Test post from Word on my Surface RT

Almost every personal computer I’ve owned throughout the years has included “function keys” on the keyboard. According to Wikipedia:

“A function key is a key on a computer or terminalkeyboard which can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions.”

From my Commodore 64 and Amiga’s, every desktop and every laptop I’ve owned there have been the familiar site of that row of keys. Even my MacBook has them, although they try to hide but…. The function key has always been there through the history of the PC.

Smartphones and their on screen keyboard have made us very familiar with a reduced selection of keys. Windows 8 makes touch devices with no physical keyboard attached are enabled for typing through an on screen keyboard which has a reduced number of keys and modes that you can switch between to access additional characters, such as numbers. Missing from the on screen keyboards are the function keys.

One of the most talked about elements of the recent Microsoft Surface unveiling has been the keyboard cover, providing a physical keyboard for the tablets. If you look closely at the top row of keys… you’ll see something different from the majority of keyboards attached to PC’s today…

Those familiar F1-F12 function keys are gone, replaced by keys for volume, search, and web.

Is this the end of the function key? As developer write Windows 8 applications, they can no longer rely on the existence of the “F-Keys” for user interactions. Will other keyboards follow along? Do we care? What will be the next key to go? Will the Post-PC era also be the Post-F-Key era?

[Parting side note: Second to only the “Not enough memory to eject disk”error on early Mac’s, by favorite BIOS boot error of all time is “No keyboard detected: Press F1 to continue”]

Today after much speculation and drama around a mystery launch event in Los Angeles, Microsoft unveiled a Microsoft Tablet. It’s not the first time that Redmond has sold hardware. I currently make use of a Microsoft mouse end webcam, and have a keyboard or two around here somewhere. There’s also the Xbox 360 and Kinect. Then there is also the Zune, ZuneHD, and I think at one point in time way back even a Microsoft cordless phone along the way somewhere. So yes, they have seem some mixed results in their efforts.

Microsoft relies heavily on partners to make their products a success. From building the software to run on them to building the hardware to run on, partners have played a key role along the way. HP, Dell, any many other computer manufacturers would be very different companies today, or maybe not even exist if they had not been able to build and sell product running Windows.

With partnerships playing such a key role, there is something to be said for not stepping on the toes of those partners and turning them against you. Some have said that Microsoft getting into the hardware game could have that effect, and turn manufacturers away from building for Windows. I truly hope the opposite is true however, and hardware manufacturers take this as an opportunity to raise the bar and deliver products above and beyond what Microsoft has put forward here. I’ve long been a fan of Tablet PC’s, going way back to my Toshiba m200 and Samsung Q1, but those devices have never truly had the ideal combination of hardware and software to provide the best experience possible.

I’ve felt as if many manufacturers gave into Microsoft and agreed to ship a couple of higher priced models with “that tablet stuff” on them, but never really embraced the platform. With iPad sales increasing and PC sales decreasing you wouldn’t think that those manufacturers would need additional reasons to innovate to keep their marker share in the “post PC era”, but apparently they do.

It’s a bold move, but I’m glad that Microsoft has put enough skin in the game to showcase what can be done, and not just in a prototype but a shipping product. If Samsung, HP, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, and others show up to the game with better products that innovate in features and design the entire ecosystem will benefit. If they don’t show up, and least there’s a serious product out there for running Win8 on a tablet.

For more, visit the Microsoft Surface Website

If you’ve downloaded and installed the latest ASP.NET MVC 4 RC bits, you might have noticed one of the recently added MVC4 project templates is not longer there. The Single Page Application (SPA) project template that shipped with the ASP.NET MVC 4 Beta as an early preview, will not ship with the final MVC 4 release. It will however continue to evolve outside of the MVC 4 release.

More information is available on the ASP.NET SPA Home Page:

“An official release of ASP.NET SPA won’t be ready in time to ship with the final ASP.NET MVC 4 release. You can find the source code for ASP.NET SPA and follow the development effort on the ASP.NET CodePlex site.”

If you look closely you will also notice another change. While it appears that a new “Basic” template has been added, the previous “Empty” template has been renamed to “Basic” and a new, much more empty “Empty” template has been added to give a bare bones empty starting point for an MVC4 project.

After spending some time scouring the web researching some aspects of the ASP.Net Web API I gathered the following collection of useful links and decided to share them here.

WebAPI for the MVC Guy

Building and consuming REST services with ASP.NET Web API using MediaTypeFormatter and OData support

Custom errors and error detail policy in ASP.NET Web API Jimmy

ASP.NET Web API- How content negotiation works

ASP.NET Web API- Extending content negotiation with new formats

RSS & Atom MediaTypeFormatter for ASP.NET WebAPI

Hyperlinking With the ASP.NET Web API

Force download of file from ASP.NET WebAPI

Authenticate, Authorise WebApi with HttpClient

Implementing [RequireHttps] with ASP.NET Web API

Request throttling in ASP.NET Web API

In case you missed the news, the beta of ASP.NET MVC has been released. You can download these latest bits MVC 4 Beta bits here using the Web Platform Installer or you can download the complete stand alone setup package instead. This installs side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC 3 so you can started working with the latest in 4 without impacted your existing MVC3 projects. Also important to note, this release includes a “Go-Live” license so you truly can start using this release. (Note, that all standard caveats apply, test your stuff, things may change before RTW)

The top features listed in this new release are:

• ASP.NET Web API
• Refreshed and modernized default project templates
• New mobile project template
• Many new features to support mobile apps
• Recipes to customize code generation
• Enhanced support for asynchronous methods

And much, much more!

One of the new and exciting additions mentioned in the list above is the ASP.NET Web API. Originally know as the WCF Web API (Codeplex Link) it has now be integrated tighter with ASP.NET. And why do you care? In this day and age, almost anything worth connecting to on the web has some sort of API, facilitating communication from a wide range of clients from browsers, to phones and tablets. The ASP.NET Web API provides a “modern HTTP programming model.”

It’s easy to get started by selecting the “Web API” template after selecting an MVC 4 Project type.

The new project will contain a sample ValuesController class that shows how to get things rolling.

          public
          class ValuesController
: ApiController { // GET /api/valuespublic IEnumerable<string>
Get() { returnnewstring[]
{ "value1", "value2" }; } //
GET /api/values/5publicstring Get(int id)
{ return"value"; } //
POST /api/valuespublicvoid Post(stringvalue)
{ } // PUT /api/values/5publicvoid Put(int id, stringvalue)
{ } // DELETE /api/values/5publicvoid Delete(int id)
{ } }

Now if you’re familiar with both MVC and common Web API’s, the next step should come as no surprise. Making a call to http://localhost:33214/api/values will call the ValuesController, and execute the Get method. In a browser the result may at first appear like this:

Here’s where you may be confused if you’re not familiar with web API’s. To understand what’s going on I would encourage you to take a look at the browser’s request and associated response returned using a tool such as the F12 Developer tools in IE9, Fiddler, or Firebug or other developer tools in other browsers.

By enabling the F12 Developer tools, selecting the “Network” tab and clicking on Start Capturing, you will be able to see details for the http traffic.

The key think to note is the Type, or mime type associated with the response. You will see that it is “application/json” instead of the normal “text/html” that an HTML page would normally return. If I go ahead and tell IE to open the file and look at it in notepad we will see the json representation returned by the controller.

This result corresponds directly to the controller code:

          // GET /api/values
          public IEnumerable<string>
Get() { returnnewstring[]
{ "value1", "value2" }; }

Simple, and extremely powerful. I’ll be posting more on the new ASP.NET Web API and other ASP.NET MVC4 features in the days ahead.

In an ongoing tradition, the Triangle .Net Users Group will be hosting a special December main meeting featuring a number of “Lightning Talks” by local presenters and a pot luck dinner. It’s a great way to get a full dose of technical info while enjoying a fun and festive gathering with your peers in the local .Net community.

sign up to give a talk ...

sign up for a dinner item...

Please help spread the word! I look forward to seeing you there!

NOTE : Meeting is Wednesday December 14, 2011.

I’ve been blogging for quite a while now, and I’ve been amazed how my posting here have introduced me to many great people, helped others, and resulting in some really interesting opportunities for me. Over the last year and a bit, with the rapid flow of information through twitter and other online resources I’ve slipped out of the habit of frequent blog posts that I’ve previously done and enjoyed.

Starting today I plan to change that.

Now don’t worry, I’m not going to try and make up for lost time with a landslide of new posts today, but I do plan to return to a more consistent routine of posts. If you’re still reading this, thanks for sticking around.

One week from today, on Saturday November 5th a number of North Carolina software developers will be spending the day at camp… Code Camp. If you’ve never attending a Code Camp, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to learn, network, and be both inspired and motivated to expand your skills. A number of speakers from near and far will be presenting on a variety of topics. To top it off, this event is free thanks to the support of a number of generous organizations.

For more information and to register visit http://codecamp.org.

After weeks of waiting, enduring silence and rumors, developers finally got their first public look at Windows 8 at Microsoft’s BUILD conference. People here at the conference were pretty excited about what they saw, and I can imagine many, many more watching remotely were also excited, or even relieved to see the details. Having talked to a number of people about their expectations a lot of people were very concerned to learn about the future of the technologies they have invested in both personally learning and financially building into projects. 

For people who were worried, maybe the biggest news for them is that if your application runs under Windows 7 it will continue to run under Windows 8. That being said, we can not expect innovation without change at some point along the way. Windows 8 introduces “Metro style Apps”, a new multi-language, multi-view technology. By multi-language it means that native languages such as C and C++, managed languages like C# and VB.Net, but also JavaScript and have equal access to the Windows (WinRT) APIs to interact with windows. In reference to the views, it allows the use of HTML/CSS with JavaScript and XAML with both C# and C++ applications. The “Metro Style” applications are part of an “immersive”, “touch first”, “no compromise” user experience that spans all aspects of Windows 8.

[slide borrowed from \\Build\  keynote

As you can see in the above diagram, the new “Metro Style” apps run along side the traditional “Desktop Apps”. Again, this means that the app you are working on today will continue to work on Windows 8. In many ways, today marks the begging of a new era in Windows application development. Well that may sound sound a bit outlandish, it’s true. This no application model not only allows a new model for application interactions, it promotes it with a variety of services to let apps communicate with each other and with other devices through the cloud.

Bottom line, Windows 8 is going to be a game changer that creates many exciting opportunities.

Have you been to the MSDN site lately? I ask because I know that personally when I need to lookup something information related to my development efforts I’ll just search for it, often getting a mix of hits, instead of heading right the “the source” for much of this info. Admittedly, in the past some information had been hard to find on site, but if you haven’t checked it our recently, the MSDN website has undergone some changes.

A quick glance at the site shows a much cleaner looking design, with what seems to be much better organized information. For a fun comparison, here’s what the site looked like a few years ago.

Below the main menu, the site is dividing into three “portals” separating content by Platforms, Tasks, and News.

The Platforms page provides some overview information and easy access to dive further into Desktop, Web, Cloud, and Phone development areas.

For other areas, a quick click on the “All Developer Centers and Hubs” link takes you to a nice site map for all of the major areas. As you continue to drill into topic areas, the trend of better organized information continues, pulling together a variety of documents, videos, links to articles, and other great sources of information.

Recently at the D9 conference Microsoft demonstrated then next version of Windows.

“Windows 8 is a reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface. A Windows 8-based PC is really a new kind of device, one that scales from touch-only small screens through to large screens, with or without a keyboard and mouse. ”

In the demos, Microsoft showed off a some of the new interface and features. This video shows off some of it.

Microsoft also officialy announced a new conference this September called Build Windows where they will be sharing much more information with developers regarding Windows 8. In fact, most requests for additional details about Win 8 generates a “learn more a Build” response.

Since these announcements there has been a lot of speculation by individuals on what this means for current technologies and future development.  While I’ve heard some very interesting interpretations by people, I’ve also heard some things that I feel are completely inaccurate.  However not knowing all of the details myself, I’m not in a position to say what is accurate or not, but would encourage everybody be cautious about what they hear and read based on this early information, and of course…. “Learn more from Build”`

A team from Microsoft Patterns & Practices have been working to create guidance for building “Modern Web Applications” in conjunction with an advisory group of individuals from the developer community.

“Project Silk provides guidance for building cross-browser web applications with a focus on client-side interactivity. These applications take advantage of the latest web standards like HTML5, CSS3 and ECMAScript 5 along with modern web technologies such as jQuery, Internet Explorer 9, and ASP.NET MVC3.”

To achieve this, the team is creating a reference application to give them a real world example to build and provide a sample to learn from.

The sample application and related guidance documentation are currently available at http://silk.codeplex.com and are free to download. The latest update was June 3rd, 2010 with Drop 10, and updates will continue to be made as the project continues.

I will be posting more on some specifics of the code and guidance, but wanted to share this initial post.

Check out this WP7 created by Brandon Foy. If it reaches 200k views Microsoft will air it on TV.

A number of Microsoft Developer Evangelists at Microsoft have put together a fun coding challenge in conjunction with Windows Azure. The challenge puts your skill and whit against others online via Windows Azure.

“How do you stack up against the coding competition? Play weekly and find out! ”

By using either a free Windows Azure trial account provided (for 3o days) or your own Azure account, you can develop your own player “bot” for the competition. It’s a fun way to learn about Azure and gain some experience publishing an application while at the same time have some fun with coding logic against the other competitors in a game of rock, paper, scissors.

There are a series of webcasts in conjunction to help get our started!

Let’s see if you can knock me out of first place!

http://www.rockpaperazure.com/

Update: Knocked from first place… now to try and get back!

Recently I ran into a situation where I wanted to host an ASP.NET MVC web application and Silverlight application in Windows Azure. The ASP.NET application provides all of the backend services for the Silverlight application. This was all well and good until I decided to move the Silverlight XAP file from the ClientBin directory of the web application over to Blob Storage so that I could update the XAP file without the need to redeploy the entire site.

That’s when it broke.

When moving a XAP file to a different “site of origin” than the website, there are a number of cross domain issues that are potentially introduced. Tim Heuer has and excellent blog post “Hosting cross-domain Silverlight Applications” in which he details the main concerns and how to address the issues. In my case, it was the “XAP MIME Type” issue causing the problem. When Windows Azure Blob Storage was serving up the XAP file, it was not correctly indicating the “application/x-silverlight-app” MIME type. For security reasons Silverlight checks to see that the content is a valid Silverlight type, in my case not allowing the XAP file to run.

I had tried using a couple of utilities to copy my content into blog storage, which had seemed to work fine for image and video files, but not the XAP file and did not allow me to set the content types manually. [UPDATE: Azure Explorer will allow you to update MIME Types: http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/ ] To resolve the problem, I needed to upload a file to storage and set it’s mime type to “application/x-silverlight-app”. In the end, this is pretty simple to do so I crafted a little utility to properly deploy my XAP file using the following code.

var account = new CloudStorageAccount(storageKeys, true);
var container = account.CreateCloudBlobClient().GetContainerReference("clientbin");
container.CreateIfNotExist(); container.SetPermissions(new BlobContainerPermissions
{ PublicAccess = BlobContainerPublicAccessType.Blob }); var blob = container.GetBlobReference(System.IO.Path.GetFileName(fileName));
blob.Properties.ContentType = "application/x-silverlight-app";
blob.UploadFile(fileName);

If you’re looking at getting up to speed with some Windows Azure training , here are some webcast dates for you to mark down and register for, including the upcoming Firestarter event!

12/09: MSDN Simulcast Event: Windows Azure Firestarter

11/29: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Introduction to Cloud Computing and Windows Azure
12/06: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Windows Azure and Web Roles
12/13: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Worker Roles
01/03: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Working with Messaging and Queues
01/10: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Using Windows Azure Table
01/17: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Diving into BLOB Storage
01/24: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Diagnostics and Service Management
01/31: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: SQL Azure
02/07: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Connecting with AppFabric
02/14: MSDN Webcast: Azure Boot Camp: Cloud Computing Scenarios

At the Silverlight Firestarter event today in Redmond (And broadcast live around the world) Scott Guthrie kicked off the show with a very exciting look ahead at some of the planned features for Silverlight 5. There were two strong themes to these new features “Premium Media Experiences” and “Business Application Development”.

The enhancements to media include Hardware Decode and presentation of H.264 using GPU support improving performance for lower power devices as well as “Trick Play” capabilities to play videos at different speeds (Up to 2x) with pitch correction. Improved power awareness will keep the screensaver from appearing while video is playing, but also allows the system to sleep when video is paused. Remote control support will also be added to media.

On the “Application” front, features improving text clarity and layout performance and “Fluid” layout capabilities. OpenType support has been enhanced and tracking/leading have been added. Enhancements have also been added for MVVM support and Databinding enhancements.I swear I could here Josh Smith’s excitement all the way in here in NC when he heard that Markup Extensions were being added as well. I think one of the coolest demos of the day was John Papa setting breakpoints in XAML (Yes, in XAML) and having the debugger stop when bindings were hit, providing the ability to step through the binding process and make solving problems easier. A GPU accelerated API was also shown, providing rich 3d visualization capabilities.

If you’re interested, a complete list of future features is available here as well as be sure to check out Scott’s Blog, Pete’s Blog, and Tim’s Blog for the latest info. (For info on the latest release of the WCF Ria Services Toolkit, check out Jeff’s Blog!) The information shared today was a strong indication of the continued commitment Microsoft has to Silverlight, and the exciting opportunities that exist for developers on the web, on devices, and on the desktop with Silverlight!

Friday, December 10, 2010 9:00 AM

North Carolina State University - Jane S. McKimmon Conference & Training Cntr
1101 Gorman St
Raleigh North Carolina 27606
United States

Register Online

Event Overview

Join your Microsoft Developer Evangelists for this free, all-day event that will get you up to speed with ASP.NET web development, going from zero to sixty in one day.

Whether you’re just starting out or are already on the web and looking for the latest developments, join us for this full day of technical content as we take you through a progression of sessions, all focused on developing with the Microsoft Web Platform.

By the end of the day, you’ll be familiar with latest advances and have a solid understanding of ASP.NET web development options.

Agenda:

· 8:30 – Registration

· 9:00 –  To the Web with ASP.NET 4 Web Forms

o The tried-and-true approach for creating effective and robust websites, ASP.NET 4 Web Forms offers powerful abstractions and rapid application development features.  Add in recent advances in ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 and you’ll be crafting amazing sites in no time.

· 10:30 – Looking at ASP.NET MVC

o ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) is a relatively new option, offering a variety of potential benefits such as separation of concerns, flexibility, control, and testability.  In this session, you’ll learn the essentials, along with the latest advances, so you can get started right away.

· 12:00 –The Web Platform Smorgasbord

o Grab a bite to eat and join us for this relaxed but rapid-fire lunchtime look at a variety of web topics, including tools and tech that you’ll surely find appetizing.

· 12:45 – Introducing WebMatrix

o WebMatrix is a new option that provides a simple but powerful way to create web applications.  You can create sites based on existing open-source applications, or dive right in and create from scratch.  From code and testing to data and deployment, we’ll introduce WebMatrix and show you how it can make your life easier.

· 1:40 – Evaluating Your Web Options

o You’re up to speed with the latest in ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and WebMatrix, but you may be wondering how and when to choose between them.  The great news is you don’t always have to choose just one.  In this session we’ll talk about factors to consider, options for adoption/migration, and ways to combine ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC in the same web application.

· 2:40 – Creating Effective Websites with ASP.NET

o Knowing how to create websites with ASP.NET is important, but making them effective is the key.  This final session dives into additional options and techniques that apply to both Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications.  From scripting with jQuery and AJAX, design with CSS, markup and validation techniques, and tools for testing, you’ll learn how to set your sites (and skills) apart from the rest.

· 4:00 – Wrap-up, Evals, and Giveaways

As announced ad PDC10, a number of new features were scheduled to be released before the end of the year…. Well they’re here! (Well.. actually you can Download the new Azure 1.3 SDK here)

New for version 1.3:

• Virtual Machine (VM) Roll (Beta): Allows you to create a custom VHD image using Windows Server 2008 R2 and host it in the cloud. Virtual Machine (VM) Role (Beta): Allows you to create a custom VHD image using Windows Server 2008 R2 and host it in the cloud.
• Remote Desktop Access: Enables connecting to individual service instances using the Remote Desktop client. Remote Desktop Access: Enables connecting to individual service instances using a Remote Desktop client.
• Full Support in IIS Web role: Enables Windows Azure web hosting roles in the IIS hosting environment. Full IIS Support in a Web role: Enables hosting Windows Azure web roles in a IIS hosting environment.
• Elevated Privileges: Enables performing tasks with elevated privileges Within the service instance. Elevated Privileges: Enables performing tasks with elevated privileges within a service instance.
• Virtual Network (CTP): Enables support for Windows Azure Connect, Which Provides IP-level connectivity and on-premises Between Windows Azure resources. Virtual Network (CTP): Enables support for Windows Azure Connect, which provides IP-level connectivity between on-premises and Windows Azure resources.
• Diagnostics: Enhancements to Windows Azure Diagnostics diagnostics enable collection of data in more error conditions. Diagnostics: Enhancements to Windows Azure Diagnostics enable collection of diagnostics data in more error conditions.
• Networking Enhancements: Enables roles to restrict inter-roll traffic, fixed ports on InputEndpoints. Networking Enhancements: Enables roles to restrict inter-role traffic, fixed ports on InputEndpoints.
• Performance Improvement: Significant performance improvement local machine deployment. Performance Improvement: Significant performance improvement local machine deployment.

• C # and VB Project support for creation Creating the Windows Azure Cloud application solution with multiple roles. C# and VB Project creation support for creating a Windows Azure Cloud application solution with multiple roles.
• Tools to add and remove roles from the Windows Azure application. Tools to add and remove roles from the Windows Azure application.
• Tools to configure each role. Tools to configure each role.
• Integrated local development via the compute and storage emulator emulator services. Integrated local development via the compute emulator and storage emulator services.
• Running and Debugging a Cloud Service Development in the Fabric. Running and Debugging a Cloud Service in the Development Fabric.
• Browsing through the Cloud Storage Server Explorer. Browsing cloud storage through the Server Explorer.
• Building and packaging of Windows Azure application projects. Building and packaging of Windows Azure application projects.
• Deploying to Windows Azure. Deploying to Windows Azure.
• Monitoring the state of your services through the Server Explorer. Monitoring the state of your services through the Server Explorer.
• Debugging in the cloud by retrieving IntelliTrace logs through the Server Explorer. Debugging in the cloud by retrieving IntelliTrace logs through the Server Explorer.

Save a spot on your calendar for the Silverlight Firestarter event on December 2,2010. This LIVE event in Redmond, WA is being broadcast live “Everywhere”. We’re working in arranging a venue in the Raleigh/Durham area to get together an view the event, bringing together some of the local Silverlight community. If you’re interested (or have a venue to host us) drop me a note or watch for details here.

For more info, or to register for the LIVE Streaming event please visit the Silverlight Firestarter site

As the November 8 launch date for the new Windows Phone 7 in the US the advertising campaign is getting ramped up.

Really!

In a show of support for Silverlight and it’s future at Microsoft, Bob Muglia, President of the Server and Tools Division at Microsoft provided a blog post on the Team Silverlight blog. In his post Mr. Muglia better explained the context of some of his comments.

Among other key points, he very clearly states:

“Make no mistake; we’ll continue to invest in Silverlight and enable developers to build great apps and experiences with it in the future”

In the post he also outlines some key trends the Silverlight targets:

“Customers are demanding the richest possible client experiences, and developers are increasingly looking to build premium, tailored experiences optimized for specific devices.” 

“Customers want to be able to deliver client experiences that are optimized for specific form factors.”

“Media delivery across the Internet continues to accelerate dramatically.  Customers want HD, studio quality, premium media content.” 

“Lastly, there has been massive growth in the breadth and diversity of devices made by a wide variety of vendors providing both open and closed systems.”

And lastly, relating to the positioning of Silverlight and HTML(5)

“The purpose of Silverlight has never been to replace HTML, but rather to do the things that HTML (and other technologies) can’t, and to do so in a way that’s easy for developers to use.  Silverlight enables great client app and media experiences”

These echo some of the comments made by Steve Ballmer about Microsoft wanting to fully support HTML but also using Silverlight to go beyond those capabilities in a variety of client and application solutions.

When PDC 2010 was first announced, it was largely positioned as a cloud computing event. Soon other topics such as Windows Phone 7 and IE 9 were added to the mix, as well as as a framework track. The marketing message at the event was clearly focused on Azure and supporting HTML 5 through IE9. The event included some exciting announcements about new Azure features that are just around the corner, a new release of IE9, and some exciting asynchronous support for languages. There were some other gems, but not quite the volume of big, wide reaching news that we have become accustomed to at PDC.

There were a lot of products and technologies that were not discussed. From the very beginning, the event was very specifically positioned around Azure and cloud.  Now because of some of the tech media coverage of certain statements made by Microsoft management, a lot has been read into what was said and what was not shown, especially around Silverlight. I wish many aspects of what was said was handled differently, but if you take a step back I think it’s pretty easy to see the bigger picture.

HTML 5 will no doubt play a major role in the future of browsing the web, and it’s something we need to put on our radar. The reality today however is that HTML 5 is still a spec being defined, it’s level of support is far ranging, and there are many things that HTML simply will not do. As always, need to too choose the best tool for the job at the right time, knowing that eventually there may be new technologies that we use to do some things. Long before this announcement we were all making choices about when to use html for websites and Silverlight for more advanced application scenarios.

Personally, I’m extremely confident in my learning investment in Silverlight and it’s capabilities to provide long lasting solutions, and extremely excited about using it in the future!

Here are some other voices from the community to consider:

http://blog.galasoft.ch/archive/2010/10/30/my-position-on-the-silverlight-debate.aspx

http://blog.nerdplusart.com/archives/silverlight-and-html5-and-your-future

http://csharperimage.jeremylikness.com/2010/10/so-whats-fuss-about-silverlight.html

http://www.snowball.be/2010/10/31/Silverlight+Will+Stay+Dont+Worry.aspx

http://wildermuth.com/2010/10/30/Post-PDC_HTML5_v_Silverlight_Debate

It’s that time of year again when the local Microsoft Developer community works together to put on a free day of training known as Code Camp.  This mini-conference attracts a wide variety of speaker from near and far, offering 30+ topics on a variety of topics. The event is free, and provides a great opportunity to learn network with the local software development community. The event is scheduled this fall for Saturday November 6th.

For complete details and registration please visit http://www.codecamp.org

XNA Games on Windows Phone 7

Description
Chris G. Williams will be presenting 'A Tour of Windows Phone 7 and XNA 4.0'. In this talk, he'll cover what's new in XNA 4.0, especially as it pertains to Windows Phone 7. He'll cover phone features, using the emulator and how to take advantage of the various sensors (like the Accelerometer) and features (MultiTouch, Gestures, etc) in your games. Rumor has it, he may even have a phone with him.

http://www.trinug.org/

As everybody scrambles to educate clients and site administrators on the recently announced ASP.NET Security Vulnerability, it’s great to see organizations like those behind Umbraco being proactive to protect their install base.

Logging into an Umbraco site, administrators are immediately greeted with a warning about the security issue:

Clicking on the alert provides the administrator simple instructions to install a patch to address the issue. 

It’s great to see this level of support! Yet another reason to check out Umbraco if you haven’t already.

PS – Please take the steps necessary to protect any sites you may have.

This weekend information regarding a security vulnerability with ASP.NET was released. If you have a website based on ASP.NET, it’s extremely important that you read this information and take the appropriate steps to secure your website. ScottGu has posted details on his blog.

It’s official. Summer is over. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it’s true.

September brings with it the shocking reality that summer is over. There still may be nice days ahead, but they are not the days of summer.  We try to deny it, but somehow things are different, and I’m not talking about just the weather. Everybody just seems a little bit more serious, meetings a little more intense, and deadlines a little sooner.

Fall also brings many things to look forward to, including .Net developer community events such as Code Camps, SQL Saturday, and SharePoint Saturday.

Here are some events to note:

Raleigh SQL Saturday – September 18, 2010 Raleigh NC

Richmond Code Camp – October 9th, 2010  Richmond VA

Silicon Valley Code Camp – October 9,10 2010  Los Altos Hills, CA

SoCal Code Camp – Saturday October 23,24 2010 Los Angeles CA

Raleigh Code Camp – Saturday November 6, 2010 Raleigh NC

Desert Code Camp – Saturday November 12, 2010 Phoenix AZ

(If I missed your event please let me know and I’ll add it)

If you’re in the Raleigh/Durham area and are interesting in developing applications for Windows Phone 7 be sure to check out the upcoming “Firestarter” training event on Wednesday September 8th.

Event Registration link: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032456599&Culture=en-US

Event Overview

Wednesday, September 08, 2010 9:00 AM - Wednesday, September 08, 2010 5:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Welcome Time: 8:30 AM

North Carolina State University - Jane S. McKimmon Conference & Training Center 1101 Gorman St
Raleigh North Carolina 27606
United States

Dream It. Build It.

The power to build smart, visually stunning games and applications is right in your hands with Windows Phone 7. Want to see what’s under the hood? This full-day series of learning events for developers will take you behind the scenes with an inside look at the philosophy, design language, and the fundamentals of Silverlight and XNA coding for Windows Phone 7. You’ll also see how the Windows Marketplace provides exciting new distribution and monetization opportunities for developers and application publishers.

Join your local MSDN Events team and get ready to amplify your creativity, productivity and market opportunities.

Morning Sessions:

Introduction to Windows Phone Development and the WP7 platform

Meet Windows Phone 7! We’re proud to introduce the innovative Windows Phone 7 platform and explain the philosophy behind its all-new user experience design. We’ll also outline the Metro design principles and cover the basics of building applications for Windows Phone 7. Finally, you’ll tour the Windows Phone Marketplace and get an overview on its exciting revenue opportunities for developers and application publishers.

Building Windows Phone 7 Applications with Silverlight

You’ve heard the fundamentals; now it’s time to dig a little deeper. This session will focus on building Windows Phone 7 applications with Microsoft Silverlight. You’ll see first-hand how to use Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend to develop and debug projects. You’ll also learn about the built-in templates and the many available controls and styles for WP7. We’ll wrap by covering how to consume services in the cloud.

Building Windows Phone 7 Applications using XNA

Microsoft XNA has been a favorite with game developers for many years. Now game developers will be able to harness the power of the XNA framework to create highly immersive and responsive games for Windows Phone 7.. We’ll charge full-speed into XNA to outline the basic Windows Phone model, explore its core device characteristics, and review the highlights of the XNA phone framework. Finally, we’ll show you some of the cool and impressive games that have been developed specifically for Windows Phone 7.

Lunch (included)

Afternoon Sessions:

Monetizing Your Apps with Marketplace

Windows Phone 7 will launch with a fully loaded Marketplace and the opportunity for developers to sell or distribute their applications. . In this session, you’ll get the details about how to navigate the certification process and publish your application including updates. Learn how to increase discoverability as well as deepen your connection with your customers through the powerful business intelligence capabilities of the marketplace.

Windows Phone 7 Services

Get ready to build more engaging user experiences with Windows Phone 7 and several powerful cloud- and phone-based components. First up is the Microsoft Location Service, which allows you to obtain location information based on GPS, cell and Wi-Fi signals. Next, we’ll cover the Microsoft Push Notification Service, which provides “live” updates for apps running on the device.

Light Up Windows Phone 7!

Device integration is how an application becomes an experience. In this session, you’ll learn how to create the compelling and interactive mobile experiences which users have come to have expect by tying into device hardware such as the keyboard, touch input and accelerometer. You’ll also learn how to incorporate audio and video into your rich media solutions.

If you haven’t already registered, be sure to check out the upcoming Windows Azure Boot Camp that’s taking place Wednesday June 23rd in Durham, NC. This free training event is a great opportunity to get your feet wet with Windows Azure. Microsoft DE Brian Hitney and Jim Duffy from TakeNote Technologies will be presenting the content.

This is a hands on workshop, so show up laptop in hand and ready to learn. More information and registration information is available. Once again, it’s a free event but you must register to attend.

Save the date! Please plan to join us on Wednesday, June 2, at 8:30 AM at the Jane S. McKimmon Conference & Training Center for an OData workshop.

Free registration: http://odataworkshop.eventbrite.com/

Recommended Audiences: Solution Architects, Software Developers, Developers, Architects

Abstract

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is an open protocol for sharing data. It provides a way to break down data silos and increase the shared value of data by creating an ecosystem in which data consumers can interoperate with data producers in a way that is far more powerful than currently possible, enabling more applications to make sense of a broader set of data. Every producer and consumer of data that participates in this ecosystem increases its overall value.

OData is consistent with the way the Web works - it makes a deep commitment to URIs for resource identification and commits to an HTTP-based, uniform interface for interacting with those resources (just like the Web).   This commitment to core Web principles allows OData to enable a new level of data integration and interoperability across a broad range of clients, servers, services, and tools.

OData is released under the Open Specification Promise to allow anyone to freely interoperate with OData implementations.

In this talk Chris will provide an in depth knowledge to this protocol, how to consume a OData service and finally how to implement an OData service on Windows using the WCF Data Services product.

Agenda

· Introductions (5 minutes)
· Overview of OData (10 minutes)
· The OData Protocol (1 hour)
· 15 minute break
· Producing OData Feeds (1 hour)
· Consuming OData Feeds (1 hour)

Bio

Chris Woodruff (or Woody as he is commonly known as) has a degree in Computer Science from Michigan State University’s College of Engineering. Woody has been developing and architecting software solutions for almost 15 years and has worked in many different platforms and tools. He is a community leader, helping such events as Day of .NET Ann Arbor, West Michigan Day of .NET and CodeMash. He was also instrumental in bringing the popular Give Camp event to Western Michigan where technology professionals lend their time and development expertise to assist local non-profits. As a speaker and podcaster, Woody has spoken and discussed a variety of topics, including database design and open source. He is a Microsoft MVP in Data Platform Development. Woody works at RCM Technologies in Grand Rapids, MI as a Principal Consultant.

Woody is the co-host of the popular podcast “Deep Fried Bytes” and blogs at www.chriswoodruff.com. He is the President of the West Michigan .NET User Group and also is a co-founder of the software architecture online portal nPlus1.org.

Woody has worked in many arenas throughout the years, including healthcare, manufacturing, publishing, promotion execution and the automotive industry. He has experience with starting and running new ventures, including past work with technology startups. Woody continues to develop his expertise by learning & developing new technologies to better meet the needs of his clients, while devoting his free time to improving the development community at large, and giving back to the community in which he lives.

Now better watch out,
you better code right.
You better test first
and refactor that right!
Carl and Richard are coming to town!

The .NET Rocks! Visual Studio 2010 Road Trip is headed back to RTP for a special LIVE event Thursday May6th and will be joined by a special surprise guest. If you’re still kicking yourself for missing them last time, sign up before it’s too late to see them again this time!

Where are they now?

What's this all about? (Their text)

Carl and Richard are loading up the DotNetMobile (a 30 foot RV) and driving to your town again to show off the latest and greatest in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0!

And to make the night even more fun, we’re going to bring a mystery rock star from the Visual Studio world to the event and interview them for a special .NET Rocks Road Trip show series.

Along the way we’ll be giving away some great prizes, showing off some awesome technology and having a ton of laughs.

So come out to the most fun you can have in a geeky evening – and find out what’s new and cool in Visual Studio 2010!

Register to attend! (The event is FREE, but you must register to attend!)

Today on the Official Microsoft Silverlight site http://www.silverlight.net is the announcement we have all been waiting for:

It’s been just three short years since the first release of Silverlight, and truly amazing to see where things are at. I’ve been extremely privileged to have had opportunities to work with the product team along the way through a number of releases now, and it’s been a remarkable experience. The teams involved represent an amazing group of talented individuals  with an unbelievable passion for their work, and it shows. My hat goes off to each an every one of them for being a part of reaching such a major milestone in a very short period of time. Well done my friends, well done!

Silverlight 4 is a major release with many new features including:

Local Fonts, Printing, Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), Webcam and Microphone support, Audio/Video Output protection, Multitask Networking, Offline DRM, Trusted Applications, IDistpatch COM interop, Group policy object support, Full keyboard in out-of-browser for trusted applications, Cross-domain network access for trusted applications, Custom window Chrome, Out of browser window settings (Position, size, etc), Web Browser Control and Web Browser Brush, Notification Toast, and Right-to-Left / BiDi text.

In addition, Silverlight’s support for major browsers included Firefox, Safari, IE has been increased to include Google Chrome on both the Mac and Windows.

As you download the RTW (Release To Web) of the client, you may notice that some of the tools downloads are still RC. Fear not, the runtime is the finished SL4, but because the tools needed the runtime to complete before the could do a final wrap there’s a slight lag. Rather than wait to release everything, these pretty darn close to final tools (My words, not theirs) have been made available at the same time as the completed runtime so we can all get our SL 4 apps built for RTW and out on the web, with the final versions  of the tools expected in the near future as a “minor update”. (Tim Heuer has more details in the this post Silverlight 4 released. Availability of tools announcement )

The Silverlight Toolkit has also been updated with an April 2010 release which has a number of enhancements including new Charting Controls, a new Context Menu control, new Themes, a new PanelDragDropTarget, as well as other improvements. For more information check out the Silverlight Toolkit April 2010 changes

Now go my friends and code!

The Windows 7 / Office 2010 Bus Tour is going to be making it’s way through North Carolina in June (Raleigh June 2, Charlotte June 3) and is a great opportunity to learn more about both products from some great speakers, including Mr. TalkingAboutWindows himself Stephen Rose.

See you on the bus!

REGISTER

Get your Bus Tour updates first! Follow us on Twitter @thebustour

With the release of Silverlight 4 quickly approaching, there is more excitement than every around developing with Silverlight. While there’s a wealth of information all over the place on new features and how to do things, I strongly encourage anybody looking for Silverlight 4 information to start here:

What’s New in Silverlight 4?

READ FIRST

Want to know the feature-by-feature 'what's new' information? Read the What's new in Silverlight 4 whitepaper for more detailed technical information.

Silverlight 4 delivers a full suite of powerful capabilities to business application developers, bringing the best-of-breed .NET platform to browser-based experiences. Silverlight provides an ideal platform for developing and deploying modern business applications for both customer facing and staff-facing applications.

On Wednesday January 13, 2010 our local Microsoft Developer Evangelist will be presenting a sneak peak at some of the upcoming Windows Azure content. As we gather to talk about Azure, I thought it was only proper that we take a moment and say it together. Now, as much as I know all of my southern friends down here like speaking French, I hate to the one to tell you that the proper pronunciation can be done with use of a French accent. As a reference I give you this link to the Merriam-Webster dictionary site for an audio clip.  Wednesday night lets all say it together!

As a choice of a name for a Cloud Computing platform, I must admit I find it a little strange. According to the wikipedia entry it a blue color, specifically “The clear blue color of the sky”. No, it may just be my view of the world, but if you were wanting to promote cloud solutions, would want to not draw attention to the beauty of a clear blue cloudless sky? Anyways, enough about words, come check out the code!

More information about the event is available on the Trinug website.

Next week I’m going to be attending the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference or PDC.  I’m very fortunate to have been able to attend three PDC’s previously in 2003, 2005, and 2008. These events included the first looks at Windows Longhorn, Avalon, Aero, Indigo, IE7, Office 12 and “the ribbon”, first looks at Windows 7, Azure, and the Surface SDK.

PDC 2003 was the first time I was able to hear Bill Gates speak live (And never would have guess I’d have lunch with him less than 5 years later). PDC is also first met some of the developers that have helped shape my career, becoming highly valued mentors and friends.

For anybody attending PDC for the first time this year, I encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunity, but don’t feel the you need to attend every single session. While the sessions are great, this event brings together that absolute best minds and talent related to Microsoft technologies. Make some time to interact and ask some questions. Take a few moments and sit back and listen to what others are asking. I still tell people the story about listening to Don Demsak, Kirk Evans,  Peter Provost , and more debating over some minor aspect of the SOAP web service protocol, and during the course of that conversation having my eyes opened to more knowledge and viewpoints on a wide array of topics than any single session that week.

An excellent way to get out and meet some people is the INETA Birds Of A Feather sessions that are taking place during PDC. The list of sessions is on the conference schedule, so take a look at find a session that’s of interest to you. The BoF room is also a great place to stop in to see what’s going at PDC and meet some people actively involved in user group communities across the nation and around the world. For more information on the sessions, visit http://www.pdcbof.com/.

I’m looking forward to the technology surprises that lay ahead next week, but more importantly I look forward to the people I will share the week with, the things I will learn, and the opportunities that will be created by interacting with them. If you’re attending, I hope I get the chance to chat with you!

For anybody not attending, Channel 9 will be streaming the keynote sessions live and broadcasting live from the PDC with a variety guests. Many members of the developer community not attending are participating in www.notatpdc.com presenting a variety of sessions during the week via Live Meeting.

Last weekend I attended and spoke at the Atlanta Silverlight Firestarter. This free, day long event featured a wide range of content presented by a number of presenters. The organizers did an awesome job and deserver a big pat on their back for their efforts.

During the afternoon I presented a Design Tools talk, focusing on Blend 3’s new SkechFlow prototyping tools and sample data. Here is the SketchFlow sample that I used during my session.

Robby T-Shirt Sketchflow Demo and Code

Last weekend I attended and spoke at the Atlanta Silverlight Firestarter. This free, day long event featured a wide range of content presented by a number of presenters. The organizers did an awesome job and deserver a big pat on their back for their efforts.

During the afternoon I presented a Design Tools talk, focusing on Blend 3’s new SkechFlow prototyping tools and sample data. I’ll be posting my slides and samples here shortly, along with further details.

Along with the launch of Silverlight 3, a number of new controls were introduced in the Silverlight Toolkit. One control worth taking a look at if you deal with any sort of data entry forms in your applications is the DataForm.

The quick and dirty demo is to take an object, in this case Photo.cs

          public
          class Photo
{ publicint PhotoId { get; set;
} publicstring Title { get; set;
} publicstring Url { get; set;
} publicstring Description {
get; set; } publicint Rating
{ get; set; }
public DateTime DateTaken { get; set; } publicbool Printed
{ get; set; } }

Add a DataForm control, set it’s CurrentItem property to a person obect

          <
          Grid
          x:Name
          ="LayoutRoot"
          >
          <
          Grid.Resources
          >
          <
          local:Photo
          x:Key
          ="MyPhoto"
          />
          </
          Grid.Resources
          >
          <
          dataFormToolkit:DataForm
          CurrentItem
          ="{StaticResource
MyPhoto}"
          Width
          ="300"
          >
          </
          dataFormToolkit:DataForm
          >
          </
          Grid
          >
        

And there we go, a DataForm!

Just like that, the control auto-generated the fields for us and wired them up to the object. In the case of the bool it selected a checkbox and uses a calendar control for the date taken field. Labels are also created based on the property names.

This is all well and good, but what if that’s not exactly what I want. For example, what if I don’t want to see the PhotoID and should not be able to change the url?

What if there was a way that we could somehow tell the system how we want it to handle the display of our photo class? System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations to the rescue! Data Annotations give us the ability to add attributes in our class that the data form looks at when generating these fields. Below is the photo class updated to hide the PhotoId field, make the URL read only, and update the label text for the DateTaken property.

          public
          class Photo
{ [Display(AutoGenerateField = false)] public int
PhotoId { get; set; } publicstring Title
{ get; set; } [Editable(false)] publicstring Url
{ get; set; } publicstring Description
{ get; set; } public int
Rating { get; set; } [Display(Name="Date
photo was taken")] public DateTime DateTaken { get; set;
} public bool Printed { get; set;
} }

And the result is

One of the additional things that can be done with DataAnnotations is data validation. By adding an attribute of [Required()] to the title, the Dataorm will pickup the validation requirement and automatically display an error message.

You will notice the OK button at the bottom of the form. I added AutoCommit=”False” to the DataForm XAML to allow me to notify the dataform that I was committing changes. In addition to required there are Range, StringLength, RegularExpression validators available.

In Part 2 I’ll go over how you can take even more control over the form by specifying content.

Every time I present on Silverlight I make a point to make sure people check out download and install the Silverlight Toolkit. After installing the developer tools, this should be your next step?

Why you ask? Controls! Controls! Controls!

In order to ship more frequent updates of controls and not be as closely tied to the runtime and SDK releases, Microsoft has selected to use CodePlex as the delivery method for all of these addition controls. (Please check out the list of controls below) The site also acts as a feedback mechanism to allow input from you and I on bugs and requested features. The source code is even available!

There are many great controls to use right out of the box, making that much more productive day 1 with Silverlight.

Now go download! http://www.codeplex.com/Silverlight/

[Details from the CodePlex site]

What is the Silverlight Toolkit?

• Components in the Mature/SDK Quality Band (The binaries for these components ship in the Silverlight 3 SDK, their full source is available in the Silverlight Toolkit.)
  • AutoCompleteBox
  • Calendar
  • ChildWindow
  • DataGrid
  • DataPager
  • DatePicker
  • GridSplitter
  • HeaderedItemsControl
  • TabControl
  • TreeView

• Components in the Stable Quality Band
  • DockPanel
  • Expander
  • HeaderedContentControl
  • Label
  • NumericUpDown
  • Viewbox
  • WrapPanel

• Components in the Preview Quality Band
  • Accordion
  • Charting
  • DataForm
  • DomainUpDown
  • ImplicitStyleManager
  • LayoutTransformer
  • Rating
  • TimePicker
  • TimeUpDown
  • 11 Themes

• Components in the Experimental Quality Band
  • GlobalCalendar
  • TransitioningContentControl
  • TreeMap

I’ll be celebrating my 9th wedding anniversary by giving a Silverlight 3 presentation to the Triangle .Net User Group in Raleigh NC on Aug 12th 2009.

“Join us for a walk through many of the powerful new features in Silverlight 3  and see how they can help you be productive writing Rich Internet Applications (RIA) with compelling user experiences. There's a lot more to Silverlight than video players and fancy animations, allowing us to create applications that people both want to use and can be productive with while still getting the project out the door on time. ”

If you’re in the neighborhood, please try to attend. It may be that last time I can leave the house for a while! ;-)

The date has been selected for the 2009 Raleigh Code Camp. It’s going to take place this year on Saturday September 19th in Raleigh, NC. The call for speakers is out, and you can submit your talks at www.codecamp.org for the event. We’re looking forward to another stellar event!

If you have never attended a Code Camp before, they are a free day of developer training put on by other developers. The speakers volunteer their time (and travel) to present on topics they are passionate about. With typically draw a number of MVP’s and other experts in a variety of topics areas. The cool things is that you don’t need to be a conference speaker or have some special title to speak, and in fact some of the best presentations I’ve seen are from people who are just passionate about their area of interest. The event is free, but you must register to attend. Attendee registration will begin in August.

On a side note, WPF MVVM Superstar Karl Shifflett is planning attend and may also be presenting a special version of his MVVM LOB training talk on Friday before. We’re looking at the interest and availability of venue right now. Karl’s an amazing and passionate WPF expert, and his talks have packed rooms across the country and around world. If you are interested in attending please let me know.

The date has been selected for the 2009 Raleigh Code Camp. It’s going to take place this year on Saturday September 15th in Raleigh, NC. The call for speakers is out, and you can submit your talks at www.codecamp.org for the event. We’re looking forward to another stellar event!

If you have never attended a Code Camp before, they are a free day of developer training put on by other developers. The speakers volunteer their time (and travel) to present on topics they are passionate about. With typically draw a number of MVP’s and other experts in a variety of topics areas. The cool things is that you don’t need to be a conference speaker or have some special title to speak, and in fact some of the best presentations I’ve seen are from people who are just passionate about their area of interest. The event is free, but you must register to attend. Attendee registration will begin in August.

On a side note, WPF MVVM Superstar Karl Shifflett is planning attend and may also be presenting a special version of his MVVM LOB training talk on Friday before. We’re looking at the interest and availability of venue right now. Karl’s an amazing and passionate WPF expert, and his talks have packed rooms across the country and around world. If you are interested in attending please let me know.

Friday at a launch event host in San Francisco and streamed live around the world, Microsoft publically released Silverlight 3 and Expression 3. The event include on overview keynote highlighting some partner projects as well as deep dive silverlight training sessions. Much of the content is available at http://seethelight.com .

While Silverlight 2 made some steps providing a strong development foundation the brought .Net to the a multi-browser, multi-platform environment. In just 22 months since the launch of Silverlight 1, it’s remarkable to see where to platform is at. Silverlight 3 is polished, robust, and ready to change to web.

At the beginning of the launch event S. Somasegar, Senior VP of Microsoft’s Developer Division talked a bit about Microsoft’s role in creating a development platform and tools that “helps you build great software that you want to build, that your users want to use". there are over 6 million .Net developers around the world with the core skills and tools in place already to develop Silverlight applications.

In the next few days we’ll be seeing a lot of new Silverlight 3 projects released as developers move their projects to the latest bits. There are a few breaking changes from the public beta, so please be sure to read through the changes documents. 

The must read posts:

Silverlight 3 Released

Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update- Part 1- Navigation Basics

Silverlight 3 Released! What is new/changed?

Welcoming Silverlight 3 RTW

What Happened to the asp-Silverlight Control-

Shawn Wildermuth - Biggest Suprises in Silverlight 3

The following arrived in the inbox tonight via MSDN Flash:

Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 Launch
Microsoft Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 will be unveiled at a virtual launch event on July 10, 2009. Attend the event at www.seethelight.com on July 10 to watch the keynote sessions and see new in-depth sessions. Stroll through the customer and partner pavilions in the Exhibition Hall or stop by 'The Visual Kitchen' TV show and watch the chefs as they dish up digital designs and development entrees as part of this exclusively produced online experience.

Looking forward to Friday!!!

If you’re interested in Silverlight 3 and building business applications you’re not going to want to miss this excellent free Silverlight training opportunity!

Join us at Advanced Home Care on Tuesday, 7th July, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. (Dinner & Meet & Greet: 6-6:45 p.m.)

Directions link: (4001 Piedmont Parkway, High Point, NC 27265).
Overview:

Silverlight 3 is expected to hit the web sometime soon this summer and in this presentation you will learn about some of the new features applicable to developing business applications with Silverlight 3. We will look at building solutions with the new navigation framework, accessing, validating, and updating data with .NET RIA Services, working with the new capabilities to make your Silverlight applications SEO friendly, and a few more things as well. Agenda : 6:00 – 6:30          Dinner & Meet & Greet 6:45 – Presentation · General Announcements · Building Business Applications in Silverlight 3.0 Presented by : · Jim Duffy is founder and president of TakeNote Technologies, an award-winning training, consulting, and software development company specializing in .NET software developer training and helping clients create business solutions with Microsoft technologies. Jim is a Microsoft Regional Director, a Microsoft MVP, an INETA speaker, and is an entertaining and popular speaker at regional user groups and international developer conferences. He is also a co-host of Computers 2K9, a call-in radio show on WRBZ (AM 850), 850 The Buzz, in Raleigh, NC. You can find additional information about Jim, TakeNote Technologies, links to his blog, as well as a public training class schedule, on-site training information, consulting information, and software development services at at   http://www.takenote.com Please see the www.triaddev.org site, or click the Directions link. So be sure to RSVP today! Note: You may RSVP in reply to this e-mail, or to www.triaddev.org

Tonight the gang at the TRINUG Web Apps SIG (Special Interest Group) decided to take a break from their monthly MVC and JQuery fun to take a look at some of the new features of Silverlight 3. The screenshot above and link below is the completed code sample that I was walking through to show some Silverlight basics and look at a few of the new features.

The sample includes Perspective 3d capabilities, element to element bindings, and Pixel Shader Effects.

Download SigDemo SL3 Code

The Silverlight 3 Out Of Browser Slide application demo that we took a look at as well is available here on Mike Harsh’s Blog.

Thanks to everybody that attended my presentation at the Carrboro RIA meetup last night.

Here are a few links to items discussed:

Getting started with Silverlight:

http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Microsoft Expression Blend website:

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

Some of the demo sites we looked at:

http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient/

http://www.smoothhd.com/

http://www.robzelt.com/silverlight/planets/

 

Silverlight Control Toolkit

http://silverlight.codeplex.com

Sketching User Experiences by Bill Buxton

Mix09 Content

http://www.vistimix.com

With the recent public announcement that the Release Candidate (RC) of Win7 was just days away, we’re starting to hear a lot more buzz around some details that had been kept secret.

Have ever wondered why Microsoft makes certain decisions for the Windows OS and what’s behind those decisions? For a behind the scenes explanation from some of the key engineers behind Windows 7 and IT Pro’s about their own experiences, check out the introduction to “Talking about Windows” by Stephen Rose.

But wait! There’s more! This isn’t just a video site, it’s a community hub that allows discussions around the content, as well as links to the Springboard Series of technical guidance.

“Communication is key...We look forward to continuing the conversation.”

Well worth checking out.

If you missed the MIX09 keynote, check it out!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on how different types of layout controls can be used make the tools and the framework do the heavy lifting for us in our Silverlight Development. Karl Shifflett recently posted an example creating a custom WPF control to make it easier to layout a data input screen and I decided to build out a Silverlight version.

The control extends an ItemsControl to use a custom container that provides a text label and layout for input controls.

The result is a custom control that allows me to add input controls such as TextBoxes and CheckBoxes and get labels and much of the styling for free. Silverlight’s DataBinding capabilities allow me to set a DataContext for the FormControl, and then simply specify an individual binding for each field.

          <
          TextBox
          Zelt:FormItem.LabelContent="First
Name"Text="{Binding FirstName}"Width="250"/><TextBoxZelt:FormItem.LabelContent="Last
Name"Text="{Binding LastName}"Width="250"/>

Utilizing this type of markup allows for a lot of potential in tool support. I’m sure that Karl plans to support this type of content in his XAML Power Toys add-in.

I’ve got a few additions before I share out the code, but I’d welcome any feedback on this approach.

In early December Montreal is hosting an exciting developer conference covering a wide range of topics from some of our industry's leading presenters. The 3 day conference is packed with information in 136 sessions. Pre and Post conference sessions are also available to increase your learning potential at the event. Attendees will also receive over $1000 in free software!

The fun starts Tuesday December 2nd with a key by Ted Neward. See you there!!!

http://www.devteach.com

Did you miss PDC? Want to see some of the latest content relating to Cloud Computing, Silverlight 2, and the future directions of ASP.NET 4? Links are below for your FREE invite!

Introducing the MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow:

The MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow is a  ¾ day, free developer event with a southern flair where you will learn about some of the latest developments in Microsoft technologies. For this edition we will cover a broad range of the latest Microsoft Technologies:

· Take a tour of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and the services that make it easy to give your applications the most compelling experiences and features.  Explore the journey a developer takes, from writing a service to launching that service in the cloud. Learn about the cloud services that enable developers to easily create or extend their applications and services.

· Microsoft Silverlight provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next-generation experiences for consumers and business, and demonstrate building a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft .NET.

· ASP.NET is evolving a very rapid pace, come explore all the latest features of ASP.Net such as Dynamic Data, MVC, and even take a sneak peak at the upcoming features in ASP.NET 4.0!  We’ll look at some new features such as taking control of your Control IDs, using the DynamicImage control, and ViewState management options.   We’ll spend plenty of time talking about MVC and creating applications based on this framework, so if you’re wondering how to leverage MVC in your web applications, this talk is for you!

12/2/2008 -- Charleston

12/3/2008 – Wilmington

12/4/2008 - Raleigh

12/5/2008 - Charlotte

A while back I posted on creating a custom layout panel in WPF that could arrange items based on an assigned date property to create a timeline view. Working through the creation of this panel taught me a great deal about how powerful the layout system was in WPF, and now how that power and flexibility extends into Silverlight 2.

The Silverlight 2 layout system is largely based on the use of panels, which includes the Canvas, Grid, and Stack Panel. Silverlight 2 includes a base Panel that you are able to derive from and override it’s default layout behavior. In addition to the basic functionality that comes with Panel, it provides two methods that you can easily override to create your own behavior. MeasureOverride and ArrangeOverride are the heart of the layout, determining the the position of elements. It’s essentially a to phase process where MeasureOverride examines the child elements of the panel to see what size they would “like to be”. The ArrangeOverride the tells the children the size and location they “are going to be”, based on whatever calculations you specify.

This example shows how using a custom attached property to specify an event date for any child element placed on the panel that ArrangeOverride can then use to position them.

This view showing the history of Windows version release dates is created using this XAML markup:

          <
          local:TimelinePanel
          Width
          ="800"
          Height
          ="280"
          StartDate
          ="1/1/1984"
          StopDate
          ="12/12/2010"
          Background
          ="LightGray"
          >
          <
          TextBlock
          local:TimelinePanel.EventDate="11/1/1985">Windows
1.0</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="12/1/1987">Windows
2.0</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="5/1/1990">Windows
3.0</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="4/1/1992">Windows
3.1</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="5/30/1995">Windows
NT 3.51</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="8/24/1995">Windows
95</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="6/1/1996">Windows
NT 4</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="6/1/1998">Windows
98</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="2/1/2000">Windows
2000</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="7/1/2000">Windows
Me</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="10/1/2001">Windows
XP</TextBlock><TextBlocklocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="1/1/2007">Windows
Vista</TextBlock></local:TimelinePanel>

As you can see from the XAML markup, a Start and Stop date are specified for the date range that the panel will display. Each child element, in this case TextBlock’s have an EventDate property specified. It should be noted that the TextBlock itself has no concept of an event date coded into it. EventDate is an Attached Property, a dependency property that can be “attached” to any element.

“An attached property is a concept defined by XAML. An attached property is intended to be used as a type of global property that is settable on any object element in XAML. In Silverlight version 2, attached properties are typically defined as a specialized form of dependency property that does not have the conventional property wrapper in the object's CLR object model .”

MSDN has more details on attached properties in Silverlight 2 online.

In the ArrangeOverride code I simply scale the date based on the EventDate’s relative position to the StartDate and StopDate of the TimeLinePanel giving me a horizontal position. For the vertical position I track the position of the previous element and if it overlaps I place it below, creating a cascading effect for overlapping elements.

          protected
          override Size
ArrangeOverride(Size finalSize) { double lastX = 0; double lastY
= 0; foreach (UIElement element inthis.Children)
{ DateTime eventDate = (DateTime)element.GetValue(EventDateProperty); double pos
= ScaleDate(eventDate); double left = finalSize.Width *
pos; double top = (double)element.GetValue(VerticalOffsetProperty); if (double.IsNaN(top)
== true) top = 0.00; double width
= element.DesiredSize.Width; double height = element.DesiredSize.Height; if (lastX
+ width > left) { top = lastY + 20 + (double)element.GetValue(VerticalOffsetProperty);
} else { top = 0 + (double)element.GetValue(VerticalOffsetProperty);
} element.Arrange(new Rect(left, top, width, height)); lastX
= left; lastY = top; } return finalSize; }

The use of custom panels for layout in Silverlight 2 creates a world of exciting possibilities, giving developers and designers an incredibly flexible set of tools. With the ability for panels to be reused within other controls such as the ListBox (Shown in my previous Solar System ListBox Demo) advanced user experiences become much easier to create. By placing the TimeLinePanel into the ItemsPanelTemplate of ListBox and attaching the EventDate to the ListBoxItem, I now have all of the functionality of a ListBox, with the visual display of my TimeLinePanel.

          <
          ListBox
          >
          <
          ListBox.ItemsPanel
          >
          <
          ItemsPanelTemplate
          >
          <
          local:TimelinePanel
          Width
          ="800"
          Height
          ="280"
          StartDate
          ="1/1/1984"
          StopDate
          ="12/12/2010"
          Background
          ="LightGray"
          >
          </
          local:TimelinePanel
          >
          </
          ItemsPanelTemplate
          >
          </
          ListBox.ItemsPanel
          >
          <
          ListBoxItem
          local:TimelinePanel.EventDate="11/1/1985"><TextBlockText="Windows
1.0"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="12/1/1987"><TextBlockText="Windows
2.0"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="5/1/1990"><TextBlockText="Windows
3.0"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="4/1/1992"><TextBlockText="Windows
3.1"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="5/30/1995"><TextBlockText="Windows
NT 3.51"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="8/24/1995"><TextBlockText="Windows
95"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="6/1/1996"><TextBlockText="Windows
NT 4"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="6/1/1998"><TextBlockText="Windows
98"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="2/1/2000"><TextBlockText="Windows
2000"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="7/1/2000"><TextBlockText="Windows
Me"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="10/1/2001"><TextBlockText="Windows
XP"/></ListBoxItem><ListBoxItemlocal:TimelinePanel.EventDate="1/1/2007"><TextBlockText="Windows
Vista"/></ListBoxItem></ListBox>

Live demo of TimeLinePanel

Silverlight 2 TimeLinePanel Demo Source Code

With the release of Silverlight 2, I’ve been working on updating a number of my existing demos as well as building a number of new ones for upcoming presentations. One of my favorite features in Silverlight 2 (And WPF) is the ability to change the visuals of a control through styles and templates, without impacting the control logic. The demo that really drove this home to me was created by Beatriz Costa. Her post on The power of Styles and Templates in WPF showed a simple yet effective way to have the visuals of controls can be altered, leaving the logic of the control intact to do all of the expected ListBox stuff. (Fire events, provide a selected item, respond to keyboard up/down). This flexibility and separation of control visuals from control logic is one of the key elements of WPF, and now Silverlight.

I started with a some basic controls on a page including a databound ListBox and a UserControl containing some TextBlocks.

After applying the styles and templates the application visuals are transformed into something much more interesting, while maintaining the complete functionality of a ListBox, while appearing as a Solar System ListBox.

          <
          ListBox
          x:Name
          ="listbox1"
          Height
          ="600"
          Width
          ="1000"
          SelectionChanged
          ="listbox1_SelectionChanged"
          Template
          ="{StaticResource
ListBoxTemp}"
          ItemContainerStyle
          ="{StaticResource
DefaultListBoxItemStyle}"
          ItemTemplate
          ="{StaticResource
ListBoxItemContainerPlanet}"
          >
          </
          ListBox
          >
        

In order to take things a step further, I also replaced the ItemsPanel of the ListBox with a custom carousel panel. The original CarouselPanel code I started with is by Jamie Rodriguez and found here.

          <
          ListBox.ItemsPanel
          >
          <
          ItemsPanelTemplate
          >
          <
          local:CarouselPanel
          x:Name
          ="planets"
          Width
          ="800"
          Height
          ="600"
          Grid.Row="0"Speed="0.03"UseMousePosition="False"ScalePerspective=".2"/></ItemsPanelTemplate></ListBox.ItemsPanel>

The result is an interactive interface with the planets orbiting around the screen, while still maintaining the full functionality of the underlying ListBox below.

Live Demo HERE

Source Code: (Soon)

Control Customization Documentation Resources:

Styling and Templating Overview
Control Styles and Templates
Creating a Templatable Control

** And yes… I know the ongoing debate about Pluto being a “dwarf planet” and not a “real” planet any more… deal with it.

Registration will soon be opening for the Raleigh Code Camp 2008 Fall Edition (RCC2008FE for short). Keep an eye on www.codecamp.org and www.trinug.org to register for the event in the near future. It’s going to be a crazy couple of weeks for me here so I wanted to get this reminder out early.I was able to sneak a peak at the session list and it’s action packed with a variety of great topics covering pretty much every aspect of .Net development.

We’re also very excited to have Karl Shifflett back in the Carolinas as our keynote speaker. Karl who has recently taken a position with Microsoft in Redmond will be covering some WPF and Silverlight related topics including his recently released XAML Power Toys and Ocean.

If you have never attended a Code Camp event before, I strongly encourage you to plan to attend. The events pack a variety of topics presented by a wide range of speakers, both local and from afar. In addition to the presenters, the events attract an energetic group of your peers interested in learning and expanding their .NET related skills. This is a great way to cram much of the value of an industry conference into a local, 1 day, free to attend event. With some uncertainty  in the economy, this is a great way to get some free training, network with your peers, and sharpen your skills.

With Code Camp falling just a couple of weeks after the Microsoft PDC conference, I can pretty much guarantee that at least a few of the sessions will contain some valuable details on things to come.

As you’ve likely heard, Microsoft has released Silverlight 2. I was fortunate to have been involved along the way and getting to interact with many members of the various teams involved. I want to start by offering a gigantic congratulations to everybody involved. You guys did a great job moving things along with such speed an innovation! Having had a chance to see a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes I have a tremendous level of respect and admiration for that teams of great people that made this release possible It is truly an amazing  and passionate group, and every member should be proud. It seems like just yesterday that “Silverlight” was unveiled as the proper name or WPF/E. I can’t wait to see the future innovation.

Some of the key highlights of this release include:

•.NET Framework support with a rich base class library. This is a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.

•Powerful built-in controls. These include DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar controls and more.

•Advanced skinning and templating support. This makes it easy to customize the look and feel of an application.

•Deep zoom. This enables unparalleled interactivity and navigation of ultrahigh resolution imagery.

•Comprehensive networking support. Out-of-the-box support allows calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services, enabling users to create applications that easily integrate with existing back-end systems.

•Expanded .NET Framework language support. Unlike other runtimes, Silverlight 2 supports a variety of programming languages, including Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby, making it easier for developers already familiar with one of these languages to repurpose their existing skill sets.

•Advanced content protection. This now includes Silverlight DRM, powered by PlayReady, offering robust content protection for connected Silverlight experiences.

•Improved server scalability and expanded advertiser support. This includes new streaming and progressive download capabilities, superior search engine optimization techniques, and next-generation in-stream advertising support.

•Cross-platform and cross-browser support. This includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux in Firefox, Safari and Windows Internet Explorer.

For me personally, Silverlight 2 represents a great opportunity to leverage my existing skill investment in .NET and extend beyond the server and desktop  into a richer browser experience. I’ve been working on updating the code for a number of new posts that I will be sharing in the days ahead, as well as updating some of my previous samples.

Microsoft has released Release Candidate 0 of Silverlight 2 today. This release is intended for developers to allow them to test there application and bring it up to speed with changes for the release. Tim Heuer has an excellent post explaining the details. If you’re developing for Silverlight 2 go read.

It’s exciting times in Silverlight Land!

Earlier this spring the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group released the Composite Application Guidance for WPF, or Prism. Initially released for WPF, the team has been continuing their work, expanding the scope to include WPF and Silverlight.

The direction they are taking includes the ability to build applications that can provide both both Silverlight and WPF experiences through sharing and re-using code and components between the two environments. I’ve honestly learned a lot digging into Prism 1, and look forward into digging deeper into the new bits in the week ahead.

David Hill has a great post that includes more details here.

Congrats to the Prism 2.0 team on getting this turned around so quickly!

After doing that "Seinfeld thing" Microsoft has released a series of ads standing up for PC. I wonder if I should send in an "I own a Mac, but it runs Vista" clip?

The full set is available here

The innovative minds over at Identity Mine have release a beta of Desklighter, their utility as part of their Blendables product family to create Silverlight applications that run outside of the browser.

"Desklighter is a windows utility that will create a “Desklight” from Silverlight xap file. The Desklight is a standalone exe application that renders Silverlight content that is easily portable and accessible. With Desklighter, you can share your Silverlight applications without having to worry about the hosting infrastructure. Distribute your Silverlight content whenever and wherever you need it. The possibilities are endless."

This concept creates a lot of very interesting possibilities, especially in the area of disconnected applications. Back when I saw how the New York Time created a special host on the Mac for their Silverlight based Times Reader, I really started to think about the potential.

With all of this comes many questions about functionality, so I'm curious to see how things work.

Adam Kinney recently announced the launch of a new Channel 9 series called <DeepVoice Echo="High">The Continuum Show</DeepVoice> in which he takes a look at many of the exciting new technologies from Microsoft that are pushing the limits of traditional applications on the web and desktops through technologies such as WPF, Silverlight, and ASP.NET

"This is the beginning of a new show on Channel 9 focused on the world of UI technologies available from Microsoft.  This includes some of your favorites like WPF, Silverlight, ASP.NET, Expression, IE8 and more.  We'll be showing new features, patterns and practices from experts and samples of inspirational applications. "

Episode 0 gives an intro

Episode 1 looks at the MVC Framework with Phil Haack

Episode 2 details the NBCOlympics.com video player

This space is getting really exciting. Great job Adam! I look forward to seeing more.

Triangle .NET User Group
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 , 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

INETA Speaker Jeffrey Palermo will be presenting at TRINUG August meeting in Raleigh, NC. Registration is required for this event which is being held at ECPI.

dive into how to design a presentation layer using ASP.NET MVC.  In today's industry, TDD, DI, and SoC are proven concepts that lead to more maintainable applications.  Along with demonstrating how to use these techniques with ASP.NET MVC, we will discuss just what concerns should be separated.  This talk provides a unique perspective on separation of concerns and uses TDD and DI to make it happen.  MvcContrib is used in all the demos.

TO REGISTER and get more info visit the TRINUG Website

South Carolina Silverlight Superstar Page Brooks has put together an awesome contest with some great prizes!

"The Silverlight Control Builder Contest is all about contributing to the Silverlight Community. We hope this contest will serve as a catalyst for an expanding Silverlight control developer community."

I look forward to seeing the innovation from the community, and will hopefully get something of my own submitted.

For those of you that attended by recent talk at the SoCal Code Camp in San Diego, here is the code sample that I used including my one page text file that I used instead of Power Point

It's called Code Camp, not Power Point Camp for a reason right? (No hard feelings against anybody planning to attend or previously attended a power point related event)

In this sample I start off taking a basic look at some of the controls available in Silverlight 2 (Beta 2 at this point) and then move into Control Styling.  In the SilverlightCotrolStyling project you can see that basic use of "Property Bag Styling", or defining a style to set the available properties of a control.

           <
          StackPanel
           Orientation
          ="Horizontal"
           Margin
          ="20,20"> 
          
          
          <
          Button
           Content
          ="Default"
           Height
          ="55"
           Width
          ="160"/> 
          
          
          <
          Canvas
           Width
          ="80"
>
          <!-- Just used to take up some space
-->
          </
          Canvas
          > 
          
          
          <!--
This second button is styled using the "FancyButtonStyle" Static resource from app.xaml--> 
          
          
          <
          Button
           Content
          ="Fancy"
           Height
          ="55"
           Width
          ="160"
           Style
          ="{
          StaticResource
           FancyButtonStyle
          }"/> 
          
          
          </
          StackPanel
          >
        

The result gives us a styled button, that can be used consistently throughout the application.

In the next example, SilverlightControlSkinning I take a look at defining my own template to completely replace the visuals of a control, in this case a button.

          
          
          <
          StackPanel
           Orientation
          ="Horizontal"
           Margin
          ="50"> 
          
          
          <
          Button
           Content
          ="Button"
           Height
          ="55"
           Width
          ="160"/> 
          
          
          <
          Canvas
           Width
          ="80"></
          Canvas
          > 
          
          
          <!--
This button uses the template "SubmitButtonTemplate" from app.xaml --> 
          
          
          <
          Button
           Template
          ="{
          StaticResource
           SubmitButtonTemplate
          }"
           Content
          ="Submit"/>
          
          
          </
          StackPanel
          >
        

This gives us complete control over the visuals of the control, while maintaining the existing logic.

In the Silverlight CustomControl project, I put a number of these concepts (Including a UserControl and Custom Layout Panel) together to create a new visual appearance for a list box containing planets and their associated info.

I will be posting some more details on specifics of the projects, but wanted to get it posted for those that attended. Please feel free to contact by with any comments or questions. I'll dive into the Visual State Manager project tomorrow.

Wow, I'm really late on getting this posted....

The RDU .NET User Experience group will be meeting tonight at 6:00 pm  at 1143 Executive Circle, Suite H, Cary, 27511. I'll be walking through some demos on "Over the wire data access" (aka - network communication) as well as reviewing some of the changes in Silverlight 2 Beta 2

If you're interested in WPF, Silverlight, and issues surrounding Rich Interactive Applications you'll want to check it out.

If you're planning to attend, please RSVP by sending me a note or leaving a comment.

Last week at TechEd I had the privilege of attending a roundtable luncheon with Bill Gates and S. Somasegar following their keynote presentation, along with a group of "influential members of the community."

With this being the last developer conference keynote for Bill before transitioning from Microsoft to a full time role with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the timing added extra significance to the event. The lunch conversation largely centered around education, both in the US and around the world and ways to improve it including the use of technology. It's great to still hear that Tablet PC's are still in the picture.

It was extremely interesting to hear how many of the same skills and viewpoints that made Bill so successful with Microsoft are now being applied through the foundation. His explanations of the foundation's approach to solving problems was extremely insightful and showed a very systematic and numeric approach to problem solving. It was great to see him very relaxed and speak candidly about his goals and passion for making a difference through the foundation. As a community, it was motivating for us to think more about how our efforts could be used to make a difference as well.

It was a lunch that I will never forget, and an honor to be associated with the group in attendance. Thank you to Bill, Soma, and everybody that was involved in making this event possible and for including me in it.

Just a [late] reminder the the RDU .NET User Experience group will be meeting at 6:00 pm next on Tuesday May 27, 2008 at 1143 Executive Circle, Suite H, Cary, 27511.

Local Microsoft Regional Director Jim Duffy will be presenting highlights of from a recent day long Silverlight 2 training presentation on Building Line of Business (LOB) Applications with Silverlight 2.

If you're interested in WPF, Silverlight, and issues surrounding Rich Interactive Applications you'll want to check it out.

If you're planning to attend, please RSVP by sending me a note or leaving a comment.

Today ScottGu announced on his blog the release of a public beta of the upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases planned for "this summer as free updates"

There are a few important installation notes, and a reminder that this is a beta, but there are also a bunch of very cool improvements. Scott's blog post goes into many of the details for web developers and VS2008 in general and Tim has a post going into specifics relating to WPF.

Download links of goodness:

• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (Beta)
• .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Beta)
• Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions SP1 (Beta)
• Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 (Beta)

In a recent blog post, Karl takes us on a journey to Metadata Island. (From the pictures, it looks like a place I would like to visit frequently!). Though his post and accompanying Silverlight videos he brings up a number of very valid points regarding the use of existing metadata to make development faster.

A big pain point in development is duplication of efforts, and even in simple cases it can eat up a lot of time very quickly. Consider creating a simple database entry form. We're first creating a database table with field names, we then construct a data layer of some sort to read and write to those field names, we then add textbox (or other) controls to a form facilitate the data entry/edits, and then usually create labels (again using the field names), tools tips are added, data validation. To Karl's point, all of this information lived in the database already, or possibly even in a specification document prior to the database being created.

More tooling support would be great. Or at least some consistent tooling, as I know we've all written code to do a variety of these tasks in the past, but never really in coordination with VS.

[Karl's form generator]

As we go forward, I hope that we see a lot of innovation in this space. I think there are a lot of opportunities as WPF and Silverlight push into line of business applications.

Bill and the gang down in Charlotte have opened up registration for their spring Code Camp on Sat May 17th. A number of people from the Raleigh area are thinking of carpooling down, and a number of us are speaking at the event. I will be presenting a session on Silverlight 2 control customization.

Code Camps are a great way to get training on a variety of topics, as well as to meet peers in the community and benefit from the energy and excitement that goes hand in hand with these events.

To attend this event you must pre-register: http://www.developersguild.org/Default.aspx?tabid=240 

The details are finally in place for the beginnings of the Raleigh/Durham Dot Net User Experience / Silverlight group. We will be meeting on Tuesday April 22, 2008 at 6:00 PM. We will be meeting at 1143 Executive circle, suite H, Cary, NC 27511.

[*****pushpin estimated may not be exact]

Please help us spread the word! If you know of people working with or interested in Silverlight/WPF in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area please forward this along.

What is the purpose of a new group?

The purpose of the group is to bring together individuals who share an interest in exploiting the Microsoft .NET platform to create Rich Interactive Applications that provide the end user with the best possible user experience. We will be focusing on  using technologies such as Silverlight, WPF, etc., as well as the related design user experience topics that are related.

Who should attend?

As suggested above, the audience really isn't limited to any type of individual; however, for the sake of providing "labels", the group is targeting Microsoft Silverlight / WPF / Expression  developer and designer audience. While we will be started off with some basics of Silverlight, the goal of the group is going to be to focus more on intermediate and advanced topics. We will be working jointly with the Triangle .Net User Group (www.trinug.org) which is starting to offer a Silverlight 101 focus group.

Where do I sign up?

There are a number of logistical issues that we need to work out getting this group going, such as a website, etc. If you are planning attend the next meeting, please leave a comment or drop me an email so that we can plan for numbers and hopefully have some discussions beforehand on what people would like to see.

What will be covered?

At the first session I will be presenting some work I have been doing relating to styling and Control Templates in  Silverlight 2 controls and have a Q&A. At that time we will also get some ideas of what we'd like to see in future events.

Why DNUX?

I met Cory Smith who has started the DNUX (www.dnux.org) groups in the Dallas Texas area and I thought the idea was brilliant. While our initial topics will likely be Silverlight related, I did not want to bind us complete to one technology. Dot Net User Experience provides a much better description of the direction I'd like to see. Hopefully I'll find him again so I can official ask to "borrow" the name idea.

I've been talking with a number of people about starting a Silverlight focused group here in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area. If you're interested, se if you can come out to the presentation I'm giving for the Triangle .Net User Group Web Applications SIG on Wednesday and we can maybe chat afterwards as well about setting another meeting up later in April. I'm thinking maybe April 22nd, 24th, or 29th?

On the topic of SIlverlight meetings.... I think there are a few of us that may soon need a local meeting more like this....

Silverlight Rehab - You're not alone

Stay out of the dark and go into the light! ;-)

If you're interested in some FREE Silverlight 2 training, on Wednesday evening (April 2, 2008 6:00 pm) I will be giving a presentation on Silverlight 2 Controls for the Triangle .Net User Group's(TRINUG) Web Application SIG. The meeting is being held at Compuware in Durham, NC. I'll be covering the controls currently included in Silverlight 2, as well as creating User Controls and Custom Controls, and also styling and skinning existing controls.

On Wednesday April 9, 2008 Brad Abrams will be presenting at the Triangle .Net User Group in Raleigh/Durham, NC. The presentation will be "Sort of think of it like Mix08 in 1.5 hours" covering Silverlight 2, the MVC Framework, and other new exciting technologies from Microsoft.

In addition to the fun of having Brad in town, our friends at FarPoint are sponsoring the event and treating us to a traditional BBQ feast! Space is limited so please register soon.

Again to rephrase, YOU MUST REGISTER TO ATTEND!

One of the fun parts of Mix08 was seeing the Code Trip bus set sail on it's voyage around the western US. It's a bunch of Microsoft DE's and prominent members of the developer community that will be holding a series of events as they travel from city to city. I look forward to seeing the bus again at it's final destination at the MVP summit in Seattle in April. 

The Code Trip site has a listing of the events taking place, real time bus GPS tracking, and a travel log. Anybody recognize the two in the preview image?

Happy trails Code Trip Team!!!

Wednesday, March 12, Chris Eargle will be presenting on Continuous Integration using MSBuild and CruiseControl at the March Meeting of TriNUG. Chris has an excellent grasp on this topic, and this presentation, while easily approachable for those new to CI, has plenty of technical depth for those more familiar with the topic. Chris is a great speaker, and this event will leave you well-versed and capable in setting up your own CI solution.

[Direct scrape from Dug's blog but I wanted to make sure we got the word out!]

Was this the Microsoft Research showing at TED that had Scoble in tears?

See the video HERE of Photosynth and related technologies that they're working on. Very cool.

Are you thinking about going to Tech Ed in Orlando this June? One of the best parts of the event are the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions put on by the INETA and Culminis communities. They're a lot of fun, and a great chance to chat face to face with peers in the community. Go ahead an submit a topic if you have some ideas, and plan to attend if you're in the neighborhood!

The official info....

Submit your ideas as topics for Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) discussions and volunteer to be a moderator!

According to some of last year's attendees, BOFs were one of the 3 best things about Tech Ed 2007. While it may seem far in the future, it's time to start thinking about topics for the Birds of a Feather sessions at Tech Ed Developers in June.

With the conference split into two consecutive Tech Ed events for the first time this year, INETA is organizing the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions at Tech Ed 2008 Developers in Orlando June 3-6, 2008 while our sister organization, Culminis, is organizing the BOF sessions at Tech Ed IT Professionals, June 10-13.

If you're not familiar with the concept, a Birds-of-a-Feather session is an open discussion lead by a moderator who is not a Microsoft employee. The sessions are not presentations, there are no projectors. Unlike the Keynotes and Breakout sessions which are mostly one to many communication, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are many to many communication and don't necessarily focus on Microsoft products or technology.  They are about people talking with people - connecting, sharing, networking, and creating community. It's that simple, and that's what we do best.

Over the past several years Birds of a Feather sessions have become fully integrated into the Tech Ed agenda.  This means you'll see them in the online scheduling tool and they'll be listed in the mini-guide.  There will be daytime sessions along with the other conference technical tracks, as well as an All-BOF Night on Wednesday, June 3rd from 6:30 to 9:00 PM.

As a result of this integration, BOF Submissions and Voting close on March 19th!

The BOFs are all about community participation, and community is a critical part of their success. INETA and Culminis solicit session proposals - you submit topics you would like to have discussed - your peers vote on they you want to see as BOF sessions - and then the organizers select, schedule, publicize and organize the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.  If your BOF topic submission is selected, you are then asked to moderate the session.  You are welcome to submit more than one topic!!  Anyone attending a BOF can contribute to the discussion.

Do your part to continue the community tradition and get involved now!  Here's how you can participate:

1. Get the word out.  Blog about the Call for Topics, or post the Call in forums you participate in.  Let folks know about the voting and about your favorite topics.

2. Propose a Topic. If you're going to be at Tech Ed - if there's a topic you'd like to discuss with your peers and you'd be willing to moderate that discussion- click through and submit the topic.

3. Vote.  Check the Tech Ed Developers BOF Voting Page and as you see topics appear that interest you, vote for them!

4. Stay Tuned. As BOF session ideas come in, they will be added to the Tech Ed Developers BOF Voting Page for you to select. When the Tech Ed Schedule Builder goes live in April, mark your calendars and plan to attend and join in great discussions. We'll also have more to say about how you can volunteer to be a Host at one or more BOF sessions in the next INETA newsletter.

For Instructions check out: http://www.ineta.org/newsletters/misc/2008-02/bof_instructions.pdf

Are you thinking about going to Tech Ed in Orlando this June? One of the best parts of the event are the Birds-of-a-Feather put on by the INETA and Culminis communities. They're a lot of fun, and a great chance to chat face to face with peers in the community. Go ahead an submit a topic if you have some ideas, and plan to attend if you're in the neighborhood!

The official info....

Submit your ideas as topics for Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) discussions and volunteer to be a moderator!

According to some of last year's attendees, BOFs were one of the 3 best things about Tech Ed 2007. While it may seem far in the future, it's time to start thinking about topics for the Birds of a Feather sessions at Tech Ed Developers in June.

With the conference split into two consecutive Tech Ed events for the first time this year, INETA is organizing the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions at Tech Ed 2008 Developers in Orlando June 3-6, 2008 while our sister organization, Culminis, is organizing the BOF sessions at Tech Ed IT Professionals, June 10-13.

If you're not familiar with the concept, a Birds-of-a-Feather session is an open discussion lead by a moderator who is not a Microsoft employee. The sessions are not presentations, there are no projectors. Unlike the Keynotes and Breakout sessions which are mostly one to many communication, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions are many to many communication and don't necessarily focus on Microsoft products or technology.  They are about people talking with people - connecting, sharing, networking, and creating community. It's that simple, and that's what we do best.

Over the past several years Birds of a Feather sessions have become fully integrated into the Tech Ed agenda.  This means you'll see them in the online scheduling tool and they'll be listed in the mini-guide.  There will be daytime sessions along with the other conference technical tracks, as well as an All-BOF Night on Wednesday, June 3rd from 6:30 to 9:00 PM.

As a result of this integration, BOF Submissions and Voting close on March 19th!

The BOFs are all about community participation, and community is a critical part of their success. INETA and Culminis solicit session proposals - you submit topics you would like to have discussed - your peers vote on they you want to see as BOF sessions - and then the organizers select, schedule, publicize and organize the Birds-of-a-Feather sessions.  If your BOF topic submission is selected, you are then asked to moderate the session.  You are welcome to submit more than one topic!!  Anyone attending a BOF can contribute to the discussion.

Do your part to continue the community tradition and get involved now!  Here's how you can participate:

1. Get the word out.  Blog about the Call for Topics, or post the Call in forums you participate in.  Let folks know about the voting and about your favorite topics.

2. Propose a Topic. If you're going to be at Tech Ed - if there's a topic you'd like to discuss with your peers and you'd be willing to moderate that discussion- click through and submit the topic.

3. Vote.  Check the Tech Ed Developers BOF Voting Page and as you see topics appear that interest you, vote for them!

4. Stay Tuned. As BOF session ideas come in, they will be added to the Tech Ed Developers BOF Voting Page for you to select. When the Tech Ed Schedule Builder goes live in April, mark your calendars and plan to attend and join in great discussions. We'll also have more to say about how you can volunteer to be a Host at one or more BOF sessions in the next INETA newsletter.

For Instructions check out: http://www.ineta.org/newsletters/misc/2008-02/bof_instructions.pdf

It's going to be an interesting week ahead, with a number of events in the developer world. On Wednesday Feb 27th, Microsoft will begin the "Global Wave" of launch events around the world, starting with a large scale event in Los Angeles. At this event we will see Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 officially launched.

One week later is the Microsoft MIX08 conference where it is anticipated that Microsoft will be showing Silverlight 2 and IE8 for the first time, as well as well as updates to Visual Studio and futures such as the MVC Framework.  (Note that it's apparently "Silverlight 2" now and not Silverlight 2.0. ScottGu has given a few preview details on his blog) I get the feeling that there are a lot of other exciting announcements in the pipe that are being held back and will be made between or during these events. (There is also the TED conference that could preview some new things from Microsoft Research)

Not to be left out of the picture, It also sounds like Adobe will be fighting for attention next week as well as they are expected to release Flex 3 and AIR. We'll save the Flash vs Silverlight debate for another day, but the important fact is that competition in this space is really heating up.

There has been a lot of debate about the future of RIA (Rich Internet Applications or Rich Interactive Applications, or as I prefer to think of it, a way to get Rich on the Internet Again), and what the impact really will be. There are some camps that feel that HTML + JavaScript will be as far as mainstream development goes within the browsers. Personally while I do not think that in the near future every html based site will cease to exist and be replaced by a Silverlight or Flash applications, I do think that these technologies represent some major opportunities for existing sites to add some dramatic enhancements without completely replacing everything that is. My hope is not that we see more of the same, but get to experience some real innovations in user interfaces and the way that information is presented to us.

While some developers/admin users have claimed that they are not willing to install the runtimes for these environments, the reality is that most end users want more interactivity and will gladly click Next, Yes, Yes, Next at the prospect of doing something cool. If the download is quick, and relatively easy they will install it.Smart developers will use ways of gradually introducing enhanced features into their sites.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say congratulations to two very deserving friends of mine that were recently awarded Regional Director status by Microsoft, Daniel Egan and Jim Duffy. Without going into all the details, (You can learn more here) but let's just say it's a pretty big deal and these guys should be feeling pretty good about their accomplishments. Good job guys! You both deserve it!

Jim received a big round of applause at the Raleigh Code Camp when our DE Brian Hitney made the big announcement. Below is Daniel after receiving the email following an INETA user group presentation he gave in Florida.

All I can say is that I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOO looking forward to attending Microsoft's MIX08 conference this year in Vegas.

One of the coolest things about MIX is how fast they get the sessions videos up online. Last year I remember downloading sessions I missed at the airport to watch on the flight home.

Some current highlights from the schedule that have me tingling are:

Microsoft Silverlight and Dynamic Languages - Learn how the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) works in Silverlight. Includes an introduction to Microsoft Silverlight for Python and Ruby programmers.

Effective User Interfaces in Windows Presentation Foundation and Microsoft Silverlight - Come see how customizable user interfaces were created by extending XAML in a way that integrates various content formats into a single consistent UI. Learn how to build an effective UI, extend XAML, build a Windows Presentation Foundation and Microsoft Silverlight application that can consume extended XAML, and much more.

Creating Rich, Dynamic User Interfaces with Silverlight 2 - See how to use the Microsoft Silverlight 2 control model to efficiently design and develop custom controls, style existing controls, create control templates, and package your controls for re-use to develop Rich Internet Applications. Also hear about the capabilities for localization and accessibility.

Working with Data and Web Services in Microsoft Silverlight 2 = Learn how easy it is to utilize POX, REST, RSS, ATOM, JSON, and SOAP in your Microsoft Silverlight mashup applications. Also learn how to easily access and display data with Silverlight using LINQ and databinding.

From Flash to Silverlight: A Rosetta Stone - Come learn how Cynergy Systems has been translating skills in Flash/Flex development to Microsoft Silverlight 2 with an eye for great design. Learn how to create custom animation techniques, apply popular Flash tricks to Silverlight, and more.

And there there's the MVC content and the WPF content.... OH.. And what about that IE8 thing?

Registration for Code Camp RDU on Feb 16, 2008 is almost full. If you're planning to attend this free day of .Net developer training, make sure you register over on the www.trinug.org website.

This year's event has a speaker list including Richard Campbell, Carl Franklin, Mark Dunn, Ken Spencer, Don Demsak, Miguel Castro, Steve Avery, Scott Forsyth, Jim Wooley and many more.

Topics include LINQ, SharePoint, MVC, SIlverlight, ASP.NET AJAX and more.

The last spaces will likely fill up fast so get registered if you're not already. This is an event you will not want to miss!

Jeffery Palermo has announced an open-source project to create solution that can serve as a user group CodeCamp web site. The even cooler part is that it is being built on top ASP.NET MVC Framework that was recently released.

This is a great way to get involved in doing something for the community, while sharpening your skills at the same time. Count me in!

Congratulations to everybody that received a Microsoft MVP award today. A special shout out to D'Arcy Lussier and Chris Love on their well deserved awards! Great job guys!

One of the biggest complaints of heard the the past from developers when new versions of Visual Studio comes out is that the can not take advantage of the new IDE because their company/project is still using the previous version of the .NET Framework.

A major step that was taken in Visual Studio was to separate the IDE from the framework. This means you can use the goodness of VS2008 on existing 2.0 projects. Brad Abrams links to the ASP.NET Ajax 2.0 templates that you can install in VS2008 or create new web projects targeting 2.0.

Don't let framework adoption rates prevent you from using the great new features in VS2008!

Tonight Microsoft took the covers off of the new ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview and the ASP.NET MVC Toolkit

While I'm extremely excited by the new ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) I could not overlook the Silverlight Controls for ASP.NET that make it easy to integrate the rich behavior of Silverlight into a web application. It provides an updated MediaPlayer Server Control  and Silverlight Server control.

The MediaPlayer Server Control allows you to integrate media sources into your web project without any knowledge of XAML or Javascript using pre-built skins, or by referencing custom XAML skins.

          <
          asp:MediaPlayer
          runat
          ="server"
          AutoPlay
          ="true|false"
          ScaleMode
          ="None|Zoom|Stretch"
          EnableCaptions
          ="true|false"
          Height
          ="height"
          MediaSkin
          ="skinName"
          MediaSource
          ="URL"
          Muted
          ="true|false"
          PlaceholderImageSource
          ="URL"
          PluginBackColor
          ="color"
          Volume
          ="volume"
          Width
          ="width"
          OnClientChapterStarted
          ="functionName"
          OnClientCurrentStateChanged
          ="functionName"
          OnClientMarkerReached
          ="functionName"
          OnClientMediaEnded
          ="functionName"
          OnClientMediaFailed
          ="functionName"
          OnClientMediaOpened
          ="functionName"
          OnClientVolumeChanged
          ="functionName" <Chapters><asp:MediaChapterPosition="index"Title="title"ThumbnailImageSource="URL"/></Chapters></asp:media>

The Silverllight Server Control allows you to reference your own XAML. The control also references client JavaScript files associated with the XAML.

          <
          asp:Silverlight
          runat
          ="server"
          ClientType
          ="ClientType"
          EnableHtmlAccess
          ="true|false"
          EnableFrameRateCounter
          ="true|false"
          EnableRedrawRegios
          ="true|false"
          InitParamsters
          ="parameters"
          InstallationMode
          ="None|Inline|Linked"
          MaxFrameRate
          ="rate"
          PluginBackColor
          ="color"
          Source
          ="XamlSource"
          Version
          ="version"
          Windowless
          ="true|false"
          ScaleMode
          ="None|Zoom|Stretch"
          OnClientPluginError
          ="functionName"
          OnClientPluginResized
          ="functionName"
          OnClientPluginLoaded
          ="functionName"
          OnClientPluginFullScreenChanged
          ="functionName" </asp:Silverlight>

More on this later... now onto the MVC...

Karl sent me a note a little while ago and I've been meaning to blog about this, but in the mean time I think Karl has gone without sleep since then and along with Josh Smith has already rolled out Mole version 2! You can get it HERE

Mole 2 is

"a high performance, full featured, multifunction visualizer that allows in-depth inspection of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) visual and logical trees. For each element in the visual or logical tree the developer can view all properties, visual image, run-time XAML or IEnumerable collection data."

If you work with WPF this, Mole is a thing of beauty! ( I wonder it would take to do this for Silverlight? )

Great work guys! For more info please see http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/mole-visual-studio-visualizer-for-wpf/

According to the Chinese Zodiac calendar 2008 is the year of the rat, but if you ask me it should be called the year of the Microsoft conference.

Starting in March, just after the official launch of VS2008, Windows Server 2008, and SQL Server 2008, MIX08 is scheduled to take place in Las Vegas March 5-7 at the snazzy Venetian Resort Hotel Casino.

According to recent announcements by Scott Guthrie, MIX08 will likely be the the big event for Silverlight 2.0 hitting the streets in a Beta with GO-Live licensing. This is definitely the "What's Next on the Web" conference. This will be the third year in a row for MIX.

In June, down in Orlando Tech·Ed 2008 will take on a new look, extending into a two week event featuring separate back to back developer and IT professional conferences. (Developers June 3-6 and IT Pro's June 10-13). Tech-Ed is the most "Here and Now" event, focusing on doing real work released products and technologies, covering the complete spectrum. It's going to be interesting how the splitting of the two crowds changes the event, and how this will impact some of the technologies that sort of fall in the middle. Many in the Sharepoint community are not too happy with the decision, but we'll see how it goes.

2008 will also feature PDC, the Microsoft Professional Developers conference in Los Angeles. PDC only happens every few years, usually providing developers with an early look in new technologies that will take shape over the follow years. PDC05 and PDC07 previewed gave developers early looks at VS2005, Windows Vista, and .Net 3.0 (WPF, WCF, WF).

I like to compare PDC and Tech-Ed by saying that Tech-Ed is where you go to learn about technologies and PDC is where you go to see the things that you're going to have to learn in the times ahead to stay on top of things.

I if I had to choose only to attend PDC would be my first choice, followed my MIX and then Tech-Ed. (That's assuming that I was only allowed to choose from Microsoft host events and not things like Dev Connections and VS Live, then it would depend...)

Bottom line is that 2008 is going to be a very exciting year in dev land!

If you're planning on participating in the TRINUG VS2008 InstallFest later this month, please be certain to have completely UN-installed any VS2008/.Net 3.5 prerelease software that you may have installed on your computer. Scott Guthrie has a blog post with a good list and order to go through to uninstall.

Microsoft DE (And all around nice guy) Joe Healy also has a list, which includes a few notes on what do do if things don't go smoothly.

I personally had no issues following Scott's list and am now happily running VS2008 and .Net 3.5.

** Just a note that we've pretty much reached our capacity for the TRINUG event. We are using a waiting list so please feel free to sign up and we'll let you know if a spot opens up. (If you are not going to be able to attend please let us know as well. You must be present to participate in the offer)

In a very insightful post, Scott Guthrie detail the current .Net web roadmap. Of particular interest is the Silverlight related text. First of all, THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU for officially re-branding taking Silverlight 1.1 to Silverlight 2.0. As somebody that's given numerous talks, the confusion that existed between 1.0 and 1.1 in conjunction with all of the other version  numbers floating around became a little much. Silverlight 2.0 makes things a lot easier to explain.

In Scott's post, he details many specific new features that we can look forward to, hopefully in another preview release later this year before the beta next year. His highlights include:

• WPF UI Framework: The current Silverlight Alpha release only includes basic controls support and a managed API for UI drawing.  The next public Silverlight preview will add support for the higher level features of the WPF UI framework.  These include: the extensible control framework model, layout manager support, two-way data-binding support, and control template and skinning support.  The WPF UI Framework features in Silverlight will be a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in last week's .NET Framework 3.5 release.

• Rich Controls: Silverlight will deliver a rich set of controls that make building Rich Internet Applications much easier.  The next Silverlight preview release will add support for core form controls (textbox, checkbox, radiobutton, etc), built-in layout management controls (StackPanel, Grid, etc), common functionality controls (TabControl, Slider, ScrollViewer, ProgressBar, etc) and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, etc).

• Rich Networking Support: Silverlight will deliver rich networking support.  The next Silverlight preview release will add support for REST, POX, RSS, and WS* communication.  It will also add support for cross domain network access (so that Silverlight clients can access resources and data from any trusted source on the web).

• Rich Base Class Library Support: Silverlight will include a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc).  The next Silverlight preview release will also add built-in support for LINQ to XML and richer HTML DOM API integration.

The most important part in my opinion is the official introduction of controls, layout, and binding support. A lot of people having been doing some very creative work on these to show the potential, but we've all been anxiously awaiting the official story. When you look at the sample sites of control vendors like Telerik, Component One, Infragistics, etc you can see the power that exists. Having the official base to build these on will just expand this potential.

Reading that "compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework" is music to my ears! This will make it extremely easy for organizations working with WPF/XAML today to instantly be productive with Silverlight. For people considering the technology, this gives you even more return potential for the learning and training investment required.

Having a Go-Live license in Q1 is also great news! It's been difficult to see the power, but not really be able to put it to use yet,

Great job to everybody that's been working on this, I can't wait to get my hands dirty on some new bits. (please be soon!)

The date has been selected for the CodeCampRDU 2008

Mark your calendars for Raleigh Code Camp on Feb 9, 2008. We'll be updating the website soon and issuing an official call for speakers.

The Triangle .NET User Group is going to be hosting an exciting meeting in December to celebrate the release of Visual Studio 2008. As part of our launch party, attendees will be given an opportunity to install the RTM version Visual Studio 2008 Professional.

EVERYONE THAT REGISTERS FOR AND ATTENDS THE EVENT IN PERSON WILL RECEIVE A FREE LICENSE KEY FOR VISUAL STUDIO 2008 PROFESSIONAL! 

Please note a couple of key things, you must first REGISTER to attend this event by logging into www.trinug.org and registering for this event. Space is limited, so don't delay. We're working on a couple of options to secure a larger venue for the event, but will likely start a waiting list shortly. At the event, the Trial Version will be provided for install. The license key that wil be sent within 90 days from Microsoft will unlock this version without need for a reinstall.

At the event, during the install party we will be holding a number of short 30 minute presentations on a variety of VS2008/.Net 3.5 topics. If you're interested in presenting with us, please let me know.

As part of the evening, we will also be asking that all in attendance bring a donation for the local food bank. We will be accepting food and cash donations at the event.

For more information, please visit www.trinug.org

I've ben closely watching the Scott and Scott show off the new ASP.NET MVC Framework. If you haven't been following along, here's some reading to keep you busy until we see a CTP release sometime soon. (Hopefully real soon!)

ASP.NET MVC Framework (Part 1)
The REST-Like Aspect Of ASP.NET MVC
An Architectural View of the ASP.NET MVC Framework
ASP.Net MVC Framework - Handling Exception by using an Attribute
In depth: The ASP.NET MVC Pipeline
RSS Feed with the new ASP.NET MVC Framework
DevConnections - The ASP.NET MVC Framework
ASP.Net MVC Framework - List and Save data

As somebody that's been following what been going on with Ruby frameworks like RAILS, as well as REST I'm very interested in seeing how this applies to the ASP.NET world. I'm still forming opinions, but I find the potential very exciting.

Congratulations to all of the teams involved in bringing Visual Studio 2008 to market!

It's always a great feeling to be able to pull beta bits off of a system, and install the release version. It's been tough not using VS2008 for everything, but now that wait is over, and we're on to the rest. I anxiously await seeing the ASP.NET MVC Framework, the next Silverlight 1.1 update, more Astoria, ASP.NET Futures and anything else Microsoft wants to update before years end!

For MSDN subscribers the bits are available on the subscribers download site. For those that are not, Express versions are available as well as trials of various versions.

NOTE** If you are installed VS2008 Beta2 - READ THIS

I meant to blog this last week when I noticed the announcement during the Silverlight DevCamp in DC that ComponentOne had released an Alpha Preview of their Silverlight 1.1 control framework.

I've been following along with great anticipation as they seem to have one of the most complete control solutions. We're all still anxiously awaiting the official Silverlight control story is going to be, C1 is certainly showing how great the potential is.

You can learn more and signup for the alpha release here:

http://labs.componentone.com/Sapphire/

Microsoft has always been involved in the developer community, but it's great to see the new ideas and innovations that are taking place to spread the word on new technologies.

The latest includes a number of Microsoft DE's (Some that I've been privileged to meet recently. I met Lynn and Woody at the INETA Leadership Summit out in LA earlier this fall and I met Anand at Dev Connections last week following his MOST EXCELLENT Silverlight demo during the keynote)

Introducing Code Trip....

Put 8 developers in an RV and send them across the country to talk code. Sounds like a blast! I haven't seen the schedule, but I hope they make it out East to Raleigh NC, or I manage to end up somewhere along the route. It's definitely going to be a fun bunch to follow! (Twitter: http://twitter.com/codetrip Facebook: join the group RSS: Subscribe To The Feed)

I'm hopeful that they be sure to drop in on any INETA User Group meetings along the way. I'm sure most groups would throw together a special event while they're in town.

 This morning after stuffing us with bagels and coffee, Frank La Vigne kicked off SilverlightDevCampDC. Frank started the day with a intro to SIlverlight keynote, followed by local Microsoft DE Andrew Duthie.

Pete Brown is now sharing some of his Silverlight 1.1 control experiences from his Carbon Calculator (Which was done in collaboration with Raleigh local Steve Suing).

More later... I hear the pizza is here!

The energy level is going to be through the roof in November when WPF Fanatic Karl Shifflett arrives at the Triangle .Net User Group (TRINUG) for his presentation on Authoring WPF Custom Controls on Wed November 14, 2007. If you are interested in WPF, and want so see some examples of it's power in real world applications come check it out.

Authoring WPF Custom Controls
Karl Shifflett
Blog: http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com

When Microsoft released the .NET Framework, they really energized and radically expanded the toolset available to developers. The .NET 3.0 Framework is no exception to this trend.

In this presentation we will explore the steps required to build and consume lookless WPF Custom Controls that expose Dependency Properties and Routed Events.  The sample code includes a WPF CheckListBox and HyperLink control (that is not dependent on the FlowDocument, Page or TextBlock controls) along with a WPF application demonstrating their use. 

visit www.trinug.org for more info!

[UPDATE]

NEW IMAGES AVAILABLE HERE:

Just a heads up that if you are working with one of the VS2008 Beta 2 VPC images, they will expire on November 1, 2007. You will need to backup and files you want to keep outside of the VPC before then or risk loosing your work. It sounds like Microsoft will be posting new images soon. Please spread the word.

The official information is available here. Official text:

IMPORTANT:

• The VPC downloads listed above will expire on November 1, 2007, which is earlier than anticipated. It is important that you backup or move any data to a new location before that date. To move Team Foundation Server data, see Moving Team Foundation Server. New VPC images will be posted as soon as they are available.

I just wanted to thank Ben and everybody else from the Raleigh Adobe User Group tonight for inviting me in to speak on Silverlight. It was a interesting to hear your questions and get your perspectives on the whole RIA space and have informed comments on both sides of the Flash,Flex/ Silverlight camps.

In honor of the event I have posted a special Silverlight version of the RDAUG logo in XAML as shown in my demo. Enjoy: 

If you're interested in Flex, Flash, and other Adobe products check out the groups website for a list of future meetings. They're also looking for some meeting space if anybody around can help them out.

Last week Microsoft opened the Popfly Beta site up to the public. Popfly is a "fun and easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, and Web pages". Basically it provides you with an online Silverlight based visual development environment that includes a variety of building blocks that you can use to build your own creations. Check it out: http://www.popfly.ms

INETA Speaker Bureau Speaker Chris Menegay stopped by TRINUG to present on Visual Studio Team System Futures. (Ironic that somebody from Texas away comes to show us something being build within a couple miles of here. Anybody from the local VSTS team want to come show us more?)

Chris provided a great look into new things coming in the next version, while at the same time introducing us to things in the current version that we had not all seen (Well, at least I learned a couple of new things!)

We're all curios to find out what Omar did to his VPC image though! ;-)

Thanks Chris, it was a great presentation.

The Triangle .NET User Group will be hosting a special meeting, with extra special guest Russ Fustino on Thursday October 18, 2007. The event will be in the evening, following the afternoon MSDN presentation Russ is giving near by. For more information and registration [YES, REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED AT THIS EVENT SO WE CAN ORDER ENOUGH PIZZA] please visit the TRINUG Website. 

Russ Fustino
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/rfustino/

October 23rd, 2007 6:30
Presentation Strategies Inc.
4021 Stirrup Creek Drive Suite 220 Durham, NC 27703

I will be presenting an introduction to Microsoft Silverlight to the Raleigh Adobe User Group on Tuesday Oct 23. The presentation will cover Silverlight 1.0/1.1 and the Microsoft Expression Suite of design tools.

 [UPDATE: THE EVENT HAS BEEN MOVED TO OCT 23!]

Why pay attention to what other language communities are doing? One day it might be coming to a language near you!

Last weekend Scott Guthrie showed the first public views of a new Model View Controller. Scott Hanselman posted some video through his blog. Jeffrey Palermo gives a great overview in this post on his blog

Last week I was able to spend some time at Microsoft in Redmond. I just couldn't resist a photo op with the "9 Guy". If you haven't taken a look at Channel 9, you're missing out on the great content Jeff and the gang are putting together.  

On Saturday Oct 29th I was fortunate to participate in the Southern California INETA Community Leadership Summit. The event brought together influential leadership team members from the local Microsoft .NET user group community.  

The event was hosted at QucikStart's Irvine facility and was sponsored by Microsoft and Verio. it was a great opportunity to discuss common problems and share ideas on creating stronger user group communities. 

If you're interested in seeing one of these events put together for you region, please drop me a note.

I was very honored this week to be informed that I have been received a Microsoft MVP Award for my efforts in the Visual Developer - ASP/ASP.NET technical communities during the past year.

Thanks to everybody that helped make this happen, and all of those in the technical community that continue to inspire me to do more. 

Karl has just announced that Josh Smith will be giving a WPF presentation on October 20^th, 2007 at the Charlotte Developers GUILD Code Camp, in Charlotte, North Carolina. Josh writes one of the most information WPF blogs and contributes a great deal to the WPF community. If you're anywhere near the area, it should be a really great session.

Brian Hitney and I will also be jointly presenting a two part Silverlight session at the event as well. (Please Bill don't schedule us all at the same time!)

Welcome back Master Chief!

I was looking for the latest Blendables release from Identity Mine (The "Love Your Software" people) and noticed this contest. It's hard not to create amazing applications with their WPF controls, so if you're doing cool things be sure to enter. (But not too many of you because I want to still have a chance to win too!)

If you're looking to get some great hands on Silverlight training, Wildermuth Consulting in cooperation with Dunn Training is bringing Shawn Wildermuth's Three Day Silverlight Workshop to a city near you!

"This includes learning the ins and outs of XAML, hosting in the browser, the tools and using Silverlight on the server. The class utilizes Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 1.1 Alpha as well as the latest toolset from Microsoft (including Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 (Orcas) and Expression Studio)."

Tell them Rob sent you! ;-)

Not to be outdone by San Francisco, Chicago , or even Dublin, Ireland Frank is putting together a Silverlight DevCamp up in the DC area on November 3, 2007. I am so there!!! If you're in the Carolina's and want to head up let me know. I've offered to present, but mostly look forward getting a group of excited Silverlight enthusiasts together. 

Watch here and Frank's Blog for more info!

I can't believe I didn't see this sooner. Great work Loren!!! Silverlight client that sends ink back to a recognition server and then uses the results. Brilliant!

http://www.tabletpcpost.com/search/

Congratulations to all of the new speakers that have been added to the INETA Speaker Bureau!

Caleb Jenkins
Daniel Egan
David Yack
Don Demsak
J. Ambrose Little
Jeffrey Palermo
John Papa
Kevin McNeish
Mark Dunn
Mark Michaelis
Mark Miller
Markus Egger
Nickolas Landry
Rod Paddock
Todd C. Bleeker

Watch for these talented individuals presenting at an INETA user group near you! More info is available in the September INETA Newsletter.

At last nights Triangle .Net User Group meeting, during the opening code sharing session I showed one of the demos from www.silverlight.net site. (If you are doing anything with Silverlight, or wanting to understand more of what Silverlight can do this site is a must!)

One of the videos posted by Laurence Moroney shows the use of using query string parameters to generate dynamic Silverlight XAML. There is a VIDEO and the original sample here: http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideo.aspx?video=113

I modified the original demo to also dynamically modify an image control to display the appropriate flag of the country of the customer queried from the NorthWind database.

To do this I simply added an image tag and placeholder information to the XAML template:

<Image x:Name="imgCountry" Source="images/ms.jpg" Width="155" Height="155" Canvas.Left="8" Canvas.Top="72">

I then modified the code in the data.aspx.cs file to include:

xNode = xmlDoc.SelectSingleNode("//d:Image[@x:Name='imgCountry']",
mng); xNode.Attributes["Source"].Value = "images/" +
myReader["Country"].ToString() + ".jpg";

These changes instruct the Silverlight template to point to the appropriate flag image. I downloaded a number of flag images from wikipedia.

I further modified the XAML template to include a basic animation of the flag that results in the following (XAML template is here)

I do not want us to dwell, but we should never forget. I took this picture at the ExpressionSession event held in NYC back in January high above the World Trade Center site. Seeing the void in the city skyline is powerful. My heart goes out to all of those that have a void in their lives because of that day.

This week my friend in the brown truck stopped by and left a little Amazon.Com box containing Charles Petzold's brand new 3D Programming for Windows book.

I'm a big fan of his writing and the tremendous amount of quality information he drops in along the way. This one looks like another must have (In additional to his previous WPF book) for an serious WPF developer.

Microsoft is rolling out a new tech preview of the Microsoft Live Labs Photosynth technology in collaboration with NASA. Very cool...

Check it out HERE

Next Tuesday (July 31) I will be presenting on Silverlight to the PTNUG user group in Greensboro, NC. If you're in the area, come out and say hi!

Looking Into the Light – An Introduction to Silverlight 1.0

Silverlight™ is a new Microsoft® technology for delivering rich, cross-platform interactive experiences for the Web and beyond. Silverlight™ enables the creation of rich, visually stunning and interactive content and applications that run on multiple browsers and operating systems. In this session, learn more about the benefits from a developer perspective and get an introduction to building applications using XAML, JavaScript and Microsoft developer and designer tools.

A big shout out of congratulations goes out to Scott Hanselman following his recent announcement that he is joining ScottGu's Developer Division team at Microsoft.

I've enjoyed reading Scott's blog and listening to him at conferences for a number of years now, and have always respected his thoughtful insight into Microsoft technology and how it's used. Scott is one of those voices that has always been both balanced fair, and I have not doubt his "Blue Badge" will not change a thing.

I think right now, more important than any single technology is the quality team of people that Microsoft is assembling, smart people that are passionate about what they do, doing what they love to do.

Tonight at the TRINUG WinFX group meeting I said I would post a link to the files required for .NET 3.0 development.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa904955.aspx

Forget the iphone, the latest version of Live Search for Mobile is the killer app for mobile phones! This FREE program is the ultimate tool for local searches, you know to find the closest coffee shop, pub, dry cleaners, etc providing both the location and contact information.

It's more than just a text search though, it's mapping capabilities rock! Combining search with Virtual Earth mapping. Paired with a Blue Tooth GPS receiver, the application turns your phone into a turn-by-turn GPS routing solution.

 With direct info on Traffic, Movies, and more - this takes mobile to a whole new level. Great job!

If you have a Windows mobile phone, this is a must have! Check it out.

Congratulations to new elected INETA Board of Directors Speaker Bureau VP David Walker on his other July 1 title change of MVP Visual Developer - ASP/ASP.NET. 

Great job David!

In addition to the local .NET fun that takes place at the Triangle .Net User Group, I'm looking to get a group of interested people together on a regular basis to take a somewhat more focused and advanced look into WPF and Silverlight. If you are in the area and working with WPF, Silverlight, Blend, or related topics I would be very interested in hearing from you. I'm especially interested in people coming at the from more of the design side than the typical developer would. If you're interested, please leave a comment or drop me a note. If you have space and would like to host such a meeting, please let me know as well!

Microsoft to open a new software development center in Vancouver this fall.  

Read the press release here..

For some Silverlight fun, check out Zero Gravity from Terralever

Endless fun!

A big blog world welcome to Jeremy and his new blog!!! http://www.myblogon.net

If you missed his Ajax/Silverlight demo from CodeCampRDU check out the details in his latest post. Great stuff!

As promised, here are the links from my WPF presentation at CodeCampRDU

Microsoft WPF Momentum video

Kaxaml XAML editor - Robby Ingebretsen

SolarSystem Templates Demo - Beatriz Costa

ShowMeTheTemplates - Chris Sells

If you're in the Raleigh area and are interesting in learning more about WPF, XAML, SILVERLIGHT, and RIA/Design please drop me a note as I'm trying to arrange some additional gatherings.

Who doesn't just love going to camp? Especially Code Camp! On Saturday a great deal of effort by Chris Love and I came to life in the form of the Summer 2007 edition of CodeCampRDU.

I want to start by thanking all of the 23 great speakers that attended from near and far (listed on the Code Camp Site) and the local volunteers from the Triangle .NET user group in Raleigh. Without these people, this event would never have happened. Special thanks go to Rod Paddock for starting our day off with the opening keynote session for us in addition to giving to sessions during that day. It was great to have you in town!

We were also very fortunate to receive incredible support and contributions from Microsoft, YohIT, Telerik, Component Art, Dundas, CoDe Magazine, O'Reilly, Wiley, and Wrox. ECPI was kind to let us use their Raleigh Campus for the day, and then to top it all off, after giving away an XBOX 360 from Microsoft, our local friends over at FarPoint gave away an HDTV as our grand prize. (Bet you never won an XBOX 360 or HDTV at camp before!?)

I had a great time in my WPF - Controls & Layout session. (I'll be posting my links and sample code shortly). It was a great way to finish off the day. Thanks to everybody that participated.

[Thanks to Steve J for the photos!] 

The June Triangle .Net User Group meeting this month is featuring INETA speaker Rockford Lhotka. Please, please please pass the word that we are not meeting at our regular venue, but at ECPI's Raleigh Campus for the June meeting. The map for ECPI can be found here.

Using Mobile Objects to Build Applications in .NET 3.0

Rockford Lhotka – Magenic

Mobile objects are objects that physically move around the network from machine to machine. .NET 3.0 provides support for this concept, and my CSLA .NET framework builds on those capabilities to simplify the creation of Windows, WPF and Web-based applications based on mobile business objects. Resulting applications achieve high levels of reuse, scalability, long-term maintainability and other benefits. The framework demonstrates the use of WCF, object serialization, System.Transactions and other .NET technologies.

*Ok - So I haven't actually read it yet... But I'm very happy to see that Amanda and Shane's book is out, and I'm sure it rocks! (Wrox?)  Congrats guys! I know a lot of hard work went into it!

Campers pack your bags! Registration for CodeCampRDU is now open! To register to attend our Summer 2007 Code Camp in Raleigh, NC please visit the Code Camp website at http://www.codecamp.org

This free, day long training event hosted by the Triangle .Net User Group includes breakfast thanks to Telerik and lunch from our good friends at YohIT in Raleigh. There will be many great give away's during the day from a variety of sponsors as well.

The session list looks great, with some terrific local speakers as well as some notable guests from out of town. The list so far looks like:

• .NET 3.5 and LINQ - Ashton Hobbs
• Adding Compression, Encryption and Hashing to Your .NET Applications - Rod Paddock
• AJAX - Creating a Virtual Earth Feed with Ajax and Silverlight - Jeremy Brown
• Building a better Updater for WinForms Client Applications - Chris Dix
• Content Query Web Part and the Data View Web Part in SharePoint 2007 using Microsoft Sharepoint Designer - Bob Gusek
• Creating Casual Games Using WPF - Rod Paddock
• DNN - David Wendelken
• Extending the CSLA Framework: Standard Business Rule Libraries and Built-in Business Rule Documentation - David Wendelken
• Layered Architecture 101 - Greg Pugh
• Real World Click Once - Craig Adams
• Sharepoint Workflow Development - Josh Carlisle
• SQL Server Integration Services for SQL Server 2005 - Charles Asbornsen
• SQL Server Performance Analysis and Tuning Potluck Session - Kevin Boles
• Web Part Development - Josh Carlisle
• Web site architecture - Diane Wilson
• Website Security - Steve Jackle
• Windows CardSpace - Brain Hitney
• Windows Work Flow - Mark Dunn
• WPF Controls: Styles, Templates, and Custom Layouts - Rob Zelt
• Write Better Code Using the Refactoring Tools in Visual Basic 2005 - Jim Duffy

We fully expect this event to sell out (Since it's a free event I guess reach capacity is more accurate) so please be sure to register early if you are planning to attend. (Especially if you're one of those people that missed our last Code Camp and have been complaining about the great event you missed out on ever since!)

GO REGISTER! http://www.codecamp.org

The great folks at Dunn Training and Consulting in Atlanta have just announced their first 3 day Silverlight training workshop. The agenda for the event looks pretty thorough, including content on both Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 1.1 (Now Silverlight 2.0). If you or your team wants to get a step ahead on Silverlight, check it out!

http://www.dunntraining.com/SilverlightTraining.htm

Inspired by Kevin Moore's WPF FlipTile3D Bag-Of-Tricks demo from Mix I decided to play around with a Silverlight version of rotating canvas transforms based on mouse positions. The math still needs a little work on the close proximity movement. The demo is available at http://www.robzelt.com/Silverlight/FlipTile and the source is available here

My first Silverlight 1.0 demo application created from scratch is now up and running. In a simple start, I've taken our Triangle .Net User Group logo, converted it to XAML and animated it when you MouseOver each of the letters.

Try it out at http://www.robzelt.com/Silverlight/TrinugLogo

You can download the source here

MIX07 has come and gone, and I can hardly wait until MIX08. It was great to see some of those old "conference friends" that I only get to see at events like this. The event also allowed me the opportunity to meet many more new contacts! Thanks to everybody that took the time to stop, chat, and share your expertise.

If you have been following the news from the event, you will know that the announcements were simply stunning. The buzz generated by Silverlight was unreal. To hear so many experts in the industry talking about how this changes the web was surreal. There is no doubt that Microsoft has a RIA (Rich Internet Application) strategy and they are executing it with skill. Look out web!

Ya, ya.. It's great that it runs on a Mac. Yes to be clear, the Silverlight .Net CLR now runs cross browser/cross platform on the Mac. What I find most impressive however is how they have brought so many of these new technologies together in one "developer ecosystem". That's the part that I really think the nay sayers don't get, is what that means to be able to develop the server, desktop (tablet, umpc), client (web, mobile device.. ) all using the same tools, the same languages. It's about productivity, scalability, and reliability.

As a developer that has been investing heavily in learning the new world of WPF, WCF, and AJAX, this has been a great validation that those efforts are worth while.

As for Mix.....

My absolute favorite session was the very last session of the conference, Kevin Moore's XD009 - Windows Presentation Foundation for Developers (Part 2 of the talk that Rob Relyea started which is darn good too!) (Video of the session is available here) We hear so much about designers these days, and developer designer work flow, you wonder if the role of the developer is getting lost. Well Kevin clearly shows why "Developers Still Matter". First, I need to say that there are few things more exciting than hearing somebody present on a topic they are truly passionate about. For Kevin, WPF is obviously more than just a job. His session shows how developers can create code to work for better for designers (or developers) working with it from XAML, but also goes on to show how much further a developer can take things. Kevin has updated his "Bag of Tricks" samples which continue to be one of the best reference samples out there for WPF.

Also on the last day, a conference just would not be complete without hearing Don Box. Steve Maine and Don Box held court to a packed house for their "Navigating the Programmable Web" talk, a deep dive into "GET". (Why does Don always need a "code monkey"? Can't he type?) The showed some coolness with the new UriTemplate class that at the time was soon to be released, but has now been released as part of the new Biztalk SDK  (That apparently isn't only about Biztalk). To remain cool and in the spirit of MIX, they did code their demo using a WPF app. (But didn't use WPF to host their WCF service. Slackers! ;-)

Other highlights were the sessions by Robby Ingebretsen and the Identity Mine crew (If you do WPF, Blendables are a must see!), Scott Stanfield from Vertigo and their Family.Show reference app, and last but not least on my favorites list was Sam George in his Ink on the Web using Silverlight talk. Way cool!

If you didn't make MIX07, or did and couldn't attend all of the sessions you wanted to, the videos are all online at http://sessions.visitmix.com

One of the very many cool announcements from Microsoft MIX07 is the Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming Service available at http://Silverlight.live.com . In a nut shell, it gives you 4gb of space to stream media from! Officially...

"Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac. Combined with the ability to create content with Microsoft® Expression Studio and other 3rd party tools, Web designers and content publishers wishing to integrate Silverlight applications into their online properties can enjoy complete control of the end user experience."

This is a great way to get started with media for Silverlight without having to store the content. This service works hand in hand with Microsoft Expression Media Encoder as well. If you're doing, or thinking of doing video on the web, this is a must see.

From Michael Arrignton @ www.techcrunch.com

"It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy."

"without exaggeration, Ajax looks like a bicycle next to a Ferrari when compared to Silverlight"

After getting up WAY TO EARLY and spending some quality time in an airplane I'm happy to have made to mix. I was suprised how helpful the "locals" at the Venetian Hotel were to find it! Now to find Expression and Silverlight!

If you're a .Net usergroup leader, or invovled in some level of making user group events happen be sure to plan on attending the INETA Community Leadership Summit being held on Saturday June 2, 2007 in Orlando, FL right before Tech Ed.

More information about the summit is available on the INETA Community Leadership Summit web site http://Summit.INETA.Org

In less than 24 hours I will be on an airplane heading towards Las Vegas to attend Mix07, the Microsoft conference that brings together the pocket protectors, turtle necks, and suits (Developers, Designers, and Business Decision Makers) of the world to discuss the future technology of the web and hear from "some of the most successful and innovative practitioners on the Web".

If you're not able to attend MIX07 which sold out early, be sure to pay attention to the www.visistmix.com website:

"Starting on Monday morning, we’re going to be updating this page continually – people at home will be able to see all of the news, fun, live keynotes, sessions and partner demos coming out of the show."

As I've said before, I'm really looking forward to MIX07. MIX06 was great, and provided me with a lot of inspiration to dig into the new technologues of WPF, WCF, and AJAX. It also opened my eyes to a world of opportunities developing for Media Center.

I truly think that WPF and Silverlight are going to positively change the status quo in computing today, allowing us as developers to truly write software that people love. And I'm not just talking about flashy special effects programs with little core value, but to allow us to really focus on make user interaction truly makes sense for a given task.

One of the many sessions I'm looking forward to is Scott Stanfield from Vertigo Software taking dive into their new WPF reference application Family.Show that was developed for Microsoft.

The Triangle .Net User Group leadership (www.trinug.org) has just announced CodeCampRDU that we will be holding a Code Camp in the Raleigh Durham area of central North Carolina on Saturday June 23, 2007. If you're interested in seeing some of the best and brightest of the local .Net Developer Community, this is a must attend event!

More information on the Raleigh Code Camp event is available at www.codecamp.org . We are currently accepted speaker proposals and working with organizations wishing to contribute to the event which will be held at the ECPI campus in Raleigh.

Attendee registration is not yet open, but be sure to visit the site to subscribe to the RSS news feed

The community site for Silverlight will go live (or "light up") on April 30th at http://www.silverlight.net/

At this time it also sounds like like a beta (Updated from the Feb CTP of WPF/E) will be released in conjuntion with Mix07.

A few Microsoft blog posts to pay attention to:

Introducing Microsoft Silverlight

Top 10 Questions about Silverlight and Media

Introducing Microsoft Silverlight

Introducing Expression Media Encoder

AGhost.. hiw did we miss that!? http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/archive/2007/04/16/microsoft-silverlight.aspx

Also keep and eye on the office site: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight

Yep.... Mix is gonna be fun!

With the rollout of a new website, Micrososft shares more of the vision.

"Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web."

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

I look forward to MIX07 as more details are announced:

from Soma's blog: "Silverlight announcement at NAB is only part of the story, the rest will be unveiled at MIX including details about how Silverlight is a core component of Microsoft’s broader .NET platform. Keep your eyes on Mix07 as part of Ray Ozzie’s and Scott Guthrie’s keynote – be sure to check it out. "

According to my countdown gadgets it's an amazing 14 days until Mix07 (and only 49 days until Tech Ed!) I'm really looking forward to the conference conversation this year. Last year was an amazing event, very different from the other Tech Ed and PDC conferences that Microsoft hosts.

If you're not registered, it's too late as the event has long sold out. Everybody can keep track of things though through the www.visitmix.com web site. It sounds like they are going to get a bunch of conference info online in [near] real time.

I'm very much looking forward to the latest on the WPF, WPF/E, AJAX, and Media Center fronts. So far my must see list of sessions includes:

• "Family.Show": I See Dead People, with Windows Presentation Foundation: Scott Stanfield - Vertigo
• "ZAP!, WHAM!, KAPOW!": Windows Presentation Foundation and the Next Generation of Online Comic Book Reading: Nathan Dunlap - IdentityMine, Robby Ingebretsen - IdentityMine
• Booyah! Designing and Developing Line-of-Business Applications That SIZZLE: Nathan Dunlap - IdentityMine, Darren Laybourn - Microsoft, Josh Wagoner - IdentityMine
• Ink for Designers and Developers: Sam Geroge - Microsoft
• Just Glue It! Dynamic Languages in "WPF/E": Jim Hugunin - Microsoft, John Lam - Microsoft
• The Emotion of Customer Experience: Lou Carbone - Experience Engineering
• Lessons Learned: Designer/Developer Productivity in Windows Presentation Foundation: Jonathan Russ - IdentityMine, Josh Wagoner - IdentityMine
• Building "WPF/E" Applications Using .NET: Jamie Cool - Microsoft, Nick Kramer - Microsoft
• Creating and Delivering Rich Media and Video on the Web with "WPF/E", Microsoft Expression Studio, and Windows Server Codename “Longhorn” : Brad Abrams - Microsoft, James Clarke - Microsoft, Chris Knowlton - Microsoft
• Deep Dive on "WPF/E" Media Integration: Mike Harsh - Microsoft
• Design in Motion: Video Production Workflow: Ben Waggoner - Microsoft
• Developing ASP.NET AJAX Controls with "WPF/E": Nikhil Kothari - Microsoft
• Go Deep with AJAX: Matt Gibbs - Microsoft, Jeff Prosise - Wintellect LLC
• Yahoo! on Microsoft .NET 3.0 and Microsoft Expression: Eric Burke - Yahoo!, Josh Jacobson - Yahoo!

I think I might need more than 72 hours!

This month our feature speaker at the Triangle .Net User Group (www.trinug.org) was Brian Hitney, our favorite local Microsoft DE. We've all heard a lot about Vista's new wiz-bang features like Aero GUI, .Net 3.0, IIS7 and other exciting stuff, but Brian dug deep and took as on a guided tour of changes to the kernel in Vista. The presentation was great. Even convinced me to turn UAC back on!

We also had a number of people promoting job opportunities to group, most exciting of which was Galen from Veracity Solutions was in town promoting a number of WPF opportunities in the area. It's cool to see people specifically asking for skills that we have been working so hard on learning. Great inspiration to keep up on the learning front. If you're interested, check their web sire or drop me a note for contact info.

i-mate has just announced a Windows Vista SideShow debugging tool. More information is available in their forums post here and you can download the debugger from: http://www.clubimate.com/t-WINGADRV.aspx

According to their post "This debugger also serves as a sneak preview of the functionality to be available in upcoming i-mate Mobile Devices and the anticipated Momento Digital Photo Frame Version 2.  Therefore, any gadgets that are compatible with the debugger are sure to work on future i-mate devices."

It's great to see them supporting SideShow on their already very cool Momento and Ultimate devices!

If you've ever attended a Tech Ed conference, and are planning on attending the years Microsoft's Tech Ed conference on Orlando, you know how great the INETA sponsored Birds of a Feather sessions are. If you're not familiar with them, they are a great opportunity to bring people together with common interest in a particular topic. They may bring together a group of experts, a group of beginners, or a mix of them all willing to share and exchange ideas.

They key to this is that the topics come from the community! Which is why it's very important that your voice is heard. If you have a session you would like to see, submit. If you want to vote on which of the submitted topics should be ensured a room, you need to go vote on the sessions.

Submit Birds-of-a-Feather topic ideas now
Vote for Birds-of-a-Feather topics

More information and voting is here.

The Expression team has announced the availability of Expression Blend RC1. This release includes "updated User Guide, a host of quality improvements, and a shiny all-new set of impressive and informative samples"

More info and download links on the Expression Web Site

I love it when the man in the brown truck brings me things! This week my I-Mate Momento 70 digital picture frame arrived. I had been holding out for the 10" Momento 100, but after continued delays and Amazon having stock of the slightly smaller Momento 70's I decided to switch my order.

As with other I-Mate products that I have purchased, the product was packaged very nicely, and was easy to setup. Within minutes I had the device configured on my wireless network and feeding pictures from a PC find a permanent home for it on the mantle.

 Now let's write some code to talk to this thing....

Today Chris Love and I spent the day up at the Roanoke Valley .Net User Group's first (anual?) Code Camp in Roanoke, Va. Code Camp's are great. If you have never been to one, go find one near you and attend. If there's not one near you, organize one!

The day conisisted of 4 tracks which included Web, Data, Framework and Process/Design. Presenters included local group memebers as well as others from places like Raleigh, Greensboro, Richmond, and elsewhere.

I attended the following:

• .NET 2.0 Tips and Tricks - Ashton Hobbs
• Reflection & Dynamic Assemblies - Will Ashley
• AJAX - Chris Atienza
• Introduction to WCF and differences b/w WCF and ASMX Web Services - Manny Siddiqui
• Applying Layered Architecture to Asp.Net - Gustin Prudner

Congrats Robin and team for putting on an outstanding event! See you in 2008!

Carolina's favorite Microsoft presenter Glen Gordon rocked the house today in Durham at the MSDN Events Windows Vista launch event. His half day session was full of great demos and looks at what's new in Windows Vista and .Net 3.0.

What to added mapped drives of network shares to the search indexes of Windows Desktop Search in Windows Vista? See KB918996

Availability of the Windows Desktop Search: Add-in for Files on Microsoft Networks

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:
Download the UNCFATPHInstaller.msi package now. (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f7e981d9-5a3b-4872-a07e-220761e27283&amp;amp;amp;DisplayLang=en) Release Date: September 28, 2006

A great reality check on the mac ads targeting Vista upgrades.

If I was writing a Mac commercial...

Nicely done D'Arcy! Vista does rock!

Thanks to those of you that have sent me comments on my CustomHostFactory post. I wanted to post publicly question that I received from a couple of people.

While specifying a hard coded BaseAddress array works, it's not really practice for deploying applications in multiple environments and updating configuration changes in the future. I set out to find a better approach to this, and found a blog post by Aaron Skonnard here that add a simple configuration capability by reading the following section of a web.config file.

          <
          appSettings
          >
          <
          add
          key
          ="baseHttpAddress"
          value
          =http://localhost/ServiceTest/service.svc
          />
          </
          appSettings
          >
        

My updated CustomHostFactory code is as follows

           using System;  using System.Collections.Generic;  using System.Text;  using System.ServiceModel;  using System.ServiceModel.Activation;  using System.Configuration; class CustomHostFactory
: ServiceHostFactory { protectedoverride ServiceHost
CreateServiceHost(Type serviceType, Uri[] baseAddresses) { CustomHost customServiceHost
= new TradeServiceCustomHost(serviceType, baseAddresses); return customServiceHost;
} } class CustomHost : ServiceHost { public CustomHost(Type
serviceType, params Uri[] baseAddresses) : base(serviceType,
GetBaseAddresses()) { } protectedoverridevoid ApplyConfiguration()
{ base.ApplyConfiguration(); } // read
base addresses from AppSettings in config// Added from sample
at http://pluralsight.com/blogs/aaron/archive/2006/04/19/22106.aspxprivatestatic Uri[]
GetBaseAddresses() { List<Uri> addresses = new List<Uri>();
AddBaseAddress(addresses, "baseHttpAddress"); return addresses.ToArray();
} privatestaticvoid AddBaseAddress(List<Uri>
addresses, string key) { string address
= ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[key]; if (null !=
address) addresses.Add(new Uri(address)); } } 

It would be really great if there was a way to remove base address through the web.config similar to how asp.net lets you remove providers and other settings with something to the effect of

<BaseAddresses>
    <Remove All />
    <Add BaseAddress="http;//..." />
</BaseAddresses>

This week I attended the Microsoft ExpressionSession07 event held in New York City. As somebody not from NYC, the view from the 52nd floor of 7 World Trade Center was simply amazing!

The content of the day was equally as exciting, although I must say that while I think Microsoft has a great story with their Expression suite of products, they need to present a much more refined message. That being said, it was still a worthwhile event to attend.

The day featured a keynote in the morning lead by Eric Zocher, and afternoon sessions by presenters including Robby Ingebresen from Identity Mine & Beau Ambur fromMetaliqq (On Expression Blend/WPF), Microsoft's Jeff King, and Eric Meyer (Expression Web). The highlight for me was hearing from Robby and Beau, both individuals that are with companies delivering WPF solutions. Both showed opportunities to productively deliver amazing looking solutions and talking about the issues of a developer/designer world. I think hearing from these two clarified a lot of the message that Microsoft needs to be spreading to make Expression a success.

Coincidentally, on the same day Microsoft Expression Blend Beta 2 was released to the web and is available here. Check out the entire Expression suite at www.microsoft.com/expression

Electric Rain also presented their new presentation software StandOut, which makes use of WPF. [Info here]

Can't find a Telnet client in Windows Vista? It's a "Windows Feature" that must be turned on from Programs and Features in the Control Panel

As the clock strikes midnight around the world, signs of the consumer release of Windows Vista have started to surface.

Retailers have started getting their displays ready, with many of them holding special launch celebrations

And some even have systems with Vista pre-loaded ready to go.