Library tutorials & articles
-
Creating Particle Effects in Silverlight
by John Mannix
Learn how to use a classic animation technique to create realistic special effects in Silverlight - offering visual effects including fire, water, smoke and fog.
-
Domain Driven Design: A Step by Step Guide - Part 2
by Casey Charlton
Get to grips with the fundamental concepts of entityes, value objects, aggregate roots and domain services.
-
Domain Driven Design: A Step by Step Guide - Part 1
by Casey Charlton
There is a lot of interest in DDD recently, both in the book, and in the methodology, and in the buzzword. Casey aims to clear up the confusion and start to demystify it.
-
C# 4.0 goes dynamic - a step too far?
by Mike James
Is C# in danger of too much change? Mike James ponders the implications of dynamic types in C#.
-
The Future of .NET Languages
by Damon Armstrong
Wondered why Microsoft always seems to release different language features for each language? Discover how .NET 4.0 will reduce the disparity between C# and VB.NET with some great new features for both languages, plus a new dynamic language runtime and new functional and parallel programming languages.
-
Using Adobe Flex in Visual Studio
by Matt Wicks
You can now take advantage of the Flex framework from right within Visual Studio to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). We get you up to speed on what Flex is and a basic application talking to a web service.
-
Controller Patterns for ASP.NET
by Alex Homer
Discover how to use controllers and partial views within your web applications, allowing powerful web applications to dynamically choose correct views at runtime, and preserving your seperation of concerns.
-
Rails: an introduction
by Kevin Jones
You've heard the hype - but not given it a shot yet? Kevin Jones explains the background of MVC, DRY and TDD and how to get started with your first Ruby on Rails web app!
-
Implementing the Singleton Pattern in C#
by Jon Skeet
The singleton pattern is one of the best-known patterns in software engineering, but often implemented without lazy loading and introducing unintended issues around threading. Jon Skeet runs through the possible implementations.
-
Iterator blocks in C# 2: auto-generated state machines
by Jon Skeet
Ever wondered how the magic "yield" statement works? Jon Skeet digs into the inner workings of C# 2.0 and how this innocuous statement gets you a whole load of "free" generated code for your iterators.
-
Iterators, iterator blocks and data pipelines in C#
by Jon Skeet
With the arrival of LINQ to Objects, understanding how iterators work has become more important than ever before. Learn how to implement them in C# 2 (or 3), and how these apply to the fundamental aspects of LINQ to Objects.
-
Creating Extensible Applications with MAF
by Mark Smith
Learn how using MAF allows you to easily create extensible applications that allow new features to be added without jeopardizing the stability of the existing code base. MAF provides a higher-level service that allow you to dynamically discover, load, secure and interact with external assemblies used to provide features for your application.
-
TDD in Practice - Dealing with Hard-To-Test Areas
by Ian Cooper
Tried TDD and abandoned it the moment you've tried it on 'real' code? Learn how to tackle these 'hard-to-test' areas, that those presentations and introductory books just don't seem to explain well.
-
Spatial data in SQL Server 2008
by Jason Follas
Jason takes you back to those high school geometry lessons and demonstrates how to take advantage of the new geospatial and geometric data types in SQL Server 2008.
-
Game development using Silverlight 2
by Dave Wheeler
Implementing a game using Silverlight is a good way to learn its more advanced aspects. Dave Wheeler shows us how, and has some fun on the way.
-
ASP.NET Patterns every developer should know
by Alex Homer
In the first of three parts, Alex looks at some of the basic patterns in ASP.NET, and how you can apply these to your ASP.NET applications in a few simple steps.
-
Bluffer's Guide to C# 3
by Jon Skeet
Pretend you know what you're talking about in suitably geeky company. More seriously, it will give you a very rough overview to give some context if you choose to investigate a particular feature further.
-
The Beauty of Closures
by Jon Skeet
Closures are often described in terms of functional languages, but Jon introduces the concept of closures in a world of C# and Java. Learn how to use them and why.
-
LINQ to Objects for the .NET developer
by Mike James
Mike James explains that LINQ isn’t just for SQL programmers but is usable by every .NET developer. Learn how take the power of LINQ queries to your every-day coding through the lowly IEnumerable interface.
-
REST and .NET 3.5 Part 1 - why REST based services?
by Richard Blewett
Why has REST been getting so much attention recently? It's no accident that Yahoo, Google and Amazon have chosen not to use SOAP to expose their APIs. Learn some of the issues of using SOAP, and how a RESTful based architecture can resolve some of these.