Chris Koenig

I’ve been invited by the Wroclaw .NET User Group in Wroclaw, Poland to be a featured speaker at their upcoming Heroes {Community} Launch event on June 2nd, 2008.  I’m really excited about my trip to Poland to meet with such an enthusiastic group of software developers and community leaders.  My session will be “Reach End-Users With Next Generation Web Applications” where we’ll be talking a lot about ASP.NET and AJAX as well as throwing in some LINQ, Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Web.  If you came to see me at the Tulsa or Dallas launch events this past year, you know the session I’m talking about.  I’ll also be visiting the Wroclaw and Warsaw .NET User Groups, if the schedule remains as it is today, so if you’re in those areas – save me a seat at the best local restaurant ‘cause I *love* to try new foods!

Thanks a BUNCH to my new friends in Poland, and see you all at the Launch!

For those of you in the Northwest Arkansas area, don’t miss the inaugural meeting of the Northwest Arkansas SQL Server User Group.

Meeting Details:

The first ever NWASQL meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 14th from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. 

Pizza will be provided and there will be several drawings for Microsoft products and other prizes!

Primary Topic:  What can we expect from SQL 2008?  (Boyd Evert:  Speaker)     

Location:          Connolly Consulting, 2703 SE Otis Corley Drive, Bentonville, AR 72712
Map:                 http://76.215.122.46/nwasql/directions.aspx

Agenda and details are available on www.nwasql.org

The Northwest Arkansas area has a FANTASTIC community of developers, DBAs, designers and enthusiasts.  A big THANK YOU goes out to Jason Pluenneke for putting this group together!

Last weekend was the first ever Dallas TechFest – and it was FANTASTIC!  Now I know we do a lot of these *Camps or *Fests around here, but this event (at least for the Dallas area) was something new.  Based on some great stories in the Heartland district’s very successful CodeMash event, we decided that a cross-technology multi-disciplinary conference would go over well in DFW.  I knew that it would be fun, and good for all of us, to start working more with our non-.NET friends in the Java, Ruby, PHP, Python and Adobe communities here, and my sentiment seemed to be shared with all of my local area User Group leaders. 

I approached Tim Rayburn (C# guru, Connected Systems MVP, leader of the Dallas Connected Systems User Group and local Community Hero) several months ago with the idea of running something like this, and he was very interested in taking the reigns to make it happen.  We reached out immediately to Erik Weibust from the Java and Spring user groups, Adam Keys from the Dallas Ruby Brigade, and Tim Stiles and Jason Ragsdale from the Dallas PHP and Dallas Pythoneers User Groups.  Together they formed the core nucleus of the team that arranged the location, speakers, food, snacks, tracks, sponsors and all other miscellaneous stuff that is required to run a first-rate community-led conference.

We held the event last weekend on May 3rd and by all accounts it was a great success!  250 of our local area developers shared their time with us on a gorgeous Saturday in May to learn about a multitude of different software development approaches, technologies and toolkits.  In keeping with our multi-technology approach, the TechFest was divided into 5 tracks:  .NET, Java, Ruby, Flex and “Emerging Technologies”.  Highlights from the tracks included “What can non-Ruby developers learn from Ruby”, “Fun with Programming”, “Having fun creating Flex-driven applications”, “Robotics Studio” and “REST: The basics and no so basics...”.  At the end of the day, .NET Rocks! host Carl Franklin took us down a hilarious journey back in time through his software development background.  He’s such a character – it was great to finally meet him in person.

Speaking of Carl and .NET Rocks, Richard Campbell reached out to me a few weeks ago and asked me if I’d be interested in participating in a live .NET Rocks! show at Dallas TechFest on the subject of Community Building.  “Of Course!” was my obvious answer, and we had a great time recording it.  On the panel were yours truly, Toi Wright (ASP.NET MVP and President of the Dallas ASP.NET User Group) and Caleb Jenkins (ASP.NET MVP, trainer, consultant and community hero).  The conversation was really interesting and I tried really hard not to come off sounding like an idiot.  You can judge for yourself when the episode airs, on May 22 at http://www.dotnetrocks.com.

I wanted to give a huge THANK YOU to Tim R, Erik W, Adam K, Jason K, Jason R, Tim S, Carl & Richard, Toi W, Caleb J, Kristee D, Phil W and everyone else who worked so hard to make this such a great event.  It took a lot of time, planning, effort, sweat and brainpower to pull this off and I really, really appreciate everyone’s hard work.  Congratulations too to the people that won some of the fabulous prizes!  The highlights of the event were an XBOX 360 Elite, a copy of Halo 3 Legendary Edition, and a brand new Mac Mini with a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate.  The event was fantastic and I’m really looking forward to next year!

I just found out today that the smart and creative folks over at The Official Microsoft Expression Design Support Team Blog have created a videocast series to go along with their popular blog.  You can visit their site to download the shows individually, or you can subscribe in your Zune by searching in the Zune Marketplace for “Microsoft Expression”.

There are 3 episodes so far, so you’re not as far behind as you might think :)

Get it while it’s hot:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DF4AF56A-58A7-474C-BFD0-7CF8ED3036A3&displaylang=en

This version adds the ability to develop games for the Zune!  I can’t wait to try it out.  You can get more information about developing applications and games for Windows, XBOX 360 and Zune using Microsoft XNA Game Studio at the XNA Creators Club website.  There are plenty of samples, tutorials, videos, screencasts and more there to help you get started.  You can also follow the XNA Team Blog for the latest information about what’s going on in the world of XNA game development.

Thanks Phil for pointing this one out!

My friend and colleague Jared Bienz over on the ISV Evangelism Team just released a new project today out on CodePlex called Transitionals.  In the wake of all the recent upsurgence of interest in WPF, this cool effect couldn’t have come at a better time for most of us.  As described on the Transitionals project page, the Transitionals library allows a WPF developer to add cool object transition effects, just like those used in Video Editing and in PowerPoint (ok - sometimes this gets over used, but it can be tastefully done).  Some of the effects in the first release of this open source project include Checkerboard, Diagonal Wipe,Melt, Door, Dots, Double Rotate, Explosion, Fade and Blur and many more!  Of course, the entire library is extensible, so you can define your own Transitions and use them in your own applications.

The Transitions library integrates into your WPF application at the XAML level.  Adding a transition effect is easy:

1. Add a reference to the Transitionals.dll assembly to your project
   
2. Add the appropriate XML namespaces to your WPF document:

   xmlns:trans="clr-namespace:Transitionals;assembly=Transitionals"

   xmlns:transc="clr-namespace:Transitionals.Controls;assembly=Transitionals"

   xmlns:transt="clr-namespace:Transitionals.Transitions;assembly=Transitionals"

   xmlns:refl="clr-namespace:System.Reflection;assembly=mscorlib"

3. Add a TransitionElement object to the XAML of your window or user control that specifies the transformations you wantinside the TransitionElement.Transition property:

   <transc:TransitionElement x:Name="TransitionBox">

       <transc:TransitionElement.Transition>

           <transt:RotateTransition Angle="45" />

       </transc:TransitionElement.Transition>

   </transc:TransitionElement>

4. Alternatively, you can set the TransactionElement.TransactionSelector property to something like the built-in RandomTransitionSelector class to choose between a set of your favorite Transitions:

   <transc:TransitionElement x:Name="TransitionBox">

       <transc:TransitionElement.TransitionSelector>

           <trans:RandomTransitionSelector>

               <transt:DoorTransition/>

               <transt:DotsTransition/>

               <transt:RotateTransition Angle="45" />

               <transt:RollTransition/>

           </trans:RandomTransitionSelector>

       </transc:TransitionElement.TransitionSelector>

   </TransitionElement>

5. Now all that's left is to assign the pieces of content you want managed by the TransitionElement.  These go in the Content property as shown in this sample.  In this case, we've added 2 button controls (AButton and BButton) and are using their Button.Click events to swap between two separate User Controls:

   UserControlA userControlA = new UserControlA();

   UserControlB userControlB = new UserControlB();

   private void AButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

   {

       TransitionBox.Content = userControlA;

   }

   private void BButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

   {

       TransitionBox.Content = userControlB;

   }

6. Presto!  When you run the application, the transition will take place when you click between the buttons.

To get more information about the Transitionals project, be sure to check out these fine resources:

• Jared's blog:  http://blogs.msdn.com/jbienz
• ISV Evangelist's Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/default.aspx
• CodePlex Project Page: http://shrinkster.com/xhp

Now - someone needs to build a "blink" and a "gradient wipe" transition so that the circle will be complete...

Visit Microsoft Learning at http://csna01.libredigital.com/?urvs5cn3s8 to register for 3 free eBooks:

I have been getting a lot of email recently from people asking about ways to contact the local Developer Evangelist in their area.   Just recently, Microsoft published this new web site called “Meet Your Local Microsoft Evangelists” that provides a clickable image-map of the US which reveals your local evangelists.  For those of you not familiar with us, you’ll get to see our beautiful faces along with our corny biographies.

One interesting thing about this is that it shows not only the local DE for the area, but also the AE (Architect Evangelist) as well as any MSDN DEs, UXEs (User Experience Evangelists) and even the Public Sector team.

Spend some time out on Meet Your Local Microsoft Evangelists and get to know us a little better!

My most favorite SeaDragon demo is now available via Silverlight DeepZoom. The demo features a “fake” advertisement on a “fake” version of MSN.com that, when you hover over it, turns into a DeepZoom-enabled version of the ad.  As you scroll around the advertisement, you can see incredible levels of detail on the Land Rover, as well as zoom into pictures of other cars.  In the lower right-hand corner, there’s event a series of photos for other cars, which you can “deep zoom” into to get right up and inspect the dashboards, and other interior features.

I’ve been thinking recently about interesting ways to take advantage of DeepZoom, and this type of advertisement is definitely one of the most obvious.  Without taking up a great deal of screen real estate, you can display a powerfully large bit of information.  It’s almost like self-service:  if the main ad catches your eye, then you can zoom in to see more, and more, and more details. 

This would also be valuable for things like travel sites and travel brochures – showing pictures of the locations as well as accommodations, rental cars and important documentation with which you’d want to familiarize yourself before traveling to your destination, and photo-management software where you can sift through thousands of photos at a time to pick out the ones you need.

Right now, DeepZoom has a lot of WOW factor but I haven’t seen too many places using it yet – maybe that’s because it’s still in beta, maybe that’s because they’re thinking about the same things I am.  Either way, I expect that more and more people will take advantage of this technology in more, interesting ways.  For now, here’s a set of links to some cool DeepZoom stuff:

The Car Ad:  http://demos.e-crusade.com/Silverlight/sd_demo/CarAd.aspx

Hard Rock Memorabilia - http://memo.hardrock.com

Silverlight 2 Developer Poster - http://joestegman.members.winisp.net/DeepZoom/

Silverlight DeepZoom Tutorial - http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=390395

PhotoZoom – http://photozoom.mslivelabs.com/ (Flickr meets DeepZoom)

Repositioning Images - http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2008/03/22/deep-zoom-collections-example.aspx

If you have some cool DeepZoom examples, tutorials, or whatever, please post a comment to this post and share it with us!

Coming up on May 10th is the first annual Tulsa School Of Dev!  Formerly known as Tulsa CodeCamp, and put together by the same team that brought you Tulsa TechFest, this developer conference features a great set of speakers, sessions and valuable prizes, and that list is growing all the time!

If you’re interested in attending, speaking, or sponsoring, please contact David Walker for more information. 

UPDATE:  Corrected the date to Saturday, May 17th

Come one, come all to the 3rd annual Austin CodeCamp!   This year’s camp is being held on May 17th, 2008 at the St. Edwards University Professional Education Center. The guys at ADNUG do a great job of putting this event on each year and I know this year will be better than ever.  And, as always, there is no cost for the event – you even get a free lunch thanks to their generous sponsors!

Head over to the Austin Code Camp  web site, click on the Register tab, and sign up today.  If you’re a speaker, and interested in submitting a session idea, you can do that online too via the Sessions tab.

See you there!

I have been using the IE7Pro add-in for Internet Explorer for almost 2 weeks now and I am SO happy with its features!  As an addin for Internet Explorer, it brings a bunch of great features that I’ve missed from different browsers.  The feature list is outstanding – here are a few of my favorites:

Mouse Gestures:  This is the BEST feature!  Right-click and drag left, and it’s like hitting the back button.  Right-click and make an L to close the current tab.  There are over a dozen built-in gestures and you can define your own.  Very, very useful – once you get used to it., you’ll miss it when it’s not there.

Super Drag & Drop:  This is my SECOND favorite feature.  Instead of right-clicking on a link and choosing “Open in New Tab”, just left-click and drag/drop the link and it will do it automatically.  Or, select some text on the page and drag/drop it to do a quick internet search.  You can also grab an image, and shift-drag/drop to save it to your hard drive.  SUPER useful feature.

Inline Search: similar to the Firefox search, this feature starts finding as soon as you type, and highlights the search results.  This makes me faster to find the things I’m looking for in a web page

Spell Check:  Every text box, every entry field, automatically checked for spelling. 

There are also a bunch of enhancements to the IE UX including

• Double-click to close a tab
• Restore tab sessions
• Extensive list of shortcut keys
• Multiple search aliases in address bar
• Optional Flash-blocker (this one is fun)
• bookmark synchronization
• many more features!

If you’re using IE7 or IE8-Beta1, click on the link below to learn more about IE7Pro.  They have detailed information and video examples of the features included.  Oh – and I forgot to mention – it’s completely free!

IE7Pro - The Ultimate Add-On for Internet Explorer

We’re one month away from the first ever Dallas TechFest.  Organized by a consortium of developers across the .NET, Java, Ruby, PHP and Python communities of the DFW area, this event will focus on providing technical and non-technical information to developers with a common theme of interoperability, architecture, and best practices. 

For more information, and to register for this event, please head out to our updated web site: http://www.dallastechfest.com.  The site has information on times, sessions, location, speakers and prizes.  I’m providing some prizes for the event including a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and a copy of Halo 3 Legendary Edition.  There are also some other great prizes that the group is giving away, so be sure to keep up with the web site to get the latest news and information.

The venue can only hold 500 people, so don’t wait - register today to make sure you get your seat at the Dallas TechFest!

We had a great time last week at the Tulsa Launch event.  After a long drive and a short sleep, Tulsa turned out about 500 people to the Heroes Happen {Here} Launch event.  Zain and I tag-teamed to deliver the developer track in the afternoon.  After sharing Keynote responsibility, my session – “Reach End Users With Next Generation Web Applications" – covered what’s new in VS08 related to ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX. 

We also covered some of the cool Extender Controls in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.  The ACT is one of the Microsoft-supported Open Source projects featured on our Open Source repository CodePlex.  These controls are a great and easy way to add AJAX functionality to your existing ASP.NET AJAX Web Applications.  There are a couple of really interesting ones to mention:

Animation Control – More that just a simple extender control, this client-side animation framework allows you to add some really interesting animation effects to your web site.

Filtered Text Box Control – this control allows you to control what types of data are enterable (is that a word?) into the associated text box.  You can restrict by valid and invalid characters.  Too bad there’s not a RegEx option, but maybe someone will update the control to add this feature?

Password Strength Control – how many web applications give you feedback about your chosen password?  The Password Strength Extender Control will tell you whether your password is “weak” or “unbreakable” and many states in between.

Validator Callout Control – this control adds some professionalism to your client-side validators by making the messages appear as callouts instead of inline messages. I particularly like the effect here – clean and clear to the user.

All of these control and more can be viewed at the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit web site where you can interact directly with all the controls in the toolkit to see what they do and how they do it.  Of course, the irony is not lost on me that this samples page doesn’t use any AJAX stylings to effect a transition between the samples – they’re full-page postbacks a la classic ASP.NET ;-)

For those of you in Tulsa for the Heroes Happen {Here} Launch Event planned for Thursday night, David Walker, President of the famous Tulsa Developers User Group and organizer of Tulsa TechFest,  is planning a Geek Dinner type event TOMORROW NIGHT at 6:30 PM at the Spaghetti Warehouse on 221 E Brady (Shawn, I will register it as a "real" Geek Dinner at some point).

David would like everyone to please register for the event if possible so we know how big to make the reservation.  If you don't register, that's cool too - we still want you to come, but you might have to share a chair with someone :-)

Be there or turn in your pocket protector...