Awww, this is so cool. I want one.
Microsoft Surface.
And speaking of MIX, in case you didn't manage to get there this year (unlike my colleague Nigel, who tried to convince us this was work), the sessions have been posted on line.
There are some really cool sessions available for watching and I also recommend you watch the keynote as it shows off a lot of the new technology announced at MIX. You can watch online, download for offline viewing and even download for playing on your Zune.
Personally, I think Silverlight is the highlight and the amount of buzz and interest it has created is staggering. Cross platform, cross browser and the power of .NET, that is Silverlight 1.1. Get the Alpha bits and try it for yourself.
Make sure you check out the Silverlight community site for demos and links to learning resources, forums and blogs. This is going to be BIG. I really liked the airline booking sample that Scott Guthrie demo'd during the keynote. You can try it yourself here.
If you are excited about the release of Expression Studio at MIX '07 then you might be interested in free training videos that cover all the products that make up the suite.
These videos are a great way to get up to speed with the new design products and you can watch them online or download them for watching later. Most of them aren't too long so you can watch them in those times you are waiting for something else to happen (or maybe watch them on the bus, train or flight somewhere).
The .NET Micro Framework 2.0 has been released and the SDK is available for download.
The .NET Micro Framework SDK Version 2.0 includes the following features:
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Microsoft Visual Studio Integration
The .NET Micro Framework SDK integrates into the Visual Studio environment, supporting C# development with productivity-boosting features such as on-device debugging, object browsing, IntelliSense®, and integrated build and deployment.
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Managed Libraries and Drivers
An on-device implementation of a subset of the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) brings the advantages of .NET development to small devices. Write device drivers and interrupt routines in C# for hardware connected through standard interfaces, such as SPI, I2C, GPIO, and USART.
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Extensible Emulator
Extend the core emulator included in the SDK to reflect your target hardware capabilities. Add simulated peripheral devices, such as sensors, displays, buttons, and servo controls. Then deploy to your customized emulator and test your code on the virtual hardware.
If you want to know more about what the .NET Micro Framework is, have a look at this page here which gives a nice overview but in summary it allows you to develop embedded applications for small devices using Visual Studio and managed code. Very cool!
We’re busy planning our 2007 Technical Briefing Events:
2007 Technical Briefing Events
· Auckland on 7 March,
· Wellington on 14 March and
· Christchurch on 21 March.
These are not–to-be-missed technical updates which will cover a broad range of topics including working with data and databases, building standards compliant websites, virtualisation, security, management tools, and in-depth training on Windows Vista, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007.
The technical sessions are organised into 3 tracks:
- Application Platform,
- Information Worker and
- Infrastructure.
Darryl and Nigel are preparing something a little different for the developer sessions which will be very cool and Nathan has his hands full putting together the infrastructure track.
There are also shorter lunchtime sessions, so all up there is a huge amount of content! To check out the detail for the sessions, go to http://www.microsoft.com/nz/events/techbrief/agenda.mspx
The events cost $199 plus GST and all attendees will receive a complimentary copy of Windows Vista Ultimate or Office Professional 2007! (conditions apply).
Register soon as the events are expected to sell out quickly. Go to www.microsoft.co.nz/techbrief for full details and to register.
I have been reading two books about Windows Presentation Foundation lately, "Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" by Adam Nathan with Daniel Lehenbauer and "Applications = Code + Markup" by Charles Petzold.
These are both excellent books on WPF but they are very different in their approaches and depending on your learning style, you may prefer one over the other.
"Windows Presentation Foundation Unleashed" is printed in colour throughout the book. Code samples look like they do in Visual Studio with syntax colouring. All the illustrations are in colour. This combined with Adam's writing style make the book a pleasure to read. WPF Unleashed starts off with an introduction of concepts including a description of XAML and then dives into controls, positioning and panels. The books goes on to cover databinding, templates, 2D and 3D graphics, animation, audio, video, speech and documents. The final section contains advanced features such as interoperability with Win32, Windows Forms and ActiveX. There are also chapters on User and Custom Controls and layout with Custom Panels. This book covers a lot of ground in around 600 pages and moves at a much quicker pace than Petzold's book. I personally prefer this book because I am already familiar with a lot of the content and it therefore gets to the things I don't already know a lot more quickly.
"Applications = Code + Markup" starts off with simple concepts and then builds on them from chapter to chapter. XAML isn't mentioned in any detail until about half way through the 1000 or so pages and in fact the book is divided into Code and Markup sections (in line with the title I guess). This book contains a lot more code samples (all in C#) to illustrate the concepts as they are introduced in the text. This books also covers all the things you would expect to learn about WPF including controls, grids, panels, tree and list views, data binding, graphical shapes, geometries and paths, graphics transforms and animations. This book doesn't cover 3D graphics but Charles Petzold's web site includes a downloadable chapter on 3D (there are so many pages in the book the extra chapter on 3D wouldn't fit in) and according to this Charles is writing a whole book on Windows 3D for WPF. "Applications = Code + Markup" is very thorough but doesn't move quite fast enough for me. If you are totally new to WPF (but familiar with .NET programming and C#) this is probably the better book.
So, in summary these are two very good books for learning Windows Presentation Foundation programming especially if you are a developer. A designer will probably find them too code centric.
While I was reading about the ASP.NET AJAX release on Scott's blog I noticed this post: Visual Studio "Orcas" Web Designer Integrated into Main. This looks very cool. This means the HTML designers in Visual Studio and in Expression Web Designer are going to be shared components going forward. Visual Studio is going to get fantastic improvements to its current HTML designer including:
- Split View Support (the ability to have both HTML Source and WYSIWYG design open simultaneously)
- Extremely rich CSS support (CSS property window, CSS inheritance viewer, CSS preview, and CSS manager)
- Dramatically improved view switching performance (moving from source->html design mode is now nearly instantaneous)
- Support for control designers within source view (property builders, event wire-up and wizards now work in source view)
- Richer ruler and layout support (better yet, values can be automatically stored in external CSS files)
- Designer support for nested master pages
Scott's post has a screen shot for those interested and hopefully we will see the new designer in the next Visual Studio "Orcas" CTP which is due next month sometime.
Well, I have just come back to work from a nice long summer holiday (including some nice relaxing time on Waiheke Island) and I see ASP.NET AJAX version 1.0 is now available for free download. Take a look at Scott Guthrie's blog for all the information.
Visual Studio 2005 SP1 is available for download. This is what the SP1 page on MSDN has to say about it:
Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 continues Microsoft’s investment in market leading development tools. Service Pack 1 addresses issues that were found through a combination of customers and partner feedback, as well as internal testing. The issues addressed range in severity from places where the syntax coloring was incorrect to customer reported crashes in various scenarios. In some areas, more than 50% of the bugs addressed were reported by customers through the MSDN Product Feedback Center and Microsoft Connect. Overall, Service Pack 1 offers customers improvements in responsiveness, stability and performance for Visual Studio 2005.
Through further advancement and feedback, Service Pack 1 also provides over 70 improvements for common development scenarios including:
- New processor support (e.g., Core Duo) for code generation and profiling
- Performance and scale improvements in Team Foundation Server
- Team Foundation Server integration with Excel 2007 and Project 2007
- Tool support for occasionally connected devices and SQL Server Compact Edition
- Additional support for project file based Web applications
- Windows Embedded 6.0 platform and tools support
If you are developing using Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista, a Beta version of the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista will be available soon.
Update (20/12/2006):
The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta was released for download yesterday. If you are using Visual Studio 2005 with SP1 on Windows Vista you can install the beta version of this update. It addresses areas of Visual Studio impacted by Windows Vista enhancements.
Here is an overview of the update:
During the development of Windows Vista, several key investments were made to vastly improve overall quality, security, and reliability from previous versions of Windows. While we have made tremendous investments in Windows Vista to ensure backwards compatibility, some of the system enhancements, such as User Account Control, changes to the networking stack, and the new graphics model, make Windows Vista behave differently from previous versions of Windows. These investments impact Visual Studio 2005. The Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 Update for Windows Vista Beta addresses areas of Visual Studio impacted by Vista enhancements.
Many of the Windows Vista enhancements are documented at the Windows Vista Development Center.
I have been playing around with a CTP of the Robotics Studio for the last couple of weeks and it is loads of fun. Today the Robotics Team announced it is released and you can visit the Microsoft Robotics Studio site to learn more about it and download the bits.
The Robotics Studio can be used with a number of robots including the Lego Mindstorm NXT which is quite easy to source here in New Zealand.
The Robotics Studio also includes an excellent simulation runtime so you can still experiment without having any hardware.
If you're looking for something a bit different to play with over the Christmas holidays, take a look at Robotics Studio.
MSDN Subscribers: Windows Vista is going live on MSDN Subscriber Downloads now.
So far x86 English DVD is there but the rest will be following shortly I'm sure.
One of my favourite areas of development is where the software meets the hardware. That's why I find our embedded products so interesting. If you are a New Zealand based developer with an interest in developing Windows Embedded solutions make sure you register for the Microsoft Embedded Seminar happening in Auckland on November 30th.
Windows XP Embedded, Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (new), Windows Embedded for Point of Sale and Windows Embedded (server products) are all covered along with demonstrations of the developer tools used to build operating system images.
Windows PowerShell 1.0 (previously code named Monad) has been released to the Web. This is a very powerful command line/scripting environment for Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Longhorn Server. Exchange 2007 will also base its command line and scripting interface on Windows PowerShell. Have a look at the Scripting with Windows PowerShell page on the TechNet site for lots of information including some great introductory webcasts. There is also a repository of scripts ready for you to use.
Update: If you want to see some of the power (ahem) of PowerShell then have a look at this video on Channel 9.
And so the list of Releases to Manufacturing goes on. It has just been announced that Windows Vista has RTM'd. For those with MSDN Premium subscriptions you will be able to download the RTM version within seven days from the MSDN Subscriber Downloads site (same goes for 2007 Office System).
Phew it's been a busy week for RTMs with 2007 Office System, .NET Framework Version 3, Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Second Edition and now Windows Vista.
Following the announcement that the 2007 Office System has gone golden, the Visual Studio Tools for Office Team has made VSTO 2005 SE (or "Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System" to quote the full name) available for download. VSTO 2005 SE allows developers using Visual Studio 2005 to build applications targetting the 2007 Office System.
Have a look at the Office Developer Centre for more information about developing with VSTO 2005 SE including a demo video.
Take a look at the 2007 Office System Developer Map to see how the different tools and technologies work with the different Office applications.
