DaveDev

Even developers and designers are not immune to this economic downtown - Microsoft wants to help.

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.

Interested in Cloud Computing and local to the Philly area? Check out the Windows Azure Firestarter this Saturday in Malvern, PA

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.

Microsoft Enterprise Developer and Solutions Conference (EntDevCon) Live Streaming today!

Tired of hearing from Microsoft about their Solutions?  Want to hear real stories from real customers and partners?  It’s time to Go Beyond Hello World – it’s time for the EntDevCon.

Doug Hauger, GM of Windows Azure, will be kicking of the Keynote at the sold-out EntDevCon this morning at 9AM EST.  Can’t make it to NYC this year?  All sessions will be streamed Live at http://EntDevCon.com and available after the conference for later viewing.  The Team has also partnered with Telligent to bring you a Community Server site focused on carrying on the great conversations that will happen over the next two days.  Be sure to check it out!

Exciting new stuff from Microsoft! The MIX09 Announcements.

Lots of exciting announcements were made recently at the MIX09 conference.  I didn’t get to attend in person this year but I tweeted throughout the keynote and event.  Yes that is my tweet highlighted in the above screenshot while “The Gu” is talking on stage.  Got to love the convergence of social media on the web. 

The Keynotes

Scott Guthrie and Bill Buxton.  Need we say more?  Definitely worth taking the time to watch.  You can view the recording of it here.  You can watch Day 2’s keynote here as well.

Tim Sneath did an amazing live blog of the keynotes and some sessions.  You can check those out here:

• The Keynote (Guthrie, Buxton)
• What's new in Silverlight 3
• Extending your Brand to the desktop with Windows 7
• Internet Explorer 8 Announcements
• Changing behavior by design

Some interesting Silverlight facts I found while watching the keynote:

• Netflix Silverlight Player
• Starts at 500kps then steps to 1000kps & finally 1500kps (HD quality).  Netflix found 20% of customers couldn't use previous player before the Silverlight version. The new player is written in C# , updated every 2 weeks now vs. 12 months prior.
• Silverlight 2 in just 18 months…
• 350+ million installs
• 300,000+ developers/designers
• 200+ Microsoft products/websites
• 10,000+ applications globally

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer

The entire Microsoft Web Platform is not available via a 1 megabyte installer.  This will grab the latest version of everything you need and also keeps you up to date moving forward.  This includes server components, development tools, even the database. 

Not only that you can now browse and install the latest web applications via the new Web App Gallery.  Wordpress, DotNetNuke, are all available at the click of a button. 

How is that for making things easier?

Expression Web SuperPreview

A freely downloadable tool that allows you to view webpages (and by that I mean PHP, ASP, HTML you name it) as it would appear in IE going back to version 6 all side by side.  Now here is the slick part – you can actually overlay the areas pages on top of each other and see it highlight the specific areas of the page that look different.

This was a big hit during the keynote and as a web developer something I wish I had years before.  There have been sites that allow you to point to your webpage and then it renders them for you in different browsers but I’ve never a tool like this that does it on the fly.  Be sure to check it out.

Expression Blend 3

The Blend team continues to amaze me.  The Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator interoperability you’ve been asking for? It’s in there.  Team Foundation Server support? It’s there. 

So are some amazing new innovations.  The Day1 keynote is worth watching just for a new Blend feature called SketchFlow. One of the things I have seen people use Blend for is prototyping.  With the ease of use XAML brings between the tooling now no longer do we need to throw away the initial design of the site when we are ready to build it.  Imagine actually being able to navigate throughout the site with your mockups themselves.  Sound crazy?  A prototype is now as real and interactive as you can think of.  From the team’s page:

“ SketchFlow introduces a new set of features designed to make it easier for you to experiment with dynamic user experiences and create compelling prototypes. SketchFlow also helps communicate design ideas to other stakeholders, and makes it easier to collect in-context annotated feedback. SketchFlow enables the navigation and composition of an application to be modeled in a very visual manner from a simple prototype that uses a series of sketches, to something much more evolved. A prototype can be made as real and interactive as it needs to be to communicate design intent and SketchFlow can leverage all the existing features of Expression Blend. “

Here a just a few Features in Expression Blend 3…

• Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import. The powerful importers for both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator enable smooth integration with workflows the designer already has in place. The designer has freedom to view and import Photoshop files layer by layer. Layers can be easily regrouped and elements retain their original formats; layers, layer positions, editable text and vectors remain available for editing within Expression Blend.
• Behaviors. Add interactivity to your application, without having to write code. Behaviors can encapsulate complex design interactions into reusable components which can be directly applied to a user interface element in the application. Developers have access to a rich API that they can use to write their own triggers, actions, and behaviors for use in their Silverlight and WPF projects.
• Sample data. Design time sample data makes it easy to build data-connected applications without access to live data. You can generate sample data or import sample data from an XML file and is available to controls on the artboard at design-time. You can extensively customize your sample data details, and you can easily switch between using sample data and using live data at run-time.
• Improved design and development experience. Expression Blend 3 includes many features that improve the overall design experience including a brand new design surface making Blend more accessible to visual designers. Team Foundation Server support allows easier integration of the Blend user into Team System. Improved animation and easing functions, 3D transforms, visual effects and an improved visual state manager enable a great tooling experience.

There are plenty more be sure to check out the Expression Blend 3 page here for all the details.

Silverlight 3

GPU Acceleration, Perspective 3D, Pixel Shaders, Out of Browser Support, Element to Element Binding, Behaviors, Easing, the list goes on and on.  The Silverlight team continues to move at lightning speed and version 3 delivers are the promise of amazing web experiences unlike nothing seen before.  From the Silverlight site:

What’s New in Silverlight 3 Beta?

Fully supported by Visual Studio and Expression Blend, highlights of new features and functionality of Silverlight 3 include: major media enhancements, out of browser support allowing Web applications to work on the desktop; significant graphics improvements including 3D graphics support, GPU acceleration and H.264 video support; and many features to improve RIA development productivity. Also, in order to fully integrate all the .NET developer tools, Visual Studio 2010 will support a fully editable and interactive designer for Silverlight. New features in Silverlight 3 include:

• Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop. New and enhanced media features in Silverlight 3 include:
  • Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming. IIS Media Services (formerly IIS Media Pack), an integrated HTTP media delivery platform, features Smooth Streaming which dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file delivered to Silverlight based on local bandwidth and CPU conditions.
  • More format choice. In addition to native support for VC-1/WMA, Silverlight 3 now offers users native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio, enabling content distributors to deliver high-quality content to a wide variety of computers and devices.
  • True HD playback in full-screen. Leveraging graphics processor unit (GPU) hardware acceleration, Silverlight experiences can now be delivered in true full-screen HD (720p+).
  • Extensible media format support. With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.
  • Industry leading content protection. Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM.
• Empowering Richer Experiences. Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals. Additional features include:
  • Perspective 3D Graphics. Silverlight 3 allows developers and designers to apply content to a 3D plane. Users can rotate or scale live content in space without writing any additional code. Other effects include creating a queue in 3D and transitions.
  • Pixel Shader effects. These software based effects include blur and drop shadow. In addition, you can also write your own effect. Effects can be applied to any graphical content. An example would be to make a button appear depressed on rollover you could use a drop shadow effect on the pressed visual state.
  • Bitmap Caching. Silverlight 3 dramatically improves the rendering performance of applications by allowing users to cache vector content, text and controls into bitmaps. This feature is useful for background content and for content which needs to scale without making changes to its internal appearance.
  • New Bitmap API. With Silverlight 3, developers can now write pixels to a bitmap. Thus, they can build a photo editor to do red eye correction, perform edits on scanned documents or create specials effects for cached bitmaps from elements on the screen.
  • Themed application support. Developers can now theme applications by applying styles to their Silverlight 3 applications and changing them at runtime. Additionally, developers can cascade styles by basing them on each other.
  • Animation Effects. Silverlight 3 provides new effects such as spring and bounce. These make animation more natural. Developers can also now develop their own mathematical functions to describe an animation.
  • Enhanced control skinning. Silverlight 3 provides easier skinning capabilities by keeping a common set of controls external from an application. This allows the sharing of styles and control skins between different applications.
  • Improved text rendering & font support. Silverlight 3 allows far more efficient rendering and rapid animation of text. Applications also load faster by enabling the use of local fonts.
• Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity. New features include:
  • 60+ controls with source code : Silverlight 3 is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with nine professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. Other additions include multiple selection in listbox controls, file save dialog making it easier to write files, and support for multiple page applications with navigation.
  • Deep Linking. Silverlight 3 includes support for deep linking, which enables bookmarking a page within a RIA.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Silverlight 3 enables users to solve the SEO-related challenges posed by RIAs. By utilizing business objects on the server, together with ASP.NET controls and site maps, users can automatically mirror database-driven RIA content into HTML that is easily indexed by the leading search engines.
  • Enhanced Data Support Silverlight 3 delivers:
    • Element to Element binding : UI designers use binding between two UI properties to create compelling UI experiences. Silverlight now enables property binding to CLR objects and other UI components via XAML, for instance binding a slider value to the volume control of a media player.
    • Data Forms. The Data Form control provides support for layout of fields, validation, updating and paging through data.
    • New features for data validation which automatically catch incorrect input and warn the user with built-in validation controls.
    • Support for business objects on both client and server with n-Tier data support. Easily load, sort, filter and page data with added support for working with data. Includes a new built-in CollectionView to perform a set of complex operations against server side data. A new set of .NET RIA services supports these features on the server.
  • Improved performance, through:
    • Application library caching, which reduces the size of applications by caching framework on the client in order to improve rendering performance.
    • Enhanced Deep Zoom, allows users to fluidly navigate through larger image collections by zooming.
    • Binary XML allows communication with the server to be compressed, greatly increasing the speed at which data can be exchanged.
    • Local Connection This feature allows communication between two Silverlight applications on the client-side without incurring a server roundtrip: for instance a chart in one control can communicate with a datagrid in another.
• Advanced Accessibility Features. Silverlight 3 is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by using familiar operating system controls.
• Out of Browser Capabilities. The new out of browser experience in Silverlight 3 enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto their PC and Mac, with links on the desktop and start menu—all without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Further, the new experience enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not—a radical improvement to the traditional Web experience. Features include:
  • Life outside the browser. Silverlight applications can now be installed to and run from the desktop as lightweight web companions. Thus, users can take their favorite Web applications with them, regardless of whether they are connected to the Internet or not.
  • Desktop shortcuts and start menu support. Silverlight applications can be stored on any PC or Mac computer’s desktop with links in the start menu and applications folder, and so are available with one-click access.
  • Safe and secure. Leveraging the security features of the .NET Framework, Silverlight applications run inside a secure sandbox with persistent isolated storage. These applications have most of the same security restrictions as traditional web apps and so can be trusted without security warnings or prompts, minimizing user interruptions.
  • Smooth installation. Because Silverlight applications are stored in a local cache and do not require extra privileges to run, the installation process is quick and efficient.
  • Auto-update. Upon launch, Silverlight applications can check for new versions on the server, and automatically update if one is found.
  • Internet connectivity detection. Silverlight applications can now detect whether they have Internet connectivity and can react intelligently including caching a users’ data until their connection is restored.

Be sure to check out the very comprehensive list from Tim Heuer again on all things Silverlight 3.

For step by step installation instructions and where to get the bits be sure to visit the official Silverlight 3 getting started page.

With all these new features and tools Silverlight 3 is becoming an excellent platform for line of business enterprise applications.  Check out these two sessions from MIX on building LOB apps using Silverlight 3.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4

So now that Silverlight has an out of the browser experience that means that WPF is on its way out right?  Wrong!  The team has never been harder at work and announced a slew of new features coming in WPF 4.0/Windows 7. 

In fact due to the very nature of XAML and the synergy between Silverlight and WPF you actually get to be a RIA developer just by being a Windows developer.  Think about that for a second.  It used to be the case if I was a Visual Basic WinForms guy I wouldn’t be able to take those skills and bring them to the ASP.NET world.  The API’s were different, the tooling was different, and the concepts were different.  But, now it will be entirely possible for me as a Windows Client developer to take my code and put it out on the Web via Silverlight.  Same skills, same tools, more opportunity for you as a developer!

Be sure to check out Jaime Rodriguez’s three part series on what he saw at MIX and how you can leverage your skills as a WPF developer across both client and web today.

Grab all the details here including video recording of the teams session and PowerPoint slides.

 Windows Azure

The Azure team has been hard at work since last November’s CTP and announced several exciting features at MIX09.

From their blog…

FastCGI allows developers to deploy and run web applications written with 3^rd party programming languages such as PHP.  This provides developers using non-Microsoft languages the ability to take advantage of scalability on Windows Azure. 

NET Full Trust  provides developers with a level of flexibility in Windows Azure that removes limitations on .NET Libraries which require full trust (including .NET Services) .NET Full Trust, via spawning process and p/invoke, also allows developers to leverage existing investments in native code or legacy components that they will now be able to invoke on Windows Azure.

Geo-location provides developers with the ability to specify a location for their applications and data to build responsive services with lower network latency as well as the capability to meet location-based regulatory and legal requirements.

You can read more details on these features written by the program managers who led these efforts. 

Read more about FastCGI and .NET Full Trust from Mohit Srivastava

Read more about Geo-location from Sriram Krishnan

Behind the Scenes

RIA? Web? Cloud? Design? Development?  It’s all there for us and MIX09 really brought that point home. To me there has never been a more exciting time to be a .Net Developer.  But at the end of the day this is bleeding edge stuff.  It’s early version stuff and it breaks.  Worse yet it breaks while you’re demoing it.  I’ve been there myself.

I wanted to end the post with a humorous post from Brad Abrams.  Brad talks about his own session at MIX and the crash he had as well as how to gracefully recover after it. 

You have to love the elegance of people like Bill Buxton who made an almost seamless recovery.

Oh and a little product called Internet Explorer 8 got released during MIX too.   Might want to check it out. =)

Internet Explorer 8 released!

Internet Explorer 8 was just released! Get it here http://microsoft.com/ie8 & watch videos and all the new features here http://tinyurl.com/dat24x .

The team has put together a hilarious video of “the history of the web”.  I won’t ruin any of the celebrity appearances its a pretty funny video and worth a view:

What’s got me excited?  I am loving the new visual search engines.  As someone who is constantly on Amazon, Wikipedia or E-bay the fact I get some visual results right from my search bar is extremely helpful.

I’ve been impressed by how many Accelerators there are now at release.  See a product on a webpage you like and want to know how much it costs?  Just highlight the text and select the accelerator and a tiny window will pop up right there.  All sorts of neat stuff like that – translate language on highlighted text, show maps of addresses, share out to social media sites like Facebook or create tinyurl’s to links.  It is fast becoming one of my often used browser features.  Check it out!

Free Microsoft software, training and certification for ALL High School and College Students

Are you a High School or College student interested in free Microsoft software? Check out the latest in software development tools from Website creation, Rich Internet Applications, Video Streaming to working with full versions of SQL Server databases.  Or get started working with XNA and create your very own X-Box game or nextgen robot through Robotics Dev Studio.

Already have the software but looking to get some free training? 

How about testing that new knowledge and showing it off with a Certification companies are looking for?

Dreamspark now offers both free training and certification.  Check it out today!

Are you a .NET Developer looking for some “How Do I” videos on Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing has been generating a lot of interest as of late.  In this economy we are all looking at ways to reduce costs and increase performance.  But how do I get started as a .NET Developer on Windows Azure?  Check out the new “How Do I” videos around Windows Azure, Live Servers, and .NET Services that were just released on MSDN! 

These types of videos will walk you through step by step on how to get started, code snippets, and how to perform some of the more common tasks all before having to download the bits.  Here is a break down:

Windows Azure

Live Services

.NET Services

Don’t forget too you can subscribe to the RSS Feed here to be notified when new videos are released.

Are you stuck behind a Firewall with no access to Twitter? Here’s the juicy bits in case you missed it!

I still think I have one of the coolest jobs at Microsoft.  Not only do I get to speak my mind online, conferences, workshops and usergroups but I also get to go into actual customer accounts.  Which brings me to Twitter.  I know it sounds crazy to a lot of my Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed buds but many organizations still block sites like Twitter and Facebook.  Yup, completely blocked!  No to mention access to IM clients like the new Live Messenger.

As someone who spent the last five years in a corporate environment “lockdown” before coming to Microsoft I can relate.  We all know that most of the really good information today comes from your fellow devs online via blogs, forums, twitter and sites like Channel9. 

These technologies also interoperate allowing you to host feeds of your activities in one place.  My blog for example has my latest X-Box Live happenings, Facebook, Twitter and my Facebook status gets updated from my Twitter feeds.  Twitter has become THE place to post great links (most likely due to the 140 char limit) and I’m not just talking about humorous pop culture references.  Real juicy technical bits!  I recently was at an internal “Developer Day” at a large financial institution (the name would be very familiar to you if I mentioned it).  Out of 120+ people in the room only 5 were on twitter.   That is only 4%!  The other 96% of those guys aren’t seeing any of the links I’m posting.  They can’t even go look at the html page of my feed because the Twitter.com domain name is blocked!

Realizing this I’ve decided to repost my technical links up on my blog.  I’ve left out my tweets about non-technical stuff or what’s going on in my personal life.  If you still want those bits you can find them up on Twitter.  But for everyone who has missed out here are some of the recent technical tweets going back to December that I think you’ll enjoy.  An “RT” means re-tweet and is a link someone else posted that I thought was important enough to share.  You can follow those people too by going to twitter.com and then their @name, for example twitter.com/mix09.

Here is the list…

Mike Swanson has updated the Adobe Illustrator to XAML Plug-In. Check it out! http://bit.ly/u2qe

RT @MIX09: RT @ch9: Scott Guthrie On Silverlight, MIX09, Keynotes, Developers and Designers http://tinyurl.com/czx82s

RT @Veronica: Apple vs. Palm: the in-depth analysis http://bit.ly/ypEc

RT @shanselman: *Wow*,REALLY nice WPF ClickOnce Twitter Client via @blackgold9 http://snurl.com/chirp (.net 3.5 sp1 use http://bit.ly/QxNi8)

RT @adkinn: 6 Things I Bet You Didn't Know About Data Binding in WPF from Nate Zaugg http://ff.im/-Ig00

Microsoft Surface - Retail Banking Demo http://bit.ly/tc38. See it in person too at the NYC Enterprise DevCon http://bit.ly/Zufu

Good article on current perceptions of Microsoft and how the company is changing that - http://bit.ly/82Zn

Anyone else notice that Photosynth is running as a Silverlight control now? Both at CNN Site http://twurl.nl/kn5753 and on Photosynth Site.

RT @Pete_Brown: my article on styling the charts in the Silverlight toolkit came out today: http://tinyurl.com/92n8om Nice job Pete!

Linux/Moonlight and PPC Mac SL 1.0 now working for Obama Inauguration Silverlight stream! Nice work guys! http://tinyurl.com/789asq

Wow - amazing must watch video of inspiration http://tinyurl.com/5qfrpl. Found via the NYC planecrash rescuers site - janiskrums.com

64 and 32 bit versions of WIndows7 beta are up on MSDN Subscribers page now! Go grab it. http://msdn.microsoft.com

Zune team isolated 30gig lockup probs. Had to do with 2006 models clock w/ leap year. Will fix automatic 1/1/09. http://tinyurl.com/873k8z

Honoring its cross platform commitment the LiveLabs team just released Seadragon Mobile for iPhone http://tinyurl.com/5tn6qm . Works great!

All MDC attendees are going to get BETA1 of WIndows7! Win7 has been my primary o/s since M3 build. Check it out: http://msdndevcon.com.

Good site with all sorts of LINQ examples: http://tinyurl.com/62j6sb. If you're like me this will help your SQL brain think LINQ.

Great Wired article about the new Microsoft under Ozzie's direction. http://tinyurl.com/5zhz7q

If you do have access to Twitter at work but haven’t joined up yet here are my thoughts on why I think you should.  Don’t forget to follow me with your favorite Twitter client too.  If you run into any snags getting started feel free to leave me feedback on via this blog and I’ll walk you through.  Hope to see you all online!

Art, Design and Code – How did I get here?

I seem to have Expression Studio opened these days more than any other programm  How good a website “acts”, “looks” and “feels” is what I remember.  So how did I get here? 

Looking back I always was attracted to more form than function.  Most of my grade school days were spent doodling into my sketchpads (yes I’d take one around school with me) or spending countless hours staring into the latest artwork of Larry Elmore on my new Dragon magazine or Dragonlance book cover. 

Those days soon began to fill up with countless hours in front of the computer with my Commodore 64 and later Amiga 500.  But even then I would be lost in imagination as I brought my thoughts to life across the canvas of Deluxe Paint.

I guess it was school that chose that direction for me.  Computers were programming and art meant having to use clay or charcoal rubbings.  Combine the two?  Are you crazy young man!  If you wanted to work with you computers as your career then you must learn to be an engineer?  In fact on the urging of my guidance counselor I enrolled as a Computer Engineer and set about a path into the realm of Physics, Calculus and Discrete Analysis. 

By the time I figured out how boring that stuff was to me I had already begun my career as a Web Developer.  The year was 1992 and the web was new.  Netscape Mozilla fit on a single 3.5” floppy disk Flashing construction signs could be found on almost every page you would load up.  I connected to the internet over my blazing fast Supra 14400 modem (so much faster than my old C64 300 baud) via a unix command prompt, loaded up WinSock in Windows 3.11 and then the world was mine!

Before I knew it I was out starting my career as a Desktop Technician with a freshly minted diploma and MCSE in NT 4.0.  “Internet Speed” began to occur and technology moved faster than ever.  It seemed like almost every week something new was coming – HTML 2.0, HTML .2 and then HTML 4.0.  Microsoft ASP, Visual InterDev and Dreamweaver.  A new field began to emerge – that of the “Web Programmer” and I road alongside it.  Switching careers entirely from IT Infrastructure and Support to a “Developer”.  I learned the ins and outs of what it meant to be a Microsoft Programmer back then on the web - COM+, MTS, Commerce Server, “The Pipeline”, Sql Server 6.5.  But I started to realize something – as fast as I made the code, as fast as much data the database churned up it was what the actual website itself “looked” like that people remembered.  That story largely remained the same as I moved along the next few years.  Watching the the dotcom bubble burst. moving into the coporate world, creating “architectures” and “frameworks” that were used by developers globally in those companies.  But the stuff I was most proud of?  That stuff still sat in my sketchbook.  It sat on the desktop backgrounds of my machines and in the short stories I would write.

But then something happened.  Just the same way that a “web developer” was born out of the beginnings of a server-client coder so thus became a Rich Internet Application (RIA) developer.  Suddenly worlds of form and function were colliding.  I could actually draw my interfaces instead of coding them.  The tools had caught up too – no longer did I have to spend countless hours debugging script (sorry JavaScript and XMSLT fans I’ve been there it just wasn’t for me).  I know there are other folks out there that have followed this path.  Started out as devs and then got the design bug.  You’re not alone – and there are tons of resources out there today. 

Even if you still love the function over the form a little design knowledge never hurts when it comes to developing compelling experiences.  So I started with the basics…

And then moved up to some design patterns…

The time might just be right to dust off that old sketchbook.  You never know what creativity will come out until you light that first spark.

-Dave

New local Philadelphia area Cloud Computing User Group – come learn about Azure

Azure Issue Tracker available for download! Learn cloud programming the dev way - through code.

If you’re still scratching your head and waiting for some real life Azure/Cloud computing examples your wait is over.  The team has posted a complete Issue Tracker sample up on Codeplex for you to begin playing with.  If you’re like me nothing ties together all the pieces and makes it real then actually opening up the code and seeing it.

This is a great starter example too because it gives you a functional application you can use.  Before coming to Microsoft at my old company we actually used the ASP.NET 2.0 IssueTracker Starter Kit code that we customized for our own team.  I’m very curious now to see how well an application like this scales up using Azure.  Not to mention it uses ASP.NET MVC so you get to start working with that as well if you haven’t already!

From the site…

“ Azure IssueTracker demonstrates a real-world ISV scenario where you want to create and host a SaaS application for your consumers. This sample is being releasede in two versions: Standard and Enterprise. The Standard version allows ad-hoc users to use LiveID federation with the .NET Access Control Service and authorize other LiveID users. This allows small groups of users to quickly provision projects and issue tracking capabilities.
The Enterprise version of IssueTracker uses the same claims-based authorization capabilities as the standard version, but allows greater control by customers over claims and authorization decisions. Additionally, the Enterprise version offers more premium capabilities like onsite configuration and monitoring in true S+S fashion.

The IssueTracker service itself is a very simple service - providing basic issue management and workflow capabilities. Because the service and the website are claims-aware applications, it allows for some interesting scenarios. Using a single set of claims and authorization logic, both active clients and passive web clients can consume the IssueTracker service. This architecture gives us the best of software on premises with rich UI capabilities as well as the broad reach of web clients - without changing a single line of code to support it.  “

There are a few pre-requisites you’ll have to install first:

And of course you’ll need to get your free Azure dev account set up too.

Check it out!

Obama Inauguration will be streamed live using Silverlight – get the details

You may have already heard the announcement that the presidential inauguration committee has chosen to use Silverlight to stream the historical event today. 

But you may not have heard everything and I wanted to clarify a few things.  I have been seeing posts on the internet of people saying that HD is available only on windows or that only windows machines can view the event.  This is entirely false.  All Silverlight 2 compatible machines can view this event and that includes Windows and intel based Macs.  Secondly the team worked very hard last night to get up a version running on Silverlight 1.0 that would allow both Linux and PPC based macs to view the event as well!  Miguel de Icaza has all the details on his blog here.  Awesome work guys this is great to see! 

It’s always neat to find out how the streaming stuff works behind the scenes.  Events like the NBC Olympics and even the open source Podcasting Kit for SharePoint have shared details of their streaming.  There is also an Expression Encoder SDK you can utilize to do your own via .NET. 

The team behind today’s streaming event is sharing some of those juicy technical details.  Check it out…

“Tech Specs

And as I promised earlier, I got the tech details on how the streams are encoded. Note there is manual stream selection in the lower right corner;

Hardware

There are quite a few encoders to handle the different streams, data rates, and to provide failover backups. All systems are quad-core, and use hardware preprocessing.

• Onsite configuration: Dell Precision workstations with Osprey 230 capture cards
• Offsite configuration: Dell 2950 with Digital Rapids capture cards.

Software

The encoders are running Windows XP and use Windows Media Encoder, with my recommended tweaks and registry key settings applied.

Codecs

• Video: Window Media Video 9 Advanced Profile (aka VC-1 Advanced Profile)
• Audio: Windows Media Audio 9.2

The audio was originally going to be WMA 10 Pro for improved efficiency, but we fell back to WMA 9.2 in order to have Silverlight 1.0 compatibility. Fortunately the audio feeds are either mono or might as well be, so we can win some efficiency back by encoding in mono.

300 Kbps streams

• Video: 480x360, 29.97 fps, 259 Kbps
• Audio: 44.1 KHz mono, 32 Kbps

500 Kbps streams

• Video: 480x360, 29.97 fps, 442 Kbps
• Audio: 44.1 KHz mono, 48 Kbps “

You can view the live HD stream here and the Linux-compatible stream van be viewed here.  Enjoy!

XamlFest NYC Event open - February 9th and 10th

Are you local to the NYC area and looking to get some hands on guidance for creating Silverlight and WPF applications?  How about a free 2 day hands on workshop? 

Check out XAMLFest happening in the NYC Microsoft Technology Center:

“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! “

Looks to be a great Agenda…

Register today  – this class is limited to only 30 lucky people!

Silverlight 3 Mix Sessions announced

Adam Kinney (aka Silverlight Surfer) has a great write-up on all the recently announced Silverlight 3 session for this years Mix conference in Vegas.  You can get all the details here.

Be sure to check out Adam’s show on Channel 9 called Client Continuum packed full of Silverlight and WPF goodness!

Windows 7 beta now available for download on MSDN Subscribers page

These are the just released beta bits (12/30/08), not the M3 build from PDC.  Go grab them here and enjoy!  After you install the beta release be sure to install the Update to Windows 7 Beta (KB961367).  Download link is on the same page as the o/s install.  This update fixes the mp3 issues people were having with WMP 12.