Gil Fink's Blog : Miscellaneous

Update Your Windows Phone 7 to Mango Release Today

Gil Fink — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:08:54 GMT

Update Your Windows Phone 7 to Mango Release Today

Two days ago I updated my Windows Phone 7 (HTC HD7 device) to the Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) even though the update didn’t arrive to my device from my device carrier. If you ask yourself how I did it, the answer is simple. I used a hack. You can read about this hack in this PC magazine article – How to Force Your Phone to Upgrade to Windows Phone Mango.

Pay attention that it might take a few tries up until this hack will succeed to operate (it took me 5 tries and to other people that I know it even took up to 10 tries). So don’t get frustrated if it doesn’t go on the first attempt (or even in the second or third etc.).

Thanks to Alex for the tip about the hack.

Third Year in a Row

Gil Fink — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 14:46:00 GMT

Third Year in a Row

Yesterday I received the mail from Microsoft that congratulate me for being a Microsoft MVP for the third time. It’s is a honor for me to get the award three years in a row. This time the receiving of the mail was somewhat weird since I saw on Twitter that people got the mail and I didn’t get it…
Apparently, my Gmail mail account (which is my personal mail account) “thought” that the congratulation mail is spam and moved it into the spam directory. This of course shows the true relationship between Google and Microsoft .

I would like to say thanks to all of you, my blog readers and the Microsoft community, for helping me keep the MVP Award for a third year! Also, I would like to thank the following people - Guy Burshtein, Maor David, and all my colleagues in Sela Group which IMHO everyone of them deserve to get the award! (and Congrats to Ido and Arik for their new MVP Award. You deserved it!)

HTML5 Adoption Strategies

Gil Fink — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:03:22 GMT

HTML5 Adoption Strategies

One of the questions that I got in the session that I delivered today was how to adopt HTML5 today? Since this was a very good question I decided to share what I think about it.

Why Do We Need Adoption Strategies?

You might ask yourself why do you need an adoption strategy for HTML5? The answer is simple. HTML5 includes many specifications that evolve in different rates. Therefore, the specification support in browsers is complicated to implement for the browser vendors. There are stable specifications such as Geolocation which are implemented by all the major browsers and there are less stable specifications like Web Sockets that aren’t. So, if you want to use an HTML5 specification in your web application how can you do that without breaking your application in some of the browsers? The answer to this question is to ask yourself whether you really need the feature. If you really need it then you can use adoption strategies in order to implement the feature.

Adoption Strategies

Here is a list of strategies that you can apply in order to adopt HTML5:

Lowest common denominator – this strategy is the simplest and it’s what I call the ostrich strategy (lets not implement HTML5 at all…). Applying this strategy is to look for the features that are implemented in all the browsers (or all the major browsers) and use them. This of course leave you with small amount of HTML5 specifications (or with non if you target very old browsers).
Vertical slices – in this strategy you decide that you only target a specific HTML5 functionality and therefore “lose” browsers that don’t implement it. If you do that for public internet applications it might harm your application’s credibility (since it won’t work for all the other browsers). This strategy is more appropriate for targeting mobile devices that is a growing market with less browsers to support and high HTML5 browser adoption.
Using Polyfills – Polyfills are JavaScript “hacks” that help to integrate HTML5 features into older browsers. For example using Modernizr which “adds” the HTML5 semantic elements (header, footer and etc.) to the DOM can help to implement these elements inside your web application and get a consistent UX across older browsers.
Using fallbacks strategies – Some elements and APIs can’t be achieved with Polyfills (for example the Video/Audio element). In this case you can use the HTML5 feature but you create a fallback if it isn’t exists. For example adding a Video element can have a fallback into Flash/Silverlight if the Video tag isn’t supported in the browser.

Summary

When you want to adopt HTML5 today you need to pay attention not to break your web application in older browsers and also in newer ones. This can be achieved by imposing some strategies such as the strategies that I mentioned in the post. If you have other strategies that you want to share with me please do so in the comments.

Balsamiq Mockups Tool

Gil Fink — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:58:48 GMT

Balsamiq Mockups Tool

As part of a project that I’m currently managing and developing, I was in a need to design UI mockup for a sample web application. I didn’t want to use Visio or Word for this task since I think that it is an overkill to use such “monsters” for a simple (but very important) task. So I remembered Scott Mitchell’s MSDN Magazine article and his recommendation for the Balsamiq Mockups tool. After I read the article last year, I evaluated the tool in the online demo and it was awesome.

Yesterday, I went to balsamiq web site and downloaded the tool’s trail version. It took me two hours to give life to the mockup that I imagined for the web application and that was it. The tool is SO easy to use, very intuitive and you create mockups “in the speed of light”. Just take a look at samples from Balsamiq Mockups site to get the idea of what you can achieve with the tool:

Once you finish to create the mockup, you can export it as an image or save it. I really enjoyed the second chance to use this brilliant tool. Now my design is at the hands of a graphical designer who get the picture of how the sample application needs to look and feel.
One last thing, the tool is a commercial product and it costs $79 per user license.

Father for the Third Time

Gil Fink — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 18:53:41 GMT

Father for the Third Time

I was asked why is my Blog so lonely lately. This is not because I have a writing block…
The answer is in the following pictures:

Three weeks ago Noya, my first daughter, was born and I’m busy with diapers instead of writing lines of code.
I will return writing soon so stay tuned!

Not Just a Designer: Code First in Entity Framework Article on VS Magazine

Gil Fink — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:08:02 GMT

Not Just a Designer: Code First in Entity Framework Article on VS Magazine

Lately I wrote an article about Code First approach in Entity Framework 4.1 for Visual Studio Magazine. The article was published a few days ago and you can read it here.

Enjoy!

I Have Joined The Conversation

Gil Fink — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:10:09 GMT

I Have Joined The Conversation

One picture is worth a thousand words:

Wrapping Up the MIX11 Experience

Gil Fink — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:40:00 GMT

Wrapping Up the MIX11 Experience

I got back home yesterday’s evening after ~20 hours on flights. This is the time to wrap up the MIX11 conference experience. Here are all the posts I wrote during the conference:

Summary of MIX11 announcements -

IE10 Preview 1 was released and can be download from here
A new tools update for ASP.NET MVC3 was released
WebMatrix got an update
Windows Azure has some new features
The next version of Windows Phone 7 – Mango – is coming soon
Silverlight 5 beta is available for download
Kinect Windows SDK is being built and will be available soon

I got to meet a lot of new people and also hooked up with people I met in MIX10. All in all, since I came with no expectations then I can tell that the conference was better then MIX10 in its content but there were less announcements then in last year.

MIX11 Here I Come

Gil Fink — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:46:00 GMT

MIX11 Here I Come

Tomorrow I’m flying to Las Vegas in order to attend MIX11 conference. Since most of my work is web-oriented, it is very natural that I going to the biggest Microsoft web conference and of course the bonus is that it is in Vegas. This is going to be my second round to Vegas and MIX since last year I also attended the conference and enjoyed it.
One of the things I really liked last year was to mix with a lot of passionate professionals and to meet a lot of interesting people. I remind you that if you are going to be there you can meet me. Use my Blog’s Contact Form in order to do that or just grab me in Mandalay Bay’s halls and start talking.
One last thing, Sela Group (the company I work for) is sending 14 senior consultant and senior architects to MIX11. For example you’ll be able to meet Ido Flatow the main writer of WCF 4 MOC course, Shai Raiten Scrat creator, Alex Golesh, and more.
I hope to see you there!

What to Look in an ORM Solution?

Gil Fink — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:28:00 GMT

What to Look in an ORM Solution?

One question that I sometimes being asked is what to look for in an ORM solution or more properly which ORM is preferable and why. The decision which ORM to choose is very crucial to the project development since after you start developing it will be hard to go back and use another ORM solution. Since there are many ORMs out there, here is a checklist that will help you to evaluate ORM solutions and to pick the one that fits your needs:

Basic Features

Can handle inheritance & polymorphism
Can handle different types of relations (1-1, 1-N, N-M)
Supports transactions
Supports different SQL operations (aggregation, grouping, ordering)

Extended Features

Multiple databases support
Allows execution of dynamic queries using a query language
Data Binding support
Stored Procedure and Function support (only if needed)
Can handle very big models and databases

Flexibility

Allows customization of SQL queries
Supports Joins and Sub-Queries
Supports concurrency
Can handle specific Database types (identity, GUIDs, XML…)

Ease of use

Graphical designer for mappings
Auto generation of model classes
Generate Database schema (Model First approach)
Maintainable (when Database schema changes)

Optimizations & Performances

Allows Lazy loading
Allows Eager loading
First level cache
Second level cache
Optimizes queries
Supports Bulk updates & deletions

Supports model serialization
Allows loading of disconnected objects
Supports disconnected state tracking
Model objects are readable in other platforms

Other things to consider

Price
Performance
Support for multiple platforms
Source code provided
Enables unit testing
Documentation & Support
Maturity
Vendor stability

This is a suggested list and there are more things to evaluate other then that by it can help you to make the relevant decision.

Meet Me at MIX11

Gil Fink — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:07:35 GMT

Meet Me at MIX11

As you know (or you found out just now) I’m suppose to attend MIX11 conference. Since I’m going to arrive on Monday and I’m not attending the pre-conference Boot Camps, I’ll have some spare time. So I decided pronounce two opportunities:

On Monday April 11, I’m going to give away four 15 minutes consulting sessions FOR FREE! about anything from ASP.NET, Entity Framework, OData to whatever you like. All you have to do is to contact me through my Blog’s Contact Form with your details and what do you want to talk about. I’ll contact the first four who will send a request and will give them the details when and where we will meet.
You will also have the opportunity to meet me and my Sela colleagues (12 senior .Net consultants will attend the conference) at MIX11 for beer or just to talk. Just contact me through my Blog’s Contact Form if you are interested.

Hope to meet you there!

My SDP Lecturer Interview

Gil Fink — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 21:40:48 GMT

My SDP Lecturer Interview

Last week Sela conducted a live broadcast with trailers to the sessions that will be presented on stage in the SDP conference. The broadcast was recorded if you want to see me “making a fool” of myself in the live broadcast you can watch the recording of my interview here (in Hebrew).
I’m reminding that I’m going to have two sessions:

Creating OData Services with WCF Data Services
Data is a first-class element of every application. The Open Data Protocol (OData) applies web technologies such as HTTP, AtomPub and JSON to enable a wide range of data sources to be exposed over HTTP in a simple, secure and interoperable way. This session will cover explain what is the Open Data Protocol and how to create OData feeds using WCF Data Services.

Not Just a Designer: Code First and Entity Framework
Entity Framework 4 brings many new opportunities for building complex data driven applications. Code First is a new EF capability that provides a code-centric experience for interacting with models and databases. The session will cover several new and future EF features such as Code First, and provide an overview for what to expect from EF in the future.

Also, I’m attending a tutorial day with Ido Flatow and Erez Harari about Entity Framework in Depth and a MVP Panel which is an ask the experts session.

Hope to see you at the conference!

Interview on MicrosoftFeed

Gil Fink — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 13:46:00 GMT

Interview on MicrosoftFeed

Yesterday an interview with me was published on MicrosoftFeed Blog.
You can read it here.

Which Development Product will You Suggest Your Boss?

Gil Fink — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 19:16:00 GMT

Which Development Product will You Suggest Your Boss?

Today I was asked to help in a decision making of buying products for developers in a company that I’m consulting for. The manager gave me the information about his budget and asked for suggestions. I suggested two products which doesn’t exists in the arsenal of tools at that company – one for developers productivity and refactoring and the second for profiling the developers products.

If you got a budget for buying a product for developers, which product will you suggest to your boss to buy and why?

MIX11 Winning Open Call Sessions Were Announced

Gil Fink — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:15:23 GMT

MIX11 Winning Open Call Sessions Were Announced

The MIX11 Open Call phase is over and there are twelve winning sessions. My proposed sessions didn’t make it to the final twelve but this was a competition and the best sessions won. From the list of twelve sessions that won, I’ll defiantly attend Elijah Manor’s “Good JavaScript Habits for C# Developers” session and Maarten Balliauw’s “Fun with ASP.NET MVC 3 and MEF” session (they got my vote while I was voting). I want to thank whoever vote for my sessions and to tell you that if you’ll attend Sela SDP conference you have the chance to hear both of my proposed sessions live!

Even though I’m not included as a presenter in the conference I’m going to be there so you’ll have the opportunity to meet me there. I’ll keep you informed about things that I’m planning for this year MIX in a few weeks so stay tuned.
See you there!