Tag: Windows 10

DeveloperWindows

How to install and customize the Windows Terminal

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!

References

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

Windows

Windows 10 Mail and Calendar app finally gets complete dark mode

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Today Microsoft is rolling out an update to its Mail and Calendar app and has finally added a complete dark mode to which the reading pane is now dark (previously the reading pane or email body was white). Microsoft has also added a toggle button to switch between light and dark which sits between the Forward and Archive buttons.

The new update is available for everyone that is using Windows 10 1809 build. You can download the Mail and Calendar app from the Microsoft Store.

Enjoy!

AIAzureDevelopmentEventsProductivity

Microsoft Build 2018–Day 2 Highlights

Today’s keynote by Joe Belfiore was focused on Multi-sense + Multi-device for Microsoft 365, which is Windows, Office and EMS

Image showing how Microsoft 365 brings together Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), a complete, intelligent, and secure solution to empower employees.

Announcements

  • Fluent Design System updates.
  • UWP XAML Islands, which lets you incorporate UWP into WinForms, WPF and Win32 applications. This also means you can start to bring in the Fluent Design System into these UI frameworks.
  • Windows UI Library, which brings native platform controls as NuGet packages instead of being tied to the OS version. This will work from the Windows Anniversary Update and newer.
  • .NET Core 3.0, which will support side-by-side runtimes, along with support for WinForms, WPF and UWP.
  • MSIX, which is dubbed the best technology for installing applications on Windows. This inherits the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) features, works across Enterprise or Store distributions, and supports all Windows applications.
  • Windows SDK Insider Preview – https://aka.ms/winsdk
  • New developer revenue sharing model. Developers will get 85% when their app is found in the Microsoft store, and 95% when you provide your customers to your app in the Microsoft store.
  • Microsoft Launcher on Android will support Timeline for cross-device application launching. On iOS this will be supported through Microsoft Edge.
  • A new “Your Phone” experience coming soon to Windows 10 that enables you to see your connected phone text messages, photos and notifications and then interact with them without having to use your phone. Really neat experience – now if only they support Windows Mobile 10 Smile
  • Microsoft Sets was officially shown and demonstrated how it can be used for an easier way to organize your work and allow you to get back to work where you left off when ready. This means not having to have 25+ tabs open in Chrome or Edge. Nice!
  • Adaptive Cards is being added to Microsoft 365, which will enable developers to create rich interactive content within conversations. They demonstrated a GitHub Adaptive Card for Outlook (365) where you could comment and close an issue. Another example shown was paying for your invoice from an email.
  • There was a lot of buzz for Microsoft Graph, which is core to the Microsoft 365 platform. Microsoft Graph helps developers connect the dots between people, schedules, conversations, and content within the Microsoft cloud.
  • Cortana and Alexa start speaking to one another. Sometime in the future you will be able to access your Alexa device through Windows 10 and likewise on an Amazon Echo you will ne able to speak to Cortana.

Enjoy!

References

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/events/build

Modernizing applications for our multi-sense, multi-device world

Microsoft 365 empowers developers to build intelligent apps for where and how the world works

AIAzureDevelopmentEventsProductivity

Microsoft Build 2018 – Day 1 Highlights

This is my first attendance at the annual Microsoft Build conference taking place in Seattle, WA. I have to tell you that so far I’m not disappointed. Here are some of the highlights from today’s events:

  • Azure is becoming the world’s computer: Azure | Azure Stack | Azure IoT Edge | Azure Sphere.
  • Azure IoT Edge runtime which runs on Windows or Linux is now being open sourced.
  • Microsoft showed off Cortana and Alexa integration which was pretty cool.
  • New Azure AI infrastructure announced: Project Brainwave which is a real-time AI on cloud and edge devices.
  • Announced Project Kinect for Azure, an Azure AI-enabled edge device.
  • Visual Studio Live Share is now generally available. This provides real-time collaborative development, shared debugging, independent views and works across Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code (Windows, Mac and Linux).
  • Azure Event Grid is getting new improvements like dead lettering (DLQ) and custom retry policies. Event Grid is also adding new event publishers for Azure Media Services and Azure Container Registry, and new event handlers for Storage Queue and Relay Hybrid Connections. Finally Azure Event Grid is providing an alternative form of endpoint validation. Event Grid provides reliable event delivery at massive scale (millions of events per second), and it eliminates long polling and hammer polling, and the associated costs of latency.
  • Azure Cosmos had some interesting updates like the new multi-master write support. It also provides API support for MongoDB, SQL, Table Storage, Gremlin Graph, Spark, and Casandra.
  • Azure Search now integrates Azure Cognitive Services to provide built-in enrichment of content using AI models, and it enables immersive search experiences over any data.
  • The Fluent Design System which Microsoft first debuted at Build 2017, is expanding beyond Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps and will be available for Windows Forms, WPF and native Win32 applications.
  • Windows Timeline is coming to iOS and Android.
  • Azure Functions updates: Durable Functions reaches general availability, and Azure Functions now leverages the App Service Diagnostics.
  • .NET Core 3.0 and .NET Framework 4.8 announced were announced, and .NET Core 3.0 is coming to desktop development (awesome!)
  • Visual Studio 2017 version 15.7 and the next update version 15.8 preview 1 were released.
  • Visual Studio App Center integration with GitHub.
    • Visual Studio IntelliCode announced, which brings you the next generation of developer productivity by providing AI-assisted development.

    This already feels like a lot but really it’s just scratching the surface. I’m looking forward to what is announced today in the keynote followed by more technical workshops and sessions.

    Enjoy!

    References

    https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/events/build

    Development

    Microsoft Adaptive Cards 1.0 is now Available

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    During the Windows Developer Day 2018 keynote, Kevin Gallo talked about Adaptive Cards and how they can be used to provide a flexible way to present your content and your data.

    Adaptive Cards gives you the tools to create scale across any engagement surface.

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    Adaptive Cards was first announced at the Microsoft Build 2017 conference and has now come out of preview and is generally available as a 1.0 product. When Windows 10 Spring Creators Update is released, you will be able to use Adaptive Cards on the Windows Timeline along with other experiences like a bot, Skype, Notifications, Teams and so much more.

    Enjoy!

    References

    Windows Developer Day 2018 Keynote

    http://adaptivecards.io/

    https://github.com/Microsoft/AdaptiveCards/releases/tag/v1.0

    Windows

    How to Find your Windows 10 Spotlight Lock Screen Images

    Have you ever wondered where you can find the Windows 10 Spotlight Lock Screen images? Well the following post explains How to Find Windows Spotlight Lock Screen Images in Windows 10 and the extract them for using as your Windows 10 desktop background.

    Enjoy!

    References

    https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/find-windows-spotlight-lock-screen-images-windows-10/

    DevelopmentEvents

    Windows Developer Day–March 7, 2018

    WindowsDeveloperDay-Mar72018

    On March 7, 2018 at 9:00 AM PST, Microsoft will livestream a Windows Developer Day event on the latest news on tools and features for developers that will be coming in the next Windows 10 Update. The livestream will cover a keynote by Kevin Gallo, CVP of the Windows Developers Platform and then be followed by a Q&A session.

    No matter what you’re working on, you’ll find plenty of improvements that will make your software even more compelling. You’ll also get inside info on:

    • Building for the modern workplace—Learn how Windows is evolving as a platform to make improving and updating your existing Windows code with new functionality as simple as possible.
    • Making your software part of the intelligent edge—Give your applications the capability to quickly make complex calculations and inferences, enabling them to become a native part of the intelligent edge.

    Windows Developer Day is the only place to find out what’s coming for developers in the next Windows 10 Update, so RSVP today.

    Enjoy!

    Resources

    Windows Developer Day

    Development

    Building a Better Napkin/Whiteboard, Go from Ink to Code

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    Microsoft’s Garage lab has announced a new Ink to Code app that will take your digital ink sketches and turn them into an actual application. Ink to Code is a UWP app that enables developers to draw a wire frame sketch and then export that sketch into source code for use in Visual Studio.

    Urban legend has it that some of the greatest ideas in history started with a napkin. The Gettysburg Address, the poem that gave way to the U.S. National Anthem, and the premise of the Harry Potter series—each were reportedly born into the world through the medium of sketches on scrap paper—and when app creators put pen to paper for their ideas, this is often a canvas of choice. While rapid prototyping with the napkin and the whiteboard holds its charms, less charming is the prospect of translating quick sketches into working code. – Lainie Huston

    Ink to Code is supposed to use artificial intelligence and automation to create the code from the wire frame sketches and at this time only supports basic visual elements like labels, text fields, images and buttons. This visual element recognition is similar to what you can find in the Microsoft Whiteboard (Preview) app, which you can download from the Microsoft Store.

    This app currently supports Android and Windows UWP apps. At this time the app doesn’t seem to be available on the Microsoft Store, so keep an eye out for it.

    Enjoy

    References

    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/blog/2018/01/napkin-disrupted-meet-ink-code-microsoft-garage-project/

    https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/garage/profiles/ink-to-code/?group=newest

    https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/150989/microsofts-new-app-turns-basic-sketches-code

    Software

    Windows Insiders Flight Hub Dashboard

    Back in the fall of 2017, Microsoft released the Windows Flight Hub. This is a quick dashboard to reference when trying to sort out the many different Windows Insiders build numbers and what is the latest preview release in the Fast, Slow, Server, IoT, ISO and SDK rings.

    Each build is called a flight and is associated to one or more editions of Windows 10.

    Enjoy!

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    References

    https://flighthub.azurewebsites.net/