Whilst setting up new a new SC-VMM based lab environment I managed to find some new ways to fail above and beyond the ones I have found before. We needed to build a new environment for testing CRM application, this needed to have its own DC, IIS server and a CRM server. The aim was to have this as a network isolated …

Obviously the most important tool is Visual Studio 2012 which is available as Express and the various wonderful SKU’s but along side these there are some great toolkits which will help your Windows 8 escapades no end. this list will be updated regularly Calisto The Calisto Toolkit developed by Tim Heuer adds helper …

I am just pushing applications through into the Windows 8 Marketplace. On checking the progress of an application it had the word “Failed”, being unfamiliar with this word I looked it up and it turns out to be some form of non success. Rushing to find out why this was the case I was presented with Your app doesn't meet …

As an out of band Windows 8 post for many of us C++ is somewhat a hidden shame, but not really a shame just hidden out of sight while we dream of closer to the metal coding. With the joys of Windows 8, C++ is once again back to the fore, I thought a couple of notes on how to get things moving might help Boostis …

In many of my presentations on Windows 8 over the last year, there has been a raft of standard questions on how to use Windows 8 effectively, so here is the first of a set of using Windows 8 posts. This aim for this post is to clarify terms and show the main Windows 8 features to allow future posts a frame of …

I started working today on a solution I had not worked on for a while. It makes use of an ASP.NET web application as a site to host SharePoint webparts (using Typemock to mock out any troublesome calls). The problem I had was that when I opened this VS2010 solution in VS2012 I could not run up this test web site. As …

I posted last week on the problems I had had getting the test agents and controller in a TFS2012 Standard environment talking to each other and a workaround. Well after a good few email with various people at Microsoft and other consultants at Black Marble I have a whole range of workarounds solutions. First a reminder …

Updated 1st October – See the Part 2 post which provides more workaround solutions Whilst setting up a TFS 2012 Standard Lab Environment for an upcoming demo I hit a problem. Initially my environment had worked fine, I could deploy to my server VM in the environment without error. However, after a reboot of the TFS …

Some great news today from Typemock, there is now a free basic edition of Typemock Isolator. The addresses a key historic problem with Isolator, that of its cost when you don’t need the advanced features of Isolator all the time. Now if you need the cool advanced mocking features of Isolator, such as mocking sealed …

I’m really excited to be presenting at a one day event on Windows 8 application design in Dublin on Wednesday 26th September. I’m excited because Bill Buxton is delivering the keynote at the event and I’m a big fan. I’m delivering a session snappily titled ‘From 8 to 88 inches: designing for everyone’ and I’ll be …