Mark Johnston's Blog : Developer

Microsoft Expression offer in UK 40% off

markjo — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:28:31 GMT

If you are a designer or developer that works with Microsoft technology (ASP.NET, Silverlight, etc) then this is a cracking offer from the guys over in the Microsoft Store – 40% off which means you can bag Expression Web (upgrade) for just under £60 for instance.

Check it out – 40% off select Expression products

Expression UK Newsletter launches - and every issue includes a free gift....

markjo — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:21:16 GMT

I love working on Expression stuff, it gives me the opportunity to work with inspirational designers and developers who care about user experience and design in software.

The launch of the Expression UK newsletter is to let you know about all the great stuff that can be done with Silverlight and WPF using Expression tools. I don't want to let all the great work being done in the UK go unseen, so a large part of the newsletter is dedicated to showcasing projects and work by UK designers and developers.

And as I like doing things a little differently, we added our own spin by including 'social art' in each issue. I know some might question the social bit but the idea is to throw in something a little different each time we send an issue and encourage users to talk about it or consume it in some way.

The first issue has this funky piece (one's a designer and the other a developer, guess which is which...) by Ben @ Tricky Business:

Read the first issue here

Oh yeah, the free gift... as my previous post mentions it is available to download from Flickr

Last.fm hack day event in December

markjo — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:34:29 GMT

Sponsored by Codeplex (aka Microsoft and all things developer + cool + open sourcey)

I love last.fm and it will be interesting to see what the ‘hackers’ come up with on Sunday 14 December at the Truman Brewery.

I know there are going to be some of my team mates attending and there are a few prizes and a top secret (but very cool) band playing to make it very worth your while attending

Join the group and then register

Microsoft Student Technology Day Videos Online - SteveB and more industry/MSFT greats

markjo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:49:35 GMT

On 1 October 2008, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer and a host of industry professionals discussed the next generation of computer science innovations with more than 300 students and lecturers from across the UK - the event was the Student Technology Day.

The videos are now all online in glorious Silverlight. And I've embedded the big man here, he was on fire that day:

The videos:

There is embed code on the site for you to put the videos on your blog/site/etc - Student Technology Day

Enjoy!

Visual Express Developer Center in Silverlight

markjo — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:05:14 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/express

Features include:

Animated landing pages
Interactive menus to explore by product or interest area
Interactive product tours for each version

innerworkings - Train your developers to code (properly)

markjo — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:12:43 GMT

I spent some time talking to Bob and the guys at innerworkings about their product and service - it is a developer training interface which integrates directly with Visual Studio and gives developers (ones that write code for a living rather than students) practice based learning opportunities to hone and improve their skills on building .NET applications.

They are based in Dublin and gave me a demo over LiveMeeting a week or so ago to show what their service does. The product is pretty cool and the fact it embeds itself directly within Visual Studio makes it a natural learning tool that doesn't interrupt a developer's production environment. Here is some blurb from their site on their offering:

Take .NET training that's 100% practice-based

Gain skills by solving problems using key .NET techniques

Work at your own pace in a realistic learning environment

Get feedback as you learn from our code-checking engine

Enjoy smart, engaging, and effective .NET learning

NOW THE GOOD NEWS IF YOU ARE A STUDENT: innerworkings have very kindly offered us 60 FREE test accounts on their training environment to distribute as part of the Imagine Cup Software Design challenge. That means that teams will be able to spend time getting very practical development skills on .NET. This will increase their chances of doing well in the competition but more importantly will help them shine when they come to interview for jobs after university. And I'm hoping that innerworkings will become an industry mentor for a team in this year's competition and pass on their wisdom to a lucky team ;-)

Go check out www.innerworkings.com

Silverlight and me appear on Partner TV (again)

markjo — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:10:32 GMT

The second shorter video (first one is here) with James Senior and I talking about Silverlight and what you can achieve with a few of the stock demos and me messing about with my old Mac and showing cross-platform debugging of Silverlight.

Partner-TV: Silverlight Demo

Microsoft UK Student page goes live - built on Silverlight

markjo — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:32:41 GMT

I haven't been part of the development but it's good to see this finally go live. We've been hankering for a 1-stop-shop for students wanting to see what Microsoft has to offer for ages and finally have it at:

www.microsoft.com/uk/students

It highlights:

Windows Vista
Windows Media
Xbox and PC gaming
Jobs
Office 2007
Windows Mobile
Visual Studio and Expression
Security
Imagine Cup

(Warning - it can make you feel a bit queasy when the globe starts to spin to fast. All part of the fun and I'm sure we'll continue to developer over the coming months)

Silverlight and the Dynamic Language Runtime

markjo — Thu, 24 May 2007 16:40:25 GMT

I was talking to my new teammate, the honorable Dr. Andrew Sithers (not sure if he honorable or not, but thought it sounded good), about Silverlight and it's ability to harness the power of dynamic languages inside Silverlight 1.1 (the one with .NET in it!).

His question was "does the 1.1 release just have the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) in it and where does the CLR fit in?" and another question I had from a customer was "is the DLR available outside of Silverlight?".

John Lam has a great post clearing the air on the Dynamic Language Runtime. He clarifies a lot of points and thankfully the two questions I had been asked, he answered:

"The DLR requires the CLR. So this means that it only works with the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha that was released at MIX, and not the Silverlight 1.0 Beta."
"The DLR will also run on top of the desktop CLR V2.0, not just the Silverlight CLR. We have a generic hosting API that lets us retarget the DLR to run on top of arbitrary hosts. Silverlight is only one such host."

To get started with dynamic languages and Silverlight 1.1 download the DLR Console and the dynamic languages quickstart

Technorati tags: silverlight, dlr, ironpython, python

WindowsClient.net community for rich-client/desktop developers

markjo — Mon, 14 May 2007 13:06:53 GMT

Ian Moulster has the scoop on WindowsClient.net launching - it is a new site focused at developers working on rich client applications (run on desktop). It's a really nice site that combines the two worlds of WinForms and Windows Presentation Foundation.

What is Windows Forms?

"Windows® Forms is a set of classes in the .NET Framework that enables rapid development of rich Windows client applications, with powerful, extensible libraries for user-interface controls and graphics."

What is Windows Presentation Foundation?

"WPF, a component of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, empowers you to build the next-generation of Windows user experiences. WPF supports UI, media, documents, hardware acceleration, vector graphics, scalability to different form factors, interactive data visualization, and superior content readability."

Start learning both by checking out the guided tours for WPF and WinForms

Technorati tags: windowsclient.net, wpf, winforms

End to end WPF demo - Family.Show

markjo — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:05:09 GMT

Vertigo Software have just shipped Family.Show (family history explorer - stuff that my Dad would dig really!), a complete end to end reference example of building an application using Windows Presentation Foundation

The Source Code is available for download

Tim Sneath on Family.Show end to end reference WPF sample

Free web application hackers workshop coming up

markjo — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:41:16 GMT

SPI Dynamics are running a web application hacking workshop at Microsoft UK campus on the 26th April and it is FREE for anyone to attend. Thankfully, it's not free for wannabe hackers but is all about helping web developers secure their applications and code from known security vulnerabilities through the browser.

What you will learn:

The evolution of Web applications and why they need to be secured
Advanced hacking techniques like SQL Injection, Blind SQL Injection, Session Hijacking and several other hacks
Why current HTTP security measures fall short
Specific methods for integrating Web application security into your company’s software development and implementation processes

Who should attend:
Developers, QA professionals and security professionals who are interested in Web application security.

Link to SPI Dynamics Web Application Hacking Workshop

Workaround for Visual Studio 'Orcas' March CTP and Blend not playing together

markjo — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 15:00:37 GMT

I've had a couple of email exchanges with customers who are playing with Visual Studio Orcas and Expression Blend and facing challenges with incomaptibilities. The problems arise when trying to open Blend created projects in Orcas and Blend not being able to build Orcas related projects.

Thankfully, there is a workaround in place. From the readme:

11. Expression Blend^TM projects fail to migrate correctly when opened in Visual Studio

Projects created using Microsoft Expression Blend™ are not migrated correctly when opened in Visual Studio. The project will still open in Microsoft Expression Blend™ and Visual Studio but will not build successfully in either product.
To resolve this issue
Edit the project file in Notepad and add “ToolsVersion=2.0” to the first line before opening the project in Visual Studio. For example:
<Project DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="2.0">
This change will prevent project upgrade. Projects will open and build in both Blend and Visual Studio but will not be upgraded to VS Orcas projects. As a result some Orcas project features may not work correctly.
12. Expression Blend^TM cannot build Visual Studio Orcas solutions and projects
Solutions and projects created using Visual Studio Orcas will not build in Microsoft Expression Blend™. Solutions and projects will open successfully in Microsoft Expression Blend™ but will not build.
To resolve this issue
Build the solution in Visual Studio.

Thought it might be useful to post this here, as I tend not to read readme files and it might be easier to find this via your search engine of choice.

I'm having one major issue with Expression Design and Orcas, in that it doesn't work when Orcas is installed. It seems to be known about and will hopefully get fixed in the next preview.

Technorati tags: expression blend, expression design, visual studio, orcas

Expression Blend tutorial videos

markjo — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:01:45 GMT

Martin Grayson, a UX guru in the Microsoft Services part of our business has worked with a colleague in my group, Richard Godfrey to put together these excellent video tutorials of working with WPF (from a real world project perspective) and Expression Blend.

Real World WPF Videos: Introduction to Blend

Vista Sidebar Gadget Resources from Conchango

markjo — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:09:00 GMT

As a nice follow on to my post yesterday about the Universal Music uMusic gadget I spotted on Rich Griffin's blog an excellent entry with a comprehensive set of resources on coding a gadget and deploying in a production environment:

Vista Sidebar Gadget Resources

Technorati tags: sidebar, conchango, gadget, richard griffin