Snowball - The Blog

Yesterday, I gave a talk for DotNed.nl, the Dutch usergroup at the Ordina offices in Nieuwegein. 55 people attended the sold-out talk, I hope you enjoyed it. Any feedback is of course welcome via mail.

The talk, Building an end-to-end Silverlight application consisted out of 10 topics that we often encounter when building LOB applications:

• 1.SketchFlow
• 2.WCF RIA Services
• 3.Data binding & DataGrid
• 4.MVVM
• 5.MEF
• 6.Commanding & behaviors
• 7.Messaging, navigation & dialogs
• 8.Custom controls & third party controls
• 9.OOB
• 10.Printing

The ZIP file below contains the PPTX and the demos (also of the 2 topics we didn’t cover).

Remember that in 2 weeks, on September 14th, I’ll be again in the Netherlands for 2 sessions for SiXin, the Silverlight usergroup. Registration for this event is free and can be done here.

PPTX & demos

Today, I gave a webinar for the readers of SilverlightShow. The video recording will be online soon. You can get the slides and demo from here.

Last week, I gave 2 sessions at NDC 2010 (Norwegian Developer Conference) in Oslo. I was glad that I was asked by the organization to be part of this conference that is known for its long list of renowned speakers. Here are my impressions of the conference as well as the downloads I promised in my sessions.

Conference report
Oslo is a really nice city. I mean really nice. People are friendly, the city is very clean and apparently, it houses a lot of great developers too.

NDC 2010 took place this year from June 16th until June 18th in the Oslo Spectrum. The Spectrum is a large event center, comparable to the Sportpaleis in Belgium. For me, it was the first time I’ve been to a conference that was organized in this type of center. I was at first wondering whether this would be handy to attend and give sessions in. Well, it works great ?. You have a great view of the session contents because of the screens being high in the rooms while you can still see the speaker very good as well. While giving my sessions, I was still able to have interaction with and see the audience.  The organization of the event itself was done as it should as well. So for the conference and infrastructure, a big thumbs up!

While infrastructure is one thing, content of sessions is much more important. One of the reasons I was really looking forward coming to this event as a speaker, as I mentioned in the intro, is that it is filled with top speakers for a developer audience Also, I got to hang out with a great number of fellow RDs. Names included Juval Löwy, Michelle Bustamente, Ingo Rammer, Richard Campbell, Carl Franklin, Tim Heuer, Billy Hollis, Rob Conery, Greg Young, Robert Martin and I’m forgetting a whole lot at this point. This is a formula for success: the Norwegians surely know how to “entertain” a developer crowd.

All in all, NDC is a really nice conference that is now on my list of yearly-must-attend events! Congrats on job well done to the people of Programutvikeling (I hope I’m spelling it right, my Norwegian is even after a week still horrible).

Session downloads
Here are the links for downloads for both my sessions:
Silverlight 4 Data Access and Services not for the faint of heart

ASP.NET 4 Caching: Performance for free

If you have any questions or remarks, please send me a mail!

At Community Day 2010, together with Bart Wullems, I gave a session called Building an enterprise application with Silverlight and NHibernate. You can download the slide deck and demo below:

Slide deck

Demo

Community Day 2010 is coming! Registration is now open.

No less than fourteen Microsoft user groups combine their efforts to organize this unique knowledge-sharing and networking event. With so many new Microsoft product and technology releases, the content of this Community Day will be focusing on Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010, Silverlight 4, Office 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, OCSR2, and many more!
So don’t miss out on the Community Day and join us on Thursday June 24th in Utopolis, Mechelen. We will bring together more than 300 IT Pro’s and developers.
The Community Day 2010 is brought to you by Azug, Besug, Biwug, IT-Talks Pro-Exchange, SCUG, SQLUG, VBIB, Visug, WinSec, XNA-BUG, CLUG, MyTIC and DotNetHub.

Register now for free at www.communityday.be !

Here are the slides and demos of the VBUG Spring Conference in Birmingham. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope to be back soon :)

Slides

Demos

I just noticed that the video of my session on ASP.NET 4.0 at DevDays Netherlands is online. You can watch it here: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/matthijs/Whats-hot-in-ASPNET-40-by-Gill-Cleeren/

After some behind-the-scenes work, I’m happy to announce that Community Day 2010 will take place on June 24th 2010 in Utopolis Mechelen.

This fourth installment of THE community event of the year will of course focus on all the new technologies that are coming out of Microsoft these months, including Visual Studio 2010, SharePoint 2010, Office 2010, Silverlight 4, .NET 4.0, SQL Server 2008 R2 etc.

New this year is that we have a dedicated track on one specific technology and that will be SharePoint 2010. This track will contain general SharePoint 2010 sessions as well as more specific ones, such as working with Silverlight and SharePoint.

The usergroups are working on the agenda now, I hope to announce the complete agenda around April 25th. Also around that time, we will open the registrations on the site.

For now, check out www.communityday.be. If you are part of a company that wants to join us as a sponsor in organizing this event, send a mail to gillcleeren@gmail.com. An event such as this one can of course only take place because of the ongoing support of sponsors and usergroups.

I hope to meet many of you on June 24th!

PS: we will NOT be serving French Fries again . We’re working on a great formula to have some really good food this year! More hopefully very soon!

This month, you can meet me at the VBUG Spring Conference 2010 in Birmingham, UK. I’ll be doing a talk on Silverlight 4 and WPF 4.

Here’s more info on the event:

Thursday 29th April 2010

Our Spring Conference this year has the theme VBUG4Thought and takes place in the Midlands at the Heritage Motor Centre which is situated just two minutes from J12 M40 and is easy for you to find.

With the imminent release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and the .Net framework 4, VBUG4Thought celebrates and highlights these new products.
This conference is ideal if you wish to learn about the new enhancements, features and capabilities of VS2010 and .Net 4. The conference will also give you an overview of how you can apply these technologies in new or existing projects.
As usual, we'll be featuring key speakers from the UK and abroad in order to give you expert, impartial and informative advice.

We are delighted to have the following speakers:

Eric Nelson -  Building an Application for Windows Azure & SQL Azure
Gill Cleeren - Silverlight 4 tour de force, with a little WPF 4 sauce on top
Hadi Hariri - Real-world applications with ASP.NET MVC and jQuery
Dave Sussman - What you really need to know about .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010
Jon Skeet - Don't call us, we'll call you: an introduction to the Reactive Extensions to .NET
Josh Twist - Building an App Store for the enterprise with MEF and .NET 4.0

For full agenda click here

Hope to meet some of you there!

Overlapping with the Dutch DevDays event this year, I was of course present at TechDays 2010 Belgium as well. TechDays really became a big event with lots of attendees, speakers and sponsors. Never before had the line-up of speakers been so impressive, with names such as Anders Hejlsberg, Scott Hanselman, Charley Kindel… The feedback that I’ve heard was very positive, with the general comment being that the session content was good, deep dive and well brought by the speakers.

I got 2 session slots:

• Silverlight 4 Tour de Force with a little WPF 4 sauce on top (together with Katrien De Graeve)
• Building Data-Driven applications FAST with RIA services and Silverlight

As promised during the talks, I have uploaded all slide decks and demos for both sessions below. You can download them and use them as you like.

• Silverlight 4 Tour de Force with a little WPF 4 sauce on top
• Slides
• Demos
• Building Data-Driven applications FAST with RIA services and Silverlight
• Slides
• Demos

I took some pictures during the event as well. Below I posted some, the entire set can be seen here.

Last Friday, we had Scott Guthrie aka ScottGu aka The Gu in Belgium for a Visug/MSDN event in Kinepolis Brussels. The event was fully booked, there was not a single seat available anymore.

For the event, we had planned something special: we ordered red polo’s for every attendee (over 500 that is) and kindly asked everyone to put them on for the moment Scott came into the room. The effect of having over 500 people in one cinema theatre wearing exactly the same is overwhelming I can say! Of course, Scott received a polo as well.

Here are some of the pictures, more will be added soon. My complete list can be seen on my Flickr account.

The polo’s are piled up

Red ScottGu fans are starting to arrive

Me in the room with Katrien and Pieter, Scott setting up his laptops

Scott’s laptops (glad to see he likes Lenovo too :) )

Red peeps coming in

And there we have it…

Don’t you just love it? :)

And Scott is now a fan of TheGu also :) In the background: ASP.NET MVC 2!

And my Visug colleague, Pieter, got a bit chilly of all this.

Thanks Scott for this wonderful afternoon!

I’ll be doing an MSDN Live Meeting on October 1st on Prism/Composite Application Guidance, starting at 2PM GMT+1. Registration is free and you can still register here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032424477&EventCategory=2&culture=nl-BE&CountryCode=BE .

Hope to see/LiveMeet you then!

Last week, Silverlight FireStarter was hosted, an in-person and also online event where top speakers like Scott Guthrie, Brad Abrams, Tim Heuer etc talked about all there is to know about Silverlight.

Luckily, all the sessions can now be seen on-demand for free here: http://www.msdnevents.com/firestarter/

A small extra: I just found through Tim Heuer a nice 2-part video on Visual Studio called the Visual Studio Documentary form Channel9:

Welcome to the first installment of the Visual Studio Documentary.This is an hour long documentary that is split into two parts, roughly a half hour each. Welcome to part one, where we take you back to the days of MS-DOS and Alan Cooper who originally sold Visual Basic to Bill Gates back in 1988.  Next week we will feature Part Two but for those that would like to watch it sooner, here is Part Two. In addition, each week we will post a longer and more in-depth stand alone interview from the interviewees that were featured in the documentary.

Links: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/VisualStudioDocumentary/The-Visual-Studio-Documentary-Part-One/ and http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/VisualStudioDocumentary/The-Visual-Studio-Documentary-Part-Two/

Today, the Belgian edition of Mix, ReMix09, took place in Belgium. With an almost sold out conference, the expectations were high, many people were expecting to learn new things on the tools and technologies that will influence how we work in the coming years. Silverlight, Expression Blend & Design, Surface… were covered in today’s sessions. Some corporate speakers, including Brad Abrams (who joined Visug yesterday for another sold out event) and Adam Kinney.

The event

After a long absence from Kinepolis in Brussels, the troops again gathered in the largest cinema complex in Belgium. Like said in the introduction, the event was almost completely sold out, which was noticeable in the keynote: almost all chairs were taken and at that very point, the highway around Brussels was still completely stuck.

Because of the fact that it’s a cinema complex, the rooms themselves are the best to do presentations in and also to watch them in.

All attendees could get a trial version of Blend, which I noticed were very much wanted.

The speakers

Most of the content today was brought by corporate speakers, giving attendees a deep insight in the technologies that were covered. These included Silverlight, Surface, Blend and ASP.NET MVC. What struck me somehow, is that there where more questions after sessions than normal: Belgian audience is not very communicative, however today, quite some questions were asked.

The keynote was delivered by Katrien De Graeve and Luc Van De Velde. It was clear, to the point and had a nice flow of ideas in it. Good work, guys!

The technologies

Two things really amazed me today. First, when Luc asked during the keynote, how many people attended last year’s Mix Essentials, only an estimated 5-10% raised their hand. I can’t think of an explanation for this though…

The other thing is the following: the people that attended the conference, had very little knowledge of the Silverlight and Blend tools. OK, you can think: that’s why they came to the conference, right?! True, but still, I would have expected that more people would have experimented with the Silverlight tools.

The pictures

I took my camera with me today (for once I actually didn’t forget to do so…) and here are some of the pictures. The full album can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gillcleeren/sets/72157622483133184/

View Full Album

Ordina@ReMix

A nice video testimonial for Ordina was shown in the keynote where I talk about WPF projects we have done in the past few months. The video will be added soon here!

Next month, I'll be speaking for the first time in Zürich, Switserland on SQL Server Saturday, a free event organized by the Swiss Pass Chapter. The event will take place on Saturday 19th September.

The event is, quite logically, aimed at working with SQL Server. I will be doing 2 sessions on the Dev Track on databinding in WPF and data access in Silverlight.

So, if you are from around there, feel free to come by! Registration is at http://www.sqlsaturday.ch

Btw, the logo/design is really cool!

Thanks to our sponsors, we have a great number of prizes we can give away at Community Day 2009. Here’s an overview (note that any of this can change still):

In the closing keynote, we will be giving away many, many prizes. Here's an overview:

• 1x MSDN Premium Subscription with Team Suite 2008 (1 year) (Sponsored by the Microsoft Regional Director Program)
• 1x Futjitsu-Siemens Windows Home Server (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium). More info on the Windows Home Server can be found here and here. 
• 1x Touch HD (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium) More info can be found here
• Bongo bons:
  Bongo Sterrenrestaurants 2009
  Bongo Charmeweekend 2009
  Bongo Weekend Ardennen
  Bongo Fietsweekend 2009
  (Thanks to all our sponsors)
• 1x Visual Studio Team Foundation Server NFR (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium)
• 1x Visual Studio 2008 Professional NFR (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium)
• 1x Visual Studio 2008 Standard (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium)
• 1x Telerik Premium Collection developer license (Sponsored by Telerik)
• 6x Jetbrains .Net Productivity Packs (ReSharper & dotTrace) (Sponsored by Jetbrains)
• GFI licenses
• 1x TechNet Plus Subscription (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium) More info on Technet Plus can be found here
• 6x MSPress - Windows Application Development (Self-Paced Training Kit) (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium)
• Several Visual C# 2008 Step by Step (Sponsored by Microsoft Belgium)
• Several 25x Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step
• 2x lichtblauw hemd met MSDN/TechNet borduring

Additionaly, we'll have the following to give away, thanks to Microsoft:

• TechDays 2009 bags
• TechDays 2009 DVD sets
• Expression Studio stickers
• TechEd 2008 DVD sets
• Heroes Happen Here books

Finally, in each session, Het Computerwinkeltje will give away a free book!

Yet another reason NOT to miss THE community event of the year!

Important information for people who still want to register but can’t at this point because the event is fully booked: we expect some seats to become available after we send out reminders, which is due this Wednesday or Thursday. So check back regularly.

Dear readers, I’m proud to announce officially Community Day 2009, the third edition of a full day of community driven content on Microsoft technologies. The event will take place on Thursday June 25th 2009.

For the first time, the event will be a full day of free sessions. Also new is the location: we have moved to Mechelen.

In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to subscribe on the Community day website (which is at this point not yet updated, but I’m getting to it…).

Spread the word! Community Day 2009 is coming!

Microsoft today officially announced Tech Ed 2009 Europe. The event will take place from November 9 until November 13. The event will target both developers and IT Pros in the same week, so only 1 week for both events. Also, the event will not be in Barcelona anymore; this time, Berlin will be the city we’ll be visiting.

Tech·Ed Europe 2009 will once again be focused into a single week for both communities. The change in format back to a combined event is based on feedback from both our developer and IT professional audiences who in this time of economic uncertainty prefer a single week activity. For 16 years, Tech·Ed Europe has provided our customers the best technical education event in the industry and we look forward to continuing to deliver the great content, education and connection opportunities.

Tech•Ed 2009 Europe

Nov 9-13, 2009

Messe Convention Center

Berlin, Germany

As you could read several times on Snowball.be, today, April 1st, Microsoft did the first version of the online Techdays called Virtual Techdays.

I presented 4 talks, 4 hours in a row, which was quite exhausting. The feedback I got was very positive, and I have to say, it was all very well organized. All sessions were on time.

Session slides and demos:

• Let Dynamic Data Take Care of You: Slides - Demos
• Complete Control over Silverlight Controls: Slides - Demos
• Microsoft Silverlight Applications Need Data...and Here's How to Get It!: Slides - Demos
• How Windows Presentation Foundation and Databinding Are Best Friends: Slides - Demos

24 hours of free technical content, that’s exactly what Microsoft Virtual Techdays is. The event will start worldwide on April 1st and is free for all.

You can still register at http://www.msfttechdays.com/public/home.aspx .

I’ll be hosting 4 sessions, so drop by if you have a chance!

Now that Mix is over, it’s time to write a rather large post on the event that took place last week in Las Vegas for the 4th time. The 5th edition is already announced (Mix10 I guess), it will take place March 15-17, in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay (up until now, Mix has always been at the Venetian).

Was Mix09 a good edition, compared to previous ones? Absolutely! At Mix06, the first year the conference was held, the main focus was on ASP.NET Ajax, which allowed “at that time” writing richer and more compelling user experiences. Mix07 was of course marked by the announcement of Silverlight 1.0 beta and 1.1 alpha (which would later become Silverlight 2). A year later, at Mix08, Silverlight 2 officially reached beta status. And this year, Silverlight 3 arrived in beta. Silverlight 3 is looking at a release date later this year.

However, not only Silverlight was the star of the show: the second day of the event was marked by the RTW of IE8, the all-new version of the popular browser. After a long road, the new browser is here and it contains a number of interesting new features, which I’ll cover later in this post.

Mix09: the event. Now on DVD!
If you didn’t have the time, money… to attend the event in real life, don’t fear. All sessions are recorded by Microsoft AND are available for free on the Mix09 website. If you want to get your modem hot from all the downloading, head over to http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09 for all videos of the event. Note that you should plan to take some days off work to see them all, there’s more than 120 videos online. Check out Mike Swanson’s blog for a complete list of the sessions, a batch file to download all sessions and a batch renamer for all content (http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson)

Also, many speakers have uploaded their demos to their blogs, so be sure to check them out.

Silverlight 2 + 1 = Silverlight 3

Star of the show was of course Silverlight 3. The released version is a beta, not yet feature complete, meaning that some parts of the software that will be in the final version aren't there yet at this point. All the necessary tools and SDKs are available, you can find the link below. A very important note: if you are developing Silverlight 2 applications, you should not install this release on your production machine, because it makes your setup a Silverlight 3 config. Currently, Silverlight 3 apps are incompatible with Silverlight 2. A virtual machine might be the best option here. 

Out-of-browser

One of, if not the biggest feature of this new release is out-of-browser support. It allows you to place your application directly on the customer's machine, enabling an off-line experience that's the same as the online experience. All this becomes possible without any additional download of runtime or the need to write applications in a different way. Any Silverlight application that is out-of-browser enabled, can now be easily found on the user’s desktop or start menu, and launched with a single click. Also, it can test if the network is connected, update itself and also has access to Isolated Storage. The API for this is very easy, I'll be writing an article on this soon.

Is this any different from Adobe Air, which enables an offline experience as well? Yes it is. Air needs a separate runtime which is about 20mb in size and provides access to the entire hard drive of their customer’s computer, which can be a significant barrier if the customer does not have complete trust.

Also, the adoption rate for Air is well below the rate for Silverlight. So far, Silverlight has an install base of about 300 million, since its launch about 5 months ago. Microsoft estimates that about 400.000 developers and designers are currently using Silverlight already.

Silverlight for Eclipse

Up until now, the Silverlight tools were mainly aimed at Visual Studio developers. Microsoft now also has a Silverlight plugin for Eclipse, called Eclipse Tools For Silverlight (Eclipse4SL). This way, Mac developers can join in in developing Silverlight applications as well. The current version is a CTP.

Expression Blend 3

While not only targeting Silverlight, the release of Expression Blend 3 is great news for Silverlight developers and designers, offering full compatibility and support for Silverlight 3 effects, along with integration with Visual Studio 2010 and WPF. One of my favorite features is the Photoshop and Illustrator import, enabling smooth integration with workflows already in place. During the import process, designers have the freedom to view and import Photoshop files layer by layer. Layers can be easily regrouped and elements retain their original formats, layers, layer positions, editable text and vectors.

Another great feature in Blend 3 is SketchFlow, a way for rapid application prototyping. Using SketchFlow, designers can rapidly map out and experiment with the UI flow of a concept with SketchFlow. Built-in ‘sketchy’ styles enable customers to concentrate on an overall concept of a solution rather than focusing too early on the detail.

Important feature you may ask for enterprise? Absolutely! Business application experts can use SketchFlow to rapidly explore different UI flows and scenarios for their line of business applications without any technical knowledge of the underlying delivery platform. These ideas can be easily presented via the SketchFlow player which provides the ability to not only interact with prototypes, but also enabling the user to provide in-context feedback using the built annotation capability.

To download all the tools for Silverlight development, go to http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx.

Microsoft Web Platform

Let's first take a look at what is really meant with this new term, the Microsoft Web Platform. The MWP is the software of choice when building Web solutions or applications for businesses, large or small. If you’re looking to create your company’s global Web presence, building applications for your small business or launching a new Web site, Microsoft has the solutions for you.

The platform includes several components, including the Web Platform Installer and the Web Application Gallery.

The Web Platform Installer Includes:

• Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1 on Windows XP SP3
• IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 SP2
• IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 Express
• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
• IIS Extensions including:
  • IIS 7 Media Services 3.0
  • IIS7 Administration Pack
  • Database Manager for IIS7
  • WebDav 7.5
  • FTP 7.5
  • FastCGI for PHP support on IIS6
  • URL Rewriter
  • IIS 7 Application Routing
  • Web Deployment Tool for IIS
• ASP.NET and features such as ASP.NET MVC
• Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio
• The Community Version of PHP v5.2.9

The Windows Web Application Gallery is a collection of the most popular Open Source and community Web applications that run on Windows. It provides a simple streamlined way for users to explore, discover, and install ASP.NET, PHP, and other types of web applications and solutions on the Windows Platform.

More information and all the downloads can be found at: Microsoft Web Platform 

Azure Services Platform

While the Azure platform was announced in November last year at PDC, a number of updates to the platform have been released. This shows that Microsoft is committed to delivering a comprehensive cloud platform.

The following updates were done on Azure:

• Windows Azure: An update to the Windows Azure service delivers advancements in interoperability,  flexiblity, geo-specification, and the ability take existing IP to the cloud. 
• Applications written in 3^rd party programming languages such as PHP can be deployed and run on the Windows Azure infrastructure with FastCGI support, providing an easy to use, scalable cloud runtime and storage environment while giving developers the power to choose their preferred programming language. For .NET developers, Full Trust is now available so all aspects of the .NET Framework can be utilized, including invoking native and legacy code components and giving existing code investments new life in the cloud.  Over the next few weeks Geolocation will be available, enabling customers to specify the datacenter location for applications and storage to optimize for lower network latency and comply with location-based regulatory and legal requirements. 
• SQL Services: SQL Data Services (SDS) recently announced an accelerated roadmap to provide a cloud database as part of the Azure Services Platform. 
  • In this updated roadmap, SDS will deliver a fully relational database service in the market to provide customers with the ability to use existing investments in on-premises SQL Server T-SQL development and use a full relational data model in the cloud.  This approach enables greater developer agility and faster time to market by supporting the use of existing applications, tools and knowledge, and featuring distributed, cloud based functionality that will work with other online services or with existing on-premises solutions.  The public availability of these updated service features will be mid-2009 and commercially available later this year.
• .NET Services: .NET Services makes further enhancements to embrace web standards, interoperability, and provide connectivity on-premises with the cloud, and disparate groups with each other across network boundaries.  These services allow customers to easily federate data and messages with its Service Bus and Access Control services.  By supporting REST, ATOM, JSON, SOAP and HTTP web standards, web developers using any programming language can use the service to connect, collaborate, and create federated applications.
• Live Services: To accommodate increasing popularity and demand, Live Services was announced at PDC 2008 as an open Community Technology Preview, where any developer can start utilizing the web services and incorporate them into socially-aware applications connecting to 460 million Windows Live users.  We will announce Live Services updates in the future, but have nothing specific to announce at MIX ‘09.

More info on Azure can be found at Azure Services Platform

Windows Mobile 6.5

An updated version of Windows Mobile was also shown at Mix. The most remarkable features are the new version of Internet Explorer Mobile, the addition of Widgets and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

Internet Explorer 8

Finally, Internet Explorer 8 was also released. Internet Explorer 8 takes a big step forward in browser innovation for the way people use the web today. Internet Explorer 8 makes it easier to visit sites you’ve been to before with the new Smart Address Bar and enhanced Favorites Bar, works with your search provider to suggest likely searches based on what you type into the Enhanced Instant Search Box, groups tabs to match the way you browse the web and gives you Accelerators and Web Slices to keep you closer to the sites and services you use every day.

IE8 is also safer than ever. Specifically, Internet Explorer 8 improves upon our protection against social engineering “phishing” attacks with the new SmartScreen Filter, which helps protect against malware sites and downloads. Internet Explorer 8’s new Cross-Site Scripting filter helps protect users against Cross-Site Scripting Type-1 reflection attacks, one of the most common attacks against Web sites. 

It's also more reliable than ever. It includes a new Compatibility View mode to help ensure that users can access all the sites they use today without display or functionality issues. Additionally, the new architecture of Internet Explorer 8 helps ensure that a single tab crashing does not cause users to lose their whole browser session, and crash recovery restores the crashed site and content

Internet Explorer 8 is available on Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista (RTM), SP1 and SP2.

To download IE8, go to www.microsoft.com/ie8.

While I continue the work on the new Visug website/branding, we have used the old site to put online the registration for 4 new upcoming events.
(Note that the new site will allow you to subscribe to an event-RSS feed, so it'll be easier to see what new events are announced!).

There will be more events announced, even in between the now already fixed dates. We are planning on doing a "Best-Of-PDC" event, similar to the "Best-Of-TechEd" of last year. At the moment, no date has been fixed for that event.

In the meantime, you are able to register for free (as always) for the following events/sessions we are doing:

September 11th: ALT.NET Overview
Presented by Yves Goeleven (Compuware)
For the past year the alt.net movement has been stirring up the Microsoft community around the globe. Now it's getting hold of the Belgian community as well.
In this session I would like to present to you what the core values of the alt.net movement are, what principles, concepts and tools we hope to promote and to booth I would like to introduce the brand new 'Dutch alt.net user group'.

October 14th: ASP.NET 3.5 Special: MVC Framework
Presented by Maarten Balliauw
This session provides an introduction to the ASP.NET MVC framework. Starting with a short intro to the model-view-controller pattern and Microsoft's driving goals for this alternative to classic ASP.NET, toover some of the key differences between classic ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC like routing, extensibility, testing, ...

Note that the 2 ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 sessions are standalone sessions, you do not need to attend them both!

October 21st: ASP.NET 3.5 Special: ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ADO.NET Data Services and AJAX
Presented by Gill Cleeren (Ordina)
After you learned everything on the MVC Framework, Gill Cleeren (Microsoft Regional Director, MVP ASP.NET) takes you on a tour to see all the other new features ASP.NET 3.5 has to offer. Not a marketing overview, but real-life demo’s will make up this session!

We will stop at the following topics:

ASP.NET Dynamic Data: ASP.NET Dynamic Data helps you quickly build a fully customizable, data-driven application without writing code. Dynamic Data provides a rich scaffolding framework that is easily extensible by using the traditional ASP.NET programming model.

ADO.NET Data Services: ADO.NET Data Services provide new services that find, manipulate and deliver data over the web using simple URIs. Benefits include an easy and flexible way to access data over the web, while enabling the separation of presentation and data access code.

ASP.NET AJAX History: We’ll how to take advantage of the new AJAX History feature to enhance the user experience of a web application.

ASP.NET Routing: The final stop is ASP.NET Routing. We’ll explain the ASP.NET Routing engine and how it can provide better control over your web application's URLs. It discusses the pipeline of a request as seen by the routing engine, and how it can be extended to work with any type of web resource.

November 27th: What's new in Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario"
Presented by Pieter Gheysens (Compuware)
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System code name "Rosario" is the version of Team System that follows Visual Studio Team System 2008. It is an integrated Application Life-cycle Management (ALM) solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance. Team System "Rosario" can be seen as a major release and will bring lots of new features in the areas of Project Management, Architecture, Version Control, Build, ... Come and enjoy a sneak preview of what will be shipped in the next version of Visiual Studio Team System.

I hope you'll find something in there you like and I hope to meet you soon at one of our events!

On 22th May, the 8th edition of Multi-Mania took place in Kortrijk. For the first time, I was invited there to do a talk on Silverlight 2.

The crowd was really interested in what can be done with Silverlight, resulting in quite a lot of questions afterwards.

The event itself is mostly organised by HOWest, a high school located in Kortrijk that is in Belgium a real frontrunner when it comes to multimedia courses, game development and the like. Fellow MVP Brecht Kets is also a teacher there and he recently founded XNA-Bug, the Belgian XNA User Group.

Anyway, you can download the slide deck and the demo's. If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

It looks like I'll be having some very busy months in front of me: the MVP summit is only 10 days away and after that, I'll be doing several talks, including Mix Essentials in Belgium.

Here's an overview of upcoming events that I'll be talking at:

• 24th April: Mix Essentials
  Session: Working with Data and Web Services in Microsoft Silverlight 2
  Learn how easy it is to utilize POX, REST, RSS, ATOM, JSON, and SOAP in your Microsoft Silverlight mashup applications. Also learn how to easily access and display data with Silverlight using LINQ and databinding.
  Do note that Steve Ballmer will be at this event!
  
• May 14th: Visug - Microsoft Heroes Community Launch (Ordina Lummen)
  Session: ASP.NET 3.5, AJAX and LINQ 
  In this session, you'll see all the new stuff that Microsoft added to ASP.NET 3.5 and ASP.NET AJAX. From the new controls, the new IDE, the transparent integration of LINQ, AJAX powered... you'll learn everything you'll need to know to use the new features to their fullest power.
  In the second part, we'll cover LINQ, the new Language Integrated Query features in C# 3.0.
  
• May 20th: Visug - Microsoft Heroes Community Launch (Ordina Schelle)
  Session: ASP.NET 3.5, AJAX and LINQ 
  In this session, you'll see all the new stuff that Microsoft added to ASP.NET 3.5 and ASP.NET AJAX. From the new controls, the new IDE, the transparent integration of LINQ, AJAX powered... you'll learn everything you'll need to know to use the new features to their fullest power.
  In the second part, we'll cover LINQ, the new Language Integrated Query features in C# 3.0.
  
• May 23rd: Multi-Mania (Kortrijk)
  Session: Building Rich Internet Applications With Silverlight 2
  Silverlight is a cross-browser and cross-platform plug-in for delivering next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
  In this demo-packed session, you’ll see how to build Silverlight 2 applications using Visual Studio 2008, how to create a UI using XAML markup and code and how to access data from a web service. We’ll also take a look at how Silverlight and LINQ work together. Finally, we’ll be looking at “Deep Zoom”, a new technology in Silverlight that offers a better user experience when viewing large images on the web.
  
• May 27th: IT Club Syntra West(Kortrijk)
  Session: Silverlight Deep Dive
  
• June 26th: CommunityDay 2008 (Keerbergen)
  Session: Silverlight 2 (TBA)

Mix, the popular Microsoft event that took place for the third year in Las Vegas, is getting a "Re-mix" in Belgium: "Mix Essentials - Pure information". Mix is the event on which Silverlight 1.0 was announced last year, and this year, the event was used to introduce Silverlight 2.

The event will have 2 tracks: one more technical, aimed at web-developers, the second one aimed at web designers and business strategists. One of, if not the biggest highlights of the event will of course be the closing keynote, given by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft.

Currently, the list of speakers is not yet complete, but can be seen here.

The event is free but registration is required. Location of the event is Louvain-La-Neuve and the event will take place on April 24th 2008.

As you may or may not know by now, in the last few months, I have been busy with the organisation of TechDays 2008 as content owner for the developer track (formerly known as Dev-ItPro days) at Microsoft. So far, it has been a wonderful experience, being in contact with some of the most renowned speakers of the world.

Today, Microsoft sent out the reminder for the early-bird registration, and meanwhile on the site, a partial list of speakers and sessions has been published. I've had great help from Tom Mertens, Arlindo Alves and since the second half of December, Katrien De Graeve. Thanks guys (and girl)!

Looking at the list of announced speakers and sessions, I'm proud to say that we have succeeded and that we are able to present you with a great line-up. Ingo Rammer, Nikhil Kothari, Dave Webster, Chad Hower, Roy Osherove, Alex Turner and more, together with some great Belgian speakers as Bart De Smet, Peter Himschoot, Joris Poelmans, Patrick Tisseghem and more... all agreed on making this the best TechDays ever!

Now, the party is not just the TechDays. The day before, on March 11th, it's the Belgian launchday for Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. This event, should you not already know, is free to attend for everyone!

Convinced that you HAVE to be on THE .NET event of 2008? Of course you are. Head over to www.heroeshappenhere.be to register.

One thing I really should add: just like we did last year, Visug is organizing their Geek Bowling! I'll open the registrations for that this week. The bowling evening (also in Gent of course) will take place on the 12th!

So, I hope to see you there on March 11, 12 and 13!!

To finish, here's a list of sessions we already announced:

Deep Reflection (Roy Osherove)
In this 400 level session Roy Osherove digs deep into the heart of some of the new features in Reflection 2.0 such as runtime code generation using DynamicMethod (Lightweight Code Generation - LCG), parsing IL at runtime, generics in reflection, debugging runtime generated code, understanding Reflection.Emit, ReflectionOnly Context's for security and using Code gen to improve performance. Put your thinking cap on.

The ABC of building services with WCF (Peter Himschoot)
In today’s highly connected world being able to communicate is very important, especially for your applications. But how? Web Services? Remoting? Enterprise Services? WCF is Microsoft’s unified framework for building communication into your application, ready for the future. In this session we will look at building services with WCF, getting our hands dirty through building a service live, in front of your eyes. After this session you should have a clear understanding of the development life-cycle for WCF, the advantages of using WCF and how to proceed with it yourself.

Architecture and Databinding in WPF (Dave Webster)
Now that we have had some time to get used to XAML and WPF and seen the shiny new UIs we can build, it’s time to get serious about architecture and understand the power of databinding.  In this talk we will discuss advanced topics in databinding, the use of MVC architecture patterns and we will stretch Expression Blend version 2.0 to its limits.

We’ve been hacked!  Web security for developers (Dave Webster)
This is a demo driven session showing the actual hack of a web site.  You will learn how to write your web sites securely, and what your IT department will need from you. Bring your laptop and join in!

Introduction to the new ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) Framework (Matt Gibbs)
A benefit of the MVC architectural pattern is that it promotes a clean separation between the models, views and controllers within an application. In the near future, ASP.NET will include support for developing web applications using an MVC based architecture.
The ASP.NET MVC Framework is designed to support building applications that exhibit the following traits:
- Testability – Red/Green test driven development.
- Maintainability –clear separation of concerns
- Extensibility – interfaces allowing custom implementation at all levels.
- Web Standards and clean URLs – with routing and giving developers tight control over the resulting HTML.
Join us for a dive into the new MVC Framework and learn how to leverage this new alterative in your own applications.

AJAX Patterns (Nikhil Kothari)
This session takes a deep look at the Ajax paradigm by discussing useful development patterns, common problems and associated solutions. Patterns covered range from development approaches such as unobtrusive script attachment, to fundamentals such as search optimization to user interface and usability patterns such as intuitive navigation and visual notifications. While the demonstrations are illustrated through basic scenarios, like any pattern, the concepts can be applied to your own applications. In the course of demonstrating the patterns, this talk will also cover various aspects of ASP.NET AJAX including the latest features.

Unit testing tips and tricks (Roy Osherove)
In this talk we'll explore techniques for dealing with various unit testing scenarios. From testing events, to testing databases to testing LINQ queries and anonymous types, we'll see many small scenarios and discuss the unit testing patterns that can help test them.

The .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Framework (Alex Turner)
Modern applications operate on data in several different forms: Relational tables, XML documents, and in-memory objects. Each of these domains can have profound differences in semantics, data types, and capabilities, and much of the complexity in today's applications is the result of these mismatches. Alex Turner, C# Compiler Program Manager, explains how Visual Studio 2008 aims to unify the programming models through LINQ capabilities in Microsoft Visual C# and Visual Basic, a strongly typed data access framework, and an innovative Application Programming Interface (API) for manipulating and querying XML.

LINQ Under the Covers: An In-Depth Look at LINQ (Alex Turner)
Want to know what really happens when you execute your favorite LINQ queries? Join us as we peek behind the curtain in Reflector to see how the C# compiler translates LINQ query expressions into standard query operators, while digging into the iterators that make LINQ to Objects tick. Learn exactly when query evaluation is deferred, and see how lambda expressions and closures work together to enable LINQ's elegant syntax. Then we'll explore how nearly identical LINQ to Objects and LINQ to SQL queries will result in radically different translations as we dig into the details of IQueryable and expression trees. Finally, we follow our IQueryable objects across the language barrier to investigate the unique features VB brings to LINQ, including XML literals. It is suggested that you attend the session "The .NET Language Integrated Query (LINQ) Framework" before attending this session.

Creating Custom LINQ Providers – LINQ to Anything (Bart De Smet)
LINQ is all about unifying data access in a natural language integrated way. But there’s more than just LINQ to Objects, LINQ to SQL and LINQ to XML. In this session, we put ourselves on the other side of the curtain and explore the wonderful world of LINQ providers. You’ll learn how to create a fully functional LINQ query provider allowing users to target your favorite query language using familiar LINQ syntax in C# 3.0 and VB 9.0: LINQ to AD, LINQ to SharePoint, LINQ to AD, LINQ to Outlook, you name it! This is your chance to get to know the inner workings of LINQ.

Building internet web sites using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (Joris Poelmans)
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides the necessary framework components to build an Internet web sites using master pages, page layouts and WCM specific functionality. In this session we will take an in-depth look at how to use these components and which are the best practices  for developing an internet web site while leveraging the MOSS platform. This session will conclude with a look at the Accessibility Kit for SharePoint as well as at the migration story for MCMS customers.

Building RIAs for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 (Patrick Tisseghem)
In this session you’ll learn how to leverage Web 2.0 technologies to deliver a rich and interactive end-user experience for SharePoint sites and content. Topics that will be covered are: building ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 enabled Web Parts; creating and consuming SharePoint Web Services that are AJAX-enabled; Web Parts hosting Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0 applications; techniques to have the Silverlight applications communicated back and forth with SharePoint content such as items in lists and libraries, user profile information and search results; samples of how publishing portals can be enriched with Silverlight navigation controls and enhanced page layouts; demos on how to build Vista Gadgets that display SharePoint content using traditional UI techniques as well as using Silverlight.

Building Rich Web Experience with Silverlight using Expression Blend and Visual Studio (Wim Verhaegen)
Silverlight is a cross-platform technology that brings new user interface capabilities such as vector graphics, media, animations and XAML to the browser.
Learn about building Silverlight applications using JavaScript, and see how Silverlight fits naturally into the AJAX development model.
This session provides developers the in-depth knowledge they need to start building Silverlight 1.0 applications today using Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression Blend.

IIS7 End-to-End Extensibility for Developers (Brian Delahunty)
In IIS7 the server exposes a brand new, powerful extensibility model for building server features that can be used to extend its functionality, or replace any of the default features.  With the Integrated Pipeline architecture, managed modules become virtually as powerful as native modules. In part I of this two part session, we will illustrate extending the server in an end to end scenario, building a managed module to extend the runtime and replace existing functionality.  We will then extend IIS7 diagnostics to instrument our module with custom trace events.

WCF and WF: Integrating two key technologies of .NET 3.5 (Ingo Rammer)
Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation are two cornerstones of .NET 3.5. In this session, you will learn about different ways to combine them to workflow-enable your WCF applications.

Advanced Debugging with Visual Studio (Ingo Rammer)
Basically every .NET developer knows the Visual Studio debugger, but only few know its little secrets. In this session, Ingo shows you what you can achieve with this tool beyond the setting of simple breakpoints. You will learn how advanced breakpoints, debugger macros and visualizers, interactive breakpoints, tracepoints and interactive object instantiation at development time can support your hunt for bugs in your applications.

Using Visual Studio 2008 as a RAD tool to build a distributed application (Jay Schmelzer)
In this demo intensive session we’ll take a look at improved support in Visual Studio 2008 for building distributed business applications.  We will focus on Visual Studio’s support for building and consuming WCF services, sharing business validation rules between client and server, implementing local caching of read-only data on the client, sharing common application services like authentication and authorization between Windows and Web client applications and much more.  Next we will turn our attention to web and see how Visual Studio 2008 allows us to easily incorporate rich experiences into our existing ASP.NET web sites using ASP.NET AJAX, the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit and take advantage of improved HTML designer, CSS editor and JavaScript intellisense and debugging.  Visual Studio 2005 raised the productivity bar for business application developers.  Visual Studio 2008 builds on that foundation bringing unmatched productivity gains to distributed business application developers.

Visual Studio 2008: Building applications with Office 2007 (Jay Schmelzer)
This session provides an overview of the tools and technologies that enable developers to leverage the new Visual Studio 2008 and Office platform tools and technologies to build new and exciting Office Business Applications. You’ll learn a number of key technologies in this session, including the creation of Office smart clients, development of custom SharePoint workflow, and extension of Outlook to integrate key business data into one of our most popular productivity tools.

Visual Basic: Tips and Tricks for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (Jay Schmelzer)
In this session, we combine some tips for existing Visual Studio features, and tricks for leveraging new Visual Studio 2008 features. We look at a variety of existing features including operator overloading, refactoring, creating your own snippets, some tips for using frameworks classes (and generics), and leveraging application settings. Then we look at new features including some LINQ Do’s and Don’ts, My Extensibility, and taking control of unit testing in Visual Studio. All of these tips are aimed at giving you a more productive, fun programming experience.

Office: Office Open XML Formats (Chad Hower)
Office 2007 now stores its documents in XML. This makes manipulation and creation of documents easy to do, even without Office installed. The Office Open XML format is also an ECMA standard and has backwards compatibility with older versions of Office as well as some capabilities on Linux and Macintosh, as well as Java. Surprised? Learn about these features and more in this session.

Architecture: Dude, where's my business logic? (Chad Hower)
Over the years we have moved from desktop, to client server, to 3-tier, to n-tier, to service orientation. In the process though many things have changed, but many habits have remained. This session discusses what we are doing wrong, and solutions.

.NET 3.0: WinForms and WPF (Chad Hower)
With two options for building forms, which is better to use? For the near future the answer often is both. In this session we will cover the strengths and weaknesses of each, and how to use them effectively together.

Today, the new website for Mix 08 went live... The really cool event will take place again in Las Vegas from March 5-7 2008, about 2 months earlier in the year than last year. More here: http://visitmix.com/2008/index.html 



If only I could be there again...

Microsoft Belgium is organising an event on Silverlight and Blend on 19th June in Mechelen. Speakers will be Peter Himschoot and Wim Verhaegen.
You can read more about it here: http://www.microsoft.com/belux/msdn/nl/events/20070619.mspx.

Sadly, I won't be able to attend :-(