Learning the latest on Blazor, to leverage our C# skills, from (chilly) MN! #dotNETConf

Good sessions this morning. Hose drinking learning as expected. But now it is 12:30pm and the doors aren’t open for lunch?! #msignite #msignite2019

Checked our Visual Studio Online (https://online.microsoft.com), which is in preview. Using dev tools in cloud sounded interesting (local device agnostic and not needing a VM to manage). But, it looks like it is only Linux-based right now. Maybe a Windows-based solution in the future?

A lot of useful Microsoft information at #msignite2019! Big takeaway is the Power Platform. It is a bigger deal than previously thought. Afterwards, got to briefly see my favorite Windows Weekly co-hosts MaryJo Foley and Paul Thurrott! Couldn’t stay long as there was more Power Platform learning to be done. 😁 #msignite #microsoftgeek #recursivegeek

Microsoft Ignite Conference has officially started! Lucky and glad to get a seat and so up close to see #satyanadella review Microsoft’s latest focuses. Nice to see latest Azure Stack offerings and talk about Azure Arc (new hybrid tools). #msignite #msignite2019

Got to stand in line for an hour and a half to get in and watch #satyanadella live on stage, only to get a standing spot. Hardly any seating for non-press (seen on the left). They had several screens up inside The Hub. I didn’t wait such a long time to only sit at a screen. I could have stayed home or in my hotel room for that. Past years were much better. Poor execution. Lame communication. #msignite #msignite2019

In the Microsoft Events app, they have a section to contact an expert to schedule 1:1 time. It sounds like a good idea, until tapping in further and realizing there is only one group doing it (Azure). The rest are ad-hoc. Oops on that implementation mighty Microsoft! #msignite #msignite2019

The line already very long to see the CEO #satyanadella talk live and in person at The Hub. #msignite #msignite2019

Too bad the #msignite conference keynote with the CEO is limited to 3000 for a major (over 20k people) conference. Some, if not most, traveled some distance for the human contact of attending the event. Trying to wrap my head around this move. Not people-centric move. #microsoft #msignite2019 #msconference

Apple iOS 13.2 messed up this morning on my iPhone 11 Pro Max. At least it was in my favor. My alarm went off an hour early because the time didn't change back. I had to power down the phone and power it back up. Then it updated. And up popped up another error: "Ultra Wideband Update Failed - Your iPhone cannot use ultra wideband until it has been updated." It does this every time the phone is powered up. All right before a trip to the Microsoft Ignite Conference.

Windows Notepad is in the Microsoft Store (it requires Windows 10 version 18943.0, a.k.a. 20H1 due around April 2020, or higher. Sure, this is a simple application that shouldn't seemingly need frequent updating. There is, after all, Visual Studio Code to provide a free, feature-rich editing experience that is frequently updated.

Why is this a positive move? In addition to out-of-band updates when issues arise, it is one more item decoupled from the Windows operating system. It will allow for a cleaner computing experience for those that don't use Notepad. But it goes deeper than that. It is an approach to managing each application on its merit, including features, platforms supported, frequency of updates, etc. Long term branches for Windows 10 can still benefit from application-specific updates. Microsoft has made several updates recently over the last year. Perhaps there are more updates to come?

This approach is in line with other existing applications including Paint 3D, Windows Calculator, Windows Terminal, Microsoft Remote Desktop, eventually the new Chromium-based Edge web browser, etc.

It creates an increased relevance to the Windows Store, already enhanced by familiar user experiences with the Apple and Google stores.

OneNote for Windows still doesn't have a key feature present with OneNote 2010, 2013, and 2016. That is the ability to change the date and time of a note. You can delete them, but not edit them. Duplicating an old note keeps the old date and time. Huh. Creating pages that make up a manual, with versioning on a per-page basis, makes it difficult to identify what has changed. If you feel the same way, check out https://onenote.uservoice.com/forums/327186-onenote-for-windows/suggestions/34027090-changing-the-page-creation-date-or-time-in-onenote and vote for this feature.

Here is another example of Microsoft just not being polished or attentive to details. Office 365 icons have changed, but they didn't get all web pages. And the order of the office icons is different. The top page links directly to the bottom page shown in the picture.

While Windows 10 1903 has many nice new features and improvements, they can't seem to get some of the basics working smoothly. Almost daily, I get the following error. Sometimes I can click "Fix Now", some windows popup, and it self repairs. Some times it never seems to resolve and I just ignore it for that day (not a great experience). Nothing appears to be logged in the Windows Event log. The actual account having the issue isn't displayed. Very unhelpful. I have heard other technologists state that Microsoft needs to reward fixes, not just new features. I agree. This is along the line of having a higher weight for quality than quantity.

Emojis in Windows 10 - press the Windows key and then Period (Win+.).

Bringing back memories! We have a copy of Windows 1.01 on 5.25" floppies (no way to read them right now). And... manuals (paper books that came with software back in the day 😊).

https://www.zdnet.com/pictures/windows-1-0-to-10-the-changing-face-of-microsofts-landmark-os

SharePoint Online has a threshold limit of 5000 for a list or document view. This cannot be changed (unlike on-premise SharePoint). For an enterprise-based SaaS solution, this is too small. Vote to increase the Threshold via https://sharepoint.uservoice.com/forums/330318-sharepoint-administration/suggestions/35017195-increase-the-threshold-to-list-views

Windows 10 configuration has been a mess since 2015 and is still present today. Microsoft needs to get a handle on Control Panel vs Settings, consolidating and having extensible. It should have been a priority at least 2 years ago. It is time to reward developers for making Windows usable, not just adding new glam.

Since Microsoft hasn't been updating the NuGet packages for BingMapsRESTToolkit (they have updated the code base, but it doesn't compile, at least with Visual Studio 2019, without a minor change), posted a .NET Standard version that has the updated models. Now able to call their Postal Code service to get the associated Time Zone.

See https://www.nuget.org/packages?q=BingMapsRESTToolkit to check out the packages.

See https://github.com/RecursiveGeek/BingMapsRESTToolkit/blob/master/README.md to get more details.

In Outlook for iOS and Android, without support for HTML email signature, that is a deal breaker. They have had years to implement this feature, making it consistent with native apps and consistent with desktop apps. It has been requested many times and specifically rejected (e.g., https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/293349-outlook-for-ios/suggestions/8632618-html-signatures). When will they listen to the customers?

The new Microsoft Edge Browser Insider Preview (https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com), overall, is working great. With its ability to use Google Chrome Extensions (and some Edge Extensions) and synchronize favorites, it works well on a daily basis (a couple of times a month Google Chrome is still needed for some sites).

There has been talk recently about Microsoft “modern OS”, a yet unconfirmed competitor to Chrome OS. It could support 5G, linger battery life, background OS updates that don’t interrupt the workflow, cloud connected, support for touch and pen, gesture support (on screen, facial, ...). Rather than calling this Windows Lite, how about just calling it Microsoft OS? 😏

After attending the Visual Studio 2019 launch last week at the Microsoft Office (even got into the video during the event), a number of us were excited to check it out. I have installed it on 4 development machines, successfully side loaded with Visual Studio 2017. So far, we haven't run into any issues with our current projects. The biggest win out of the box is how fast it launches. We are testing it to see if we no longer need ReSharper (R#), a longstanding valued, but additional cost, tool.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment in Azure DevOps Pipelines, while it takes some effort to set up, is great and significantly helps with quick deployments of web applications on-premise and in Azure.