Ben H Blog - Keep it Simple, Then Refactor.

Just a couple quick links to my slides and demos from my VS Live sessions.  I spoke on TypesScript and how to Build Touch Enabled Web Sites.  Attendees at both sessions where great.  Thanks for attending!  Please fill out the session evals to let us know how we are doing.

Type Script Slides and Demos

Touch Enabled Web Sites

Thanks again for attending.  More to come related to VS Live Vegas…

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.

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.

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)

Last Saturday was the 2nd annual Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta.  Just like last year it was a great event.  For a list of the speakers and topics go to the site for the event here.  Julie Yack organized the event this year and it was awesome once again.  Kathleen Dollard put together a beginners track and Jeff Certain, Drew Devault and myself where lucky enough to do the presentations.  Jeff did a great job going over the best practices related to architecting an application.  His main point was that coding furiously with no design in a bad idea.  Instead use UML and other technologies to design the architecture first.  It might take a bit longer at the start, but it will save time in refactoring and backtracking later.

The topic of my talk was beginning ASP.NET.  It is almost impossible to decide on how to talk about ASP.NET in a 75 minute session.  Most of the audience was familiar with HTML and JavaScript concepts.  So, I decided to focus on how to utilize ASP.NET to help extend the concepts and languages you already know.  I talked about code behind and how it automatically wired up events and some state management.  We also talked a bit about master pages and themes.  At the end I showed a bit more advanced stuff like AJAX and the AJAX Control Toolkit to display some of the power of ASP.NET.  After my session I created a basic media player to fit in the application using Silverlight.  Drew also created a media player that worked outside the browser and was not integrated into ASP.NET.

In the end I think it was a great day.  Below are the slides and demos from my session.  The demos do not include the final version of Jeff’s code or Drew’s Media player.  They are my web application and the architecture as it was when I started.  Thanks to those that attended and let me know if you have any questions.

PowerPoint Zip

Demos

I just saw this today and it looks cool.  Let me give you the high level overview and then you can go to Scott Guthrie’s detailed post.  A while back I started to use jQuery to help with all my JavaScript coding.  I really like it.  Even if you don’t use the really advanced features it is a huge help just selecting and operating on elements client side.  If you want some more info on jQuery just search the web and you will find tons of good documentation out there on the blogosphere.

So, one of the hassles with jQuery is that you have to include the libraries in script tags on your page in order to use them.  This is not a huge deal, but it can be a pain if you want to use the libraries in multiple projects and maintain one central version of the jQuery libraries.  That is were the Microsoft AJAX CDN comes into play.  It is a Microsoft hosted version of both the AJAX libraries and the jQuery libraries.  So, you can point to a Microsoft URL and bring in these libraries.  This will find the location that is closest to your user and bring down the libraries from the cache on that server.  Should be a much faster solution for everyone.  Check out the details on Scott Guthrie’s blog here.

I am happy to say I am presenting at the Spring ‘09 SSWUG.ORG .NET vConference on April 22, 23, 24.  I recorded my sessions earlier and I’m please with the results.  If you are not familiar with the vConference format you can get a 10 minute sample of one of my presentations here.  The cost of the conference is only $125 and since it is a virtual conference there are no additional expenses.  There really is some great content presented by outstanding presenters.  Here is the link to check out all the SSWUG vConferences going on:

https://www.vconferenceonline.com/upcoming.asp

I also wanted to point out a free event that is going on Friday, April 17th.  Here is the link to the free event:

https://www.vconferenceonline.com/shows/spring09/sql/s09event.asp

I will keep this blog updated with my content and slides once the conference begins.

Just wanted to pass on this link to a post from Rocky Lhotka.  He describes why many of his new projects are starting to favor Silverlight over ASP.NET and Win Forms.  It’s a quick read and gets you thinking.  Check it out:

http://www.lhotka.net/weblog/WhySilverlightIsTheFuture.aspx

I know January is almost over, but to me the year is still new.  I wanted to inform everyone about all the awesome User Groups and Community events in Colorado.

One of the most exciting upcoming events is the first ever Rocky Mountain Tech Tri-Fecta on Saturday, Feb. 21.  I cannot explain how cool this event is going to be!  It’s basically an all day geek fix.  There will be sessions related to .NET development, SQL Server and Windows Server.  So, if you work with MS products or know someone who does this is the event for you.  We have tons of speakers (Scott Hanselman is coming!) from all over the country and many who work for Microsoft and have inside info you cannot get anywhere else.  If you like what you are hearing please be sure visit the www.rmtechtrifecta.com site to register for the event to reserve your spot.

Next I wanted to let people know about the South Colorado .NET User Group.  I have taken over the leadership of this group from Julie Yack.  Julie Yack, David Yack and David Milner round out the leadership team for this group.  Next Tuesday we have Kathleen Dollard coming down from Ft. Collins to talk about rethinking Object Orientation.  SHould be great!  Please check out the link above to get more details.

Here are the links to all the MS related user groups I can think of in Colorado.

Denver Visual Studio User Group

North Colorado .NET User Group

Boulder .Net User Group

Colorado Springs SQL Server User Group

Denver SQL Server User Group

Colorado Springs Windows User Group

Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group

Please let me know if I missed a group.

I've been meaning to blog about this for awhile now.  If you have not checked out the .NET Framework 3.5 Enhancements Training Kit, you should.  It has documentation and tutorials on the cool new features in the 3.5 Framework including: ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Dynamic Data, ASP.NET AJAX History, ASP.NET Routing, ADO.NET Data Services, ADO.NET Entity Framework, WCF 3.5 SP1, and the .NET Framework Client Profile.  You can download the training kit here.

One enhancement that we are interested in at work is the AJAX History enhancements.  This is cool because it enables AJAX to use browser history.  In the past when you used AJAX to do a post back on a section of your web page, that post back was not captured by the browser history.  So, users could not use the back functionality of their browsers to get back to before the AJAX post back.  The new AJAX History features allows us to configure the page to use browser history.  It's pretty easy so if your interested just download the training kit and walk through the tutorial.  It takes 15 - 30 minutes and you will be ready to go.

Enjoy!  Let em know some of the cool stuff you find with the training kit.

Today was another great day at the vConference.  I attended some great sessions over the course of these three days and now I'm excited to go back and watch the ones I missed on demand.  I hope everyone had as much fun as I did with the conference!

I did finally get my hosting situation figured out.  That means I can get my slides and demos out here for people to download.  I do believe that the vConference site will have this stuff posted eventually, but in case they don't here you go:

SharePoint:

Business Data Catalog Part I

Business Data Catalog part II

KeyNote - SharePoint and SilverLight

.NET:

Beginning WPF Databinding

Advanced WPF Databinding

Design Patterns

KeyNote - Data Services

KeyNote - SilverLight and Cross Domain Calls

KeyNote - LINQ vs. ADO

Day 2 of the conference was just as good as day 1.  We had great sessions all day long.  I attended a bunch of the sessions and had some great conversations with many of the attendees.  One of the issues we ran into today was the demos where not available.  I was going to post them here, but I'm having some issues with my ISV and getting the files to the server.  I will post them ASAP.

In the mean time, enjoy the rest of the conference.

Day one of the Virtual Conference is over.  It was a good day.  We had dueling Dynamic Data Presentation going on from David Yack and Rachel Appel.  If you missed one go to the on demand section of the conference and watch the other.  After  watching both of these sessions you can become an expert on Dynamic Data.

I also attended many of the other session.  Rob Bagby did a great Rest session and Scott Golightley did an awesome WCF session.  Kathleen Dollard gave two great sessions and Tim Heuer got us started with SilverLight.  Not to mention a killer Keynote delivered by yours truly.

And all this was just the .NET Conference. 

I also delivered my two sessions on SharePoint and Line of Business applications.  These were with the SharePoint conference.  Again, if you missed it please check it out on demand.  If you have any questions please direct them to me.  I'd be happy to help.

Tomorrow I deliver my two sessions on WPF data binding.  Please  check them out.  It's also not too late register and attend.  You would also get access to all the on demand sessions from day one.  Here is the link to the registration and my discount code.

Enjoy!

The PDC is a great place to get the latest news related to Microsoft Technologies.  It's a good idea to keep up to date with what is going on in the world of Microsoft.  However, most of the stuff released and demoed there is bleeding edge stuff that won't be available for live deploys for months or even years.  That's where the SSWUG.org Virtual Conferences being held next week come in.  Three days of great content, most of which can be used in the applications you are building right now and can be deployed TODAY!!!  Four conferences are being held that include: SQL Server, SharePoint, .NET and BI.  Not only is it great content, but's it's only $100!!!  Or if you use my discount code you can get it for $90.  My discount code is:

SPVIPBH

Please use this code to save yourself $10 and go have a burrito at Chipotle on me.  Mmmmm Chipotle.......

Just wanted to update everyone on a couple of things related to the .Net Virtual Conference.  In my previous post, I explained the idea of the conference and discussed all the great content that is available.  In these hard economic times, getting access to this type of content for $100 is a great opportunity to save some money without compromising the bottom line.  Well, things have gotten even better!  Announcing a change to the .NET Developer Virtual Conference.  Now the .NET Developer Virtual Conference also provides access to the SharePoint, Business Intelligence and the SQL Server virtual conferences.  Read the details here.  Now you pay the same price ($100) and get access to over 120 session.  Pretty awesome.  PLEASE NOTE THE DATE CHANGE FOR ALL CONFERENCES.  THE CONFERENCES WILL NOW OCCUR ON NOV. 5th, 6th and 7th.  Here is the registration link.  Do not miss out on this opportunity to be in the know!

On a personal note I recorded my sessions last week and I think they went pretty well.  My WPF talks are not the flashy, shiny WPF sessions you've seen in the past.  These sessions will help you with the actual guts of doing a useful WPF application.  Leave all that flashy, shiny stuff to those artsy designers and their black turtlenecks.

I was also subjected to an interview that was posted by Chris Shaw.  If your interested in my answers to the tough questions in the interview please click here.  Please do not be scared away by my ugly mug at the top of the article.  If you look around on Chris Shaw's blog you will find some of the interviews with the other presenters.

I'm using the cascading drop down provided by the AJAX control toolkit.  I started getting a "[method error 500]" in one of my drop downs a few months ago.  At the time I thought it was bad data and after I removed some of the dups all was fine.  Well, the problem came back recently and I determined all the data was accurate.  So, I began debugging through the problem.  After I got some more details from Fiddler and debugging, I was able to find this post that fixed the issue.  Kudos to Simon Harriyott.

My work here is done.

Fiddler is an invaluable tool for seeing what is actually being sent over the wire in your web application.  Fiddler runs without issue when using it to track chatter that is occurring over the normal HTTP channels.  However, it will not log traffic when running your ASP.NET application in debug mode locally.  There is an easy trick to fix that.  Here is the post that describes the fix.  Enjoy!

Now play that Fiddler boy and give the devil his due...  When are they going to release the Golden Fiddler?  (Sorry for the "Devil went down to Georgia" reference.  I just couldn't help myself)