As a provider of .NET components, Syncfusion is in the exciting, but challenging, position of always being on the cutting edge. Whenever platforms or tools ship out of Microsoft, which seems to be about every other week these days, we have to educate ourselves quickly.

A lot of information on application development is available, but that information is becoming harder to digest. More and more books are being published, even on topics that are relatively new; one aspect that continues to frustrate us is the inability to find technology books that offer a concise overview. When trying to gather information, we are usually faced with two options: read several 500+ page books, or scour the Web for relevant blog posts and articles. As with everyone who has a job to do and customers to serve, we find this quite aggravating.

This frustration translated into a deep desire to produce a series of concise technical books that would target developers working on the Microsoft platform. We firmly believe that, given the background knowledge such developers have, most topics can be translated into books that are around 100 pages. This is exactly what we resolved to accomplish with the Succinctly series.

The best authors, the best content

Each author was carefully chosen from a pool of talented experts who shared our vision. You will find books that contain original content guaranteed to get you up and running in about the time it takes to drink a few cups of coffee.

Forever free

Syncfusion will produce books on several topics. They will always be free. Any updates we publish will also be free. We can hear you say, "What is the catch?" There is no catch here. Syncfusion has a vested interest in this effort. As a component vendor, our claim is that we offer deeper and broader frameworks than anyone else in the market. Developer education greatly helps us sell against competing vendors who promise to enable AJAX support with one click or turn the moon to blue cheese!

The first book in this series, jQuery Succinctly, will be on the popular jQuery library. It is currently available for download.

As always, please let us know what you think. If you have any topics of interest, thoughts, or feedback, please feel free to send them to us at succinctly@syncfusion.com. We sincerely hope you enjoy the series. Thank you for reading.

By Stacia Misner, guest blogger

Microsoft SQL Azure Reporting is a component of the Windows Azure Platform that brings SQL Server Reporting Services capabilities to the cloud. In this webinar, I will explain what cloud-based reporting is all about and the types of scenarios for which it makes sense. For example, although cloud-based reporting can be an attractive option for small-to-mid-sized businesses, there are also some compelling reasons why larger organizations might consider moving some reporting functions to the cloud.

SQL Azure Reporting is still in community preview mode, which means it is still evolving as a product, but that also means it is available for you to explore and evaluate at no additional charge. However, you will need a SQL Azure account, which provides you with cloud-based storage for your databases with or without a Windows Azure account. (With Windows Azure, you can host your own custom applications or run virtual machines in the cloud.) I will show you how easy it is to set up your first SQL Azure database and add SQL Azure Reporting. Currently, Microsoft is offering a three-month trial which includes a 1 GB edition of a SQL Azure database, so you can try it for yourself after watching.

SQL Azure Reporting does not match SQL Server Reporting Services feature for feature, but it does provide a solid platform that is perfect for certain reporting scenarios. During the webinar, I’ll show you exactly what SQL Azure Reporting can do for you, and I’ll point out its limitations. That way, you can make an informed decision about using it to deliver business intelligence from the cloud.

By Daniel Jebaraj

Last week was an exciting one for .NET developers. The beta version of Visual Studio 11 and the Windows 8 consumer preview were especially interesting because they were quite unlike other updates from previous years—this is a first glimpse at developing in an OS that seamlessly operates on both desktops and tablets. Although it is still very early, Microsoft is poised to shake up the mobile market.

On top of this wave of excitement, we released a vector image library of more than 600 icons that adheres to the Metro standards outlined by Microsoft. We’re calling it Syncfusion Metro Studio 1. In it you’ll find icons for virtually any purpose, whether you’re working on an app for banking, an e-mail client, or a simple UI. It also ships with an editor that allows you to take any of the included images, resize them, change their color, customize them as need, and immediately use them in your applications. We’ve worked very hard on Metro Studio, and we want to give it to you for free to get you ready for the clean, uncluttered future of desktop, Web, and mobile applications.

Windows 8 integrates the desktop and tablet environments, further closing the gap between them. This is a bold move for Microsoft, essentially making only one device necessary for consumers—they can have a device with a keyboard and mouse, and then simply pick up the device and use it as a tablet. This is a new environment that we’ve never seen before. If the hardware can take on this challenge, you can be sure the development community will be there to take advantage of this paradigm shift.

Check out the vlog below to learn more about Metro Studio and my first impressions of Windows 8.

I recently came across an interesting article on ZDNet. The author, Jason Perlow, suggests that Microsoft should be putting out a $199 tablet PC that uses the Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) platform. He goes on to speculate that the reason Microsoft is not putting out such a system is politics and their internal commitment to Windows 8 as the tablet platform of choice.

I could not disagree more with the premise of this article. The reason Microsoft cannot put out a half-baked tablet, just for the sake of getting into the tablet market, is that they are Microsoft—enterprise customers hold Microsoft to a higher standard.

Amazon or Barnes and Noble (B&N) can put out a tablet offering that is far from perfect. Nobody has lofty expectations of a tablet from Amazon or B&N. Most realize that such devices are meant to serve primarily as a front-end for offerings from Amazon and B&N, and that is what the market expects them to be. I had a chance to play with Amazon’s Kindle Fire. It is a nice device, but by no means is it close to what I refer to as a Microsoft level of completeness. For instance, consider this: The native Kindle Fire e-mail client does not, to my knowledge, natively support Microsoft Exchange. Would Microsoft be able to get away with a similar offering?

Microsoft sets the standard? Not so fast, you say. Look at Apple. They have put out a perfect tablet PC, the iPad. It has a gorgeous e-mail client and an overall excellent user experience. Is it not the gold standard? Doesn’t Apple manage to meet and exceed all expectations? Well, not quite. Consider this: The iPad, while being an extraordinarily capable device, does not have an Exchange client that performs to Microsoft standards. It took iOS version 5 to be able to perform the following tasks with its native e-mail client.

• Formatting text using bold, italic, or underlined fonts.
• Creating indents in the text of your message.
• Flagging important messages.

Can you imagine a Microsoft e-mail client not being able to do any of the above even in version 1.0?

It may not be said very often, but Microsoft is the gold standard when it comes to business applications. Microsoft is very much aware of what is expected from them and they are putting in every effort to deliver a stellar tablet experience that meets and exceeds the needs of their discerning user base. This, I believe, is why they are taking their time. Windows 8 will definitely be worth the wait.

So, as we look at the shiny tablets that will ship this Christmas, keep in mind the best is yet to come!