Laurent Duveau : Montreal

Silverlight Tour Montreal in November

pluginbaby — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:51:15 GMT

The Silverlight Tour is coming back to Montreal next week.

When: November 02-04

Where: Montreal, Qc

Registration (Fr): http://www.runatserver.com/SilverlightTraining.aspx

If you are looking for 3 days of intensive Silverlight training in French this is your chance to learn it from soup to nuts!

Samedi.NET special Silverlight event in Montreal

pluginbaby — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:02:14 GMT

The Montreal .NET Community organized a full-day Silverlight workshop last Saturday.

The topic of the day was: “Build a business application with Silverlight 3”.

We were 5 speakers presenting many sessions (all code, no slide) to show different tools and technologies:

Visual Studio 2008 SP1
Expression Blend 3
Expression Designer 3
.NET RIA Services
WCF and LINQ

The event went pretty well, what amazed me the most is the fact that we got more than 160 attendees!!!

So we could feel the excitement for Silverlight growing more and more, and I answered to so many questions both during my presentations and at the end of the day!!!

To change from Northwind we used a simple Db with beers (thanks Andy):

I did 2 talks:

.NET RIA Services
Silverlight and SEO

Here is what I showed during my first talk:

Navigation Framework
Manage Data
- Entity Framework and LINQ
- .NET RIA Services
- DataGrid + DomainDataSource
  - Custom columns
  - DetailsRow Template
  - Sort
  - Filter
  - Group
  - Pagination
- Activity Control
Export to Excel

The download below adds more:

Edit, Delete (with confirm) beer with the new DataForm control.
Insert new beer in a ChildWindow
Beer details page
Out Of Browser mode (OOB)

For more on .NET RIA Services and how you can add it in your existing architecture, have a look at this incredible list of posts:
http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/08/02/business-apps-example-for-silverlight-3-rtm-and-net-ria-services-july-update-summary.aspx

I’ll write more on my second talk (SEO) in another blog post.

Download source code

Also check the post of my co-worker Louis-Philippe, he has lots of pictures of the event.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

[french] Montreal User Group special Silverlight event!

pluginbaby — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:05:00 GMT

For anyone near Montreal don’t miss this user group special event in less than 30 days:

Click on the image to register.

Please note the event is free for members of the Montreal .NET Community.

I’ll have the pleasure to present on Silverlight 3 and .NET RIA Services, as well as other members of my team at RunAtServer Consulting, not to forget our loving RD…

Should be fun and we will have tons of cool giveaways!

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

Microsoft TechDays Canada 2009

pluginbaby — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:14:28 GMT

Save the date: Microsoft TechDays Canada will have its second edition in 2009 and is coming back to Montreal on December 2, 3.

For others cities/dates go to: www.techdays.ca

My Silverlight presentations at Code Camp Montreal

pluginbaby — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:38:19 GMT

Yesterday I gave 2 Silverlight presentations at the Montreal Code Camp 2009.

1. Business application with Silverlight 3 and .NET RIA Services

In this session I showed how Silverlight 3 new features and controls helps you build real business oriented app, and how you can take advantage of .NET RIA Services to simplifies 3-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.

Download my slides (french):

My demos were taken from 2 sessions I saw at TechEd 2009: WUX303 and WUX308 by Scott Morrison, so you can find the files on his blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/scmorris/archive/2009/05/17/tech-ed-2009-demo-files.aspx

2. Silverlight and SEO

After briefly explained the problem with RIA and SEO, I did 3 demos in Visual Studio 2008 to show different way to make your Silverlight app SEO friendly. The last demo was the Silverlight Store, a very efficient and easy way to do SEO-enable your Silverlight site using Silverlight 3, ASP.NET 3.5 and .NET RIA Services (More details by the author itself).

Download my slides (french) and demos:

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,.NET RIA Services

Get ready for Code Camp Montreal

pluginbaby — Tue, 12 May 2009 01:51:10 GMT

Code Camp Montreal will take place on Saturday, May 30th 2009.
It is free but you need to sign up on the website: www.codecampmontreal.com
If you are not registered yet, hurry up!

This year again I’ll be giving 2 sessions (in french):

Business application with Silverlight 3 and .NET RIA Services
Silverlight 3 and SEO

Full Session list:
http://www.codecampmontreal.com/Agenda.ashx

See you there!

Code Camp Montreal 2009

pluginbaby — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:09:52 GMT

The next Code Camp Montreal will take place on Saturday, May 30th 2009.

Local speakers interested in presenting (French or English)? submit your sessions!
http://www.codecampmontreal.com/Appel%20aux%20conf%c3%a9renciers.ashx

I’ll be there to talk about Silverlight 3, if you too come and say hello!

My Silverlight talk at Montreal .NET User Group

pluginbaby — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:31:00 GMT

This week I gave a Silverlight presentation at the Montreal .NET Community (www.dotnetmontreal.com).

Very few slides and lots of code, I built live from scratch a Silverlight business oriented application with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend, here is what I demoed:

Entity Framework over a SQL Server db (beers!)
LINQ
WCF service + asynchronous call on the Silverlight 2 client + best practice
Design and Animation with Blend + a few tips (tab key to collapse windows, properties search)
Tips to prevent an animation from running twice
DataGrid templating (custom columns, custom selected row view)
DataBinding
Isolated Storage cache [Learn more]
Custom alternative “no Silverlight installed” version as well a as a way to simulate a user without Silverlight in IE. I finally build a nice working version of the page with data for the user without forcing him to install Silverlight. [Learn more]
Quickly talked about some of the new features coming with Silverlight 3 (currently beta)

Silverlight experience:	Alternative ASP.NET version:

Lot’s of content! I wanted to show a bit of Silverlight 3 but that was too much.

You can download my code (*) here:

As well as the slides (french):

(*) The download include the asynchronous Database update as users edit the DataGrid.

For those of you who are interested to hear about Silverlight 3 don’t worry you still have plenty of events coming!

Montreal Code Camp in may
Forum des architectes in may
Our Silverlight Tour training
More to come…

The very first Silverlight 3 training in Montreal!

pluginbaby — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 03:26:00 GMT

Be ready for the next version of Silverlight!

I am so happy to announce that I will give a french Silverlight 3 training at the end of this month in Montreal, Qc.

The Silverlight Tour has already been modified to include Silverlight 3 content. If you want to be ready for the next version of Silverlight, this is the place to be. This three-day workshop is going to teach the latest features of Silverlight as well as the complete Silverlight 2 stack.

When: April 27-29

Where: Montreal, Qc

Registration (Fr): http://www.runatserver.com/SilverlightTraining.aspx

The new features covered include:

Out of Browser Support
Pixel Shaders
Animation easing
Hardware Graphic Acceleration
Behaviours
Navigation Framework
Blend 3
Binding Improvements
Secure Web Services
Binary XML Transport
RIA Services Client Controls
Preview of RIA Services

Technorati Tags: Silverlight Training,Formation Silverlight

Third time's a charm (MVP award)

pluginbaby — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:34:00 GMT

The very first email of the year is still a wonderful one as I got awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Microsoft. This is the 3rd year in a row so I am pretty honored and excited about that. I have been involved in so many community events this year, with great opportunities to speak at EnergizeIT, TechDays, DevTeach, and W3 Québec as well as take part in worldwide conference like TechEd America, MIX Las Vegas and the famous MVP Summit in Redmond! Lately I also wrote an article for MSDN.

Expect more Silverlight content here as this has become my main focus. 2009 is the year where Silverlight 3 will see the light (he he he), the first version I saw seems promising, so I hope to do as many new Silverlight presentation as the past year, and speak at Microsoft events about this exciting technology. Hopefully I will be at MIX09 in Las Vegas to learn all about the latest stuff. I will also continue teaching the French version of the Silverlight Tour in Canada and Europe and I like it! I don’t forget the Montreal .NET Community which will host a CodeCamp and many more cool activities!

Happy New Year!

My Silverlight session at DevTeach Montreal

pluginbaby — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:23:48 GMT

During my “Business oriented Silverlight 2 application” talk at DevTeach conference (december 2008) I used Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend to build an application that retrieves SQL server data (Beers!) through an Entity Framework model and exposes it to a Silverlight client via a WCF service and LINQ queries. I did some design and animation, added a ComboBox and DataGrid to display data and asynchronously update the model as users edit it. Then I showed how to use local cache on the client to optimize network traffic and finally applyed some Style to shape the UI.

I had only 2 slides in my ppt deck, and here is my funny slide #2:

I coded all that live on stage in 60 min without any errors!

As promised here is the source code of the application I built live:

Slides:

[Beers Db by Andy Beaulieu]

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

Win an MSDN Premium Team Suite at DevTeach Montreal!

pluginbaby — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 05:19:53 GMT

Attend one of the following session by RunAtServer Consulting folks and you could win an MSDN Premium Team Suite Subscription (yes, the FULL Top of the Top package at 14 000$):

Advanced ASP.NET Server Control - Dominic Sévigny – December 2 at 1:30pm Viger A room
Business Oriented Application with Silverlight 2 - Laurent Duveau – December 4 at 1:30pm Neufchatel room

See you there!!

Technorati Tags: DevTeach

My Silverlight presentations at TechDays 2008 Canada

pluginbaby — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:33:00 GMT

Here is the Silverlight 2 project I build for my “Mastering your Silverlight Samurai Skills” 2 parts talk I did at TechDays Canada 2008.

Powerpoint material will come later.

Usefull links

Silverlight controls:

Deep Zoom demos:

My company RunAtServer Consulting is doing Silverlight development, we already have some clients and realizations, don’t hesitate to contact us!

We also have a 3 days Silverlight 2 training in french!
>> More information (fr)

Technorati Tags: TechDays_ca

Silverlight sessions at DevTeach Montreal 2008

pluginbaby — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:41:41 GMT

[via Guy Barrette]

Looks like there will be plenty of Silverlight content at DevTeach Montreal this year:

Building Silverlight Controls
David J Kelley - SLV467
Designed primarily for Developers. This technical presentation walks through a number of senerios for building Silverlight Controls including user controls and custom panels. The usage of properties, dependency properties, events, reusability, and encapsulated control architecture is reviewed in detail. In the presentation we will build a custom chart control based on a user control and built custom panels and review dispatch timer and multi threading in the context of controls.

Comparing Silverlight to ASP.NET
D'Arcy Lussier - SLV301
With Silverlight, web developers now have a new option for delivering browser-based applications. But does Silverlight negate HTML-based web development? Should we put aside traditional web development for this new paradigm? In this session we’ll compare Siilverlight and ASP.NET, not to prove one as better than the other but to show why you might consider one over the other for your next web application.

Data Visualization with WPF and Silverlight 2
Tim Huckaby - SLV202
Building Data Visualization Applications with the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) & Silverlight 2.0
This session will be heavily demo focused to accentuate how the power of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight 2.0 can be used to visualize data. WPF is the next-generation presentation sub-system for Windows. It provides developers and designers with a unified programming model for building rich Windows smart client user experiences that incorporate UI, media, and documents. WPF uses vector based graphics rendering, which results in better graphics and presentation for an application. WPF also has other features such as layout, styling, and data binding, which, when you mix with interactivity, enables scenarios such as interactive data visualization. When you put all this together, you have a unified API for various presentation components, such as 2D and 3D documents and declarative programming through XAML, which is a powerful platform for data visualization that can be used to really “light-up” you enterprise applications.

Designing Interfaces with Expression Blend
Markus Egger - SLV333
Silverlight and WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) are powerful UI technologies, and XAML represents a fascinating new way of programming WPF and Silverlight. However, without tools, XAML gets tedious quickly, and a good designer is needed. Microsoft offers a whole set of such tools. This session focuses mostly on MS Expression Blend (used in combination with Visual Studio). This session provides an overview of the goals, features, and characteristics of this tool and shows how to create a small next-generation application using it. This session also shows developers how good looking interfaces can be created using a few simple and repeatable tricks.

Hacking Silverlight 2
David J Kelley - SLV469
Hacking Silverlight 2.0 for designers and developers
Designed for Designers and Developers. This engaging presentation gets the audience involved in bridging the gap between design teams and software development using Silverlight and the Silverlight toolablity story. The presentation is full of audience participation and skits that get audience members up out of their seats and excited about Silverlight. The basics of team work using Microsoft tools for design and development are used and the audience is shown some of the coolest Silverlight hacks that can make Silverlight applications really shine. With the “Coming out of the closet” skit the audience is shown sexy UI using Silverlight, learning about speed of development and why we care about Sexy engaging Web 2.0 experiences.

Silverlight 2 Controls: Data on Board
Dave Campbell - SLV355
Learn how to populate your Silverlight controls with data, and how WebServices are your friend. This will be done using LINQ and WCF webservices, in addition to more traditional code-behind and asmx.

Silverlight 2 Controls: Your Controls, Your Way
Dave Campbell - SLV389
Learn how to use the Parts and States model and VisualStateManager to your benefit in your environment. Starting with existing controls through modification using VS2008 and Blend to produce a Custom Control that is then consumed.

Silverlight 2.0 Achitectural Best Practices
David J Kelley - SLV421
Designed Developers and Architects or people wanting to understand Silverlight archtecture. This presentation startings with a detailed technical review of Silverlight control, application architecture and design patterns. Design patterns as applied to Silverlight application development and general best practices are reviewed in detail. The presentation includes learning from the trenchs of building Silverlight apps on a large scale including horror stories and ‘Anti-Patterns’ or things ‘not to do’ are reviewed.

Silverlight Development: Lessons from the Trenches
D'Arcy Lussier - SLV349
So what’s it like creating a line of business application using Silverlight? What are the differences in developing a Silverlight application compared to a Winform or ASP.NET based application? In this session I’ll share with you my experiences in creating a real-world Silverlight based application and what you should expect /look out for when developing with this exciting new technology.

Silverlight 2: Business Oriented App. (In French)
Laurent Duveau - SLV321
You've already heard a bit about Silverlight? You have some knowledge of this technology which is now available?
Come discover how to create a business oriented application: that means manipulate data and build a rich UI with Silverlight!
During this session I'll use Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend to build an application that retrieves SQL server data through an Entity Framework model and exposes it to Silverlight client via a WCF service. I’ll use a grid to display the data and asynchronously update the model as users edit the grid. Finally I will show you how to place the data in local cache on the client to optimize network traffic.

Turning on the Silverlight – A Silverlight Intro
Markus Egger - SLV201
Microsoft Silverlight is the latest generation of Microsoft UI technologies for web browser applications. It is based on (and a sub-set of) WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). It enabled developers to create next-generation user interfaces in web browser applications that work not just on Windows systems, but other environments such as the Apple Mac or mobile devices. This is a radical departure from previous .NET development, which was limited to Windows systems. Silverlight applications enable developers to run .NET code on non-Windows Systems. This session also compares Silverlight to other technologies such as Flash. Attendees of this session will get a good feel for what it is like to develop real life applications in Silverlight.

User Controls, Customization, and Styling
Dave Campbell - SLV312
Silverlight 2 Controls: User Controls, Customization, and Styling
Get your Silverlight application Stylin’ with out-of-the box techniques for making your UI to not only look like it was all written by the same company, but also matching your corporate identity. This will be showing VS2008-only concepts, so no design knowledge or interest is necessary.

As you can see I will be presenting a session and it should be interesting as I will build a full Silverlight application live with very few powerpoint... can’t wait to be there!
Are you registered ? Hurry up, it is coming in Montreal on December 2-4!

I’M A PC at Apple Store…

pluginbaby — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 01:26:39 GMT

What a couple of MVPs do when they get a free “I’M A PC” toque ?

They run to the first Apple store and ask an employee to take a picture!