Building MEAN Apps with Cosmos DB I've released a new video series that shows how to build MEAN apps using Cosmos DB. Each video in the series will be a couple of minutes and show how each part of the application works. The first video is out now (see below)! I build a lot of apps with MongoDB, Express, Angular and Node (MEAN). MongoDB just works so well with these, but recently I've been using Cosmos DB on Azure in its place because it's easy to use, scale, is super fast, and I don't have to change how I code. Cosmos DB makes it easy to step right in where I used to use Mongo, because it lets me use...

Most cloud platforms offer both a visual interface and a CLI for us developers, and Azure is not different here. I use both, but I primarily enjoy the CLI once I know what I want and when I want to get there quickly. UI's are great when we need that guided experience, which is often helpful. But once we get that familiarity, the CLI can get us through our journey much faster. This allows me to focus on what I am building more. Here is a short video clip showing how you can install the Azure CLI on macOS. You can see instructions for both macOS and Windows, here. You can sign up for the free trial on Azure yet...

I love building web apps with JavaScript and I almost always need an API to serve my data or connect to a behind-the-scenes service. Azure Functions makes this wicked easy. In fact, it takes a just a few minutes. Brian Clark and I share my screen in the video below as we create an Azure Function end-point together. Then we hit it from postman using its public url. Feel free to follow along by trying Azure Functions at this link. You can sign up for the free trial on Azure yet from this link....

The Angular CLI makes it easy to build a production ready Angular app. The next step is getting that app up and in the cloud. This is where a CI process helps take that code from Github, build it properly, and the deploy it to Azure. I outlined the detailed steps below if you want to try this for yourself. If you want to learn how to build your Angular app using the Angular CLI, check out my course on Pluralsight. You can also watch these steps in this 3 minute video. Prerequisites We need something to serve the assets such as Node.js. Be sure you have a Node.js server in your Angular project, similar to the one...

I love the Web and I love tools that make creating awesome things for the Web easier! When creating Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) there are a lot of options. So it just makes sense to create an extension for VS Code to help design PWAs. As the title mentions, this is an alpha. I'd love some of your help to test this extension. Give it a run through and see what we might want to change, add, remove, or document further. My first cut at this extension can be found here. Please refer to the GitHub repo to create any issues. I will iterate on this extension a few times, til I have something that is useful to the wider...