Community report – XDDN Melbourne April

Ian Randal (@kiwipom) spoke at the XDDN Melbourne April meeting.

He lightly touched on what IoC is, in the context of how Caliburn.Micro uses it. He then went on to show some demos of  Caliburn.Micro. He demonstrated how a XAML page can be created which binds to a ViewModel, without requiring any “UI glue code” to stick it all together. It made for a simple application that had a higher percentage of the code being business logic, rather than scaffolding.

A recording of the talk can be found below

https://vimeo.com/41073059/

Windows 8 developer camp companion application + source code

I put aside a few hours over the weekend and created a companion application for the “Windows 8 developer camps” that are currently running all around Australia. http://www.lalaninja.com.au/2012/03/19/windows-8-developer-camps-australia/

It only took a few hours to throw something simple together for the attendees. The application provides some basic features to help out on the day

• Daily schedule
• Dates
• XDDN details. So that attendees can continue with their Windows 8 learning
• Links to online Windows 8 developer resources
• Links to source code of the demos I gave in my presentations (submitted in pending app update)

Download the Windows Phone 7 marketplace right now
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-AU/apps/1a7853b1-1d2c-4d1c-9ba1-6d709053eced

I have made the source code available for anyone that wants to see how a simple app can be put together in only a few hours and submitted to the marketplace.
https://github.com/DavidBurela/Windows8DeveloperCampPhoneApplication

XDDN around Australia

To try and streamline the XDDN groups around Australia, I have been working with the organisers of the other cities to create a few central locations for everything.
For those unfamiliar with XDDN, it is a usergroup I run that focuses on UX, Design and Development on Microsoft UI platforms. Such as Win8, WinPhone7, HTML5, etc.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/@XDDN_AU

Melbourne: http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-XDDN/

Sydney: http://www.meetup.com/Sydney-XDDN/

Perth: http://www.meetup.com/Perth-XDDN/

The main reason for moving everything to Meetup is that it allows everyone to easily see upcoming events and get automatically notified when new events are created.

Having XDDN on Meetup.com also supports my other goals of getting more people involved with their local development communities. Joining the groups will allow you to easily find other local groups that you may want to attend, such as Agile or Alt.Net groups.

Please join the group for your city, as the old event sites (such as EventBrite) will be slowly decommissioned over the next few weeks.

XDDN Melbourne – April meeting

This month I have organised for Ian Randall (@Kiwipom) to talk at the April XDDN meeting.

I have also created a new twitter account @XDDN_AU from which I will be tweeting all of the sessions for Melbourne, Sydney & Perth. Be sure to follow it.

Register here: http://xddn-melbourne-april2012.eventbrite.com/

Learn about creating great MVVM applications with LESS CODE. Ian Randall will be demonstrating how to use Caliburn.Micro to create cleaner XAML based applications. These techniques will work with WinRT (Windows 8), Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and WPF.
Caliburn.Micro can be downloaded at http://caliburnmicro.codeplex.com/

Time: 5:30 pm networking & pizza.
6:00 pm presentations start.

Caliburn.Micro – Ian Randall

Caliburn.Micro (http://caliburnmicro.codeplex.com/) is more than just an MVVM library, it’s a client application framework that works every bit as hard for your app that a web framework does: Logging, composition, binding, and much, much more.
This session will cover getting started with Caliburn.Micro and give practical demonstrations of Convention Over Configuration, Actions, Screens & Conductors and will go a bit deeper under the covers (if we get time).

Ian Randall is a software developer for Datacom in Auckland and a XAML geek on the internets. He helps to run the Metro Meetup in Auckland and just spent the last 6 months putting on ‘codemania’ (http://codemania.co.nz). He is currently trying to catch a breath…
He loves Melbourne, partly for the friendly Victorian people, but mostly for @aeoth’s legendary chocolate brownies.

I’m speaking at the Melbourne March XDDN

I’m speaking at Melbourne XDDN this month. With the Windows 8 Consumer Preview released, now is the perfect time to reexamine Windows 8. Below are the meeting details:

Register here: http://xddn-melbourne-march2012.eventbrite.com/
Date: Wed 21st March
Time: 5:30 networking & pizza. 6pm presentations start

A tour around Windows 8 – David Burela
Windows 8 has been announced to the public and is being branded as “Windows reimagined”. This introductory session will show some of the new features coming with Windows 8.
A touch first interface, user account syncing via the cloud, “charms”, app to app data sharing, and the ability to use a picture password to log into windows will all be demonstrated.

Getting started with Windows 8 development – David Burela
So you’ve heard that Windows 8 has a new way of applications known as “Metro styled immersive apps”, but what does this actually mean? What is WinRT? Is Microsoft really making developers use HTML5 to create desktop apps? What about your previous investments in Silverlight?
Join David Burela as he helps clarify what the new programming model is and what impact it will have on you. Explanations of WinRT and how to create basic applications will be shown.

I’m speaking at the Melbourne September XDDN

I’m speaking at the Melbourne XDDN this month. Now that Windows 8 and the WinRT programming model has been released, it makes sense to focus on them. Below are the meeting details:

Register here: http://sddn-sep-2011.eventbrite.com/
Date: Tue 27 Sep
Time: 5:30 networking & pizza. 6pm presentations start

A tour around Windows 8 – David Burela
Windows 8 has been announced to the public and is being branded as “Windows reimagined”. This introductory session will show some of the new features coming with Windows 8.
A touch first interface, user account syncing via the cloud, “charms”, app to app data sharing, and the ability to use a picture password to log into windows will all be demonstrated.

Getting started with Windows 8 development – David Burela
So you’ve heard that Windows 8 has a new way of applications known as “Metro styled immersive apps”, but what does this actually mean? What is WinRT? Is Microsoft really making developers use HTML5 to create desktop apps? What about your previous investments in Silverlight?
Join David Burela as he helps clarify what the new programming model is and what impact it will have on you. Explanations of WinRT and how to create basic applications will be shown.

BUILD keynote day 1–Metro experience with Jupiter, XAML and HTML5/JS

Highlights

• You can download the developer preview of Windows 8
  http://dev.windows.com/
  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/13/welcome-to-windows-8-the-developer-preview.aspx
• The confusion around HTML5, xaml and Jupiter is finally cleared up.
  The new immersive apps (full screen, metro style apps which are launched from the tile based interface) can be built in either C#/XAML or HTML5/JS. Under the covers it reflects into the WinRT APIs. Apps built like this will run on ANY Win8 machine (x86, ARM, etc)
  
  
• Silverlight & WPF are "legacy". They put it onto the slide for show. The Win8 xaml looks to be 90% compatible with Silverlight. Demos are shown where they take a Silverlight app, copy/paste the code into a new Win8 XAML app, and only a few namespaces need to be changed. A silverlight grid is then changed to use the native WinRT grid to make it touch enabled and "Metro-y"
• The Win8 XAML app is ported to Windows Phone 7 with only 1 line changed.
• New version of Visual Studio available to help build apps for Win 8 "Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview" (got to love Microsoft product names)
• Expression blend works for editing the HTML5/JS apps
• The native WinRT controls work in XAML and HTML5
• New windows 8 app store. Store & submission process VERY similar to Windows Phone 7. Can submit via Visual Studio
  Paul Thurrott: "Biggest point of Windows Store: Microsoft is NOT taking a 30 percent cut. It will take a ZERO percent cut."
• Win8 machines can be easily restored back to a "clean base image" that developer can specify. Keeps all files, just reverts apps. (Reset/Refresh)
• Windows Live application integration. Nice support for photos, calendar, mail, people. Very similar to Windows Phone 7 built in features.
  Windows user account settings Synced across PCs via the cloud (profile photo, etc)
• Win8 specs are the same as Win 7. Consumes less memory after startup.
  Boot times have been massively reduced. Cold boot demo shows the PC almost starting faster than the monitor can turn on.

Useful articles

• Brief analysis of Metro on Windows 8 by Long Zheng http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110914/an-analysis-of-metro-on-windows-8-developer-preview/
• Windows 8: 101 tips & tricks for the new start experience http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110914/windows-8-101-tips-tricks-for-new-start-experience/
• Summary of Metro vs. Desktop apps by Mary Jo Foley http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-developers-metro-is-your-future/10611
• Mary Jo Foley on "what we do & don’t know about WIn8" http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-8-heres-what-we-now-know-and-dont/10608

Community report–Melbourne SDDN April

I am now in charge of organising the speakers for the Melbourne http://sddn.org.au group (Silverlight Designer and Developer Network).

This month I arranged for three speakers to present:

• David Glover (@dglover) – Windows Phone 7 social View Template
• Cristian Prieto (@cprieto) – Creating plugins for Expression Blend
• Chris Walshie (@ChrisWalshie) – Upcoming features in Windows Phone 7 Mango update

David Glover showed a new Windows Phone 7 template that has released on codeplex. It allows anyone to very quickly put together a Windows Phone 7 app that aggregates data feeds (RSS, Twitter, etc.). This means that you can create an application that displays the latest news from your business, or perhaps a sports team. The template is available at http://socialviewer.codeplex.com/

David’s session was recorded and can be viewed below (8 minutes)

Glover also created a screencast after the event that can be viewed here

 

Cristian Prieto’s session explained the basics of creating a plugin for Expression Blend. The session was recorded but not online yet. Here is a link to an old blog post of mine that explains how to get started and configure Visual Studio for creating plugins. https://davidburela.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/guide-to-creating-expression-blend-3-addins/

Chris Walshie gave a slideshow presentation explaining the new features that are in the upcoming Windows Phone 7 update, codename Mango. He attended Mix11 so was able to tell us all about

• Background workers
• Multiple live tiles
• Deep linking into your applications
• Changes to the push notifications
• etc.

Community report: Code Camp Oz 2010–Luke Drumm on Windows Phone 7 & XNA

During this presentation Luke Drumm gives an introduction to programming for the Windows Phone 7. He covers how to create a Silverlight based application, then explains all of the theory that goes into creating XNA games for WP7.

http://www.vimeo.com/17630858

 

More videos from day 2 of Code Camp 2010

• Rory Primrose – Windows Identity Foundation
• Krzysztof Kozmic – IoC container usage
• Rajitha Aththanyake – Real world unit testing
• Luke Drumm – Windows Phone 7 & XNA
• Alex Mackey – HTML5
• Liam McLennan – BDD

 

Silverlight Firestarter 2010 keynote

Summary

• Silverlight 5 coming out end of next year (2011).
• Silverlight 5 will have lots of performance improvements
• Some new features that brings it closer to WPF
• XAML debugging
• Profiling tools for CPU & memory. looking forward to that
• They say “Media applications” way too many times in the first 15 minutes to try and emphasise that that is the focus of Silverlight
• WAY too many similar apps shown and reshown from different companies, their own spin on a “Silverlight Line of Business application with interactive charts”.
• Lots of nice new 3D accelerated capabilities that were played down. In my opinion THIS should have been the target of the keynote/Silverlight. This is something that HTML5 doesn’t do so well yet.