Here’s the list of things that “really” caught my attention in 2010. By really I mean, not just caught my attention but made me spend time in it and go – “That is so cool!”
I finally rated these developments of 2010 base on #1 if they are entirely new (or how great are the 2010 features), #2 how much time I spent on it and #3 with how many people I went – “Hey did you hear about ….”
IE 9
Somewhere between IE 6 & so called, Microsoft's complacency, Internet Explorer lost market to competitors. But the very promising Internet Explorer 9 looks like a great comeback. So much that, I think, IE9 might have a place in this list for 2011. If you have been following Ray Bango, you would get a lot of information first hand. The Beta version is slicker, smarter, flashier has some great tools. Big features include the support for HTML5 & CSS3 and Chakra, the new JavaScript engine.
“All In” Cloud services
With the release of Windows Azure and SQL Azure cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), this year Microsoft went “All in!” the cloud. The cloud version of SQL server made Azure services an easier sell and the possibility of having composite solution (computing and/or storage) addresses some of the skeptics. Some of more news came in with the new and improved BPOS rebranded as Office 365 and Windows Azure platform appliances allowing partners and large enterprises to run Windows Azure on premise.
Don’t miss to claim your free trial while it is available.
Windows Phone 7 (and the worthy mention – HTC Evo)
For all those who kept going “Are they there yet?” - well yes, it’s finally here and it looks pretty good. I got my hands on Samsung focus and I liked it.
Microsoft’s touch screen based smart phones did come in late but I admire the confidence of some folks at Microsoft when they say, “2010 is not the end of the world.” The statement has some substance in it but how much, only time will tell.
I want to mention the Android based HTC Evo, I used that for 2 weeks and it too was very impresses.
Using these two phone made me believe that the iPhone’s era of dominance is definitely now over.
NuGet (initially released as NuPack)
NuGet is a free open source developer focused package manager intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. It was the big surprise gift that came to me from Microsoft camp this year to the developers who love open source. Within weeks of it’s release, I could see people in open source community forums asking – “is there a NuPack for this?”
Visual studio 2010
Needs no introduction, our favorite IDE just got more efficient, extendable and productive. It carries the cloud, the NuPack, the phone and the browser, the web , the desktop and is now loaded with power tools.
Microsoft continues to supply the Express versions of Visual Studio for free.
and for my top pick, with drum rolls…
Razor sharp MVC 3
It’s the same MVC framework that brought us closer to the Web, now with the new Razor View engine making your view look more elegant than ever. It is now powered with Chart helper, Unobtrusive Ajax, client validation with deeper extensibility.
The current installer installs MVC 3 side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC 2.
Top features include :
- Expressive Views including the new Razor View Engine
- Powerful hooks with Dependency Injection and Global Action Filters
- Rich JavaScript support with unobtrusive JavaScript, jQuery Validation, and JSON binding
- Streamlined validation with improved Model validation
Happy new year.
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