At Microsoft Build 2019 conference, Microsoft announced and showed off the new Windows Terminal application. It quickly was released as a preview and has been updated regularly over the last 12 months.
In this video, Gregor Suttie aka “Azure Greg” shows you how to install and customize the Windows Terminal. If you haven’t tried the Windows Terminal or are curious on how it can be customized then check out this video.
Enjoy!
https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
Architecture diagrams are a great way to communicate your design, deployment, topology or simply to be used for training decks, documentation, books and videos.
When it comes to Azure icons there are a few resources available to you, but keep in mind that Microsoft reserves the right to not allow certain uses of these symbols, stop their use, or ask for their removal from use regardless of the source.
This package contains a set of symbols/icons to visually represent resources for Microsoft Azure and related cloud and on-premises technologies. Once downloaded, you can drag and drop the SVG files into PowerPoint or Visio and other tools that accept SVG format, and you don’t need to import anything into Visio.
The latest version at the time of this post is v2019.9.11 and was updated September 19, 2019 and only contains SVG image files now.
You can download the resources from here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=41937
If you’re familiar with draw.io (soon to be renamed to diagrams.net), then your in luck as there is an icon pack for Microsoft Azure cloud resources. These are the same images that were originally created by Microsoft.
You can download and access these icons from the GitHub repository which will load them up in draw.io https://github.com/ourchitecture/azure-drawio-icons
This is a comprehensive list of icons that at the time of the post is made up of up 1388 icons.
You can access the resources from here https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/patterns/styles/glyphs-icons/
With the Amazing Icon Downloader extension for Chrome or the new Microsoft Edge (chromium based), you can easily find and download SVG icons from the Azure portal.
When you’re in the Azure portal the extension will activate and automatically show you all the icons present for the view your in. As you will see some of the icons are named and so are easy to search for, however other icons have the following naming convention FxSymbol0-097 for example.
You can download the Amazing Icon Downloader extension from the Chrome web store https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazing-icon-downloader/kllljifcjfleikiipbkdcgllbllahaob/
The icons are designed to be simple so that you can easily incorporate them in your diagrams and put them in your whitepapers, presentations, datasheets, posters, or any technical material.
Until recently I mostly used the Microsoft Azure Cloud and AI Symbol / Icon Set. Although it seems to be updated on a yearly basis, I find it still lags in keeping up with the changes happening in Azure. Since I like using the current Azure icons, I prefer using the Amazing Icon Downloader as I’m usually in the Azure Portal working with a particular resource and its quick to just grab that icon.
If you know of any other resources please let me know and I’ll update this list.
Enjoy!
Related post: https://theflyingmaverick.com/2018/01/29/microsoft-azure-symbol-icon-set-download-visio-stencil-png-and-svg/
For those that do Azure presentations / screen recordings you know that you often find yourself scrubbing out your sensitive and personal information such as subscription keys, email addresses, keys and connection strings. What if you could have this magically done for you?
Well let me introduce to you a handy Chrome extension called Azure Mask that will mask GUIDs (such as Subscription IDs), email addresses, keys, and connection strings with a blur. The intention of the extension is to make it easier to do screen recordings without revealing sensitive, personal, account information that may show up on screen.
NOTE: This extension will only run and apply against Azure portal URLs.
As mentioned on the Azure Mask GitHub repository readme, you can install this extension in Chrome from either a package or from source. Let’s take a look at how we can install from source.
After installing the Azure Mask extension in Chrome, navigate to your Azure portal and after signing in you will see all your Azure secrets magically blurred:
If you want to turn off this extension, click on the Azure Mask extension button in Chrome to bring up the options:
Enjoy!
Following up to a post I did in 2012 on ResXFileCodeGeneratorEx Update for VS2010, here are links to download this tool for Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2013:
Extension for Visual Studio 2015 can be found here:
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/f43d27fa-6bf7-4f3d-bf5e-3e716e63716b
Extension for Visual Studio 2013 can be found here:
https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/16d24be3-6400-4a43-b946-766e41aca4bd
Enjoy!
The following is a great post with a great overview to the Developer Tools found in Internet Explorer 12.
“As web developers we need tools that enable us to inspect and debug HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as monitor page load performance, and UI responsiveness. The IE F12 tools were rebuilt from the ground up, providing features to accomplish all these tasks and more, taking into account tons of feedback from developers. Below are some of these new features seen in version 11 and here is a complete list of what’s new in F12 Tools.
- Clean, modern, user interface.
- New UI Responsiveness, Memory, and Emulation tools.
- DOM Explorer, Console, and familiar tools are updated to enable an easier and faster workflow
In previous versions of the dev tools, there was a menu. Some items have moved to various parts of the IE F12 developer tools. For example, the Browser Mode options that were once part of the menu are now the Emulation tab. Let’s take a quick look at each tool in the toolset and what it can do for you.”
See more at: http://rachelappel.com/internet-explorer-f12-developer-tools-overview#sthash.0TEdP6UP.dpuf
Enjoy
One of the tools I use for development is Code Compare from Devart, which allows me to easily and efficiently compare source code, whether it’s a file or a folder comparison. This tool rocks and they have a free version to boot!
Ok so what is Code Compare?
Code Compare is a free tool designed to compare and merge differing files and folders. Code Compare integrates with all popular source control systems: TFS, SVN, Git, Mercurial, and Perforce. Code Compare is shipped both as a standalone file diff tool and a Visual Studio extension.
Code Compare introduces the concept of Code Orientation, ultimately making it stand out from competitive file diff software. The concept implies syntax highlighting, similar lines detection as well as unique structure and lexical comparison algorithms. The file compare tool takes into account language specifics, which allows comparing sources in several of the most popular programming languages as code!
One of the great benefits about Code Compare is that it can be integrated with a number of version control systems. This means you’re not stuck using the comparison tool that comes with each version control system and you can have a consistent experience across all your comparisons.
I have Code Compare integrated with TortoiseSVN and TFS.
For a list of version control systems that Code Compare can integrate with, checkout the following page.
http://www.devart.com/codecompare/
http://www.devart.com/codecompare/integration/
http://www.devart.com/codecompare/integration/integration_tortoisesvn.html
Have you ever found yourself looking for a cool project name for your next project? Well look no further than the The Project Name Generator
Project Name Generator makes random, catchy and creative project and code names for your projects.
The Project Name Generator is an online and free web service. The goal of the project generator is to make cool ideas for project names, and that the users having fun and gaining new inputs and ideas to work on with.
Just click on the red Generate Project Name to get started. If you don’t like the name generated, just click it again for another result.
As you can see on the image below, you can see a history of all the names you’ve generated.
I came across a great tool for Visual Studio that fixes a real issue when pasting code into Visual Studio called Pretty Paste. This is a tool which fixes an issue where copied text into Visual Studio introduces new blank lines and line numbers as shown in the following image:
This is a fantastic tool. Thank you Mads Kristensen for creating this tool for the community!
You can install it from the Extensions and Updates dialog in Visual Studio. Go to Tools | Extensions and Updates and do an online search for pretty paste:
You can also download it from the Visual Studio Extension Gallery: http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/6a23234d-45f6-4212-bac3-f6d9bb08fb1e
Enjoy!
I’ve been using Metro Studio 2 from Syncfusion for a while now to create beautiful looking Metro styled icons for Website, Windows Phone and Windows 8 development projects.
Today I got an email from Syncfusion about the ability to create icons from any font character. This is awesome stuff and I just wanted to share this with you.
If you haven’t tried Metro Studio 2, then head over and download it. It’s free and a tool I recommend every designer and developer should have in their toolbox.
Enjoy!
How many times have you tried to upload or email your Visual Studio solution, only to find out that your zip file contains files and folders that you didn’t mean to include, like the bin, obj and other folders. What about source control bindings? Yes that too will get included.
Well I came across a great utility called Clean Project from Ron Jacobs that cleans your Visual Studio solutions so you can quickly upload or email.
This functionality is available inside Visual Studio and also from the Windows Shell.
You can install CleanProject from Tools –> Extensions Manager in Visual Studio. Then search for CleanProject. In the References section below I listed links to other locations you can download the project from.
If you want to email your solution:
You can also run CleanProject from the Windows Shell. Just right click the folder you want to clean and select Clean, Remove Source Binding and Zip Solution from the context menu.
Thanks Ron Jacobs for your hard work on this utility. I look forward to further enhancements and/or other tools in the future.
It's all about Microsoft Business Applications
by Hussain Abbasi
Author: John Lunn @jonnychipz
If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong.
Code. Fun. Serverless
Intelligent Apps for Pilots
My personal blog about everything technical
coding facts and opinions
Technical Leadership Centred Around the Microsoft Data Platform
Exploring the world of Azure, IoT and other interesting topics
where learning never ends...
Practical Coding Tutorial
A blog about Microsoft Azure
Christian Nagel about C#, ASP.NET Core, UWP, Xamarin, Azure, and more
Cloud Computing & DevOps Tips & Tricks with Hammad Aslam.
Stefan Wick on UWP and the Microsoft Developer Platform
The Flying Maverick 