ClientFX news

Smart Client Development Newsletter – June 2006

richarde — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:05:00 GMT

TechEd '06

TechEd '06 is now officially over and it was so great to see so many developers, MVPs and at the Visual Studio 2005 booth on the Expo/Learning Center floor. For those of you who couldn't attend, don't worry! There's a 'Virtual TechEd' site at http://virtualteched.com/default.aspx where you can view many of the breakout sessions that were recorded and view some other great videos and blogs that will get you as close to the TechEd experience as you can get.

Here are a few highlights of what the smart client teams had to show at TechEd

Saurabh Pant gave a complete overview of Windows Forms development using new features in Visual Studio 2005, including several great demos.
Scott Morrison showed several common Windows Forms development challenges and provided examples of how to overcome them.
Steve Lasker presented a breakout session on architecting disconnected Windows Forms applications with SQL Server, using the the data synchronization features.

We'll be doing more TechEd conferences around the world through the end of the year. In particular, the team will be presenting at the TechEd Southeast Asia and Europe conferences. See http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2006/worldwide.mspx for information about a TechEd worldwide conference near you.

New Stuff

Fabrikam Mobile Reference Application

Check out this very cool sample application using Windows Forms in a mobile scenario. The Fabrikam application provides a solution for a hypothetical mobile salesforce working with Tablet and handheld mobile devices. It gives you a great real-world reference application that you can use in a variety of ways - to show a client what kind of powerful apps you can do with Windows Forms or to use as a starter or example code for your own application. In fact, the application is designed in building blocks that you can also use or modify yourself.

Events and Conferences

Microsoft ASP.NET, Visual Studio & .NET 3.0 Connections: November 6 – 9, 2006, Las Vegas Mandalay Bay

Microsoft, MSDN Magazine and Tech Conferences return to Las Vegas to bring you the hottest developer show in the industry. This premiere event has 200 + in-depth sessions delivered by Microsoft and Industry Experts, hands on workshops, networking parties, expo and more. This event sold out last fall so register now at www.DevConnections.com . Early Bird special: register by Aug 7 get a free hotel night based on 3 night minimum stay.

Contact: richarde@microsoft.com

Disclaimer: This information is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Copyright^© 2006, Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Use of these contents is subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

Smart Client Development Newsletter – May 2006

richarde — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 02:10:00 GMT

Smart Client Development Newsletter – May 2006

Fix that app, darnit!

It’s called the ‘White Screen of Darn’ or WSOD for short and it’s trying to tell you something about your app! This whitepaper provides some very useful information on how to take advantage of the information on this screen to get your app back up and on its feet!

SQL Everywhere

If you’re at TechEd, you can hear about ‘SQL Server Everywhere’ in Steve Lasker’s talk on 6/16. SQL Server Everywhere is an extremely lightweight version of SQL Server that can be deployed the full range of Windows platforms from CE to client and server platforms. So when we say lightweight, how light do we mean? How about slightly more than the size of a floppy disk? This screenshot shows the full size of the runtime files:

Once SQL Server Everywhere is installed it will install the ClickOnce sample app. Here’s a quick screenshot but download the CTP to see for yourself just what you can do with a database you can deploy with any app!

More TechEd - Full Schedule for Smart Client Development

What else will we be talking about at TechEd? Here’s the complete list. Also, be sure to stop by and meet the team at the Visual Studio 2005 booth in the Expo Center.

 Code Title Timeslot Room Speaker/s
DEV234 Windows Forms: Leveraging the Microsoft Enterprise Library in Windows Forms Applications [Breakout 16] 6/15/2006 8:00AM-9:15AM 257 AB Lars Mehrmann; Eugenio Pace
DEV206 (WinFX) Windows Forms: How to Build Windows Forms Applications Today That Will Interoperate Well with Windows Presentation Foundation [Breakout 02] 6/12/2006 10:45AM-12:00PM 153 ABC Scott Morrison
DEV332 Windows Forms: Building Enterprise-Ready Forms Applications [Breakout 15] 6/14/2006 5:30PM-6:45PM 156 ABC Brian Noyes
DEV343 Smart Client: Offline Data Synchronization and Caching for Smart Clients [Breakout 20] 6/15/2006 4:30PM-5:45PM 109 AB Steve Lasker
DEV303 Securing and Deploying Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Microsoft Office (VSTO) Solutions [Breakout 01] 6/12/2006 9:00AM-10:00AM 259 AB Paul Stubbs
DEV318 Smart Client: Real-World ClickOnce [Breakout 07] 6/13/2006 10:15AM-11:30AM 162 AB Brian Noyes
DEV221 Windows Forms: An Overview of Windows Forms in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 [Breakout 04] 6/12/2006 3:15PM-4:30PM 257 AB Saurabh Pant
DEV347 Windows Forms: Solutions to the Most Common Windows Forms Development Challenges [Breakout 23] 6/16/2006 1:00PM-2:15PM 205 ABC Scott Morrison
DEV351 Visual Studio: Developing Local and Mobile Data Solutions with SQL Server Everywhere 6/15/2006 13:00 - 14:15   Steve Lasker

Upcoming Events

6/11-16 – TechEd, Boston, MA (www.microsoft.com/TechEd). - Tech•Ed is Microsoft’s largest annual conference for providing IT professionals and developers with technical training, information and resources to build, deploy and manage solutions with currently shipping and near-term Microsoft technologies.

We would love to hear from you - send your feedback and suggestions to Rich Ersek (richarde@microsoft.com).
Disclaimer: This information is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Copyright© 2006, Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Use of these contents is subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

Friends of Client Development Newsletter – April 2006

richarde — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 22:31:00 GMT

Friends of Client Development Newsletter – April 2006

WinForms Website Updated

If you’ve been to http://www.windowsforms.net lately, you’ll notice several changes and updates.   We’ve embarked on a website update project to update the Information Architecture to make it easier to find the information you’re looking for and to add fresh, new content to the site.   You’ll see several new articles written by community members highlighted on the main page as well as new whitepapers written by our team on the ‘Get Started’ page. Check it out today!   And, if you’re an author of WinForms-related articles on other sites, be sure to submit your new article to our listings.

Current Projects - Update

Last month, we gave an overview of several projects we’re working on.   Here’s a brief update on the Crossbow project:

Crossbow is the code name for the interoperability layer between Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). The Client framework runtime, including Crossbow will now ship along with WPF.   Last week, the project reached an important internal milestone that means our plans remain on track and we’re steadily improving quality along the way to our first Beta release.    You can see more about Crossbow in Mike Henderlight’s webcast.

ClickOnce

If you’re a fan of ClickOnce apps, Saurabh Pant’s blog features several excellent discussions on ClickOnce applications. His latest post covers ClickOnce behavior in the FireFox browser.

Upcoming Events

6/11-16 – TechEd, Boston, MA (www.microsoft.com/TechEd). - Tech·Ed is Microsoft’s largest annual conference for providing IT professionals and developers with technical training, information and resources to build, deploy and manage solutions with currently shipping and near-term Microsoft technologies.

We would love to hear from you - send your feedback and suggestions to Rich Ersek (richarde@microsoft.com).

Disclaimer: This information is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Copyright© 2006, Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Use of these contents is subject to the terms specified at http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm.

Introducing the "Friends of Client Development Newsletter" (March 2006)

richarde — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 21:19:00 GMT

Friends of Client Development Newsletter – March 2006

Introducing our Team

Greetings from the Microsoft product team that brings you WinForms!

We’re launching this newsletter as an insider's view of what we’re working on - the first in series of monthly newsletters that gives you the latest on our progress in developing new products, our vision for the future, and anything we think you'll find interesting and exciting. We would love to hear from you - send your feedback and suggestions to Rich Ersek (richarde@microsoft.com).

Current Projects

So what have we been up to in the past several months? We’ve just finished up a quality-focused milestone which gave us an opportunity to further improve on our engineering practices. For example, one of our accomplishments in this milestone was to reactivate and reevaluate all of the bugs we postponed from the “Whidbey” (Visual Studio 2005) release so we could prioritize those fixes appropriately and start the next major release (codenamed “Orcas”) with a clean slate. We also put new processes in place such as “feature crews” and have adapted agile development practices that will help us to increase product quality and to deliver great features and great products.

We’ll put the spotlight on a different project each month. Throughout the course of the year we’ll update you on new developments along with a few new projects. Here’s an overview of a few new things we’re working on:

Acropolis – Revolutionizing Smart Client Development

Smart client solutions can offer a wealth of benefits in flexibility and usability over thin client solutions while at the same time retaining some of their manageability capabilities. These benefits can be substantial and can include an increase in user efficiency, a reduction in development and training costs, and corresponding improvements in the overall TCO and ROI of the solution. Smart client solutions can also open up a host of new scenarios for mobile workers and provide productive solutions that operate in offline and intermittent connectivity situations. Unfortunately, developing smart client solutions can be challenging. The lack of an application model, supporting infrastructure, and out-of-the-box implementations for commonly used client-side services forces each developer to address these sometimes complex issues themselves.

Acropolis aims to remedy this situation by providing an application framework and tools to support the development of smart client line-of-business solutions. Acropolis is based on the composite smart client approach where solutions are constructed from a number of loosely coupled ‘parts’. Each part provides a unit of self-contained functionality that can be independently tested and developed and re-used in many different solutions. Parts allow solutions to be assembled in a very flexible way so that they can be more easily updated to include new functionality or more easily changed to suit new business requirements.

Acropolis provides tools that support the visual assembly of solutions from parts and for the definition of business logic via workflow. Acropolis leverages the power of the Windows Presentation Framework (formerly Avalon), allowing Acropolis applications to provide next generation user experiences with support for advanced data visualization, theming and customization. Acropolis also integrates with ASP.NET supporting services for managing authentication, authorization and user personalization, allowing a common administrative experience across both thin and smart client solutions.

We would very much welcome your feedback on our vision for Acropolis. Please watch this space for more information on how to get involved in the Acropolis smart client revolution!

Crossbow (Mike Henderlight)

In case you are not familiar with Crossbow, it’s the code name for the interoperability layer between Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). There has been some exciting new recently on the Crossbow runtime front as we are now executing on a plan that will have us shipping the runtime along with WPF. Originally, we were going to ship the runtime in the next release of Visual Studio (code named “Orcas”). After talking with many customers, it became clear that we needed to do whatever we could to move up the ship date so that we could release coincident with WPF. We’re happy to report that we heard you loud and clear and we will deliver!

The sense of urgency makes perfect sense if you think about it. Crossbow is all about the ability to leverage your existing investments in Windows Forms and infuse your application with WPF functionality at your pace and without having to re-write your entire application. Furthermore, if you choose to write a WPF application from the ground up, you may need to augment the feature set of WPF by utilizing Windows Forms controls, Windows Forms-based User Controls and/or ActiveX controls. For example, many customers need a rich DataGrid control and since WPF will not ship a DataGrid control in the first release, customers want to use the Windows Forms 2.0 DataGridView control.

Now it’s your turn again. We need you to download the next public release of WPF (Beta2) and try out this technology and give us feedback. Report bugs to us via the MSDN Feedback Center, spread the word about the technology, blog about it, find ways to add value to existing Windows Forms application using WPF functionality. For more information including samples and getting started info, check out Mike Henderlight’s blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/mhendersblog).

Occasionally Connected Smart Clients (Steve Lasker)

Enabling users to work on their terms, not just when a network connection is available

Occasionally Connected Systems (OCS) is an Orcas scenario focused on empowering the Windows platform with end user value. By enabling RAD productivity for developing offline LOB applications, Smart Client developers will finally have one of the key missing components to help push Windows into the mobile market enabling end users to work on their terms. In addition to providing offline capabilities, or intelligent caching for read-only data, OCS also simplifies the programming model for small apps that grow to large apps. Historically, developers were left to Access and Fox Pro to productively develop small applications. As these apps grew, they typically had to re-write these apps to handle scaling requirements. By leveraging a light weight, in-proc local data store developers can work with locally cached data. As their apps need to synchronize local data with other data services, developers will be able to leverage a new set sync components. This is a big advantage for the .NET platform, a value add for WinForms developers and a compelling motivation for VB6 developers to upgrade. To get more details, you can view a presentation Steve Lasker gave at VSLive San Francisco. http://blogs.msdn.com/smartclientdata/archive/2006/02/01/522549.aspx

Upcoming Events

4/2-5 – ASP.NET Connections, Orlando, FL (http://www.devconnections.com/). DevConnections is one of the premier developer events and will feature ASP.NET team members along with several of the leading experts in the ASP.NET community. .NET Developer Platform General Manager, Scott Guthrie, will give the keynote.

6/11-16 – TechEd, Boston, MA (www.microsoft.com/TechEd). - Tech·Ed is Microsoft’s largest annual conference for providing IT professionals and developers with technical training, information and resources to build, deploy and manage solutions with currently shipping and near-term Microsoft technologies.

Code	Title	Timeslot	Room	Speaker/s
DEV234	Windows Forms: Leveraging the Microsoft Enterprise Library in Windows Forms Applications	[Breakout 16] 6/15/2006 8:00AM-9:15AM	257 AB	Lars Mehrmann; Eugenio Pace
DEV206	(WinFX) Windows Forms: How to Build Windows Forms Applications Today That Will Interoperate Well with Windows Presentation Foundation	[Breakout 02] 6/12/2006 10:45AM-12:00PM	153 ABC	Scott Morrison
DEV332	Windows Forms: Building Enterprise-Ready Forms Applications	[Breakout 15] 6/14/2006 5:30PM-6:45PM	156 ABC	Brian Noyes
DEV343	Smart Client: Offline Data Synchronization and Caching for Smart Clients	[Breakout 20] 6/15/2006 4:30PM-5:45PM	109 AB	Steve Lasker
DEV303	Securing and Deploying Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Microsoft Office (VSTO) Solutions	[Breakout 01] 6/12/2006 9:00AM-10:00AM	259 AB	Paul Stubbs
DEV318	Smart Client: Real-World ClickOnce	[Breakout 07] 6/13/2006 10:15AM-11:30AM	162 AB	Brian Noyes
DEV221	Windows Forms: An Overview of Windows Forms in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005	[Breakout 04] 6/12/2006 3:15PM-4:30PM	257 AB	Saurabh Pant
DEV347	Windows Forms: Solutions to the Most Common Windows Forms Development Challenges	[Breakout 23] 6/16/2006 1:00PM-2:15PM	205 ABC	Scott Morrison
DEV351	Visual Studio: Developing Local and Mobile Data Solutions with SQL Server Everywhere	6/15/2006 13:00 - 14:15		Steve Lasker