On November 25th we organized another User Experience at Vitra event.
(See all the pictures - by Pieter Baert)
This time there were two different events: afternoon sessions of 45 minutes around Silverlight 4, SketchFlow, SharePoint and Experience Continuum; in the evening the more typical Vitra showroom setting with corners around Microsoft Advertising, Silverlight, Windows 7, Expression SuperPreview and IE8, WIndows Live, Surface. Partners were present showing off some cool stuff: These days and Digipoint, The Creative Stores were also present with their Surface application created for AB Inbev. Zendster was there with the satellite truck for the uplink and show their Smooth Streaming solutions.
The Belgian Silverlight User Group was again this time present with demos of Silverlight (version 4 included of course) and SketchFlow.
I would like to thank all participants, partners, colleagues and of course a special thank you to the unstoppable Tom Crombez for driving the whole event!
Experience Continuum talk and short sessions links
This time I did not go for Expression Blend with SketcFlow demos as last time but rather for an overview talk around the Microsoft user interface technologies and the experience. Abbreviated to Experience Continuum I addressed technologies that offer possibilities to create experiences for client, web and devices (like Microsoft Surface).
This was not a typical technical/developer presentation but rather an overview of the technologies and demos on each of them. Since the attendees were a mixed audience this seemed like the right approach. Showing what is possible gives ideas right?
In the Experience Continuum, also called the Client Continuum I addressed the following technologies:
- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and how it integrates for a better experience with Windows 7
- Silverlight
- Microsoft Surface and Natural User Interface
- The tooling for all three of these: Visual Studio for development and Expression Blend for interactivity and UI
The important thing that links these technologies is not only the capability to develop a good user interface but also that they are linked by the usage of .NET and XAML. This makes reusing at least parts of design and code much more possible than with disparate technologies for web, client and devices.
Windows Presentation Foundation demos
Jing – a small little free screen capture and recording tool by TechSmith.
URL: http://jingproject.com/
Seesmic – Twitter client for Windows. My new favorite one actually.
URL: http://seesmic.com/
Blu – Also a Twitter client that shows off some very nice WPF interaction features. Just watch the startup animations, they’re so nicely done! This is a demo application by thirteen23.
URL: http://thirteen23.com/experiences/desktop/blu/
WPF and integration with Windows 7 features
Want to learn how to take advantage of the new Windows 7 features in your own projects? There are several good resources to help you:
Fishbow Facebook client
The Fishbowl application was first shown during PDC 2009 and is delivered by Microsoft as a sample application built on .NET 3.5 SP1, using WPF for the UI and integrating with the Windows 7 OS features through the Windows API Code Pack for .NET. The next version of WPF will allow direct integration with Windows 7 features without the download of extra libraries.
The application also uses the newly released Facebook SDK for .NET, for easy integration in WPF and Silverlight. It has some interesting features like drag & dropping photos from and to the Windows Explorer into Facebook, but the features that I preferred to show were those that take advantage of Windows 7 taskbar enhancements.
 |  |  |
| Thumbnail buttons in the preview thumbnail. | Notifications in the taskbar program icon: in my case 3 new notifications. This is done through icon overlay. | Jumplists – notifications show up as jumplist items |
Check it out for yourself, download the client for Windows 7 or download the full source code from Codeplex.
For more information about this application see this post: Fishbowl for Facebook Using the Windows 7 Taskbar for Extra Spice at Windows 7 Developer blog.
Side note: Windows 7 Themes
One person also made the comment that it was interesting how the Jing tool was changing the desktop wallpaper image. However this was a coincidence since this feature is part of Windows 7. By the way, my current favorite wallpapers (and Windows theme) is the Bing’s Best theme.
Silverlight demos
Silverlight is another technology in the same stack: .NET + XAML. Since separate sessions were available on this topic I did not spend a lot of time or demos on this.
Some of the demos were:
- TED video player – sample by thirteen23, out-of-browser Silverlight application
- Sobees web client – in and out-of-browser Twitter client
Microsoft Surface and the Natural User Interface
Video mentioned in the talk:
The tooling: Microsoft Expression Blend 3 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008/2010
As the continuum between these technologies is .NET + XAML it’s important to also address the tooling for both developers and interaction designers (or front-end developers or WPF/Silverlight integrators, whatever your favorite term here).
To end, some link love
If you have also written something about the UX@Vitra event let me know and I’ll add a link here.
On December 4th we have a top speaker and .NET guru visiting Belgium: Scott Guthrie is doing a full afternoon at Kinepolis. This is your chance to attend a live session, be quick to register before all places are taken.
The event is filling up really fast.
What will Scott Guthrie talk about?
Bringing you a full afternoon of technical content, Scott will start with an overview of the new features in Visual Studio 2010 and web development, also addressing ASP.NET MVC 2. In the second part of the session Scott will focus on the new features in Silverlight 4 beta, released just last week at Microsoft PDC.
Q&A
There is also an opportunity for a Q&A at the end of the event. If you have questions for Scott be sure to send them upfront to scottinbelgium@visug.be.
The event is a joint organization by Microsoft Belgium and the Visual Studio User Group (VISUG).
Practical details:
When: December 4th, 2009 – 13h30 - 17h00
Where: Kinepolis Brussels
More information on MSDN site.
Twitter tag: #scottinbelgium
See you there, register now!
Yesterday, during the keynote at the Professional Developers Conference the new Silverlight 4 beta was announced. To tell you the truth I’m really impressed with the number of new features that the team has been able to deliver in beta form just a good 3 months after the release of Silverlight 3 last July. Here’s an overview of the features that for me pop out the most in this new beta.
How to get it.
Please note this is beta release and should be installed only in development environment. There is no go-live license available with this beta release.
To try out the beta you will need Visual Studio 2010 Beta or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 Beta 2. All the links to the tools can be found here: http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/#tools
Overview of new features
Media
Webcam and microphone support
Silverlight 4 supports webcam and microphone input. This was a very highly requested feature in the past and has now been included in this version.
Check out the very cool PDC keynote demo where you can use your webcam in a Silverlight application to read a book ISBN barcode and automatically retrieve the related Amazon book information. This is also a great example of how fantastic the .NET support in Silverlight is. For this sample they simply used an open source .NET barcode reader library from Codeplex.
Offline DRM support through PlayReady, this applies to out-of-browser Silverlight applications.
IIS Smooth Streaming support for the iPhone
Yes, this is maybe something you weren’t expecting coming from Microsoft. IIS Media Services 4.0 will support streaming to the iPhone. Note this is not Silverlight support on the iPhone, it’s streaming a format that is supported by the iPhone and generating a video tag that Safari browser on the iPhone supports.
Point your iPhone to http://www.iis.net/iPhone to try it out. More information at http://www.iis.net/overview/IntegratedMediaPlatform.
Out of browser
The out of browser functionality is now extending further into the system. While Silverlight still runs in it’s security sandbox, trust can be elevated to run as a trusted application. A trusted application can now read and write files to the typical My Documents, My Pictures etc directories (or equivalent on Mac platform).
A Silverlight out of browser application will never run in admin mode, however a user can be asked for extra permissions. This always happens in a standard dialog interface which cannot be manipulated or changed in look and feel by the developer (fortunately so). Some other enhancements:
- Notifications API
- COM automation support such as accessing devices
- Interact with desktop applications (send mail, launch Excel, etc)
- HTML support within the oob application.
- Control over the window chrome and positioning
- WebBrowser control and HTMLBrush so that you can use the contents of a web page as a brush.
Business applications
- Printing support through the new PrintDocument class
- Commanding support
- Bi-di and righ-to-left text
- Enhanced data binding features (IDataErrorInfo, binding to non FrameworkElement elements)
- Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) support
- Mousewheel support for a set of default controls like lists
- Clipboard access
- Right-click mouse event support so that you can create your own context menus
WPF convergence
WPF uses the same UI language as Silverlight, i.e. XAML. However, there are some important differences which make sharing XAML code directly between Silverlight and WPF projects impossible. The convergence of these two technologies is however very important and therefore you can see some evolution in Silverlight adopting implicit styles, WPF 4 adopting the Visual State Manager and animation easing.
Silverlight 4 is now also using the same Common Language Runtime (CLR), which means the same assemblies will work on WPF and Silverlight (binary assembly compatibility). We’re talking about pure library assemblies, not XAML.
WC RIA Services
.NET RIA Services has now been renamed to WCF RIA Services.
Walkthrough and source code of the keynote demo can be found here: http://jeffhandley.com/archive/2009/11/18/contososales.aspx
Feature requests for Silverlight 4
You can also let your feature requests be heard at http://silverlight.uservoice.com/pages/4325-feature-suggestions. During the PDC keynote, Scott Guthrie mentioned that about 70% of the Silverlight 4 feature requests are being implemented.
Learning and tutorials
Lots of stuff to dive into, have fun!
This year I did not have the opportunity to join the Microsoft PDC event personally but I did manage to follow most part of the keynotes. Keynotes were streamed live both on November 17th and November 18th. If you would like to watch them on-demand they are being made available on the www.microsoftpdc.com site soon.
The PDC is historically quite important for announcements, this year was no different. Here’s an overview of what was announced (note: personal list, no guarantees it’s an exhaustive list).
Keynote Day 1
Speakers for the first keynote were Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect at Microsoft and Bob Muglia, President Server & Tools.
Windows Azure & SQL Azure
Windows Azure release schedule was announced, the services are free to evaluate through January 2010. We will begin charging customers on February 1st, 2010.
Learn more, download the tools: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/
Microsoft Pinpoint
Pinpoint can be viewed as a marketplace to find partners with whom to work for your projects, giving you access to specialized service providers and support.
http://pinpoint.microsoft.com
Codename “Dallas”
“Dallas” the commoditization of data. OK, that’s my own personal way of seeing it (not any MS official wording) but that’s really one way I’d put it. I see the use of this for statistical data, meteo, postal information, and much more. Check it out and request your trial token: http://blogs.msdn.com/dallas/archive/2009/11/17/a-quick-overview-of-dallas-for-developers.aspx
Dallas also works together with Pinpoint, which can be seen as your marketplace for data providers.
Seesmic for Windows
Loic LeMeur, founder of Seesmic went on stage to present the new Seesmic for Windows. This version is built in WPF and can be downloaded from the seesmic.com site. At the same time he also showed a Silverlight version of the application (note: currently the Silverlight version is not available yet).
Visual Studio 2010 – no new announcements but a nice demo:
Download the full source of the demo application shown during the keynote, Tailspin: http://tailspintravel.codeplex.com/
ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta
The next version of ASP.NET MVC is available in beta. Check out Phil Haack’s post on this. This beta release contains a go-live license.
Windows Server AppFabric (previously Velocity & Dublin codenames)
Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure platform AppFabric include the capabilities from projects “Dublin” and “Velocity,” as well as the Service Bus and Access Control services that were formerly under the “.NET Services” brand (today, these services are now called Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and Windows Azure platform AppFabric Access Control services).
- For Web applications, AppFabric provides caching capabilities to provide high-speed access, scale, and high availability to application data. This feature was previously codenamed "Velocity".
- For composite applications, AppFabric makes it easier to build and manage services built using Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. This feature was previously codenamed "Dublin."
Learn more:
Keynote Day 2
Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and Kurt DelBene were the top speakers announced for this keynote.
Silverlight 4 Beta
The stuff put into Silverlight 4 is incredible, that’s what you’ll hear from anyone that watched the day 2 keynote. New features like elevated trust and notifications for out-of-browser Silverlight applications, but also webcam and microphone support, print support, and much much more.
Silverlight 4 Beta is available now, Tim Heuer has great post with all the links and starter demos and videos for you - http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/11/18/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-complete-guide-new-features.aspx.
Official Silverlight.net page on Silverlight 4 Beta: http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/
There is also a new section on Channel 9 with Silverlight 4 training: http://channel9.msdn.com/learn/courses/Silverlight4/
WCF RIA Services
Previously called .NET RIA services, the beta version was announced. Check out Brad Abrams’ blog http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/11/18/welcome-to-wcf-ria-services-beta.aspx
Microsoft Office 2010 Beta – SharePoint 2010 Beta
Kurt DelBene talked about the new features of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and announced the availability of the public betas for:
- Microsoft Office 2010 Beta
- Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Beta
- Microsoft Project 2010 Beta
- Microsoft Visio 2010 Beta
- Office Mobile client for Office 2010 beta – available through the Windows Marketplace
Download your version at http://www.microsoft.com/2010
Also announced: PowerPivot for Excel 2010 – CTP version is available - http://www.powerpivot.com/
One last thing: if you haven’t watched the keynote, take the time to watch it soon because I promise, it’s worth it. As Silverlight is one of my focus points I can recommend you to watch the Silverlight 4 part at the very least.
The SQL Server Day, taking place on December 3rd in Utopolis Mechelen is a full day dedicated to SQL Server 2008 content. Driven by the SQL UG, they have now added a full developer-focused track.
When: December 3rd 2010, keynote starts at 10 AM.
Where: Utopolis Mechelen
Content to expect: check out the full agenda with three separate tracks (Business Intelligence, SQL Data Platform and Development). Sessions include ‘What’s new in Report Builder 3.0, Tracking Changes and Data Movement in SQL Server, Handling XML in SQL Server, Entity Framework in Visual Studio 2010 and more.
If you haven’t registered yet, don’t wait too long!
See you there.
The Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a great tool to automate the installation of web developer tools, framework, web server and database. In case you haven’t see this you I encourage you to take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/web. This is also something we showed during the REMIX 2009 keynote so you may want to have a look at the video for part 1 of the keynote.
Installing the platform and the tools is one thing, this includes the full Microsoft stack with IIS, ASP.NET but also PHP 5.2. But next to installing the stack it also offers you the ability to install open source web applications like DotNetNuke, BlogEngine.NET, Umbraco but also PHP applications such as Drupal, Moodle, Wordpress and many others. The application available through the Web Application Gallery (WAG) are all open source and were submitted to the tool. You can also submit your own open source application to be part of the gallery. This requires your application to be packaged using the Web Deployment Tool.
Installing non-public web applications and products
While you can use the Web Deployment Tool used by the Web PI to package and easily deploy your own web applications you don’t get the nice UI given through the Web PI tool.
The good news is now since the Web PI v2 RTM you have some interesting options. One of these options is adding custom XML feeds with your own non-public packaged applications or even extra products (choose the Options link). Katheryne has two nice postings on the IIS.Net site around this feature: “Web PI Extensibility: Custom Feeds – Installing Custom Products” and “Web PI Extensibility: Custom Feeds – Installing Custom Applications”, worth checking out!
Again, you don’t need the Web PI to deploy your own applications and are perfectly able to use the Web Deployment Tool separately but if you like the ease of use of the Web PI tool this is a perfect solution.
Further reading
On November 5th the Belgian Silverlight User Group (BESUG) is already celebrating its 1st year anniversary. Congratulations are in order!
After a successful startup year with workshops organized by the founders Frederik Duchi and Kevin DeRudder, as well as some sessions with top speakers like Laurent Bugnion in May and Arturo Toledo just last month we wish the user group a good continuation in its second year.
As a celebration the user group is organizing an anniversary dinner on November 5th 2009 in the Chess Café in Gent. And what’s more: it’s free! There are a few places left so if you would like to join the team and discuss future projects or sessions, mingle with people interested in Silverlight and have fun – don’t wait and register for the dinner.
Last week during the ReMix 09 keynote in Belgium, two companies, These Days and Ventigrate officially announced the first alpha release of Sistr. Sistr is a component that makes use of jQuery and Silverlight 3 to render richer fonts in web applications. It’s implemented in such a way that it’s very SEO friendly but at the same time allows you to integrate fonts that would otherwise need to be converted to PNG images.
You might have seen the Flash counterpart of this component, named sIFR. You might want to look at a short comparison table to see the capabilities.
Using Sistr on your site is pretty straightforward and explained on the HowTo page.
How to get started? Easy, just download jQuery library and Sistr component. The standard version does not include the source code, which is available if you want to embed fonts.
Unzip the Sistr file, this gives you a small sample project that shows you how to integrate the component in a site.
Congratulations to Ventigrate and These Days for giving back to the community with this tool.
ReMix Brussels 2009 was held at the end of September 2009. We had a great day with a general opening keynote and eight technical sessions on Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC, Expression Blend and general UX around Surface.
Four speakers from Microsoft corp joined us in Brussels and continued on to Helsinki, Vienna and Lisbon for a ReMix Europe tour: Adam Kinney, Arturo Toledo, August de los Reyes and Brad Abrams. For the Belgian event we also had Belgian MVP Maarten Balliauw join us for a session on ASP.NET MVC.
If you were unable to attend or missed a session, there is good news. All sessions are now available online for on-demand viewing.
You will notice there is also a link with all the partner testimonial videos (with Emakina, LBi, The Rerence, Paratel, Ordina, These Days, Ventigrate, RealDolmen and DigiPoint).
Next to accessing all videos, make sure to check out the Announcements page where you can find more information on the most important announcements we made during the keynote:
- WebsiteSpark
- Web Platform Installer & Gallery
- Silverlight and Internet Explorer 8 Contests (still a good month to go!)
- Start to Silverlight training
- Getting started links – for Silverlight and Expression Blend
Enjoy!
Next week Kevin Dockx and Maarten Balliauw will be presenting a session at the PHP Benelux user group event. The event will take place on the 28th of October at 18h. Check out the site if you want to register.
Maarten & Kevin’s session will be around Silverlight with PHP. Interesting topic if you ask me!
After their session I’ll also be talking at the event around the Microsoft Web Platform Installer & Gallery, but also in general how Microsoft is supporting PHP on Windows. It will be interesting to be at a completely non-MS user group and session. Looking forward to the attendees feedback.
Session will take place at RealDolmen Kontich, registration details and route information can be found on the PHP Benelux page.
See you there?
Something I thought may be worth a short blog post: the Partner department is organizing a Start to Silverlight training next week. The event is called Start to Silverlight, taking place on 29th and 30th of October 2009 at the Microsoft Innovation Center in Mons.
Why is this more than a training? To start there is a full day Silverlight for developers delivered by Regional Director Gill Cleeren (Ordina) and a full day for front-end design/integrators focusing on Expression Blend 3 (delivered by Jonas De Geest from RealDolmen). But that’s not all. After the training we have foreseen 5 separate coaching sessions that you can take advantage of. Let’s say you have a first idea on a project or proof of concept. This is a great chance to get guidance and help to take the correct first decisions on the setup of that first project.
Registration is open to partners, but then becoming a partner is free if you are not one yet. Pricing is set at €99 per day for partners. Be quick if you need to register because seating is limited.
All details and registration information here.
This fall we’re giving you not one but two chances to win a netbook and other prizes! Next to the Belux Silverlight contest we are also launching the “Internet Explorer 8 – Webslices & Accelerators Contest”.
Webslices
Webslices allow your site visitors to subscribe to portions of information on your site. They will see when the information is updated without having to go back to your site. For example, I have installed the Vacature.com webslice that shows me the latest additions to jobs for a certain keyword, as you can see in the screenshot on the right.
Accelerators
Accelerators allow users on any site to quickly do an action that is enabled by your own site. In the example below I’m selecting a sentence in Dutch and using the “Translate with Bing” accelerator to give me the translation in English – all of this without leaving the visited page. You can go further with this by showing mapping information, a calculation of some sort, a lookup of information at the user’s fingertips, etc.
In the IE8 contest your webslices must have a preview window such as the Bing translator one below.
The contest jury
The jury will be evaluating both the Silverlight and the IE8 contests. A great chance for some extra visibility of your skills and creativity!
- Brice Le Blevennec, CEO, Emakina Group
- Michael Kogeler, General Manager, Microsoft Consumer & Online
- Luc Van de Velde, Director Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft
- Kurt Vergult, Creative Director, LBi
How to participate
Any Webslices and Accelerators you enable on your site can be submitted to the contest. For accelerators you will need to make sure they have a preview window. Other than that, we suggest you be as creative as possible in coming up with ideas for Webslices and Accelerators. Take a look at was is available today in the IE Add-ons gallery for some inspiration.
All the details on how to participate:
The contest is open to residents of Belgium or Luxembourg.
Guidance on how to develop Webslices and Accelerators
A few weeks ago we launched the Web Application Toolkits, (currently) seven different toolkits that give you project templates and sample code on developing a set of typical projects. These include making your site social, sending templated e-mail, integrating Bing search and also one giving you guidance on developing Internet Explorer 8 customizations such as Accelerators, Webslices and Visual Search.
A great start to get your first steps in this contest. A few new ASP.NET controls like the ASP.NET Web Slice control enables you to implement webslices very quickly. Be sure to check the Channel9 video explaining this toolkit.
The toolkit is most useful if you are developing in ASP.NET . But, if you prefer can also develop these customizations in any other platform. Some help on getting your webslice for Drupal and Joomla. See more at Hans Le Roy’s site (Dutch).
Good luck!
We just launched the BeLux Silverlight 3 Contest, where you have a chance to win a cool HP Mini Netbook pre-loaded with Windows 7 Ultimate or other cool prizes.
Got any cool project or idea for a Silverlight 3 project? Participating is easy and quick. Make sure your application or component is accessible publicly, send us a small description of why this is such a fantastic application and who knows, you might even win.
Need some visibility? This is a great chance to get some from top notch agencies at the same time!
The Jury
People from both the Belgian web community as well as directors from Microsoft Belgium.
- Brice Le Blevennec, CEO, Emakina Group
- Michael Kogeler, General Manager, Microsoft Consumer & Online
- Luc Van de Velde, Director Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft
- Kurt Vergult, Creative Director, LBi
How to participate?
You have until December 12th to submit, read all about it:
Good luck!
Yesterday we held REMIX Brussels 2009 at Kinepolis. I had a good time during the keynote and talking to many of the attendees during the day. I’ll do a more detailed write-up in due time. In the meantime you can already see some pictures here and here.
WebsiteSpark
During the keynote, Luc Van de Velde officially launched WebsiteSpark in Belgium. This program is now available to small web development and design companies in Belgium. Next to giving you access to software, tools and training it also gives visibility to potential customers.
For more information, FAQ and to register, go to http://www.microsoft.com/web/WebsiteSpark/.
The program is launched in Belgium with two hosting network partners: Combell and Hostbasket.
Web Platform Installer 2.0
Released last week, the Web Platform Installer 2.0 (Web PI) is the easiest way to setup your development machine with all the tools, framework, web server and database elements, or can be used to very quickly deploy a server. It’s a single download that gives you a single interface in which to choose what you want to install on your machine. It contains all the free tools and frameworks from the Microsoft Web stack. But that’s not all, it also gives you a simple way to install open source web applications.
When you choose to install an application from the Web App Gallery the Web PI will automatically check for any dependencies like the database, certain IIS extensions, and so forth. This applies to ASP.NET applications but also for any PHP open source application that is part of the gallery. It will automatically install CGI on IIS and PHP 5.2.11, and any other dependency needed by the application.
Are you working or participating to an open source web application? Why not check out how to add it to the gallery? You will need to follow the Web App Gallery Principles and package your application to submit it to the gallery. You can find the details at microsoft.com/web page for developers, where you will find tutorials and the forum.
Starting next week we have a new set of MSDN Live Meetings coming to a computer near you. MSDN Live Meetings are all online, so you can follow them either from work or home.
Subjects range from Silverlight & WPF, to Visual Studio 2008, to the Windows Azure Platform. All sessions are delivered in French and Dutch.
Register free to attend the sessions.
September 15th - MSDN Live Meeting - Modules gebruiken voor het bouwen van WPF- en Silverlight-applicaties (PRISM)
Als er twee UI-technologieën beschikbaar zijn, zoals WPF en Silverlight, die in gelijkaardige talen zijn geschreven (XAML) maar met verschillende assemblies in verschillende situaties draaien, dan is het logisch dat je liefst één keer een UI schrijft om later met minimale inspanning de beste, of de twee opties te kunnen kiezen. In deze sessie tonen we hoe u het maximum uit op XAML gebaseerde applicaties haalt en welke architectuurbeslissingen kunnen helpen om deze opties van in het begin van de ontwikkelingscyclus mogelijk te maken.
Gill Cleeren will be presenting this session.
October 6 -
MSDN Live Meeting - Visual Studio Team System & Team Foundation Server Licensing Roundtable – exceptionally this session is English only
Have questions around licensing of Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server? Take this chance to get answers to all your questions.
October 20th
MSDN Live Meeting - REST-ful services bouwen met WCF
Een van de belangrijkste nieuwe features van Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 (WCF 3.5) is het Web Programming Model, dat de ontwikkelaars in staat stelt om services te bouwen met behulp van een RESTful-architectuur. Het aantal services dat met deze nieuwe architecturale benadering wordt geïmplementeerd, neemt hand over hand toe. In deze sessie bekijken we de basisprincipes van REST in vergelijking met SOAP/WS-* en bespreken we hoe je services die RESTful van aard zijn, kunt bouwen met behulp van WCF 3.5. We behandelen ook het toevoegen van Web feeds (RSS en/of ATOM) aan onze services om de toegang tot de bedrijfsgegevens te vergemakkelijken.
MSDN Live Meeting - onstruire des services REST-ful avec WCF
L’une des principales nouveautés de Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 (WCF 3.5) est le modèle de programmation web - Web Programming Model. Ce modèle permet aux développeurs de construire des services sur la base d’une architecture RESTful. Le nombre de services mis en œuvre à l’aide de cette nouvelle démarche augmente à vive allure. Cette session présente les notions fondamentales de REST par rapport à SOAP/WS-*, et explique comment construire, avec WCF 3.5, des services intrinsèquement RESTful. Nous expliquons aussi comment ajouter des flux Web (RSS et/ou ATOM) à nos Services, afin de faciliter l’accès aux données de l’entreprise.
November 3rd
MSDN Live Meeting - Tips en tricks met de Visual Studuio Debugger
De Visual Studio debugger is een tool die door ontwikkelaars nog te weinig wordt gebruikt. In deze sessie tonen we hoe u hem als professional kunt gebruiken en leren we nieuwe technieken aan om het oplossen van problemen en de debugging te versnellen. We tonen het gebruik van geavanceerde breakpoints, geavanceerde watch window / Expression evaluator trucs, modifiers, assertions on the fly, remote debugging, en nog veel meer. We geven ook tips en trucs om sneller en efficiënter te debuggen bij het schrijven van C#, VB, WPF, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, of services. De debugger is het belangrijkste instrument om bugs op te sporen, het is dus zeker de moeite waard om deze sessie te volgen en hem optimaal te leren gebruiken.
MSDN Live Meeting - Conseils et astuces pour l’utilisation de Visual Studio Debugger
Visual Studio Debugger est un outil largement sous-utilisé par bien des développeurs. Au cours de cette session, vous apprendrez à utiliser ce debugger comme un pro tout en acquérant de nouvelles techniques qui vous aideront à résoudre rapidement vos problèmes et à déboguer vos applications. Nous vous montrerons comment tirer parti des perfectionnements sophistiqués qui font partie intégrante de cet outil, et nous vous donnerons toute une série de conseils et astuces dans différents domaines : évaluation watch window / Expression, modifiers, assertions on the fly, débogage à distance, etc. Que vous écriviez en C#, VB, WPF, ASP.NET, Windows Forms ou que vous développiez des services, nos conseils vous aideront à mettre vos applications au point plus rapidement et beaucoup plus efficacement. Le debugger deviendra votre outil de prédilection pour repérer les bugs ! Alors, n’hésitez pas : suivez cette session et tirez-en profit au maximum.
November 24th
MSDN Live Meeting - Transposer une application ASP.NET vers Windows Azure (24 novembre)
Envoyez vos applications dans les nuages! Windows Azure vous permet de profiter de l’infrastructure cloud computing pour l’hébergement, l’exploitation et le stockage de vos applications. Ponctuée de nombreuses démos, cette session vous explique comment transposer une application ASP.Net existante pour l’héberger dans Windows Azure, tout en profitant de la fonctionnalité de stockage de Windows Azure.
MSDN Live Meeting - Een ASP.NET-applicatie overbrengen naar Windows Azure
Zet alles over naar the cloud! Met Windows Azure kunt u voordeel halen uit de cloud computing-infrastructuur voor hosting, computing en storage van uw applicaties. De sessie bevat talrijke demo’s, we brengen een bestaande ASP.Net-applicatie over naar hosting in Windows Azure en maken gebruik van Windows Azure storage.
December 8th
MSDN Live Meeting - Kennismaking met .NET Services
Een gedeelte van het Windows Azure Platform, Microsoft .NET Services is een set door Microsoft gebouwde en gehoste Windows Communication Foundation services voor het bouwen van Internet-enabled applicaties. Volg deze sessie en leer alles over de belangrijkste onderdelen van .NET Services: Service Bus en Access Control Service.
MSDN Live Meeting - Présentation des .NET Services
En tant qu’élément de la plate-forme Windows Azure, Microsoft .NET Services est un ensemble de services Windows Communication Foundation hébergés, construits par Microsoft. Il s’utilise pour développer des applications dotées de fonctionnalités Internet. Participez à cette session et découvrez les principaux éléments de .NET Services: Service Bus et Access Control Service.
December 17th
MSDN Live Meeting - Utiliser XML avec Visual Basic 2008
Rares sont les applications modernes qui ne font pas appel à XML ; documents professionnels, fichiers de configuration, sérialisation d’objets, SOAP, RSS et Open XML n’en sont que quelques exemples. Même vos fichiers de projets Visual Studio et vos paramètres de configuration sont des fichiers XML. Récemment encore, le traitement XML vous obligeait à apprendre toute une série de concepts et son format à base de texte n’était pas des plus aisés pour un programmeur. Avec Visual Basic 2008, les choses changent ! XML devient un type de données intégré, avec une riche expérience d’édition qui élimine totalement l’entrave conceptuelle entre le code que vous écrivez et le XML que vous essayez de manipuler. Au cours de cette session, vous apprendrez à créer, interroger et transformer aisément du XML à l’aide de la syntaxe puissante mais conviviale de Visual Basic. Nous nous concentrerons sur des fonctions comme XML IntelliSense, XML literals, les expressions incrustées et l’utilisation de language constructs au lieu d’un DOM pour naviguer dans la hiérarchie XML. De nombreux conseils, astuces et "gotchas" figurent également au programme. Dites adieu à XSLT et bienvenue à Visual Basic 2008!
XML gebruiken met Visual Basic 2008
In de meeste moderne toepassingen wordt XML gebruikt; zakelijke documenten, configuratiebestanden, object serialization, SOAP, RSS en Open XML zijn slechts enkele voorbeelden. Zelfs uw Visual Studio projectbestanden en configuratie-instellingen zijn XML-bestanden. Voor XML processing moet u wel een aantal nieuwe concepten leren en het op tekst gebaseerde formaat van XML is programmatorisch niet zo eenvoudig …. tenminste, tot voor kort! Met Visual Basic 2008 wordt dat namelijk anders en wordt XML een ingebouwd data type met een rijke editingervaring die de conceptuele barrière tussen de code die u schrijft en de XML die u wilt manipuleren, volledig wegneemt. In deze sessie leert u snel en eenvoudig XML creëren, ondervragen en transformeren met de krachtige, maar gemakkelijk te gebruiken syntax van Visual Basic. We bespreken features zoals XML IntelliSense, XML literals, embedded uitdrukkingen en we gebruiken language constructs in plaats van een DOM om door de XML-hiërarchie te navigeren. Daarnaast onderzoeken we tips, trucs en ‘gotchas’. XSLT behoort tot het verleden, we gaan nu aan de slag met Visual Basic 2008!
