XBOX One Screenshots as Windows 10 Desktop Backgrounds

From the mountain vistas of Far Cry 4 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, to the cityscapes of Grand Theft Auto 5 and Batman: Arkham Knight, many of the current generation console games are gorgeous. The XBOX One lets you capture these stunning scenes as a screenshot or video clip, which you can then share with your mates or completely forget about until something randomly reminds you they exist and you lose hours browsing them all, reminiscing about hilarious bugs or wondering why in the hell you decided to record what you just watched.

When I finally installed Windows 10 on my laptop and saw that OneDrive was integrated into the system, I had a flash of inspiration. I use the same Microsoft account on both my laptop and my XBOX which means they share the same OneDrive (among other things)¹.

I went to Upload on my XBOX and shared one or two screenshots to OneDrive (one of the possible ways to share screenshots and clips). I then checked my laptop and after a few minutes, saw the newly shared images under the `Pictures/Xbox Screenshots` folder of OneDrive. It was only a few steps to get from that to having my screenshots as a desktop background slideshow.

To setup the slideshow, I hit Windows+I to get to Settings, then selected Personalization. Choosing the Background section on the left, I selected Slideshow from the Background dropdown on the right, then I browsed to the screenshots folder under OneDrive and selected it as the source of pictures for the slideshow.

To make sure things looked right with my backgrounds, I also chose the Colors personalization section and checked for Windows to automatically pick an accent color.

Now, whenever I share a screenshot to OneDrive from my XBOX, it automatically gets added to the desktop background slideshow on my laptop and desktop computers. Of course, I still have to remember to share it in the first place, but I am hoping some future system update will make sharing automatic or at least easier from within a game (like a Take Screenshot and Share feature in one go).

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to leave a comment if you find this useful or have a story to share about how you make use of the XBOX sharing features.

Using the same Microsoft account across devices and services really helps make the most of Microsoft's offerings [↩]

C#6: Using Static Types and Extension Methods

This week I thought I would continue from the last couple of posts on the new language features introduced in C#6 and look at the changes to the `using` keyword.

Up until the latest syntax, `using` was overloaded in three different ways¹.

To import types from a specific namespace, reducing the need to fully quality those types when referencing them in subsequent code.
```
using System.Collections;
```

To alias namespaces and types in order to resolve ambiguities when types share a name but different namespaces.

using Drawing = System.Windows.Drawing; // Namespace alias
using RectangleShape = System.Windows.Shapes.Rectangle; // Type alias

To define a scope at the end of which an object will be disposed

using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
    // Stuff using the stream
}

With C#6 comes an additional overload that allows us to import methods from within a specific static class. By specifying the `static` keyword after `using`, we can give the name of a static class containing the members we want to import. Doing this allows us to reference the methods as though they were members of our class.

Using Static

Consider `System.Math`; prior to this updated syntax, using the various methods on the `System.Math` class would require either specifying the fully qualifed type name, `System.Math` or, if `using System` were specified, just the type name, `Math`. Now, by specifying `using static System.Math` we can reference the methods of the `Math` class as though they were members of the class invoking them (without a `System.Math` or `Math` prefix). In this example, `Math.Abs()` is called as just `Abs()`.

using static System.Math;

public class MyClass
{
    public void DoStuff(int value)
    {
        var absoluteValue = Abs(value);
        Console.WriteLine(absoluteValue);
    }
}

As with other additions in C#6, this seems to be aimed at improving developer productivity as it leads to less overall typing when using the methods of a static class. However, the new `using static` syntax also allows for very targeted inclusion of static classes without the rest of their containing namespace, previously only possible with an alias, such as `using Math = System.Math`. This targeting ability, while not really adding anything for regular static methods, makes a significant difference for extension methods.

Extension Methods

As you probably know, extension methods are just fancy static methods, they can even be invoked as would a regular static method. However, extension methods can also be invoekd as though they where member methods of a variable or literal value. For example, both the following examples compile to the same code (assuming we have an enumerable called `list`).

list.Where(x <= 5);
Enumerable.Where(list, x <= 5);

However, before the `using static` syntax, including extension methods was a bit uncontrolled. If you wanted the extension methods in `System.Linq.Enumerable`, you had to include the entire `System.Linq` namespace; there was no way to include only the `Enumerable` static class. In some circumstances, this inability to include just the static class led to annoying type name clashes and occasionally unexpected overload resolution ambiguities or surprises. Now, with `using static` we can specify the exact class of extension methods we want to include and ignore the rest of the containing namespace.

With all that said, there is a notable difference between including regular methods of a static class and extension methods of a static class when importing via `using static <namespace>.<static class>`².

Subtle Difference

When a static class is imported with `using static`, the way a method can be invoked depends on whether it is an extension method or not. For example, imagine we have a static class called `MyStaticClass` and it has a regular³ static method on it called `Print` that takes a `string`. When included via `using static`, `Print` could be used like this:

void Main()
{
    MyStaticClass.Print("this string");
    // or...
    Print("this string");
}

However, if instead `Print` were an extension method on type `string`, including `MyStaticClass` via `using static` would limit `Print` to being used like this:

void Main()
{
    MyStaticClass.Print("this string");
    // or...
    "this string".Print();
}

Note how in both examples , `Print` can be invoked as a traditional static method when the containing type is referenced, as in `MyStaticClass.Print()`, but their invocation varies when `using static` imports the class. In that second scenario, non-extension static methods are invoked as though they are methods on the current type, where as extension methods are invoked only as though they are methods on a variable. For the extension method version of `Print`, the following is not allowed:

Print("this string");

To use this argument-style syntax with an extension method, we must resort to the same syntax we would have used before `using static`, specifying the type name before the method:

MyStaticClass.Print("this string");

Though I feel it is clear and intuitive, this is a subtle difference worth understanding, as it can lead to breaking changes. Consider if you were refactoring the methods of a static class from extension method to regular static method or vice versa, and that class were imported somewhere with `using static`; any invocations that were not prefixed with the static class name would fail to compile.

In Conclusion

Overall, I like the new `using static` syntax; I believe the differences in method invocation from how static class methods are normally invoked makes sense and I hope you do too. Like all the other features of C#, there will be times to use this feature and times to let it go in favour of something clearer and more appropriate. For me, the ability to pluck a specific class and its extension methods from a namespace without importing the rest of that namespace is the most useful aspect of `using static` and probably what I will use most. How about you? Do you see yourself adding `using static` to your coding arsenal, or is it going to languish in your scrapbook of coding evil? Do tell.

The MSDN docs say two different ways, but it was clearly three and is now three and a halfish [↩]
However, unlike the subtle difference I highlighted in my last post, thankfully, the compiler will catch this one [↩]
as in not an extension method [↩]

Tracepoints, Conditional Breakpoints, and Function Breakpoints

We've all been there: we step through our code with breakpoints and it works just fine, but run it without ever hitting a breakpoint and our code explodes in a fiery ball of enigmatic failure. Perhaps the failure only happens after the 1000th call of a method, when a variable is set to a specific value, or the value of a variable changes. These bugs can be hard to investigate without actually modifying the software that has the bug, which then means you are no longer debugging the same software that had the bug and might mean the bug disappears¹.

Thankfully, Visual Studio has our backs on tracking down some of these more obscure bugs. Visual Studio allows us to modify our breakpoints to only break on certain conditions (like the 5th loop iteration, or when a file is open), to output text to the debug window, or to just output text and not actually break into our code. We can even create breakpoints that break on any function that matches a name we provide, just in case you don't even know which code it's actually calling.

Though I discuss the 2015 experience, the features themselves have been around for quite some time. I would not be surprised if this were the first time you had heard about these breakpoint settings, they have always been somewhat hidden away from the primary workflow. Even now, with the updated user experience, they are not obvious unless you go exploring. If you want to see how to use them in your variant of Visual Studio, or get more information on breakpoints in 2015, MSDN has you covered (2003|2005|2008|2010|2012|2013|2015).

Conditions and Actions

Let's begin by taking a look at adding conditions and tracepoints. When you add a breakpoint to a line of code, either by using the F9 keyboard shortcut or left-clicking in the code margin, a little toolbar appears to the upper right of the cursor² . The toolbar has two icons: the first is called Settings…, where all the cool stuff lives; the second is called Disable Breakpoint, which is very useful if you have customized the breakpoint³. If you click the Settings… button, you will see an inline dialog with two checkboxes; Conditions and Actions⁴.

If you check the first box, Conditions, you will be presented with various fields for specifying a condition under which the breakpoint fires. There are three types of condition;

Conditional Expression
Hit Count
Filter

Conditional Expression conditions allow you to specify a condition based on variables within your code. You can break on when a specific condition is met, or when a condition changes (this allows you to break when a variable changes value, for example).

Hit Count conditions allow you to break once after the breakpoint has been hit a specific number of times (such as on the fifth index of an array in a loop), every time after the breakpoint has been hit a specific number of times, or every time the hit count is a multiple of a specific number (like every other hit, or once every five hits).

Filter conditions allow you to specify filters based on process, thread, and machine names, and process and thread identifiers.

You can add multiple conditions to a breakpoint, which all have to match for the breakpoint to fire. When a condition is applied to a breakpoint, the red circle will have a white plus symbol inside it.

If you check the Actions box, you can specify text to be outputted when the breakpoint fires. By default, a checkbox named Continue Execution will be checked because, usually, if specifying output text, you want a tracepoint rather than a breakpoint. However, if you want to break and output text, you can uncheck this additional checkbox.

When a breakpoint is set to continue execution, the red circle changes into a red diamond. If a condition is also applied, the diamond has a white cross in it.

If you use the Oz-code extension for Visual Studio, tracepoints are given some additional support with a quick action to add a tracepoint and a tracepoint viewer that shows you just tracepoints.

Function Breakpoints

So far, we've looked at traditional breakpoints that are set on specific lines of code. Function breakpoints are set against function names. To add a function point, use the Visual Studio menu to go to Debug→New Breakpoint→Function Breakpoint…⁵. Selecting this will show a dialog where you can specify the function name (qualifying it as you require), and the language to which the breakpoint applies. You can also specify conditions and actions as with any other breakpoint.

In Conclusion…

Visual Studio is a complex development environment, which unfortunately leads to some of its cooler features being harder to find. I hope you find this introduction to breakpoint superpowers useful, if you do or if you have more Visual Studio debugging tips, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Today's featured image is "Debugging the Computer" by Jitze Couperus. The image is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Other than being resized, the image has not been modified.

yay, fixed it… [↩]
This also appears if you hover over an existing breakpoint in the margin [↩]
Deleting the breakpoint would also delete any customization, but disabling does not [↩]
This dialog can also be reached by right-clicking the breakpoint and choosing either Conditions… or Actions… or by hitting Alt+F9, C; the only difference here is that one of the two checkboxes will get checked automatically [↩]
You can also add one via the keyboard with Alt+F9, B or the New… dropdown in the Breakpoints tool window [↩]

Five things to love about modern.IE

You might be surprised to learn that the browser testing resources website, modern.IE (provided by Microsoft) is not just about Internet Explorer. Although some of the features are geared solely toward IE testing, some are browser-agnostic and can be very useful when developing websites. Here are a few of the things modern.IE can do for you.

Virtual Machines

Working on websites often means debugging using different browser variants. Unless you are exceedingly lucky, that will include older versions of Internet Explorer. While services like BrowserStack are invaluable for testing, they cost money and are not always responsive enough for productive debugging. Instead, I have found virtual machines (VM) to be much more useful.

Microsoft has been making VM's available for Internet Explorer testing via the website modern.IE for quite some time now. You can download VM's for whatever development platform you have, whether it is OS/X, Windows, or Linux.

Azure RemoteApp

If you want to test your work against the latest Internet Explorer in Windows 10 and you do not want to download a virtual machine, or are working from an unsupported device, Azure RemoteApp is for you.

All you need is a Microsoft Live ID and you can login and test with the latest IE for free.

Browser Screenshots

Just want to check what your site looks like across various browsers and devices? The Browser Screenshots feature of modern.IE will give you screenshots across nine common browsers and devices. Somewhat surprisingly (at least to me), this includes more than just Internet Explorer; at the time of writing, you get:

Internet Explorer 11.0 Desktop on Windows 8.1
Opera 12.16 on Windows 8.1
Android Browser on Samsung Galaxy S3
Android Browser on Nexus 7
Mobile Safari on iPhone 6
Safari 7.0 on OS X Mavericks
Chrome 36.0 on Windows 8.1
Firefox 30.0 on Windows 8.1
Mobile Safari on iPad Air

Not only will it give you the screenshots, but you can share them with others, generate a PDF, and more.

Site Scan

This scan checks for common coding practices that may cause user experience problems. It will also suggest fixes when it can. Not only that, but the source is available on GitHub so that you can run scans independently of modern.IE and the Cloud.

I ran this against my blog and it took just over seven seconds to return the results.

Compatibility Report

This feature will scan a given site for patterns of interactions that are known to cause issues in web browsers. The first time I tried to run this, it did not work. However, a second attempt gave me results.

Surface 2 RT review

First, full disclosure. Late last year, I entered a twitter contest being held by the official Microsoft Surface twitter account, @surface. I had to tweet what I would do if I won a Surface 2 with Surface Music Kit. My answer was somewhat throwaway; a spur of the moment thing:

Surface #RemixProject: Incredible music on the go with the Surface Music Kit. No more forgotten, low quality sound bites on a cell phone.

— Jeff Yates (@jefftunes) October 17, 2013

A few weeks later, I received a DM informing me that I had won "something" and to provide my address within five days. I obliged, expecting to get a t-shirt or some other Surface-related swag; I was incredibly surprised when I received a shipping notification one Tuesday that showed a Surface 2 RT with Surface Music Kit would be arriving that afternoon. That said, there was no requirement on my part to provide a review nor that any such review should be unduly positive. With all that known, please read on.

Surface Music Kit

Keyboard

One of the cool things about the Microsoft Surface devices are their covers. The covers (available in touch and type variants) have an integrated input device and are the primary method of providing an external keyboard to a Surface¹, though one could also use a Bluetooth or USB keyboard. Most of these covers have an embedded QWERTY keyboard and touchpad, much like a small laptop keyboard. However, the Surface Music Kit includes a special keyboard/cover designed for use with the Surface Music Kit application. This cover has three touch sliders (like electronic volume controls), some playback/record controls like one might find in a multimedia playback device, and a grid of 16 pads. Together, these can be used to mix and manipulate samples in the Surface Music Kit application².

Surface Music Kit cover; try typing your password on this

Since the device I won came with the music kit cover, my initial problems stemmed from having to use the onscreen keyboard. As cool as the Surface Music Kit is, I can't type my email password with volume sliders and drum pads. Even though the onscreen keyboard is responsive and has a nice array of layout options (the thumb-friendly layout that splits the keyboard for easy thumb typing is great), I found it a little frustrating to use. Whichever layout I tried, the keyboard occupied too much of the screen, didn't provide the kind of tactile feedback I rely on when typing, and just wasn't fast enough when I wanted to unlock my device. These problems aren't unique to the Surface; I've yet to find any device where the onscreen keyboard doesn't suffer from these problems (though your mileage may vary). Of course, this problem is easily resolved: I received the Type Cover 2 as a Christmas gift from my wife.

Apps

By now, the number of apps in the Windows Store, especially when compared with equivalent Android or Apple stores, has been discussed to death. The Windows Store is getting more apps every day but the choices are limited by comparison with its competitors. That said, all the apps I really wanted such as Netflix, LastPass, and Mouse Without Borders were available and more often than not, other apps had an online equivalent (for example, I can watch Amazon Prime via the website, though it's not all roses when it comes to websites so read on).

The frustrating part of apps running on the Surface RT comes from the desktop. Surface RT devices run a version of Windows built for ARM processors instead of the usual x86/x64 processors that other Windows-based devices use. This means that unless a desktop application has been specifically written to run on this special ARM-based version of Windows (such as Office 2013, which Microsoft provides with the Surface 2 RT) it won't. The outcome of this is that even little apps that you find useful in every day stuff – especially as a developer such as git, node, Sublime, etc. – will not work. I didn't expect to find this as frustrating as I have and it has only been exacerbated with the unnecessary neglect of Internet Explorer by many websites.

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 11 is fantastic but also the only option on the Surface 2 RT given that other browsers are not available for the ARM-based platform. In the past, Internet Explorer has had a much-deserved stigma attached to it due to lack of standards compliance, quirky behavior, and poor performance. This has made it difficult for websites to support older versions of IE. However, the Internet Explorer of old is dead and in more recent releases, this stigma is just undeserved dead weight that needs to be cast aside. Unfortunately, this message has either not reached many developers or landed on deaf ears, leading to heavy-handed checks for IE on many sites that block IE users from getting a fully-featured site or interacting with a site at all, even though the site would work if that block were lifted.

As a developer, this has been doubly frustrating. I can't install useful tools like Git or Sublime, nor can I use many online development environments as they don't work or completely block their use from any version of Internet Explorer. This limited browsing experience isn't limited to development tools though; I have found that quite a few sites do not properly support IE. Perhaps one day, Microsoft will convince people that IE should be embraced once more and that its legacy should be left in the past, but until then, users of Surface 2 RT may face a substandard browsing experience.

That said, when sites do work with IE11, they work really well. A standout website for developers has to be Codio. I set this up against my GitHub account and have used it successfully to work on code samples for blog entries. Hopefully more sites begin to support IE like this.

Battery Life and Performance

This is where I should pull up some metrics of how the battery life is for various every day scenarios, but I'm not good at capturing metrics, so I'll tell you my experience. The battery life seems good when using the Surface for general stuff like editing documents, browsing the Internet, etc. The main complaint I have is that I'd like it to have an opt-in auto shutdown if left on sleep for more than a day. While sleep uses very little battery, there are times when my Surface has been sleeping for days on end, resulting in a drained battery. This has led to me shutting down the Surface 2 RT whenever I stop using it, which means I lose out on the "always on"-ness. Although the Surface 2 RT cold boots pretty quickly, the readiness after sleep is significantly faster. That said, I have no substantial complaints; my Surface 2 RT is definitely the most battery-efficient Windows-device I have had so far³.

Other bits and bobs

Front camera, start button and rear camera

The two cameras on the Surface 2 RT: one front-facing and one rear-facing, stereo speakers and built-in microphone are all excellent and it was a pleasure using all these to give a Skype tour of our new bathroom to my parents back in England. The built-in kickstand with two viewing angle positions is also fantastic. In addition, the Surface 2 RT has a full-size USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, mini-HDMI port, and microSD slot.

Service

It is not often that one gets the opportunity to review the quality of device service and repair at the same time as reviewing the device. However, it has been some time since I first received my Surface 2 RT and in that time, I had the misfortune of dropping it on the concrete floor of our basement⁴. While the Surface 2 RT took the fall with grace, it fumbled the landing, which shattered the screen rendering touch operation impossible.

I followed the instructions on the Surface Online Service Center site to register my device and submit a service request. A broken screen is not covered by the standard warranty, so I paid a $200 fee and got myself a return to print out. I then detached my keyboard and removed the microSD card I had inserted⁵, and took my broken device to the local FedEx shipment center along with my return information. The packing and shipping of the device was included without any additional charge.

I do not recall just how long the service took, but within a week or two, a refurbished Surface 2 RT arrived on my doorstep. I eagerly unpacked it and turned it on. It sat in a reboot cycle.

I was not happy.

I plugged in the power and tried again. Still stuck in a reboot cycle.

Eventually, I found instructions to do a full factory reset, after which, the device booted but clearly had problems. It was not until after I had downloaded and installed just over one gigabyte of updates that it started to behave properly. It is because of this that I have mixed feelings about the service experience.

On the one hand, it was easy to register my device, submit a service request, and get it shipped. On the other hand, I had to use quite a bit of technical know-how to get the replacement device to work. I feel that if Microsoft wants to win over the non-tech market with these devices, they are going to need to do a lot better. I know for sure that many of my friends and relatives would not have known what to do next if faced with the reboot cycle, probably leading to endless tech support calls to Microsoft, or worse, me.

Conclusion

I have been using my Surface on and off over the last few months. Trying to see where it fits in my life between the eight core desktop PC at home, my core i7 ultrabook at work, and my phone, I was unsure that a tablet/laptop hybrid would work out and to begin with, it did not. However, once I got the QWERTY type cover and discovered which scenarios were useful to me, the Surface 2 RT has been a great addition to my regular arsenal of gadgets⁶.

The service experience was disappointing. While initially wonderfully easy, it became terribly frustrating once a replacement device was received, especially since I had paid $200 for the privilege. Microsoft needs to pay more attention to detail in this process if it is to become a first class experience.

Overall, I like the Surface 2 RT and will continue to use it (in fact, I have been writing most of this blog using it). However, I have to ask myself if I would have bought one and if I'm honest, I would not. Not because it isn't a great device but because the price tag, like most slates/tablets⁷, seems high for what you get⁸. Of course, that also means I wouldn't buy a competitor's device either so read into that what you will.

both have a track pad, but the type cover has more traditional, plastic backlit keys [↩]
Unfortunately, there is no SDK for using the Surface Music Kit cover in your own apps, which seems like an oversight to me [↩]
I currently use a Windows-based Core i7 ultrabook, but have had a Nokia Windows Phone and a variety of Dell laptops [↩]
It was during a jam session and I was trying to balance it so I could see the lyrics while I played guitar – the Surface was eager to prove that I was stretching myself beyond operating parameters [↩]
Specific instructions stated that these were not guaranteed to be returned if I left them with the Surface [↩]
desktop, laptop, Android phone, xbox 360, xbox one [↩]
delete as applicable [↩]
clearly, I would've paid $200 for it, considering I was happy to pay that for the repairs [↩]