Hello, I'm   Jason

So Windows 8 has a new custom Start screen that allows live tiles to be displayed and rearranged on a per user basis. They also allow complete customization of the new Start screen. This includes a few backgrounds that are updated based on the color choice the user selects. Each color choice comes with two colors – a default color for the live tile and a background color for the start menu.

Do you work on a team that shares code libraries? Have you ever wanted to implement a new method to replace an old one (with a differing signature) and simply deleted the old method? You can handle these situations easier by using an attribute on a class or method. The attribute is called Obsolete. This allows you to gracefully mark code as deprecated as shown below:

So, I’ve been officially renewed as a Microsoft MVP again.

I started to test out the migration of our web applications with ASP.NET 4.5. In many cases, we have a login page that redirects from one domain to another domain or sub-domain. In those instances, we’re setting the enableCrossAppRedirects property in the configuration files. You can find out more about setting this by visiting MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/eb0zx8fc(v=VS.100).aspx.

I can still remember today, 11 years later. I was just about to walk in late to my English class at Penn State University when I heard that the first tower was hit on 97.9x. At the time Freddie Fabbri (the insignificant significant one) was the DJ (known best for his role in assisting Breaking Benjamin). He was about to break to another song when when he said that he received word that one of the World Trade Center towers was hit. From that point forward, none of us could ever imagine what was about to happen.

In Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010, and 2013 (beta), you can add multiple Microsoft Exchange mailboxes by going into your Outlook account, and adding mailboxes like so:

One of my colleagues found out earlier today that a project he recently upgraded to Visual Studio 2012 was broken. What caused this? The setup project that was added to his solution. Back on July 15th, 2010, a program manager from Microsoft posted that Microsoft was abandoning the Visual Studio 2012 setup options in favor of InstallShield LE. While InstallShield does have it’s purpose and many consider it to be the best (or only) real setup solution out there, the Microsoft team offers no standalone installer out of the box. This means developers must be forced to use ClickOnce, Windows Store, InstallShield LE, or another product they purchase.

During early builds of Visual Studio 2012, many developers griped and complained about the lack of color within the application. By the time VS2012 has RTM’d, two themes shipped with VS2012. There is a light theme and a dark theme.

So you’ve downloaded Windows 8, installed it on your box, and are ready to get virtual machines (VMs) setup. Now what? In Windows 7 days, this could be accomplished by using Virtual PC or VirtualBox (an offering from Oracle). With Windows 8, VirtualBox is still available. However, Windows 8 comes with a new feature that’s been available for several years from Microsoft in Windows Server called Hyper-V.