Katrien's MSDN Blog

Come see Scott Guthrie talk on Visual Studio 2010, web development and Silverlight 4

katriend — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:39:54 GMT

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

ScottGu’s blog
Follow Scott Guthrie on Twitter: @scottgu

See you there, register now!

Silverlight 4 Beta – Overview of the new features

katriend — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:10:30 GMT

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!

Microsoft PDC 2009 – the announcements at the keynotes

katriend — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:12:52 GMT

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:

Download and try Windows Server AppFabric Beta1: http://msdn.microsoft.com/appfabric
Learn more about Windows Server AppFabric at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/appfabric

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.

SQL Server Day 2009 – now with a full developer track

katriend — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:17:44 GMT

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.

MS Web Platform Installer & Gallery – extensibility for your own non-public apps and products

katriend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:17:54 GMT

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.

Celebrate the 1st anniversary of Belgian Silverlight User Group

katriend — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:14:54 GMT

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.

Sistr – Free open source rich typography tool for Silverlight

katriend — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:52:42 GMT

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 2009 – all recorded sessions now online

katriend — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:31:53 GMT

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!

PHP Benelux event on Oct 28th – Microsoft & PHP

katriend — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:23:52 GMT

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?

Start to Silverlight – jumpstart your first project with coaching and training event

katriend — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:16:12 GMT

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.

Internet Explorer 8 – Webslices and Accelerators Belux Contest is on!

katriend — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:59:03 GMT

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!

BeLux Silverlight 3 Contest – Be creative and win cool prizes

katriend — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:52:15 GMT

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!

Seen at REMIX: WebsiteSpark and Web Platform Installer 2.0

katriend — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:55:13 GMT

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.

Upcoming MSDN Live Meeting events (September-December 2009)

katriend — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:46:25 GMT

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.

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!

Another chance to meet two ReMix speakers

katriend — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:36:00 GMT

If you have not yet registered for the full day free event “ReMix 2009”, taking place on September 29th in Kinepolis Brussels I suggest you don’t wait too long. Registration is still open, for the time being that is…

There is also very good news because next to the ReMix event we have two user groups doing evening sessions on Monday September 28th. This is your chance to meet with the speakers in a more informal way and catch up on some great presentations. So what & when:

Brad Abrams on Framework Design Guidelines - 28 September – 18:00 – hosted by VISUG (Visual Studio User Group)
Learn about guidelines that have helped the Microsoft .NET Framework grow into the most popular developer framework Microsoft has ever created. After ten years of use, we have an enormous amount of real customer data about what makes great framework design. Whether you are building your own framework or just want to get the most out of the .NET Framework, this is a must-attend talk!
More information and registration
Arturo Toledo on Expression Blend 3 – 28 September – 19:00 – hosted by BESUG (Belgian Silverlight User Group)
Arturo is doing an interactive session on Expression Blend 3 the day before ReMix. In this session he will talk about SketchFlow, Behaviors, Sample Data, Control Customization (Visual State Manager), Animations and the Photoshop / Illustrator import. This is your chance to meet Arturo in a more informal setting and of course fire off any questions you have.
More information and registration.

Hope to see you at one of the events!