Responsive Web Design - Is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors).
Rachel Apel has written a concise easy to understand article about building a responsive and modern UI with CSS for WinJS apps.
The Windows Library for JavaScript is a library of CSS and JavaScript files. It contains JavaScript objects, organized into namespaces, designed to make developing Windows Store app using JavaScript easier. Windows Library for JavaScript includes objects that help you handle activation, access storage, and define your own classes and namespaces.
In Rachel's article includes plenty of good examples of markup, designer, and code which show how CSS for WinJs apps can be used to create a modern responsive design.
Read the article: Build a Responsive and Modern UI with CSS for WinJS Apps
If you are a typical business application developer you probably work with a database which is cluttered with ‘type’ tables e.g. InvoiceType, CustomerType, PaymentType, CreditCartType, OrderType, ItemType, ProductType – which all have a schemas similar to these:
There are the same number of columns in each type table above.
The data type of the columns are the same in all the tables.
Some column names are the same in all the tables.
Columns names that are not the same in all tables do follow the same naming rule in each table e.g. ItemTypeId, OrderTypeId, ListTypeId which all end with ‘Id’.
Given how similar these tables are, why not use 2-3 tables for all standard ‘type’ data, maybe something like this?
More to follow in part 2 of ‘DB Schema Design–Rethinking ‘Type’ Tables’
Have you checked out the Windows Store apps Dev Center lately?
It’s been filled with excellent resources for learning about and developing Windows Store apps. From code, to design guidelines, it’s chuck full of what you need to develop Windows Store Apps.
Feature guide
Product guide
Getting started
Support forums
Design downloads
Our design principles
Index UX guidelines
iPad to Windows Store app
iOS
Android
Windows 8
WPF/Silverlight
Samples
API reference
Downloads
Certification requirements
Below are some features that may be a part of C#.6 and VB.12. For current information visit Language feature implementation status for Dev14
Feature status as of 10/3/2014:
Feature
Example
C#
VB
Primary constructors
class Point(int x, int y) { … }
No
Auto-property initializers
public int X { get; set; } = x;
Done
Exists
Getter-only auto-properties
public int Y { get; } = y;
Ctor assignment to getter-only autoprops
Y = 15
Parameterless struct ctors
Structure S : Sub New() : End Sub : End Structure
Using static members
using System.Console; … Write(4);
Dictionary initializer
new JObject { ["x"] = 3, ["y"] = 7 }
Indexed member initializer
new JObject { $x = 3, $y = 7 }
Indexed member access
c.$name = c.$first + " " + c.$last;
Declaration expressions
int.TryParse(s, out var x);
Await in catch/finally
try … catch { await … } finally { await … }
Maybe
Exception filters
catch(E e) if (e.Count > 5) { … }
Typecase
Select Case o : Case s As String : …
Guarded cases
Select Case i : Case Is > 0 When i Mod 2 = 0
Partial modules
Partial Module M1
N/A
Partial interfaces
Partial Interface I1
Multiline string literals
"HelloWorld"
Year-first date literals
Dim d = #2014-04-03#
Binary literals
0b00000100
Digit separators
0xEF_FF_00_A0
Line continuation comments
Dim addrs = From c in Customers ' comment
TypeOf IsNot
If TypeOf x IsNot Customer Then …
Expression-bodied members
public double Dist => Sqrt(X * X + Y * Y);
Event initializers
new Customer { Notify += MyHandler };
Null propagation
customer?.Orders?[5]?.$price
Planned
Semicolon operator
(var x = Foo(); Write(x); x * x)
Private protected
private protected string GetId() { … }
Params IEnumerable
int Avg(params IEnumerable numbers) { … }
Constructor Inference
new Tuple(3, "three", true);
String interpolation
"\{p.First} \{p.Last} is \{p.Age} years old."
TryCast for nullable
Dim x = TryCast(u, Integer?)
Delegate combination with +
d1 += d2
Implicit implementation
Class C : Implicitly Implements I
nameof operator
string s = nameof(Console.Write);
Strict modules
Strict Module M
Faster CInt
Dim x = CInt(Math.Truncate(d)) |
#pragma
#Disable Warning BC40008
Checked and Unchecked blocks
Checked : x += 1 : End Checked
Field targets on autoprops
Serializable> Property p As Integer
If(b,e1,e2) uses type context
Dim x As Integer? = If(b,1,Nothing)
Visual Studio 2013 is new and improved.
Visual Studio 2013 provides support for Windows 8.1 App development.
It includes features to make it easier to develop across all Visual Studio languages and platforms: tools, controls and templates, new Coded UI test support for XAML apps, UI Responsiveness Analyzer and Energy Consumption profiler for XAML & HTML apps, enhanced memory profiling tools for HTML apps, and improved integration with the Windows Store.
Blend for XAML has been enhanced with significant new capabilities for Windows Store app design. Blend includes the addition of rulers and custom guides for more precise content layout as well as improved styling capabilities. Blend for HTML also inherits these enhancements and adds specific new capabilities for building Windows Store apps with HTML, such as the new timeline for animating changes in CSS.
Visual Studio 2013’s One ASP.Net unifies your web project experience so that you can create ASP.NET web applications using your preference of ASP.NET component frameworks in a single project. This new unified experience includes the ability to easily create hybrid applications that include improved versions of ASP.NET WebForms, MVC or Web API, all in a single project. Now you can mix and match the right tools for the job within your web projects, giving you increased flexibility and productivity when developing for the web.
‘Browser Link’ syncs HTML and CSS changes in Visual Studio with one or more open browsers‘Browser Link’ allows you to connect Visual Studio 2012 to one or more open browsers.
Iterators are used to perform custom iteration over collections such as lists or arrays.
Iterators make it possible to use the iterator programming pattern. Wikipedia states: “In object-oriented programming, the iterator pattern is a design pattern in which an iterator is used to traverse a container and access the container's elements. The iterator pattern decouples algorithms from containers; in some cases, algorithms are necessarily container-specific and thus cannot be decoupled.”
Iterators can be used to create a custom iteration over array or collection class.
Iterators can increase performance because they allow you to asynchronously consume the elements of a large collection.
Iterators can decrease memory use too.
Learn more by clicking: What's New for Visual Basic in Visual Studio 2012