ASP.NET and the JS 2k16 toolchain (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Bower)

Here is a blog post detailing my journey of discovery over 1 weekend into the new (at least to ASP.NET developers) JS tools that are being adopted by Visual Studio and are making their way into ASP.NET developers lives.

Note, this article contains changes of opinion, a word count that some viewers may find offencive, and beer. You have been warned.

Typescript 0.9.5, Chutzpah and Visual Studio update woes

Introduction

This post is kind of a story. The story of how a simple (seemingly) update to Chutzpah version 3.0 and by extension Typescript 0.9.5 made an otherwise normal development day into a war against a legion of Typescript errors, most of which weren't even in our code.

If you're here, there's a chance you've come up against a similar issue. Hopefully this post can talk you through to a happy solution.

Output to screen readers in Windows 8 and other .NET apps

Introduction

A long time ago, in a post far, far away, I went into using Microsoft SAPI as a way of reporting information back to a user using the in-built SAPI engine and briefly explained how this could be used to help people with a visual impairment as well as some other uses. If you are interested in focussing on accessibility in your desktop or Windows 8 apps and want another powerful tool in your arsenal, this post will tell you how to communicate directly with people's screen readers (if present).