It looks like Mozilla has been playing mind games with Microsoft, and targeting the Internet Explorer 8 browser. Just a few days after Mozilla gave us a sneak preview of the 3.7 version of Firefox, they have been making "mockups" available of Firefox 4.0 to the public.

The open source browser maker has added colour over Firefox 4.0's location bar. It will turn green when a user starts typing, will blend with the bar when at rest, flashes blue on hover and transforms into red when a page is loading.

This all to attract more users to use Firefox as their default browser, and to get users to switch from IE to Firefox without seeing to much of a difference. The key point they are trying to raise is that Firefox is the most flexibile and customisable browser available today!

One of the standout changes that Firefox is looking at, is the location of the search bar at the top. It looks like the search bar will be similiar to the IE8 and Google Chrome designs, where the tabs will be either above the search bar, or below. This will give it a more sleak look.

It really looks like Firefox is going beyond their usual designs, and really trying to make Firefox the browser to have. You bet it’s going to get more great features, as it’s going to be some time until we can browse the web with this lbrowser!

If you are already a Firefox fan, and would like to have a sneak peek of Firefox in 2010, you can visit the following link.

The Visual Studio plug-in provides BlackBerry smartphones support for Visual Studio 2008, allowing the creation of simple internet/intranet web pages or the use of Ajax and ASP.Net.

All .NET developers can use their development tool of choice, while still taking advantage of key features found in web development to quickly create contenet based web sites, and more complex applications, which will run on any Blackberry smartphone. They can also enjoy seamlessly integrated web development, debugging and profiling in a single tool.

New Web Development Enhancements:

Debugging:

• Support is available for debugging web projects with BlackBerry Smartphone Simulators
• Setting Breakpoints on JavaScript® code
• Seamless integration into Locals and Watch Windows

Profiling:

• Visibility into the content of XMLHttpRequest requests and response data
• Visibility into data traffic for web-based content, including elements such as images, CSS, JavaScript, HTML
• Reporting on time-to-load for web-based content, including elements such as images, CSS, JavaScript, HTML

Simulator:

• BlackBerry® Bold™ smartphone simulator now included as the default simulator for web projects
• Ability to install v1.2 alongside v1.1 to allow continued support for debugging BlackBerry® MDS Runtime projects

Requirements:

• Operating System: Windows® XP and Windows Vista™ (32-bit)
• Microsoft Visual Studio: minimum requirement Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (Service Pack 1) Standard Edition

The plug-in is free, and you can download the Blackberry plug-in from here.

I have seen numerous applications where developers use ".toString" to convert a value to string. However lets say you are trying to convert a value from a database field that does allow NULL to inserted... what will happen if you cast this value to a string from int?

For my examples I left the entry in the database NULL.

Example with "Convert.ToString()":

// This will set the variable test to null:
// Use a datareader to return result from database
string age = Convert.ToString(dt.Rows[i][1].ToString());

Console.WriteLine(age);

If you run this code snippet in your own code, you will see NULL is written assigned to the variable.

Example with "toString()":

// This will throw an exception:
// Use a datareader to return result from database
string age = dt.Rows[i][1].ToString();

Console.WriteLine(age);

If you run this code snippet in your own code, you will see that the code will break. The problem with this statement is that null doesn't have a ".ToString()" method. It will throw a NULL reference exception error.

To summarise, it is best practice to CONVERT a value to string, if you are not sure what value you are getting back, then to CAST it to a string.

I am a fan of the Agile methodology in developing software. It brings results, it is very effective if followed correctly, and widely used within numerous companies. Agile is people driven, instead of process driven. Have a good team of motivated developers, is worth more then the process. However there are rules around this too. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

What is Agile development?

Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. The term was coined in the year 2001 when the Agile Manifesto was formulated. Some people came together, exchange ideas and came up with the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

Agile Development consists of a series of interdependent planning and delivery rhythms(uniformities). These agile rhythms, while quite simple conceptually, have proven not so simple to implement. Yet this cyclical series of meetings and events delivers the reliable beat which allows teams to find their own agile rhythm.

While no single document delivers all of the ammunition agile teams need to get the rhythm, this set of agile meeting and facilitation checklists offers an easy framework to help guide software development teams through the various agile cycles.

The Agile Development 'Rhythms':

• Strategy - Projects and product development efforts ideally start with a vision associated with a business need or direction. This vision is then typically framed in context of a strategy and associated goals and objectives during a management team planning session.
• Release - Releases represent the large-grained delivery cycle in agile development. Releases typically range between one and six months, but may extend longer in some environments. Releases begin with a release planning meeting where product owners (or product managers, project leads, etc.) work to define and prioritize a candidate set of features that are then estimated by the team.
• Iteration - Also known as Sprints, iterations are short, fixed-length subsets of releases, generally in the 1-6 week time frame. Iterations represent the execution heartbeat of the project. During, each iteration the team’s goal is to deliver useful software.
• Daily - Every day the team is focused on completing the highest priority features in the form of working, tested software. As features are delivered within the iteration, they are reviewed and accepted, if appropriate, by the product owner. Each day a short, 15-minute standup meeting facilitates the communication of individual detailed status and any impediments or issues.
• Continuous - Agile development teams are constantly driving towards a state of continuous, adaptive planning, collaboration, design, development, testing and integration. This commitment fosters a dynamic, highly productive environment in which automation is critical and the output is always high-quality, valuable working software.

Some examples of Agile practices:

• Test Driven Development (TDD)
• Behavior Driven Development (BDD)
• Continuous Integration
• Pair Programming
• Planning poker

Microsoft's chief operating officer says they are planning to open their retail stores "right next door to Apple" in the few months. Microsoft and Apple have been fighting it out for years over who has the best operating system. Microsoft's Windows platform runs on the most PC's in the world, while Apple are known for the design sense.

The approach is new but consistent with Microsoft's advertising strategy. Its online and TV campaigns have taken to always comparing against Apple, often juxtaposing Apple's supposedly higher prices versus inexpensive Windows systems.

Microsoft plans to showcase their latest technologies like Zune HD, Xbox 360, and then there is the Microsoft tabletop. If Microsoft uses some of these popular items as cornerstones for their retail presence, and even allows the chance to get first-looks at some of these things, they may be on to something.

Microsoft has announced that you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium E for £49.99** or Windows 7 Professional E for £99.99**. This pre-order offer begins on 15th July, 2009 and it will end on 9th August, 2009. Windows 7 will be officially released on 22 October at a price from £119.99 for the Windows 7 Home Premium E platform.

Minimum recommended specifications for Windows 7:

• 1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1GB RAM (32-bit) / 2GB RAM (64-bit)
• 16GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20GB (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

Windows 7-E?

In Europe, due to regulations imposed on Microsoft, the company has announced that Windows 7 will not ship with the company's own Internet Explorer in Europe because of allegations that Microsoft was restricting choice to European consumers. Due to the removal of Internet Explorer, European customers will not be able to upgrade their Vista installations and will have to perform clean installations of Windows 7. Microsoft has said that it may offer the option to install Internet Explorer via Windows Update

The offer is available through participating retailers. Each retailer will tell you how to get your copy when Windows 7 is released. For more information visit this link.

The latest version of Sliverlight, Silverlight 3, was released today - a day earlier then expected, as it was supposed to be out officially on July 10 only. Silverlight 3 supports Internet Explorer version 6/7/8, Firefox 2/3 and Safari 3/4 browsers - currently there is no support for Opera or Chrome browsers.

Microsoft has rolled out Silverlight 3 with a lot of new stuff including the Smooth screening feature. Silverlight is a browser plugin that enables rich media experience, audio playback, vector graphics and animation.

Microsoft's Silverlight is a direct rival of Adobe Flash and is available for download from Microsoft's Silverlight site.

Some key highlights:

• Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio.
• Empowering Richer Experiences.
• Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity.
• Advanced Accessibility Features.
• Out of Browser Capabilities.

Internet Search giant Google has confirmed that it will soon release it own Operating system called "Google Chrome OS". This is seen as a direct opponent for Microsoft Windows.

The announcement was made on the Google blog on Tuesday 7 July 2009. Google said that "Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks." Google plan to open-source the code for the OS later in the year, with the first version of the operating system available to consumers in the second half of 2010.

Google also said they are planning Google Chrome OS as a separate project from their wellknown mobile project called Android. Android was designed from the start to work accross several devices lie phones and netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web.

A preview of ASP.NET MVC 2.0 should be available within the next two months. After the first release, the team continued on building new functionality and improving the current release. The next major version of ASP.NET MVC after version 2 will likely drop support for Visual Studio 2008 and require the ASP.NET 4 framework.

The MVC 2 feature list:

I’m going to cut to the chase and just quote what Phil Haack posted on the CodePlex ASP.NET site:

• Areas - Provide a means of grouping controllers and views to build out subsections of a site in isolation.
• Asynchronous Controller Actions - Provide an asynchronous programming model for controller actions for improved scalability.
• Strongly-typed input helpers – Expression-based helpers for generating form fields against the model.
• Strongly-typed link helpers – strongly typed helpers for generating action links
• Support for Data Annotations - The default model binder will include support for Data Annotations attributes (a la Dynamic Data).
• Caching Improvements - Improve various caching scenarios.