Canadian Developer Connection

It’s a big day for RIA!

plaberge — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:12:51 GMT

Today is a landmark launch day for anyone building Rich Internet Applications (also known as RIAs), particularly those that build compelling web-enabled experiences on the Microsoft platform.

We launched 2 new product versions today and it’s something all of us at Microsoft are very excited about: Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3.

Silverlight 3 represents a big change in how you can build RIAs in .NET. In a nutshell, below are some of the enhancements and new features you can use with Silverlight:

Out-of-Browser Experience: Build RIA applications that don’t require a browser to run. This is a big deal as it means that you can use Silverlight to create connected desktop experiences that run on any Silverlight 3-supported platform.
GPU Acceleration: One of the hurdles many Silverlight developers and designers needed to overcome in prior versions of the platform was dealing with (or rather “faking” or “hacking”) 3D support within Silverlight. This was due to the fact you couldn’t take advantage of the GPU hardware on the PC to deliver the 3D experiences you wanted to build. With Silverlight 3, now you can leverage the PC’s GPU.
Smooth Streaming Video: Everyone is familiar with the experience of choppy video online. Smooth HD Streaming has been incorporated into Silverlight 3 to help alleviate that problem. In essence, Smooth Streaming allows the streaming server and the Silverlight plugin to determine your bandwidth and adjust the quality of the stream to best fit your bandwidth restrictions. There is a good demo of this here.
Development and Design Support: The Silverlight 3 SDK provides over 100 new UI controls that Designers and Developers can use out of the box in their Silverlight apps. It also provides a newly introduced navigation framework that helps with deep-linking and back/forward browser control. It also provides much richer network support.
Developer Tools: With the launch of Silverlight 3, we also provide the tools for building Silverlight 3 applications in Visual Studio. It’s also your choice where to get these tools. You can get them using the Web Platform Installer or through the traditional channel at the Silverlight Dev Site.

You may have noticed I talked about developer tool support but I didn’t spend any time on Designer tools. That’s because I want to focus a bit on the design tools in the section below. Expression Studio 3 has been launched (although Expression Blend, the interactive design tool has been launched in RC form for now). There is several cool things we have added into the Expression suite of tools for Version 3 (including full support for Silverlight 3). I want to highlight the new features of two of the tools here, namely Expression Blend and Expression Web:

Expression Blend 3 RC

SketchFlow: This is a huge productivity gainer for developers. Remember the days of sketching a screen design and app workflow on a napkin to show to the client? Now you can do the same thing with Expression Blend without having to do manual sketches, wireframes and then build the actual app. You can do this as one step now.
Intellisense support: If you like to get into the code while using Expression Blend, you now have Intellisense support within the tool (including intellisense for C#, VB and XAML).
TFS Integration: “Does Expression Blend support for code repositories (including check-in and check-out)?” I have been asked this question many times and the answer was always a let down. My answer was basically “save the work you did in Blend, go back to Visual Studio and check in the code assets from there”. Well, no more – I’m happy to say that Blend now supports the ability to check your project assets into Team Foundation Server, Microsoft’s code repository tool.

Expression Web 3

SuperPreview: If you design websites, you are probably acutely aware of the pain that is testing your web application for rendering in multiple browsers. Your process for this testing likely included multiple machines, constant flipping back and forth between browser windows and you still ended up missing incompatibilities. SuperPreview fixes a lot of this pain by providing you with a way to look at how your website will render in multiple browsers, side-by-side with tools that help you identify inconsistencies.
New User Interface: Expression Web is no longer “the tool in Expression that doesn’t look like the other tools”. In keeping with design consistency, Expression Web now sports the slick, dark grey IDE UI that the rest of the tools do.
Auto-Hide Panels: Screen real estate is valuable as a website designer. You usually need to use most of the space on the screen to see how the website looks, viewing the actual code and the like. Tool panels often get in the way. With Expression Web 3, you have the ability to hide these panels as you see fit, which is very helpful when all you want to do is look at the code!

This is just a very quick summary of some of the things we have delivered in Silverlight 3 and Expression 3. For more detailed info on these items, I encourage you to take a look at the following resources:

Silverlight 3

Expression 3

-Paul

[Tip] Accessing Toolbars Within Tool Windows in Visual Studio

John Bristowe — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:23:00 GMT

You may have noticed that within tool windows like Solution Explorer, you cannot reach the toolbar by hitting tab or arrowing to it. The keyboard shortcut to reach a Tool Window's toolbar is Shift+Alt. Note that Alt+Shift will not work.

Reposted from Did you know... How to access a toolbar within a tool window? - #007 by Sara Ford, author of Microsoft Visual Studio Tips

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[Tip] Resizing Tool Windows with the Keyboard in Visual Studio

John Bristowe — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:02:00 GMT

When a tool window is not docked...

Press the Alt key once
Press the Spacebar once. You will get the standard window system menu with Move and Size.
Select Size
Now, just arrow towards the window edge you wish to resize, and resize from there.
Press Enter to commit the resize, or press Esc to cancel resize changes.

Note: Using the Move command from this menu will prevent the docking targets from appearing. If you want docking targets, use the tip documented here. This is the same as doing a Ctrl-Drag using the mouse. Also, if you press Alt+Spacebar, you’ll get the main Visual Studio window system menu, hence why you must release the alt key before you press the spacebar.

Reposted from Did you know... How to resize a tool window from the keyboard? - #006 by Sara Ford, author of Microsoft Visual Studio Tips

“Silverlight on the Silver Screen”: Two Days Away!

Joey deVilla — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:15:34 GMT

Don’t forget that Silverlight on the Silver Screen, ObjectSharp’s free seminar on Silverlight 3, Expression and SketchFlow takes place in Toronto this Thursday at the Scotiabank Theatre. If you’d like to learn more about the rich-UI applications that you can build with Silverlight 3 and Expression and how quickly you can design and prototype user interfaces and interactions using SketchFlow, you’re going to want to catch this event. For more details about this event, see our earlier article on Silverlight on the Silver Screen and the Silverlight on the Silver Screen official site.

The Annual Reset

Joey deVilla — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:44:36 GMT

July marks the start of the year for a lot of organizations, and Microsoft is one of them. We may still have six months of 2009 left, but as far as Microsoft is concerned, it’s already 2010 – Fiscal Year 2010, that is. A new year is the time for doing some looking back at the previous year and planning for the one to come, and that’s what we’re doing right now. The Developer and Platform Evangelism Team at Microsoft Canada and its “extended family” – other groups within Microsoft, as well as our friends at our PR company, High Road Communications – are all gathered at the big FY10 planning offsite, working on all the stuff you’re going to see in the coming year.

The reviewing, planning and brainstorming at the offsite’s keeping us quite busy, so things might be a little quiet here on Canadian Developer Connection over the next couple of days. Think of it as the calm before the storm, because this year’s going to be a big one.

[Tip] Tool Window Dragging with the Keyboard in Visual Studio

John Bristowe — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 18:04:00 GMT

With the desired tool window selected, press Alt+Minus to bring up the tool window menu. Press Down Arrow to select the Move command and hit Enter. Now, you can control the tool window with the arrow keys.

To dock, simply use the arrow keys to the desired dock target and hit Enter.

Reposted from Did you know... How to drag a tool window around using the keyboard? - #005 by Sara Ford, author of Microsoft Visual Studio Tips

[Tip] Spliting and Creating New Windows in Visual Studio

John Bristowe — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:42:00 GMT

There are two ways to split the current window:

From the Menu Bar, go to Window - Split
Using the mouse, grab the splitter control found directly above the document scrollbar

But the split command only works horizontally. If you need to split vertically (see Program.cs:2 in the above picture), try using the Window.NewWindow command found on the Menu Bar at Window - New Window. Then, as in the picture above, go to Window - New Vertical Tab Group.

Reposted from Did you know... How to split windows and Create new windows? - #004 by Sara Ford, author of Microsoft Visual Studio Tips

Follow @ManningBooks on Twitter and Get Discount Codes

Joey deVilla — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:01:00 GMT

Manning Publications have a great variety of books on .NET development. There’s the stuff you’d expect, such as books on C#, ASP.NET and SharePoint, but they’ve also produced books on IronPython and IronRuby (not many books on these languages), functional programming is both F# and C# and doing brownfield development and building DSLs using .NET. Many of their books have helped me get up to speed with .NET development, and I’m currently working my way through The Art of Unit Testing.

Another great thing about Manning Books is that they’re available in both paper and electronic form. This is great news for me, as I have disk space aplenty, but I’m running short on shelf space. There’s also the fact that while technology-specific books are useful, their shelf life is rather short. I’ll still buy paper editions of books that are longer on theory and technique, but when it comes to specific versions of languages, libraries or frameworks, I’ll take the ebook version.

One more great thing about Manning Books is that they’re generous with the discount codes. Their discount codes are often for 33% to 50% off the regular price, and they announce them on their Twitter account, @ManningBooks. If you’re looking to build your tech library and save money at the same time, you should follow them.

(Just so you know: Neither I nor anyone at the Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft have any kind of arrangement to promote Manning’s books. I just like their books, and getting a discounts on them is a bonus.)

SharePoint Saturday Toronto: July 11th

Joey deVilla — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:00:00 GMT

SharePoint Saturdays are free events where you can learn about SharePoint from architects, developers, and other professionals who work with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (a.k.a. MOSS). Filled with sessions from respected SharePoint professionals & Microsoft MVPs, they’re day-long events covering a wide variety of SharePoint-oriented topics.

On Saturday, July 11th, Toronto will have its first SharePoint Saturday at Microsoft Canada Headquarters (1950 Meadowvale Boulevard, Mississauga – off Mississauga Road, just north of the 401). The event is free of charge, open to the public and your chance to immerse yourself in SharePoint. The day will start at 9:00 a.m. with a short introductory keynote and sessions will run to 4:30 p.m.. Lunch will be provided and there will be numerous giveaways throughout the day.

There will be three primary content tracks, with each track consisting of five presentations lasting about an hour and ranging from introductory, 100-level content to highly technical, 400-level "expert" sessions. The speakers will represent a broad cross-section of the community and will offer a variety of different perspectives and points of view.

SharePoint Saturday Toronto is a great opportunity to learn, share and network. If you’ve been meaning to learn or expand your knowledge about the SharePoint platform, you should be there!

For more details, visit the SharePoint Saturday Toronto site.

Silverlight on the Silver Screen: One Week Away!

Joey deVilla — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:29:05 GMT

You’ve got to hand it to ObjectSharp: when they do a parody, they pull out all the stops:

Next Thursday, June 9th – exactly one week from today -- ObjectSharp will host Silverlight on the Silver Screen, a presentation on the upcoming revision of Silverlight, Silverlight 3, along with Expression Blend, SketchFlow, Windows 7’s touch technology, Microsoft Office SharePoint System (MOSS), Visual Studio 2010 and Team System. They’ll cover all sorts of things, including:

How to design user interactions with SketchFlow
Integrating rich applications using SharePoint and Visual Studio Team System
Building rich line-of-business applications with Silverlight and .NET RIA Services
Tying together rich media and advertising with the Microsoft platform
Touch tech with Windows 7 and WPF

There’ll be something for you, no matter which of the “Three Ds” – designer, developer or decision-maker – you are!

Silverlight on the Silver Screen will take place at the Scotiabank Theatre (259 Richmond Street West, just west of John) on Thursday, July 9th from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m..

Registration is free – all you have to do is visit the Silverlight on the Silver Screen registration page to sign up. I’ll see you there!

31 Days of Silverlight

Joey deVilla — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:37:39 GMT

31 Days of SIlverlight is a series of blog posts posted through the month of July by Microsoft Developer Evangelist Jeff Blankenburg (yes, the same guy behind the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever, which was covered in the previous post).

For each day in July 2009, Jeff will post a fairly in-depth article on his blog covering some aspect of Silverlight development. He says that they’ll be “100- to 300-level in difficulty” (introductory to upper-intermediate) and will provide enough information for someone new to Silverlight could start from scratch building the examples.

So far, he’s posted two articles, both with plenty of examples and downloadable source code:

These first two articles are packed with information; with them alone, a Silverlight newbie should be able to build a HyperCard-like application or “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style game without much trouble. At this rate, by the time July is over, there’ll be enough material published in the series to make a decent book or course. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of 31 Days of Silverlight!

The Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever

Joey deVilla — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:23:32 GMT

The Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever is a new puzzle site aimed at programmers in the same vein as web-based puzzle challenges such as notpron, Rankk and Python Challenge. Created by Microsoft Developer Evangelist Jeff Blankenburg, “TDPE” consists of a sequence of 30 web pages, each one with a puzzle that when solved will take you to the next one. Each puzzle provides the necessary hints to solve it, although some of the hints are tucked away in not-so-obvious places. Some puzzles can be solved with a little programming skill, some require a little knowledge of computer programming theory (although a little Binging will do) and some can be solved with a little logic and lateral thinking.

Jeff has offered a prize to the first fifteen people who complete the The Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever (only those who complete it will know how to prove it). Judging from the Twitter account for “TDPE” and tweets with the #TDPE hashtag, not all the prizes have been claimed yet.

I managed to power through the first 29 puzzles while watching Ghostbusters on TV yesterday, but the very last one has me stumped. As others who’ve been flummoxed by this problem have said on Twitter, I’m sure I’m overthinking it.

Can you beat the Toughest Developer Puzzle Ever? I’m sure you can, but you might want to do it after work. Let me know how you’re doing in the comments!

Happy Canada Day!

Joey deVilla — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:50:20 GMT

Creative Commons picture courtesy of Rene Erhardt.

From all of us at Microsoft Canada, we’d like to wish you a happy Canada Day! Have a safe and fun holiday, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

[Tip] Visible White Space in Visual Studio

John Bristowe — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:50:00 GMT

A simple, but very powerful, little feature, especially when you deal with white space as much as I did when I tested the editor. The first time I saw one of our developers using it, I thought, "Yuck!" But now I'm addicted, even when I'm not testing white space vs tabs:

From the Menu Bar, go to Edit – Advanced – View White Space
From the keyboard, press Ctrl+R, Ctrl+W (using the General Settings configuration)

Note: This command is only available when a file is open. The visible white space state will persist across new files, re-opening files, and, most importantly, Visual Studio sessions.

Reposted from Did you know... How to view Visible White Space - #003 by Sara Ford, author of Microsoft Visual Studio Tips

Ottawa IT Community Awards Night Tonight

Joey deVilla — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:05:28 GMT

The Ottawa IT Community Awards Night takes place tonight (Tuesday, June 30th), and if you want to attend, you’ve got until 4 p.m. to register!

It’s hosted by these four groups:

The event will honour the partners and members of the groups who helped make 2008/2009 another great season for developers, IT pros and DBAs. It’ll have free food, some great competition and draws for prizes,

It takes place at the Yuk Yuk’s in downtown Ottawa (292 Elgin Street, under Hooley’s) and runs from 6:00 p.m. until about 9:00 p.m.. If you’d like to attend, you need to register.