- Bing Maps roadshow in Reston
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Want to get up to speed on the latest release of Bing Maps including both the Ajax and Silverlight controls as well as the SOAP web services? Don’t miss the upcoming roadshow in Reston, Va. Details:
http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/govmaps/archive/2009/11/24/bing-maps-roadshow-coming-to-reston-virgina.aspx
“At this event, experts will provide an overview of Bing Maps as a powerful visualization tool for geographic and location-based information. With highlights of scenarios such as locators, fleet/asset tracking, data visualization portals, and location intelligence, we’ll present a deep dive into the Bing Maps Platform, including details on specific features, AJAX, Web Services, and new Silverlight APIs.
We’ll also review exciting recent enhancements, exploring ways to integrate with GIS systems and leverage SQL 2008 spatial features, as well as other related tools and technologies. When you meet the experts, you’ll learn solution implementation and best practices―and you’ll leave with the tools and resources to tap the power of location using Bing Maps.
Event Summary:
1:00 - 2:15 Introduction to Bing Maps, Solution Overview, and Demos
2:30 - 3:30 Deep Dive on Architecture and APIs
3:45 - 5:00 Best Practices, Data Integration, and Future of Bing Maps”
- EventToCommand + DataStateBehavior eases MVVM pain
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MVVM is a pattern. There are all sorts of MVVM frameworks popping up that help make implementing the pattern easier. If you select the MVVM tag off of www.codeplex.com, you will find a number of them:
http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?TagName=MVVM&ProjectSearchText=%22MVVM%22
One I have recently grown fond of is http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com/. The reason I like this one is because they have built an Expression Blend Behavior called EventToCommand. Details for the behavior:
http://blog.galasoft.ch/archive/2009/11/05/mvvm-light-toolkit-v3-alpha-2-eventtocommand-behavior.aspx
As the post says, ‘EventToCommand is used to bind an event to an ICommand directly in XAML.”
This is WAY COOL!!! EventToCommand helps overcome commanding challenges in Silverlight.
I love Blend Behaviors. If you haven’t looked into them, YOU MUST! Every WPF and Silverlight developer should be using them (where applicable). “A Behavior is in essence a reusable piece of interactivity that can be applied directly to user interface elements...”
Here are some resources:
Good Overview - http://tinyurl.com/BehaviorsOverview
More reading - http://tinyurl.com/BehaviorsTriggersActions
Expression Blend 3 SDK - http://tinyurl.com/blend3sdk
Lots of folks creating and uploading them to Expression Gallery - http://tinyurl.com/BehaviorsGallery
Behaviors from the Blend Team - http://expressionblend.codeplex.com/
Behaviors are part of the Blend SDK. There is a lot of confusion about the Blend SDK because people think you have to buy Blend to use it. You don’t! You can download it from http://tinyurl.com/blend3sdk and use it straight from Visual Studio. Blend definitely makes wiring up Behaviors easier so you should it for that if you are already using Blend!
The samples you can download from http://expressionblend.codeplex.com/ include DataStateBehavior and DataStateSwitchBehavior. Peter Blois has a good post on these behaviors:
http://blois.us/blog/2009/04/datatrigger-bindings-on-non.html
DataStateBehavior/DataStateSwitchBehavior provide a nice clean way to change values in your ViewModel that result in initiating animations in your View.
I’ve been wanting to whip up a simple sample that shows both EventToCommand and DataStateBehavior/DataStateSwitchBehavior. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time right now to do so. Instead of sitting on this, I decided to blog about it first, then share a sample/video when I get around to it.
- Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch
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Robert Levy from the Surface team and Anson Tsao from the WPF team gave a great session on:
Multi-Touch on Microsoft Surface and Windows 7 for .NET Developers
The session is definitely worth watching if you are interested in building multi-touch apps on Windows 7. In the session, they announced the Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch which is a set of “Controls, samples, templates, and docs Coming shortly after the WPF4 launch.” Don’t let the Surface name fool you, the toolkit will work on any Windows 7 touch PC with the .NET Framework 4.0 installed.
This is exciting news that I have been keeping under wraps for quite some time. The toolkit will take Windows 7 multi-touch developer productivity for WPF4 developers to the next level. During the session, they shared that the toolkit will include:
Common controls optimized for Multi-Touch
Controls design primarily for Multi-Touch
Essential Multi-Touch UX Functionality
Hearing all of this is, of course, a bit of a tease since the controls won’t be available for a while, but exciting news nonetheless. The good news is that the Surface team also announced that the Surface SDK is no longer “by invitation only.” You can download it from http://surface.com/developer. Since the toolkit is a subset of existing Surface 1.0 SDK assets ported to WPF4, you can get a head start by evaluating the Surface 1.0 SDK. If your development cycle is far enough out, you might even want to consider building your app on the Surface 1.0 SDK and porting it to WPF4 / Windows 7 when the toolkit is available. Of course, you will have to stick to the subset that is being ported to WPF4, but your code will only need minimal changes (if any) to run on a Windows 7 PC once the toolkit is released.
- Great PDC session on SharePoint 2010 sandbox solutions
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http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/PR10
I missed this session at PDC. There were so many good sessions, it was hard to choose. The good news is that the sessions are now showing up at http://microsoftpdc.com/Videos.
I didn’t get to elaborate on sandbox solutions in any great detail during my recent developer dinner presentation on SharePoint 2010 due to time constraints. However, this is a very important feature of SharePoint that you will want to dig into as you go explore SharePoint 2010. Chances are the environment you will be deploying solutions to will only allow sandboxed solutions.
- Silverlight touch just got easier
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I’ve been waiting for this to happen! The Surface team ported their Manipulation and Inertia APIs to Silverlight 3+. They’ve made them available for download at:
http://tinyurl.com/SurfaceManipSilverlight
This is a must have set of APIs if you are interested in building multi-touch solutions on Windows 7 with Silverlight 3+.
- ADO.NET Data Services for Java and PHP developers
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Every time I talk about ADO.NET Data Services, I mention that they can be consumed by any API that allows you to make http requests. I usually show how you can use the Add Service Reference feature of Visual Studio to generate proxy classes to make it simple to interact with the data service. Finally, I mention that Java and PHP toolkits exist to accomplish similar levels of developer productivity. However, I don’t think I have ever put links to those toolkits in any of my presentations. Here they are:
http://tinyurl.com/DataServicesJava
http://tinyurl.com/DataServicesPHP
SharePoint 2010 exposes lists as an ADO.NET Data Service. Therefore, you can use these toolkits to interact with SharePoint!
- FOLLOW UP: Developer Dinner on SharePoint 2010
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Thanks to everyone for coming out. As I mentioned at the dinner, we will skip December due to the holidays. We will start up in January again. Topic and date TBD. Here’s the deck I used today:
Keep an eye out for the hidden slides. There are quite a few more slides than I actually went through.
- SQL Azure and SSMS: happy together
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SQL Server Management Studio Support for SQL Azure
http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/archive/2009/11/10/9920168.aspx
More details:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee621784.aspx
One of the things they don’t mention in the post is that all this works in SQL Server Management Studio Express! Go get it:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c772467d-e45b-43e1-9208-2c7b663d7ad1
Happy SSMSing with SQL Azure!!!
- Going to PDC?
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I am looking to connect with my customers at PDC. So if you work or are doing work (as contractor, consultant, etc.) for a US Government organization, then drop me a line here. I’d love to connect at PDC.
- Simple, short videos on the Windows Azure Platform
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Windows Azure Platform
Windows Azure
SQL Azure
.NET Services
Short, sweet, clear. Brilliant!
- Developer Dinner on SharePoint 2010
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Sorry for the short notice…
The next developer dinner is on Nov 11th. Details:
http://tinyurl.com/SP2010dinner
Please note the announcement calls out that the dinner IS NOT at the Microsoft Reston office. It is at a nearby hotel.
- Tallahassee follow up
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Thanks for taking the time to attend our developer day!
For resources from my Windows 7 for .NET Developers session, see this post:
http://tinyurl.com/Win7DevDinner
The two decks and the GuestBook demo I used for the Windows/SQL Azure session are from the Windows Azure Training Kit:
http://tinyurl.com/WindowsAzureTrainingKit
The two helpful tools I demonstrated for SQL azure are:
http://sqlazureexplorer.codeplex.com/
http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com/
These are MUST HAVE tools for anyone working with SQL Azure right now.
- SDL Developer Starter Kit - “Just Do It!”
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For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) is “A Microsoft-wide initiative and a mandatory policy since 2004, the SDL introduces security and privacy early and throughout the development process. Combining a holistic and practical approach, the SDL is risk-based with the goal of protecting end-users by reducing the number and severity of vulnerabilities in code.”
As a company, Microsoft has received lots of recognition for SDL. Customers often ask “How does Microsoft build software?” That’s not an easy question to answer, because different teams used different processes depending on size, preference, etc. On thing that’s consistent though is that every team uses SDL. So can you!
http://tinyurl.com/sdldevkit
“The Microsoft SDL - Developer Starter Kit offers content, labs, and training to help you establish a standardized approach to rolling out the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) in your organization—or enrich your existing development practices.”
Seriously, why wouldn’t you take the time to review this? Are you using Team Foundation Server? Amongst tons of other great resources from the link above, you will find SDL Process Templates for VSTS. No excuses. Like Nike says, “Just Do It!”
- FOLLOW UP: DevDinner - Developing for Windows 7 using the .NET Framework
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As always, thanks to those of you who attended. You can find the deck here:
The Surface 1.0 videos are there as well.
Some of my code demos came from other sources:
http://tinyurl.com/Windows7TrainingKit
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SensorsAndLocation
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsTouch
Don’t forget that these resources have tons of samples, slides, hands on labs, etc.
The demos I wrote (mostly the .NET 4.0 and touch demos) need a little clean up, organization, etc. before I make them public. I’ll blog about them soon.
Joe Healy has some additional .NET samples here. Some of my stuff was inspired by Joe. Also, a shout out to Jared Bienz. The Sensor and Location demo I showed was a modified version of the Hands On Lab he wrote that’s in the latest release of the Windows 7 Training Kit.
Also, there is a new set of videos collectively titled Windows 7 New Features for Managed Code Developers:
http://www.msdev.com/Directory/SeriesDescription.aspx?CourseId=130
I haven’t had a chance to review them, but I don’t believe these videos cover .NET 4.0. I think it is all 3.5 SP1.
As I mentioned, keep an eye out for next month’s dinner. We will be announcing it soon. The topic will be SharePoint 2010 from a developer’s perspective. As I mentioned last night, I never really warmed up to SharePoint development until now. To me, SharePoint 2010 is the first version that feels familiar and approachable for the typical ASP.NET developer. I hope to convey that at the next dinner.
As always, if you or your company do work for the US Government, are looking to adopt any of the new Windows 7 features in your applications, and want to some help from our team of evangelists, then feel free to contact us through our team blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/publicsector/contact.aspx
- Hello, anyone out there? (aka I’m back)
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My blog has been dead for quite some time. My last post was over a month ago. I haven’t given up on blogging. I took the last month off to bring my new son into the world. I’m back. It will take me some time to get caught up from being away from work for a month. I will be blogging again in the coming weeks.
Over the last few months, I have been spending most of my time on Windows 7 related work (mostly multi-touch) and learning what’s new SharePoint 2010 for developers. I’ll be sharing some of the things I have learned about Windows 7 development at our next Developer Dinner. Here’s the link to the announcement on my team blog:
Microsoft Developer Dinner Series for Partners: Developing for Windows 7 using the .NET Framework
As for SharePoint 2010, well there isn’t much I can share just yet. We’ll definitely have a developer dinner on SharePoint 2010 for devs. My team is also planning a full day SharePoint event in November. The event will be delivered in DC and Reston. The DC event will also be available online. More details are available here:
Maximize Your SharePoint Investment: Leverage It as a Development Platform!
