The week in .NET - 5/16/2016

To read last week’s post, see The week in .NET – 5/10/2016.

We shipped!

Yesterday, we released ASP.NET Core RC2, .NET Core RC2, and the preview 1 of the associated SDK. We also released Entity Framework Core RC2.

We also have a new .NET web site that you can reach using the simple dot.net URL.

On.NET

Last week on the show, we talked about what we shipped yesterday:

This week, our very first guest on the show, Miguel de Icaza, is coming back.

Tool of the week: Web Accessibility Checker

It’s not always easy to keep track of the accessibility of our web sites. Wouldn’t it be nice if our code could be automatically checked against accessibility standards, and if we could get error messages for violations in Visual Studio, in the error list window? Mads Kristensen’s Web Accessibility Checker does exactly that.

Mads has a blog post going through the details of the tool.

Xamarin App of the week: Xactware

Xactware processes 80% of U.S. home property claims, worth over $340 billion per year. Using Xamarin, Xactware mobilized existing C# code to build Xactimate Mobile for iOS and Android. Claims adjusters receive assignments, build 3D models, estimate costs, settle onsite, and instantly upload all materials for processing.

xactimate

Game of the Week: Dex

Disclaimer: Dex has a Mature 17+ ESRB rating.

Dex is a tip of the hat towards 2D pixelated style graphics, but with a modern feel. It is a side scrolling action/RPG game with beautiful graphics and engaging dialog. In fact, the style of the cut scenes reminded me of reading a comic book and fits perfectly with the overall game!

Players are dropped into the cyberpunk city of Harbor Prime and allowed to roam around exploring and completing missions. As players level, they are given the opportunity to align their character with the play style that suits them. For example, when encountering an enemy you have the choice of silently taking them out or going in guns blazing (literally). Dex also incorporates the ability to hack the world by transferring your consciousness to defensive electronics such as turrets and enemies with implants.

Dex was created by Dreadlocks LTD using Unity and C#. It is currently available on Linux, Mac and Windows. Dex will be coming to Good Old Games (GoG), Xbox One and PlayStation 4 soon. More information can be found on their Made With Unity page.

User group meeting of the week: Roslyn – Refactorings, Analyzers and Codefixes

Robin Sedlaczek will be giving a talk about Roslyn, refactorings, analyzers, and codefixes on Thursday, May 19, at 6:00PM in Luzern, Switzerland, with .NET Usergroup Zentralschweiz. The talk will be given in German.

.NET

.NET Core RC2 Announcement
A billion is cool by Phil Haack, and Nuget’s post on the same topic with some cool stats.
Visual Studio “15” Preview 2 by John Montgomery
All Together Now: .NET, RHEL, Hyper-V and VSCode by Don Schenck.
ServiceStack, a journey into the madness of microservices, part 3 by Scott Mackay.
Automated Testing of Message Based Systems, and How we do Semantic Logging by Jeremy Miller.
Announcing MSBuild Structured Log: record and visualize your builds by Kirill Osenkov.
Welcoming Protobuild to the .NET Foundation by the .NET Foundation.
The Business Case for Actors and Akka.NET by Aaron Stannard.
Fun with Expressions by robmikh.

ASP.NET

ASP.NET Core RC2 Announcement
Notes from the ASP.NET Community Standup – May 10, 2016 by Jeffrey T. Fritz.
Upgrading from ASPNET Core RC1 to RC2 Guide by Steve Smith.
Getting Ready for ASP.NET Core RC2, Converting an ASP.NET Core RC1 Project to RC2, and Writing API Controllers in ASP.NET MVC 6 by Shawn Wildermuth.
ASP.NET Core RC2, Docker and HipChat Connect add-on by Laurent Kempé.
5 Factors to Consider When Converting a WebForms App to ASP.NET MVC Core by Jonathan Danylko.
NDC Oslo Web API sample updated to ASP.NET Core RC2, and IP Filtering in ASP.NET Web API by Filip W.
Modulus: Commercial Docker Containers for running ASP.NET Core Applications by Lohith.
Microservice with ASP.NET Core & MVC 6 on Linux by Michał Ogłuszka.
Using the C# 6.0 nameof Operator in ASP.NET MVC Razor Views by Jason Roberts.

Xamarin

Xamarin.iOS, the garbage collector and me by Krumelur.
Realm Xamarin, a reactive database for .NET developers.
The first ever pull request to Xamarin Forms by thebeekeeper.
Jason Smith’s Xamarin Forms Performance Tips by Kent Boogaart.
MvvmCross Hamburger menu for iOS by Marc Bruins.
Xamarin Dev Ops with VSTS – Getting Started by Richard Woollcott.

F#

Releasing F# Language Documentation as Open-Source by Den Delimarsky.
New Visual F# Portal with Open Source content.
Functional Web Applications using F# and Suave, by Tomas Jansson.
Functions Composition in F# and Scala, by Victor Michaïlovich.
Exploring Azure with F# Azure Storage Type Provider, by Pierre-Luc Mahe.

Check out F# Weekly for more great content from the F# community.

Games

Build A Unity Game Part 2 – Video, by Stacey Haffner
Unity and IPv6 Support, by Mantas Puida.

And this is it for this week!

Contribute to the week in .NET

As always, this weekly post couldn’t exist without community contributions, and I’d like to thank all those who sent links and tips.

You can participate too. Did you write a great blog post, or just read one? Do you want everyone to know about an amazing new contribution or a useful library? Did you make or play a great game built on .NET? We’d love to hear from you, and feature your contributions on future posts:

Send an email to beleroy at Microsoft,
comment on this gist
Leave us a pointer in the comments section below.
Send Stacey (@yecats131) tips on Twitter about .NET games.

This week’s post (and future posts) also contains news I first read on The ASP.NET Community Standup, on Weekly Xamarin, on F# weekly, on ASP.NET Weekly, and on Chris Alcock’s The Morning Brew.

The week in .NET – 5/16/2016