On 30th January, we did the first of a planned series of web-related technology talk events -- this time focusing on Web User Experience (UX). I'd like to thank everyone who attended and stayed back late (we overran by 45 minutes!)  I think we had a lively time.

Building the PlayHellgate London Silverlight site

We covered the following in the 3 hour presentation session:

  1. An overview of the spectrum of Microsoft's user experience technologies. This spans from the ubiquitous web-based (such as ASP.NET AJAX) to rich user interfaces leveraging platform capabilities (such as Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Mobile), and finally to the new class of Rich Internet Applications (enabled by Silverlight.) We also showed (or, in a specific instance, attempted to show smile_regular) real-life applications deployed by customers / partners using these technologies.
  2. Jocelyn (our ISV Developer Evangelist) then did a code-talk / demo session on ASP.NET AJAX. Be sure to check out the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit -- you saw how easy it was to add interactivity to ASP.NET web applications!
  3. We had Yong Hwee from patroids creative works who shared first-hand experience on developing their first project on Silverlight.
  4. I then did a code demo on how we actually developed a real-world Silverlight 1.0 application using Visual Studio and JavaScript. Of course, you can also build video-rich application in 7 steps, and no code with Expression Media Encoder.

My presentation decks for the session can be found on my SkyDrive. You can find Jocelyn's presentation deck (Overview of ASP.NET AJAX) here.

I have also uploaded my two slide decks, which can be accessed from the links below:

(I will be sharing the Silverlight demo code as I clean it up for public consumption, so do check back this blog again in a week or so...)

 

Prelude:

Do keep a look out for the next event entitled "Building Web 2.0 Mash-ups" -- where we will talk and demo building Facebook applications with Visual Studio, creating mash-ups with Windows Live Services, and introduce cool technologies like PopFly, etc.  

This scheduled for the evening of 12 March 2008 -- keep it free!