Thanks to all who attended my jQuery presentation at the Dallas Tech Fest last Friday.
As promised, here is the code we developed and discussed during the presentation.
If you are interested in learning more about jQuery, here are two resources I recommend:
Thanks,
Ken
I'll be presenting two sessions this Saturday (3/28/09) at the Tulsa School of Dev event being held at the North East Campus of the Tulsa Community College. (The event is being held in conjunction with Sharepoint Saturday.)
9:00am - Introduction to jQuery - Occasionally a software product comes along that fundamentally changes the way we do things... jQuery does that to the world of client-side JavaScript! Learn how to use jQuery in your web pages for styling, user interaction, animations and more. You'll be surprised at how easy it is!
1:30pm - Coding with Confidence Using C# - You're an experienced C# developer, now take your skills to the next level. In this session you will see how to get the most out of C# by learning tips and tricks on how to work with events, initialize data, minimize garbage collection, work with iterators, create binary components and more!
Hope to see you there!
Ken
Omar Villareal from Notion Solutions will be presenting this Friday (3/27) at DevCares - see the Dallas DevCares site for time and location information. Here's an abstract for the talk and Omar's info:
Session Information
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 is an integrated application lifecycle management (ALM) product family with the tools and processes that help development teams (developers, testers, project managers, release managers…) work more effectively together. Whether it is a brand new application or an existing application that is in maintenance mode, having a sound ALM process and a good set of tools in place can increase a team’s productivity and reduce friction between team members. In this session we will look at the Team System tools and features that can help developers go home at 5:00 PM while still delivering high quality code on time. We will also glance at some of the tools and projects that the developer community has released to complement the work that Microsoft has done with the Team System family of products as well as the two features that I find most exciting in the upcoming release of Team System with Visual Studio 2010.
Speaker Bio
Omar Villarreal, is a Development Process Consultant for Notion Solutions, Inc. in Irving, TX. He is passionate about helping development teams implement better project management and development processes as well as to produce better quality software in record times through the use of the right tools and he has been doing that and since the early beta releases of Team System.
Omar is a Team System MVP, MCP, President of the Dallas .Net Users Group, Founder and President of the Dallas Team System Users Group and has organized two Code Camps in Dallas, TX. Omar also speaks about Team System at regional community events but when there is none of that going on, he rides his mountain bike at different off-road trails in the D/FW area. You can read the blog posts he writes when he finds time between all these activities at http://www.TeamSystemRocks.com/blogs/omarv.
Hope to see you there,
Ken
Thanks to all that attended my presentation at the Dallas .NET User's Group last night! We had a good time getting started with jQuery.
You can download the demos from the presentation by clicking here.
I'll be on vacation (Spring Break!) for the next week, but will try to catch up promptly and answer any questions/comments on my return.
Thanks again!
Ken
Just confirmed that I will be speaking at the March meeting of the Dallas .NET User's Group on Thursday, March 12.
The topic is jQuery! Here's an abstract for the presentation:
Adding Life To Your Web Sites Using jQuery
Occasionally a software product comes along that fundamentally changes the way we do things... jQuery does that to the world of client-side JavaScript. Learn how to use jQuery in your web pages for styling, user interaction, animations and more. You'll be surprised how easy it is!
Hope to see you there,
Ken
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 8:30AM - NOON
NOTE: DevCares is held the last Friday of each month at the Infomart near downtown Dallas. Click here for the official Dallas DevCares site.
Learn about the latest technology for developing HTML-based web applications: ASP.NET MVC!
ASP.NET MVC enables you to build Model-View-Controller (MVC) applications by using the ASP.NET Framework. ASP.NET is an alternative, not a replacement, for ASP.NET Web Forms that offers the following benefits:
Click here to register or contact us for more information.
SPEAKER
Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital One Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest son's Pack. Chris also enjoys traveling, cooking, camping and playing guitar.
You can contact Chris through his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig, via e-mail at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com.
Thanks to everyone who attended my presentation on Silverlight at the January DevCares meeting.
Here's the code from the DNRTv viewer project we built during the presentation: DnrTvViewer.zip.
- Ken
I attended the MSDN Developer's Conference in Dallas on 1/26/09 - here are some random thoughts on things I learned:
Windows Azure (pronounced like "as you're walking by the window") was described as "an operating system for the cloud". The basic idea is that you will create an "Azure-aware" web site or application and deploy it to "the cloud" - any one of a worldwide network of huge data centers being built by Microsoft. You won't have control over exactly where or how things are deployed, all you do is configure the type of service level that your application requires... things like number of processors, number of instances (for fail over and load balancing), etc.
Windows Azure Services will provide abstractions for various .NET services (access control, workflow, service bus), SQL Server data services, and Windows Live Services that you can use in your applications.
The great thing about Azure is that you will be able to start small easily scale your applications as your needs grow. Need another server to support your site? Simply change your Azure configuration and your site will be replicated and load balanced to another server instance automatically! No need to purchase, install, and maintain another server on your premises or lease another machine with your service provider. This will be a huge benefit to small companies and startups that simply don't have the cash or in-house expertise to setup and maintain 24/7 production servers.
It will be interesting to watch the progress of Azure. We were told the development team would like to have something ready to go by the end of the year, but there are many questions left to answer and technical challenges to overcome. Many of the questions asked had to do with performance and security - definitely big concerns when you begin to outsource your application hosting. No pricing model is available yet either other than to say that you would be paying for usage - kind of like you do for electricity. You need more power and it's available, but you only pay for what you use. Whether that means you are paying for CPU cycles, application instances, bandwidth, memory, disk space or some combination of all the above is TBD.
From the Oslo Developer's Center:
"Oslo" is the code name for the Microsoft's next generation application development platform. The goal of "Oslo" is to provide a 10x productivity gain across the application lifecycle (design, development, and management). "Oslo" leverages domain-specific models, languages and tools to achieve this goal.
Oslo looks to be a huge project that is still really in its infancy. The idea is to consolidate the many ways in which we represent "models" into a single, unified language currently named "M". M syntactically looks similar to C#, but is used for defining sets of data. Models and "model instances" are stored in the Oslo repository (currently SQL Server) and can be executed by one or more "runtimes".
So what the heck are "models", "model instances", and "runtimes"? Look at it this way... a "model" (think the HTML standard) defines the rules and grammar for all "model instances" (think specific web pages) and a model instance can be executed by a "runtime" (think browser). Or maybe the C# language (model), a C# program (model instance) and the C# compiler (runtime). When taken in the general sense, there are many examples of this "model/model instance/runtime" concept.
Oslo may be the "next big thing" down the road, but it's on my back burner for now.
I also saw some demos of features to be included in the next release of Silverlight, version 3.0, and they rocked. The demos were coming fast and furious so I gave up on taking notes, but it looks like the focus will be on much increased productivity for Silverlight developers. More controls, built in data validation tools, and "automatic" business layers which eliminate the need for creating separate services and proxies for communication between the client and the server.
The demos made me want to start working with the next version of Silverlight today! It seems to make developing Silverlight applications much easier and I think will help speed adoption of Silverlight as a viable platform for more business development projects.
F# is a functional programming language for .NET which will be included as a "first class citizen" along side of C# and VB in the next version of Visual Studio.
Although the learning curve of adjusting to a functional way of programming will probably keep F# from becoming the language of choice for many programmers, it should definitely find its niche in the world of multi-threaded applications. As multiple CPUs become more and more prevalent, demand for software to take advantage of them will increase. F#'s use of immutable types and built in support for asynchronous methods are ideal for eliminating many of the errors that plague multi-threaded applications. Since F# is a .NET language, once compiled it is simply MSIL code and as such is callable from C# and VB programs. I see the use of F# in the future for developing libraries for the expressed purpose of optimizing parallel processing, while developers can still use more familiar languages for the majority of their development work.
F# is another argument in favor of polyglot programming!
The MSDN Developer Conference was advertised as "bringing PDC to you". It was a great idea, and helps to get the word out on what's coming for those who can't make it to PDC. Let's hope Microsoft does it in Dallas again next year!
And by the way, the food was outstanding.
- Ken
DevCares is a monthly series of FREE half-day events sponsored by TekFocus and Microsoft. Targeted specifically at developers, the content is presented by experts on a variety of .NET topics. These briefings include expert testimonials, working demos and sample code designed to help you get the most out of application development with .NET. Events are held the last Friday of each month.
Take a whirlwind look at Silverlight 2.0. We'll start by showing you what you need to get started developing with Silverlight and quickly move into real code! Learn how to develop interfaces using XAML, use Expression Blend for creating animations, communicate with the web server, work with data and more.
Ken Byrd (that's me!)
Development Mentor
TekFocus
Friday, January 30, 2009
8:00 - 8:30 - Registration & Networking
9:00 - 11:30 - Presentation
To register, please call 214.800.5611 or visit
www.clicktoattend.com
Event# 134502
TekFocus at the InfoMart
1950 Stemmons Freeway, Suite 3050 Dallas, TX 75207
The MSDN Developer Conference is coming to Dallas on January 26, 2009!
For only $99, you can catch all the highlights from PDC and hear all of the announcements around the Azure Services Platform and Windows 7.
Other sessions include the latest developments in .NET, Silverlight and looks at the futures of C#, VB, ASP.NET and more.
Register today and then let me know you'll be there!
- Ken
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