Brandon Satrom

When using JavaScript to build controls in a Windows Store app, you have access to HTML elements, WinRT controls and WinJS controls. See how you can mix and match these or even build your own.

Learn how the JavaScript framework for building Windows Store apps and the underlying Windows Runtime allow you to build apps with client-side state, offline storage, controls, templates, binding and much more.

Following on last month’s discussion of media queries, Brandon Satrom looks at the other two pillars of responsive Web design—fluid grids and flexible images. Media Queries are the engines that drive responsive, adaptive sites, but they are only effective when the designs of those sites are also responsive and adaptive. This month, I'll introduce you to some ideas around the other two pillars of "Responsive Web Design." I'll start with an overview of some up-and-coming CSS Layout modules, and then talk about some techniques for making non-textual elements like images and embedded video adaptive as well.

Support for CSS3 Media Queries across all major desktop and mobile browsers means you can use context clues to deliver tailored experiences for a wide range of devices, as Brandon Satrom explains. This article provides an overview of the Media Queries CSS3 module, discusses its syntax and use, and shows a simple example that leverages Media Queries to build tablet- and smartphone-friendly views for an online photo gallery. The goal is to provide a solid foundation for creating responsive Web sites and applications using only CSS and some tailored styles.

The new HTML5 canvas element gives you the power to create and manipulate images and animations on the fly. And it’s not just for complex projects like games. As Brandon Satrom demonstrates, you can use it to do some pretty cool data visualization as well.

Much of what the world is calling HTML5 is a set of technologies geared toward making real application development possible on the Web—and geolocation is a great example. Brandon Satrom introduces the Geolocation spec and shows you how to get started using it in your applications.

A number of new input types in HTML5 make creating Web forms easier than ever, and the best thing about these new types is that they’ll work at some level in all browsers. Brandon Satrom shows you how to start using HTML5 forms in your applications today.

As much as the development community and latest browsers are pushing the HTML5 hype up to a fever pitch, the vast majority of people on the web aren’t using those brand new browsers and versions. But that doesn’t mean you have to put off using HTML5 till the next decade. In this column, Brandon Satrom provides some practical strategies for how you can adopt HTML5 technologies today.

In this article — the first of a series that aims to show you how you can use HTML5 to build apps for the Web — Brandon Satrom introduces HTML5, describes Microsoft’s approach to the new standard and helps you think about how to adopt HTML5 technologies.

The Web Pages page-centric programming model supported by WebMatrix is a great way to get Web apps up and running. If you later decide that embracing ASP.NET MVC would give you more flexibility, you're covered. We’ll explain why you might choose to migrate and show you how to do it.

With the .NET Framework 4.0, you can now boost performance by replacing the default ASP.NET output cache with your own implementation. We show you how to do this with the MongoDB "NoSQL" database in a simple ASP.NET MVC app and then we swap out the custom provider to leverage features of Windows Azure AppFabric.

Behavior-Driven Development techniques let you test and code in the language of your business scenario. We’ll explain how the BDD cycle wraps traditional Test-Driven Development techniques and walk you through an example BDD development cycle for an ASP.NET application.