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See You at Tech Days Canada 2008 in Toronto
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Hey southern Ontario folks, don't miss Tech Days Canada 2008 on October 29th and 30th in Toronto.
If you're into Microsoft technologies, you're sure to find something that you want - or need - to know about. There are over 30 sessions in five tracks. I'm very interested in the Web Development track with plenty of Silverlight content.
After lunch on the first day, I'll be presenting "A Deep Dive into the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions" and showing how to hook up your client code to ASMX Web services.
BTW, speakers may not like it, but I'm a big fan of "bailing" on sessions. I mean, if you discover after a few minutes that the content isn't what you want, skip out (quietly) and head to a different session. Your time is valuable so spend it wisely.
BTW2, this is a paid event, which is a bit of a downer from Microsoft Canada. The upside is that you'll avoid the marketing fluff and get info you can use on real projects. You also get a lot of goodies like VS 2008, MS Expression Web 2, and a TechEd 2008 DVD set in the learning kit.
The Toronto event is at the Toronto Congress Centre near the international airport.
Ken
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Silverlight 2 Release Candidate Available
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When a product like Silverlight 2 gets to the Release Candidate (RC) stage, you can be pretty sure that the shipping features and APIs are set in stone. The last sprint is to sand down a few minor edges, watch for showstoppers, and make sure the installation routine works well.
For this Silverlight 2 RC (#0) you'll need to update Visual Studio 2008, Expression Blend 2, and get the latest runtime.
Here's a blog with some links to what you need:
http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/archive/2008/09/26/silverlight-version-2-rc0-has-been-released.aspx
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New Stuff Coming for ASP.NET and Silverlight
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Interesting that you can peer into Microsoft's technology future just by scanning the planned PDC 2008 sessions. For example, here's Simon Calvert's ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap:
"See how you can taking control of your control IDs, display images using the new DynamicImage control, learn about better ViewState managment in GridView and ListView, and get more control over the CSS markup of ASP.NET server controls. See how Dynamic Data makes building you data-driven apps easy. If you're interested in AJAX, we'll show you further advancements in client rendering and binding."
Stefan Schackow from the ASP.NET team has a topic called Cache Extensibility
"Learn how the next version of ASP.NET extends caching with an API that enables developers to plug-in custom cache implementations."
For Visual Web Developer fans, Jeff King promises to show future deployment techniques:
"Get a first look at the next version of Visual Studio for web developers. See how the new deployment tools enable frictionless transfers of web projects from machine to machine. Learn about the new code generation aides and the next generation of JavaScript editing and navigation tools. Finally, see how the updated WYSIWYG design view enables standards-based development."
Amit Chopra and David D'Souza plan to demo Silverlight 2 for mobile devices:
"Extend your existing Silverlight 2 applications to work on Windows Mobile and how to build rich mobile Silverlight apps that access device peripherals such as camera; GPS or WiFi or the radio stack for location; as well as mobile web services"
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Silverlight 2 Will Ship "Later This Fall" - On Oct 27 or Nov 22?
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Many architects and developers have enterprise projects in the works that depend on the release of Silverlight 2, so having a final release ship date is important. In an interview with MS PressPass, Scott Guthrie says, "Silverlight 2, which will ship later this fall..."
My first prediction was for an official Silverlight 2 release to Web (RTW) on October 27th at 8:30 a.m. (PST) in LA when Ray Ozzie takes to the stage for his PDC 2008 keynote. Hedging my bet, how about an SL2 release during Scott Guthrie's keynote speech at ASP.NET Connections on Tuesday, November 11th at 8 a.m?
Another hint for the end of October is that Telerik, in its product roadmap, announces that its wonderful RadControls for Silverlight 2 will be released at "the beginning of November."
BTW, never ask Microsoft people (such as Silverlight guru Jesse Liberty) to speculate on a release date. You see, it's an unforgivable sin at Microsoft to reveal a planned release date.
I'd say the Microsoft employee motto is, "Better to look stupid and out of the loop than look unemployed". <grin> Therefore, let's leave it to outsiders (guys like me) to stick their necks out and end up with egg on their faces over missed dates. <grin>
Ken
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Could MS Take the Shine Off Chrome?
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Microsoft has no plans to support Silverlight on Chrome - at least according to a post by Yi-Lun Luo on the Silverlight forums:
"Hello, currently we don't have plans to support Chrome. We will support it in the future if it gains enough market share. Please understand, each browser implements the plug-in model differently, so it'll be a lot of effort to officially support a browser 100%."
It would take the shine off Chrome if the new browser (intended for rich web apps!) couldn't run Silverlight. All kinds of speculative scenarios take off from there:
- Chrome adds routines to emulate FireFox just enough to trick the Silverlight plugin into running
- Google produces its own Silverlight clone (Twilight from Moonlight?), leaving Silverlight on the sidelines
- Google just sticks with pure JavaScript apps, cranks up the tooling support to make the platform compelling, and ignores Silverlight. All this to the glee of Microsoft-bashers
Chrome has gained a lot of fans in very few days. My view is that Microsoft will have no choice but to offer Silverlight for Chrome on Windows - and probably has a team looking at it already.