DevBlogs - Microsoft Developer Blogs

Why does the disk optimizer put boot files at low-numbered sectors?

Raymond Chen November 24, 2020 Nov 24, 2020 11/24/20

When the disk optimizer rearranges data on the disk, one of the things it does is put boot files at low-numbered sectors. Why is that? Is it just for mathematical convenience? Why not put them at the highest-numbered sectors, so they stay out of the way of regular data? Rotational media number their tracks and sectors from the outside in. The...

Raymond Chen November 24, 2020 Nov 24, 2020 11/24/20

Other

The Old New Thing

Welcome!

Thejaswini Somasundaram November 24, 2020 Nov 24, 2020 11/24/20

Welcome to the Azure Notification Hubs blog. What is Azure Notification Hubs? Azure Notification Hubs is a push notifications routing service that lets you send millions of push notifications at once. As a developer, you can send push notifications to your app on multiple platforms without worrying about the complexity of the underlying ...

Thejaswini Somasundaram November 24, 2020 Nov 24, 2020 11/24/20

Notification Hubs

Azure Notification Hubs Blog

In the works: HLSL Shader Model 6.6

Greg Roth November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Microsoft and its partners are happy to announce the development of Shader Model 6.6, the latest advancement in HLSL capability. Shader Model 6.6 will grant shader developers increased flexibility to enhance and expand existing rendering approaches and devise all new ones. New features include expanded atomic operations, ...

Greg Roth November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

DirectX Developer Blog

You've got Help!

Sean Wheeler November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

You've got Help! Up until now, creating updateable help has been a largely manual process. The CAB files downloaded by Update-Help had to be rebuilt and hosted on the Microsoft Download Center. The tools for managing the Download Center require manual steps and several levels of approval. These and other internal challenges meant that ...

Sean Wheeler November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

PowerShell Update-Help

PowerShell

Visual Basic WinForms Apps in .NET 5 and Visual Studio 16.8

Klaus Loeffelmann November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Visual Basic, along with its Application Framework, is supported in .NET 5 and Visual Studio 16.8! Visual Studio 16.8 includes the Windows Forms Designer, so Visual Basic is ready for you to migrate existing applications or create new applications. While .NET Core has had Visual Basic since the first release, and WinForms since it was ...

Klaus Loeffelmann November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

.NET .NET Core

.NET Blog

Join the meetup: Achieving speed to capability in government - Dec. 2, 2020

Karina Homme November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Today’s mission speed continues to outpace government’s ability to deliver modern capabilities to end users. To keep pace with mission demands, agencies are reimagining their IT efforts including leveraging powerful technologies such as continuous software deployment, container management, automated machine learning, and serverless PaaS...

Karina Homme November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Azure Azure Government

Azure Government

Examining the Carbon Footprint of Devices

Srilatha (Bobbie) Manne November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

When we talk about reducing our lifestyle carbon footprint, most of us think about turning down the heat in winter or driving or flying less. When the subject becomes electronic devices, similar tactics are often put in place: dim the display or put the laptop to sleep at night. These are all valid solutions and play an important part in ...

Srilatha (Bobbie) Manne November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Architecture Sustainable Software Engineering

Sustainable Software

AzureFunBytes Short - Cloud Shell

Jay Gordon November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

The Azure Cloud Shell is one of my favorite things about using Azure. Many of the administrative tasks that I may have had to run from a local computer can now be done from a browser anywhere I can authenticate into my Azure account. I used to always worry about needing a computer that had a shell or a terminal program with my ssh key on it ...

Jay Gordon November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Azure & Cloud CI/CD

Azure DevOps Blog

Virtual desktops are an end-user window management feature, not a programmatic one

Raymond Chen November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Virtual desktops are a window management feature, not a security feature or a performance feature. Furthermore, they are for end users to organize their windows, not for other programs to organize the windows. The purpose of the IVirtualDesktopManager interface is to allow applications to take the virtual desktop state into account in a...

Raymond Chen November 23, 2020 Nov 23, 2020 11/23/20

Other

The Old New Thing

Conditionally Trivial Special Member Functions

Sy Brand November 20, 2020 Nov 20, 2020 11/20/20

The C++ standards committee is currently focusing on adding features to the language which can simplify code. One small example of this in C++20 is conditionally trivial special member functions, which we added support for in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8. Its benefit isn’t immediately obvious unless you’ve been deep down the rabbit hole...

Sy Brand November 20, 2020 Nov 20, 2020 11/20/20

C++General C++ Series

C++ Team Blog

Microsoft Developer Blogs