Learn AngularJS for free to build web and mobile apps at scale

AngluarJS is a modern JavaScript library to build enterprise web and mobile applications at scale. AngularJS is widely used JS library by all frond end and web developers worldwide in different programming languages to build scalable web and mobile applications.

AngularJS is a library backed by Google. Microsoft started to support AngularJS with great IntelliSense in VS developer tools including the following templates:

a) VS Web project templates including web forms & mvc templates.
b) VS Hybrid cross platform mobile app using Apache Cordova

Today you can start building AngularJS applications in Visual Studio 2013 and 2015.

To learn AngularJS basics before jumping into code. Microsoft offers a free course in Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA):
http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/introduction-to-angularjs

This course is a great start to understand the basics of AngularJS.

Also, there is a free course on AngularJS website, here is some links to learn AngularJS:
https://docs.angularjs.org/tutorial
http://campus.codeschool.com/courses/shaping-up-with-angular-js/intro


** If you live in DC metro area,  I will be covering basics of AngularJS along with Building Cross platform mobile apps using Cordova, link to the event (7/15):
http://www.meetup.com/NoVaJS/events/223495406/


Hope this helps.

What is npm ? How to get started with npm with Visual Studio 2015

This blog post is for following audience:
a) Microsoft stack and .NET developers.
b) New developers using Apache Cordova.
c) An engineer who has not been using any open source tools in Visual Studio.

This blog post will answer the following questions:
1) What is npm ?
2) Why would i use it ?
3) How to use it ?

npm is a package manager for: JavaScript, Node, Cordova, JQuery, mobile, angular, react and other famous JavaScript libraries and frameworks.

You will use npm when you want to install any js library or framework in your Visual Studio project. For example: if you want to install node.js, Cordova js libraries or any other js library such as: ionic or react!

To get npm js package manager, you need first to install Node.Js which contains npm package manager tool.

https://nodejs.org/

Once you download and install the installer, you would have npm package manager tool in your system!

How to use it?
Open your command line after you installed node.js installer and type the following to install ionic framework:

npm install -g cordova ionic

Hope this helps you how to get started using npm package manager!

-- ME

What is TypeScript? Why would i strongly recommend to use it in your next project

As all of us know, Building large applications in JavaScript is hard! It gets messy and hard to manage and test.

The Problem
Because of the nature of JavaScript, it is not "favorable & easy practice" for non JavaScript developers to write classes, modules, OOP code in an easy, clean and straight forward way.

This was the reason of the rising & popularity of JS libraries and frameworks such as: jQuery, Angular, Knockout and much more amazing js libraries.

Recently, I have been thinking to build a Hyprid mobile application using Cordova, and this open source platform helps developers to build cross platform native apps using standard web technologies in JS and HTML.

I was thinking what is the right and best approach to start structuring my project in an organized pattern such as MVC, so i have bunch of views and controllers and my code is clean to build robust solution!

The Solution
You have different ways to implement this, One is to use Angular JS library that helps you strcture your code in a MVC patterns and design your views that are linked to models and js files that have all your controllers implementations.

Another approach, is to use TypeScript which gives your the ability to write clean client scripting and it generates JS code for your and it works in all browsers!

If you are using any OOP programming language such as: C# or Java. It will so easy for you to add TypeScript (*.ts) file in your project and start writing classes, interfaces and all OOP code with IntelliSense and type casting capabilities within VS IDE.

So, you write C# Like code in TypeScript file, it generates JS code and it works in al browsers.

Here is a play ground site to test it some code and see generated code:
http://www.typescriptlang.org/Playground

The same site has tons of materials to learn, samples and get started:
http://www.typescriptlang.org/Tutorial


TypeScript is available and supported if you use VS 2013 (update 2) or VS 2015!

Hope this helps!