Laurent Duveau

My “Windows 8 Store” presentation

pluginbaby — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:16:52 GMT

Here are the slides I used for my Windows 8 Store presentation at the Windows 8 Camp in Montreal on May 12, 2012.

Introducing the Windows Store

This presentation covers the great opportunity on the upcoming Windows Store:

App discovery
Reach
Business models (free, paid, trial, expiring trials, …)
Revenue sharing
Certification

But what about enterprise deployment ?
Can I distribute my app internally without going to the Store ?

The answer is yes, this scenario is supported!

Check this very good MSDN link for more information:
”Deploying Metro style apps to businesses”
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/deploying-metro-style-apps-to-businesses.aspx

And follow this blog for futures updates:
Windows Store for developers

Looking for a Windows 8 course?
Visit the Windows 8 Tour portal for our list of classroom training, including Introduction to Building Windows 8 Metro App.

Smart-Use worldwide finalist for Microsoft Next!

pluginbaby — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:56:06 GMT

Smart-Use, our multi-touch 3 screens solution, is among the 27 finalists worldwide for the Microsoft Next 2012 competition.

More details: http://tinyurl.com/7tp3x6k

We need you to win the People's Choice award, follow the link above and make a Facebook "Like", thanks to help a small Canadian company!

Installing Windows 8 beta on the Samsung BUILD Slate

pluginbaby — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 03:39:54 GMT

The following procedure is for people who were at the BUILD event and got a nice Samsung Slate device with Windows 8 Developer Preview, now wanting to install Windows 8 Consumer Preview on it:

Download the x64 ISO on a Windows 7 machine:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso
Create a USB bootable drive with it using the “Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool”:
http://wudt.codeplex.com/
Reboot the build tablet holding down the Windows key
Go to troubleshooting, advanced options, command line
Switch to your USB drive (like D:)
Run Setup.exe
Use product key: DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J
Enjoy!

Design Guidelines for Windows 8 Metro apps

pluginbaby — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 03:02:52 GMT

Question I start to hear often: where to find good online resource for Metro UX design guidelines ?

1. Well, when first going to MSDN you’ll find this page “Designing Metro style apps” which I find a bit harsh (hello pictures?):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465427

2. Far better is the “UX guidelines for Metro style app development” article on the Blend Insider blog, which in fact is a well organized list of MSDN links grouped by topics:
http://blendinsider.com/technical/ux-guidelines-for-metro-style-app-development-2011-10-21/

3. And then, this awesome “Windows 8 Touch Guidance” document by Microsoft:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20120223/microsoft-offers-touch-guidance-to-windows-8-metro-app-developers/

What’s new with .NET, Windows 8, Metro, WinRT ?

pluginbaby — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:52:50 GMT

Still trying to figure out what’s changing in the Microsoft development platform ?
How to deal with .NET, Silverlight, Windows 8, WinRT and Metro style apps in 2012…?

I strongly recommend reading those documents for clear recommendations:

White Paper by Magenic: Assessing the Windows 8 Development Platform
http://magenic.com/Portfolio/WhitePaperWindows8DevelopmentPlatform.aspx

The Microsoft Platform Guide byTelerik:
http://www.telerik.com/platformguidance.aspx
This interesting article tries to answer the question: which technology to choose right now depending on my project? It will be updated later for Windows 8…

Launching www.tourtrainings.com web portal for trainings on MS technologies

pluginbaby — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:19:00 GMT

I am very happy to release a set of 8 websites dedicated to trainings on the latest Microsoft Technologies, all grouped in one portal: www.tourtrainings.com

Right now you can explore:

HTML5 & ASP.NET MVC: www.html5-tour.com
Windows 8: www.windows8-tour.com
UX Design: www.uxdesign-tour.com
SharePoint: www.sharepoint-tour.com
Xbox Kinect: www.kinect-tour.com
Azure: www.azure-tour.com
Windows Phone: www.windowsphone-tour.com
Team Foundation Server: www.teamfoundation-tour.com

We expect to progressively provide more and more content delivered by technical experts in a city near you. Stay tuned!
You can follow us:

Silverlight MVP += 1

pluginbaby — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:44:00 GMT

Sweet first email of the year… announcing that I’ve just been re-awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Microsoft for Silverlight. This is my 6th year in a row as an MVP so I am very grateful!

2011 was awesome! This is the year I became Microsoft Regional Director (RD) (on April 1st…).
I also did lots of community events, speaking at Microsoft conferences and user groups on Silverlight, Windows Phone, LightSwitch and HTML5. I am still sharing on Twitter @LaurentDuveau.

The big surprise I mentioned 1 year ago was our alliance with Wygwam. Then we launched 2 products: SmartUse and IAS!

2012 also promise to be intense for my team, starting with exciting projects on Windows 8 and XBOX Kinect!

Content of this blog tend to be less frequent, and less technical, which reflect my career path, I am now evolving in much more management than coding.

Good news is I intend to travel much less in 2012 as a second baby is on its way for February. No MVP Summit, no MIX, …

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

pluginbaby — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:05:21 GMT

Here at RunAtServer, waiting for Windows 8 we have built our Metrofied Wishes Card!

http://www.runatserver.com/voeux/2012/wishes.htm

www.runatserver.com / Web, Mobile and Touch Solutions / Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn!

Silverlight Training Montreal in November 2011

pluginbaby — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:05:14 GMT

Still a few seats available for the next Silverlight Tour stop in Montreal, come and learn top Silverlight content from local experts!!!

What: Silverlight training

When: November 21-24 (4 days)

Where: Montreal, Qc

Registration/info

Also note that we offer a free license of Telerik's RadControls for Silverlight to every attendee ($999 value)!!
For more information on RadControls, visit:
http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight.aspx.

“Back from BUILD” presentation material

pluginbaby — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:26:08 GMT

Here are the slides we used for the “Back from BUILD” presentation at DevTeach Ottawa 2011 with Colin Melia (@colinizer).

We talked about:

1. The Windows 8 experience
2. What’s new in Silverlight 5
3. WinRT – the new cross-language Windows client platform
4. Building a Metro Style app with XAML
5. Building portable libraries for cross-platform apps

I think attendees appreciated that we let them play with the new Windows 8 tablet…

HTML5 and Silverlight 5 presentation material

pluginbaby — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 21:10:05 GMT

Here are the slides we used for the “Silverlight 5 and HTML 5” presentation at DevTeach Ottawa 2011 with Frédéric Harper (@fharper):

Download the demos:
(requires Silverlight 5 RC)

This time, I refrain myself from doing this kind of jokes:

DevTeach Ottawa 2011 Silverlight pre-conference material

pluginbaby — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 01:43:21 GMT

This week in Ottawa, I did a full day workshop on Silverlight, as a pre-conference of the DevTeach Canadian event.
I showed how to build from scratch a business application, from the Db to the UI, covering these topics:

Entity Framework
WCF RIA Services
DataBinding
Sécurity (users and roles)
Validation
MVVM and Command
OOB
Animations, Styles and ControlTemplate in Blend
Silverlight Spy tool (www.silverlightspy.com)

Get my slides

Get the code

The app I built is from the MS hands-on-labs, you can get all the word doc and vs files there:
http://www.silverlight.net/learn/overview/silverlight-4-training-course

If you are interested to learn more on Silverlight don’t forget the Silverlight Tour Training, a four-day course on Silverlight 5 with VS2010 and Blend.

WP7.5 Mango: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

pluginbaby — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 01:31:03 GMT

Note: I love my phone, this post is a way to describe my (short) experience with the latest version of the Windows Phone OS (Mango), read that as my feedback to get a better product.

The Good

First, the update process was excellent this time! Microsoft learnt a lot from NoDo it seems… good job!
Twitter and LinkedIn integration in People hub!
I can now “Snooze for x minutes” for calendar reminder… huge gain for me! I must admit I use my calendar as a tasks reminder (a better way to do this?)
Nice little fix: in silent mode, the camera makes no more sound… back to spy mode ;-)
Save location in Bing Maps (favorites), this basic feature was curiously absent from the previous version (only tiles, but I don’t need 25 more tiles on my home screen, thanks).
Email threading view (Hello modern UX… I have this in GMail since 2004…)
I managed to get WiFi sharing from the phone (Good!), but with an awful trick (very bad!)
Bing maps local search! I can now search for “pizza” and not getting direction to Italy (I’m in Canada)
A lot more nice little additions here and there…

The Bad

No more direct access to the “folder” button in my inbox. This really bugs me. I use folders in my inbox, lots of them. Before Mango I had a “folders” button at the bottom of the screen. It is no more there in Mango (replaced by a search button), and you have to open the appBar to access it, 2 taps instead of one, for something you do all day long.. this is not a win.
Bing Maps for navigation: turn by turn indications is nice, but still not a real GPS replacement. The default maps app is still a bad GPS, period. (No auto correction, live speed, current speed limit, 3d view, ...)
No Silverlight or Flash in the browser :-(…. come on this is lame!

The Ugly

Search (physical) button: Well… what to say about the infamous Search button.. I call it the SUX button. Totally useless now with Mango. Before that we had the search button used for Contacts, Emails, Marketplace, ... and Bing Maps for everything else (Impossible to use this button for your app) which leads to inconsistency, and user afraid of clicking on the dammit button and get ousted to Bing.. the UX was just a bad failure. Now with Mango the phone search button is only for Bing, no searches on apps, no contextual search. Useless, but at least it is consistent now…
Monstruous trick to get WiFi sharing to work (see here for details). Seriously, tethering and Wi-Fi sharing should be built-in the product.

Anyhow I like Mango, and can already see potential improvements that should be added for an upcoming update…

Attend a Silverlight 5 workshop, get a free license of Telerik's RadControls for Silverlight!!

pluginbaby — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:44:58 GMT

The first 15 people to register for the DevTeach Ottawa Silverlight pre-conference on November 2 will get a free license of Telerik's RadControls for Silverlight ($999 value)!!
For more information on RadControls, you can visit their website at http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight.aspx.

ALSO, each pre-con participant will get an exclusive 50% rebate on the Silverlight Tour training (995$ value)!!
The Silverlight Tour is a four-day, soup-to-nuts breakdown of Silverlight 4 (already have Silverlight 5 exclusive content). This includes learning the ins and outs of XAML, hosting in the browser, the tools and using Silverlight on the server.

More info:
http://www.runatserver.com/SilverlightTraining.aspx

So don’t wait more and register now!

Silverlight Training Montreal in October 2011

pluginbaby — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:54:18 GMT

Still a few seats available for the next Silverlight Tour stop in Montreal, come and learn top Silverlight content from local experts!!!

>> This course will be taught in French * <<

What: Silverlight training (fr)

When: October 25-28 (4 days)

Where: Montreal, Qc

Registration/info

* We do english class as well… check our website!