A few years ago, the concept of the Internet of Things was seen as some weird concept from a sci-fi flick. But things changed. Though IoT is still in its infancy, it garnered a lot of attention lately and is now seen as a revolutionary technology that will transform and disrupt various industries. There’s great interest in building IoT devices and IoT software development today.

As a matter of fact, many organizations are competing to make various components available in the market in order to promote the already trending development of IoT solutions. However, some of those platforms ran out of steam.

Among those platforms that came complemented IoT is .NET – one of the most popular microsoft technologies. Corporate behemoths like Amazon, Accenture, Dell etc. has been leveraging .NET for years due to its versatility and impressive performance. Coincidentally, these two traits are what IoT app development demands today.

That said, let’s explore the merits of using .NET for IoT projects.
 

Windows 10 IoT Core compatibility

 
Windows 10 IoT Core is a free, optimized version of the popular Windows 10 OS from Microsoft, designed to work with low-power devices such as Dragonboard 410c, Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 etc. The OS features an impressive toolkit and a plethora of integration options.

But the icing on the cake is that .NET is fully compatible with Windows 10 IoT Core. Combining both these contributions from Microsoft enables developers to build great IoT apps with a decent UX.
 

The rich toolset of ASP.NET Core

 
A popular, widely-used open-source web framework, ASP.NET Core allows developers to create visually appealing web applications including IoT apps. Combined with the Windows 10 IoT Core, one can also use ASP.NET Core to build services that can run on the background of IoT devices.

The highlight however is ASP.NET Core’s toolset. The framework supports a number of popular programming languages like Visual Basic, C# etc. and facilitates faster deployment, excellent performance, and easier cloud integration. With ASP.NET Core, the devs are also free to choose the cloud platform for their applications – be it AWS, Google Cloud IoT, or Microsoft Azure. It’s no wonder why the ASP.NET development services industry is still one of the fastest growing tech industries in the world.
 

Ready-made solutions

 
.NET encourages developers to use its ready-made solutions to save time. But this also has another advantage. When using .NET’s ready-made solutions, the developers are less likely to encounter a coding issue that hasn’t been rectified or resolved by the community.

If the devs use ready-made .NET solutions for IoT and comes across some obstacle, chances are someone already encountered and resolved it and was generous enough to publish the code on GitHub. The reusable code generated by the .NET community can speed up IoT app development considerably.
 

Supportive community

 
The best thing developers can have is a supportive community backing a technology they are extensively working with. .NET has such a community. Thousands of experienced developers in the community can help thousands of amateur developers trying to figure out IoT development. They normally hang out on GitHub and StackOverflow publishing unique pre-written code pieces and relieving amateur developers of their coding headaches.
 

Conclusion

 
.NET has been around for a while and consistently retains its position in the market countering advancements from potential replacements. In fact, it’s only become more popular with its rich toolset, open source persona, and strong community support. All of these traits combined makes IoT app development a fun activity with .NET.

It’s blatantly obvious that slow loading times and awkward interactions in a web application deter users forcing them to seek a better alternative. For years, developers relied on powerful microsoft technologies to develop high performance, interactive web applications. But not all developers always manage to build websites and web apps with the best performance.

That said, this blog will serve as a guide to many web development beginners on improving the performance of a website.

Before attempting to improve the performance of a website, it’s wise to collect a baseline of the web application’s performance. This is to see how the changes to the site are impacting its performance. Sometimes, the changes may do more harm than good reducing the performance. But performance tuning is still recommended as a holistic exercise that will impart deep insights on developers.

The following tips are recommended by our team with years of experience in delivering top-notch ASP.NET development services. The effectiveness of some tips may vary from website to website, and also depends on the nature and scale of the website. So, do take this with a grain of salt.
 

Reduce HTTP requests

 
Did you know that a browser pays a tax to open connection to a server?

It does. And the tax is what you call a TCP/IP connection overhead. When there is high latency, it takes quite a long time for the browser to establish new connections. In addition, browsers may also come with a limit on the number of requests they will make to one server at a time. The significance of these connection requests makes it evident that reducing the number of HTTP requests is a great performance optimization tactic.
 

CSS content should be loaded first

 
It’s better to load the CSS content of the website first. To understand why, it’s important to understand the nature of browsers – what it is that gives them great speed when downloading web pages.

When downloading pages, browsers attempt to render the application as soon as it has content. This is pretty much a wild guess by the browser as it won’t know what content on the page would go against the guesses it made while downloading the page. If the browser discovers that it has made a wrong guess on the rendering of  the page, it will start over again discarding all the work it has done till then. A stylesheet can trigger such a scenario which is why it’d better to avoid having styles that modifies elements that have already been rendered by the browser. This is why loading CSS files first is important.
 

Image compression

 
A website without images would be bland and without substance. Experienced web developers often use inline-SVG or CSS tricks to make vector images for web pages. This is because such images tend to be smaller than raster images. Not all developers can make this happen. They can compress the image instead or in their words ‘shrink the image’. Developers can make use of a number of services or plugins for JavaScript build tool to perform image shrinking.
 

Conclusion

 
Unlike software development, developing web applications require developers to take a lot of other factors into account including web browsers. Tuning the performance of web apps is much diverse than that of software. The end goal, however, is to satisfy users. Web performance optimization promises a better experience for end-users and better opportunities for the brand itself owing to the impressed app users.

For years, Microsoft has been heavily contributing towards the evolution of software development to what it is today; an ever-expanding industry that molds new technologies into innovative digital solutions. The tech giant recently made news after leveling up their ERP and CRM game by launching the Dynamics 365 Mobile.
 

Dynamics 365 App

 
The Dynamics 365 Mobile packs powerful analytics capabilities and would come in real handy for enterprises to simplify, streamline, and automate most of their business processes. With the app, users will have on-the-go access to various CRM functionalities that enable them to handle their activities quickly and efficiently.

The app’s features allow them to track and respond to queries, and also interact with customers from anywhere at any time. A good mobile experience is what customers prefer in this age, as people access the internet more via mobile devices today than desktops. Improved business productivity and competitive advantages are added benefits of Dynamics 365 mobile.
 

Features that would make a difference

• Personalized Action Hub: One great feature of Dynamics 365 app is that it allows users to create a personalized mobile workspace. Upon launch, the app’s Action Hub would display features that enable users to perform their routine tasks faster. The action hub features include one to key in new records, receive notifications through smart cards, pin items on home screen for easy access etc.
• Great UI: The new UI allows switching between multiple business modules seamlessly. Users generally found it quite challenging to switch between modules when using CRMs. Dynamics 365 app’s interface design makes it seamless and consistent across various devices, while also integrating with other Microsoft products including Office 365 and SharePoint.
• AI-driven Relationship Assistant: AI can do wonders for modern businesses, and Microsoft knows that which is why Dynamics 365 mobile comes with an AI-driven Relationship Assistant that allows users to track and log all user activities and customer interactions for data analysis, action card recommendations, and of course for informed decision-making.
• Offline Data Synchronization: Connectivity issues may cause problems when it comes to syncing data. But with Dynamics 365 app, this is no big deal. The app allows creating and storing notes even when offline, and syncs the data in the background when the connection is back online.
• Visual Overhaul: Not necessarily a feature, but the overall visual appeal of the Dynamics 365 app grants a new feel altogether. The app shows every important information in a single screen with a vibrant layout. The dashboard is much more organized and compact now, and users won’t have to navigate much to access the data they need. It’s also easier to track progress in the forms.

Conclusion

 
Modern day CRM systems are mandatorily required to help businesses stay connected to their customers while on the move. Dynamics 365 mobile does just that, allowing customers to reach out to businesses right from their mobile devices at any time, and vice versa. For the business, the app improves employee efficiency with an AI-powered virtual relationship assistant, configurable dashboards, and offline syncing capabilities. Seems like the mobile CRM is on its way to being one of the most sought out Microsoft technology solutions in the market.

It is not that difficult to find comparisons between ASP.NET and PHP in the internet. As a matter of fact, it’s all over the internet with two factions defending both these technologies and attempting to put down the other.  The real question should be where these technologies are best suited rather than which one comes out on top. Both ASP.NET development services and PHP development services enjoy great demand in the market today. Let’s explore the core features of both languages.
 

Microsoft ASP.NET

 
The development languages for the open source ASP.NET includes VB.NET, C#, C#.NET, and F#, and uses tools like Visual Studio and Mono to develop high performance websites. The server OS is of course Microsoft Windows, and it shares a syntax similar to VB. Despite being open source, ASP.NET isn’t technically free as there are quite a few associated costs.
 

PHP

 
A full open source scripting language, PHP leverages tools like PhpStorm, NetBeans, and various other editors. It is compatible with servers running on Linux, mac, or Windows, and comes with a syntax similar to C and C++ languages. PHP is free to use, and a large community backing it with technical support.
 

Choosing between ASP.NET and PHP

 
To reach a conclusion, it’s better to compare the most important aspects of both ASP.NET and PHP.

Scalability

Considering the fact that the scalability of a web application depends on the expertise of the programmers, the coding standards, the development framework, and programming practices and guidelines, both PHP and ASP.NET are fully capable of delivering highly scalable web applications.

Performance

There is a wrong notion that the performance and speed of a website or web app depends on the platform. PHP sites and ASP.NET sites rival each other when it comes to performance as both are capable of running routine processes and delivering desired results quickly.

As for the speed, it also depends on various other factors like database server, end-user’s computer hardware power and bandwidth. For the application to possess considerable speed, the code should be written well and the architecture should be implemented the right way.

Support

PHP is slightly ahead when it comes to support, owing to the larger pool of developers and an ever-growing community. ASP.NET is not far behind however as Microsoft invests a lot in supporting most of its technologies for website and software development, and the community is as helpful as the ASP.NET community. For developers with technical queries, the PHP community would still respond faster owing to its sheer volume of dedicated developers.

Cost

Despite the open source license, ASP.NET is still a Microsoft product and there are obviously going to be associated costs. PHP, however, is completely free. ASP.NET requires Windows OS running on the machine, which was considered to be more expensive than using the open source Linux OS which PHP supports. However, Microsoft’s recently made Windows hosting much less costly – now almost equivalent to the expense of Linux hosting.

But when it comes to professional web development, ASP.NET requires Visual Studio. Though a free version called VS Express is available for beginners, the IDE won’t cut it for professional development of sophisticated web applications. PHP, on the other hand, supports a variety of great IDEs – both free and paid.

Suitability

While PHP is ideal for smaller business websites, billing websites, and startups, ASP.NET is what companies rely on for enterprise-level websites and ERP apps. ASP.NET can also be used to build enterprise-class CRM systems, while PHP can be used for less complex CRMs.
 

Conclusion

 
All these points make choosing between the two quite challenging. But ultimately, a developing a good product cost-effectively depends on the development team’s strengths. If your developers are experts in the most popular Microsoft Technology, ASP.NET development would certainly be cost effective. Its rival, PHP, is not a slouch either provided the suitability of the application language is analyzed beforehand.

Microsoft recently announced that they are working on the next version of their signature IDE, Visual Studio which could bring major changes to software development. Reportedly, the tech giant is still in the early planning phase for the next Visual Studio tool suite release, named Visual Studio 2019. The earliest signs of Visual Studio was spotted at GitHub, which is turn about to be acquired by Microsoft for $7.5 billion in company stock.

John Montgomery, director of program management for Visual Studio at Microsoft, after revealing that Visual Studio 2019 is in the works in his blog post, also added that we will be seeing many indicators of the company laying the foundation for the latest Visual Studio suite in Github, where their Developer Tools team spent a lot of time in.
 

Sneak peek

 
Visual Studio 2017 was launched in March 2017, which gave rise to a speculation that Visual Studio 2019 would be released in early 2019. However, the company did not reveal anything on the release, but promised to say more in the coming months.

John Montgomery’s blog post still provided a couple of goals for Microsoft’s new Visual Studio release. The company intends to release Visual Studio 2019 faster, with a goal of making the IDE suite more reliable and effective for teams. Visual Studio 2019 is also expected to be easier to use with a short learning curve.

The director also added that we can expect better refactorings and navigation, in addition to a more capable debugger and faster solutions loads and builds. The company would also be exploring the collaboration aspect of the next version, leveraging connected capabilities like Live Share to facilitate real-time collaboration. Cloud scenarios are also expected to be more seamless.

Another intriguing reveal was Microsoft’s willingness to improve team productivity by having Visual Studio utilize Azure to deliver AI-driven assistance to the IDE. Seemingly, other Microsoft technology solutions will also be getting updates to leverage AI, considering the fact that the company seems to be willing to invest in hot trends.
 

Where they are headed

 
Because they specifically mentioned Visual Studio’s Live Share feature, we can expect the company to improve the feature. Live Share was announced in November last year, and quickly became popular for its co-authoring capabilities i.e. enabling developers to work together on the same code, much similar to the edit capabilities of a few Office 365 applications. Essentially, the company wants their new Visual Studio to facilitate real-time collaboration effectively.

Aside from its goals for the IDE suite, Microsoft expansion plans also seems promising since their announcement of the GitHub acquisition earlier this month. It was announced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who also added that GitHub will remain an open platform and developers would still be able to extend it. Developers would be able to use the languages, operating systems, and tools of their choice for their projects, and deploy the code on any cloud and any device.

We will be seeing Microsoft’s IntelliCode, an AI-powered assistance for cloud scenarios in Visual Studio 2019. When introduced during Microsoft’s Build 2018 Developers Conference in May, IntelliCode was applauded. The AI-driven program learns over time and streamlines formatting while suggesting APIs and recommendations to avoid errors. The company is leaning on Azure to train IntelliCode and get it functioning in Visual Studio 2019.

The company also revealed that it took about a whopping 2000 high quality GitHub repositories to train IntelliCode’s machine learning model and ensure that it sticks to best practices.
 

Conclusion

 
Although the company didn’t give out any info on the release of the new Visual Studio version, they certainly made it clear that the path they are taking would benefit every Application Management services company leveraging their technologies. Montgomery also teased an announcement in the next few months. Developers who participated in the Visual Studio 2017 Preview would likely be the first to get information on the release of the first beta version of Visual Studio 2019.