Keeping up with Microsoft books from Manning Publications

Natural User Interfaces in .NET is a hands-on guide that prepares you to create natural user interfaces (NUI) and great multi-touch experiences using the WPF and Silverlight multi-touch APIs. This book starts by introducing natural user interface (NUI) design concepts that everyone needs to know. It then quickly moves to the WPF Touch API and Surface Toolkit guiding the reader through a multitouch NUI application from concept to completion. Along the way, you'll see where these concepts can be extended to Silverlight via its touch interface.

This book offers the most complete coverage of the .NET multi-touch development story. Through its a unique combination of NUI concepts and practical implementation guidance that cannot be found in any other book or web resource, readers will come away with a complete knowledge of how to create engaging multi-touch applications with great NUI experiences.

Natural User Interfaces in .NET assumes a basic familiarity with WPF and Silverlight and focuses completely on teaching essential NUI design concepts and technical expertise in developing multi-touch applications with these technologies. Many of the NUI concepts and design guidelines will be of interest to both designers and developers, but this book was written with developers in mind.

Microsoft Silverlight 3 makes it easy to introduce a rich, new dimension to your web applications. Silverlight is a powerful tool, but you can get a lot out of it by building on what you already know. After you add a few new techniques to your toolbox, you'll be able to create eye-catching animations, slick visual transitions, friendlier user interfaces, and even rounded corners to your windows!

Hello! Silverlight is a fast-paced, entertaining introduction to Silverlight. Authors Bill Reiss and Dave Campbell guide you hands-on from your first Hello World example through the techniques you'll use to add life to your web applications.

ASP.NET MVC 2 in Action is a fast-paced tutorial designed to introduce the MVC model to ASP.NET developers and show how to apply it effectively. After a high-speed ramp up, the book presents over 25 concise chapters exploring key topics like validation, routing, and data access. Each topic is illustrated with its own example so it's easy to dip into the book without reading in sequence. This book covers some high-value, high-end techniques you won't find anywhere else!

Microsoft ASP.NET MVC (model/view/controller) is a relatively new Web application framework that combines ASP.NET's power and ease of use with the stability and testability of a MVC framework. The much-anticipated version 2 release brings new capabilities to the framework along with numerous additions that enhance developer productivity. In ASP.NET MVC 2 in Action, readers learn how to move from web form-based development to designs based on the MVC pattern. It begins with an introduction to the MVC framework and quickly dives into a working MVC 2 project.

ASP.NET is an established technology to build web applications using Microsoft products. It drives a number of enterprise-level web sites around the world, but it can be scaled for projects of any size. The new version 4.0 is an evolutionary step: you will find a lot of new features that you will be able to leverage to build better web applications with minimal effort.

ASP.NET 4.0 in Practice contains real world techniques from well-known professionals who have been using ASP.NET since the first previews. Using a practical Problem-Solution-Discussion format, it will guide you through the most common scenarios you will face in a typical ASP.NET application, and provide solutions and suggestions to take your applications to another level.

A good web development framework anticipates your needs—jQuery practically reads your mind. You'll fall in love with it when you see 20 lines of code reduced to three. jQuery is concise and readable. And with version 1.4, there's even more to love including new effects and events, usability improvements, and more testing options.

jQuery in Action, Second Edition is a fast-paced introduction to jQuery that will take your JavaScript programming to the next level. An in-depth rewrite of the bestselling first edition, this edition provides deep and practical coverage of the latest jQuery and jQuery UI releases. The book's unique "lab pages" anchor the explanation of each new concept in a practical example. You'll learn how to traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax to your web pages. This comprehensive guide also teaches you how jQuery interacts with other tools and frameworks and how to build jQuery plugins.

Continuous integration is a software engineering process designed to minimize "integration hell." It's a coordinated development approach that blends the best practices in software delivery: frequent integration, constant readiness, short build feedback cycles, persistent testing, and a flexible approach to developing--and modifying--system requirements. For .NET developers, especially, adopting these new approaches and the tools that support can require rethinking your dev process altogether.

Continuous Integration in .NET is a tutorial for developers and team leads that teaches you to reimagine your development strategy by creating a consistent continuous integration process. This book shows you how to build on the tools you already know--.NET Framework and Visual Studio and to use powerful software like MSBuild, Subversion, TFS 2010, Team City, CruiseControl.NET, NUnit, and Selenium.

Because CI is as much about the culture of your shop as the tooling, this book will help you bridge resistance to adoption by providing clear guidelines for starting and maintaining projects-along with defined metrics for measuring project success. Each author brings a unique set of experiences and practices to create a rich and varied picture of this powerful technique.

Dependency Injection (DI) is a software design technique emphasizing Separation of Concerns, Modularity, Extensibility and Testability. Applied well, it enables programmers to successfully deal with complexity in software and add new features to existing apps with greater ease. DI is the key to writing modular software and producing flexible and maintainable code bases.

While well-known among Java developers and other practitioners of object-oriented design, DI is only now gaining momentum in the .NET community. The Unity container released by Microsoft patterns & practices and the new Microsoft Extensibility Framework (MEF) make DI more relevant than ever for .NET developers.

Dependency Injection in .NET is a comprehensive guide than introduces DI and provides an in-depth look at applying DI practices to .NET apps. In it, you will also learn to integrate DI together with such technologies as Windows Communication Foundation, ASP.NET MVC, Windows Presentation Foundation and other core .NET components.

Building on your existing knowledge of C# and the .NET platform, this book will be most beneficial for readers who have already built at least a few software solutions of intermediate complexity. Most examples are in plain C# without use of any particular DI framework. Later, the book introduces several well-known DI frameworks, such as StructureMap, Windsor and Spring.NET. For each framework, it presents examples of its particular usage, as well as examines how the framework relates to the common patterns presented earlier in the book.

Taking over development of an existing application is rarely an easy task. Good coding and management practices are often lacking, so maintenance and improvement of the app can be tough. This book will help you maintain and extend your brownfield applications, and find and fix its pain points.

The books starts by laying out the unique characteristics of brownfield apps—both negative and positive. It then systematically explores how you can employ well-established techniques like continuous integration, version control, and automated testing, even if they weren't part of the original dev process. You'll learn techniques to identify logical layers and tease apart dependencies to effectively separate concerns for improved flexibility. This practical book will help you improve not only your application's maintainability, but also the team's confidence in the project.

Unit testing, done right, can mean the diff erence between a failed project and a successful one, between a maintainable code base and a code base that no one dares touch, and between getting home at 2 AM or getting home in time for dinner, even before a release deadline.

The Art of Unit Testing builds on top of what's already been written about this important topic. It guides you step by step from simple tests to tests that are maintainable, readable, and trustworthy. It covers advanced subjects like mocks, stubs, and frameworks such as Typemock Isolator and Rhino Mocks. And you'll learn about advanced test patterns and organization, working with legacy code and even untestable code. The book discusses tools you need when testing databases and other technologies. It's written for .NET developers but others will also benefit from this book.

A general-purpose language like C# is designed to handle all programming tasks. By contrast, the structure and syntax of a Domain-Specific Language are designed to match a particular applications area. A DSL is designed for readability and easy programming of repeating problems. Using the innovative Boo language, it's a breeze to create a DSL for your application domain that works on .NET and does not sacrifice performance.

DSLs in Boo shows you how to design, extend, and evolve DSLs for .NET by focusing on approaches and patterns. You learn to define an app in terms that match the domain, and to use Boo to build DSLs that generate efficient executables. And you won't deal with the awkward XML-laden syntax many DSLs require. The book concentrates on writing internal (textual) DSLs that allow easy extensibility of the application and framework. And if you don't know Boo, don't worry—you'll learn right here all the techniques you need.

Windows PowerShell transformed the way administrators and developers interact with Windows. PowerShell, an elegant dynamic language from Microsoft, lets you script administrative tasks and control Windows from the command line. Because it's a full-featured, first-class Windows programming language, programmers and power-users can now do things in a shell that previously required VB, VBScript, or C#.

Windows PowerShell in Action, Second Edition is a completely revised edition of the best selling book on PowerShell, written by Bruce Payette, one of the founding members of the Windows PowerShell team, co-designer of the PowerShell language, and the principal author of the PowerShell language implementation.

This new edition preserves the crystal-clear introduction to PowerShell, showing sysadmins and developers how to build scripts and utilities to automate system tasks or create powerful system management tools to handle day-to-day tasks. It's rich with interesting examples that will spark your imagination. The book covers batch scripting and string processing, COM, WMI, remote management and jobs and even .NET programming including WinForms and WPF/XAML.

Windows PowerShell in Action, Second Edition adds full coverage of V2 features like remote, changes to the threading model, and the new -split and -join operators. The book now includes full chapters on Remoting, Modules, Events and Transactions, and the PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment. As well, it provides deeper coverage of PowerShell "commandlets" (cmdlets) and more of the popular usage scenarios throughout the book.

PowerShell and WMI is an example-driven guide for administrators managing networks of Windows servers and desktops. With over 150 specific examples—including ready-to-reuse scripts and techniques—you'll learn the ins and outs of automating WMI via PowerShell 2. You'll find deep coverage of all aspects of Windows administration, including IIS, DNS and Hyper-V.

The first part of the book introduces PowerShell and WMI together by presenting a set of best practices that can be applied to PowerShell and WMI. Part 2 then digs into the day-to-day management concerns you'll face in your own systems. Each of the numerous tested techniques is presented as series of functions that can be loaded as PowerShell modules. This provides an easy method of accessing the functionality as well as demonstrating the advanced capabilities of PowerShell.

Like classic administrative shells, PowerShell accepts and immediately executes typed commands. In addition, it has all the features of a full-fledged programming language built in, so you can create scripts to automate even the most complex tasks. And it's fully aware of all the components of Windows and most Windows servers, so you can use PowerShell to control Exchange, IIS, SharePoint, and other core pieces of your Windows system.

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches is an innovative tutorial designed for busy administrators. Author Don Jones has taught thousands of administrators to use PowerShell, and now he'll teach you, bringing his years of training techniques to a concise, easy-to-follow book. Just set aside one hour a day—lunchtime would be perfect—for an entire month, and you'll be automating administrative tasks faster than you ever thought possible. Don combines his own in-the-trenches experience with years of PowerShell instruction to deliver the most important, effective, and engaging elements of PowerShell to you quickly and painlessly, setting you on the path to a career-boosting future.

Discovering and using DMVs is an eye-opening-and even life-changing experience for most DBAs. Reviewers reading the unfinished manuscript for this book are already making comments like:
“The code snippets are great! After reading the first chapter, we were already able to incorporate it into our daily jobs.”
“I would have no reservations recommending this book to SQL DBAs and developers. It's EXACTLY what we need.”
“The techniques in this book will repay the time spent with it. This is a book that should be on the desk of every SQL Server administrator and developer.”

In short, DMVs radically simplify the task of maintaining and improving the overall health of your SQL Server system. Whether you're a DBA or developer, this book will help you unlock the power of SQL Server DMVs.

The integrity and security of your database is crucial to your business. SQL Server 2008 is a massive and mature product with a very large feature set. As a SQL Server administrator, you must be equipped to handle myriad day-to-day tasks to keep your database healthy, and you must also be prepared to act quickly when something unexpected happens.

SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action offers over 100 DBA-tested, high-value, best practices that will help you tame the beast and keep it under control. Unlike the many comprehensive SQL Server reference tomes out there that attempt to cover the whole SQL Server feature set, this book drills down on the techniques, procedures, and practices that help you keep your database running like clockwork.

SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action focuses the production DBA, digging deep into the various tasks specific to that role. Expert author Rod Colledge--check him out at sqlCrunch.com--teaches you best practices that cover the lifecycle of a SQL Server system, including infrastructure design, installation, and operational maintenance. And while many of these techniques will work in any recent version of SQL Server, you'll find full coverage of emerging SQL Server 2008 best practices.

Each technique is presented in a task-driven style, and in the order of the typical life cycle of a SQL Server system. This allows you to easily open the book at the appropriate page and focus on what you need to know for each specific situation.

SQL Server MVP Deep Dives--This is no ordinary SQL Server book. 53 MVPs each pick an area of passionate interest to them and then share their insights and practical know-how with you. Author royalties go to support War Child International.

This is no ordinary SQL Server book. In SQL Server MVP Deep Dives, the world's leading experts and practitioners offer a masterful collection of techniques and best practices for SQL Server development and administration. 53 MVPs each pick an area of passionate interest to them and then share their insights and practical know-how with you.

SQL Server MVP Deep Dives is organized into five parts: Design and Architecture, Development, Administration, Performance Tuning and Optimization, and Business Intelligence. In each, you'll find concise, brilliantly clear chapters that take on key topics like mobile data strategies, Dynamic Management Views, or query performance.

SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action is a comprehensive guide to deploying, customizing, and creating web parts written for SharePoint developers. It covers everything from the basic foundations to how you can use web parts to implement robust, scalable, maintainable and user-friendly SharePoint applications. With countless examples demonstrating everything from design, to development, deployment, troubleshooting, and upgrading, you'll get a taste of the full web parts dev process.

Because Web Parts are really small applications, you need to know some of the same basic concepts that you'd use in any type of application development. If you have limited experience with.NET, this book will quickly introduce you to using the Visual Studio 2010 environment with SharePoint 2010 so you can get started confidently. This book is focused on SharePoint 2010 and highlights the new features and tools, and it shows you how to leverage your knowledge of previous versions of SharePoint and ASP.NET to best advantage in the 2010 environment.

You can use SharePoint 2010 workflows to transform a set of business processes into working SharePoint applications. For that task, a power user gets prepackaged workflows, wizards, and design tools, and a programmer benefits from Visual Studio to handle advanced workflow requirements.

SharePoint 2010 Workflows in Action is a hands-on guide for workflow application development in SharePoint. Power users are introduced to the simplicity of building and integrating workflows using SharePoint Designer, Visio, InfoPath, and Office. Developers will learn to build custom processes and use external data sources. They will learn about state machine workflows, ASP.NET forms, event handlers, and much more. This book requires no previous experience with workflow app development.

This book is broken into 3 parts. The first part will teach you what SharePoint 2010 is all about and how to get started using it. This will include a section on setting up an environment and cover functionality that is already available with no need for additional configuration.

The second part will cover step by step scenarios for implementing real world scenarios. The approaches are simple enough that a tech savvy business user could follow along without having to understand how to program. The goal of this section is to teach you how to build powerful sites leveraging the out of box SharePoint functionality along with other helpful tools such as InfoPath, Access and SharePoint Designer.

The third part discusses how to implement governance across your sites to ensure proper use and to establish a relationship between your sites that will tie it all together into a cohesive solution.

The book is aimed at the user that wants to understand how to get the most out of SharePoint without having to understand development or server side configurations. It is geared toward:

• The everyday SharePoint end user to help you become a power user
• The Developer or IT Pro that wants a better understanding of what SharePoint can do leveraging out of box functionality
• Anyone intrested in learning about SharePoint 2010!