developer tools

With 460 full-time employees worldwide, 18,000 customers, and plans for an initial public offering on the horizon, Atlassian's revenue has grown from $17 million in 2007 to more than $100 million five years later.

Possibly more interesting is that the company doesn't have salespeople, was founded in Australia instead of Silicon Valley, and largely saw this enormous growth selling behind-the-firewall tools to development teams.

Let me put this out there upfront: developer tools are boring. And yet, you talk to Atlassian execs and its customers, and it seems to be a big lovefest for the company and … Read more

The security protocol that enables Siri to communicate with Apple's servers and return information via speech recognition has been cracked by developer Applidium.

What does that mean?

In a nutshell, according to Applidium, "anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri!" The technology that Siri uses to communicate with Apple servers is not HTTP, as many developers may suspect. In fact, Apple uses TCP to connect with Siri.

After some more digging, Applidium had discovered the server name and address that Siri uses. After finding the server, a valid certificate was needed. By … Read more

For years, an extension called Firebug has been a powerful tool that kept Web programmers loyal to Firefox.

But now, as browser makers add their own tools geared to attract those who build Web sites and applications, the lead Firebug programmer has taken a job with Chrome, CNET has learned.

"Monday, I start work on next-gen Web dev tools at Google on the Chrome browser team. Consequently I will no longer be contributing routinely to the development and maintenance of Firebug for Firefox," John J. Barton told members of a Firebug mailing list yesterday.

The change reflects the … Read more

The latest member of Microsoft's Visual Studio family is one step closer to a final release.

Microsoft today is releasing the second beta of LightSwitch, a software tool aimed at developers who want to build business applications that run as both native and Web applications.

The new version, which becomes available MSDN subscribers today, and everyone else on Thursday, adds a handful of new features from the previous beta, all aimed at increasing what can be done with the software.

The first is support for publishing applications to directly to Windows Azure, Microsoft's cloud services platform. This is … Read more

Microsoft today unveiled the next iteration of its Silverlight technology, Silverlight 5, which the company said will improve things like media playback and the time it takes to develop applications, along with adding support for 3D and hardware acceleration.

"There's been a lot of angst on this topic in the last few weeks," Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president for Microsoft's developer division, told attendees of the company's Silverlight-focused Firestarter event at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash. "Let me say upfront that there is a Silverlight future, and we think it's going to be … Read more

Developers interested in creating apps for Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform can now play with the newest beta of the development tools.

Graduating from community technology preview status in March to near-final status on Monday, the Windows Phone Developer Tools offer several new features designed to intrigue developers thinking of building games and other apps for the platform.

Microsoft has now integrated its Expression Blend 4 development tool directly into the Windows Phone 7 environment. Using Expression Blend, developers will be able to build graphical interfaces for their mobile apps using a drag-and-drop approach. Expression Blend 4 joins … Read more

Microsoft said on Thursday that it would delay by "a few weeks" the launch of its Visual Studio 2010 developer tool suite and version 4.0 of the .Net Framework.

In a blog posting, developer division head S. Somasegar said the company needs more time as it continues to work on some performance issues.

Microsoft had planned to launch the product in March. The company now plans an added test version--a release candidate--to launch in February, with the final version coming a few weeks after the planned March launch.

"Since the goal of the release candidate is … Read more

Microsoft is set to announce on Monday that it is ready with a second beta version of its Visual Studio 2010 and .Net Framework 4.0 developer tools. Both products are set for a final release on March 22, Microsoft said.

"Microsoft has reached the home stretch for Visual Studio 2010," said Dave Mendlen, a senior director in Microsoft's developer division. "This is probably the biggest release we've had in many years."

Among the product's features is a Tivo-like recording feature that Microsoft has now dubbed "IntelliTrace."

"That's our … Read more

Quickly and easily grab screenshots and edit them with this handy Internet Explorer add-on. Although it's lacking a few of the niceties included with the version for Firefox, this freeware is still impressive.

FireShot for Internet Explorer places a nondescript button on your toolbar. The button contains a drop-down menu with options for editing and capturing screenshots, and accessing your preferences. But unlike the Firefox version, it does not include a status bar shortcut icon, which was nice for one-click access to buttons for editing, uploading, copying, and e-mailing captured screenshots. During our first go-around, we clicked the toolbar … Read more