MSDN geekSpeak

Next geekSpeak – June 24 – WCF Deployment Strategies with Keith Elder

Join us this Wednesday for a practical look at how to deploy WCF services from a guy who’s been there. Our guest Keith Elder is a team leader and senior software engineer for Quicken Loans, so he’s been on the frontlines of running services in an enterprise. Besides being a popular speaker and running a user group in Mississippi, Keith is a blast to talk to.

If you’ve ever wanted to get your questions about WCF answered, or pick up some excellent tips, this is the geekSpeak for you.

Register today at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032417610&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Resources for geekSpeak: MVVM Patterns with Christopher Bennage and Rob Eisenberg

Kudos to Christopher and Rob for helping bring our geekSpeak attendees up to speed on the evolution of UI patterns. If you missed this geekSpeak you can catch a recording here.

Below are links/resources mentioned on the show:

• WPF Architectural Patterns Examples on CodePlex
• Caliburn - an Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight
• WPF Model-View-ViewModel Toolkit
• ChumChase – a FriendFreed client demonstrating many patterns
• Prism – patterns & practices composite application guidance for WPF and Silverlight
• WPF Apps wth the Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern from MSDN Magazine
• Martin Fowler's GUI Architectures
• Christopher and Rob’s book Sams Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours

Next geekSpeak – June 10 – MVVM Patterns with Christopher Bennage and Rob Eisenberg

In this episode of geekSpeak, we explore UI architectural patterns, such as MVVM (ViewModel), with two Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, Christopher Bennage and Rob Eisenberg. Christopher and Rob will share their experiences developing WPF and Silverlight applications with these techniques and discuss some of the insights they gained along the way. Be ready with your questions on applying these patterns to your projects!

Join us on Wednesday, June 10 at noon Pacific time. Your hosts for this geekSpeak will be Glen Gordon and Brian Johnson. Register at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032418083&Culture=en-US

About our Guests

Christopher Bennage is the President and cofounder of Blue Spire Consulting, Inc., a Florida based software consulting firm specializing in .NET technologies, user experience, and interface design.  Christopher began programming on his Texas Instrument in elementary school, but fell in love with computers with the advent of the Commodore Amiga.  His career has brought him through a number of various technologies before eventually landing him in the marvelous world of C# and the .NET Framework.  His early interest in Flash, rich user experiences, and usability led him to be an early adopter of both WPF and Silverlight.
More recently he coauthored Sams Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours with Rob Eisenberg.
Christopher embraces the values of the Agile Software Manifesto and has been significantly influenced by Extreme Programming, Domain Driven Design, and other related practices.
In his free time, Christopher is usually very distracted by a dozen different, competing creative ideas.  His interests include liberal education, science, truth, beauty, video game development and a number of deceased British authors. He lives in Tallahassee, FL with his wife, Sandra, and their three children.

Rob Eisenberg is a .NET architect and developer working out of Tallahassee, FL. He is a partner with Christopher Bennage at Blue Spire Consulting, Inc., a software development firm specializing in .NET technologies, user experience, and interface design. Rob got his start with computer programming at the age of nine, when he thoroughly fell in love with his family's new Commodore 64. His fascination with programming started with the Commodore Basic language, then moved to Q and QuickBasic and quickly continued on to C, C++ and presently C# and the .NET Framework. Rob publishes technical articles regularly at devlicio.us and has spoken at regional events and to companies concerning .NET technologies and Agile software practices. He is coauthor of Sam's Teach Yourself WPF in 24 Hours and is the architect and lead developer of the Caliburn Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight. Rob is happily married to Anna Eisenberg and in his spare time enjoys swing dancing, making artisan cheese and playing/teaching drum set.

Notes from Reza Madani’s MSDN geekSpeak on Simple Animations with WPF or Silverlight

Here is some info:

- My blog is at: http://blogs.harborobjects.com/RezaMadani/

- Silverlight 2.0 and 3.0 versions of the code are attached.  2.0 version does not include the ‘drop shadow effect demo’.

- System requirements: Visual Studio 2008 – sp1, Silverlight SDK 2.0 (or 3.0).

- Recommended books ‘WPF Unleashed – SAMS’, ‘Programming WPF’ – O’Reilly

- Code samples (on Lynn Langit’s SkyDrive – you must log in with a Windows Live ID to access this – link here

Resources for geekSpeak: WPF for the Business Programmer with Paul Sheriff

Here are follow up resources for Paul Sheriff’s geekSpeak on WPF for the Business Developer. Be sure to visit Paul’s websites for demo code shown during the geekSpeak. http://www.pdsa.com/event/geekspeak

Some examples of WPF charting

• http://telerikwatch.com/2008/11/new-telerik-wpf-charting-and-gauges-on.html
• http://ligao101.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/a-wpfxaml-based-chart/
• http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Controls/WPF/Charting/
• http://www.componentone.com/SuperProducts/ChartWPF/
• http://dot-developer.blogspot.com/2009/01/microsoft-chart-controls-in-wpf.html

Good sources for XAML “skins”

• http://www.xamltemplates.net/
• http://www.visualstudiogallery.com/ExtensionDetails.aspx?ExtensionID=4ed8a367-0166-40e2-9eab-76b2d06c6da4
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/wpfskins.aspx
• http://igorshare.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/wpf-skin-factory-or-how-to-skin-your-application/

Article highlighting Vs2010 support for WPF

• http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonz/archive/2009/02/20/a-new-look-for-visual-studio-2010.aspx

The DataGrid from codeplex - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/WPFDataGrid.aspx. Note that some form of it will most likely be in VS.NET 2010

Graphing component (for WPF and SL)( http://www.mscui.net/Components/Graphing.aspx

Visual State Manager - http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/06/06/silverlight-2-beta2-released.aspx

Overview of MVVM design pattern - http://blogs.msdn.com/johngossman/archive/2005/10/08/478683.aspx

Using WPF with Office applications (via Visual Studio Tools for Office)

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb772076.aspx
• http://utahdnug.org/blogs/xamlcoder/archive/2007/07/17/using-wpf-with-vsto-amp-office-2007.aspx
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/WPFControlsInVSTO.aspx

Regarding what is reusable between Silverlight and WPF, it’s not too easy to come up with a definitive list. Here is a good article:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc895632.aspx

Resources for geekSpeak: What’s New in Silverlight 3 with Shawn Wildermuth

Many thanks to Shawn Wildermuth for giving us all some insight into what’s coming for Silverlight 3. Here are the show notes. Watch or downloading the recording here.

Useful links from the show

• Silverlight 3’s new pixel shaders
• How to enable hardware rendering via the object tag
• MIX talk on using physics behaviors
• How to run Silverlight 2 and 3 on the same machine.
• Overview of .NET RIA Services
• DevTeach conference where Shawn will be presenting in June.

Good Silverlight blogs to follow

• Bill Reiss http://www.bluerosegames.com/silverlight-games-101/
• Sergey Barskiy http://sergeybarskiy.spaces.live.com/
• Corey Schuman http://www.85turns.com/
• Silverlight Cream http://www.silverlightcream.com/
• Scott Guthrie http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu
• Brad Abrams http://blogs.msdn.com/brada

Next geekSpeak – Wednesday, February 25 – The .NET Access Control Service with Michele Leroux Bustamante

Wow, what a title! This Wednesday, join one of our favorite geekSpeak guests Michele Leroux Bustamante as she enlightens us about the .NET Access Control Service.

The .NET Access Control Service is part of the Azure Services Platform. It allows applications to delegate authentication with built-in support for a variety of credential types, supplies claims-transformation for dependent applications, is a scalable on-demand solution, and removes the need to provide dedicated development and IT resources for an on-site STS that can scale. Michele will show us how developers can build federated security scenarios leveraging the Access Control Service – your Security Token Service hosted in the cloud.

Register for this geekSpeak here: The .NET Access Control Service with Michele Leroux Bustamante. Note that the title on the registration page might not be correct, but we are talking about .NET Access Control Service in this geekSpeak.

About Our Guest:

Michèle Leroux Bustamante is Chief Architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, and a Microsoft MVP for Connected Systems. At IDesign Michele provides training, mentoring and high-end architecture consulting services focusing on scalable and secure architecture design for .NET applications and services, interoperability, federated security scenarios, and globalization architecture. Her product focus includes WCF, CardSpace, Geneva, Azure and Oslo. Michele participates in Software Design Reviews for products in the Microsoft roadmap, including WCF, Oslo, CardSpace and other security-focused products. During the Beta 1 phase Michele participated in prototyping elements of the CardSpace technology for the product team. She is a member of the International .NET Speakers Association (INETA), a frequent conference presenter, conference chair for SD West, and is frequently published in several major technology journals. Michele is also on the board of directors for IASA (International Association of Software Architects), and a Program Advisor and instructor for UCSD Extension. Her latest book is Learning WCF (O’Reilly 2007/2008) – see her book blog here: www.thatindigogirl.com. Reach her at mlb@idesign.net, or visit www.idesign.net and her main blog at www.dasblonde.net. 

Next geekSpeak – Wednesday, February 18 - “Oslo” and the “M” Language with Jon Flanders

Microsoft Modeling Platform code name "Oslo" is the forthcoming platform for model-driven applications. In this episode of geekSpeak, industry guru Jon Flanders introduces us to the "Oslo" project and the Microsoft code name "M" language that works with it. Jon highlights how "Oslo" and "M" let you create models that can be stored in the Repository or any Microsoft SQL Server database using a simple text file format. Bring your questions for this interactive conversation. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

Register at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032402585&Culture=en-US

Resources for geekSpeak: What You May Not Know About the Visual Studio Team System 2008 with Mike Vincent

Here are the resources mentioned on Mike Vincent’s geekSpeak for 2/4/2009.

VSTS 2010 offers rich support for hierarchical work items. Here’s are some helpful articles by Cameron Skinner http://blogs.msdn.com/camerons/archive/2008/11/25/model-and-work-item-integration.aspx and Grant Holiday http://ozgrant.com/2007/08/05/tfs-rosario-feedback-hierarchical-work-items/

The Pex project - Automated White box Testing for .NET from Microsoft Research: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/Pex/

Information on SQL Server compact support: http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling/archive/2008/10/01/visual-studio-team-system-2008-database-edition-gdr-september-ctp-is-now-available-for-download.aspx

Visual Studio Team System overview: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/teamsystem/default.mspx

MSDN Subscription information: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/subscriptionschart.aspx

Check out 2 for 1 offer when upgrading from Visual Studio Professional: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/howtobuy/offers.mspx

Microsoft ROI calculator: http://www.msftroi.com

Team System Web Client: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb980951.aspx

Power Tools for VSTS: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb980963.aspx

StyleCop analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of style and consistency rules. It can be run from inside of Visual Studio or integrated into an MSBuild project http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sourceanalysis and http://blogs.msdn.com/sourceanalysis/

For links to everything Team System go to http://www.teamsystemwidgets.com/

Resources for geekSpeak: The Power Threading Library for Silverlight with Jeffrey Richter

Many thanks to Jeffrey Richter for coming on geekSpeak to introduce the version of his Power Threading library especially for Silverlight. This geekSpeak episode was graced with the first public appearance of several new features, and we had a lot of fun seeing the library in action. Here are resources mentioned on the show.

• Watch the geekSpeak recording
• Download the Power Threading Library
• Join the Yahoo group for support
• Watch a video of Jeffrey and his Async Enumerator
• Jeffrey’s MSDN Concurrent Affairs columns:
  Simplified APM with C#,  
  Simplified APM With The AsyncEnumerator and  
  More AsyncEnumerator Features
• Jeffrey’s Books: CLR via C# and Windows via C/C++

Next geekSpeak – Wed, Feb 4 – What You May Not Know about VSTS 2008 with Mike Vincent

For this first February geekSpeak, our returning guest Mike Vincent will share some perspectives about how VSTS is a good investment in these tough economic times. Mike illustrates some of the ways the Visual Studio Team System 2008 can deliver value by getting your whole organization team involved to deliver successful projects. He touches on people, process, process templates, test-driven development (TDD), continuous integration, reports, and the value of good application life-cycle management.

To register visit http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032402457&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

About our Guest

Mike Vincent is a solutions architect based in Orange County, California. He provides clients with software architecture, application life-cycle management, and development services that primarily focus on Microsoft .NET technology. Mike has been in the software business for more than 20 years in engineering and marketing management positions. He founded both the Southern California Chapter of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) and the Orange County C# Developers group, and Mike is treasurer of INETA North America (NorAm). You can reach Mike through his blog at http://mvasoftware.com/blogs/mikev_weblog/default.aspx

Next geekSpeak - Wed, Jan 14 – SQL Data Services with James Johnson

Tune into geekSpeak this Wednesday for a chance to ask your SQL Data Services questions of James Johnson. Come on, we know you’ve got questions about this exciting new cloud/database thingy. So register at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032400473 and get them answered live. Lynn and Lindsay are your hosts for this one.

About our guest:

James Johnson

James is the Founder and President of the Inland Empire .NET User’s Group (www.iedotnetug.org). He has a great affinity for all things web, data, user experience, and building community. His passion is getting people access to experts, experiences and technologies, they never thought they would have access to, or could achieve. James is a frequent blogger at www.duringlunch.com, and is constantly working on the next big thing.

Resources for geekSpeak: Silverlight and ADO.NET Data Services with John Papa

Here are the links from the January 8th geekSpeak with John Papa.

• John’s blog http://johnpapa.net
• John’s book: Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 (plus a sample chapter!)
• Source code for the demos from the webcast
• John’s articles in MSDN Magazine
• Cloud Gazing (November, 2008)
• Service-Driven Apps With Silverlight 2 And WCF (September 2008)
• Tim Heuer’s series on using ASP.NET authentication and roles with Silverlight 2
• Nikhil Kothari’s Web Development Helper (plug in for IE)
• Fiddler 2 (stand alone HTTP traffic inspector)
• ReSharper add-in for Visual Studio

2009 geekSpeaks kick off this week

We have two great geekSpeaks this week.

On Wednesday, January 7, join us for MSDN Webcast: geekSpeak: REST and the Windows Azure Services Platform with Adnan Masood (Level 200) where you’ll hear about building RESTful services and hosting them in the Azure cloud.

Then on Thursday January 8, catch our rescheduled geekSpeak from December - MSDN Webcast: geekSpeak: Silverlight and ADO.NET Data Services with John Papa (Level 200). John will share great tips for hooking up these two hot technologies.

As always, we are looking for your questions live on these geekSpeaks to drive the conversation.

See the rest of January’s geekSpeaks at http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/geekspeak.aspx?tab=webcasts

Next geekSpeak – Wednesday, December 10, 2008 – Silverlight Video Players with Corey Schuman

One of the outstanding features of Silverlight is the capability to create phenomenal video players. In this geekSpeak we’ll hear from Corey Schuman on the subtleties of building video players with Silverlight. If you’ve got questions about Silverlight and Video, here’s a great opportunity to get them answered. Your hosts will be Glen Gordon and G. Andrew Duthie .

Register at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032397084&Culture=en-US

About our guest

We added the Santa hat for effect. :)

Corey Schuman is a Microsoft .NET developer who concentrates on combining an object-oriented software development approach with a stellar UI experience. While working in the Microsoft Platforms Group at Schematic, Corey has worked with clients including HSN, Library of Congress, and NBC. Prior to Schematic, Corey worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Philips where he excelled at merging business applications, new technology, and user interfaces.

As for Microsoft Silverlight, Corey has been actively involved since the first release in September 2007, and he continues prototyping and pushing the boundaries of where Silverlight can go. Corey writes about Silverlight in his blog at http://www.85turns.com