Gold Coast : Surface

Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch

marcsc — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:25:39 GMT

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.

Silverlight touch just got easier

marcsc — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:51:39 GMT

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+.

Integrating Virtual Earth 3D into WPF and Surface Applications for Mere Mortals

marcsc — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:28:04 GMT

I just published a Channel 9 interview with Josh Wall and Josh Blake from InfoStrat about their Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Surface controls that make integrating Virtual Earth 3D a breeze. Check it out:

http://tinyurl.com/Ch9InfoStratVE

“Virtual Earth 3D has many applications, but until recently has only been practical on the web with a JavaScript interface. WPF applications could not use the full potential of Virtual Earth 3D without requiring a WPF wizard and some XAML magic due to Win32 interop limitations.

Information Strategies (InfoStrat) has the solution. They created a WPF / Surface control, InfoStrat.VE, and are sharing with the community on CodePlex. This control provides a WPF interface for the Virtual Earth 3D control, complete with data binding for camera control and WPF-based pushpins. All Win32 restrictions (air space control, no rotation or visual brush) are eliminated. Microsoft Surface is also supported.

Watch the interview to learn the history behind the control, see it in action, learn how to get started, and even contribute back to the community.”

UPDATE: Interested in learning about a pretty cool solution that uses InfoStrat.VE? Check out Sam Chenaur’s post:

John L Scott Real Estate Looks to WPF and Software + Services

PARTNER SHOWCASE: Northrop Grumman - Innovating for the War Fighter with Microsoft Surface

marcsc — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:32:34 GMT

I’ve been a Developer Evangelist for 3+ years now. For the first 3 years, I spent the majority of my time focusing on delivering public presentations at conferences, for webcasts/screencasts, onsite at customer facilities, and at local community events in DC area. This year, the focus of my role changed slightly. Although I still do my fair share of the previously mentioned activities, I am now on a team that focuses on Systems Integrators (SIs) and Partners who do work for the US Government. I’ve always been focused on US Government developers, but the scope of the people I interacted with was more broad. With my new role, I have had more of an opportunity to work with SIs and Partners on things like Proof of Concept (POC) applications.

Back in September/October, I had the pleasure of spending a few weeks with Northrop Grumman and the Microsoft Technology Center in Reston, Virginia to build a POC application on Microsoft Surface. After the completion of the POC, we recorded an interview and demo with the team responsible for creating the application. I just published that video. Here’s the description:

“Northrop Grumman partnered with the Microsoft Technology Center and the Microsoft US Public Sector Developer and Platform Evangelism team to build a Proof Of Concept (POC) application that would demonstrate how Microsoft Surface could enhance mission planning, rehearsal, and post mission knowledge collection for military command and control decision making. Northrop Grumman Corporation is a leading global security company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in aerospace, electronics, information systems, shipbuilding and technical services to government and commercial customers worldwide.

Watch the interview to see a full demo of the POC. The interview highlights Northrop Grumman’s learning experiences on the POC especially with regard to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the Surface SDK, the designer/developer workflow enabled by WPF and the new thinking behind Natural User Interfaces with an emphasis on User experience.”

The interview is available at:

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Inside+Out/Northrop-Grumman-Innovating-for-the-War-Fighter-with-Microsoft-Surface/

One of the things I am trying to do in my new role is to start a “PARTNER SHOWCASE” series of posts to help highlight work like this that SIs and Partners are doing for US Government customers. Feel free to contact me if you fall into this category and you’re interested in showcasing your work on Channel 9!

Microsoft Surface GIS Apps by Infostrat

marcsc — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:02:59 GMT

I’ve been working with a number of partners lately on building Microsoft Surface apps. Infostrat is one of them. They have done some of the best Virtual Earth integration work I have seen so far. Have a look at this video that highlights their work:

Want to learn what Surface development is all about? Check out the recording of the PDC session:

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC17/

You’ll also want to keep up with the Surface blog. If you

http://blogs.msdn.com/surface/

Finally, contact me if you are doing US Government focused work and are interested in getting into Surface development.