Ease the pain on testing using modern.ie!

As web developers we need tools to test our web applications across all browsers. If you asked the majority of developers which browser causes more issues on debugging, they would say Internet Explorer (No offense Microsoft). But most companies, specifically the majority of big corporations, use Internet Explorer because Microsoft is the only one that offers the most robust enterprise deployment management tools of any browser vendor. Microsoft touted research conducted by Forrester that said that 96 percent of businesses standardize on a single browser because it saves them money.

As web developers, we know older versions of Internet Explorer are still lingering out there, so what do we do now? Aside from installing at least three browsers from different vendors on our PC to test cross browser compatibility, we also still need to test on different versions of IE. Finally, in early 2013, Microsoft launched “modern.ie” to help developers spend more time on innovating versus more time on testing.

The Modern.ie website has a collection of free tools and resources for developers that can be downloaded from the website. The most useful tools that I personally like are the Test VMs for different IE versions.

All the Test Virtual Machines for Internet Explorer are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. These VM’s are a real time saver. You can download all the RAR files that are appropriate for your testing needs and all of them can be loaded in one PC.



You will be surprised, that you can even download a test VM for Internet explorer 6, running in XP!



Another useful free tool that I use from modern.ie is the “Site Scan”. As the name suggest, it scans your site for common coding problems. Just type in the URL on the given input field, and click on “Scan”. You can also download the open source version in GitHub.



This tool will help detect compatibility problems on IE that prevent users from getting a better experience in their web apps. After entering the desired URL for site scan, it will produce results indicating a check mark that means pass or “!” for suggested enhancements.



So now it's been a year since the website modern.ie was launched and I would agree that it probably did saved a million of development hours for web developers out there for testing web sites using the free tools. Less time testing ! more time coding!

We hope you have found this week’s edition of "To The Point" by Eleanor Boado to be helpful and informative. Look out for our next week instalment as we continue to explore unique topics from business to the latest technology.

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Point Alliance Team

MVC Bundling

The amount of style sheets and JavaScript files included with a website these days is staggering. As you develop solutions, it is becoming important to be aware of the amount of different style sheets and JavaScript files you are forcing the user to download on each request. A simple way of limiting the amount of these requests, while keeping your code separated in a logical way, is to implement bundling in your MVC Project.

If you have 12 different CSS files and 8 different JavaScript files in your solution, it’s easy to combine these into two different requests. In your App_Start folder, create a new class called BundleConfig. Within the class, create a public static void method called RegisterBundles() which will accept a BundleCollection object as a parameter. You then will add a ScriptBundle collection, and a StyleBundle collection to the BundleCollection.

See example below.



Now, in your Application_Start() method within the Global.asax file, you call your bundling provider. A good idea is to enable optimizations only when building in release mode. When optimizations are enabled, the bundle will automatically combine each ScriptBundle and StyleBundle into one request, as well as minify each result.



The last step is to modify your _layout.cshtml file to reference the bundles. In the BundleConfig file that we created, we created a name for each of the ScriptBundle and StyleBundles. You reference these in your layout using the following format.



That’s it! You have now optimized your website, limiting the amount of requests done per page per user while allowing separation of your style sheets and scripts during development.

We hope you have found this week’s edition of "To The Point" by Kevin Doig to be helpful and informative. Look out for our next week instalment as we continue to explore unique topics from business to the latest technology.

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Point Alliance Team

Preventing Data Leakage with SharePoint and Microsoft IRM

For many organizations, SharePoint has become the de facto successor to the Windows File System for managing documents. It offers many features beyond the Windows File System, including the capacity to manage documents through the entire lifecycle from draft, to approval, publication, archival, and finally, disposal. Additional features include access control and version control.

These features make SharePoint a formidable document management platform. However, in today’s security conscious world, companies ask for additional features to prevent data leakage. Reasons include preventing users, even authorized editors, from being able to download documents to thumb drives, or to email documents, to name a few.

This is where Microsoft Information Rights Management technology comes in. Microsoft IRM can be integrated into SharePoint to super-charge its security horsepower. Documents (for example, Word, Excel, or PDF) added to SharePoint are automatically encrypted using state-of-the-art encryption technology. While documents must be downloaded to the user’s computer in order to view the document (in a Word client, for example), it is decrypted on the fly in a process where the document communicates with the Rights Management Server, and provides only the rights, the user is permitted to have, for example, to read, but not print or copy/paste. These rights travel with the document. As such, IRM protected documents downloaded to a thumb drive, for example, are unreadable and useless, when opened outside the organization.

We hope you have found this week’s edition of "To The Point" by Suthan Sivapatham to be helpful and informative. Look out for our next week instalment as we continue to explore unique topics from business to the latest technology.

We want to hear your point! If you have any ideas, suggestions or any questions about our weekly blog, please contact us at: info@pointalliance.com.

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Point Alliance Team

Teamwork, what is it good for?

From sending a satellite into space to creating the next mobile app, every extreme goal or dream requires great teams and great teamwork. Without teams that have great chemistry, a sense of responsibility and accountability, no project will be a success.

So how do great teams operate? They have a code of honor!

What is a code of honor? For you gamers out there, I’m not referring to the third person shooter game. A team's code of honor is a set of rules and guidelines we put together as a team to make sure the right expectation is set and there are no surprises.

Why do we need a code of honor?

1. Develop a sense of accountability,
2. Feeling of support,
3. Powerful statement of who you are and what you stand for,
4. It defines you and your goals

When pressure is high, emotions tend to go up and intelligence drops. Having a code of honor will help the team work through this difficult time and guide them to success.

Let’s think of our troops for example. When the troops are under fire, the only thing they have on their mind is not to get shot. If it wasn’t for the code of honor, every man would be for themselves. Instead they follow a certain protocol to survive. The same goes for a project and the team. The code of honor should have line items pertaining to situations when you have a lot on your plate and can’t finish a task, work delegation, attending meetings, training, rolls and responsibilities, etc. This will help build a sense of accountability within the team. The team can refer to these guidelines and know that other team members are there to support them. They will see that the team is trying to achieve one goal; one mission.

It is important to understand that with keeping the team’s mission as our primary focus, each team member’s needs second, and our own needs third; each team member’s needs will be met. Great team members always ask what they can do for their team rather than what their team could do for them.

Just like a sports team, when you are in a project team you need to be wearing the team’s name in front of your shirt and your own name in the back. Your mission is to win and you are all working together to get to this goal. You can have a team of champions or you can have a championship team. There is a difference between the two.

I strongly recommend reading "Team code of honor" by Blair Singer. It’s one book that all great teams need to read and understand.

We hope you have found this week’s edition of "To The Point" by Sam Vaghefi to be helpful and informative. Look out for our next week instalment as we continue to explore unique topics from business to the latest technology.

We want to hear your point! If you have any ideas, suggestions or any questions about our weekly blog, please contact us at: info@pointalliance.com.

Warm regards,

Point Alliance Team