Development by Davis: “Review of the new Digital Public Library of America” plus 3 more

Review of the new Digital Public Library of America
Deploying IntelliSense code snippets for Visual Studio 2012 with VSIX packages
Top 5 misconceptions about open source in government programs
Transitioning to Google Wallet Merchant Center

Review of the new Digital Public Library of America

Posted: 21 May 2013 02:00 AM PDT

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) opened last month.

(The official launch had been planned to occur at the Boston Public Library but the temporary closing of the library due to the Boston Marathon tragedy prompted that event to be postponed until the fall.)

The aim of DPLA is to provide a large-scale, national public digital library of America's archives, libraries, museums, and cultural institutions in one portal. Leaders from 42 of America's institutions have contributed to the project, from ARTstor to the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Virginia Library. The idea of a national digital library harks to the early 1990s and the desire to provide a portal to make cultural and scientific information available to all. It was conceived as a non-commercial alternative to Google's proposed digital library or an American equivalent to the European Union's Europeana digital library.

Deploying IntelliSense code snippets for Visual Studio 2012 with VSIX packages

Posted: 21 May 2013 12:40 AM PDT

Back in Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft introduced reusable code snippets that can be picked up in the code editor with IntelliSense support. Something like this:

Code Snippets are XML files with .snippet extension based on a specific schema. Rather than typing manually your XML files, a good idea is using a snippet editor. There are a lot of snippet editors available for free, I personally use the Snippet Designer editor which is integrated in the IDE. With an editor like this, you simply write or copy-paste code and provide the appropriate metadata information. The editor is responsible for producing well-formed XML files that can be correctly recognized by Visual Studio.

I will not cover creating code snippets here, I will instead show how to package snippets for easy deployment.

Once you have your snippets, you might want to use them in the code editor or to share them with other developers. Code snippets are stored inside language-specific folders, such as C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VB\Snippets\1033. Also, Visual Studio provides the My Code Snippets folders where users can save snippets without being administrators.

In the previous editions of Visual Studio, you could package a number of snippet files (plus add-ins, macros, item/project templates, controls) inside a .Vsi installer. Then, the Visual Studio Content Installer tool helped users install contents into the appropriate location.

Even though .Vsi packages are still supported, Visual Studio 2012's extensibility relies on the VSIX file format, which provides a better customer experience. For this reason, sharing reusable code snippets should be done with a VSIX package.

Assuming you have a number of snippets ready and that you already installed the Visual Studio 2012 SDK, the first thing you need to do is creating a new, empty VSIX project:

In Solution Explorer, add a new folder to the project where you will store snippets. The name of the folder is very important, because it will be also the name of the group of snippets inside the code editor. Add all the .snippet files you want to deploy to other developers:

As you can see in the figure, it is very important to remember to set the Build Action, Copy to Output Directory, and Include in VSIX properties as shown, otherwise snippets will not be included in the package.

The next step is adding a package definition file, with .pkgdef extension. To add one, you can simply use the text file template. The package definition file will tell the installer where to install code snippets. I am using Visual Basic code snippets, so I'm going to use the following syntax:

[$RootKey$\Languages\CodeExpansions\Basic\Paths]  "DelSoleVBSnippets"="$PackageFolder$"

What the code does, is finding the registry key that contains the collection of directories for VB code snippets on the target machine. To this collection, a new path is added with the custom key specified on the second line. Supported language identifiers are Basic, CSharp, SQL, HTML, XML, C++, and JavaScript. You can check out the MSDN documentation for additional strings in the pkgdef file.

Don't forget to set the file properties as you already did for snippets. The next step is making a manual edit to the extension manifest. In Solution Explorer, right click the source.extension.vsixmanifest file and choose to open it with the XML internal editor, finally add the following node before the closing file tag:

  <Assets>      <Asset Type="Microsoft.VisualStudio.VsPackage" Path="Snippets\DelSoleVBSnippets.pkgdef" />    </Assets>

Close the XML editor and re-open the manifest with its designer. Set the extension's metadata (publisher, license, images) but make sure you do not change the asset added manually. You are done.

You can now debug your extension in the experimental instance of Visual Studio by simply pressing F5. When ready, switch to the Release configuration and build the solution. You will find the redistributable .Vsix package under Bin\Release as usual. This package can be easily published to the Visual Studio Gallery for easy deployment through the Extension Manager in Visual Studio.

Note: if you plan to install your snippets to a non-default location, you might need to create a snippet index file. Check out this page in the MSDN documentation.

Enjoy your code snippets!

Alessandro

Top 5 misconceptions about open source in government programs

Posted: 21 May 2013 12:00 AM PDT

On March 15, 2013, ComputerWeekly.com, the "leading provider of news, analysis, opinion, information and services for the UK IT community" published an article by Bryan Glick entitled: Government mandates 'preference' for open source. The article focuses on the release of the UK's new Government Service Design Manual, which, from April 2013, will provide governing standards for the online services developed by the UK's government for public consumption.

Transitioning to Google Wallet Merchant Center

Posted: 20 May 2013 05:19 PM PDT

Posted by Mark Thomas, Product Manager, Google Wallet

A key focus of Google Wallet is to simplify commerce for merchants and shoppers; for over a year now, consumers on Google Play have been using Wallet to make their purchases, to the benefit of the entire ecosystem. Helping merchants benefit from the growing consumer adoption of mobile commerce is where we believe we can make the most impact. And that's why today we're focusing our efforts on the new Google Wallet Merchant Center and retiring Google Checkout over the next six months.

Most Google Play apps developers will seamlessly transition to the Wallet Merchant Center, which provides new reporting and analytics features and much more. A small number of Google Play developers, however, will see some changes:

Developers using Google Checkout on their website to sell physical goods or services will no longer be able to use Checkout after November 20, 2013. We have provided some discounted migration options to help with this change. If you are a U.S. merchant selling physical goods and services who does have payment processing, you can apply for Google Wallet Instant Buy, which offers a fast buying experience to Google Wallet shoppers.
Developers who use the Google Checkout for the Notifications and/or Order Reports API(s) will need to migrate to replacement APIs, made available through Google Play, before November 20, 2013. Watch for announcements on the new APIs soon.

If you sell apps or in-app products in Google Play, you'll soon have access to the new Wallet Merchant Center. Watch for an email notifying you that that it's now available to you. We expect to transition all merchants to the Wallet Merchant Center over the next several weeks.

We invite you to join us for our live merchant webinar on May 23, 2013 at 10AM PDT to learn more and ask any outstanding questions. As always, feel free to contact us at any time during this transition. Finally, be sure to check out the exciting updates launched last week at Google I/O (including Instant Buy and Wallet Objects) and stay tuned for more great developer features coming soon!