On May 24th Microsoft held a press conference announcing many of the new features coming to the next version Windows Phone 7. Codename for this version is “Mango” so we’ll refer to it by that name in the rest of this post. Note that the official name in the documentation is Windows Phone 7.1 beta.
Mango was first unveiled at WMC event in Barcelona in February, more features including the full developer SDK functionalities were also shown during MIX conference in April. Take a look at the video below where Joe Belfiore walks you through the new consumer features.
Read about the consumer features in Mango on these sites:
Developers can tap into more than 1500 new APIs in Mango and start taking advantage of the new features today. But what are the main new features? Too many to call out in this post but focusing on the top we get:
Download and install the updated SDK containing Visual Studio 2010, phone emulator and Expression Blend for Windows phone, including some tools like the .XAP deployment tool. Note: for current application development: the new updated tools allow you for multi-targeting. This means v1 projects can be worked on with the updated tools, as well as creating new applications targeting the Windows Phone 7.1 version. Running the two tools versions side by side is not possible, and in this way not required really.
Today as a developer you can only submit applications for Windows Phone 7 (not Mango). In the near future the application marketplace for Mango will become available and from that point on you will be able to submit your “Mango” targeted application. Register for the marketplace on http://create.msdn.com. For tips on Belgium & Luxembourg specifics of Marketplace registration, watch this live meeting recording: “Windows Phone 7: Tips and Tricks about Developer Registration and Application Certification”.
Happy coding!
Our third Microsoft Webcafe is taking place on May 26th in Mons at the Microsoft Innovation Center. Register today for this after-work tech informal meetup with web, phone and UX professionals. It’s free! And because it’s Belgium, what better than adding beer tasting activity to the mix?
As usual, we have a mix of partner and community presentations around real projects, as well as content updates from Microsoft. This time we have also added a fun ‘café’ related activity: two beer sommeliers will join us during the breaks to teach us all about beers. You can find more about the beer process and taste up to 15 different sorts of beer during the event. That’s enough information we want to share about this, do expect some pretty nice surprises.
Special: prize draw of Dazzlepad Tundra Table PC In addition, there will be a very nice prize draw: it’s your chance to win a dazzlepad Tundra tablet PC. Your presence is your chance to win!
FeedTso, a social feedreader for Windows Phone 7
A journey in the development of WP7 application, mainly from the UI and User Experience design stand point. We'll be sharing some tips on how to make a WP7 that looks good.
Presented by: Daniela Panfili and Simone Chiaretta
SmartKwizz is the powerful combination of a self-service platform hosted in Windows Azure and a mobile application for Windows Phone 7 and other smartphones. Learn how this application leverages ASP.NET, Silverlight and Bing Maps, Windows PHone 7 and Windows Azure. Presented by: Rénald Nollet (Technical Director at c-services, Cronos company based in Luxembourg)
Date: Thursday May 26th 2011
Agenda: 17h - 17.30h: Welcome 17.30 - 18.15h: 10 minute sessions part 1 18.15h - 19h: food & drinks with beer tasting 19h - 19.45h: 10 minute sessions part 2 19.45h – 22h: food & drinks with beer tasting
Address: Microsoft Innovation Center Mons Parc Initialis, Boulevard Initialis 1 1 7000 Mons
>> Register and join us!
Earlier this week at TechEd North America, an update to the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 has been released (that toolkit is a mouthful !). With this third release in just two months, the toolkit get some nice extra enhancements to help you build Windows Phone 7 apps taking advantage of Windows Azure, storage and integration with the Access Control Service (ACS) 2.0. Since version 1.1 there is also out of the box support for the Microsoft Push Notification Service.
What is it? This toolkit contains Visual Studio project templates, class libraries optimized for use on the phone for storage and membership services, a sample application and documentation. The objective of the toolkit is making it easy and quick for you to create Windows Phone applications leveraging Microsoft’s cloud services.
New in v1.2:
Links:
buildmypinnedsite.com delivers you tools, content and code guidance to help you with implementing Internet Explorer 9 Site Pinning features. While you can already find quite some information on the matter on MSDN, this site goes an extra step and is totally worth a visit.
The information is nicely structured in seven steps, going from adding a simple hi-res icon to sharing and promoting it on the IE Gallery.
With the launch of Internet Explorer 9 where we had more than ten Belgian partners and sites implement site pinning. These included HLN.be/7sur7.be, Le Soir, Zita, and many more. In the meantime a few others have joined the club out of which:
De Morgen – www.demorgen.be
Sport.be
Sport.be implements dynamic jump lists and notification overlay.
One of the things I like to emphasize when working with partners that implement site pinning is the next step: make sure you measure its success. Otherwise, how are you going to decide for any evolution of the features in the future? For example if you start simple with pinning and some static jum plists, having usage statistics might be able to help you make a business case to go the next level: notifications, dynamic jum plists and so forth. Again for this part of the job, buildmypinnedsite.com has the help: download the white paper to learn more about integrating analytics and instrumentation. Recommended read: the Engineering IE blog article “BuildMyPinnedSite.com: 50% More Engagement in 15 Minutes or Less through Pinning”.
As announced on the Official Microsoft Blog, the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS (v1.0.0) are now available. The toolkit contains resources and services designed to make it easier for iOS developers to use Windows Azure. This release pushes forward the momentum around Mobile + Cloud, and expands it such that we can make it easier to target Windows Azure by offering native libraries for non-Microsoft platforms.
You can see the official announcements here:
Last March we released the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7, which not only provided a set of generic services for Windows Azure but also provided resources to build native applications for Windows Phone 7 that target those services.
You can get the Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS—and all the source code—on github:
The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS works in two ways: you access Windows Azure storage directly, or alternatively, can go through a proxy service. The proxy service code is the same code as used in the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 and negates the need for the developer to store the Azure storage credentials locally on the device.
In addition to the iOS toolkit release, we are also excited to share the news that development for the Windows Azure Toolkit for Android has already begun – we expect to ship the first version next Month.
Here are some resources to help you get started:
You can start building your application on Windows Azure in 3 simple and easy to do steps:
1. Download the Tools:
Get Visual Studio Express and the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio to start building and debugging applications for the Windows Azure Platform http://tinyurl.com/learnaboutazure. If you have already Visual Studio installed you can download the tools directly from http://tinyurl.com/toolsforazure. Also download the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7.
2. Setup an Account:
Set up an account and obtain a free subscription for accessing the online portals for Windows Azure, SQL Azure and Windows Azure AppFabric. You can learn more about the accounts http://tinyurl.com/getazureaccount or you can sign up directly and get the trial http://tinyurl.com/getazurefreetrial.
3. Create your First application and Deploy it on the Windows Azure Platform:
First learn how to create a simple ASP.NET application in Visual Studio for Windows Azure on your local machine http://tinyurl.com/localazureapplication. Once successfully created, learn how to deploy this application on the Windows Azure Platform http://tinyurl.com/deployazureapplication.
When all steps are executed successfully you should have running your first mobile application on the Windows Azure Platform!
Last week I had the pleasure to do a session at the biggest Belgian design and web development event: Multi-mania. My session covered an overview of Internet Explorer 9 developer tools (F12 devtools). With the release of Internet Explorer 9 and support for standards with many of HTML5’s umbrella of technologies, it’s important to take advantage of the latest features while making sure older sites stay compatible.
Developer tools are not new in IE9, but this updated version does bring some very welcome new features:
Below you can find the slides for the session as well as recommended resources to learn how to use the tools.
Happy HTML5 coding and debugging!
Join us for the bi-weekly webcasts, delivered live and directly to your computer.
Abstract
In this fast paced and ever changing world, insight in your company’s data becomes more and more crucial to stay ahead. Power users need this insight in data now, not in the next week or month. Due to this trend, BI has to evolve into a more mobile, quick and personal approach. Microsoft addresses this need for self-service BI for Power Users with Report Builder 3.0 and PowerPivot. This session gives you a quick overview of the SQL Server BI stack and introduces you to the concepts of self-service BI.
Timing 14:00 – 15:30 Attend this webcast and get a FREE "I have IT in my DNA" T-shirt!
May 24, 2011: FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint: a developers walkthrough
Abstract Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint extends the SharePoint search functionality and provides an exceptional search experience by incorporating features such as an extensible content processing pipeline, contextual search, extensible relevance models and an advanced query language. This session will introduce the FAST search platform from a developers perspective and will explore the different functionalities as well as talk about common developer tasks around Fast Search 2010 for SharePoint 2010 such as: - Configuration and extension of the FAST search webpart - Extending the content processing pipeline - Building search applications using the SharePoint object model combined with the capabilities of the FAST Query Language (FQL).
Speaker Joris Poelmans works as ECM unit manager and SharePoint principal architect at RealDolmen (www.realdolmen.com), a leading Belgian IT services company and Microsoft Gold Partner. His main competence area is Information Worker solutions, where he currently focuses on the SharePoint 2010 Products and Technologies platform. In October 2005, he was given the Microsoft MVP award for Windows SharePoint Services. He is also president of the Belgian Information Worker User Group (www.biwug.be) which regularly organizes sessions about the SharePoint platform in general. He can be contacted through his blog at http://jopx.blogspot.com.
Attend this webcast and get a FREE "Cloud Continuum" T-shirt!
June 7, 2011: Integration as a service - Creating hybrid solutions with the Windows Azure Platform
Abstract There are plenty of business drivers for enterprises to consider a move the cloud, but at the same time there are plenty of reasons as well why these enterprises will not be able to move their entire stack in the short term. At least for the next ten years hybrid systems will be the defacto standard way of implementing cloud based systems in the corporate world. In this session I will show you around the different services, offered by the Windows Azure Platform, that ensure a seamless integration between cloud and on-premises resources.
Speaker Yves Goeleven is a Windows Azure MVP and Solution Architect for Capgemini Belgium. His main focus is on the implementation of enterprise grade solutions on the Microsoft’s platform in corporate environments, based on both custom software development practices as well as platform services offered by Microsoft, including for example the Windows Azure Platform and xRM.
Attend this webcast and get a FREE Windows Azure hat!
The Patterns & Practices team has released Silverlight Integration Pack for the Microsoft Enterprise Library.
What is it and what’s inside?
Enterprise Library application blocks are a very popular download for enterprise developers, providing guidance and reusable components.
The Silverlight Integration Pack contains a set of building blocks focusing on Line-of-business (LOB) Silverlight applications, porting the desktop version and adding functionality for Silverlight projects. Building blocks include Validation Application Block, Logging, Exception Handling Block, Caching Application Block, Interception & Policy Injection Application Block, Configuration support and a reference application.
NuGet support Both Enterprise Library 5.0 and Enterprise Library 5.0 Silverlight Integration Pack are available as Windows Installer Packages (MSI) via MSDN or as NuGet packages. The configuration tool is also available as a Visual Studio extension package (VSIX) from the Visual Studio Gallery.
>> Go to the original article: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/agile/archive/2011/05/11/silverlight-integration-pack-for-microsoft-enterprise-library-5-0-released.aspx
‘Quick tip’ posts are short, useful posts pointing to content and tricks that might otherwise get lost in a typical 140 chars message on Twitterverse.
You’re designing or building applications and want to fast forward to get ready for the next generation of user experiences? Join us on June 28 in Brussels Business Faculty for a free event!
Technology is becoming more natural and intuitive. Touch, face- and voice-recognition, movement sensors – all are part of an emerging field of computing often called natural user interface, or NUI. Interacting with technology in these humanistic ways is no longer limited to high-tech secret agents and Star Trek.
During this event, you’ll get inspired by Microsoft’s vision and strategy for natural user interfaces – see what today’s and tomorrow’s technologies can bring! In addition, you’ll learn from the UX experts what it takes to build applications that feel effortless in their use and that are optimized for emerging technologies. Finally, we have invited a number of companies that will showcase their next-generation user experiences and will demonstrate what is possible already today!
And what’s more, you can get some hands-on touch experience with a series of Windows 7 Slate devices or enjoy our exciting Xbox Kinect experiences!
Special: prize draw of Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse
There will be a very nice prize draw: it’s your chance to win one of the Microsoft Arc Touch mouse. Your presence is your chance to win!
Cease this opportunity to take your applications to the next level, and make them more natural! Register today for this event and meet-up with other UX professionals. It’s free and you’ll get an exclusive T-shirt!
UX Design Patterns for Multi-touch applications
What is that makes your applications intuitive and make them feel effortless in their use? Come and learn a few tips and tricks from the UX experts.
Presented by: Sigrid Vandenweghe (Human Interface Group)
Experience some compelling examples of next-generation user experiences, built on the Microsoft platform. Presented by: Microsoft Partners
Date: Tuesday June 28th 2011
Agenda:
Address: Brussels Business Faculty St. Lendriksborre 6 Font Saint Landry 1120 Brussels (Neder-Over-Heembeek)
If you missed TechDays 2011, there is no way to bring you back the whole experience. That’s the bad news, the good news however is that we go a long way and bring you a recorded video of each of the sessions so you can learn from the best. From now on, you can browse all the sessions, view them online or download to your favorite media player and download the slides. With top speakers like Scott Hanselman, Jeff Prosise, Ingo Rammer, Vittorio Bertocci, Glenn Block, Christian Weyer, Hadi Hariri, …. and so many more. The event welcomed over 40 different speakers!
Check out our photos of the event and a short video compilation below. You can also view the testimonials video from attendees here.
On the TechDays website you can find the video recordings split up by Developer/IT-Professional and then further by track.
Next to the tracks you can also browse scenarios:
(note: Channel 9 contains all developer sessions, for IT-Professional content you can find it on TechNet Edge)
All session videos lead you to a Channel 9 TechDays 2011 Event page. Channel 9 also has a landing page for the whole event, which allows you to browse and do free-text search. You can also take advantage of commenting on the video and in this way have a conversation with other viewers or even get feedback from some of the speakers.
Happy learning!