Chris Bowen's Blog : WPF

XAMLFest Boston 5/27 – 5/28… and Online

cbowen — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:42:38 GMT

XAMLFest events are a great (and free) way to learn about Silverlight and WPF through a combination of presentations and instructor-led hands-on lab work.

XAMLFest Boston is coming to the NERD facility (One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA) on May 27th & 28th, and will be the last XAMLFest in the northeast this fiscal year.

John Pelak has the full details via the ISV Developer Community Blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/05/05/you-re-invited-to-xamlfest-boston-may-27-may-28.aspx

This event, like past ones, is already filling up and will reach capacity, so act quickly if you know you can attend!

XAMLFest Online

Because this event series has been so popular, filling up each time, the team is taking XAMLFests to the web to help reach more designers and developers.

XAMLFest Online will be held June 1-5, featuring a syllabus with two live sessions each day supplemented with recorded content.

Bruce Kyle has the details at:

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/05/10/join-for-xamlfest-recorded-sessions-online-live-june-1-5.aspx

Enjoy becoming XAMLized!

-Chris

XamlFests Return in February

cbowen — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:42:30 GMT

In December, I blogged about XamlFest, a free event in Waltham, MA that gave attendees a chance to learn WPF and Silverlight via instructor led hands-on labs.

That quickly filled up, and so have others, so the ISV Developer team is offering additional XamlFests across the country, with three in the northeast & NYC areas.

From the ISV team post:

[…] These are two-day interactive events where you’ll learn about the platforms, tools and processes used to deliver differentiated user experiences. It’s a chance for you to mingle with user experience minded Microsoft folks and industry leading design firms and design integrators. You'll learn about WPF and Silverlight.

Each Xamlfest day will start with interactive sessions by Microsoft and our design partners, followed by a free lunch and a chance to network, have some fun and win prizes. Each afternoon will be geared toward assisted development with instructor-led walkthroughs, or better yet, come with your own project in mind.

Location	Registration	Dates
New York, NY	xamlfest-nyc@live.com	Feb 9 – 10
Farmington, CT	xamlfest-ct@live.com	Feb 12 – 13
Redmond, WA	xamlfest-redmond@live.com	Feb 16 – 17
Portland, OR	xamlfest-portland@live.com	Feb 19 – 20
Atlanta, GA	xamlfest-atlanta@live.com	Feb 23 – 24
Waltham, MA	xamlfest-boston@live.com	Feb 26 – 27

Seating is extremely limited, so sign up quickly if you can attend.

-Chris

2008 Winter Northeast Roadshow - Resources and Summary

cbowen — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:28:23 GMT

The Winter Northeast Roadshow series has run its course! Jim and I traveled about 2,000 miles to deliver seven events for nearly 600 people across the Northeast, and had a great time bringing developer technology and practices to you.

The Goods

As promised, we're posting the content and resources from each of our sessions.

Look for the content from Jim's sessions, "Windows Workflow Steals the Show" and "Adventures in Data with Silverlight, WCF REST, and ADO.NET Data Services" on his blog.

SESSION: "Tech Update"

Resources

SESSION: "ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 and jQuery"

Slides & Demos

Presentation and Demo Content (via SkyDrive)
Downloadable samples from the book "jQuery in Action"
jQuery UI Demos
- Effects sampler
PhotoGallery Application - Stephen Walther

Resources

SESSION: "Deeper into Windows Presentation Foundation"

Demos (no slides used)

Session Demo Content (via SkyDrive)
Logon Screen Demo
UIElement3D Sphere Sample
3D Solids Sample
WPF Toolkit & Ribbon Preview - Hands On Lab

Resources

SESSION: "Lunch in the Lab - A Look at Microsoft Research"

Slides

Presentation Slides (via SkyDrive)

Resources

Thank You!

Thanks to everyone who invested the time to join us for these events. Special thanks to the each of the following companies and organizations who helped us along the way:

Rochester Institute of Technology
AutoTask
Vermont Technical College
State of Maine - Central Maine Commerce Center
Daniel Webster College

We couldn't have delivered the Roadshow without your fantastic support!

Next Time

We're going into hibernation for a little while to reacquaint ourselves with family and friends, but early 2009 will see many events, including our Spring Roadshow, likely in the later February into March timeframe.

Keep an eye on our blogs and sign up for MSDN Flash to hear updates on that and other events as they emerge.

Thanks again, and we'll see you again on the road!

-Chris

XamlFest Boston: Come As You Are, Leave Xamlized

cbowen — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:11:34 GMT

Are you excited about the WPF but concerned about the learning curve? Have you seen Silverlight but don’t know where to get started? Or are you curious about how tools like Visual Studio and Expression Blend help designers and developers work together to deliver great user experiences? If so, join us at XamlFest!

XamlFest is a two day interactive event where you’ll learn about the platforms the tools and processes used to deliver differentiated user experiences. It’s a chance for you to mingle with UX minded Microsoft folks as well as industry leading design integrators. It’s also an opportunity to pick up a free copy of Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio 2 for you attendance.

Each XamlFest day will start with interactive sessions by Microsoft and our design partners, followed by a free lunch and a chance to network, have some fun and win prizes. Each afternoon will be geared toward assisted development with instructor-led walkthroughs, or, better yet, come with your own project in mind and we’ll help kick start your very own proof of concept!

PLEASE NOTE: Each attendee will need a laptop to take part in the assisted development sessions.

Dates

Thursday & Friday December 11th and 12th.

Venue

Microsoft Technology Center

890 Winter Street Suite 100

Waltham, MA 02451

[Directions]

Agenda

Date	Time	Topic
Thursday, 12/11	9:00 AM	Introduction to WPF, Xaml, Expression Blend
	10:30 AM	Break
	10:45 AM	Building Visually Rich Applications: The role of the Integrator in building designable applications
	12:00 PM	Lunch, Mingle, Prizes
	1:00 PM	Instructor-led WPF walkthrough and assisted development
	3:00 PM	Assisted Development
	5:00 PM	End of Day 1
Friday, 12/12	9:00 AM	Introduction to Silverlight, Data Binding, LINQ
	10:30 AM	Break
	10:45 AM	Platform Centric Design Best Practices: Creating WPF and Silverlight XAML for Web and Local Client Solutions
	12:00	Lunch, Mingle, Prizes
	1:00	Instructor-led Silverlight walkthrough and assisted development
	3:00	Assisted development
	5:00	XamlFest Ends

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What if I don’t have Visual Studio?

A. No problem, every attendee leaves with Visual Studio 2008 Pro!

Q. What if I don’t have Expression Blend?

A. Again, no problem! Everyone leaves with Expression Studio 2.

Q. What if I don’t have an idea for a starter project?

A. We’d like you to leave with something personal, but if nothing comes to mind that’s OK too. It’s the main reason we’re planning a few guided sessions where you can fallow along with us. These sessions should take no more than two hours, so if something sparks your interest you’ll still have time left for assisted development.

Q. What if I don’t have a laptop?

A. You can still participate in the training in the mornings and lunch, but assisted development in the afternoon is a harder problem to solve. We have no problem with people pairing up, so you might want to check with friends or co-workers to see if they’re interested.

Q. Can I just come for the training and skip assisted development?

A. XamlFest is about empowering designers and developers to deliver great user experiences and we believe a key component is hands-on assisted development. If you are unable to participate in the afternoon sessions please wait until the day before the event to register. This will give others the opportunity to sign up first, and if there’s still space available you’re welcome to join us.

XamlFest -- Come as you are, leave Xamlized.

Registration

Space is extremely limited, so we ask that you please register only if you fully expect to be able to attend. Register by contacting xamlfest-boston@live.com.

MSDN/Architecture Journal Readers and the Reader SDK

cbowen — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:48:44 GMT

Some very cool news if you're a fan of the WPF-based New York Times reader or Seattle P-I reader. We've just released the Reader SDK which you can use to quickly create similar rich applications for your own purposes.

In addition, the MSDN Magazine Reader sample application (featuring full source code) is now available, as is the Architecture Journal Reader.

Head over to WindowsClient.net for information on the Reader SDK and links to the MSDN Reader sample. The MSDN Reader lives under the name "Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit" or SCE. Head to the Architecture Journal site for more on that application [download here].

Here's a quick tour, focusing on the MSDN Reader (most of the features are shared with the Architecture Journal Reader.) As you can see, it's basically like have a magazine or newspaper right on your machine:

See an article and presto - read away!

But this goes well beyond the capabilities of mere paper. You can zoom in or out without loss of fidelity and you can add your own annotations, but I think the most important feature is search:

If you're anything like me, you come across lots of articles that you'd like to note for later reading... when you have that elusive "free time"... That's easy to do with the Readers' "Reading List" feature. First send stories to the Reading List (right-click to get the menu):

Then, open the Reading List, (by default, docked on the right-hand side) and click through to read each article (they're automatically grayed out as you view them):

And of course, the Readers both support automatic synchronization of content to support offline reading. The MSDN Reader uses the new Subscription Center beta to manage it's subscription:

The MSDN Reader and Architecture Journal Reader applications are definitely worth a look. If you have your own data/content source that you'd like to make available for display, I encourage you to take a look at the MSDN Reader code and the SCE/Reader SDK as well.

-Chris

WPF-Based Yahoo Messenger for Vista Available

cbowen — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:40:46 GMT

As a pretty cool example of the effects that are possible with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Yahoo has just announced the availability of the preview release of Yahoo Messenger for Vista.

Download it from:

http://messenger.yahoo.com/windowsvista.php

As of today, they've announced support for 64-bit Vista as well.

-Chris

Technorati tags: WPF, Vista, Yahoo, .NET

New Deitel Resource Centers: ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ, Popfly, WPF, and SharePoint

cbowen — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:28:52 GMT

Deitel recently released more topics of interest to .NET developers in their excellent Resource Center series.

Created to help you find articles, tutorials, blogs, downloads, FAQs, and more, here are the new centers:

I find these valuable since they're not simply lists of links. Most resources have brief descriptions of each item written by someone who has taken the time to review the resource.

Worth a look!

-Chris

Technorati tags: ASP.NET, LINQ, Popfly, WPF, SharePoint

MIX University Expands with a Free WPF Bootcamp Course

cbowen — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:45:57 GMT

Tim Sneath posted about a great new addition to the already strong lineup of training available at MIX University.

Now you can access a full three-day WPF training course (over 20 hours) for the low cost of free. From Tim:

"You'll hear a keynote from Ian Ellison-Taylor, the general manager responsible for WPF, Silverlight and client platform tools; introductory sessions on core WPF topics from external luminaries like Ian Griffiths; depth training by talented and knowledgeable speakers from the product group such as Beatriz Costa and Kevin Moore; and lastly, five sessions on real-world experiences from early adopters who built applications ranging from The North Face kiosk application to the new Yahoo Messenger client."

MIX University now has free videos, demos, quickstarts, and labs for the following technologies:

Silverlight
WPF
ASP.NET AJAX
Sidebar & Live Gadgets
Expression
Internet Explorer Extensions
Media Center
RSS
Virtual Earth
Windows CardSpace

Definitely worth a click to take a look.

-Chris

Technorati tags: WPF, Training, MIX, Education

Big Changes for the Acropolis Project

cbowen — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:48:37 GMT

If you're been looking into the Acropolis project for building composite applications, take a look at this post by the Acropolis team.

The short of it is that the project in its current form (as CTP's) will no longer be versioned (but will remain available.) However, the goals, concepts, and lessons learned from Acropolis are being transitioned to the Patterns & Practices team for long-term direction and development of guidance:

"We are very excited to announce that we are going to be working closely with the Microsoft Patterns & Practices team to provide guidance (samples, applications blocks, patterns and so on) for building composite client applications for .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008."

The post includes a summary of guidance for customers who have been considering how to implement composite applications:

"If you have evaluated Acropolis and are unsure whether to adopt it for your project, or to use the existing CAB, or to wait for the new guidance, our guidance for this situation remains the same - if you are building a Windows Forms LOB composite client (with maybe rich islands of WPF content) you should carefully evaluate the current CAB release. If you are specifically interesting in building composite applications on .NET 3.5, please get involved with the Patterns & Practices project and help us to deliver a guidance package that meets your requirements."

In a related announcement, Glenn Block of the P&P team has announced plans around the WPF Composite Client. It will be a new set of libraries and guidance, not a new version of the existing CAB, to be delivered in several smaller releases so customer feedback can be incorporated into subsequent iterations.

-Chris

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Technorati tags: Patterns and Practices, Acropolis, CAB, WPF

New CTPs of .NET Framework 3.5, Acropolis, and ADO.NET Entity Framework

cbowen — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:01:06 GMT

This week brought a host of new CTPs (Community Technology Previews) to the MSDN Download Center:

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 CTP
download

.NET Framework 3.5 builds incrementally on the new features added in .NET Framework 3.0, for example, Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows CardSpace. In addition, .NET Framework 3.5 contains a number of new features in several technology areas. These new features have been added as new assemblies to avoid breaking changes. They include the following:

Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness. This new feature will let you write code written in LINQ-enabled languages to filter, enumerate, and create projections of several types of SQL data, collections, XML, and DataSets by using the same syntax.
ASP.NET AJAX lets you create more efficient, more interactive, and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.
New Web protocol support for building WCF services including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM, and several new WS-* standards.
Full tooling support for WF, WCF, and WPF, including the new workflow-enabled services technology.
New classes in .NET Framework 3.5 base class library (BCL) address the most common customer requests.

ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP

download

This CTP contains updates to the ADO.NET Entity Framework since the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta 1 release, including changes in Object Services, Query, Entity Client, and the Entity Data Model Wizard in Visual Studio. Some of the new features include IPOCO, detaching from long-running ObjectContext instances, multiple entity sets per type, support for referential integrity constraints, span support, transactions, serialization, no more default constructors in code-generated classes, improvements to stored procedure support, access to the underlying store connection, directory macros in the entity connection string to support hosted scenarios, native SQL read-only views, UNICODE support in Entity SQL, query plan caching, and canonical functions in Entity SQL.

Microsoft Codename "Acropolis" July CTP
download

Building on the vision of software + services, Microsoft Code Name “Acropolis” makes it easier to build and manage modular, business-focused, client applications for Microsoft Windows with the .NET Framework. It builds on the rich capabilities of Microsoft Windows and the .NET Framework, including the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), by providing tools and pre-built components that help developers quickly assemble an application from loosely-coupled parts and services. Code Name “Acropolis” reduces the complexities of building occasionally connected client applications and provides the ability to assemble and reconfigure systems without having to write as much code. It is part of the .NET Client Futures release, Microsoft’s preview of upcoming technologies in Microsoft Windows client development, available now at www.windowsclient.net.

Technorati tags: Acropolis, WPF, .NET 3.0, ADO.NET, WCF, WF, .NET

Embedding Active XAML in PowerPoint

cbowen — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:53:35 GMT

[File under "Cool Presenter Tricks"]

Simon Guest posted about a nice little trick for embedding XAML in a PowerPoint slide. What makes it all happen is finding an add-in for PowerPoint to display web pages from a slide.

Simon points us to Shyam Pillai's "LiveWeb" add-in. Run the setup there and PowerPoint will offer a web page embedding feature.

I must say I'm impressed, and already thinking of ways I can spice up my own presentations. With the add in, you can link to local or remote web pages and have them display as they would in a browser, within a PowerPoint show. You can event scroll the pages and click on the elements.

Of course, the main point of Simon's post was to mention that you can link to XAML pages (such as .xbap and .xaml), but the fact that I can include local or live web pages in my presentations is very cool all by itself.

In the above screenshot, I've (quickly) wired up a slide to point to Charles Petzold's "Teapot" .xaml example. Though as Simon mentions, there's room for extensions/options, I'm happy to say it otherwise "just works".

-Chris

Chris Bowen's Blog : WPF

XAMLFest Boston 5/27 – 5/28… and Online

XAMLFest Online

XamlFests Return in February

2008 Winter Northeast Roadshow - Resources and Summary

The Goods

SESSION: "Tech Update"

Resources

SESSION: "ASP.NET AJAX 3.5 and jQuery"

Slides & Demos

Resources

SESSION: "Deeper into Windows Presentation Foundation"

Demos (no slides used)

Resources

SESSION: "Lunch in the Lab - A Look at Microsoft Research"

Slides

Resources

Thank You!

Next Time

XamlFest Boston: Come As You Are, Leave Xamlized

Dates

Venue

Agenda

Frequently Asked Questions

Registration

MSDN/Architecture Journal Readers and the Reader SDK

WPF-Based Yahoo Messenger for Vista Available

New Deitel Resource Centers: ASP.NET 3.5, LINQ, Popfly, WPF, and SharePoint

MIX University Expands with a Free WPF Bootcamp Course

Big Changes for the Acropolis Project

New CTPs of .NET Framework 3.5, Acropolis, and ADO.NET Entity Framework

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 CTP download

ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP

download

Microsoft Codename "Acropolis" July CTP download

Embedding Active XAML in PowerPoint

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 CTP
download

Microsoft Codename "Acropolis" July CTP
download