Four years ago I wrote one of my first WPF applications. It was named 'BackUp' and enabled you to keep directories in sync (similiar to Microsoft's SyncToy). Actually I learned a lot of the WPF stack by creating this application, but since I did use code behind instead of the MVVM pattern, it was a good occasion for refactoring the code and applying a new UI.
In this post I will present the new Metro UI and describe my experience in using event-based components for the synchronization workflow.
For a long time I have been using Outlook to manage my contacts and appointments. I always synchronized my mobile phone with Outlook. After buying an Android device things have changed.
Now I use Google Contacts and Google Calendar to manage my contacts and appointments. Since I still use Outlook I need an easy way to synchronize Google with Outlook. Google provides GoogleCalendarSync to synchronize your calendar, but synchronizing contacts is only available for business customers.
In this post I will provide an Outlook addin which imports your Google contacts to Outlook.
About one year ago a created a blog engine which was based on ASP.NET MVC 1. Since then technologies have evolved. When ASP.NET MVC 3 was released, I decided to update my blog engine to use the new RazorViewEngine. Instead of MSSQL Express I use Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 together with the new Entity Framework 'Code First' approach.
Today I took a look at the new covariance and contravariance features of .NET 4. In this post I will explain the theoretical background and will provide some practical examples. The code snippets cover most of the features of CLR 1 to CLR 4.
During my experiments with Android, I have created a Yahtzee application with shake detection.
In this post I will give you an overview of the application and show you how to implement shake detection.
I also provide the full source code and an APK file, so you could install the game on your phone.
The Android market share is continuously growing. So I decided to create a Yahtzee application to get some experience in android development. In this post I will compare Windows Phone 7, which has recently been launched, to the Android platform from a developer perspective.
Unity is a well known dependency injection container. Custom extensions can be created to extend its functionality. The download of Unity contains an extension for interception.
In this post I will show you, how interception can be used for separation of cross-cutting concerns.
Did you ever search an application in your start menu? Even with the search bar of Windows 7 or Windows Vista it takes some time to select the right shortcut. In this article I will show you a tool, which enables you to start your commonly used programs by speech.
An article about the Piwi Framework, written by Christian Grobmeier and myself, appeared in the latest edition of the PHP Magazin.
The article is a basic introduction to the framework. It covers the main concepts and features of Piwi and explains how you can use the framework to create a website.
A few weeks ago I blogged about a problem concerning coverage of unexecuted code in PartCover. The problem was that the report generated by PartCover does not contain any coverage information about uncovered methods. That implicated, that my tool ReportGenerator calculated a wrong coverage quota, since the lines of unexecuted method were considered to be 'not visitable'.
I claimed that it would not be easy to create a workaround for the problem, but actually it isn't that difficult, if you use the right tools.
