The Software Formerly Known As Expression Blend: license issues, part II


What a day! Just found out that as of Update 2, Blend for Visual Studio 2012 now supports WPF applications. That means, Blend now comes free of charge with Visual Studio 2012.



This late addition of WPF support (to a product that had supported the framework before) comes more than expected, after the slight turmoil around Microsoft's Blend pricing policy. Of course, WinRT Blend was the first freebie - Are there better ways to establish a technology than giving away the best development tools?

Kommentare

Kommentar veröffentlichen

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

Using AutoMapper for MVVM implementations

Being Clean Code Developers, whenever we start developing a new application, we try to improve our code quality, right? As a part of that, we librarify what can be librarified and use 3rd Party and Open Source assemblies wherever possible so we can concentrate on the really dirty work. OK, here's one thing Stefan Lieser brought to my attention in the course a Google Group discussion. It's called AutoMapper , and as the name gives away is a great deal of help when you have to map instances of Type A to instances of type B (very simply put, really). Sounds rather boring at first glance, but me and my buddy Maik decided we'd take a look at it for our nhibernate based MVVM implementations, in which (up to now) the viewmodels were wrappers / proxies for the models. Apart from that, it does great Conversions from one list type to another, which was a numb piece of loop-through-source-store-in-destination. The Gloria : Stickiness of memory addresses Having worked with NHibernate,
Mehr anzeigen

Deploying ClickOnce-applications in different environments without modifying the assembly identity

Bild
The following describes a method that is viable for ClickOnce deployment using "Online Only" mode. One of the aspects I recently pondered about is code identity. In other words : Auditors ask me how I ensure that the software tested and accepted by the departments is exactly and with no alternations the assembly we deploy for productive use and not some tinkered-with version. "That's easy", I say, "I can't!". Because some config-variables are set between approval and release, the ClickOnce hashes differ and thus does the whole thing. The image depicts the requirement rather roughly, but I think more detail is not required: An application should be stateless and not compiled to fit it's environment. The first thing coming to my mind to sail around this kind of trouble is keeping the App.config (or any other file of my personal gusto) a part of the deployment, but removing it from the hash. That would be easy, fast and a little dirty. First and f
Mehr anzeigen

Preparing for and passing MCTS exam 70-536

Bild
Today, I passed my Microsoft 70-536 exam. More or less successful, I scored 894 (700 being the passing score) in a bit less than 90 minutes. After reading how much has already been said about this exam, I can summarize: - It does cover a very vast set of topics (the whole .NET-Framework), but only has a few questions for each. - The exam itself is rather short, containing no more than 40 questions. If you are getting many easy questions, this is an advantage. Otherwise... - Only really well-aimed preparation will make you fit for this. Just like a driver's license test, really. Eventually I have to admit that - although I have learned a lot during the preparation phase for this exam - I still wouldn't voluntarily mess around with many of the aspects it covered (like Security Zones or CAS-Policies). I just know they exist and that's about it. Preparation tips Exam preparation seems to be one of the many things, people are willing to spend money on. Many websites offer PDF-Fi
Mehr anzeigen