Out Of The Box

CES Keynote Summary

Jon Box, MSFT — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:06:00 GMT

Well, I think it was a good showing for Microsoft again. I think the keynote was entertaining and informative, and shows that we have a broad set of business. Take a look and see if you agree. I’ve provided an outline below (with some time stamps so you can jump right to a point of interest), as well as a few quotes that stood out to me.

Links:

Video: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/VideoGallery.aspx
Transcript: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2012/01-09CES.mspx
Frank Shaw summary: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/01/09/that-s-a-wrap-microsoft-2012-ces-keynote-recap.aspx
Nokia's announcement: http://press.nokia.com/2012/01/09/nokia-and-att-introduce-the-new-nokia-lumia-900-on-atts-4g-lte-network/
New Device Announcements: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2012/jan12/01-10Devices.mspx
CES Press Materials: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/Materials.aspx

Outline

Introduction by CES CEO
Very cool video showing history of MSFT and CES, musically synthesized.
Ryan Seacrest arrives at 9:40
WP7, 12:50. Derek Snyder demos.
WP Hardware Partners, 23:00

T-Mobile will offer Nokua Lumia 710 and 800 in Canada, and Lumia 710 in US
Nokia Lumia 900 on AT&T 4G LTE (4.3 in. display) in US
HTC Titan II, on AT&T (4.7 in. screen, 16MP camera

Windows PC, 26:30

1.3B Windows PC's in-use on our planet, the #1 smart device by audience size
Windows 7 hardware video (29:00)

Sony Vaio Z (15 hours of battery life),
Asus Zenbook UX21 (go 1 week on standby),
Acer Aspire S3 (1/2" thin)
Toshiba Portege Z830 (world's lightest 13" laptop)
Dell XPS 14z (14" screen in 13" Chassis)
Lenovo IdeaPad 300 (book like silhouette)
Sumsung Series 9 (small, light)
HP Envy14 Spectre (the first multi-surface glass notebook, )

Windows 8 demo, Tami Reller (CMO Windows), 31:15

"Silicon partners, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments are all working hard with us to bring Windows to ARM, together with our OEMs. And this all means that the widest possible range of PCs and tablets will be available for Windows 8 across architectures, giving customers more choice and more flexibility"

Windows Store, 36:49

Cut The Rope, from ZeptoLab
"The Windows Store will be global, available in every language that is offered for Windows, and that's more than 100 languages. Free and paid apps will be available in more than 200 markets around the world, and that's just an incredible reach. And the store it not just for consumers, if they want businesses can actually use the Windows Store to deliver their business apps and updates to employees."

Windows today

"Windows 7 is the best-selling operating system of all time. Five hundred million users on the planet for Windows 7. We're licensing about seven new copies a second. And by my calculation, I think that means by the time we wrap up today, there are probably 25,000 new Windows 7 users on this planet." SteveB
"Every Windows 7 PC will be ready for Windows 8 on day one. So, the 3 million people who have already come to our website and downloaded the Windows 8 preview, boom, they can do it from any Windows PC ever made."

Tweet choir, 49:15
Xbox, 52:40

"In a sense, Xbox kind of represents the best of a part of our DNA that we're really proud about. We make these big, bold bets. We invest for the long-term. And we make exciting things happen. And we're 10 years later, we're the world's sales leader in the last year for consoles, which is exciting as heck. We have over 66 million Xbox users. And perhaps the most amazing thing is, we have over 40 million Xbox Live subscribers tuning in on a regular basis for a variety of different entertainment experiences."
Shipped 18M Kinects in the last year

Craig Davidson demos Xbox Kinect and TV functionality, 56:05

Announcing partnership with News Corporate, and the new Fox Xbox app
U-Verse coming
Two-way TV, demo'd by Jaymi Bauer, 1:03:04, Kinect Sesame Street TV

1:08:37, Kinect Video, and announcement bringing Kinect to Windows 8 on FEB 1st
Closing - Quick Mentions

"Sync, which we've worked on with Ford. Sync is now installed, powering intelligent experiences in over 4 million Ford vehicles since 2007, and I think we'll reach 9 million additional cars in the course of the next three years."
Office 2010, fastest selling version of Office in company history, per Frank S. post above
Office 365, used by 80M+ people
Skype, 200 million people who used over 300 billion minutes of voice and video

What's next?

Metro, metro, metro
Windows 8

Memphis Lunch on Windows Server 8 and SCCM

Jon Box, MSFT — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:57:55 GMT

Ascendum invites you to hear the latest from Microsoft about next generation server operating system codenamed “Windows Server 8”. Join us for lunch Wednesday, December 14 at The Crescent Club where Doug Miller, Microsoft’s Datacenter Specialist for Tennessee, will share some of the business and technical innovations you might see in the next version of Windows Server. This exclusive, invite-only event will fill up fast so please register promptly below.

Windows Server 8

Presented by Doug Miller, DataCenter SSP at Microsoft

Be the first to find out about the coming enhancements in Windows Server 8 and how it will help you better manage, secure, and deploy technology in your datacenter. Check out the enhancements available today in the developer preview and see where Microsoft is taking the next generation of Server Operating System. Windows Server 8 empowers IT to provide users with flexible access to data and applications anywhere, on any device, while simplifying management and maintaining security, control, and compliance.

SCCM 2007 R2

Presented by Roberto Henriquez, Sr. Practice Consultant at Ascendum

Discuss a real world example of how Microsoft SCCM significantly decreased the amount of manual work required to image and maintain workstations in one company’s global environment. Uncover how SCCM 2007 R2 helps manage global infrastructure while improving the end-user experience.

December 14, 2011, 11:30am – 2:00pm

Crescent Club - 6075 Popular Avenue, Suite 909, Memphis, TN 38119

Registration

Memphis SharePoint Meeting, OCT 27, RSVP

Jon Box, MSFT — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:25:32 GMT

Memphis SharePoint Users Group Meeting on Thursday, October 27th from 3:30 – 6:30pm at the Crescent Club.

Nitin Nagar with Ascendum will demonstrate how SharePoint provides a basis for key enterprise requirements and allows enterprise users and administrators alike the benefits of a true ECM solution. We’ll explore the advantages of designing and developing ECM solutions leveraging SP2010 and explore further this bold new SharePoint world.

Xerxes Randelia with Aspect will discuss Security around SharePoint in an open forum with Q&A. Aspect has been delivering SharePoint solutions to clients since the beta release of the first version of SharePoint in 2001. Aspect has delivered hundreds of SharePoint projects to clients of all sizes and industries.

Memphis SharePoint User Group

Thursday, October 27th, 2011
3:30pm – 6:30pm
Crescent Club
6075 Poplar Ave Ste 909, Memphis, TN

Please register to attend at http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=157599

IE9 Site Pinning enabled on my blog

Jon Box, MSFT — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:24:36 GMT

Check out site pinning on my blog. You’ll obviously need Windows 7 and IE9. To get started, follow the directions or drag the favicon on this page and drop onto your taskbar. Let me know what you think.

Crazy Reading This Week

Jon Box, MSFT — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:33:34 GMT

Just had to share these

ars technica: Microsoft wishes Linux a happy 20th birthday, AUG 17. Interesting quote: Microsoft's relationship with Linux was one of several topics that Zemlin discussed during his keynote. He showed a classic quote from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who infamously described Linux as a "cancer" in 2001. Joking that Ballmer's hostile characterization of Linux was only partly accurate, Zemlin pointed out that Microsoft is one of the largest contributors to version 3.0 of the Linux kernel by code volume.

CNET: Microsoft lists 'App Store' as a Windows 8 feature, AUG 17. I usually don’t post these as I can’t confirm the rumors, but this one refers to the new Windows 8 blog, B8, and quotes Steven Sinofsky from there.

PcMag: Microsoft Tips Its Future Living Room: Xbox, Mediaroom, Apps. AUG 17. I don’t have any inside info on this one, but I love the direction of this article. Interesting quote: Underneath the Xbox, however, lies Mediaroom, which also powers set-top boxes such as AT&T's U-Verse, plus boxes from BT and Deutsche Telekom. But Microsoft also made the conscious decision to treat Mediaroom as a "white box" product, letting AT&T brand its box the way it chose. Over 40 different operators have launched boxes using the technology, which touch 7 million subscriber households…

WinRumors: Three new Bing Facebook commercials released. AUG 16. This article has the videos embedded, which show the integration of Facebook into Bing (showing your friends’ likes in your search results). Plus talks about the upcoming HTML5 application.

Network World: Internet Explorer protects best against socially engineered malware, AUG 15. Interesting quote: Internet Explorer scored a 99.2% protection score in the firm's most recent test of socially engineered malware distribution, with Google Chrome coming in a distant second with 13.2%. Trailing behind it were Safari and Firefox tying with 7.6% each, and Opera pulling up last with 6.1%. And then another quote, which ended the article: In general, users are four times more likely to be socially engineered into downloading malware than they are to fall victim to a software exploit.

Information Week: Bing Beats Google On Search Effectiveness, AUG 12. Interesting quote: While Google may control the lion's share of the search market, queries made through Microsoft's Bing search engine lead users to click on a Web page at a significantly higher rate than queries made through Google, according to data released Thursday. The success rate for Bing searches in the U.S. in July was 80.04%, compared to 67.56% for Google, according to Experian Hitwise.

A Look at Asynchronous Script Downloads

Jon Box, MSFT — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:00:23 GMT

You hear more and more about slow loading pages, and one of the big factors for this is downloading too many resources and immediate execution. Consequently, developers are looking for resource downloads and actions that they can postpone for later execution – such as after the primary part of the page is loaded and functional. So, how can you take advantage of this?

There are several options, but I want to point out today leveraging defer and async attributes on your JavaScript declarations. Defer was originally developed in IE4, later added to HTML4 spec, and is documented in the HTML5 spec. The W3C says that a script with the attribute defer implies that execution occurs when the page has finished parsing; thus a time savings. So, one could leverage defer today in HTML4 browsers. However, a new capability has hit the scene in async for HTML5, and these two attributes can be used together.

The W3C HTML5 specification says “There are three possible modes that can be selected using these attributes. If the async attribute is present, then the script will be executed asynchronously, as soon as it is available. If the async attribute is not present but the defer attribute is present, then the script is executed when the page has finished parsing. If neither attribute is present, then the script is fetched and executed immediately, before the user agent continues parsing the page.” Plenty of capability provided here to delay execution so you can make your web page have a quicker start.

To get a better look at this async attribute, check out the HTML5 Async Scripts example in the IE Test Drive site. It features two tests: “loading independent scripts faster”, and “run dynamic scripts in order”. And there’s plenty to apply here.

Load Independent Scripts Faster

This is a nice and easy to understand sample, and the effect is easily intuitive. Imagine in your HTML that you have a series of SCRIPT tags and then other resources (like an image) to download. These downloads and script execution will occur in the order parsed, which sometimes can lead to poor performance. Consider the following code snippet, where you might have some JavaScript that can wait until later, as well as a image that is required in the startup of the page. While SLOW.JS is downloading and executing, the image request is waiting before the download can even start and makes the page look unresponsive for a moment. And this is the first way that async comes to the rescue.

In the sample, there are two iframes, both pointing to two identical pages except for one item – which is the async attribute on SLOW.JS (which happens to call a web service that has a almost 2 second SLEEP in it).

        1: <script async src="slow.js"></script>

       2: ...

       3: <img src="IE_Logo_256.png"/>

The sample code is setup such that there are two gray empty boxes, one pointing to a page with the above code (labeled With HTML5 async), and the other box pointing to a similar page without the async attribute (labeled Without HTML5 Async). When the test is initiated, you are waiting for the two windows to show a downloaded IE logo to appear, as well as a message that the script executed. In the Without HTML5 Async window, you will have a grey box, empty of the IE logo, and waiting for the web service to return so SLOW.JS can finish. In the With HTML5 Async window, the IE logo appears first and then later the “Scipt Executed” message appears.

Again, a nice easy sample to understand and apply. But, let’s move onto another valuable async capability.

Run Dynamic Scripts In Order

Sometimes, a web developer will load script later than the loading of the page, and this is done via code. These are called dynamic scripts, and while easy to do, there’s an important lesson in that they load asynchrously. Yes, this is typically a good feature, but what happens if you need to download a set of scripts and they have a dependency that dictates some execution order be followed. Well, async is here to help again, as well as the HTML5 Async Scripts sample page.

To explain this sample, let’s first explain the visual elements of the test, and then we’ll go into the code inner workings. Similar to the previous test (see above), this test has two windows which will be loaded with the HTML5 logo. To make the test happen, the code depends on a sprite technique of loading different parts of an image using the CSS background-image property, and later controlling which 64x64 pixel subset to load leveraging the background-position property. If all goes as planned, you should get a logo such as the following:

However, here’s where things get interesting. The code dynamically declares the 16 calls for each window (one for each 64x64 slice of the image); however, the script calls out to an external service which contains a random SLEEP value. And because there are two windows, this means that 32 script down loads happen followed by 32 script executions. That would be fine, except that the resulting script has to be executed in a certain order for the image to be constructed properly. The HTML is set up such that it is flowing left to right with room for 4 slices across and 4 slices down (which is why the image is 256x256). The function is basically loading DIV’s dynamically to the window without care of location, so the correct order is required. Remember the lesson of dynamic script: execution is asynchronous! So, when you have a dependency on the order of script execution, you could end up with a mess like this:

While easy to see the visual results of this test, I wanted to understand what all is happening under the hood here; so, I had to take a peek. Thank goodness for IE Developer Tools, and that they exist in the IE10 Platform Preview. At first, I could not see how this was all happening, so let me take you through my investigation.

First, I was trying to understand how the script order was not being followed. I could see that the two windows were loaded with the same function (see snippet below) except for one line of code. And just like the previous example, there’s a “Without HTML5 Async” window and a “With HTML5 Async” window. The WITH window has Line #2 below, while WITHOUT does not. Otherwise, the windows have the same exact code. This is an important part to understand, but it’s simplicity might hide a few things in this example – so more snooping around required.

       1: var script = document.createElement("script");

       2: script.async = false;

       3: script.src = url;

       4: document.head.appendChild(script);

My next stop was trying to look at the resulting image. Several things that I found out: it’s a set of DIV’s, created dynamically, and leveraging the background-position. Based on the slice #, the background position is calculated. You can see the background-position starts at the top left slice, and works it way through the 16 squares.

This snippet is the WITHOUT ASYNC window, and you’ll see that the slices are not in order – thus resulting in a jumbled mess.

And then looking at the WITH ASYNC innerHTML, you’ll see that the elements are ordered and that the resulting HTML5 logo image looks correct. So, how are these getting out of order, since I see that the script declarations are created in order?

My next challenge was not being able to debug and have breatkpoints – I’m just not implemented in the IE10 preview. So, then I thought I’d prove out seeing the execution and also improve the sample. I’m smart and can add value to the IE Corp guys. Right?

I started by adding console.Log calls so that I could see the order of the execution. I highly recommend adding calls like this to help understand what is happening. First I created a simple console logging function that would work even when I don’t have the console window open:

       1: function consoleLog(msg)

       2: {

       3:     window.console && console.log && console.log(msg);

       4: }

Then, I sprinkled in a few logging calls to my debug message function, specifically targeting the script declaration and the later DIV creation. Background: the dynamic script calls a server, which downloads a script that calls an existing function already downloaded to the client, log() in demo.js, which creates the DIV that contains the image slice. So, based on this, I know that the scripts are declared for both windows in the correct order, and I’ve now verified that the DIV creation is not in order for the WITHOUT ASYNC container. Below is a snippet of one of my loggings, logged with each DIV creation, that shows how the two images are created. Note: the calls with an ID that had a “t” appended to the sequence number are the calls processed for the WITHOUT window (t stood for traditional, I believe), where the others are for the WITH ASYNC window. So, after this was all said and done, I still had not connected the dots and my logging was not that helpful this time. But, I still recommend this tactic. (And the IE Corp guys are smarter than this 3rd grader.)

So, then I looked at network trace in the Network tab of Developer Tools. I was able to see the results of the 32 script declarations, 16 for each window. See the trace below. Again, note that the ID is the sequence (and correlates to which slice will be generated) and that the “t” represents which window. One will also notice a sec paramater, which appeared to communicate the SLEEP duration to the server (roughly looked like 100ms x sec parameter). You can see this too – run the trace, and hover the mouse over one of the yellow boxes and then you can see the breakdown of the download. After looking at the request duration of each of these, you’ll see a correlation to the sec parameter.

I could see that the downloads request processing started in order. But the big learning here was that due to the SLEEP call in the web service, finishing the download of script did not occur in the same order – and remembering that the declarative script is asynchrously executed, this is where the order of the image slices is impaired. So, you’ll see that the scripts started to download in order but our asynchronous default behavior hurt us because finishing the download and the resulting execution is not controlled by the code – as blocks 2t and 3t were loaded before 0t and 1t. And look at where 4 landed in order; fortunately, this was on the WITH ASYNC window so it had no impact. This was my AH HA moment.

In the trace, you can see where the specific scripts are downloaded (note the beginning of the yellow block), but the important part is when the download finishes (the end of the yellow block). And with this view, you can see when they are downloaded in respect to the others. With this and the key fact that when finished downloading , the script will be executed. But with the variable durations, the resulting execution is not in the order that the code required. (I hope that I’m saying this clearly.)

Fortunately, the WITH ASYNC window had script with the async=TRUE entry, which forced those executions to wait until the previously declared script had finished. BAM! This is where I finally caught on. Yes, I’m slow, but I’m betting someone else might look at this and miss the the beauty of this sample, and how it created the problematic execution for the WITHOUT ASYNC window. It was a good learning experience.

Conclusion: the async attribute in the above snippet is hugely important when dynamic script is created with a dependency on other dynamic script.

Feature Detection of Async

Warning: make sure your browser supports this new async feature. The sample checks to see if your browser can handle by using the following feature detection:

       1: function testSupport() {

       2:     var script = document.createElement("script");

       3:     if(typeof script.async == "undefined") {

       4:         //not supported

       5:     } else if(script.async != true) {

       6:         //Script execution order not supported

       7:     }

       8: }

Conclusion

defer and async are powerful additions to your web development toolbox, and are part of the HTML5 standard. async is in the IE10 Platform Preview, so start thinking about how to leverage.

Kinect and Windows Phone (Mango) Experiment

Jon Box, MSFT — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:19:20 GMT

Here’s the video and source code to a project that connects Kinect and WP7 Mango device, via NodeJS. Made by an intern.

HTML5 Developer Contest: Cash Awaits

Jon Box, MSFT — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:07:42 GMT

What an interesting contest! Can you build a Responsive Design HTML5 page that exists in 10K zipped or less? Be sure to check out the info from the MIX Online team here and from the contest site here. This is conjunction with the folks who put on an earlier 10K contest (crazy cool entries) – and it’s an impressive list of names, including Ethan Marcotte author who originally pinned the popular article on the subject. FAQ and rules are here.

VS 2010 Adds Support for HTML5 and CSS3

Jon Box, MSFT — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:19:19 GMT

Check out the Visual Studio Web Standards Update which brings a ton of HTML5 & CSS3 support to Visual Studio 2010 SP1. VS Web Standards Update is a free extension available for anyone who is using Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and it provides HTML5 & CSS3 support based on current W3C specifications.

The Links

Add-on Download - http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/a15c3ce9-f58f-42b7-8668-53f6cdc2cd83
VWD Team Announcement - http:/logs.msdn.com/b/webdevtools/archive/2011/06/15/web-standards-update-for-visual-studio-2010-sp1.aspx
Walkthrough post by Scott Hanselman - http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingTheWebStandardsUpdateHTML5SupportForTheVisualStudio2010Editor.aspx
Additional Reference by Vishal - http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2011/06/announcing-html5-css3-support-for.html

Microsoft’s internal IT Department Shares Lessons of IE9 Rollout to More Than 100,000 Computers

Jon Box, MSFT — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 19:31:00 GMT

Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) worked closely with the Internet Explorer product team to test and deploy Windows® Internet Explorer® 9 across the enterprise. This content discusses the testing and deployment strategy that delivered Windows® Internet Explorer® 9 to more than 100,000 desktop computers around the world. Learn how Microsoft used its own deployment tools and management technologies to reduce the time, cost and complexity of planning, building, and deploying Internet Explorer 9.

Situation

Microsoft wanted to test the prerelease versions of Internet Explorer 9 in order to help provide feedback to the Internet Explorer product group during development. In addition, Microsoft also wanted to verify application compatibility and deployment tools to ensure that scenarios were fully tested for enterprise-wide rollout before the public release of Internet Explorer 9.

Solution

Microsoft developed a testing and deployment strategy that delivered Internet Explorer 9 to more than 100,000 desktop computers around the world. Microsoft used its own deployment tools and management technologies to reduce the time, cost, and complexity of planning, building, and deploying Internet Explorer 9.

The Details

Technical White Paper

Executive Summary (from the white paper):

The prerelease version of Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 9 gave Microsoft Information Technology (Microsoft IT) the opportunity to validate Internet Explorer 9 during its development, and to test deployment tools and processes designed to simplify enterprise-wide application rollouts. The team also wanted Microsoft users to experience new Internet Explorer 9 features designed to take advantage of emerging web standards, as well as new security features, while minimizing disruptions due to the deployment.

Microsoft IT took a leadership role in deploying the browser early, and did so in a systematic way. Using Microsoft employees to test the prerelease versions of Internet Explorer 9 provided a real-world testing environment for capturing product and deployment feedback. This allowed Microsoft IT to uncover bugs early in the product development process, helping to improve the product before its release to customers. Early testing also addressed application compatibility issues with line-of-business (LOB) applications, ensuring minimal Helpdesk calls for LOB related issues.

This white paper describes the deployment planning, delivery process, and ongoing support for Internet Explorer 9 across Microsoft. The paper is intended for enterprise technical decision makers, technical architects, and deployment managers who are considering an Internet Explorer 9 deployment.

This white paper is based on the experience and recommendations of Microsoft IT as an early adopter. It is not intended to serve as a procedural guide. The Microsoft environment is unique. Its users tend to be more technical than average users, and the Microsoft IT desktop management philosophy gives users control over their own computers. Installation of prerelease software is strictly voluntary at Microsoft, and Microsoft IT made the Internet Explorer 9 client available to all employees during the deployment process.

Each enterprise environment has its own unique requirements. Therefore, each organization should adapt the plans and activities described in this white paper to meet its specific needs. Also, this white paper should be used along with the deployment guide provided by the Internet Explorer 9 site for IT Pros, found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff973978.aspx.

SharePoint Event in Memphis, June 23, RSVP Required

Jon Box, MSFT — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:33:51 GMT

Learn How SharePoint can Increase Worker Productivity and Get a Sneak Peak on System Center Configuration Manager 2012

Ascendum, one of the fastest growing global information technology companies, is now geared up to solve business problems for organizations throughout the Memphis metro area. Join them for an eventful morning and choose from the Business or Technical sessions carefully crafted to maximize the attendee’s time and address your priorities:

Session #1:     8:30 am – 9:30 am (CDT):
· 10 ways to increase business productivity with SharePoint and Office – Business Track
· Sneak Peak System Center Configuration Manager – 2012 - Technical Track

Session #2:     9:45 am – 10:45 am (CDT):
· Private Cloud: What is it? How do I get there? What does this mean to my business? – Business Track
· Empower everyone in your organization to make better informed and timely decisions by leveraging Data Visualization and Business Intelligence Solutions with SharePoint and Microsoft BI – Technical Track

Location: DoubleTree Hotel Memphis, 5069 Sanderlin Avenue
Date: June 23, 2011, 7:30 am - 11:00 am (CDT)
Presentations start at 8:30 am

Presenter Bios:

Doug Miller
Director – Core Infrastructure

Miller is one of 26 members worldwide who sits on the Microsoft Infrastructure Partner Advisory Council, and is a member on a number of Microsoft Product Advisory and Customer Advocacy Boards. As a dynamic speaker, Miller presents regularly at events such as MMS, Tech ED and the Gartner Data Center Conference. Doug is responsible for Ascendum’s Microsoft Solutions focused on Data Center, Client, Virtualization, Security and Unified Communications. Doug brings unparalleled breadth and depth of knowledge around Core Infrastructure solutions.

Raveen Rajavarma
Director – Information Worker and BI

With over 6 years’ experience developing customer solutions within SharePoint and the Technical Editor for the “Inside SharePoint 2007 Administration”, Raveen will share his insights and experience helping organizations maximize worker productivity leveraging Microsoft’s SharePoint. Raveen has led hundreds of SharePoint implementations and evangelized the use and adoption of SharePoint throughout his career. Raveen is currently co-authoring a book with Microsoft about SharePoint 2010 & Business Intelligence.

For more information, please contact us at info@ascendum.com, or call 513.792.5100

Windows 8, What We Know Today

Jon Box, MSFT — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:13:37 GMT

Well, it’s an exciting time to work at Microsoft, with so many cool things unfolding before us. As you could imagine, there are lots of questions around the next generation of Windows, internally code-named “Windows 8”. I look forward to the next disclosure at the BUILD conference in September – so at the moment, that’s what we have to wait for. You can NOT make any full conclusions yet – this was just a little peek. For now, refer to these “Windows 8” resources, the only definitive statements that have been made from Microsoft:

Demonstration video on YouTube (Building "Windows 8" - Video #1) – high quality online or download the mp4 (right click to save).
Ecosystem demonstration featuring prototype hardware – video online.
All Things D video presentation – video online (from D9 event, content controlled by All Things Digital, not full copy of event)
Press release – “Microsoft Previews ‘Windows 8"’”
BUILD conference – for developers this is where to learn more and sign up.
Article by Julie Larson-Green, corporate vice president, Windows Experience

I see lots of questions and unmerited deduction occurring. Stay tuned! The story is still unfolding, and we just got the opening cover pulled back to the Windows 8 story. See you at the BUILD conference!

Microsoft and Disney show Tron:Legacy leveraging HTML5

Jon Box, MSFT — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 14:21:40 GMT

Wow! Another cool web experience, that runs better with IE9. Check this out: Disney TRON: Legacy Digital Book Site. Very cool experience.

First off, it is HTML5, so any modern browser can run it. Second, just looking at the Behind the Scenes explanation, the development has several excellent quotes about using IE9, like “From our tests, although Internet Explorer 9 offered the best and fastest experience, it also displays correctly in Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera”.

The explanation post covers topics like:

the design experience
the prototyping experience (looking at canvas over CSS3)
finding the limits of bandwidth and large quality graphics
Syncing multiple assets
Leveraging the IE9 debugging tools and console.log
Preloading images
Using the same fonts from the comic book with WOFF and FontSquirrel.com
Site pinning and BuildMyPinnedSite.com
Feature detection, cross-browser testing, etc.

You can also see a video interview with Giorgio and Ari Bixhorn describing the technical coolness of the TRON experience. Topics covered:

What's going on behind the graphics, anyway?
What led to the use of HTML5's Canvas versus, say, CSS3 Transforms to create the stunning graphics with lightning bolts flashing in the background?
What did they do to compensate for Canvas being a mostly "dumb" graphical surface?
How did the overcome bandwidth constraints when loading several high res images?

Props to VectorForm and Disney for their commitment to the Tron legacy, Disney’s creative passion, and bringing the comic book to live virtually.

Window Phone Gaming Bootcamp Online–Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Jon Box, MSFT — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:17:45 GMT

Jared Bienz is giving a FREE online event. You can register here:

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032486598&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

What is it?

This App and Gaming Bootcamp is an 8 hour event where you’ll learn about Windows Phone, learn how to build applications and learn how to build games. We’ll cover everything from location awareness (the GPS) through graphics design and animation; we’ll even cover topics like physics and cloud services.

This event will offer a mix of presentations, demos, labs and interactive sessions where you can follow along with the instructor. At the end of the day you’ll have a working basketball game, and we’ll even help first 50 people who are serious about selling in the marketplace get started for free (a $99 value). Even if you’re not ready to get started right away, we’ll show you how to kick off a new mobile business with free ultimate versions of almost all Microsoft products for the next three years.

Win CMA Fest 4 Day Pass with Internet Explorer 9

Jon Box, MSFT — Sat, 28 May 2011 04:15:48 GMT

Rascal Flatts, Jason Aldean, and Ronnie Dunn have different prize packages just waiting for you. Go to these links and follow the registration instructions. You’ll need IE9 and Windows 7, and the contest payoff could be big for the country music fan. Each artist has their own contest and they have different COOL prizes. They do each offer CMA Music Fest 4 Day passes, which makes this WAY COOL!!!

And 4 nights at LP Field plus these other prizes, it’s a country music fan’s dream event. If you don’t know, CMA Music Fest is like no other music event. During the day, you can visit Fan Fair Hall to meet artists, as well as see artists perform at music stages around downtown Nashville (just check out the Riverfront Park schedule – awesome by itself). Then at night, we head to LP Field and see some of the hottest names in country music (6 mini-concerts each night on the schedule). And as the CMA Music Fest veterans know, 4 day pass holders get special benefits at LP Field like STAGE-FRONT access in the Fan Photo Line. Nothing like a stroll right in front of a big act blowing out the stadium.

These contests will be done through an IE9 feature called “site pinning”. The instructions on the contest links will tell you exactly what to do to get started. But, basically, after providing your Facebook login, there will be an image to drag to your taskbar (this is the pinning), which will put a button from your artist on your taskbar. And then daily right click (and a jump list will appear as in the picture below), and select “Enter Pin To Win Contest”.

So, go register now at each site! CMA Music Fest is in Nashville TN, and runs June 9-12. See you in Nashville in a couple of weeks!

P.S. These links below will take you to the corresponding contest.

Rascal Flatts contest	Jason Aldean contest	Ronnie Dunn’s contest

DEV332: Enhancing Pinned Sites with Windows Internet Explorer 9

Jon Box, MSFT — Fri, 27 May 2011 13:10:30 GMT

This was my second session at TechEd. (I described my first here.) This session is obviously focused on site pinning, one of my favorite topics. In this session, as I described the fundamental pieces to site pinning, I showed other implementations as well as a mock conversation of how I would demo to DotNetRocks.com (building out a demo for them through the presentation). The video can be found here.

This is the outline:

The Value of Pinning

a list of measured learning's from IE Marketing

How To Pin

From the end user viewpoint
Favicon

Fundamentals

Jump Lists

Static
Dynamic
Inplace Navigation

Notification

Icon Overlay
Activating the taskbar button

Thumbnail Preview Buttons

Other Considerations

Analytics / Instrumentation
Discovery

On site promotion
IE Gallery

Feature Detection

Non-IE browsers
Windows Vista issues

Pinify, formerly ie9ify

DEV348 - Debugging Pesky HTML5 Websites with F12 in Windows Internet Explorer 9

Jon Box, MSFT — Fri, 27 May 2011 03:37:26 GMT

This is a short recap of my presentation at TechEd, on . Video is here.

This talk was practical advice that came from solving several customer requests that started with: “my site broke with IE9”. The talk was short on slides, but included live debugging of several live sites (please don’t shoot the messenger if your site was demo’d).

The Outline:

F12 Developer Tool Overview
Issue Discovery Tactics

How to make sure you have valid HTML5
Hints from the console window
Changing the User-Agent
Changing the Document Mode
Lessons from the Network tab

Profiling
Search assistance
The Console Object
Other Assistance

Fiddler
SuperPreview

Want to make sure that I give some credit to The Beebs (aka. Martin Beeby, MS Developer Evangelist in the UK). At MIX, he presented a similar topic, and I leveraged a code snippet from him – and you should take note of this. As you might know, you can manipulate an existing HTML page with the F12 Developer Tools. And Martin showed me a handy little snippet to add JQuery to an existing page, so then you can use the console window to issue JQuery calls to the live page – which can come in handy.

        1: var headID = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];

       2: var newScript = document.createElement('script');

       3: newScript.type = 'text/javascript';

       4: newScript.src = 'http://ajax.aspnetcdn.com/ajax/jQuery/jquery-1.5.2.min.js';

       5: headID.appendChild(newScript);

Experiencing Flash issues with IE9 today?

Jon Box, MSFT — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:49:01 GMT

I’ve had a few customers ask me about an IE9 situation where Flash app’s are appearing in the top left of the window and flashing. Turns out that this is not a IE9 bug, but something with Flash and apparently Intel HD Graphics adapters. More details can be found here on Adobe’s site. A pre-release fix is talked about too here.

WP7 Beta Mango Tools Available Today

Jon Box, MSFT — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:32:53 GMT

More good news for Windows Phone 7 today. You can download later today. Other news coming out during the press conference, so might want to watch it live or later here. A press release is here, but here’s a summary of the new features. Another summary on Windows Phone blog.

Communications: Easier to connect and share

The smartphone experience can be complicated by a sea of disconnected apps and accounts as people attempt to keep pace with all the ways they communicate – from calls, texts, email and IM to status updates, Tweets, check-ins, photo posting and tagging. To help people stay on top of that growing complexity, the Mango release organizes information around the person or group people want to interact with, not the app they have to use.

• Threads. Switch between text, Facebook chat, and Windows Live Messenger within the same conversation.

• Groups. Group contacts into personalized Live Tiles to see the latest status updates right from the start screen and quickly send a text, email or IM to the whole group.

• Deeper social network integration. Twitter and Linked In feeds are now integrated into contact cards, and Mango includes built-in Facebook check-ins and new face detection software that makes it easier to quickly tag photos and post to the Web.

• Linked Inbox. See multiple email accounts in one linked inbox. Conversations are organized to make it easy to stay on top of the latest mail.

• Hands-free messaging. Built-in voice-to-text and text-to-voice support enables hands-free texting or chatting.

A smarter approach to Apps

Windows Phone will challenge the way people think about apps. Today their usefulness is measured by what can be done within the app, but we see the promise of apps in how they can be integrated directly into the core experiences of the phone. In addition to making it easier to get timely notifications and updates from apps right from the Start Screen, the Mango release will also surface apps as part of search results and within Windows Phone Hubs. As a result, a useful app is more likely to be right there when you need it.

• App Connect. By connecting apps to search results and deepening their integration with Windows Phone Hubs, including Music and Video and Pictures, Mango allows apps to be surfaced when and where they make sense.

• Improved Live Tiles. Get real-time information from apps without having to open them. Live Tiles are more dynamic and can hold more information.

• Multitasking. Quickly switch between apps in use and allow apps to run in the background while helping to preserve battery life and performance.

Internet beyond the browser

In addition to including Internet Explorer, the Mango release will connect the power of the Web to the unique capabilities of your phone, such as location awareness, camera and access to apps, to present a new way of viewing the Web that is more localized, actionable and relevant.

• Internet Explorer 9. A browser based on the powerful IE9 and including support for HTLM5 and full hardware acceleration.

• Local Scout. Provides hyper-local search results and recommends nearby restaurants, shopping and activities in an easy- to-use guide.

• Bing on Windows Phone. More ways to search the Web, including Bing Vision, Music Search and Voice so it’s easy to discover and decide.

• Quick Cards. When searching for a product, movie, event or place see a quick summary of relevant information, including related apps.

WP7 Stencil Kit

Jon Box, MSFT — Sat, 21 May 2011 13:19:09 GMT

Thought this was kinda cool. It’s made by UI Stencils, and they produce stencils for other popular platforms.

The Windows Phone 7 Stencil Kit allows you to mock-up app ideas with ease. Use the precision cut stainless steel stencil to let the ideas flow. Perfect for doodling user interface, user experience, app flows and wireframe ideas. Do check out our previous post about 20 free prototyping, sketching, mockup and wireframing resources for Windows Phone and official Download for Windows Phone 7 Buttons.

UI Stencils have released the stencil for $24.99. This kit was co-developed by the Windows Phone internal design team at Microsoft. It features the current Metro design language and iconography. The kit comes with:

Stainless steel stencil
Zebra mechanical pencil
Plastic protector
2 UI Stencils stickers

Are you an iPhone developer, and looking to expand your kingdom ?

Jon Box, MSFT — Mon, 02 May 2011 22:05:42 GMT

There’s a lot of dynamics unfolding before us in the mobility space. Android is putting pressure on iPhone sales, and Gartner says WP7 will catch up with the competitors. Who knows for sure. However, I do feel that Windows Phone 7 is a quality product, and it will only get stronger. And if you’re aware of the Nokia partnership, Microsoft does represent another revenue channel for the mobility developer and ISV’s.

With these issues, is it possible that a iPhone developer would look at Windows Phone 7? Hmmm, not sure. I have my religious technology issues, where I say “I’ll never use technology X, because it comes from company Y and they are our competitor”. (Just ask my family or friends.) But, when life and economics are changing and you have to pay a house note and put food on the table, sometimes you have to be open minded. I don’t know how all of this is going to pan out – nor do I know who will be the main mobility platform players in 5 years. I sure hope that Microsoft is in the game, playing in a quality way. But, if I was feeling pressure about making the next deal happen and I was fearful of my future, you can bet that I would be looking for options. Therefore, an entrepreneur and/or mature consultant will look at other platforms.

So, I’d like to recommend this learning resource for iPhone developers, considering WP7. In case you need to expand your tool belt of skills and business opportunities for the future, take a look – it won’t hurt. We have put together a educational package for the iPhone developer that includes the following:

a NEW iPhone/iOS to Windows Phone 7 API mapping tool

With this tool, iPhone developers can grab their apps, pick out the iOS API calls, and quickly look up the equivalent classes, methods and notification events in WP7. A developer can search a given iOS API call and find the equivalent WP7 along with C# sample codes and API documentations for both platforms. Give it a try!

a 90+ pages “Windows Phone 7 Guide for iPhone Application Developers” white paper, organized in 8 chapters, and growing
a series of “developer stories”, in which developers share on video their experience porting iPhone applications to Windows Phone and explain why and how they did it.

I’m not saying “jump ship” or “it’s over!” or anything like that. That would be crazy talk. But, once you see some of the market dynamics and some of our WP7 potential, you might take a quick peek at WP7 and this package will help in the translation.

More coming from the WP7 Interoperability team in the future.

Windows Phone Accelerator Labs Coming to Chicago and Dallas in May

Jon Box, MSFT — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:31:16 GMT

Working on a WP7 application and want some help? Check out Dave Bost and his teammates, who are hosting a Windows Phone Accelerator Lab in Dallas (May 9-13) and Chicago (May 16-20). Limited seating, and registration is a submission process.

3 Weeks Left to Get Into {Dev:unplugged}

Jon Box, MSFT — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:15:25 GMT

We believe that HTML5 and related technologies, in conjunction with faster and faster browsers, finally give developers the tools they need to create experiences that are just as vivid, interactive and high-fidelity as what you have come to expect from native applications without the need for plug-ins. We want to see what you can do unplugged. Push HTML5 to its limits and compete for over $40,000 in prizes. The Grand Prize winner will receive $9,000 in cash and a fully-loaded trip with a Golden Ticket to the Future of Web Apps Conference in Las Vegas on June 27th.

Submission deadline on May 8. Don't wait, enter your app today!

More details at http://contest.beautyoftheweb.com/.

Details also on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/microsoftstudent/posts/142647012472551

Check out the submissions so far, but there’s room left for more cool submissions. Cash and hardware await the winners…

Contest Details

Key Dates:

· Submit your App idea: March 1st – May 8th

· View entries in the Gallery: April 5th– May 8th

· Top 40 Finalist Gallery update: May 12th-May 22nd

· View the winners: on or around May 23rd

File Size & Format:

· Please upload a .pptx, .ppt, or .pptm file.

· Your entry must be 5MB (5,000 kilobytes) or smaller. Please minimize
the size of the file and try again.

· Note: your App has to be live on a website so we can test it. Don’t
have hosting yet? http://www.microsoft.com/web/hosters/browse.aspx.

Judging Criteria:

· Gaming Category = fun, addictive, easy to play.

· Music Category = beautiful, hypnotic, choreographed

Some Reading Assistance

· How to Build Asteroids with the Impact HTML5 Game Engine

· How to Build an HTML5 Music Visualizer using EaselJS

HTML Goodies: Lots of Education Waiting For You

Jon Box, MSFT — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 23:54:46 GMT

Anyone noticed the HTML5 articles appearing at the HTML5 Development Center at HTML Goodies ? Not only am I seeing some good content, but I also see that they are supporting IE9 site pinning. Not to step over the valuable articles there, I looked into their site pinning implementation and there are several lessons in their effort.

HTML Goodies Jump List Menu

Here’s their jump list menu for Windows 7 users:

HTML Goodies META tag’s

For reference, I’ve provided a snippet of their code below:

        1: <!-- Install Meta-->

       2: <meta name="application-name" content="HTMLGoodies" />

       3: <meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="HTMLGoodies: The Ultimate HTML Resource" />

       4: <meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="http://www.htmlgoodies.com/html5/index.php/" />

       5:  

       6: <!-- Static Jump list task items -->

       7: <meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Latest HTMLGoodies Articles; action-uri=http://o1.qnsr.com/ads2/r?%3Bn=203%3Bc=806673%3Bs=9518%3Bx=7936%3Bf=201103291502070%3Bu=j%3Bq=1%3Bz=TIMESTAMP%3B; icon-uri=http://www.htmlgoodies.com/favicon.ico" />

       8: <meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=HTML5 Development Center; action-uri=http://o1.qnsr.com/ads2/r?%3Bn=203%3Bc=806674%3Bs=9518%3Bx=7936%3Bf=201103291506150%3Bu=j%3Bq=1%3Bz=TIMESTAMP%3B; icon-uri=http://www.htmlgoodies.com/favicon.ico" />

       9: <meta name="msapplication-task-separator" content="Forum Tasks" />

      10: <meta name="msapplication-task"  content="name=HTML Discussion Forums; action-uri=http://o1.qnsr.com/ads2/r?%3Bn=203%3Bc=806675%3Bs=9518%3Bx=7936%3Bf=201103291518190%3Bu=j%3Bq=1%3Bz=TIMESTAMP%3B; icon-uri=http://www.htmlgoodies.com/favicon.ico" />

Static and Dynamic Jump Lists

Nothing earth shattering here, but I tell folks all the time: anyone can throw out a static jump list, but making the site more interactive will improve your customer retention – and you do that with dynamic jump lists and notifications. I believe that IE9 consumers will be the most valuable consumers to a site – if a site has a valued business proposition and creates an appropriate experience for the consumer through site pinning. But the site has to do its part. My soap box: simple experiences and low-valued content do not retain the consumer – so build something cool and engaging. It’s a win with IE9 consumers!

Semicolon in the static meta URL

If you’ve looked at the syntax for a static jump list, then you know that the format for building a static item is:

       1: <meta name="msapplication-task" 

       2:       content="name=Check Order Status;

       3:                action-uri=./myPage.aspx;

       4:                icon-uri=./favicon.ico"

       5: />

The content entry communicates 3 values: menu item text in name, the URL to jump to via action, and the icon to show. These fields are delimited by a semicolon. Easy enough!

But, what to do if you have semicolons in your URL? Notice what HTML Goodies did – just replace the semicolon with %3B, and problem solved. Note their code in lines 7, 8, and 10. (Thanks to Justin Posey and Brandon Satrom for this learning.)

Space in the static meta

Nothing note worthy here, but I haven’t left spaces around the proper field delimiter (semicolon) as in line 7 of the Html Goodies code. Just making a note that this was evidently valid syntax. I had no idea.

Another angle that caught my by surprise: when looking at their menu in the F12 Developer Tools on a static item that is broken across multiple lines (as in the semicolon example above), it shows the content attribute as one line, but with spaces in between the delimited string

Separator

I know that the MSDN doc’s talk about separators or dividers (my term) in the jump list menu. As you might notice in the HTML Goodies menu above, they have these dividers in the middle of the static jump list (what the UI exposes as the Tasks section). But this is the first production usage of the msapplication-task-separator that I’ve seen. Note line9 in the HTML Goodies sample above.

Got my curiosity going, so in my playing on my machine, here are few other pointers about this item:

Using a separator does not take away from your limit of 5 static items.
Back to back separator’s result in one divider in the menu.
Multiple separator’s require a unique value in the content attribute.

More explanation here on MSDN.

StartUrl Pointing to a Page

In most cases, I see msapplication-starturl pointing to a folder. (I’ve blogged about the issues with this entry, so assuming you know those facts already.) But, in the case of HTML Goodies, they point to a page (see line 5 in their code above), and this is definitely acceptable. The path is in there, and it has the trailing slash already.

Salutations

Thanks for stopping by again. Hoping that someone learns from these observations. I document them so my old mind won’t lose them.

Also, check out the content on HTML Goodies. Lots of good stuff there. I’m enjoying the HTML5 page. And you should pin it too!

You Sniffers: Watchout for the new IE10 User-Agent

Jon Box, MSFT — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:23:45 GMT

As announced at MIX last week, we’ve started shipping previews of IE10 (download) – just like we did through the IE9 alpha/beta stages. And this shows our continued focus on making IE a top browser choice for Windows users and IT shops. But, after reading Tony Ross’ post on the new IE10 user agent string, I wanted to forward along his post and emphasize a potential support issue.

Recently, my teammate Taylor Cowan found that one of our customer’s sites was incorrectly sniffing for the browser type and version. The code had a wrong RegEx string, which was yesterday’s problem. It also was checking for the IE version, looking for 1 digit – which is tomorrow’s problem. Someday, they’re going to think they found IE v1, when a IE10 user visits their site. That day is not that far off, with folks playing with platform previews and the release coming someday.

So, again, we recommend moving your code away from browser detection and towards “feature detection”. There are very few cases where sniffing is the mature coding practice, so start today enhancing your code.