Gabriel Mongeon

For some time now, Microsoft use the UserVoice platform for gathering feedbacks from some of their products, which mostly target developers. UserVoice is really good for that task and its looks even better than Connect for feedback, which is still use for bugs and technical issues. But I don’t they are any list detailing theses site. So here’s my short list, and if you found one, let me know!

• ASP.Net
• Expression Encoder
• Expression Super Preview
• Expression Web
• Microsoft Advertising
• Silverlight
• Visual Studio
• WCF RIA Services (Thanks Colin!)
• Windows Phone (Users)
• Windows Phone (Developers) and the WP7 application for this site
• Windows Phone Interoperability

For a fifth year in a row I’ve been renew as a Microsoft MVP Visual C#!
Even if I do not have a ring on my award to prove it…

Happy new year!

More than a year ago, I proposed, on the newly created Stack Exchange Area 51, to have a version of Stack Overflow for French-speaking developers. To my great surprise, French-speaking developers followed this proposal and it is now in the “Commitment” phase, or engagement, without even having advertised it!

Do you want to commit as well? Click on the image below to support this proposal!

Microsoft has launched the Windows PowerShell Command Builder for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products and Microsoft Office 365 allowing you to create PowerShell commands graphically and more easily than if you had to type them yourself.

It is a simple Silverlight application but it allows you to make queries (SharePoint Server 2010, Foundation 2010, and Office 365) that can be more complex:

The documentation is here!

Happy PowerShell

Next week, I will be at the SharePoint Conference 2011 in Anaheim. This Microsoft event is dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies.

If you attend this event, meet me at the Alcero booth, which will be an exhibitor all week. It will be my pleasure to discuss with you!

When you want to make changes to the web.config file of your SharePoint 2010 application, you can use two methods:

• Create a webconfig.<your_name>.xml file that you add to the \CONFIG directory (Source on MSDN)
• Do it programmatically and use the SPWebConfigModification and SPWebApplication.WebConfigApplication objects (Source on MSDN).

However, when you use the second method and remove the changes from the file using Remove(), the changes are not removed. Even if you use .Update() and .ApplyWebConfigModifications(). This may only result in your modification appearing multiple times in the web.config file, but if you insert more sensitive modifications to uniqueness, such as for an HttpModule, it creates an error that prevents the site from functioning (Error 500).

At the end of last year, I had published that Microsoft Research was working on a prototype electronic platform running on NETMF named Gadgeteer. Well, it now seems that it has moved out of the research phase to “commercialize” this platform: Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer.

GHI Electronics has released the first Gadgeteer kit named GHI FEZ Spider Starter Kit. This kit allows you to code your own electronic module using your favorite language (and I am talking about C# ;) ) without knowing the basics of electronics. In fact, it is a hardware abstraction to allow budding hobbyists to start without learning how to solder or connect various electronic components.

Here is the next generation of Windows, Windows 8, ideal for tablets and if you have a Windows Phone, you will easily find your way around:

Building “Windows 8” - Video #1

When is the release?

To learn more: http://bit.ly/iCTxY6

Context

You are developing a SharePoint 2010 application using Visual Studio 2010 on a Windows 2008 64-bit server. You want to run a post-deployment script (PowerShell for example) for debugging:

The Problem

When you add a script, for example: powershell $(ProjectDir)\PowerShellScript\MySuperPowerShellScript.ps1

You always get an error when running the script:

Error occurred in deployment step ‘Run Post-Deployment Command’: The command "powershell $(ProjectDir)\PowerShellScript\MySuperPowerShellScript.ps1" exited with error code: 1.

This error is due to the fact that VS2010 runs in 32-bit mode, as well as its post-deployment scripts, and the SharePoint 2010 APIs run in 64-bit mode. This creates errors when executing the script.

Microsoft has just published the User Experience Design Guidelines for Windows Phone for Mango (Windows Phone OS 7.1). For anyone developing for WP7, it is a must to create pleasant applications for your users, as some miss the mark!

Here is an example from the guide:

Happy developing!