If you have registered for the Windows insiders program and you are unable to receive the Windows 10 preview bits, this could be due to few issues related to configuration settings on your desktop. If you have configured your system properly but still the bits not shown in your available updates, you might have to change some settings manually.

 

In this post, I will show you the trick which will enable you to receive the bits. Do this changes with precautions. Continue reading more to learn about it.

Bing Rewards program can help you to earn credits for searching on Bing or trying new features from Bing or other Microsoft products and services, which can be redeemable for a variety of gifts and other rewards. If you are in India, now you can register for it (which is free) and start rewarding yourself by just searching on Bing.com.

 

If you are new to this, checkout the blog posts and register for this free program. Start searching on Bing, start earning some rewards just for your searches.

On 8th March 2016, Microsoft aired a new cumulative update (OS build: 10586.164) for #Windows 10 version 1511. Now they have published the ISO/Offline installer for the said build. This means, you will now be able to download the ISO of the security update once and install it in multiple devices.

 

Continue reading more to find out the link to download the ISO file of the March 2016 security updates for Window 10. It’s around 846 MB only.

Along with Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview build 14283, Microsoft also released a new update for Outlook Mail and Calendar app, having some new improvements. Among those, one cool new enhancement is the ability to turn ON/OFF the message preview in the message pane.

 

Though it is by default set to ON, but in case you want to hide it or make it visible in future, this small post will help you to configure the same, step-by-step. Continue reading.

Gabe Aul, the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Engineering Systems team, announced the availability of Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview build: 14283 for the fast ring Windows Insiders. Though this build is now limited to few devices, but will later expand to other devices.

 

This build focuses some new improvements and fixes. As it is an insider build, it also has some known issues. Continue reading the post to know what has been changed, along with the issues currently present.

Microsoft has released a new cumulative update (OS build: 10586.164) for Windows 10 version 1511 on 8th March 2016. If you are not part of Windows Insiders program and in the public release ring, you will get this update through the Windows 10 update service.

 

This updates includes improvements and security fixes only. No new features were introduced. This post will give you a basic overview of the key changes.

If you are building a custom installer of your own, you might want to compress the files inside a ZIP and extract them on need basis. You can easily do this by using some 3rd party libraries, among which some are free and some are paid versions. Why to use additional libraries if the .NET framework provides you the set of APIs?

 

You might be aware of this, but if you are unaware of it, let me tell you that, it was present since .NET 2.0. Let’s explore it in today’s quick blog tips & tricks. Continue reading and share the link in your network.

If you are using Outlook 2016 (version: 16.0.6568.2025) and configured the email client to download mails using POP3, you might face some issues which will delete all the emails from server inbox after outlook downloads those and/or create duplicate items of the downloaded messages.

 

Microsoft has shared an workaround to resolve this issue. If you are using that specific version of Outlook 2016, continue reading to know more details of the same and fix the issue temporarily while Microsoft is working on a permanent fix.

The giant company released the RC build (Release Candidate) of Visual Studio 2015 Update 2, focusing mainly on stability and user's feedback received via the Update 1 RTM channel. Microsoft marked this as "Go Live", though it is still under prerelease and has few known issues.

 

If you want to explore the new changes, read more to find the download links as well as the link towards release notes and a list of bug fixes, known issues.

If you are working with XML serialization in .NET/C#, you might have already encountered this and might have analyzed a lot why your data is not serializing though you have written proper code. The reason/solution might be simple but in case you are not aware of such common mistakes, you will definitely break your head finding the root cause.

 

In this quick post, we will learn about the common mistakes that may happen while declaring the properties of data class that you are going to serialize. Continue reading and let me know, if you find more points to be added here.

In most cases, we use XML files to serialize/de-serialize data from/to the app. To do this, we expose properties of known types and pass them to the serializer for the automatic serialization process. Sometimes, we don’t need to serialize all the properties and manually need to mark them from the serialization process.

 

In this small blog post, we are going to see the way, by which you can prevent a property from the XML serialization process. Continue reading to know more.

Not every system has the right folder permission set to all user account and hence, sometime we need special access to specific folder during installation or while executing the application. It is not possible to manually set it up by browsing the folder and hence an automation is mandatory.

 

If you are looking for a way to set the right permission to specific folder(s) using C# code, this post will help you. Continue reading to learn more about it and grab the code.

Whenever you create a new code file in Visual Studio, it adds a default set of using namespaces automatically to faster the development process in common name resolution. Not all of them are mandatory to use and can be remove at later point of time or before code check-in.

 

Visual Studio 2015 provides us an easy way to organize the using namespaces within the active code file, project and/or solution. You will really love this new feature. Continue reading to learn more about it.

Apart from the other cool new features, the giant company also added a feature in Microsoft Visual Studio named “Layout Management”. This is a nice feature for people working on multiple devices with Visual Studio 2015. Using this you will be able to save and sync your IDE layout across devices.

 

Today in this post, we are going to discuss this and will learn how to save and sync the Window Layout. Continue reading and let us know, how this can benefit you.

For some people, it is sometimes irritating when the "Output" window automatically opens up on the screen when building a project or solution in Visual Studio. For some people, it's the reverse case and they want to check the entire log while the build is running or the console application is running in debug mode.

 

In Visual Studio, you can control this behavior and ask the IDE whether to open it into view or not. It’s not specific to Visual Studio 2015 and is available since VS 2013. Let's see how to enable/disable it.

It happens many times (during the coding or code review process) when we need a bigger space in our favorite Visual Studio IDE to check/read the code completely. Closing all the other docked windows/panels, toolbars and then adding them one by one is really very difficult and time-consuming.

 

Visual Studio 2015 provides us an easy way to switch between a full screen and normal mode. This way, you don’t have to do extra work to create a bigger space. Continue reading to learn more on this topic.

If you are working in Visual Studio 2015 IDE, you might have noticed the “Quick Launch” search bar, which allows you to quickly navigate to common menus and settings. This is a handy tool that you will need while searching for some options or features within the popular IDE.

 

Today this post will cover how to enable/disable this “Quick Launch” bar. Continue reading to know these quick tips & tricks on Visual Studio 2015. Pass it on to your friends/colleagues.

Registry is the heart of Windows Operating System and all/most of the apps and games associates various values/data into the registry, which can be accessed at different point of time. Playing with Windows registry is very dangerous and hence general people should avoid or take special care while working with it.

 

In case you are a developer, you want to read/write/delete entries to/fro Windows Registry. This post will cover details and code snippets to delete an entire key tree from it. Continue reading to learn how to do it.

Sometime we need to find out details of running process which is external to your current process, might be a third party one. If you are currently looking for some code to find out details of a process, this post will definitely help you. Here we will learn, how to get the process description using C#.

 

Continue reading to learn about it. Also, sample code has been shared for you to understand it better. If you have specific query, drop a line in the comment section.

Microsoft now stepped one step forward to push Windows 10 to a major set of devices who are still using Windows 7 or Windows 8.x by marking the OS as “Recommended Update”. It’s still your decision whether to opt-in or opt-out. If you opt-in, you will of course get it as free.

 

It is still a right time to upgrade to Windows 10, but not mandatory. To know more about it and the upgrade process, continue reading this post.

I hope you read my previous post on “Building a Toast Notification with text for apps targeting Universal Windows Platform”. There we learned how to create a very basic toast notification. Continuing the series of posts, today we will learn how to add buttons within the notification.

 

Let’s begin with building toast notification with text and buttons. Stay tuned to learn creating more complex notifications in next blog posts of this series.

Microsoft started rolling out a configuration update to Windows 10 Mobile users who are in fast ring. This might be a step towards rolling out the Redstone update to the Windows 10 Mobile users. If you are already in the fast ring, you might have already got the notifications.

 

Windows Insiders chief, Gabriel Aul, in a tweet announced the availability of this update which will prepare your device for the next big update and improve all over the upgrade experience.

When downloading from a remote location, many time we need to know whether the file downloaded properly or not. There are many techniques to know about it but among them, one of the approach is to check the hash value of the file. The Cryptography APIs of .NET can help you to calculate the same.

 

Today in this post, we will learn how to calculate the hash value of file stored in local resource. Continue reading to learn more about the steps. Code has been shared.

If you are a developer and building apps or games for Windows 10, targetting Universal Windows Platform (aka. UWP), you might want to show toast notifications to the user of your app/game. You might also want to provide some additional content like textbox, button etc. to get specific inputs.

 

As part of this tutorial series, we are going to learn how to show custom toast notifications. Today let’s begin with building simple toast notification with text. Stay tuned to learn complex notifications in next blog posts.

You might have already hear about Clippy. Yea, that’s the Office Assistant that we had in those days. In earlier office versions it helped us with many quick tips to complete the job easily, having some nice animations. If you are fond of it and want to use it in your development environment, there is a cool ReSharper extension for Visual Studio.

 

Recently I came across it and thought to share with you more details about the extension as well as some snaps and the process to install it. The extension is also available as opensource project on GitHub. Continue reading to know more.

If you are a developer and developing code using Visual Studio IDE, you might want to learn the shortcut keys that our facorite IDE exposes to use. Mads Kristensen developed a Visual Studio extension and exported all the keyboard shortcuts of Visual Studio 2012, 2013 and 2015.

 

In this post, I am not only bookmarking the tool and link to the site, but also sharing the same with you. I hope, it will be useful for you in day to day development life.

Windows 10 SDK provides an easy to implement project template by which you can quickly create an app for Universal Windows Platform which you can use to run a hosted web app. You don’t have to create the whole app, if the site is already running. Just change few values in manifest file and your app will be running.

 

In this post, we will learn how to create a hosted web app targeting Windows 10 (without writing any code). Share your feedback and/or ask your queries, if any.

Microsoft recently released Windows 10 Mobile build 10.0.10586.63 to Windows Insiders in the fast ring. There’s not such noticable changes in this build, but I have noticed one cool feature that allows you to select and copy a portion of text from SMS messages easily by just tapping.

 

In this post, I am going to share you details about this with proper screenshot for easy understanding. I hope that, you will like it. Let us know, what you discover more on this build.

Most of the developers in the Microsoft platform uses C# as their programming language. C# is now matured to version 6 and has come with new features in its different versions. As a programmer, we should know all these features. This will not only help you in cracking interviews but also help you decide whether you should upgrade your project to latest.

If you are building apps/game for Universal Windows Platform, you might want to retrieve the device information where the app/game is currently running. You might use this information to log details about any exception and/or to do specific action based on device details.

 

In this post, we will learn how to fetch the device information in UWP apps. Continue to read about the APIs exposed by Microsoft SDK. Don’t forget to read my other posts too and share your feedback.

How many times we are in such a condition when our battery is going to die and we have to do some important calls or something else? If we poll for it, the count will be high. If you are a developer and building apps targeting Universal Windows Platform (aka. UWP), you might want to integrate the battery APIs already exposed.

 

This post will cover about the API today and we will learn how more about the API with proper demonstration. Continue to read more on this topic and don’t forget to check other posts on the same topic.

If you are a developer building apps for Universal Windows Platform, you might have noticed that, at the time of debugging there are some strings of digit getting display just under the title bar of the application. This is called as Frame Rate Counter, which displays frame rate and per frame CPU usage.

 

Today in this small blog post, we will learn how to enable/disable the Frame Rate Counter in your Universal Windows apps. Countinue reading to know more about it.

If you are a developer and building apps for Universal Windows apps, you might like to customize your app title bar to match your app theme. You can also change various colors of the buttons. Windows 10 SDK provides you to customize the title bar of Universal apps.

 

Today in this blog post, we will learn how to apply custom colors in apps built for Universal Windows Platform along with different other APIs exposed for it.

Let’s come to basics of programming today. It’s a common interview question asked during an interview and many time candidates become confused with the difference between using directive and using statement/block. Today we will cover this topic and discuss various difference among those.

 

To learn or brush up the basic concepts, continue reading more. I hope, this will clarify all your doubts. If any feedback, do share below in the comments section.

Many time we need to programmatically retrieve the size of a file before downloading it from a web location or a network path. This is require to calculate the progress and/or the estimated time to download and display it to the user. For a local file it is easy, but to retrieve this information from a remote location, the implementation is little different.

 

Today in this small blog post, we will learn how to retrieve it dynamically using C# code. Continue reading to know about it. Code snippet has been shared in the post.

Everyone cares about his/her system's security and cares more when its related to virus. Here comes one new enhancement in security perspective in Windows 10 November updates and that's about Windows Defender. Its now more integrated with Windows Operating system.

We all know Windows defender is already present from Windows 7 on wards. Lets see what Windows November update has added more to Windows Defender.

You might be aware that, Microsoft planned to downgrade all OneDrive personal accounts from 15GB free space to 5GB and that will hit all of your account soon. Now they came with an offer which will allow you to keep your base storage quota and camera roll bonus, even after the changes rolls out.

If you want to keep your 15GB free OneDrive space, just follow the steps mentioned in this post and your account will not be affected when the amount of free storage changes.

If you are running Microsoft Office 2010 and a regular user to it’s Outlook product, you might have recently observed that, many buttons, menus changed their state to disabled mode. If you are using any add-ins, those became disabled. This is because your Outlook switched into Safe Mode.

 

This is quite obvious and actual reason behind this is a little bit different. In this post, we will discuss more about the issue and a quick fix to resolve it. Continue reading.

This could be one of the issue you might face while using service call or HTTP Post to server. Though this issue rarely happens but in case you encounter such error in your production, possibility is your client application is facing issue connecting to the server due to proxy server.

 

If you come across such issue, this quick blog post will help you to resolve it. You don’t need to do much, but just a configuration settings will help you.

Serialization and deserialization of .NET objects made easy using various serializer classes that it provides. But serialization of Dictionary object is not that much easy. For this, you have to create a special Dictionary class which is able to serialize itself. The serialization technique might be different in different business cases.

 

Today, let’s discuss how to implement the same with a sample. Code is shared in the post, which you can use in your application. Continue reading and let me know if you have any other approaches.

“Linked Inbox” feature is now available again in Outlook Mail for Windows 10 Mobile. After a new build pushed recently, Microsoft pulled the same and replaced with an older version of the Outlook Mail due to some issues. The issue was causing the app to crash and close.

 

Good news is that, the app is again available in store with linked inbox feature, which will enable you to merge multiple mail boxes into one inbox. Continue reading to know about it.

Microsoft has announced availability of Visual Studio 2015 Update 1. There are plenty of new changes in this final build apart from CTP release and RC release. Apart from our favorite IDE, the final release of Team Foundation Server Update 1 is also available. Download and checkout the new features.

 

In this post, sharing the download link as well as features list and release notes shared by the giant company. Go thru them while the download is in progress.

You might have been heard about the product JIRA. It is a bug tracking product, developed by Atlassian. It can be used as general "issue tracker", “new feature request tracker” and more, rather than solely a bug tracker. It’s more customizable than BugZilla and queries also can be modifiable.

 

Today in this small blog post, we will learn how to create a query to list down all the issues “Resolved by” a particular user or you. Continue reading to know more about it.

Microsoft brought a new set of enhancements along with Windows 10 November Update. Among them, one is lock screen enhancements which will allow you to set background image of lock screen from the Windows Spotlight and set/remove the login screen background image.

 

Today in this post, we are going to discuss on the same and will see how to set those various options in Windows 10 November update (aka. Threshold 2).

Microsoft restores the availability of Windows 10 November Update, which was pulled just after release. The giant company also explained why it was pulled. If you have the RTM build 10240, check out Windows Update. You might have got the notification to install version 1511 by that time.

 

If you have already installed the November Update (version 1511, build 10586), there’s a patch for you. To know more about this, continue reading the post.

If you are building add-ins for Microsoft Word, at the time of add-in installation you might want to check whether user has installed MS Word on his system or not. Based on that, you might want to show a message to the user or take proper action as per your business need.

 

In this small blog post, we will learn what needs to be done using C# to find out whether the said Microsoft Office product is installed or not. Continue reading to know about this coding tricks.

On various scenarios, especially when you are building and shipping Add-Ins for outlook, at the time of add-in installation you might want to check whether user has installed outlook on his system or not. Based on that, you might want to show a message to the user.

 

In this small blog post, we will learn what needs to be done using C# to find out whether outlook is installed or not. Continue reading to know about this coding tricks.

The giant company brought a set of new features in Windows 10 November update. It’s the first big update after Windows 10 gone RTM. Along with other features and enhancements, it brought Start Screen/Menu enhancements. This includes more tiles and occasionally showing suggestions.

 

Today in this small blog post, we will discuss about these enhancements along with it’s settings to enable/disable the same. Continue reading to know more about it.