Programming news: Mono 2.8.2, Joomla 1.6, WP7 tips

Language/library updates

PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17

PHP 5.3.5 and 5.2.17 have been released. Both releases resolve an error with parsing strings into doubles.

Mono 2.8.2

Mono 2.8.2 is out, and it has important security fixes for ASP.NET.

Tools and products

Big batch of Microsoft technologies

Microsoft released ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS Express, SQL Server Compact Edition 4.0, Web Farm Framework, Orchard (a new open source CMS), and WebMatrix. Scott Guthrie has the details.

MuleSoft 3.1

Version 3.1 of the MuleSoft enterprise service bus is out. The new features focus on cloud and SaaS technologies.

BitzerMobile launches

BitzerMobile has just opened its doors for business. The company has an intriguing offering that allows you to create cross-platform mobile applications that act as front ends to your enterprise applications, using a superset of HTML. It's a very neat idea, and it holds a lot of promise.

NephoScale introduces new IaaS platform

NephoScale has officially launched. The company is a provider of IaaS services to allow development teams to deploy applications to the cloud without needing system administrators to be involved, reducing the time to deploy and the costs.

Joomla 1.6

Joomla 1.6 is now out, and it has a slew of updates to make it easier to developer for and administer.

Jaspersoft 4 released

Jaspersoft released version 4 of its flagship BI product. This version completely overhauls the UI to be much richer and easier to work with, and is now a full-fledged Web application.

Editorial and commentary

Funny pages

Geeks are Sexy pointed me to a hilarious graph. It's about graphic design, but it works equally well for software development. xkcd has an all-too-true chart called "How to write good code."

Appcelerator grows

Appcelerator is continuing to grow and add new employees. This is good news for fans of the company's open source, cross platform mobile development tool, Titanium.

Tips and tricks

BlackBerry tablet OS SDK

RIM has a video out showing the SDK for its new tablet OS.

Bin deploy SQL Server CE 4 and Razor

A MSDN article shows how to do a "bin deployment" of SQL Server CE 4.0 and the razor view engine. A bin deployment puts all of the needed items in the bin directory of the deployed application, requiring no installation of software.

Windows Phone 7 theme resources

Michael Snow has a quick tip on how to access the Windows Phone 7 system colors so you can make your app play nicely with the system themes.

Windows Phone 7 cheat sheet

There's a good cheat sheet for Windows Phone 7 developers on MSDN that lists the most important things to keep in mind when designing WP7 apps.

Tying "await" to anything

Stephen Toub posted an article that shows how to make a provider to the new "await" keyword in the Async CTP. "await" is an exciting new feature, and this article also shows some if its power.

Events

Data modeling best practices Webinar

Embarcadero is offering a free Webinar on January 26 that will focus on seven common data modeling mistakes and how to avoid making them.

J.Ja

Disclosure of Justin's industry affiliations: Justin James has a contract with Spiceworks to write product buying guides; he has a contract with OpenAmplify, which is owned by Hapax, to write a series of blogs, tutorials, and articles; and he has a contract with OutSystems to write articles, sample code, etc.