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I consider myself a developer more than a designer. In fact, I’m pretty bad at web design. I know what looks nice, and I know what doesn’t work well, but I’m not so good at creating kick butt designs. So, at TechEd last year, I presented “Top 10 Mistakes Made By Web Developers” and it went over extremely well, and I was asked to do it again this year. I did it twice at TechEd EMEA in Barcelona, and was asked to do it twice this year as we filled the room the first time! Since it was an Interactive session, it’s not recorded, nor are the slides put online but I offered to share some of the sites I used both as good sites and bad sites and also share the slides! I’ll be posting the demo code from WUX310 later this week! Thanks! Read More...

I just finished presenting my last session of TechEd EMEA for 2008 and I'm sad to be leaving! But, hopefully I'll get another chance next year. My last session was a repeat of "Top 10 Web Mistakes" and I said I'd post some of the sites that I showed during the session, so here they are. Sites That Suck http://www.teacherxpress.com/ How am I supposed to find content on this site? http://www.continental.com Some validation errors are okay, others, maybe not so much. http://www.samanzerin.com/ I don't even know where to start, figuratively or literally. http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/flowmaps/bridges.htm http://wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/ Nice to see consistency on here. :) http://www.toyjoy.com/ Only pop ups? Really...

Just arrived back home from a great few days down at PDC in LA. What a fun show to be at - even for people inside the company it's a great opportunity to learn about some of thee great projects going on. I'm really excited about Live Mesh and am looking forward to learning more about Azure and the services it offers. My talk is now available online here , and I've attached my talk materials below. The ChartBuilder demo is available on David's blog along with a nice write up. The response to the Silverlight Toolkit has been VERY positive and you'll be seeing me write more about our plans and what we have going on with that. Read More...

If you happen to be in Asia around October 8-10, I’ll be speaking at Tech-Ed Hong Kong . Come by and say hi. I’m giving three talks, one on each day. October 8 11:45 AM – 1:00 PM ASP.NET MVC - An alternative approach to building Web Applications October 9 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM Developing Data Driven Applications Using ASP.NET Dynamic Data October 10 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM Write better designed code with Test Driven Development I’m hoping to have a little time after some of my talks to go do a little sight-seeing around Hong Kong. The trip to Hong Kong is actually a side trip from Japan where my wife and kid will stay while I go and and speak at this conference. I’m looking forward to the vacation, but wish I had scheduled the vacation part after the...

Sorry for being so quiet lately, things have been a little nutty, but in a good way. We've been pretty heads down working on all kinds of fun stuff, the next version of IE, the next version of Expression Web and getting ready to launch Visual Studio 2008. I'm really excited to see that one ship. I worked on it for almost a year before I transitioned to this role, and I know almost all the folks on the team, and am amazed at what they've pulled off! I just got an email from Mariet, who was the primary coordinator of the ReMIX sessions in Europe this spring. All of the sessions in Amsterdam were video taped, and are now available online! So if you didn't make it to MIX or ReMIX, you can see some of the sessions, myself included on the ReMIX website...

I think that this was my favorite session I did while doing all my ReMIX presentations. It was the one I found most interesting, and most relevant to the work that I do, and see many web developers and designers doing every day. I'm not sure if there is video for this session, but if it shows up, I'll be sure to link to it. In the mean time, I've included the slides for you to check out, and I'll try to get a blog post out about in the next week or two summarizing the info in the deck. Read More...

I presented this session both in Amsterdam and in Zürich, though I managed to lose my notes in Zürich and had do to a number of the demo's by the seat of my pants which was a bit of a challenge. In any event, it was based on a session by Omar Khan of the VWD team that he presented at MIX07, called " Using Visual Studio Codename Orcas to Design And Devloper Rich AJAX Enable Web Sites " Read More...

In Amsterdam at ReMIX, I presented "Implementing Rich UI for Web Applications" where I showed how to deliver richly interactive web experiences with animation, video and more using Silverlight and Expression. It was based on a session from MIX07 by Joe Stegman titled " Building Rich Web Experiences using Silverlight and JavaScript for Developers " Read More...

In Amsterdam at ReMIX, I presented "Implementing Rich UI for Web Applications" where I showed how to deliver richly interactive web experiences with animation, video and more using Silverlight and Expression. It was based on a session from MIX07 by Joe Stegman titled " Building Rich Web Experiences using Silverlight and JavaScript for Developers " Read More...

At TechEd this year, I presented a session where I presented my top five pet peeves on the web, the biggest and easiest problems to avoid on the web. With how easy it is to share content on the web, I felt that these top five things were the best and easiest to get rid of. In order, I felt they were: 5. Unprofessional Site Design 4. Lousy Content 3. Poorly coded HTML/CSS/JavaScript 2. Inappropriate use of Rich Content 1. Not Being POSH I've attached my slides below, so check them out, and let me know what your pet peeves are! Read More...