Best practices for private config data and connection strings in configuration in ASP.NET and Azure

by bill-s, 2016-01-09T08:02:49.000Z

A reader emailed asking how to avoid accidentally checking in passwords and other sensitive data into GitHub or source control in general. I think it's fair to say that we've all done this once or twice - it's a rite of passage for developers old and new. The simplest way to avoid checking in passwords and/or connection strings into source control is to (no joke) <strong>keep passwords and connection strings out of your source. </strong>Sounds condescending or funny, but it's not, it's true. You can't check in what doesn't exist on disk.

Building Universal Windows Apps for Universal Performance

by bill-s, 2016-01-09T08:03:56.000Z

The Universal Windows Platform has been touted as nirvana for developers wanting to build applications that run anywhere. While it generally holds true that they do, many additional aspects of the build process need to be considered. Often the first point of discussion is how to design applications that scale across the wide variety of target devices. What is often forgotten, at least until very late in the development process, is how to build an application that is going to be both highly responsive and high performing.

DAY 7: SURPRISING CSS PROPERTIES YOU CAN USE TODAY

by bill-s, 2016-01-10T03:03:59.000Z

While working on the Juju GUI project, I was reviewing a pull request when I spotted there were no prefixes on box-sizing. I thought I should check if they needed it before asking the requester to add them. In doing so I was surprised to find that there are a lot more CSS features with global support than I originally thought. So I trawled through the chasms of Can I use and have come out with some gems to share.

Calling VSTS APIs with C#

by bill-s, 2016-01-09T08:00:55.000Z

In the last API-related article, <a href="http://blog.devmatter.com/personal-access-tokens-and-vsts-apis/">Personal Access Tokens and VSTS APIs</a>, we looked at how we can use <a href="http://www.telerik.com/fiddler">Fiddler</a>, along with a Personal Access Token (PAT), to query the Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) REST APIs. In this post, we’ll take a look at how we can use a 3rd party Fiddler extension, <em><a href="http://www.chadsowald.com/software/fiddler-extension-request-to-code">Request to Code</a></em>, along with the “Paste JSON as Classes” Visual Studio feature to jump start the process of calling VSTS APIs with C#.

Release Management Overview

by bill-s, 2016-01-09T08:08:15.000Z

Learn the fundamentals of Release Management, how it relates to DevOps, and benefits it and continuous deployment bring to any organization.