Downloads/Code

• IntroToWinRT.pptx (4.79 MB)
• IntroToWinRT GitHub Repository

There were a number of resources discussed in our meeting and for convenience you can see find them here.

Resource Videos

• PLAT-874T – Lap around the Windows Runtime
• PLAT-875T – Windows Runtime internals: understanding “Hello World“
• TOOL-531T – Using WinRT with C#
• TOOL-533T – Using WinRT with JS
• TOOL-532T – Using WinRT with C++
• TOOL-930C – A .NET developer’s view of Windows 8 app development

Resources

• Windows Dev Center
• Windows Runtime Forum

The keynote centered around 2 main topics. First is the changes in computing, including hardware, mobility, and the way in which we interact with multiple devices of all sizes. Second, is the new Metro UI , which is the way in which immersive Windows 8 applications are built and developed to provide rich experiences on the native operating system.

Computers have been changing for quite some time, devices are getting smaller, they are responding to touch input, and customers are using them on the go. This means applications need to be built in a way that allows customers to interact with content in a performant way no matter the screen size. Customers are also using computers in all aspects of their daily lives. They need applications that are mobile and that actively synchronize themselves across multiple devices, so that the experience is seamless.

Touch is an extremely important aspect to all this, with former GUI technologies there were some affordances to lags in performance when using a traditional mouse input. When using touch as a primary input it seriously impacts the user experience if the application doesn’t respond to a gesture. Microsoft has stated that they are committed to increasing performance and with reports of an 8 second boot time, quick resumes through Connected Standby, and a decrease in overall operating system memory consumption to 281 MB of core OS memory (down from 484MB), it is apparent that they are really squeezing every byte possible out of the operating system.

Microsoft also announced a brand new line of computing devices from the small tablet devices (which were given out to all attendees) to large multi-monitor desktops which support touch and hardware accelerated graphics. Power users will also benefit from the new Hyper-V support which is now included in Windows 8. Another important hardware feature that was announced is the ability to Refresh and Reset your desktop settings to a factory state.

The Metro UI is much broader, while reimaging the entire Windows 8 application experience, they have also reimagined the entire application model in the form of new API that sits on top of the Windows kernel call the Windows Runtime. This new Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a brand new application model that is completely different than the previous Win32 model. It offers a fresh new Windows start screen with Live Tiles and Notifications. Applications can now interact with the entire screen real estate without the need for window management complexities like chrome, minimizing, etc. WinRT has built in support for Charms, which allow developers to communication across applications. The only bit of screen real estate consumed by the runtime is a single pixel around the entire screen which is used to invoke both system and application commands via a concept called “first pixel sensitivity”.

There has been a lot of talk about Silverlight and WPF developers getting phased out of the new Windows 8 platform, first off, this is not true. Windows 8 has committed to offering full backwards compatibility with Windows 7 and all the Win32 applications and frameworks which are built on top of it. This doesn’t mean Silverlight or WPF will work on WinRT. However, (before you get too upset), your skills as a XAML developer are not lost. WinRT has rebranded their previous UI frameworks into a new set of components, which you will find very similar, under the distinction of XAML (the UI markup language) and the model/controller language of your choice (ie. C#, VB, C++). They’ve also added to the WinRT the ability to create applications with a view markup defined in HTML5 and CSS with controller logic written in javascript. A move that will hopefully attract designers who were previously constrained to web technologies to come on board and start creating native applications for the windows 8 platform.

Since this is a “Developer’s Preview Release” and since so many changes were made to the application development and deployment model, Microsoft also announced the release of new version of Visual Studio 11 and Expression Blend. The hope is that developers will download the bits and start looking as ways in which they can reimagine their own applications. Everything presented today will be provided for developers to download at http://dev.windows.com.

This year was filled with a number of announcements at the two keynotes I did my best to update my twitter feed with some of the cool ones.

The first keynote was focused around recent release of IE9, the next generation of web, ASP.NET MVC3, and HTML5, and the new release of IE 10 Platform Preview 1 (watch online):

• IE9 Released
• IE10 Platform Preview1 Released (download)
• HTML5 Labs available to demonstrate HTML5 features and compatibility
• New Developer Conference coming to Anaheim, CA from September 13-16 2011 (PDC maybe? maybe not?)
• Microsoft is commited to pushing and actively contributing to NuGet (an open source package manager)
• Tools update for ASP.NET MVC 3 available for download
• Entity Framework 4.1 released (download)
• Updated Scaffolding support for Entity Framework and MVC
• Updated ASP.NET MVC New Project Dialog (screenshot) with support for the Razor View engine, HTML5 markup
• MVC 3 new projects now include built in Modernizr script support and many scripts and references are updatable via NuGet package references.

The second keynote, which really piqued my interests was all about Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, and the Kinect (watch):

• Windows Phone 7
  • Respectable acknowledgement of the Windows Phone 7 Update state by Joe Belfiore, and announcement of the Where’s my Update? page.
  • New Windows Phone 7 Update codenamed “Mango” shipping this Fall
  • Focus of Mango is on Opportunity (Ecosystem, Countries, Discoverability), Capability (Browser, Phone Integration, Multi-tasking), and Developer Experience and Tools
  • Opportunity
    • Nokia appeared live and affirmed their commitment to partnering with Microsoft to reach hundreds of millions of customers
    • Mango will support for 16 Languages, 38 Countries, and 35 Countries can buy apps from a single Marketplace
    • Marketplace search added to App list on home screen
    • New Pivot view added to App decriptions in Marketplace
    • New Related Apps pivot on in Marketplace
    • Hubs and Search Cards (Movies, Restaurants, etc) have an Extras tab that deep links to relevant content
  • Capability
    • IE9 and HTML5 will be included in the Mango
    • HTML5 audio/video tag support added
    • Background Audio support added to Mango
    • Background Agents available in Mango, with support for running when users battery/wifi are optimal
    • Multiple Live Tiles for Apps
    • Live Tile Animation
    • Updates to Live Tiles without Push notifications
    • Sensor support added for Direct Camera support, Compass, and Gyro
    • Socket Communication added
    • Performance Optimizations – Scrolling and Input, Image Decode, Garbage Collection, and Memory Usage
    • New Motion Sensor API for combining the Compass and Gyro raw data
    • Angry Birds (May 25), Spotify, and Skype are coming to the Windows Phone
  • Developer Tools
    • Phone orientation tool for simulating Accelerometer, with options for pre-recorded gestures and actions
    • Location simulation available via built-in Bing Maps tool, with options for pre-recorded location changes
    • Phone Performance monitoring and analysis tools available
• Silverlight
  • Sliverlight 5 Beta is now available (download)
  • Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 is now available (download)
  • Hardware-Based Video Decode
  • Added 3D support
  • Trick Play support – pitch correction audio
  • Recieve Commands from a remote control
• Kinect
  • Kinect SDK is coming this Fall

In addition to some wonderful keynotes, I wrote a personal summary of the sessions I attended (all of this content is available online):

• Deconstructing Orchard: Build, Customize, Extend, Ship

  Bradley Millington explained the new features of the v1.1 release of Orchard CMS. This release comes with a new Recipes concept to startup development. Think Visual Studio Project Templates but for Orchard sites, these are fully customizable and open to community contributions, so new templates may come out for many common scenarios. Bradley also showed how simple it is to extend modules and themes. Finally we saw how a simplified deployment can round out a solution with minimal barriers to entry.

• Fonts, Form and Function: A Primer on Digital Typography

  Everytime I see Robby Ingebretsen I’m always so impress about how simple he makes design feel. Check out his presentation at the Design Toolbox if you haven’t yet. Robby took us on a journey through the font choices for his group’s new website http://thinkpixellab.com/. He had some musings about fonts having personalities and relating that to a Hollywood cast in a major screenplay. Of course, we were shown with the every important Grid concept.

• Inspiring UX – UX Lightning Series

  ‘UX Lightning sessions are a full hour session with 4 exceptional speakers each presenting 10 minute topics’. There was lots of inspiring content about Natural User interfaces, putting a lot of ownership on us as Developers and Designers. August de los Reyes was truly remarkable in his 21st Century Design Manifesto where he promotes a design process which is focused on Motivation, Needs, Positive Emotion, Learnability, Adaptability, and Revolutionary changes. This is in contrast to a user centric design which puts faith in the users (who often don’t know what, why, and how they like something), and incremental design evolution.

• ECMAScript 5: The New Parts

  We had the pleasure of listening to the godfather, Doug Crockford, show off the new ECMAScript 5 changes. Many of the features have been wanted for some time. Luckily many of them have shims for older browsers. The addition of strict mode allows the type safety to bring javascript to the next level of software craftsmanship.

• Multitasking in the Next Version of Windows Phone, Part I

  Announced after the second keynote, Darin Miller, reviews the new Background/Live Agents, Reminders, and other background and multi-tasking APIs. Mango has some great new features, and they are being designed in a way that respects the user, all while retaining their excellent developer experience. Like optimizing downloads when you are on WiFi and power.

• Building Data-centric N-tier Applications with jQuery

  The WCF RIA Services team has been doing a great job rounding out the REST/jQuery story. Brad Olenick showed a WCF Service that was consumed by jQuery using plugins for templating, data linking, change tracking, sorting and paging on the server side and on the client side. I can see this being a great tool coupled with the coming jQuery UI Grid. I hope the community rallies around this one especially with the recent shift in structure for the offical jQuery templating and dataLinking plugins

• Graphics & 3D with Silverlight 5

  One of most exciting announcements of Silverlight 5 is 3D, I’m really intrigued by it. As expected they brought in the XNA 3D features which is more aligned with the Windows Phone 3D experience. Aaron Oneal wowed everyone with some really cool demos including the Virtual walkthrough of the Windows Cafe. Then he walked us the through the Graphics processing pipeline showed how vertices, colors, triangles, textures, overlays, and lighting can be written straight to the GraphicsDevice. Caution, 3D development is not for yhe faint at heart.

• WCF Web APis: “There’s a URI for That”

  Coupled with Brad Olenick work above Glenn Block wrapped up the other side of what’s included on the http://wcf.codeplex.com release. In addition to consuming json using dynamic objects, they have a fluent API for configuring services and service creation (ie. IoCs). There are also new strongly typed generic request/response wrappers that expose header information. For more details, see Sam’s post.

• Fun with ASP.NET MVC 3 and MEF

  The power of NuGet was very prevalent at Mix this year, and I’m very excited about the power of using MEF and NuGet combined. Maarten Balliauw showed us how setting up your MVC application to accept MEF Imports, then by separating components into different projects you can add/remove them and in turn on/off functionality.

• NuGet In Depth: Empowering Open Source on the .NET Platform

  Another great HaHaa show. Scott and Phil performed a great ping-pong over creating and consuming NuGet packages. They also showed off the new Symbols feature, “which is huge” as Scott would say. Very entertaining session and inspiring for NuGet

During the breaks, I joined up with some other East Coast developers and speakers and worked on a Coding for Fun Project involving the .NET Micro Framework called the Curious Cloud Contest, we had a nice time with the project and we won a Video Production award in the process. You can see our team’s (MADExpo) video here.

I also had two wonderful evening events, the first night I had the pleasure of joining the Microsoft NUI team for some good Mexican food and the usually HTML5 vs. Silverlight discussion. The following night I had the privilege of being invited to join the folks from Telerik at Aureole, we were joined by Walt Ritscher and a number of people from the Windows Phone Team including Jamie Rodriguez and Ben Riga, both of whom did a wonderful job presenting at that morning’s Keynote event.

Downloads

I’ve uploaded the sample code and the presentation to my website. You can use the following links to download them:

• Using MEF with Silverlight Presentation (.pptx)
• Using MEF with Silverlight Samples (.zip)

Downloads

• WP7-MultiTouch.pptx (3 MB)
• Browse Source (Requires Silverlight 4)
• WP7-MultiTouch.zip (1 MB)

There were a number of resources discussed in our meeting and for convenience you can see find them here.

Resources

• WP7 UI Design and Interaction PDF - Main Resource for Guidance
• Silverlight Toolkit – Windows Phone Gesture Listener
• MultiTouchVista – Multi Mouse Support for the WP7 Emulator
• MultiTouch Manipulation

Downloads

• WP7-MultiTouch.pptx (3 MB)
• Browse Source (Requires Silverlight 4)
• WP7-MultiTouch.zip (1 MB)

There were a number of resources discussed in our meeting and for convenience you can see find them here.

Resources

• WP7 UI Design and Interaction PDF - Main Resource for Guidance
• Silverlight Toolkit – Windows Phone Gesture Listener
• MultiTouchVista – Multi Mouse Support for the WP7 Emulator
• MultiTouch Manipulation

WordSwipe is a word game where you find as many words as you can during the provided time. Words can be located on a grid in any direction ajacent to the current letter. When you enter longer words you get more points.

This game uses touch and swipe gestures to select the words and uses the phones accelerometer to reposition the letters when you rotate the phone.

The current version offers a random board and at the end of the game you will see a list of all the possible words that were available so you can continue to improve your score.

Trial mode will allow you to play a 1 minute game as apposed to the standard 3 min game, so feel free to try it out before buying.

Future updates include online integration which will allow you to compete against other on a daily board.

Thank you to everyone that attended. My slides and Race Car Application are available for download using the links below.

Downloads

• NovaCC-Silverlight-Testing.pptx (584 KB)
• Browse Source (Requires Silverlight 4)
• NovaCC-RaceCarApp.zip (61 KB)

$('#Makes').autocomplete({
    source: function(request, response) {
       response(['test1', 'test2']);
    }
});

WCF Service

In order to get this working though we first need a WebScript enabled WCF Service.  To do so, you add a new WCF Service, we’ll call this on the AutomobileService.svc.  First thing is the setup the service to use WebScriptServiceHostFactory, open the actual .svc file (right click, Open With, OK) and add a new attribute with the Factory.

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#" Debug="true" Service="jQueryAutocompleteWithWcf.AutomobileService"
CodeBehind="AutomobileService.svc.cs" Factory="System.ServiceModel.Activation.WebScriptServiceHostFactory" %>

Additionally, we want to add the WebGet attribute to the operations, which should have a single parameter for search ‘term’.

[OperationContract]
[WebGet(ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)]
IEnumerable<string> GetMakes(string term);

Script and Markup

Now that we have our service setup its time to call the WCF service.

$('#Makes').autocomplete({
    source: function (request, response) {
        $.getJSON('AutomobileService.svc/GetMakes', request, function (data) {
            response(data.d);
        });
    }
});

Notice the response is using the data.d property where ‘d’ is the WCF serialization container that caused us problems earlier. With a few extra lines you can add caching and aborting.

var makesCache = {}, makesXhr;
$('#Makes').autocomplete({
    source: function (request, response) {
        var term = request.term;
        if (term in makesCache) {
            response(makesCache[term]);
            return;
        }
        if (makesXhr != null) {
            makesXhr.abort();
        }
        makesXhr = $.getJSON('AutomobileService.svc/GetMakes', request, function (data, status, xhr) {
            makesCache[term] = data.d;
            if (xhr == makesXhr) {
                response(data.d);
                makesXhr = null;
            }
        });
    }
});

I hope this code help someone out in the future, the source code has a fully functional demo and should have all the code you need to get the WCF service returning results to your autocomplete textbox. If you are interested in doing this with .NET 3.5 there are a few extra configuration items needed, leave a comment if you have any trouble and I’ll be happy to help out.

Download

The full source code is available for download from my website

• Browse Source Code (Requires Silverlight 4)
• jQueryAutocompleteWithWcf.zip (18kb)

Thank you to everyone that attended.  My slides and Race Car Application are available for download using the links below.

Downloads

• Silverlight-Testing.pptx (584 KB)
• RaceCarApp.zip (64KB)