The top article this week is a great one -- make sure you get a chance to check it out. It'll certainly brighten up your Monday... but it also might make you start wishing for the weekend to come a little sooner too.

5. Does Your ScrumMaster Have Agile Intuition? (Innolution)

4. The Reasons Why Programmers Don't Blog (Arkency Blog)

3. Why Doesn't Mobile Convert? (User Testing)

2. 5 Acquisitions Microsoft Would be Crazy Not to Consider (Tech Radar)

1. If Programming Languages Were Beer (TopCoder)

Here’s what you will find in Version 4 (update 3):

• Drag reorder open tabs (documents)
• Editors for position and size
• Project refresh
• Search and delete screenparts
• Enhancements to image picker
• Hiding Property Editor during multi-select
• Tweaks to UI elements toolbox
• Bug fixes

Drag Reorder Open Tabs

In a previous update, we overhauled the project tab for open projects and documents. And now we are taking it one step further by allowing you to drag reorder open tabs. Simply grab the tab (active or inactive) and drag it into position. You can also use keyboard shortcuts cmd/ctrl + shift + arrow key to move the active tab.

Editors for Position and Size

Quite a few of you requested the ability to key in precise pixel values for position and size. Indigo Studio always supported entering height and width values, but was one-click down.

Now there is a new section in the property editor for location and position. The auto-height and width options are also readily available. It’s a small thing, but we understand that it makes it easier to glance at the size and position values. And one more thing, you can use the up/down arrow key to increase or decrease the values in the editor.

Project Refresh

You can now refresh the project home without having to close and reopen the project to see changes made in the file-system. Instead of a simple refresh, Indigo Studio will notify you of any changes made in the file system. This can be handy if other users are making changes to documents you have open in your project.

Search & Delete Screenparts

The screenparts under the screenparts tab in your toolbox are now searchable. So go ahead and fill it up without worrying about quickly locating one. You can also right click and delete the screenpart right from the toolbox. And yes, delete key will also work.

Enhancements to Image Picker

The image picker now remembers the last sort order you selected. That is, by recently changed or by name. We also show you the image name or date info depending on the sort order selected.

Hiding Property Editor During Multi-select

You may have noticed that the property editor sometimes gets in the way when you are multi-selecting UI elements.

It’s now more intelligent and hides itself when you begin multi-selecting. Let us know how it’s working out for you.

Tweaks to UI elements toolbox

The UI elements now have a hover style when you try to select and drag one from the toolbox.

How to get this Update?

Here's how you can update the version of Indigo Studio installed on your machine:

• If you have the option to automatically check for updates on startup checked, you should see a dialog box pop up when you launch Indigo. Simply click update, and Indigo Studio will do the rest. This is the easier approach.
• If for some reason you chose not to automatically check for updates, go to MENU > HELP & ABOUT and use the "CHECK FOR UPDATES" option.

About Indigo Studio for Interaction Prototyping

Don't have Indigo Studio? Download a free 30-day trial which will let you try all of the prototyping goodness!

Download Indigo Studio

Looking to suggest improvements and new ideas for Indigo Studio?

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If for some reason you are having trouble with Indigo Studio, check out our help topics, forums or contact support.

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View Release Notes

You've already seen Tim Brock's "7 Do's and Don'ts of Dataviz" article (and if you haven't, go read it now!!)... and now you get to see it visually enhanced in an infographic style! A little less prose and a lot more visual, this infographic is sure to help you conceptualize Tim's tips in a whole new way.

7 Do's and Don'ts of Dataviz by Infragistics WPF Controls

Share With The Code Below!

In my 15 years in the field of user experience, I’ve analyzed a lot of user research and usability testing data. For most of that time, I’ve typed up and organized my notes in spreadsheets. I find a spreadsheet to be an ideal format for research notes, because it allows me to list participants in each column and tasks, problems, and themes across rows.

On larger projects, when analyzing data with a group of people, I’ve used an affinity diagram instead. An affinity diagram is an ideal way for a group of people to combine their findings by listing each observation on individual post-it notes, organizing those notes into groups by common themes, and then labeling those groups. But on a recent project, even though I was analyzing alone, I decided to abandon my usual spreadsheet to see how well an affinity diagram would work. It worked out well, and it caused me to notice the advantages and disadvantages of each technique. First, let me briefly describe each of these methods.

Analysis Spreadsheet

I find a spreadsheet to be a good method to organize usability testing or user research data because I can list each participant as a column and each row can describe how they performed a task, their answers to a question, common problems they experienced, or themes I observed. Looking across the rows, you can easily see how each participant answered a question, how many experienced a common problem, or how many had similar comments, as shown below.

Affinity Diagram

With an affinity diagram, you transfer your handwritten notes to post-it notes, including one observation per note. Then you group related notes together, forming various levels of related groups and sub-groups, which results in common themes, as shown below.

Advantages and disadvantages

Both of these are valuable ways to analyze data, but each has advantages and disadvantages. In part 1 of this post, let’s look at the pros and cons of using an analysis spreadsheet. In part 2, I’ll discuss the pros and cons of affinity diagrams.

Spreadsheet Advantages

Spreadsheet Disadvantages

Affinity diagrams have some advantages over spreadsheets and also some disadvantages. I’ll discuss those and make some conclusions in part two.

Office 365 is a collection of software and services that provides productivity software and related services to its subscribers. It includes server and client applications that allow users to experience a fully integrated Microsoft Office solution.

Not just for the end users, Microsoft Office 365 also provides a lot of opportunities for the developers to build applications that can consume the data stored in the cloud via the Office 365 API.

In this article, we'll introduce you to Office 365 from a developer perspective, and explore how developers can consume Office 365 data.

Office 365 for Developers

Developers can either extend Office products by building Office 2013 desktop apps, Office 2013 web apps or by building third party applications to consume the Office 365 Data.

Office 2013 Desktop or Web Apps include the Task Pane App, the Content App, and the Mail App.

With the Office 365 API, developers can build applications and websites using Office 365 data. Since the Office 365 API is based on the REST API, the target applications can range from native applications to Web applications running on Windows 8, iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Web Applications.

The REST API provides a more informed process for developing apps to consume Office 365 data and the process to connect and retrieve the data is pretty much uniform across all the platforms.

Almost all the types of programming languages or applications have a means to call REST services. This makes it easier for the developers working on the other platform to pretty much consume the Office 365 easily.

Office 365 uses Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD) which manages the identity within the network and provides the users a single sign on experience for the apps. The Authentication and authorization from the API is handled using OAuth.

What does the Office 365 API provide?

The Office 365 API provides developers with options to access the following:

• Mail
• Contacts
• Calendar
• Discovery Services
• Files

Image Source: Slide Presentation of Office 365 Development from MVA Academy

Some of the common operations that the Mail API provides include:

• Reading messages.
• Deleting messages.
• Sending (Send, Reply, Reply All, Forward) messages
• Working with attachments
• Drafting messages
• Moving or copying messages
• Working with the email folders, and more.

Some of the common operations that the Calendar API provides include:

• Reading events for the specified date range
• Creating events
• Deleting events
• Editing events
• Basic operations with the calendars and the calendar groups

Some of the common operations that the Contacts API provides are:

• Reading the contacts
• Searching for contacts
• Creating/editing/deleting the contacts

The File API also provides the following functionalities as well:

• Get the SharePoint client
• Download and read files
• Create files
• Update file content
• Delete files and folders
• Get the list of files and folders
• Copy files and folders

How to get started with the Office 365 API

To start building apps with the Office 365 API, it is important to setup the Office 365 Development Environment first.

If you're using Visual Studio, you need do the following:

1. Download and Install the Visual Studio 2013 with the latest update
2. Download and install the latest Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio 2013
3. Get the Office 365 Developer Subscription and Office 365 Dev tenant
4. Start Building your app with the Office 365 API

If you are an Android developer, you need to download and install the Android SDK for Office 365 to create Android apps.

If you are an iOS developer, you need to use the iOS SDK for Office 365 to create native iOS apps.

Developers working on other programming languages can call the Office 365 REST APIs directly using any development environment that is compatible with the REST.

It's also worth noting that you need an Office 365 Developer Subscription account to start using the features of Office 365 from your App. If you have an MSDN subscription, you can redeem your Office 365 Developer Subscription benefits. If you don't have an Office 365 account, you can start with the free 30-day trial account.

In order to start using the Office 365 API from your app, you will have to configure the Office 365 Developer site from your Office 365 Dev account. Once this is done, you have to include your Office 365 account to your Azure Subscription.

Stay tuned for our next post: App Development using the Office 365 API – Part 2!

Microsoft have been struggling to get traction with their mobile computing efforts, with Windows Phone stuck at around 3% share of the smartphone market. Windows 8 is doing a little better in the tablet market but is still a distant third to iOS and Android. Despite losing in the platform wars, Microsoft’s developer ecosystem is still strong and they’re not showing much sign of wanting to give up their tools. The latest Developer Economics survey showed that 38% of mobile developers were using C# for some of their work, while16% use it as their main language. Those developers are not all focused on Microsoft platforms by a long shot. They’re not all building games with Unity either. So what are they doing?

Not just Windows Phone, particularly not for pros

While 30% of all developers in the survey were targeting Windows Phone, that doesn’t quite account for the majority of those whose main language is C#. Also, more than half of the developers targeting Windows Phone are Hobbyists and Explorers - i.e. those not working on mobile apps full time. If we focus on full time professional mobile developers, as we will for the rest of this article, then just 50% of those that use C# as their main language are primarily targeting Microsoft platforms. Apple’s iOS (with 23% of developers) and Google’s Android (14%) are in fact more popular targets than Windows 8 (10%). So, how do developers use C# on other platforms? With cross-platform tools, particularly Unity and Xamarin.

More enterprise apps than games

Unity is by far the most popular engine for mobile games, in fact in the Q3 2014 Developer Economics survey a massive 47% of game developers were using it for some of their projects. C# is the most important language in the Unity developer ecosystem, although there are two other languages supported (UnityScript,a JavaScript variant with type annotations; and Boo, a statically typed language with Python-like syntax). However, a lot of developers are using Unity to build games in their spare time. When we look at the full time pros, we find that games are only the 4th most popular category of app. The top 3 categories are Business & Productivity tools, Enterprise-specific apps and Utilities, all staples of the enterprise-focused app developer. Developers are either building these apps for Microsoft platforms, using Xamarin to reach iOS and Android with them, or both. Indeed it’s the combination of a familiar language (and code portability) and tooling for many enterprise app developers with the cross-platform reach they can get with Xamarin that’s making C# such a popular choice in this area.

A flexible cross-platform approach

A lot of popular cross-platform tools for mobile development only support iOS and Android. As such, for those also wanting support for Windows Phone and possibly desktop Windows and Mac too, Xamarin is one of very few serious options. That said, it’s not just a default choice. Using Xamarin.Forms, developers can get the write-once-run-anywhere efficiency that drives many decisions to use a cross-platform approach. The downside to this approach is that it can give the lowest common denominator of functionality; not allowing developers to really optimize for the unique features of each platform. However, Xamarin also directly wraps the native platform APIs, allowing developers to call anything in the native SDKs. They can even automatically create bindings for popular third party libraries on each platform. The other key reason developers often go with a native rather than cross-platform approach is performance. However, a recent independent performance test (by an early Google engineer) showed Xamarin’s compiler produces raw performance that’s comparable to native on iOS and Android. Raw performance isn’t the only thing that counts of course - a garbage collection pause causing a stutter in your animation is jarring, however fast the the code is executing otherwise. Enterprises customers will usually put up with mild inconveniences of that nature to get the cost savings and maintenance benefits of a single code base across platforms though.

Better revenues

Possibly the best measure of the success of C# on mobile devices is the revenues of the developers using it. Whether you believe the same level of smoothness in the user experience can be achieved or not, it only matters if it costs users and revenue. Here there is no room for debate. The revenues of full time professional developers whose main language is C# are comparable to, or better than, those of other developers targeting the same primary platform with the native language. For example, the revenue distribution for C# developers on iOS is extremely similar to that for Objective-C developers and the average revenues are higher. This is both because there are more C# developers earning more than $10K (46% vs 36%) per month and while there are slightly fewer earning more than $100K per month (16% vs 17%), a significantly greater fraction of those using C# earn more than $500K per month (14% vs 6%).

This is not to suggest that C# is somehow a better language for targeting iOS than Objective-C. This is correlation and not causation. The cause of the better revenues is that the C# developers are much more likely to be targeting enterprises than the Objective-C developers and that’s where the higher revenues are most likely to be found. There’s an enormous pool of developers trained in C# and related Microsoft technologies. A lot of them are working on desktop enterprise apps or the server side. As it becomes increasingly clear that C# is a viable language for successfully delivering cross-platform mobile solutions, C#’s rise on mobile looks set to continue for several years yet.

This is a guest post by Mark Wilcox of VisionMobile. Mark is a developer who has worked on everything from the lowest level smartphone firmware to games and apps that sell pizza. He’s also a project leader with a focus on lean methods and a consultant who loves rapid prototyping, app economics and business models. Mark uses this experience to interpret the latest stats about the app industry as a Senior Analyst at VisionMobile. You can follow him on Twitter @__MarkW__.

With every release comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release notes are available in both PDF and Excel formats. The PDF summarizes the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. The Excel sheet includes each change item and makes it easy for you to sort, filter and otherwise manipulate the data to your liking.

Download the Release Notes

Ignite UI 2014 Volume 1

• PDF (Ignite UI 2014 Volume 1, Build 14.1.20141.2692)
• Excel (Ignite UI 2014 Volume 1, Build 14.1.20141.2692)

Ignite UI 2014 Volume 2

• PDF (Ignite UI 2014 Volume 2, Build 14.2.20142.2318)
• Excel (Ignite UI 2014 Volume 2, Build 14.2.20142.2318)

With every release comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release notes are available in both PDF and Excel formats. The PDF summarizes the changes to this release along with a listing of each item. The Excel sheet includes each change item and makes it easy for you to sort, filter and otherwise manipulate the data to your liking.

Download the Release Notes

ASP.NET 2014 Volume 1

• PDF (ASP.NET 2014 Volume 1, Build 14.1.20141.2392)
• Excel (ASP.NET 2014 Volume 1, Build 14.1.20141.2392)

ASP.NET 2014 Volume 2

• PDF (ASP.NET 2014 Volume 2, Build 14.2.20142.2317)
• Excel (ASP.NET 2014 Volume 2, Build 14.2.20142.2317)

C# is becoming an increasingly important language for mobile development, with or without Windows. Check out our latest infographic to learn more!

Share With The Code Below!

This is a guest post by Mark Wilcox of VisionMobile. Mark is a developer who has worked on everything from the lowest level smartphone firmware to games and apps that sell pizza. He’s also a project leader with a focus on lean methods and a consultant who loves rapid prototyping, app economics and business models. Mark uses this experience to interpret the latest stats about the app industry as a Senior Analyst at VisionMobile. You can follow him @__MarkW__.

     Microsoft’s Patterns and Practices team announced today that they are about to undergo a change. In the past, the team has focused on creating and giving guidance on most major Microsoft platforms. Today however, the team has announced that they have decided to focus primarily on Microsoft’s Azure, which is their cloud platform. Although the team is essentially “narrowing” their focus, they believe that in actuality that they are expanding their focus for they will now be looking at different platforms, languages, and technologies which they were not working with previously. While the team’s overall focus is shifting away from its major platforms, specifically Prism in regards to this article, clients and developers should not fear that there will no longer be support for their projects.

     So who exactly will be driving the Prism-based client work that the Patterns and Practices team has been focusing on for years? Patterns and Practices will be handing over ownership of their Prism projects and frameworks to three individuals whom they refer to as “passionate and dedicated” community members. One of these three individuals who will be taking ownership of the Prism framework is Brian Lagunas, a member of our team here at Infragistics. Brian is currently a Product Manager for Infragistics’ award winning XAML product line as well as a Microsoft MVP, a Microsoft Patterns & Practices Champion, author, speaker, and original creator of the Extended WPF Toolkit. Brian’s involvement with Patterns and Practices began with Prism 2, and he later became a valued member of the Prism Advisory Board.  Brian’s years of experience and commitment to the Prism project has led him to speak as an expert about Prism at different events and conferences around the world, as well as provide personal training on Prism and author courses on Prism for Pluralsight.

     In addition to Brian’s expertise in Prism, the two other accomplished individuals who will be taking ownership with him are Ariel Ben-Horesh and Brian Noyes. Both-Horesh and Noyes have been a part of Prism from the start, and have seen much success in their time as team members from contributing directly to the design and implementation of Prism to building several Prism-based applications that can be found in the Windows Store. Between the expertise, experience and passion of these three individuals, there is no need to fret the change of ownership. While Microsoft will not be developing future releases of Prism, Patterns and Practices expect a strong continuity for the projects due to the significant contributions that the new owners have been making since the beginning. More information on the change of ownership, specifically in regards to Prism, can be found here on Brian Lagunas’ blog, as well as here [insert Microsoft’s announcement link] on Microsoft’s official announcement. Congratulations to Brian, as well as the other two new owners of the Prism frameworks!   

Follow the new owners on Twitter:

Brian Lagunas: @BrianLagunas

Ariel Ben-Horesh: @ArielBH

Brian Noyes: @BrianNoyes

Competition in the mobile app space becomes fiercer every day. There are more and more applications crowding the marketplace, and everyone seems to want a piece of the proverbial pie. However, many developers continue devoting their time to open source projects, and are happy just knowing that their applications are helping the greater community of their peers. What motivates these entrepreneurial, yet philanthropic developers? Infragistics Marketing Communications Analyst, Dara Monasch, spoke to the lead developer of open source app, Mobilesiz.es, Darren Barklie, to dive into his team’s motivations as well as get a little information about their app!

1. You say that Mobilesiz.es was conceived on a scrap of paper 12 months ago. Can you share more of the story around how the app concept was developed?
   
   Since NIFTIT was founded around 18 months ago, we had always spoke of a collective ambition to build products, as well as contribute to the open source community.  Khoa and Dom (NIFTIT co-founders) threw around a few ideas to be considered by the wider team.  As frontend designers and developers, we thought we would find the mobile statistics web app the most useful for ourselves day to day.  So that initial scrap of paper was expanded to wire-frames, then full designs and eventually a fully-developed web app.
   
   
2. Why did you decide to go open source with Mobilesiz.es? Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement in the open source community?
   
   We have the greatest respect for the open source software community.  Like most devs, so much of our daily workflow is made up of open source/free software; from operating systems down to jQuery plugins, via web browsers and content management systems.  That these resources remain free and so widely-accessible is what really drives innovation on the web.  While Mobilesiz.es is a modest contribution, we are still hopeful that it is a worthwhile addition to ease and/or hasten fellow designers and developers workflows.
   
   
3. What was the best part of developing Mobilesiz.es?
   
   Working from a completely blank canvas!  While it can be as intimidating as it is exciting, I really enjoyed the freedom afforded to the team that typically doesn’t come from working with a client.  It’s quite a different process to create something from nothing.
   
   
4. Was wireframing always part of the application development plan? How important do you find wireframing was to this project, if at all?
   
   As mentioned, starting with nil content and having to conceptualize every functionality and design decision is much different than working with a client or providing a service.  Wireframing proved essential to exploring the scope of our functionality and to allow the team to make early design decisions.  Making these decisions early, before essentially “skinning” our solution with a final aesthetic, avoided any headaches later in development.
   
   
5. You selected AngularJS for this project specifically due to the two-way data binding functionality; do you have any tips or tricks to share now that you’ve written the app, either about that functionality specifically or AngularJS in general?
   
   With AngularJS: know what you want to do before you do it.  With jQuery we are used to writing HTML and then manipulating it in the DOM, whereas Angular forces you to take a different approach. The functionality needs to be written into the HTML.  While this is more modular and structured, it can be difficult if you are used to writing jQuery scripts.
   
   
6. Can you share the biggest challenge you encountered while developing Mobilesiz.es?
   
   Like responsive design, learning to be extremely fluid and adaptable throughout the development process proved to be the biggest challenge – but also the most worthwhile learning experience.  Since this was a side project, we couldn’t always be as consistent with our attention as creating a product perhaps deserves.  So it was necessary to maintain agility with both our timing and our attention.  Since there was never a right or wrong way to solve a problem, we also had to adapt this flexibility in problem-solving and solution-finding. 
   
   
7. What do you anticipate Mobilesiz.es being most used for?
   
   Hopefully our concept is focused enough that it is used exactly as it was conceived: as a quick-fire tool for designers and developers to retrieve key mobile device information.
   
   
8. What has the most interesting use case been so far for Mobilesiz.es?
   
   To generalize our internal user testing experiences, I think what has been most notable is how quickly people find the device they want.  Our search functionality is really quick to respond, and the filters are easy to interpret and enjoyable to use.
   
   
9. You mention that Mobilesiz.es aims to provide data to its users in 3-8 seconds and less than three clicks. How did you decide on these metrics?
   
   We knew that for Mobilesiz.es to be a useful tool to the community, it only had to do one thing, but do it really well.  In this case, our chief metric was the timing it took from the user landing on our page to retrieving the device information they required.  That’s why we accommodate so many different filtering options that can be utilized simultaneously.  The metrics you mention were based on in-house testing.  Should the tool gain some wide-spread use, we would consider monitoring these metrics much more closely to aid future improvement.
   
   
10. What do you think your next project will be?
    
    It’s already in progress, but I don’t think we’re in a position to reveal it yet!  Lessons learned from the experience of building Mobilesiz.es have refined my approach to this next project, which is much bigger in scale and ambition.
    
    
11. Do you have any advice for developers who are considering starting their first open source project?
    
    I think that my advice would be to maintain your focus on doing one thing and doing it as well as you possibly can.  Identify a single problem and provide a single stream-lined and user-friendly solution.  The process of identifying the whole problem, moving through the design of a solution, before coding, testing, releasing and marketing your product will provide you with a full body of experience that will serve any developer well as they further their career.  As a user, I love sites that I can rely on for just that one task; favourites including spritecow.com, flaticon.com and work3hours.com.
    
    
12. Is there anything else you’d like to share?
    
    Just to recognize the wider team of NIFTers that supported the process from paper to product; special thanks to Nghi, Craig, Courtney, Dom, Jessica and Khoa.  I’d also like to point out that Mobilesiz.es is forkable on Github, should any devs wish to contribute to the project and/or report any bugs; we’re keen to improve the product to ensure it is the best resource online for finding key mobile device information.
    
    

So there you have it! Thank you so much to Darren and the Mobilesiz.es team for sharing their story with me, and letting me share it with all of you!

If you have an open source application or another venture that you think the Infragistics community would like to hear about, please reach out to Dara and let her know!

Bryan Downing over at Quantlabs recently featured Infragistics finance dashboard sample applications in a recent post - take a look!

[youtube] width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yY2XgyjOsXk" [/youtube]

If you've read my other articles you might have realized I have a particular interest in how science and the study of perception can aid us in creating effective visualizations; visualizations in which the viewer can quickly and clearly see the important patterns encoded within and not be mislead by errant artifacts. But that doesn't mean that visualization design should be based entirely on matters of perception. Seemingly arbitrary conventions should not be forgotten, as the examples below aim to demonstrate.

Temporal conventions

There may be nothing inherently wrong with the chart below in terms of our ability to perceive patterns. However, the majority of times-series charts you are likely to see will have the time component increasing horizontally from left to right.

This convention may be related to writing conventions: Fuhrman and Boroditsky found that English speakers (who write from left to right (obviously)) tend to perceive time as increasing in the same direction, while Hebrew speakers (who write from right to left) favor time going from right to left. (That paper is a very interesting read; unfortunately it does use bar charts that don't start at 0.) Meanwhile, Bergen and Lau found that some Taiwanese speakers (then resident in America) envisioned time as running from top to bottom, in line with the predominant direction of writing in Taiwan (at the time).

Whether or not you want to take these results and follow them to the letter is probably a matter for debate, but if your data is predominantly to be viewed by a Western audience you are best off following the left to right convention (below) unless you have a very good reason not to.

A second temporal issue is with textual labeling. If you're presenting data to a foreign audience, be aware of differences in formatting of numerical dates. Note that this is not a purely West versus East difference or an English versus not-English difference. Take the time series below. Is the time-gap between each tick a day (ie the first tick is January 4th, the second is January 5th...), a month (the first tick is April the 1st, the second tick is May the 1st...) or a year (the first tick is January 2004, the second tick is January 2005...)? Clearly it's important to be explicit with dates. Ideally use axis labels that are unambiguous, failing that use a more meaningful axis or main title to clarify.

Color conventions

Conventions are also relevant to choosing an appropriate selection of colors. Some color conventions come about naturally - the sea is blue, land is green or brown - and others appear to be arbitrary or a result of branding. Differences abound across cultures.

Take a look at the map below. It may appear to show an island at its center. In fact that's the black sea and the blue protuberance at the top is the Crimean Peninsula. A map with an actual purpose is likely to have other additions to make it more useful - cities, roads, places of historical interest - and these may make it clearer what is land and what is water. But reversing the conventions still serves no useful purpose. That doesn't mean that maps should follow the blue-green convention (there are plenty of useful maps that don't), just not invert it.

I've mentioned previously the dangers of using green for positive or affirmative outcomes and red for negative ones. To recap, because of the relatively high-prevalence of red-green color vision deficiencies (aka color blindness) anything up to ~10% of your audience might struggle. But using red and green for the reverse encodings (below) could well confuse and inadvertently mislead most of your audience.

Political parties also have associated colors. In the UK, the Conservatives are blue and Labour red. The association between Republicans and red states and Democrats and blue states is much more recent. Now this convention seems enshrined it would be unwise to go against: if we color code charts using these "brand" colors, readers who know the context may well not even bother to read the labels. (I think it's also reasonable to argue there's a good case for ignoring the second "rule" in my 7 Do's and Dont's of Dataviz article here.)

Andy Kirk at visualizing data recently conducted a (perhaps not entirely scientific) poll regarding the convention of using blue for males and pink for females. The results suggested this particular convention may not be appreciated. Avoiding gender stereotypes seems like a good idea. The lesson to take from above is that, if you're going to use an alternative pairing of colors, make sure you pick a pair that is significantly different from just inverting the stereotype.

This past week was a goldmine for web dev articles, so it's no surprise that the top two are from that genre! Enjoy!

5. Microsoft Azure Beats Amazon and Google for Mobile Development (IT World)

4. On Secretly Terrible Engineers (Tech Crunch)

3. The 5 Pillars of Interaction Design (The Next Web)

2. The Things You Need to Know to Do Web Development (Typical Programmer)

1. Why Angular is Not Only for Single Page Web Apps (DZone)

The issue

   Upon running the installer for any version of TestAdvantage 2007 volume 2 and earlier, you receive a message similar to this. 
Mercury Interactive QuickTestProfessional Version Check
Fatal Error found 
With one or both of QuickTest Professional version, and .NET Add-in versions will be identified as 0.0 

Why this is an issue

     To stem issues with the installation of TestAdvantage, we put in our installer tests to see that you have QuickTest Professional installed, a valid version of it that supports our product, and the .NET add-in that is required to properly use TestAdvantage. To verify this information we tested the registry entries that QuickTest Professional added upon installation, and the installation of it's .NET add-in.

     As of the release of QuickTest Professional 9.5, in 2008, they changed what registry entries that were added upon installation, which caused our installers to fail to recognize our product. We fixed all the installers of our supported products at the time, TestAdvantage 2007 volume 3 and up, to accommodate for the change, but older versions of TestAdvantage installer will fail to install. 

     Similarly you may get this issue on 64 bit Windows OS. As at the time we only checked the default registry area, and with 64 bit Windows OS's the registry entries are put in a different part of the registry.

How to resolve this issue  

As our installers check the registry, the way to bypass the issue is to alter the registry so that it finds what it expects to find. You can either manually open the registry and change the locations yourself, or copy the below text and place it in a text file with the extension of .reg and run it. 

32 bit Registry file changes

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mercury Interactive\QuickTest Professional\CustComponent\QuickTest Professional\CurrentVersion]
"Major"="9"
"Minor"="2"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mercury Interactive\QuickTest Professional\CustComponent\.NET Add-in\CurrentVersion]
"DotNET_Add_in"="C:\\Program Files\\Mercury Interactive\\QuickTest Professional"
"Major"="9"
"Minor"="2"

64 bit Registry file changes

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mercury Interactive\QuickTest Professional\CustComponent\QuickTest Professional\CurrentVersion]
"Major"="9"
"Minor"="2"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mercury Interactive\QuickTest Professional\CustComponent\.NET Add-in\CurrentVersion]
"DotNET_Add_in"="C:\\Program Files\\Mercury Interactive\\QuickTest Professional"
"Major"="9"
"Minor"="2"

Microsoft was slow to react to the step change in user experience provided by iOS and Android versus the first generation smartphone platforms. Windows Phone was then late to market and has finished a distant third in the smartphone platform wars. Smartphone adoption was consumer led and in the race to catch up, Windows Phone skipped some enterprise-friendly features that left it out of the running for business adoption too. In tablets, Windows RT was largely rejected by the market and Intel processor based devices running Windows 8 have only managed a weak third place in the market so far. In terms of their share of the mobile OS market, Microsoft is a long way behind Apple and Google. However, as enterprises are increasingly making big investments in mobile, Microsoft still has a significant opportunity.

If you can’t beat them, join them

Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, has made it clear that the company’s focus is now mobile first and cloud first. This includes aggressively rolling out their services across iOS and Android. In fact they already have more than 100 apps across the two platforms and that number is growing fast. Nadella has not been hesitant to acquire technology where previous strategy has left gaps. The new Outlook apps for iOS and Android are based on the Acompli apps that Microsoft acquired late last year. These will likely be enhanced in the near future with the technology from the recently-acquired calendar app, Sunrise.

In addition to filling out their offering and buying in talent for their competitors platforms, they have also moved to protect their dominance in productivity software with free Microsoft Office for consumers on mobile platforms. To sweeten the deal for those who pay, they’ve added unlimited storage via OneDrive. They then removed reasons to switch by opening up to competing storage solutions such as Dropbox and Box. Following the old adage that the best form of defense is a good offense, these moves help keep Microsoft’s central position in the daily life of business users while starving startups hoping to topple them of revenue. No one without Microsoft’s scale can compete directly on price while offering similar value.

Developers, developers, developers!

The other key to protecting Microsoft’s core enterprise revenues is keeping their technology stack at the heart of enterprise app development. For this to happen, third party enterprise app developers need to stick with .NET and related tools to build apps for iOS and Android. Developer loyalty is where Microsoft has been very strong. VisionMobile’s Developer Economics surveys repeatedly show Windows Phone with massively higher developer mindshare than the installed base of devices merits. That mindshare also continues to grow despite ongoing lack of traction with device sales.

One of the reasons for this developer loyalty is that Microsoft makes top class developer tools. They’ve invested heavily in this area for a very long time and most developers don’t want to downgrade their tools and productivity in order to target another platform. While Microsoft didn’t do the groundwork necessary to let developers target iOS and Android with their tools, Xamarin did. Microsoft and Xamarin have a global partnership to enable C# developers (and to some extent, Visual Basic developers) to target iOS and Android via Visual Studio. Microsoft open sourced their state-of-the-art Roslyn compiler technology for .NET, presumably mainly so that Xamarin could integrate it. It seems likely that the partnership between the two companies will deepen at some point, probably through investment or acquisition. In any case, it seems to be working. In the Q1 2015 Developer Economics survey, Xamarin was the second most popular cross-platform tool, behind only PhoneGap/Cordova. The survey data also shows that C# is clearly on the rise as a language for mobile development.

Next best thing

If you can’t own the OS and platform APIs, then the next best thing is to own the developer tooling and thus the key relationship with developers. If you want to introduce or drive new features or standards (that don’t require new hardware or OS level support) then it’s the developer relationship you need to own rather than the platform itself. Arguably a lot of innovation in mobile going forward will be achieved through cloud services and Microsoft would love to own those APIs. This only goes so far in the consumer space, where Apple and Google can veto Microsoft’s moves at the public app store interface. However, in the enterprise, where most apps are not distributed via the public app stores, anything goes. This is where Microsoft’s biggest mobile opportunity lies, and it’s also where the bulk of the revenue in app development will end up. If Microsoft can keep a huge pool of developers fed and happy on mobile, then they’ll be in a much better position for whatever comes next in computing.

This is a guest post by Mark Wilcox of VisionMobile. Mark is a developer who has worked on everything from the lowest level smartphone firmware to games and apps that sell pizza. He’s also a project leader with a focus on lean methods and a consultant who loves rapid prototyping, app economics and business models. Mark uses this experience to interpret the latest stats about the app industry as a Senior Analyst at VisionMobile. You can follow him @__MarkW__.

Cast your mind back to your first mobile phone. Or more specifically the phone charger that the vendor had packaged with it. If you ever tried to charge your handset at a friend’s house or at the office, you may have encountered the irritation of an incompatible phone charger. However, think more recently about the last phone you purchased and the chances are that you’ll not have experienced this inconvenience. 

Why not? Probably due to the standardization of mobile phone chargers, which has been agreed upon by a number of telecommunications companies. The issues of having complicated, vendor specific nuances and the conveniences offered by standardization is what we’ll be discussing in this blog post. Specifically, we’ll be looking at the development of an application standards group that wants to make positive changes to how applications are developed. This movement is being headed up by Xamarin. These guys (alongside others) are trying to become the standard bearer for cross device development, so this development is both a positive step forward for them and the wider industry.   

We think that’s ACE!

Xamarin and several other vendors (including Box, Cisco, VMware and Workday) recently outlined the plans to move away from an SDK based application development towards something more universal at the March 2015 Mobile World Congress (in Barcelona). The name of this enterprise level application group seems to be quite fitting; it’s called is ACE (App Configuration for Enterprise), and ace it is.

ACE is a standard intended to promote several aims, with a lot of changes being given to rolling up security and management features into applications. These changes can be summarized as follows:

• Allowing vendors and developers to automate the first-time setup experience with enhanced application configuration capabilities
• Enforcing application secure app connectivity to corporate networks with app specific tunnels
• Providing a single sign-on apparatus with a view of avoiding separate user login requirements on an app by app basis
• Allowing access to native apps only on secure, compliant devices with access control
• Preventing data leakage with a flexible set of security policies including open in and copy/paste controls
• Wiping corporate data remotely from lost or stolen devices

The current approach to readying Enterprise level applications has always been a very fragmented experience. As ACE is the first industry-wide solution that can alleviate this problem regardless of its intended usage, it should be viewed positively. Mobile applications are, if we’re being candid, what make mobility programs successful. As such, ACE is an important and powerful catalyst in enabling empowerment for a greater number of firms with the updated, enterprise-ready apps they need regardless of their deployment structure.

Simplification for developers

As an app developer, the first port of call for developing an application is normally a software development kit (SDK). In many instances, this is no bad thing. An SDK includes literature examples and many other general details for getting started.  This may lead to you wanting to ask what’s the need of having them replaced?

We’d answer that an SDK is only vendor specific, so the line of thinking from ACE is a valid one.  They offer this by using a standard framework and plugging into application programming interfaces (APIs) from Android and Apple's iOS so that mobility management tools will be easier to integrate. With ACE, developers will also be able to cut time and costs when they develop enterprise apps as they’ll not need to create multiple versions of the same tool using different SDKs.

Simplification for administrators

The last three items on the bullet point list above can also contribute to how effectively IT administrators are doing their work. Firstly, knowing that there is a maintainable list of authorized devices that connect to applications on terms laid out by IT security’s access controls should be reassuring to all stakeholders. 

Secondly, having this feature being backed up by standardized security policies and the ability to remotely wipe devices in a fashion that which is universal regardless of who made the device ensures a quicker response time to any data loss. It also means that administrators will have less work to do in familiarizing themselves with various devices and their configurations, as ACE will give them a platform for tackling any issues they’ll potentially face.

A more unified future for the industry

We think that the development of ACE can only be a good thing. Standardization and streamlined processes will help application development mature to levels that can only be beneficial, not just for IT staff but to the end user.  For these efforts, Xamarin and their peer companies should be applauded.

Hardly a day goes by without new programs, products or updates being released from the tech sector, which certainly lives up to its dynamic nature. Last Thursday was no different, as Microsoft’s Patterns and Practices team announced that they will be shifting away their focus from the PRISM project and concentrating more on Microsoft’s Azure - their cloud platform. You can read more about the change in our blog post on that topic.

The change will have no effect on clients and developers, as ownership of the PRISM projects and frameworks will be given to three ‘’passionate, dedicated‘’ and highly accomplished Microsoft community members: Ariel Ben-Horesh, Brian Noyes, and Infragistics’ very own Product Manager of our market-leading XAML product line, Brian Lagunas. Brian has impressive knowledge and experience in the field and has been involved with Patterns and Practices since the launch of PRISM 2. He has been an expert speaker about PRISM at various international events and conferences and also provides personal training on the project and author courses on PRISM for Pluralsight.

Both Brian Lagunas and Brian Noyes joined this week’s episode of one of our favorite radio shows - Dot.Net Rocks! - where they talked about PRISM, its evolution and composability, and their ownership of the project now. The conversation touched on PRISM’s core nature, which is a set a of tools for building WPF apps and helping you organize your application in a more manageable and easier to test mode, its support for Windows Phone and Universal apps, and other PRISM-related topics. Rather than give away more, why not check it out for yourself? We hope you enjoy!

As any mobile app developer knows, clients with little programming knowledge tend to expect miracles from our work. Of course, we do pretty neat things but we’re often asked to build apps and develop stunning interfaces by people who have a limited understanding of how this is actually done and just how complex it can be. Used to instantly accessing apps on their devices, they expect these can simply be pulled out of the air and consequently expect apps to be built within short time frames and to limited budgets. This can be irritating (to put it lightly), and it’s important to let people know just what is and isn’t possible. Nonetheless, in a world of on-demand access, finding more efficient routes to building apps can only contribute to enriching your skillset.

Built with the modern, high pressure workplace in mind, Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms let you work more efficiently and boost your productivity by simplifying cross-platform app development. In this post we’ll be looking at what they can offer you and how they help bring projects to closure quicker. Clients might not understand what you do or how you do it, but by using Xamarin you can be sure they’ll be amazed by your output.

What is Xamarin?

Xamarin is an API which lets you build apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone in one place, in one language (C#). Rather than having to write code in three different languages for the different operating systems, Xamarin brings all this into one place. From one code base it configures your apps to the particular architecture of the different platforms as if written natively. Put simply, this means you can develop apps in much less time and at a fraction of the cost of alternative cross-platform app development methods. Because the code base for all three systems is written in C# you can also maintain it, iron out bugs and introduce updates far more easily throughout the app’s life cycle.

If Xamarin takes care of the ‘functional’ side of things, Xamarin.Forms takes cross platform development to the next level by allowing you to share design code across devices too. With Xamarin.Forms you can write in either C# or XAML and apply your rich, visually stunning and interactive UI design across platforms. This cuts out the additional work of developing UI on different systems and again makes your job quicker, builds smoother and clients happier.

Why we think you’ll love Xamarin

Here at Infragistics we pride ourselves on creating state of the art UX controls and recognize just how useful Xamarin is for UX designers. We’ve put together five reasons why we love Xamarin and why we reckon you’ll be pretty impressed too:

1. C# - The best language for mobile app development

Xamarin uses C# as the code base from which apps are then configured to different platforms. Why’s that? Simply because C# is the best code for cross-platform app-development. In C# you can do anything you’d do in Java, Objective-C or Swift. It uses type inference to give developers more safety in fewer keystrokes, boasts asynchronous programming and functions such as lambdas are super simple.

2. Use the same code across different platforms

When you develop with Xamarin, on average 75% of your app’s code will be shared across platforms. Of course, each system will need some platform specific C# development, but just take a moment to think about how much time you’ll save when building apps for different platforms.

3. Reach the market sooner

With Xamarin.Forms you’ll be building native User Interfaces for iOS Android and Windows Phone using 100% shared C#, meaning you can release apps simultaneously in all the different stores.

4. User interfaces that look and feel as users expect

The first rule of UX is that when end users interact with your product they should barely notice how smooth and satisfying it is to use. Consumers will be confused and may even reject an app which doesn’t respond as they expect it to. You might think that sharing a code base across different platforms would lead to issues around UI not feeling quite right, yet Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms excel at creating a native experience despite all apps being built in C#. For the business app developer Infragistics have combined our UX expertise with Xamarin to let you incorporate stunning UI controls with your Xamarin.Forms builds.

5. The bottom line

We know that clients expect apps to be designed faster than ever and at a lower cost. Xamarin is a real helping hand here and lets you achieve targets efficiently and effectively.

App development for the 21st century

Developing apps across platforms is a highly complex task and, until now, has been a real headache. Whether it’s writing the code, finding bugs or maintaining apps, Xamarin makes development easier and more efficient. We love Xamarin for its simplicity and scope for improving app development and reckon you will too!

Introduction

With every release comes a set of release notes that reflects the state of resolved bugs and new additions from the previous release. You’ll find the notes useful to help determine the resolution of existing issues from a past release and as a means of determining where to test your applications when upgrading from one version to the next.

Release Notes: NucliOS 2014 Volume 1 Build 139 and NucliOS 2014 Volume 2 Build 295

By Torrey Betts