Vipul Patel

Introduction Windows 8.1 provides developers access to available devices on a Windows 8.1 computing device through first-class support for device enumeration APIs. By using these APIs, developers can programmatically query for device properties, such as ID, Friendly name, and other device properties. Device APIs The Device Enumeration APIs are homed in the Windows.Devices.Enumeration namespace. Devices […]

Introduction One of the biggest changes in Windows Phone 8.1 was the introduction of the Windows Phone Action Center. The Windows Phone Action Center enables users to quickly access certain phone settings as well their toast notifications. Applications can interact with the Windows Phone Action Center in a variety of ways, such as: Send a […]

Introduction The Windows Phone operating system provides platform support for use by application developers for socket communication for real-time network notifications. This support comes in the form of various classes in the Windows.Networking.Sockets namespace. Let us take a quick look at the various classes in the namespace: DatagramSocket class: This class represents a UDP datagram […]

Introduction One of the cool things about the latest version of Visual Studio is that it brings all of its features almost equally to all the platforms it supports. That means, the rich debugging experience that developers have come to love and appreciate for XAML-based Windows and Windows Phone applications also applies for JavaScript-based Windows […]

Introduction Visual Studio 2013 (Update 2) offers many diagnostics tools that developers can use to debug their XAML-based Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 applications. Having access to a good debugging toolset ensures that developers can release applications that are reliable and perform well. Debugging Support in Visual Studio 2013 Visual Studio 2013 support debugging swallowed […]

Introduction When you are building a new product, there is no dearth of features that need to be built and bugs that need to be fixed. How do developers then decide what to prioritize? One of the features being offered as part of Visual Studio Online is Application Insights, a new service that can collect […]

Introduction Can you remember any time in your development career when you did not have your piece of code worked with the solution your team was building? Think hard. Do you recall any such incidence? I can bet you will have a hard time coming up with one. Now, think again about the various tools […]

Introduction To store or transmit data, we need the data to be converted into a sequence of bytes. We can achieve this by serializing data. Serialization is defined as converting an object into a sequence of bytes for storage or transmission. Deserialization is the reverse (converting a series of bytes into objects). Serialization Support in […]

Introduction In an earlier article, Introduction to ASP.NET vNext, we learned about the next generation of ASP.NET called ASP.NET vNext. One of the major changes happening in ASP.NET vNext is the changes happening in MVC. The next version of ASP.NET will come with MVC6 – where the Web API, MVC and Web Pages framework are […]

Introduction Recently, Microsoft announced the preview availability of the next generation of ASP.NET called ASP.NET vNext. Microsoft has chosen a new direction with ASP.NET vNext – it is open-source. Here are the top 10 things we need to know about ASP.NET vNext. ASP.NET vNext has been redesigned from the ground up to optimize it for […]

Introduction Visual Studio has long been a staple for developers targeting applications for the Microsoft ecosystem. So when Microsoft recently announced public availability of Visual Studio Online, it would be a bit of an understatement to say that the developer community was a bit shocked with the announcement. The shock was felt because while Microsoft […]

Introduction As developers targeting the Microsoft platform, it has always been considered a “requirement” to use Visual Studio, and most developers do use it. However, not everyone who uses Visual Studio uses all of the features available in a particular version. In the fall of 2013, Microsoft released Visual Studio 2013 with even more features […]