Our friends at SmartBear Software recently released TestComplete 9, making their already comprehensive software testing suite even better. The web based testing enhancements to TestComplete 9 will knock your socks off. You can now create a single test that can be run in any of the latest browsers and and evaluate virtually any cutting edge technology, including HTML 5. TestComplete 9 allows your tests to easily manage browser tabs, handle JavaScript dialogs, conditionally handle browser types and quickly locate and work with any object on the page, even if that object is from any of a multitude of supported third ...

If you happen to be experienced in development using Visual Studio, but a bit new to working in XCode for iOS development (like me), you are probably used to your application breaking on exceptions during debugging.  But by default, your iOS application may not act as you expect when it comes to debugging crash exceptions.  You may instead see something like this:

With an error message that says: 

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception

What?  Why was my exception uncaught while I am debugging?  I, for one, would rather be taken to the point at which the exception ...

If you have used WCF RIA Services along with Entity Framework for Silverlight applications, you know how useful they are for performing database operations from your application.  With the WCF RIA Services Toolkit, it gives you even more flexibility to expose your RIA DomainService methods to not only a Silverlight application, but any application that can access a SOAP or JSON endpoint.
I will provide some steps here for setting up and consuming data through a SOAP endpoint.

1. Install WCF RIA Services Toolkit

You will need to install the toolkit in your development environment.  You can get it here...

In the past, I’ve always used MeasureUp as my practice certification exam provider. While I was never dissatisfied, I was also never completely satisfied either. For my most recent exam, I decided to change things up and try a different provider, and I chose the Kaplan tests from www.selftestsoftware.com. Now that I have used both, I have a few comparisons that I can share. To be clear, I won’t be comparing the MeasureUp practice exam to the same SelfTest practice exam. I will be comparing my past experience with MeasureUp, which consists of 6 prior exams, to my most ...

Falafel just released a new mobile application that displays the magnetometer sensor of your Windows Phone 7. In addition to displaying the magnetometer, it also displays true north, and the up vector all in a “floating compass” 3D view. I’ve been playing around with the concept of using the accelerometer and magnetometer sensors and displaying them in a nice 3D format for some time now, as evidenced by my posts: Silverlight/XNA and Correcting WP7 Attitude Alignment, Showing the WP7 Magnetometer in 3D with XNA/Silverlight, WP7 Attitude and Magnetometer UPDATE with HTC Titan, Basic XNA Graphics for the ...

With ASP.NET MVC Razor and the ability to easily leverage Kendo UI, Sitefinity 5.1 is the fastest and most flexible version of Sitefinity yet. At Falafel Software, we want to be sure you understand how to make the most of these new techniques and tools. Our Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1 Package will do just that. Part training class, part mentoring program, you’ll learn to bring all the tools together to build your first cutting edge Sitefinity 5.1 site with MVC Razor and Kendo UI. Then you’ll have your own personal consultant to help you build or update your Sitefinity projects....

Another teaser to show where we are going with all the possibilities with the new Falafel Dashboard for Sitefinity 5.1

Please feel free to comment here to request more features, input, must haves, etc…

 

We continue to be very excited about the new release of 5.1 and the world of possibilities it opened to build robust widgets and modules in MVC with the razor syntax

 

Update: To learn more, we're now offering an instructor-led Foundations of Sitefinity 5.1 class, where you'll learn how to use ASP.NET MVC + Razor, JavaScript and Kendo UI in Sitefinity 5.1. 

Sitefinity joins the MVC ranks with its 5.1 release and boy is it impressive. What makes it so unique is that Web Forms is still offered in the platform for developers to use as an alternative or hybrid approach. You heard that right, mix Web Form and MVC controls on the same page! Furthermore, with the MVC-only implementation, page templates are rendered as pure, unpolluted HTML pages. This is ...

Now that Sitefinity 5.1 was released yesterday, congratulations to the entire Telerik team BTW, we are preparing at Falafel to release a Sitefinity Dashboard that will allow immediate access to relevant information about the site.  We have so many ideas and I am sure the community can help shape the future versions of this Dashboard as well.

We are using MVC + Razor Syntax (we love this part BTW) and including the wonderful controls from KendoUI to spice up the Dashboard.

The Dashboard product for Sitefinity will contain:

• Multiple e-commerce Dashboard widgets
• Recent Comments
• Pages Awaiting Approval
• Pages in draft ...

Telerik is releasing Sitefinity 5.1, the most comprehensive update to Sitefinity since 4.0. This begs the question, are you ready to take advantage of all Sitefinity 5.1 has to offer? 

Telerik packed this new release full of great new features and enhancements. Developers will be delighted with the new technical enhancements that allow Sitefinity to be easily extended with ASP.NET MVC and Razor. Couple that with Telerik’s Kendo UI integration and you have the most flexible and speedy version of Sitefinity ever built. 

There is a lot for administrators to get excited about in Sitefinity 5.1 too. New features allow ...

In my previous blog I talked about loading a simple non-textured SketchUp model into your Windows Phone application. This blog will deal with loading textured SketchUp models.

I did some searching about and found a textured SketchUp model online of the Moon and Earth.

 

 

Using the same DirectX/XNA Exporter Plugin from the last blog, I exported them. What you end up with is an DirectX file and a jpg file for each texture used in your model. You need to put these files in your Content project directory and make sure you include the DirectX files in the ...

JavaScript has been turning up everywhere. With nearly every desktop and mobile web browser on the planet coming equipped with a JavaScript engine, the language has become the de facto standard for client side code. There is just no better way to guarantee your audience can access the full feature set of your application.

Although JavaScript has typically been regarded as a client side technology, in-roads have been made in other areas in recent years. Frameworks like node.js are powering major server side applications and JavaScript can even be found querying some of the major NoSQL databases.

Here at Falafel ...

I used to wonder this myself, then came to my own conclusions about it and moved on. Recently, I was asked this question by another developer, and I thought that it might be worth writing about in case anyone else is wondering about it.

As engineers, one of our common impulses is to reduce redundancy and complexity by refactoring until nothing is duplicated. I think that’s where the initial impulse comes from when this question of consolidating lookups occurs to someone. They notice, “Hey, I have all these tables with a key and a value. They all have exactly the ...

Our good friends at Telerik were invited to show off Kendo UI in the exclusive Google Developer Sandbox at Google I/O 2012. At Falafel Software, we were especially excited about one of Telerik’s demonstrations; a web-based photo booth application that leverages Kendo UI and new cutting edge HTML5 features available in Google’s updated Chrome browser, codenamed “Canary”.  This web application uses the Media Source API and other early stage HTML5 elements to access your webcam, analyze a constant stream of video data to detect and track multiple faces, overlay a number of props and effects (think funhouse mirrors, ...

Two of Falafel Software's employees have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award. The award is given to outstanding members of Microsoft's technical communities for contributions made during the previous 12 months.

For our CEO, Lino Tadros, it's a milestone. This is the 10th year in a row that Lino has been named a MVP. For over a decade Lino has actively contributed to the Microsoft community, adapting his expertise to the latest technology. Earlier this year, Lino was recognized at the Microsoft MVP Summit for bringing to market EventBoard for Windows Phone, one of the most trusted ...