VS Live Redmond Recap. Who’s ready for VS Live Orlando?

Last week was VS Live in Redmond.  I’m just recovering enough to write a post about it.  It was a great conference.  The best thing about this conference is the interaction between presenters and attendees.  As a presenter I love the ability to talk offline with attendees at all the different events setup by the conference organizers.  I also like interacting with the rest of the presenters at the conference as well.  I really feel energized and ready to go after taking in all the information at the conference.

I presented two sessions in Redmond.  One on Internet Explorer\HTML5\CSS3 and one on using MEF to build composable applications.  Both sessions went well.  The attendees had great questions and were well engaged.  During these sessions a few code changes and demos were done.  Below are links to the updated slides and demo code:

IE9: HTML5 Developer Overview

MEF Composition

Let me know if you have any feedback regarding the content of these files.  Other than that I want to say thank you to all those that attended my sessions.

After all that happened in Redmond I am jazzed to do it all again in Orlando.  If you have not registered for the Orlando conference do it here now as early bird pricing ends next week.  As a presenter I love to attend the other sessions at the conference and gain as much knowledge as possible.  In Redmond I was always conflicted on which sessions to attend.  I’m looking forward to catching those sessions I missed in Orlando.

Hopefully the temperature in Orlando will be a bit warmer as well.  See you there.

VS Live October 17–21 in Redmond

We all know that PDC… I mean BUILD is coming up in a couple weeks in Anaheim, California.  Microsoft is keeping all the announcements (Including a real agenda) for BUILD really close to the vest.  One thing is for sure, there will be some fallout after BUILD.  Many questions, rumors and suspicions will be debated out there in cyberspace.  What better place to get the real answers than at Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond?  VS Live in Redmond includes sessions from some of the top names in the industry, including many Microsoft Product\Program Managers.  No one knows what will come out at BUILD (Or no one can talk about it until after BUILD).  In the short time between BUILD and VS Live the speakers will undoubtedly be up to speed on what is going on in the Microsoft world.  Join us at VS Live and have access to all the speakers to get your questions answered by real world software engineers.

Early bird rates are available until Sept. 7th.  Click on the image below to register for VS Live in Redmond and get a special speaker discount.

By the way I will be presenting on HTML 5 and MEF at VS Live in Redmond.  I sincerely hope to see you there.

HTML5 WebCamp - Bring Your Tent and Get Ready For Some Smores

I just wanted to make a quick post to inform everyone about an an all day HTML5 event coming to Colorado Springs on Friday, June 10th.  The event is presented by Microsoft and includes demoes, presentations and hands-on labs.  MS Developer Evangelists Dr. Doris Chen and Michael Palermo will host and present the event.

Now for the info that will seal the deal.  The thing that makes taking a Friday off work to attend this event worth it.  I will make a guest appearance during some of the demoes and try to throw Michael Palermo off his game.  Demoes are hard enough when you do them yourself.  Now Michael will have to deal with me driving while he directs me from the backseat.  Should be an enjoyable ride.

To get more details and register for the event visit the MS Events site here.  I hope to see you on June 10th.  It will be epic!  (As the kids say these days)

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HTML 5 vs. Silverlight

Ever since PDC 2010 there has been tons of controversy and debate swirling around HTML 5 and what it means for Silverlight.  About a week ago Scott Guthrie wrote a post that I found on the Silverlight Team Blog (here) that addresses this issue.  I recommend reading that post and the comments as well.  When all the buzz came out about HTML 5 I saw a bunch of angry posts from Silverlight developers.  Many of the comments on Scott’s post fall along the same lines.  However, it has been months since PDC and people are starting to calm down and realize that HTML 5 is just another tool in the tool box.  I compare this to the ASP.NET MVC release and how it affected Web forms developers.  At first you feel threatened.  You think that all the hard work you put into mastering Web forms or Silverlight will be irrelevant.  After awhile you realize that new technologies simply give you more options when solving problems for your clients.

My opinion is that HTML 5 and Silverlight will co-exist for a very long time.  The reason is they have different usages and solve different problems.  Especially in the mobile space.  No matter how you slice it users like the native experience of apps on their mobile devices.  I know with HTML 5 you can make websites look and feel like native mobile apps, but the experience is still just a bit off.  So Silverlight will be around as a mobile development story for some time.

I also believe Silverlight will remain for awhile because of the fact that HTML 5 is JavaScript intensive.  In my opinion JavaScript is still not as friendly to work with as managed code, even with all the new libraries like JQuery and Dojo.  Maybe someday the libraries and tooling will make developing JavaScript easier.  Again that is not going to happen for some time.

So, let’s review our UI choices for developing new .NET applications.  There is ASP.NET, ASP.MVC, Silverlight and don’t forget WPF.  I know that is simplifying things quite a bit, but in general that is what we have from a .NET perspective.  Each one of these technologies have there pros and cons.  The best advice I can give you is to design your applications with services and business layers so your UI is as thin as possible.  If you do that, it is not really that hard to create a UI layer for every one of these technologies.