Windows Developer Power Tools

A wealth of open and free software is available today for Windows developers who want to extend the development environment, reduce development effort, and increase productivity. This encyclopedic guide explores more than 100 free and open source tools available to programmers who build applications for Windows desktops and servers.

Addressing general readers as well as software practitioners, "Software and Mind" discusses the fallacies of the mechanistic ideology and the degradation of minds caused by these fallacies. Mechanism holds that every aspect of the world can be represented as a simple hierarchical structure of entities. But, while useful in fields like mathematics and manufacturing, this idea is generally worthless, because most aspects of the world are too complex to be reduced to simple hierarchical structures. Our software-related affairs, in particular, cannot be represented in this fashion. And yet, all programming theories and development systems, and all software applications, attempt to reduce real-world problems to neat hierarchical structures of data, operations, and features. Using Karl Popper's famous principles of demarcation between science and pseudoscience, the book shows that the mechanistic ideology has turned most of our software-related activities into pseudoscientific pursuits. Using mechanism as warrant, the software elites are promoting invalid, even fraudulent, software notions. They force us to depend on generic, inferior systems, instead of allowing us to develop software skills and to create our own systems. Software mechanism emulates the methods of manufacturing, and thereby restricts us to high levels of abstraction and simple, isolated structures. The benefits of software, however, can be attained only if we start with low-level elements and learn to create complex, interacting structures. Software, the book argues, is a non-mechanistic phenomenon. So it is akin to language, not to physical objects. Like language, it permits us to mirror the world in our minds and to communicate with it. Moreover, we increasingly depend on software in everything we do, in the same way that we depend on language. Thus, being restricted to mechanistic software is like thinking and communicating while being restricted to some ready-made sentences supplied by an elite. Ultimately, by impoverishing software, our elites are achieving what the totalitarian elite described by George Orwell in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" achieves by impoverishing language: they are degrading our minds.

Full Color INCLUDES COMPLETE CODE AND ASSETS FOR EACH APP IN THIS VOLUME! Got a great idea for an app? There’s a chapter for that! Calling all developers: Windows Phone 7 is starting to gain traction, and the opportunity is yours to sell the next killer app! 101 Windows Phone 7 Apps is a book series like no other–best-selling author and Microsoft developer Adam Nathan walks you through the process of building 101 real, robust, diverse, and marketplace-certified Silverlight applications. You not only get online access to the full source code and related assets, but the book is chock full of tips, warnings, and advice that can only come from Adam’s experience of writing so many complete applications and selling them in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Imagine how long it would take you to develop and test 50 apps and how much you would learn from the experience. Rather than spending all that time starting from scratch, use this book to hit the ground running! Whether you simply make cosmetic changes to apps in this book (for example, creating kid-themed versions), repurpose apps (such as building a mortgage calculator based on Chapter 10’s tip calculator), or build something completely unique, this book can greatly accelerate your development time and help you create high-quality apps. Sell your apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace and make this book pay for itself! Volume I contains the first 50 apps and covers the following: Everything you need to know about Silverlight Fully exploiting phone features such as the application bar, hardware/software keyboards, multi-touch, accelerometer, microphone, and more Using rich controls such as pivots, panoramas, and controls in free toolkits, such as date/time pickers, toggle switches, charts, and graphs Building your own custom controls, including popular ones missing from the platform, such as a checkable list box, multi-select picker box, and color picker Broadly applicable pages, such as a photo-cropping page and accelerometer-calibration page How to make your app look and feel like a first-party app Practical tips on a wide range of topics, even acquiring and creating sound effects, using custom fonts, and creating icons

In-depth coverage of the major Visual Studio 2015 revamp Professional Visual Studio 2015 is the leading pro's guide to new and upgraded features of Microsoft Visual Studio. With a unique IDE-centric approach and deep dive into the software's many nooks and crannies, this book will bring you up to speed quickly on everything Visual Studio 2015 has to offer. Whether you're new to Visual Studio or just upgrading, you'll appreciate in-depth, professional explanation of updates, features, and support. Visual Studio 2015 is packed with improvements that increase productivity, and this book walks you through each one in succession to help you smooth your workflow and get more accomplished. From customization and the interface to code snippets and debugging, the Visual Studio upgrade expands your options — and this book is your fast-track guide to getting on board quickly. The Visual Studios 2015 release fixes a number of issues that deterred many professionals from adopting VS 2013. Old products have been retooled, and new features are aimed at productivity enhancement and fixes to UI. Fully aligned with VS 2015, this guide walks you through the changes and helps you incorporate helpful new features into the way you work. Discover new options for themes, displays, and settings Learn the new workflow and shortcuts to ASP.NET code Master improved debugging and unit testing support capabilities Exploit changes to Windows STORE apps, phone apps, Azure, and SharePoint

Printed entirely in color, with helpful figures and syntax coloring to make code samples appear as they do in Visual Studio. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is a key component of the .NET Framework 3.0, giving you the power to create richer and more compelling applications than you dreamed possible. Whether you want to develop traditional user interfaces or integrate 3D graphics, audio/video, animation, dynamic skinning, rich document support, speech recognition, or more, WPF enables you to do so in a seamless, resolution-independent manner. Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed is the authoritative book that covers it all, in a practical and approachable fashion, authored by .NET guru and Microsoft developer Adam Nathan. · Covers everything you need to know about Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) · Examines the WPF feature areas in incredible depth: controls, layout, resources, data binding, styling, graphics, animation, and more · Features a chapter on 3D graphics by Daniel Lehenbauer, lead developer responsible for WPF 3D · Delves into non-mainstream topics: speech, audio/video, documents, bitmap effects, and more · Shows how to create popular UI elements, such as features introduced in the 2007 Microsoft Office System: Galleries, ScreenTips, custom control layouts, and more · Demonstrates how to create sophisticated UI mechanisms, such as Visual Studio-like collapsible/dockable panes · Explains how to develop and deploy all types of applications, including navigation-based applications, applications hosted in a Web browser, and applications with great-looking non-rectangular windows · Explains how to create first-class custom controls for WPF · Demonstrates how to create hybrid WPF software that leverages Windows Forms, ActiveX, or other non-WPF technologies · Explains how to exploit new Windows Vista features in WPF applications

Harness the full power of the Visual Studio IDE to take your coding skills to the next level by learning about IDE productivity practices and exclusive techniques Key FeaturesIncrease your productivity by leveraging Visual Studio 2019's improvements and featuresExplore powerful editing, code intelligence, and source code control features to increase productivityDelve into VS’s powerful, untapped features such as custom project templates and extensionsBook Description Visual Studio 2019 (VS 2019) and Visual Studio Code (VS Code) are powerful professional development tools that help you to develop applications for any platform with ease. Whether you want to create web, mobile, or desktop applications, Microsoft Visual Studio is your one-stop solution. This book demonstrates some of the most sophisticated capabilities of the tooling and shows you how to use the integrated development environment (IDE) more efficiently to be more productive. You’ll begin by gradually building on concepts, starting with the basics. The introductory chapters cover shortcuts, snippets, and numerous optimization tricks, along with debugging techniques, source control integration, and other important IDE features that will help you make your time more productive. With that groundwork in place, more advanced concepts such as the inner workings of project and item templates are covered. You will also learn how to write quality, secure code more efficiently as well as discover how certain Visual Studio features work 'under the hood'. By the end of this Visual Studio book, you’ll have learned how to write more secure code faster than ever using your knowledge of the extensions and processes that make developing successful solutions more enjoyable and repeatable. What you will learnUnderstand the similarities and differences between VS 2019 and VS CodeGet to grips with numerous keyboard shortcuts to improve efficiencyDiscover IDE tips and tricks that make it easier to write codeExperiment with code snippets that make it easier to write repeating code patternsFind out how to customize project and item templates with the help of hands-on exercisesUse Visual Studio extensions for ease and improved productivityDelve into Visual Studio’s behind the scene operationsWho this book is for This book is for C# and .NET developers who want to become more efficient and take advantage of features they may not be aware of in the IDE. Those looking to increase their productivity and write quality code more quickly by fully utilizing the power of the Visual Studio IDE will also find this book useful.

Detailed instruction on using the specialized software-development tools necessary for Windows application development. Included is information on using the C Compiler, the Linker, and the Resource Compiler.