31Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.3 Released

Microsoft Development, Software Events
Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.3 Released For Visual Studio 2017 version 15.3, Microsoft focused on improving accessibility, particularly using Visual Studio with the most popular screen readers. Microsoft made over 1,700 improvements but if you are using Visual Studio 2017 in a low-vision or no-vision mode, a lot has improved. Couple of the more major things Microsoft improved. Debugging is much more accessible. Debugger windows like the Call Stack, Locals, Autos, and Watch windows were inaccessible to screen readers. That’s now fixed. The VS editor’s text adornments let developers know about features available at particular points on a line of code, such as breakpoints, lightbulbs, and error and warning “squiggles.” Customers can now discover and navigate between these adornments via the new “Show Line Annotations” command set, which you can…
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31Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are going to work together

Microsoft Development, Software Events
Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are going to work together Amazon and Microsoft announced on Wednesday that they’ve been working on a partnership to allow their respective voice assistants, Alexa and Cortana, to speak to one another. Starting later this year, owners of Amazon Echos and other Alexa-powered devices will be able to say: “Alexa, open Cortana” to start querying Microsoft’s voice assistant. Owners of devices running Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system will be able to summon Alexa via Cortana in a similar manner. Why would customers want that — especially with the relatively clunky nature of the necessary voice command? The companies say that each voice assistant has its strengths — features like Microsoft Outlook and Exchange email integration for Cortana and smart-home controls or shopping for Alexa — and that…
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30Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

NYPD dropping Window Phone for iPhones

Microsoft Development, Software Events
NYPD dropping Window Phone for iPhone A New York Post report that one of Microsoft's more celebrated U.S. business customers for Windows Phone is dumping the platform raises some interesting questions about Redmond's future mobility plans. The Post reported on August 28 that the New York Police Department (NYPD) is going to scrap the 36,000 Nokia phonesrunning the Windows Phone OS that it has been rolling out for the past two years. Microsoft dropped support for Windows Mobile 8.1 in July 2017. But the two handset models the NYPD purchased, the Lumia 640XL and Lumia 830, both were among the Windows Phones that were upgradable to Windows 10 Mobile. (Of these two, only the newer 640XL will also be eligible for the coming Fall Windows 10 Mobile update, however.) As of October 2016,…
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24Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Half of Windows 7 machines do not run AV software

Microsoft Development, Software Events
Half of Windows 7 machines do not run AV software It has been disclosed by Microsoft that Windows older desktop operating systems remains more vulnerable to malware as of today.  The majority of users are still running older versions of Windows, without necessarily using up to date security software which is Anti-Virus packages. In its latest Security Intelligence Report, the company revealed that among all Windows 7 and Windows Vista PCs reporting statuses other than “Protected” to Microsoft, more than half of them have no type of protected software installed at all, which is pretty massive. Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft decided to turn on Windows Defender by default when no other anti-malware software is present. The majority of unprotected Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 PCs have their anti-malware software turned…
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24Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

C# 8.0 Previewed

Software development Concepts, Software Events
C# 8.0 Previewed Originally written in www.infoq.com, some amazing stuff coming down the pipe for C#. Nullable Reference Types We’ve covered nullable reference types in the past, but briefly the idea is that reference types would no longer be nullable by default. Instead, you have to explicitly mark them as nullable using the same “Type?” syntax that you use for nullable value types. Assigning a null to a non-nullable reference type will be a compiler warning. Likewise, reading from a nullable type would be a compiler warning unless the variable in question was explicitly checked for null ahead of time. So theoretically the only change developers need to make is to sprinkle question marks where appropriate. Since our report, a new syntax was added to this feature. Consider a scenario where you know…
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