August 8th: Your Spark Jaded my Razor: A comparison of popular ASP.NET MVC View Engines

Posted August 7th, 2012 . meetings, Uncategorized

Topic

When ASP.NET MVC first launched, its default WebFormsViewEngine felt like a step back 10 years into Classic ASP 3.0. But part of the framework’s beauty is that it was designed to support other View Engines, allowing you to to keep the same Model and Controller code while changing to Views that don’t bring back scary memories of COM. Spark, Jade, and Razor are all popular View Engines that have each made a statement inASP.NET MVC. Let’s see what they are all about, how they compare, and how they stack up to the original engine.

Bio:

Jay is a code wrangler, problem solver, and president of Arana Software (www.aranasoft.com). He has been developing on the web since 1995, when the Blink and Marquee tags lured him away from Visual Basic 3. With a career focus on user experience, he is a strong advocate of practices and processes that improve quality through code, including automated testing, continuous integration, and performance analysis and optimization. Jay is also an active speaker and leader in the developer community, a Microsoft MVP in C#, an ASPInsider, and an organizer for many developer events in the Ann Arbor area.

Originally from Rochester, New York, he and his wife, Amy, have lived in Michigan since 2003. They like Michigan, but still consider themselves tourists, and probably always will.

July 11: What’s New for the Windows Azure Developer? Lots!!

Posted July 9th, 2012 . meetings, Uncategorized

Topic

June has been a huge month for the Windows Azure platform – perhaps one of the most important since Windows Azure was released! It all started with the Meet Windows Azure event in San Francisco on June 7th, and continued into TechEd. Getting most of the press, and rightfully so, was the announcements pertaining to the functionality now available in Windows Azure Web Sites and Virtual Machines (IaaS). These are without a doubt “game changing” in the cloud computing and Windows Azure space. There were also announcements related to Cloud Services (formerly known as ‘Hosted Services’ – the traditional PaaS offering), SQL Database (formerly SQL Azure), and Windows Azure Active Directory (which now includes Access Control Services). During this session we’ll review many of the new Windows Azure features, and even explore some of the new functionality now available via the Windows Azure APIs and tooling updates

Bio:

Michael Collier is a Windows Azure MVP and serves as a National Architect for Neudesic, a Microsoft SI partner that specializes in Windows Azure. He has nearly 11 years of experience building Microsoft-based applications for a wide range of clients. Michael spends his days serving as a developer or architect – helping clients succeed with the Microsoft development platform. He also enjoys speaking about Windows Azure at local user groups, as well as regional and national conferences. Michael is also the founder of CloudDevelop, as well as the Central Ohio Cloud Computing User Group in Columbus, OH. You can follow Michael on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MichaelCollier and on his blog at www.MichaelSCollier.com.