nix-y. Or perhaps you"re a PowerShell person who wants to take your command-line to the next level.

Well, just as NuGet is how we get .NET libraries quickly, and Chocolately is a kind of apt-get for Windows, PsGet is a way to easily add PowerShell modules to your prompt.

To install PsGet you run this script (feel free to vet it):

(new-object Net.WebClient).DownloadString("http://psget.net/GetPsGet.ps1") | iex

Once you"ve got PsGet, the purpose of this post is to introduce you to PSReadLine.

To install PsReadLine with PsGet, just

install-module PsReadLine

If you want to install PsReadLine manually, you can from their readme. It does a LOT:

PsReadLine replaces the command line editing experience in PowerShell.exe. It provides:

Syntax coloring

Simple syntax error notification

A good multi-line experience (both editing and history)

Customizable key bindings

Cmd and emacs modes (neither are fully implemented yet, but both are usable)

Many configuration options

Bash style completion (optional in Cmd mode, default in Emacs mode)

Bash/zsh style interactive history search (CTRL-R)

Emacs yank/kill ring

PowerShell token based "word" movement and kill

Undo/redo

Automatic saving of history, including sharing history across live sessions

"Menu" completion (somewhat like Intellisense, select completion with arrows) via Ctrl+Space

But it doesn"t replace it in a scary "moved my cheese" way, but in a comfortable familiar way, similar to how Bash works now. It will add things that you WILL miss when you move to another machine that doesn"t have PsReadline. If you are already comfortable (or learning) PowerShell, this will feel comfortable immediately. It"s not Dvorak. ;)

Some cool PsReadLine examples

Syntax coloring for things like keywords (cd) and common commands (git):

Syntax coloring with PSReadline

PowerShell often has you opening parentheses, brackets and things, and then you have to count them to close them. PsReadLine helps with that also:

Not only does it give you nice syntax-highlighting for things like function building, it also shows me with the red > that I haven"t closed the block.

Forgot to close the block

When you are editing a multi-line script, you can also now backup to other lines!

multiline editing with PSReadline

If you are typing something like Get-Process and either want to autocomplete switches, or autocomplete results, you can press Ctrl-Space:

autocomplete

If you"re advanced, check out get-PSReadlineKeyHandler and not only look at what functions are bound to which hotkeys, BUT also check out all the functions that AREN"T bound. You have a lot of power for customization here!

get-PSReadlineKeyHandler

You can even set Emacs keybindings!

Set-PSReadlineOption -EditMode Emacs

Go check out https://github.com/lzybkr/PSReadLine on GitHub and give it a star!

Developers Forum,Technical information

Related Links

Security is hard

Visibility is hard

Organizing is hard

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