I am rapidly becoming quite addicted to the virtues of using virtual PCs. It’s great having lots of virtual images with which to test and develop. Need to test IE 7 but you’re running IE 8? Make an IE 7 testing image!
However I just bumped into a problem with virtual image: out of the box, [...]
The Connected Show: Git LIT with Silverlight and WPF 4
Peter Laudati is really figuring this podcast hosting thing out. In this show he leads a superb Silverlight/WPF discussion with Pete Brown. One of my measures of a good podcast is how few times I have to yell out loud at my iPod imploring the interviewer to ask the obvious follow-up question (Carl Franklin usually gets yelled at the most!). Peter had done his homework and asked rational, insightful follow-up questions. This was a very good interview all around. There are also great show notes available.
High Performance JavaScript by Nicholas C. Zakas
This book was was featured as O'Reilly's ebook of the day for only $9.99 the other day. How could I go wrong? Ten bucks and just a few minutes later I had the mobi version on my Kindle (the mobi format is soo much better than PDF--I can't wait for Manning to get around to offering the mobi format for its ebooks.)
If you write JavaScript for any serious purpose, you gotta have this book. There are detailed chapters on JS file loading, data access, DOM scripting, among lots of other valuable topics. There is one of the best detailed (very) descriptions of how regular expressions work that I've ever seen. A close look at performance tools is also provided. High Performance JavaScript debunks myths, explains mysterious issues, and clears up lots of confusion. This book needs to be within arm's reach of any Web developer. Although I only gave $10 for this book, it's worth its weight in gold and even at its suggested retail price (who ever pays that!) it's a great value.