The PDC is the pinnacle of the Microsoft events calendar as far as I’m concerned: it’s the flagship event for developers, offering the most comprehensive, future-looking, technically deep, densely-packed set of sessions from Microsoft speakers you can...

As everyone must know by now, the Windows 7 Release Candidate is broadly released and available for download from the Windows site . The RC build is essentially our dress rehearsal: we’ve hit feature complete, stabilized the release, followed the active...

What is Windows 7 doing at a web conference like MIX09 ? Last week I went along to the above titled session, in which Yochay Kiriaty , an irrepressible evangelist on my team, presented the case for a desktop application in an increasingly web-orientated...

Windows Azure isn’t particularly “on-topic” for this blog, but hey, just because I’m a client guy doesn’t mean that I can’t show any interest in other technologies, right? Manuvir Das presented a session on the subject at MIX09, and since I’m sat at home...

Seema Ramchandani works on performance as a Program Manager on the Silverlight team. She gave a fast-paced talk at MIX09 covering the graphics and media that contained some helpful tips for performance profiling, debugging and optimization. Silverlight...

Brandon Bray gave an interesting presentation at MIX09 on how the CLR (the execution engine that underlies the .NET Framework) was refactored to support for Silverlight; I thought I’d share my distilled notes from the session. Bringing .NET to the Silverlight...

Deborah Adler presented a fascinating case study of how user experience design can really have a positive impact on the lives of those who touch our products. She was the principal designer behind Target’s ClearRx drug prescription packaging , which has...

Dean Hachamovitch is the General Manager for the Internet Explorer team. Amazingly, he managed to blog about IE8 at the same time as he was delivering his keynote – he must have been typing with his feet :-) Dean started with a humorous video on the ...

As announced at the MIX09 conference today, we just shipped the final version of Internet Explorer 8 . If you haven’t yet given it a try, here are eight reasons that might persuade you to check it out: You want a web that moves as fast as you do: Highlight...

At 9am Pacific (GMT-7), I’ll start live blogging the second day of MIX09 keynotes. As with yesterday, I’ll post the live version at this location on the visitmix site , and then within a couple of hours of the end, I’ll post a better edited, linked version...

Bill Buxton talked about why user-centered design is so important; now we’re going to talk about the “ how ”. We’re going to be talking about three key categories today: web , media and RIA . One of the things we’re trying to do is to provide a single...

Earlier today on the visitmix site, I posted a “live blog” of the first two MIX09 keynotes here in Las Vegas. Now that the dust has settled a little, I wanted to provide an edited version for broader consumption. If you’re looking for a comprehensive...

In previous years , I’ve posted a live blog here of the major announcements at our flagship developer conferences. This year I’m going to try and do the same over on the MIX09 site , with “raw” regular updates of the key announcements; I’ll then wrap...

It’s been a little while in coming, but I’m delighted to announce that we’ve shipped the latest release of Family.Show , our reference application for WPF development. Family.Show started a couple of years ago, when WPF was in its infancy and a few of...

Not a huge release this one, but we've just shipped an update for Silverlight 2 that fixes a number of minor bugs that have been reported over the last couple of months. Get it while it's hot, here: Silverlight 2 GDR1 end-user runtime Silverlight 2 GDR1...

Any good politician, regardless of leaning, knows that the language you use to frame a topic is key to how it is perceived. By repeatedly using pejorative terms to describe your own position and that of your opponents, you start to move a debate onto...

A lot, it turns out. Some long-time readers may remember my post of a year or two back where I set a fun little challenge to test what could be accomplished with just a single element of XAML . In the preparation for MIX09 , the team created a competition...

Just wanted to take a moment to highlight Mike Swanson’s amazing theme pack for Windows 7. Mike is a colleague, friend who works just down the corridor from me. His primary role with the company is as a content owner for our developer conferences (he...

It’s great to see Windows 7 Beta finally released to the world! We're very proud of what has been accomplished over the last months; in many ways, it sets a new quality bar for a beta operating system release. Building on top of the Windows Vista foundation...

Over the next week or so, I want to put a bit of context behind some of the announcements from PDC, particularly the ones that got glossed over amidst the excitement over Windows 7 and Windows Azure. I’m going to start with highlighting some of the work...

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m sitting back-stage in the huge keynote room here at the PDC in Los Angeles. Watching some great demo rehearsals; things are shaping up well for the “software experiences” keynote which is my area of responsibility, and it...

A gloomy, rainy Monday morning is rarely a pleasure to be savored, but today is a great day! We’ve signed-off on the final release of Silverlight 2 – every control has been added, the last few bug fixes have made it into the release, and it’s finally...

My favorite conference is almost upon us. If I’ve been quiet for a little while on my blog, it’s because this has been a crazy busy season for me and my team, as we put all the pieces in place for PDC2008. PDC is Microsoft’s flagship conference, both...

Get it from http://silverlight.net/GetStarted , along with the developer tools, documentation and the June update to Blend 2.5. Lots of new goodies – as ever, Scott Guthrie’s blog has a comprehensive guide. I’m not going to try and compete with him today...

If you're into any of the technologies that this blog covers, you'll be mad if you miss the Professional Developers Conference this year. It's actually been three years since our last PDC, so we're overdue! I'm really excited about all the things we're...