MSDN Magazine November Issue Preview

October was our busiest month. Between our regular October issue and the super-sized Windows 8 special edition that went out mid-month, we more than doubled our usual editorial output for the month. And we did so while a lot of our Microsoft contributors were absolutely slammed working on the release of that Windows 8 thingy you might have heard about.

I wrote in my Editor’s Note column (All Eyes on Windows 8) that MSDN Magazine would continue to aggressively cover Windows 8, the Windows Runtime and Windows Store app development. So it should come as little surprise that our November issue wll lead off with Tim Kulp’s dive into securing Windows Store apps built using JavaScript. Kulp says that devs can now transform JavaScript security from a facade to a multifaceted defense system that protects both your data and your users. Definitely worth a look if you plan to dive into WinJS.

Also in the November issue is part 2 of our feature “Managing Memory in Windows Store Apps.” Part 1 in the Windows 8 special edition offers an introduction to memory concepts and issues, then moves onto some tips for managing memory for Windows Store apps written in JavaScript. Part 2 in November will dive into C#, Visual Basic and C++ memory optimization.

Two more features round out our Windows 8 coverage for the issue. Veteran MSDN Magazine authors Chris Sells and Brandon Satrom team up on a feature with the rather self-explanatory title, “Building and Using Controls in Windows Store Apps with JavaScript.” The authors show how you can mix and match HTML elements, WinRT controls and WinJS controls, as well as build controls of your own. Finally, Microsoft’s Nazia Zaman offers some great design and UX guidance, with her feature “Designing Windows Store News Apps.”

We’re committed to addressing Windows 8 and the Windows Runtime, but that doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned our charge to serve the broad Microsoft community. Far from it. In the November issue you will find F. Avery Bishop’s exploration of Windows Phone 8, as he shows you how to use voice commands to speech enable apps for the new Windows Phone platform. Finally, Tim Star, Tim Omta and Mario Contreras worked together on their feature, “Implementing Build Automation with Team Foundation Service Preview.”

Our columnists come out swinging on a diverse range of development technologies and issues. Julie Lerman’s Data Points column looks at the slew of improvements to the Entity Framework Designer in Visual Studio 2012. You can find more coverage of Microsoft’s updated flagship IDE in our September issue. And our newest columnists—Bruno Terkaly and Ricardo Villalobos—are back with the next installment of Windows Azure Insider to show how Windows Azure Mobile Services automates the creation of a backend for your device apps. You can read their inaugural column, from the Windows 8 special edition, here.

Back this month once again is Kenny Kerr, who writes the Windows with C++ column. This month he shows how developers can build lightweight and scalable concurrency-safe programs, thanks, as he writes, to “some excellent synchronization primitives in Windows and the state-of-the-art C++ compiler.” Kerr took a break from MSDN Magazine for a stretch earlier this year, and we sorely missed his contributions.

Ted Neward has been hard at work exploring the Cassandra NoSQL database in his Working Programmer column the past couple issues, and this month he looks at the powerful clustering capabilities of Cassandra. Charles Petzold, meanwhile, is just coming off an extended series of his own (a four-parter on using the Windows Phone motion sensors to build a night sky app). This month Petzold shows how to use the Bing Maps SOAP Service to rotate a map on Windows Phone so the map always orients north on the display to north in the real world.

As ever, we close on David Platt’s Don’t Get Me Started column. And no surprise, the man is a bit concerned about the impending UX calamity he foresees, thanks to the powerful new tools and resources delivered by Windows 8 and the Windows Runtime. Remember HTML marquees? Let’s not do that again.

What do you want to see covered in the pages of MSDN Magazine? Leave a comment here or email me at mmeditor@microsoft.com.