Jim O'Neil's Blog : MIX

M-V-C is H-E-R-E

joneil — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:19:00 GMT

Here’s one of a number of cool announcements coming out of MIX 09 going on now at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The ASP.NET MVC (Model-View-Controller) Framework version 1.0 is now live. This is the culmination of a pretty amazing exercise in transparent development in which multiple previews and release candidates were made available to the community, and an active dialog was maintained on the ASP.NET Web Site as well as by key bloggers like Phil Haack and Scott Guthrie.

If you didn’t have the chance to be part of the evolution of ASP.NET MVC, there’s a great set of tutorial resources on the ASP.NET Web Site, including a training kit. There’s also a free e-book tutorial authored by Scott Guthrie. This 185-page, soup-to-nuts walkthrough is actually chapter 1 of an upcoming book from Wrox Press: Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 (with co-authors Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, and Phil Haack).

Download the e-book tutorial

Update: I just stumbled across the first of a series of blog posts by Sara Chipps on MVC for the Web Forms programmer. She does a great job of ‘translating’ between the two technologies, which should help ease the anxiety! Keep an eye on her blog as you start exploring ASP.NET MVC.

Silverlight 3 Emerges from the Shadows

joneil — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:10:00 GMT

Scott Guthrie gave a bit of a teaser in a blog post last November, but today Silverlight 3 is a significant step closer to reality through the official announcement of a beta release at MIX 09 in Las Vegas. Coinciding with the beta is the availability of a preview of Expression Blend 3.

So what’s coming down the pike in Silverlight 3? Well, the big news is the availability of Silverlight outside of the browser. This means you’ll be able to deploy Silverlight applications to the desktop without need for an additional runtime or download. Add to that over 50 new features and productivity improvements, including

Support for H.264 video and AAC audio playback
Perspective 3D – Via an extension of the 2D API already in Silverlight 2, you’ll now be able to add perspective to your visual presentations to provide a near-3D experience.
Built-in and custom shader effects – As in WPF, you’ll be able to provide effects like blur and drop-shadow as well as custom effects that utilize Microsoft’s High Level Shader Language (HLSL).
GPU acceleration – Through caching of the visual tree as a bitmap, Silverlight 3 will be able to make better use of the GPU for certain effects, thus freeing up the CPU for other work.
Element name binding – This brings the binding model of Silverlight more in line with that of WPF by allowing the property of one UI element to be bound to the property of another.
Styling improvements – With Silverlight 3 you can now build styles that are based on other styles as well as reset styles at runtime (both are options that are also available now in WPF).
Binding validation – With Silverlight 3, validation is now available in two-way binding scenarios for data entered via the UI before it is transmitted to the binding source. As in WPF, UI validation templates will also be provided.
Multi-select list box – This control is but one of 60+ fully customizable controls available across nine professionally designed themes (complete with source code to use as is or modify to your heart’s content).
Application library caching – Framework assemblies are cached on the client and reused across application invocations or instances, thus improving performance and reducing the collective application footprint.
Local connections – Silverlight applications running on the client can communicate with each other without requiring a server round-trip.

That’s just a quick-and-dirty list, there’s definitely more, including extensible logging, more options for From-To animations (like spring and bounce), deep linking, improved text rendering and font support, and a File Save dialog.

By the way, the NCAA has chosen Silverlight 2 to provide the high quality, on-demand coverage for March Madness. And you don’t have to wait until tomorrow – there’s some historical highlights as well, including Laettner’s amazing last second shot in the 1992 East regional final versus Kentucky… not that I’m a Dukie or anything!

Get into the MIX09

joneil — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:43:37 GMT

It’s exactly two weeks until MIX09, and here’s the scene from my home office window juxtaposed with one of the MIX09 venue. Vegas is looking pretty good, huh?

Weather aside, there’s a lot of other great things in store at this year’s edition of *the* conference focused on next generation web, rich internet applications, and the collaboration between developers and designers.

There’s nearly 30 sessions on Silverlight alone, including not one, not two, but three on what’s in store with Silverlight 3. There’s quite a few on ASP.NET MVC as well (for which RC2 was made available last night). Add to that Azure, Live Services, UI/UX, and you’ve got about 10 dozen sessions to choose from.

Check out the MIX09 site and schedule your ~~vacation~~ training now! And if you can’t be there, join Chris, Bob, and me on the Northeast Roadshow. We’ll actually be in Hartford and Augusta while MIX is going on.

MIX It Up In Vegas – March 18th - 20th

joneil — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:37:55 GMT

“Content is King at MIX09” at The Venetian in Las Vegas from March 18-20th.

MIX09 is the conference for innovative Web developers and designers to network and learn about the future of Silverlight, ASP.NET, Expression, Internet Explorer, and other web technologies from Microsoft.

Scott Guthrie and Bill Buxton will be doing the keynotes, and there’s about 40 sessions covering the gamut on web technologies, including glimpses into the next version of Silverlight, Silverlight 3.

Here’s the best part… but it won’t last. Register by February 13th (use discount code MIX09offer) and you’ll get $400 off the registration cost. So, you can buy something nice for your Valentine, and still have some ~~gambling~~ spending money left.