Category: reviews

The Dew Review – ’The Snugg’ Case for Nexus 7

It must be review season around here or something…

Last week I received a new case for my first generation Nexus 7 tablet. It is an orange leather case and flip stand from The Snugg. There are Snugg cases available for most popular smartphones and tablets (iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Nexus 7, Nexus 4, Surface, etc.) Here are a few unboxing shots.

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So far, I have been very impressed with the case. It doesn’t make the tablet feel noticeably heavier, and I worry less about dropping it than I did with the standard rubbery case from Google. The Nexus 7 fits snugly inside the Snugg, and there are openings to reach all of the important buttons, ports, etc. The case is very well built. I don’t feel like it is going to fall apart of from opening and closing the case the way some cases do over time.

The case functions well whether holding open like a book, holding in one hand with the cover folded around back (there is actually  a strap to slip your hand into for extra security – you can see it in the fourth picture above), or propped open on a tabletop with the flip lip tucked into the tab on the back of the case.

Here is a picture of the case with the Nexus 7 inside. My kids love the Toy Story Andy’s Room active background from the Google Play store.

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If you are in the market for a case for your smartphone or tablet, you should put The Snugg on your list of cases to consider. They are prices competitively compared to other well-made cases.

 

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

The Dew Review – RavenDB 2.x Beginner’s Guide

I just finished reading Packt Publishing’s RavenDB 2.x Beginner’s Guide by Khaled Tannir. I haven’t used RavenDB in a project before, so when I was asked to review the book, I jumped at the opportunity. NoSQL in general, and RavenDB in particular, is something I have meaning to start learning.

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I really liked the format of the book. Each section starts with a brief introduction of the topic, continues with a  step by step set of instructions complete with code snippets and/or screen shots, and finishes up with a deeper explanation of what was done and what happened behind the scenes. The instructions part of each section is titled “Time for action”, the deeper dive is titled “What just happened?”, and some sections also have a “Have a go hero” challenge. These challenges give the reader a more advanced task to perform based on the one just completed and explained. Most of these challenges include some tips to get you started.

In some of the more introductory sections, the format felt a little repetitive, but it’s easy enough to skim through those parts if you’re comfortable with them already. For the more advanced topics, it’s a great way to re-enforce the material.

The book begins with an overview of RavenDB, covers the basics of NoSQL at a conceptual level and compares and contrasts its strengths with relational databases. Next it moves into the Management Studio… getting it installed and running, and gives an overview of what can be performed in the Studio. The next several chapters focus on using RavenDB within .NET and Visual Studio. Indexes, queries, and documents are all covered at a good level of detail. Chapters seven through 10 cover less code-focused aspects of RavenDB including deployment, scaling and profiling. There is a chapter on accessing RavenDB via a RESTful interface over HTTP rather than through the .NET API and the book finishes with a “Putting it all together” chapter where the author walks through building an ASP.NET MVC application with RavenDB as the data source.

The book is well-written, organized and an all-around good read. I think it targets a large number of developers – those who are experienced in .NET but have little or no exposure to NoSQL or RavenDB. If you fall into that category, I highly recommend picking up this title. When you see that Oren Eini, the main man behind RavenDB, is one  of the reviewers, you know it’s going to be a technically solid tutorial.

 

The Dew Review – DevExpress WPF Subscription – 2013.1 Release

Introduction

I have been using the latest release (2013.1) of DevExpress’ WPF Subscription over the last several weeks on my new Ultrabook, and I have had a great time exploring the expansive collection of tools and controls included in the suite. I have only used a fraction of the available controls available in this release, but I have been very impressed with everything I have been able to test drive so far.

What’s New

DevExpress has been building WPF controls for a long time now, but I cannot remember the last release with so much new stuff included. Here’s a quick rundown of the new features in 2013.1:

  • Getting Started Tutorial (New – Online)
  • Data Grid (Enhanced)
  • Chart Control Wizard (New)
  • Map Control (Enhanced)
  • Property Grid (New)
  • Row Multi-Select in Grid Lookup Control (New)
  • Range Control Integration in Scheduler Control (New)
  • Design-Time Extensions (SmartTags in the Designer) (New)
  • Scaffolding Wizards (New)
  • WPF Data Source Wizard (New)
  • Instant Layout Assistant (VS2012 Only) (New)
  • Icon Library w/VS Integrated Image Picker (New)
  • Windows UI Style Controls (New)
  • Touch Enabled Theme (New)
  • Window Visual Effects (New)
  • Touch-Friendly Date Picker Control (New)
  • Touch-Friendly Range Control (New)
  • Visual Studio Template Gallery

Quite a list, eh?

I will focus this article on a few of the coolest (in my opinion) features: the Template Gallery, the Windows UI Style Controls, and the Touch-Enabled Theme.

Template Gallery

DevExpress now integrates their own Template Gallery into Visual Studio. Under the DevExpress menu, you will find an ‘All Platforms’ submenu containing ‘New Project’ and ‘New Item’ menu items.

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Selecting either of these launches the Template Gallery. The project templates are divided into WPF Common, WPF Business Solutions, and WPF Windows UI Solutions.

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The Business Solutions are project templates that create Word and Outlook applications with main windows that are modeled after Microsoft Word and Outlook, each very functional. Here is a screen shot of the Word style application running with no extra code added:

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There is a full ribbon control filled with controls that manipulate the rich text editor. Everything I tried works as expected.

The ‘New Item’ Template Gallery window provides the following list of item templates to select:

  • WPF Common
    • DXWindow
    • DXRibbonWindow
    • DXSplashScreen
    • UserControl
  • WPF Views for MVVM
    • Tabbed MDI View
    • Business Object View
    • Collection View
  • WPF View Models for MVVM
    • Blank View Model
    • Business Object View Model
    • Collection View Model
  • WPF Data Models for MVVM
    • Entity Framework Data Model

Each of the item templates has its own wizard to assist in binding to existing or new data sources. MVVM out-of-the-box… nice. Hopefully, we will have the same kinds of choices built into Visual Studio’s New Item dialog soon.

Windows UI Style Controls

Selecting the Tile Application project from the DevExpress Template Gallery will create a WPF project that looks like a Windows UI Style app. Run the project for the first time and here is what you will see:

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It is a full-screen WPF desktop application with no close button or other window chrome. If you didn’t alt-tab back to Visual Studio and see the application’s icon in the Windows Desktop taskbar, it would be hard to tell the difference. The Windows 8 look-and-feel is provided by the DevExpress TileLayoutControl and groups of TileControls.

This is an MVVM application with two views (in addition to MainWindow.xaml), two view models and a sample data source used as the model.

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Touch-Enabled Theme

A new theme called TouchlineDark was added to support touch screen PCs and tablets. By changing the dx:ThemeManager.ThemeName to TouchlineDark in MainWindow.xaml from the previous section, the whole app switches to the new theme.

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By default, DevExpress WPF controls styled with this theme will be larger and more touch-friendly, as can many of the standard WPF controls from Microsoft. Here’s a shot of the DevExpress WPF Data Grid using TouchlineDark I found in the online documentation.

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Summary

As you can see, the WPF Subscription from DevExpress has everything a developer could ask for to create great-looking line-of-business (LOB) or Windows UI Style applications in as little time as possible. With advanced support for MVVM, data binding, theming and simple but powerful controls, the suite will be an integral part of my developer toolbelt for my next WPF project.

Happy coding!

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

 

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