Silverlight 2 for Mobile at PDC!

October 22, 2008    Category: Blog   1 Comment »

I noticed this announcement (below) on the Mobile site from Amit about Silverlight 2 for Mobile. If you’re going to PDC this year, then you should definitely go check out Amit’s session!

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That’s right. I said Silverlight 2 for Mobile! – you know, Silverlight with the CLR running in it… on your mobile device!

Think of how awesome that would be!

What’s the big deal?
If you’ve been following the Silverlight for Mobile space, then you’ll know that the only thing that Microsoft has been talking about up until now has been Silverlight 1 for Mobile, even at at Mix this year. If you’ve been paying attention then you might have seen this little tidbit of a roadmap from Todd (technical evangelist from Microsoft).

Why am I excited?
While I think that most Silverlight for Mobile applications will focus on mobile gaming and consumer "widgets" (think: rich mobile widgets for mapping, weather and traffic notifications, etc..) I am most excited about the possibility of creating robust mobile applications for enterprise customers line of business applications. I’m specifically thinking about applications that leverage Test-Driven development practices,  Dependency Injection, and Model-View-View Presenter designs for robust flexibility and the ability to multi-target the same rich application for web and mobile web with multiple views.

MVVP-Silverlight-Mobile

My Take
Right now, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to talk about, other than the session title at PDC. But I will say that even the idea of having Silverlight 2 on a mobile device is truly exciting!

I’m guessing that there will be more to talk about after PDC.  I can’t wait!

Silverlight 2 is out!

October 14, 2008    Category: Blog   No Comments »

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Several people have already blogged this. In fact, you should stop reading right now and go and look at Gu’s, Hanselman’s, Heuer’s and Shawn’s posts. Go ahead… I’ll wait.

OK, back? I don’t really have much anything to add, except that this has been one of the top 3 questions that I’ve been asked over the last many months. XAML Fest, Clients, User Groups, and TechFests… all seem to want to know the same things… "when will it ship?"

Well, I’m glad to finally have an answer for that question! The other 2 questions are "how would I compare Silverlight to Flash" and "what if I don’t have Blend or Visual Studio?".

I’ll save the Flash/Silverlight question for another time (except to say that you should go look at the Rosetta project).

Rosetta

As far as the Blend/Visual Studio question. Here’s my answer.

Yes. You should use Blend and Visual Studio. The developer designer workflow is awesome and the tooling is exceptional. That being said. You can now also go get the Silverlight for Eclipse plug in … if that’s the way you roll.

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As for me?…. Now I’m off to go upgrade all of my code, demos, slides and tools to Silverlight 2. (and maybe I’ll be able to hold off a bit before jumping to the next set of CTP tools… Silverlight 3!)

I’m speaking at the XAMLFest in Houston today and there have been several questions around how we did our automatic dependency injection in our Silverlight applications and the tools other tools that I recommend.

I updated my recommended tools for Silverlight on Delicious and

We use Ninject for DI in Silverlight. Here’s a great blog post from Jonas Follesoe (a Microsoft Regional Director from Norway) on using Ninject to do Dependency Injection in Silverlight.

Seperation of Concerns - The way of a true master

I really like Jonas’ writing style, especially the way that he comments his code examples

Code illustrating my DataContext problem.

also… be sure to check out the very cool Expression Kolur plug in that he wrote. Awesome!

Blend add-in screenshot

Enjoy!

 

I had the honor of speaking at the Dallas C# SIG last Thursday. I was asked by a couple of people if my slides were posted anywhere… so here they are on Slideshare. Enjoy!

Here’s the summary of my talk from the C# web page:

This is going to be one of the most unique talks on Silverlight that we’ve ever done. We have no agenda, just a ton of topics, experience and information on Silverlight, UX, and designing amazing user applications. Bring your questions, experience and let’s have a great time discussing all of these topics! We’ll overview Silverlight 1 and 2, the tools, features and abilities of Silverlight as well as walkthrough common scenarios, uses and pitfalls of practical Silverlight development in the field as well as highlighting some of the new and exciting Silverlight 2 features: DeepZoom, Isolated Storage, Data and Visual Templates. Silverlight 2 opens a whole new world of possibilities and options to .NET developers in the Rich Internet Application space. Combining the best of web application deployments with traditional Windows development, this best of breed application platform is changing the world of on-line as well as line-of-business applications. The most significant part of being a successful Silverlight developer is your ability to work well with data, and the ability to work well with designers.

I had a great time!

XAMLFest

As Chris, Zain and Denny already pointed out, XAML Fest is coming to Houston.

What is XAMLFest? From Denny’s post:

<XamlFest />is a free two day seminar being hosted around the country to help show that XAML and WPF are not overwhelming or even particularly hard. If you live in the central part of the US, you can attend <XamlFest /> in Houston, Texas

What will I be doing there?

XAML-MAN The organizers asked me to come present on the "Role of the Integrator"… basically I’ll be talking about the interactions between developers and designers in the XAML / WPF / Silverlight world. This will be similar to the Developer Designer Zen talk that I did for XTrain and Adobe.tv.

Mostly though, I’m looking forward to hearing from the other presenters and meeting with folks from across the region that are doing WPF/Silverlight work.

If you are attending be sure to say hi!

SouthDNUG

I’ll be speaking at the South Colorado .NET User Group tonight. If you’re in the area make sure and stop by! We’re going to be covering a LOT of Silverlight content. I’m looking forward to it!

You can get all of the meeting details and RSVP here.

See you then!

I just posted a new episode of CommunityCast.tv. It’s an interview with Joseph Hill, a good friend of mine that also happens to be the Product Manager of the Mono Project. If you watch the video all the way to the end you’ll see a couple of us giving Joseph a hard time for leaving the Dallas area and heading to Boston (to work for Mono).

Watch it here!

 

One of the great things about speaking for INETA is traveling to places that I’ve never been before. July is going to be a little different for me. I was born in Southern California and grew up just an hour north of San Diego in a town called Temecula. (Except for 3 years when I lived in Okinawa)

We moved from Murrieta to Tulsa in 2001 and I haven’t been back to California since then. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been 7 years! Aside from the people and family that are in California there are only 3 things that I really miss. So I’m really looking forward to meeting up with my Dad and having a good lunch while I’m there.

If you are going to be in the San Diego area in July… make sure to stop by the .NET User Group and say hi! We might even go grab a bite to eat afterwards… if I used to know you in Southern California… send me an email: blogger[at]calebjenkins[dot]com.

The topic is still TBD, but it will probably be one of these:

  • ASP.NET AJAX with Visual Studio 2008
  • Silverlight with Visual Studio 2008 + Expression Blend
  • Developer Designer Zen (bringing two world’s together)
  • Better Application Design with practical loose coupling

What would you want the topic to be?

Technorati Tags: ,,

Spokan_net_logoJust a quick note: I’ll be speaking at the Spokane .NET User Group tomorrow night covering ASP.NET AJAX with Visual Studio 2008.

This will be my first time in Spokane ever. I’m planning on driving over to see Lake Coeur D’Alene while I’m there too. I’ve heard so many nice thing about this area that I’m really looking forward to the couple of hours that I’ll be out there.

OK, I have to get up in 3 hours to make my *early* flight (a super, super early flight! ugh.. )

Anyways, if you’re in the area… stop by the User Group and say hi!

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Tomorrow, Jan 22, 2008 – I’ll be presenting on Silverlight with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend at the Lubbock .NET Users Group. If you go to Texas Tech, or are in the area come on out for it!

See you there! 

Update: Here are the slides from the talk. Enjoy!

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