Best Buy Windows 7 Launch
One of the great things about working at Microsoft is the company has so many customers, regardless of what your role is people understand at least who it is you work for. I work with developers and designers day to day on our application development stack but my relatives all still consider me the windows guy. If there is a problem that needs troubleshooting I am the family help desk. I think a lot of people in our industry can relate and it only gets worse when you work for the company that makes Office and Windows.
Windows releases are always big and this was my first chance to see the launch of a new operating system from behind the scenes. Having been able to present to a technical audience at numerous launch events I was looking forward to getting regular people’s views on Windows 7.
On Thursday, October 22nd launch I quickly headed out to my local Best Buy to help answer questions and see what the buzz was like.
The first thing I wanted to see was what the retail product versioning was like. In a recent C-Net.com interview Steve Ballmer mentioned that consumers would be seeing simplified versions at retail stores. The lesson had been learned from Vista and consumers wanted a simplified sku base and also where each upgrade version included the features of its predecessor. I am happy to report that the team followed through with Steve’s promise.
Pretty much every laptop and desktop (with the exception of the Netbooks running Starter edition) ran Windows 7 Home Premium. For customers who needed to upgrade to Professional (ability to join domains) or Ultimate (BitLocker and BitLocker to Go) the Best Buy crew had a process in place to do it right there in the store. I took a picture of the display explaining the differences between the three versions and the upgrade prices below.
This was really great to see! Customers were getting a complete Windows 7 experience out of the box with Home Premium on almost all the machines and if they required additional features for their workplace they could get it installed right at checkout.
The next question that came to my mind was what about all those people who had recently purchased PCs and were wondering if they were eligible for a Windows 7 upgrade? Great news on that front as well. I can’t imagine my relatives sticking in a Windows 7 upgrade disk that HP or Dell shipped them and then completely migrating their PC over (in fact I’ve been asked to do this already as an early Christmas present). Great news on that front as well!
As long as a customer purchased a PC between June 26th and October 21st they need only bring the PC into Best Buy and for $40 they will upgrade the entire PC to Windows 7. No waiting for disks to be mailed from the computer manufacturer they simply only need stop by the store and they can get the upgrade.
Common Customer Questions
So what kind of questions did I get asked as The Microsoft Guy in the store that morning. I think it is interesting to note as much as we get swept up in technology on the Internet to everyday people it is still just a tool. To my surprise over half of the people I met did not know it was Windows 7 release day at all. They had just taken the time to go out and buy a new PC that day for various reasons. That was a bit shocking to me but makes sense if you think about how many people out there are running Windows.
Other common themes I heard…
“I need to post pictures and videos to the web.”
“I want to make my own movies.”
“I need to watch DVDs on it.” (the only deal breaker I saw for Netbooks people were just not into having to buy an external DVD drive and worry about getting it setup)
“Does it come with Office?”
This was an eye opener for me too. I am so focused on the tools to create applications (Silverlight, Expression Studio and Visual Studio) or how businesses can create better architecture solutions that I missed what the average retailer customer would be using Windows for.
I can’t begin to tell you how happy the built in Windows DVD Maker made people that day. Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Security Essentials were also a big hit and every customer I talked to wanted it already installed on their machine.
What features did I demo? Peak, Shake, the new Taskbar, Jumplists and Homegroups were all well received. These hit home with a lot of folks who use windows day in and out and now have an easier way to get common tasks done. Rather then go through each one of them check out this great site that includes 7 second clips of each feature and how people are using them.
I also want to give big kudos to the Best Buy team. Most of them had been up late the night before replacing every PC with the Windows 7 version. This was a lot of machines! Every desktop, laptop and netbook I saw (with the exception of one XP netbook) was running Windows 7!
This included the kiosk demos that run on all the machines when they were idle. These were great covering a lot of the questions I listed above and going over how to publish pictures/video to the web and make movies.
Another thing I noticed was that most of the machines when you would go up to them and click the mouse or touch the keyboard would go to an “overview mode”.
This mode would show an Explore This Computer screen that listed the processor, ram, hard drive space, windows version and included software all in one place. A very slick way to present answers to some of the most common questions people had. Once these common questions around tasks and processing power were answered purchasing a new PC became more of a touch and feel experience. I constantly saw people move from machine to machine until they found one that felt right. For some that meant a certain sized screen while for others it meant the keys on the keyboard being a certain size or alignment. It’s good to be a PC.
House Party
Yes I geeked out and signed up to be one of the House Party hosts. It wound up being a great reason though for a lot of the guys in the neighborhood to get together, eat some pepperoni and cheese, and talk shop.
In fact I was surprised how many IT guys there are in my own neighborhood (thanks to my wife and everybody else's wives for connecting the dots for us). We had SQL DBA’s, Technology Managers from Pharma companies and Microsoft Partners all represented.
Due to the nature of the crowd I decided to dig a little deeper into Windows 7 instead of the general features you saw listed above. I connected one of my HDTV’s to a new HP TouchSmart TX2z tablet I have. This let me show off Windows 7 multi-touch in all its glory. I raffled off the signed Windows 7 Ultimate and everybody who did not win left with a poster or goody bag. Everybody enjoyed themselves and it gave my five year old (that’s her picture in the middle) a chance to show off her party planning and decorating skills.
Happy Windows 7 launch!
Why a Netbook?
Several weeks ago I decided to go out and purchase a Netbook. A Gateway LT Series Netbook to be exact. Why you ask?
For starters Netbooks are the fastest growing pc market and more customers will be using those netbooks over the coming months. As a developer I was curious to see what all the latest web technologies would run like on it (Silverlight, Flash, HTML5, AJAX, and jQuery).
What would Silverlight run like with a single core 1.2 GHz processor and only 2 gigs ram? Would I be able to do Fullscreen HD video streaming like on Netflix (the answer is yes). I was curious too if it would be possible to use it as a development machine. Wouldn’t it be cool to have a portable two pound dev station with me at all times?
Windows 7 Ultimate and will it Blend?
The first thing I did was throw Windows 7 Ultimate RTM on it and I’m happy to report it runs surprisingly well. There have been some rumors going around that only the starter edition would be available to install on Netbooks. That is simply not the case and you can install any version you wish.
What about Visual Studio, Expression Blend, Silverlight and WPF? The answer is yes! At the recent Harrisburg MSDN Mid-Atlantic Roadshow I did the entire show on the Netbook over a tethered 3g connection and Silverlight streaming/deepzoom both ran flawlessly.
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 was also announced for download today. I was curious to see if I could get these new bits working on the Netbook. I quickly logged onto MSDN and pulled down VS2010 Beta 2 Ultimate. Thanks to some speedy servers and FIOS I had the bits within 20 minutes. I then opened up the ISO and copied the files to a local USB Key, the same key I used to install Windows 7 on the Netbook. The entire process took about 45 minutes.
A video is worth a thousand pictures
When talking about performance I think it is better to actually see it than me throw up some benchmarks on my blog. So I put together a little Screencast for you. In addition I wanted to record and edit the video itself entirely using just the Netbook.
To do that I used the Expression Encoder 3 Screen Capture tool and Windows Live Movie Maker. It definitely stretched the little guy to the limit and you’ll see it bog down a bit when I’m running the screen capture tool and a couple of the dev tools at the same time. Realistically you wouldn’t be running a screen capture app and the dev tools at the same time but I show you how to get some more performance when doing that as well.
Here is what you’ll see running on the Netbook in the video:
- Windows 7 Ultimate
- Windows Experience Index
- Visual Studio 2008
- Visual Studio 2010
- Expression Blend 3.0
- Expression Encoder 3.0 Screen Capture Tool
Watch the video here on Channel9. Bonus points if you can name the font I used for the overlays in Movie Maker. ;-)
-Dave
It was great meeting a lot of you over the past few months and I feel lucky to be part of the communities we have here. September kicked off my first roadshow and I didn’t know what to expect. From the open Q&A, hallway conversations, to the number of people who left ready to install Expression Studio 3 the enthusiasm was all around. Thank you! I was honored by the great evaluation feedback you gave me and hope to continue deliver top notch content.
Developers live in the real world
Your feedback also confirmed what I had always thought important for these events. Longer sessions on a single topic, real world examples, and a big picture view on why you would even want to look at the technology. In a nutshell having speakers who have walked in your shoes and who realize developers don’t work in a bubble. Understanding we all have to convince the very groups we work with sometimes on the benefits of a new technology before we even click that Install icon.
I was on the other side of that podium listening to a Microsoft speaker talk about the new shiny stuff mere months ago. All fired up and then I would go back to my cubicle at work and find myself programming plain old html again. What is wrong with this picture? It was a vicious cycle and something I hoped to change for you by providing not just the what’s new but the how do I impress my boss/business and how do I get the technology approved at my company?
It is a theme I will continue to embrace and bring as we move to the end of the year and then into Visual Studio 2010/.NET 4.0 next year. You can, and should, expect that same philosophy from the speakers you listen to. It’s time we all moved beyond “hello world” and into being the IT partner the business has always asked of us.
Windows 7 is here but are we ready?
The Windows 7 Philadelphia and Pittsburgh launches were a great time for me. Who knew I’d have my name up in lights on the big screen some day? The Dev tracks were packed with hundreds of people who came to get a glimpse of what was new in 7. Many of you enjoyed the Multi-Touch demos as well as diving into how to code some of the Windows 7 specific features like trigger start services, jump lists and the new taskbar. You also asked me if I would be doing a local recap.
I am proud to announce the next MSDN Mid-Atlantic Roadshow kicking off this November! I will follow the same style I did at the previous roadshow and attempt to bring you all real world examples that go beyond hello-world. Whether this includes commercial off the shelf software already using the great new Windows 7 features or practical applications of Multi-Touch on the web (think Silverlight for Visually impaired). I’m hoping to give you a 105 minutes you’ll enjoy and be able to use.
Here is how the day will pan out:
What’s new in Windows 7 for Developers
Windows 7 has many improvements in both performance and user interface that you can take advantage of in your applications. This session will give an overview of how to code in those features users will expect such as Libraries, the new Taskbar, and Jump Lists. We will also look at taking advantage of several performance improvements like Trigger Start services and the new Windows Troubleshooter. Finally, we will look at adding some of the new interface options available such as Multi-Touch and the Ribbon Menu to your existing applications.
Level: 200 | Length: 1:45
My fellow road showers will also being doing the same for Silverlight. A longer, single session with a focus this time on data and networking.
Data Access and Network Options in Silverlight
Wondering about the most effective way of getting data into your Silverlight application? Trying to sort out the different options available? Then this session is for you. We will provide an overview of the different networking and data access techniques available in Silverlight. We’ll show examples of using each of these technologies, and along the way, we’ll also look at the role these technologies can play in other .NET applications, as well as look at the Sample Data feature in Expression Blend 3, and how to transition from Sample Data to production data in your applications.
Level: 200 | Length: 1:45
Where to sign up? You can sign up using the registration links below and Each event will from 1pm to 5pm with refreshments being served.
Hope to see you there!
Over the next three weeks I will be packing it up, hitting the road, and talking directly with Developers and Designers like you! From Philly to Norfolk to Harrisburg to Pittsburgh I’ll be showing off in person everything Expression Studio 3, Silverlight 3 and Windows 7 can bring to your applications.
MSDN Mid-Atlantic Roadshow
First up is the rest of the MSDN Mid-Atlantic Roadshow. Curious about Silveright 3? Expression Studio 3? I’ll be giving both an overview as well as tips and tricks I’ve picked up the past two years in Blend. We’ll be giving away Expression Studio 3 trial DVDs to all attendees and raffling off some great prizes like Xbox 360 games.
Creating Rich Internet Applications on the Microsoft Platform using Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3
You’re a Developer not a Designer. So how do you shine in this new world of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) while still leveraging your .NET skills? This 2 hour overview will get you up to speed on the latest Microsoft Silverlight, Expression Studio and Visual Studio has to offer. Go beyond hello world and get the latest tips and tricks to make your application shine. You’ll be surprised how easily you can create a working web application that is engaging to your users, and integrates with your existing web architecture.
Level: 200-300 | Length: 1:45
| City | Date | Register |
| Stops Left | 4! |
| Allentown, PA | 9/21/2009 | Register |
| Malvern, PA | 9/22/2009 | Register |
| Norfolk, VA | 9/25/2009 | Register |
| Harrisburg, PA | 9/29/2009 | Register |
Windows 7 Launch
Next up are the official Windows 7 launch events! Interested in how you can use the new features in Windows 7 to enhance your application? Multi-touch, jumplists and new graphics options are not only easy to code in but they offer competitive advantages.
I’ll be covering both the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh launches so be sure to sign up and say hello.
Philly Podcamp 2009
After wrapping up the MSDN Roadshow and Windows 7 launch event I will be heading over on Saturday, Oct 3 to Philly Podcamp! If you’re like me and convinced of the important changes New Media has brought about and continues to bring then this is your chance. Not to mention an opportunity to completely embarress me in Guitar Hero. You can register on the Philly Podcamp site here.
Hope to meet you in person!
-Dave
Whether you are someone who leans more towards design or coding you have probably come across the need for some interesting fonts. Typography is a fascinating area with a long history dating back to the origins of print. When we look at creating an engaging user experience today we are often trying to make a connection with our audience. We “empathize” with our users needs and look to invoke certain feelings. Fonts can do that in amazing ways and its pretty easy to add them to your own applications.
The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) site has a great art section where you can download wallpapers, blog bling and the font that they used. Maybe its because I’m such a video gamer but the font really connected with me and brought back memories of playing Wipeout and Star Trek.
Installing the Font into Windows
I keep a local folder in my documents directory of all the fonts I have found intriguing. Most of these go into my applications or demos I do for that extra sparkle. You can keep them anywhere you would like however I just find this method the easiest to use. That way I can zip up all my fonts if I need to use them on a different machine.
Adding a font to Windows is as easy as double clicking on the filename. The Font Manager window will them pop up (Windows 7 is pictured) and you will be given some typography information as well as samples of the font at different sizes. Just click the install button and windows will register the font for use.
This means ALL windows programs will now have access to that font such as Microsoft Word. Keep in mind that custom fonts are not required to include both uppercase and lowercase. The PDC09 font (it’s official name is Squared) only includes lowercase for example. So don’t scratch your head when word tries to capitalize at the beginning of a sentence and you see invisible letters.
Using the new font in your Silverlight application
Now that we have made sure the font installed correctly it is time to add it to a Silverlight Application. In this example I am opening up Expression Blend 3, adding a simple gradient to the default grid layout and creating a TextBlock control. I then selected the newly installed squared font from the textbox text properties and added some colors I thought to be pleasing.
Keep in mind one of the amazing things about Blend is we are seeing in real time what our application looks like. This means for Silverlight the artboard is being rendered in Silverlight. While we are in design time it understands the selected fonts and displays them correctly. However if we run the application you will notice something happens.
This is where a lot of people get tripped up. The application compiled, the browser opened up and it looks nothing like what it did in my Blend design surface. So what is up?
Font Embedding - it’s all about the download size!
It is important to remember one of the core design principles of Silverlight is a small download size. Every time you add a resource such as an image, a font, or a video the initial the size of your application will increase.
Luckily, Silverlight is really smart about this. It gives you the choice of not only which Fonts you wish to include in your application but also which parts of those fonts (Uppercase, Lowercase, etc.) giving you even more control over the size of your downloads. To bring up this menu simply click on the Font Manager button in the TextBlock text properties. As mentioned above the squared font doesn’t use any uppercase which is why you will see the “S” missing. Blend tries to capitalize the first letter of all the fonts being listed.
You can see both the Font Manager button and the Embed checkbox (I circled it in red) in the artboard screenshot above. Keep in mind you do not have to select which pieces of the font to use Blend will automatically include all subsets of that font for you. It is only necessary to check off the Embed checkbox for the font to be included in your application.
Once you click the checkbox two things will happen. A new Fonts directory will be created in your application and the selected Font source file will be copied into it for you.
Blend will then modify the XAML source for your TextBlock to point to the newly installed Font resources in your project.
Looking cool with just a TextBlock thanks to Fonts!
We are now ready to show off our finished product. Running the application will now show a correctly displaying TextBlock with the selected square font. Amazing how much of a difference fonts can make even on a plain piece of text.
This is a trick you can use in all of your applications moving forward whether it is WPF or Silverlight based Blend and Fonts have got your back.
Want more information like this? The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is coming up in less than 3 months!
If you register by September 15th you can also save $500 bringing the cost of a ticket down to only $1,595. Be sure to check out the PDC site here for more details.
At the Philly Cloud Computing usergroup last night Chris Rolon, a local Azure wiz, showed off a new application from Neudesic called Azure ROI. This freely available application takes the currently announced Azure pricing and allows you to play with numbers around what your usage would be. Want to see what it would be like if you added more (or less) storage, messages, etc? Now you can easily change configurations around and see what your costs would be per day, month or year.
The calculator also offers a Migration Costs and ROI tab that will allow you to see your break even point as well as your up front costs for migrating to the cloud.
The application is written entirely in Silverlight and uses Azure as its back end. They will be making the source code freely available soon up on Codeplex for people to download. They’ve already got a few popular Silverlight/Azure apps up there right now including an Azure Storage Explorer that is worth checking out.
You can check out the Azure ROI Calculator here.
The downloads just went live a few minutes ago! If you are an MSDN or TechNet Subscriber you can download Windows7 now.
The downloads include both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions as well as Ultimate. I can’t help but feel such excitement downloading a fresh new operating system and installing it across my machines. Brings back memories of Windows 2000 getting released over MSDN and installing Server for the first time on my then current laptop. Wasn’t long after that I got an e-mail from the network admins telling me I had put up a server in the official production domain and needed to take it down. Then off I went to MSDN to download Windows 2000 Workstation to comply with network policy only to be struck with a limited number of IIS concurrent users which I couldn’t test against. Well it still beat using Personal Web Server. Ahh the memories of being an enterprise developer. =)
The days of having a separate IIS base between the client and server operating systems changed with Vista’s release and we can now use our base dev boxes for running most of the server components. Funny when I think about how I’m running SQL Server 2008, the entire SQL Server BI Stack, IIS, Visual Studio and now Expression Studio on my little laptop.
I might just have to go for a bit more ram (all my laptops are still running 4 gigs) on the next upgrade. But then again as any dev knows nothing beats the raw power of a custom built desktop. I just happen to be running a freshly download Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on mine -Woot!
Don’t forget while you’re downloading the bits to stop on by the Windows Developers Center. Lots of details, documentation and examples on developing for Windows 7.
-Dave
I had a great time meeting everyone at PhillyNJ.Net. Lots of interest around Silverlight and Expression especially when it comes to Line of Business Applications. As promised you can now download my slides and code. The deck is a bunch of custom slides I put together that takes you from the ground up. Why should I care about UX as a Developer? What impact does it have on the Enterprise? What’s XAML? Why Expression Studio? Even more importantly it shows you some real examples you can start using today! You can grab that deck here.
The first area we covered was basic templating in Blend and created some custom controls. We also showed off some transforms and animation such as the new perspective 3d transform in Silverlight 3. You can grab the project here.
Databinding is one of the hardest concepts to get your head around. XAML Markup just seems to throw off a lot of people. One of the new features in Blend 3 is the ability to create design time data and then bind your controls to it when running your application. This becomes extremely useful for not only designers but developers as well. It is often we find ourselves with a database but no services wrapped up to it yet to bring that data into our presentation tier.
Blend 3 will allow you to simulate what the collections will look like (remember you can bind to almost anything in XAML as long as you implement IEnumerable or its child IList). Not only will Blend generate the XAML Markup for you it will also allow you to drag other elements from the same collection onto your artboard and wire them up. The example I showed was binding a datagrid (seems this is the very first thing we want to do as a Developer) to the generated collection and then have a Listbox that would show the selected item as we enumerated through the grid.
Sounds complex? It’s really not and once you look at the generated XAML you begin to see the power of it. Blend simply told the Grid I had a static resource collection and set it to the DataContext for me. It then took each item in the collection and bound it to the appropriate elements. You can even edit the generated layout like you would with any other control. You can grab that project here.
Don’t forget I’ll be hitting the road in a few weeks and bringing these sessions into your own backyard. Be sure to check out the Mid Atlantic MSDN Roadshow for more details.
All slides and code here is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
This question has come up a couple times recently during my presentations and I wanted to point a potential snag you may hit. In order for Silverlight to run Out of the Browser (OOB) it needs to have an xml manifest file included in your project.
The file looks like this…
You can have this file created for you by setting the option inside the Silverlight Project properties window. Pulling up the properties will give you two new options to select. The problem is that Visual Studio will not automatically generate this file for you until you click on the “Out-Of-Browser Settings” button. It is not enough to just click the check box to enable out of the browser.
So if you are scratching your head and wondering why your getting that nifty manifest file missing error go back in and be sure to click the button so it generates it for you.
Clicking on the OOB Settings button will give you a bunch of options where you can set the information the window will display and when you hit OK it will generate the file for you.
That is really all there is to it to enable the OOB functionality in your application. As long as users already have the Silverlight 3 plug-in they can run both in and out of the browser. No additional installation or frameworks are needed. Simply going to a page with an OOB enabled Silverlight control will give the user a new option to install locally when they right click on the control.
Clicking install will bring up an installation window with the option of creating a shortcut on your desktop or start menu.
It is important to point out that this does not change the security model of Silverlight either. It is still completely sandboxed as it would be running in the browser. If your users have additional questions there is a “More Information” link on the installation prompt that will take them to a Microsoft site with details about what “Outside the Browser” means for them.
The application can now be run both from your website as well as a stand alone application. If the user ever wants to remove the local application they need only right click anywhere in the stand alone application or the Silverlight control on the webpage and select “Remove this application”. Eliminating any need to go to “Add/Remove Programs” through the setup panel in Windows.
You can also download updated documentation for how to check whether your application has been installed yet locally, is running or out of the browser, as well as if network connectivity is present.
From the Cheesesteaks of Philadelphia to the crab cakes of Maryland my fellow geeks Dani Diaz and G. Andrew Duthie are hitting the road and coming to you! If you have been curious about the latest releases of Developer and Designer tools from Microsoft but don’t know where to start these events are for you.
We’ll be covering eight different cities and will go from using the tools themselves to the patterns and practices people are using to be more productive. Instead of just throwing a bunch of slides and “Hello World” apps at you we are going to build a working application that will spam across the entire day. From where to get the bits, planning/designing your application, to building it and finally publishing it out these events will cover it all.
Here is how the day will pan out:
Creating Rich Internet Applications on the Microsoft Platform using Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3
You’re a Developer not a Designer. So how do you shine in this new world of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) while still leveraging your .NET skills? This 2 hour overview will get you up to speed on the latest Microsoft Silverlight, Expression Studio and Visual Studio has to offer. Go beyond hello world and get the latest tips and tricks to make your application shine. You’ll be surprised how easily you can create a working web application that is engaging to your users, and integrates with your existing web architecture.
Level: 200-300 | Length: 1:45
Building Composite Silverlight and WPF Applications using Prism and MVVM
When you have two UI technologies like WPF and Silverlight written in similar languages (XAML) but that run against different assemblies in different situations, it's not unreasonable to want to write a UI once and later be able to choose the best or both options with only a trivial amount of effort. This session will show you how to get the most out of your XAML-based applications and what architectural decisions can help enable these options from the beginning of the development cycle.
Level: 200 | Length: 1:15
Introduction to .NET RIA Services
This session is an introduction on how Microsoft is simplifying the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together ASP.NET and Silverlight. Learn about patterns for working with data, implementing reusable and independently testable application logic, and application services that readily scale with growing requirements.
Level: 200 | Length: 0:30
Where to sign up?
Each event is from 1pm to 5pm and will also come after an early morning IT Professional session. So if you’re curious in learning more about Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 you can come early and stay for the Developer goodness in the afternoon.
Hope to see you there!
Our fiscal year at Microsoft ends in June and the new year begins in July. It is a time of reflection and re-alignment as we look at past successes and how to best serve our customers moving forward into the new year. For me it also meant being asked if I wanted to take on a new challenge. Up until this point I’ve been focused exclusively on large enterprise accounts. Most of what I’ve done shows up in whitepapers or the stuff you see during the MIX keynotes.
My main focus this year will be on the people themselves within PA/NJ/NY. What makes you guys tick? What are you looking for out of the teams in Redmond? “But Dave you have all this online stuff you do and I’ve seen you at Code Camps!” True - for those that know me I’m not a big title guy. I’ve always felt you shouldn’t let your title dictate what you do. Go out and fill the needs you see and let them figure out your title. This change is a recognition of that work. It frees me up so that I can spend more time directly with you – the users of Microsoft software no matter the venue. Whether you work for a Microsoft Partner, a Corporation, attend a Code Camp, run a User Group, go to a Conference or sit in on a Launch Event I’ll be there!
I’ve always been a “community” guy at heart. Going back to high school I proudly lead the Astronomy Club. I know – so geeky right? It didn’t matter. It was a place for us to relax and learn from each other without worrying about the school’s agenda. That’s what excites me about the communities I have been visiting these past few weeks – passion. It takes me back to what made all those high school days so exciting. People are there because they care about their craft and they care about helping each other learn.
I hope you’ll let me be part of that. I’m listening.
With the release of Expression Studio 3 MSDN Subscribers can now download the entire suite (a $600 retail value). This was something I have personally been pushing for a long time. With the rise of User Experience and RIA in the Enterprise I have seen Expression being used more everyday in the design of the next generation of LOB (line of business) applications.
With Team Foundation Service integration and a slew of new features this a a perfect opportunity to check out Expression as an enterprise developer. This release also includes Sketchflow as well as the final release of Super Preview in the updated Expression Web.
You can find it under the new “Designer Tools” section now via MSDN.
An Exciting Launch
This week kicked off the “virtual” Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3 launches. For weeks the SeeTheLight website had a placeholder countdown timer. As UX Geek and Twitter user it was pretty exciting as we all watch the countdown slowly go down from days to minutes. “
“10 minutes left!” came the tweets across my Sobees bDule Twitter client… “5 minutes!”… “1 minute”…
“It’s Live!” we all shouted as the countdown timer suddenly changed into a sun lighting up the way to Silverlight and Expression goodness.
How Exciting! The virtual launched allowed you too pull down information on the new releases, watch how-do-i videos, as well as participate in a funny TV show called “The Visual Kitchen.” Now that the launch is over the site has been updated with all the content that was shown. Lots of great stuff to fill your RIA/UX appetites.
So where do I get the bits?
Just like all the previous releases you will want to start at the Silverlight.Net websites “Get Started” page. This page will give you step by step instructions and links on grabbing the files and setting up your development environment. Silverlight 3, as with prior releases, was created with backwards compatibility in mind. With a single plug-in you are able to run Silverlight 1, Silverlight 2 and all the new Silverlight 3 features. So if you haven’t downloaded any of the Silverlight plug-ins yet don’t worry this is all you need. If you already have the Silverlight 2 plug-in install this will upgrade you.
One of the slick new features with this release is the installation. Silverlight will now use the Web Platform installer!
I previously blogged about the Web Platform Installer during the MIX09 Announcements. Customers have been asking for a long time to simplify the installation of the Microsoft Web Platform. ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, IIS, SQL Express, VS Express, DotNetNuke, and more all can be installed and updated from a single small sized download setup package. Silverlight is now part of that experience giving you a complete end to end one stop shop for all things Web on the platform.
As part of this release the teams have also updated the Expression Website. New features include an Online Gallery of freely downloadable XAML elements, themes, skins, behaviors and all sorts of other goodness for use in your Silverlight or WPF applications. The site also has a revamped learning section to enable you to find the tutorials and information that is important to you.
What’s new in this release?
I continued to be impressed by Tim. I first met him at a Silverlight training course given by none other than Shawn Wildermuth. Wow – two great Silverlight gurus in my second week of working at Microsoft. If I needed any further proof that Microsoft was serious about RIA development these guys sealed it for me. Tim continues to be at the top of his game and posted an in depth blog entry on everything new with the release. Be sure to check it out to get more details.
Who could forget “The GU!”? Scott posted details as well on this release you should check out.
If you’re like me you might also want to hear from the team leaders themselves about why this release is so important. The Gu and Christian Schormann sit down at Channel9 to discuss some of the themes behind this release.
How about some in depth free online training around this release? Look no further than XAML Fest Online. Kudos to the Microsoft ISV team for putting this one together the content was in depth as was the ongoing Q&A from the audience. I had the pleasure of leading the Designer track for one of the in person XAMLfests and then getting to proctor the online courses.
Are there any cool Silverlight 3 applications yet?
As with prior releases the Silverlight Showcase is the place for checking out the latest Silverlight applications. With 600+ entries from over 60 countries there is bound to be something that strikes your interest. The Showcase was updated for the Silverlight 3 release and includes some great examples.
I wanted to point out two Silverlight 3 applications I have been using myself. For those of you who are following me on Twitter you’ve probably seen me posting from bDule. Well the guys are at it again and for this launch they ported the client into a Silverlight 3 application. Now you can get all the great Twitter, Facebook and search functionality you are used to but via the convenience of the web. They’ve also added a synchronization feature that will enable you to keep all your settings regardless of whether you’re on a pc or pulling up the client from the web. Because this release is using Silverlight 3 the client will now run on Macs. So if you’ve been itching to try it out but haven’t yet be sure to Check it out!
The second application is a completely functional TED browser. For those not familiar TED it is an annual conference that focuses on spreading innovation in ideas. It does this by bringing together top professionals in the fields of technology, entertainment and design. The talks are also limited to 20 minutes or less forcing the presenters to convey their message in a powerful and connective way. One of the more high profile TED talks recently was the Bill Gates keynote on world poverty and education. This was the talk where Bill released the mosquitoes into the crowd.
With the release of Silverlight 3 Thirteen23 created a stand alone TED browser that lets you search the entire library of talks, view the most popular presentations and watch them instantly. Because it is Silverlight 3 this application will run on both PCs and MACs as well as in the browser or outside of it. Probably one of the best examples I’ve seen of the new Out-Of-Browser capabilities in Silverlight. With one click you can now have the application available from your start menu or desktop without having to install any additional software. It all runs using the same Silverlight plug-in you already have and yes the Out-Of-Browser functionality works on both MAC and PC too! Be sure to point your browser here and check it out.
Exciting new technology. Looks good but how does this make my job easier?
Having only been with Microsoft now two years I get told time and time again I still think like a customer. But what does that mean? For me it is just not only about innovating technology. It is about releasing that for people who do this as a living we don’t live in a vacuum. We are part of an eco-system that includes people with various focuses in design, project management, development and IT Skills. It means having a network we might not have full control over, a desktop that we might not be able to install software on and a team that might be working from parts all over the world. This was the main reason behind creating the EntDevCon site this year and what I like to say as “Going Beyond Hello World.”
It is with mindset that I come to this release of Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3. This to me is what I had been craving inside my previous organization. Things like Team Foundation Support in Blend? We listened – it is in there. Sand-boxed, secure, Out-Of-Browser application support without any additional installations? It is in there!
At my previous job I often dreamed of having a source repository for my UI elements much in the same way most organizations have their classes and frameworks stored. Being able to target a single API and Platform whether you are making Windows Applications or Web Applications with consistent UI patterns is a powerful thing. That has now become a reality thanks to the full XAML support across technologies and tool sets. There is even guidance on differences between WPF and Silverlight and how you can leverage that. For the first time as a .NET Developer or a XAML Designer you can target Windows applications, Web applications and even stuff like the Surface table all while maintaining a single codebase. Multi-Touch, Multi-User Twitter client on a surface table anyone?
Getting tools that focus on your discipline and trade rather than the technology is important We know that designers and developers think differently about a problem but it is the SAME problem and technology should be the force that unites them. If you remember one thing about these new technologies and toolsets it should be this; regardless of the discipline of your team members they can now work seamlessly with each other. That means allowing things like the importing of Photoshop or Illustrator files directly into blend. It also means having your designers able to work with design time data that looks exactly as the developer intended it to. I’ve been there myself, the developer trying to cut up a PSD file to look and behave the way my designer wanted it to only for both of us to end up frustrated.
Let the healing begin…
Sketch what??
I just can’t say enough about the Expression Team. When I first saw the changes Microsoft was proposing to the UI layer a few years back at PDC2003 I had to scratch my head. XAML was a great idea on paper but with only tools available like the SDK’s XAMLPad or a beta add-on editor for Visual Studio I knew I’d be spending ours in XML just trying to get things to look the way I wanted. It really wasn’t until Expression Studio was released that the light bulb went off for me. I could finally “draw” a button instead of coding a button. This wasn’t the empty promises of years gone passed with Design Time Controls either. Because these tools were written in XAML themselves and there was now a unified XAML runtime in WPF and Silverlight instead of numerous incompatible web browser doms. What can I say – I got super excited from that day forward and it hasn’t stopped.
In his book Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton points out that real innovation and ideas come from the sketch itself. It seems like such common sense looking back now to me. How many times did I just white board stuff out in brainstorming sessions? Quick, and easily thrown out, these sketches would lead to bigger and better ideas. They didn’t force you to think it terms of technologies the way UML or Visio did.
Expression Blend 3 kicked it up a notch with something called Sketchflow. This is where having professionals on a team with years of interface design comes into play. How many times have you created mockups whether they were in Visio, PowerPoint or Photoshop only to throw them away when it came to actually implementing them. From within Blend itself you can now “sketch” fully functional apps and have your users annotate right on them. Take that a step further and think about drawing this on top of a PC Tablet? Sounds like Science Fiction right? It’s not and its here today! You only need to do a quick search on Twitter to see how its changing the productivity of software development teams.
Once you see it in action it starts to really make sense. Check out the MIX09 Session Christian Schormann did here…
… and then his blog follow up tutorial here.
Pretty Exciting stuff eh? Go get started today and let us know what you think! Silverlight 4 is already under development and ready to have the next great feature you are looking for.
-Dave
Internally at Microsoft there has been talk about how we can help developers and designers in this economy. The beginning of those efforts is now launching with ThriveDev a website dedicated to offering FREE resources on training, certifications, videos, as well as job posting and integrating with your local developer community.
“ Although the economic news is looking a little brighter, we know it’s still tough out there…. to help Microsoft has put together Thrive - a website all about helping you survive the recession and manage their careers in this tough economy. Thrive pulls together a ton of great resources to help you learn new tasks faster, get access to discounted training, and certification and connect you with your local community. Thrive has lots of interesting insights from members of our own developer community who are sharing their stories and advice about what they are doing to manage their career in the downturn. “
Some great upcoming features include:
- .NET Rocks “Development in a Downturn” podcast series – 10 part podcast series focusing on developers in the community sharing their stories of how they have handled the recession, what they have learned and advice they have to share to others based on their personal experiences
- Step by step resources to help you ramp quickly on new tasks. We’re being asked to take on more with fewer resources and limited training, these step by step scenarios help save time and money.
- “How to be a better Developer” series – everything from community MVP’s weighing in with their advice, to how to leverage social networks to benefit your career, to “Driving your Career Forward” , a 32 part screen cast series on how to develop key soft skills that can help you be more successful on the job.
- Job search functionality on thousands of development job openings across the country
- Industry resources and articles on how to land a job; including a 4 part webcast series on “Getting a Development Job in the Current Economy”
- Community Connection to find local developer events and user groups
Be sure to stop on by and check it out as well as letting us know if there is anything you'd like to see on the site.
AGENDA:
9:00 AM–10:30 AM Introduction to Azure
Hear about key problems that cloud computing is solving and how these services fit into the Microsoft cloud computing initiatives. Learn about the pillars of the platform, its service lifecycle, and see how they fit with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies.
10:45 AM –12:15 PM Azure Storage
Modern services need available, scalable and durable data in many forms, including both structured and unstructured data. This session presents blob, table and queue storage services and the APIs for manipulating and querying data.
12:15 – 1:15 PM “Working Lunch” – Putting it together – Building a simple Azure Application
This session goes beyond the "Hello World" development experience, giving best practices across common tasks for serious service developers. These tasks include logging, debugging, deployment, management, and maintenance of individual services.
1:30–2:00 PM Azure Services (Service Bus, Workflow Services)
Learn how to use the service bus in the Microsoft .NET Services to address difficult connectivity, security, and discoverability issues. See how simple it is to use cloud-based workflow services to run business processes in the cloud as well as perform orchestration across on-premises and cloud services while running workflows in an environment that scales automatically.
2:15–3:45 PM Azure Services (Access Control Service)
Learn how to manage access control to the ServiceBus, Workflow, and Data Services via the Access Control Service. This session illustrates the access control capabilities of these services, and several common patterns for building your application securely using the .NET Services, access control service.
4:00–5:30 PM Introduction to Live Services
Learn how you can use the Live Framework within web (ASP.NET) and client (.NET Framework) applications to integrate with various Live Services. See how to get started, integrate exciting new capabilities into your app, and target unique new scenarios that reach new users.
Registration is free but seating is limited. Check out the events site for more details.
