Visual Studio Team System 2010 focuses on application quality
Microsoft is making significant strides into ALM with the upcoming Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 that it says will better enable developers and QA professionals to collaborate and focus on application quality.The company has not committed to a release date for VSTS 2010. Dave Mendlen, director of developer tools at Microsoft, noted that it would be part of the next wave of the .NET Framework, .NET 4.0. Microsoft will also ship a standard edition of Visual Studio 2010 concurrently.
VSTS 2010, formerly known by the code name “Rosario,” expands the company’s ALM vision with more roles and fewer walls between them, effectively “democratizing” ALM, said Mendlen. Modeling plays a heavy role in how that is accomplished.
Microsoft details WCF and WF in next-gen .NET
By David WorthingtonOctober 1, 2008 — Microsoft has detailed some of the .NET 4.0 feature set, and how it will evolve Windows Server to host composite applications by extending the Application Server Role.
Today, the company announced its road map for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and an update to Windows Server 2008, code-named “Dublin.” Community Technology Previews of the new technologies will be released at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference at the end of this month.
Ten Concepts for Successful Automation Scripts
By Edward J. CorreiaSeptember 9, 2008 — There isn’t much use in automating a testing process if the automation scripts can’t be used again and again. The more such scripts have to be tweaked or modified to be applied to the latest revision, the more likely they are to end up in the trash. It pays to develop scripts that are easily maintained so that any necessary changes are minimal and benefit to the project is maximized.
“Most [people] think of automated testing as a way to record then play back various functions from an application, but this is just a small part of this type of testing,” says Matthew Hoffman, manager of systems verification and validation at Concurrent Technologies, a software development services consultancy. He offers 10 things an automated tester can do to keep tests useful and free of major maintenance requirements.
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How dangerous are the first Google Chrome vulnerabilities?
By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNewsA pair of security holes whose proofs-of-concept were validated by BetaNews show that Google Chrome may not have been as thoroughly inspected as Google would have us believe. But isn’t finding bugs and holes what beta testing is all about?
A beta test is not a product debut, at least not by definition. So the discovery of the first few serious security vulnerabilities in Google’s Chrome shouldn’t, in and of themselves, raise alarm bells. However, one may rationally wonder why a project that was in the works for at least two years, if not four, wasn’t able to find these same security holes long before the independent researchers did.
Last week, we learned that a variant of the same security vulnerability that afflicted Apple’s Safari for Windows two months ago also impacts the first Chrome beta. Although Webkit is the rendering engine for both products, architecturally speaking, this problem actually has nothing to do with rendering, but rather about how downloads are presented and handled.
Security researcher Aviv Raff has become particularly adept at spotting cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, and similar problems where one component is triggered to pass control to another component without appropriate controls in place. Last week’s discovery is a classic Raff feat of juggling. Read more
Adobe Flash to deliver NFL games in full
By Tim Conneally, BetaNewsSeptember 5, 2008, 6:51 PM
The National Football League, NBC Sports, and Adobe have announced their collaboration on Sunday Night Football Extra — full-length live streams of NFL Sunday night football games.
Delivered in Adobe Flash, the games are promised to include the ability for viewers to change their camera angles, as well as access live statistics, in-game highlights, picture-in-picture views, and live blogs from color commentators.
Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115.0 or higher and Firefox 2.0+, IE7+, or Safari 2+ are required for viewing. NBC recommends a minimum 500 Kbps connection for stutter-free playback.
Running behind the scenes is Adobe Flash Media Server, supporting the huge number of expected connections. Adobe says its developers utilized the company’s own Flex authoring environment, Flash CS3 Professional, and Photoshop CS3. Read more
The First Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft Ad
Besides the slick and probably expensive editing designed to make Jerry Seinfeld look like the more awkward of the pair, there’s not a whole lot of special effects in this clip. In fact, there’s not really a whole lot of anything, including laughs, information or pimping of Vista. It’s kinda like Seinfeld’s really long, really rambling Superman ad for Amex he did a few years back. We hope the rest of the campaign is better. They did get Bill Gates to use his mug shot somewhere in the spot (not spoiling it by saying where), but other than that we’re underwhelmed. Here’s what we took away from it: Bill Gates’s jiggling ass is moist and tasty. Don’t ask us now, watch the clip and you’ll see.
Google Chrome (BETA Browser) for Windows
Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.
WinMerge 2.8.6 is the latest stable version, and is recommended for most users.
WinMerge is an Open Source (GPL) visual text file differencing and merging tool for Windows. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions. Read more
IE8 beta lets users cover their tracks
By David WorthingtonAugust 29, 2008 — On Wednesday, a beta refresh of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 that includes new privacy and search features became available for download.
End users are the target audience for beta 2. It introduces granular privacy settings that Microsoft has dubbed InPrivate browsing and InPrivate blocking. InPrivate helps users cover their tracks as they browse by informing them about cookies that may observe their browsing history and permitting them to selectively remove those cookies.
How to Work with Linux Partitions from Windows
by Blake EliasDo you dual-boot Windows and Linux? If you do, then you’re probably familiar with the different file systems that the two operating systems use and the difficulty in transferring files between the two. While most modern Linux operating systems can read and write to Windows file systems (NTFS and FAT/FAT32), Windows can’t read or write to Linux file systems (Ext2 and Ext3). Read more