Catch up on the fresh stuff.
Summer’s the perfect time to brush up on some web development skills, news, and rumors. Around the internet, we’ve seen some conversation on methods, best practices, and upcoming language and dev space changes, and to make it easy on you, dear reader, here’s a round-up of some of the highlights.
Spend a little extra time on your web dev education — we know you want to.
JavaScript
On the Infragistics blog, they’ve listed some ways to start working with the features that will be included in Harmony. Harmony is the next version of the client scripting language, and it’s been supposedly almost-ready-to-drop for awhile now. Chrome’s at the head of the pack incorporating some of the features, including:
- Lexical Scoping
- Collections
- Weak Maps
- Proxies
Reviewing JavaScript’s future also “wouldn’t be complete without including some of the big libraries and frameworks that sit on top of the language.” Their ones to watch? JQuery, Backbone.js, and Knockout.js.
Making the ASP.NET to Windows 8 Transition
Have you or your business begun developing for Windows 8? Developing for Windows 8 means building Metr0-style apps with HTML5 and JavaScript. But it requires some adjusting. Fortunately, we’ve found there are some great resources out there to help.
Visual Studio Magazine has published some best practices for the transition, at the pre- during- and post-development stages, as well as how to approach the marked changes to navigation.
Back at the Infragistics blog, we found more tips on moving from ASP.NET to Metro. The most important thing, it turns out, is keeping the right state of mind in approaching stateful application development, and ensuring you grasp it fully.
All the Latest at the Microsoft Conference
Of course we’re always excited to hear about the coolest new things coming out of Microsoft. This summer’s conference came and went, and with most of its hardware updates and releases already announced, the emphasis instead was “a deep dive into its coding architecture” and an in-depth presentation of Windows 8 updates.
TechRadar posted their five favorite moments from the conference, including a detailed preview (finally!) of Windows 8.1, sessions emphasizing apps and app development for Windows 8 and Windows phones and tablets, and larger discussion of the company’s shift to a rapid release cycle for its operating system, and a more in-depth conversation about Xbox One development.
For your development pleasure, check out this list of good, bad, and “whatever” from Build 2013.
Of course, Internet Explorer 11 was a hot topic, too. The newest version is reportedly much faster, with an innovative pinned sites feature that has made an impression on attendees. Will this iteration prove to be its redemption? It’s also confirmed: the newest update supports WebGL.
Probably most significant is a larger shift in the company, towards a rapid release cycle, for both operating system updates as well as software and hardware products. This was an important discussion surrounding the larger conference and all of the other topics therein. Whether they do it well or not-so-well, it will affect all of our relationships with the Microsoft and its enormous influence in our enterprise and personal technological lives.
On the subject of rapid release cycles: Many attendees we spoke with said they noticed Microsoft taking on a different tone from the one it has affected before, and the messaging of faster releases and various product offerings was certainly part of the perceived shift going on at the company.
How well Microsoft can stick to its word we’ll see, but we left with the impression that we’re in for different Microsoft than we knew a year ago. Time will tell how well they follow through. Either way, it will impact all of us.
What were the best (or worst) bits of the Microsoft Build Conference this year? Have you been working on any extra training and development skills this summer? We want to know – post in the comments!
