Sunday, November 02, 2008
All the PDC 2008 keynotes and session are available online for free.  Why not watch the keynotes over lunch with your collegues?

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx

Sunday, November 02, 2008 7:48:46 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/google-doesnt-use-openid/

I guess it's OK for Google since they do no evil  ;-)

Sunday, November 02, 2008 7:29:46 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Accueil
http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

Bernard Fedotoff: PDC 2008: Les nouveautés annoncées au Microsoft Professional Developer Conference

En direct de Los Angeles, dans le cadre de la conférence PDC 2008, nous discutons avec Bernard Fedotoff des nouveautés annoncées par Microsoft. Entre autres, nous discutons de nos coups de cœur respectif.

Bernard Fedotoff est Microsoft Regional Director depuis 1996 ; il a animé les Devdays et Techdays en Suisse et en France depuis 1997. Il a été fondateur et PDG de PSEngineering depuis 1990, société qu’il a revendue en 2004. En 2005, il a fondé la société Agilcom. Bernard a mené auprès de clients français, suisses, et d'afrique du nord de nombreuses missions en technologie .Net, d'architecture et de coaching d'équipes de dévoppement. Son passé de Pdg et son expertise technologique apportent aux projets qu'il accompagne deux points de vue riches d'expériences et de convictions. Il a aussi accompagné la mise en place de plateaux offshores vers la Tunisie, en implémentant des approches Agile avec Team Foundation Server. Enfin, il est aussi co-auteur de nombreux ateliers des coachs publiés sur le site MSDN de Microsoft France. Bernard est titulaire d’un diplôme d’ingénieur ainsi que d’un troisième cycle universitaire en robotique. Il consacre ses quelques minutes de temps libre à la montagne.

Télécharger l'émission

Si vous désirez un accès direct au fichier audio en format MP3 ou Windows Media (WMA), nous vous invitons à télécharger le fichier en utilisant un des boutons ci-dessous.

         

Si vous désirez utiliser le feed RSS pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous invitons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.

Si vous désirez utiliser le répertoire iTunes Podcast pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous encourageons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.



Sunday, November 02, 2008 7:18:41 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
TechDays attendees will receive a set of TechEd 2008 DVDs featuring session recordings but there's an issue with the included content browser that was created with a pre release version of Silverlight.  The issue is with the content browser itself, not the content (videos).  You can still view the videos.

To help you browse the content, Tim Heuer has posted a PDF file listing all the sessions.

http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/10/31/teched-north-america-dvd-silverlight-update.aspx

Sunday, November 02, 2008 7:17:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Thursday, October 23, 2008
With Silverlight 2 just being released, you may be looking for training.  Check out the Silverlight sessions that will be presented at DevTeach Montreal 2008.  BTW, for US folks....the Canadian dollar is at around 78 cents US.  That's like saving 22% over the admission fee!!!  If you use this promo code when registering, you'll also save $50: G0005GUVSM.

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 2.0

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 2.0
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: 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 a LINQ 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.


Thursday, October 23, 2008 7:11:18 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
[From Eric Moreau]

If you need a reminder for TechDays...


Thursday, October 23, 2008 6:56:11 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Wednesday, October 22, 2008

OMG!!!  I haven't packed my things for PDC next week and now Microsoft has just opened registration for Mix09!

http://2009.visitmix.com/

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 4:34:22 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Sunday, October 19, 2008
There were some changes this week in the MSDN Canada DPE group.  Jean-Luc David is moving to Redmond to work at corp.
http://blogs.msdn.com/cdndevs/archive/2008/10/14/farewell.aspx


That's JL on the left with me at the MVP Summit.


He's replaced by Joey deVilla, the accordion guy!

Joey deVilla on Accordion

http://blogs.msdn.com/cdndevs/archive/2008/10/17/an-accordion-a-new-addition-a-great-team-and-big-challenges.aspx


Best of luck to both of you!


Sunday, October 19, 2008 9:40:48 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
This is a special offer from MSDN Canada to the user group members of the Montreal area for TechDays Montreal.

quote.png
In anticipation of the upcoming Tech•Days 2008 tour date in Montréal on November 6th and 7th, I’m writing to inform you of an EXCLUSIVE OFFER that Microsoft Canada is extending to user group members in the Montréal and surrounding area.
 
The first 500 user group members to send their confirmation e-mail for early bird registration to me (v-anhow@microsoft.com) will personally receive a NEW XBOX 360 title at the event on November 6th, 2008.
 
In order to be eligible, registration must be completed prior to the early bird registration deadline on October 29th, 2008 (NOTE: Early Bird Registration is the largest discount being offered and has been extended.  In Montréal, $249 instead of $499).  In addition, the confirmation e-mail must reference the user group(s) to which they belong and must be forwarded to Andrew Howell no later than October 31st, 2008 at 5:00pm EST.

The XBOX title will be available for pick-up at designated times at the event.  Specific details will be communicated directly to each individual recipient in advance of the Montréal event.

We sincerely hope that you’ll take advantage of this exclusive offer and look forward to seeing you at the Palais des Congrès on November 6th and 7th, 2008!
unquote.png

Sunday, October 19, 2008 9:29:55 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Accueil
www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

Arnaud Cleret: Serveur Biztalk

Nous discutons avec Arnaud Cleret du serveur Biztalk. Entre autres, nous discutons en quoi le serveur Biztalk est une pièce maitresse pour l'implantation d'un "Enterprise Service bus" (ESB).

Suite à cinq années passées aux Aéroports de Paris en tant que Chef de projet et Architecte Logiciel spécialisé sur les problématiques d'architectures distribuées et d'industrialisation des développements, Arnaud Cleret a rejoint Exakis en janvier 2005 en tant qu'Architecte Logiciel et Leader Technique .Net. Depuis juillet 2008, Arnaud est Directeur Technique (CTO) et a en charge l'activité Architecture Logicielle dont le rôle est d'intervenir principalement sur des missions de définition d'architecture, d'expertise et d'audit chez les clients autour des technologies Microsoft mais aussi en interne chez Exakis pour promouvoir et favoriser l'adoption des nouvelles technologies. Arnaud est aussi impliqué dans différentes communautés et à ce titre, depuis 2006, à été nommé MVP sur la technologie C# puis sur BizTalk.

Télécharger l'émission

Si vous désirez un accès direct au fichier audio en format MP3 ou Windows Media (WMA), nous vous invitons à télécharger le fichier en utilisant un des boutons ci-dessous.

         

Si vous désirez utiliser le feed RSS pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous invitons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.

Si vous désirez utiliser le répertoire iTunes Podcast pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous encourageons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.



Sunday, October 19, 2008 9:25:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Mike Nash announced on Monday that Windows code name 7 will be officially called...Windows 7.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 12:33:13 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Monday, October 13, 2008
Microsoft has announced that Silverlight 2 has RTM'ed today and will be available tomorrow (Oct 14th).

Read about it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-13Silverlight2PR.mspx

Listen to ScottGu's teleconference here:
mms://wm.microsoft.com/ms/presspass/2008/10-13SL2_RTW_TeleconferencePlayback.wma

Download it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Another interesting announcement is that Microsoft is funding an Eclipse project in order for Eclipse developers to be able to develop Silverlight applications.
http://www.eclipse4sl.org/

Monday, October 13, 2008 4:55:55 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Thursday, October 09, 2008
A Facebook group was created to help Canadians meet, exchange and connect at PDC 2008.

www.CanucksAtPDC.com

Thursday, October 09, 2008 7:25:59 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Wednesday, October 08, 2008

I was hit with the dreadful "The breakpoint will not currently be hit" problem this week.  Searching the Web, looks like it is a common problem both with VS 2005 and 2008 however, it was the first time I experienced it.

The symptom
You have a solution with a client project and a Web or WCF project.  You place breakpoints in both projects so you can step thru the code on both side.  You break in your client code but you can’t jump in the Web/WCF code.  When you look at the Web/WCF breakpoint while debugging, the red dot displays an exclamation mark and this message: "The breakpoint will not currently be hit".

 BreakpointWillNotCurrentlyBeHit.jpg

The solution
Looks like there are many solutions to the problem.  Here’s what I did:

  • Checked that VS was not in release mode.  Nope, I was in debug mode.
  • Deleted the \bin\debug folders.  No good.
  • Deleted both the \bin\debug and \obj folders.  No good.
  • Deleted all source code and retrieved everything from source control.  No good.
    Out of three developers, I was the only one with the problem so I checked if my VS debugging settings were changed.  Nope, we all had the same settings.
  • Tried to reset my settings anyway with devenv /resetsettings.  No good.
  • Started a new solution with a simple WCF project and a Console app client.  No good, same problem so it's really VS, not the code.
  • Tried a VS repair.  No good.
  • Uninstalled and reinstalled VS completely.  Bingo, it worked!

The problem
I have absolutely no clue.  Anyone has an idea on why this problem happens?

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 12:33:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
I presented an ADO.NET Data Services overview at the Montreal .NET Community this week.  You can download my PowerPoint presentation here:
http://www.dotnetmontreal.com/dnn/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=tK%2fmGnVF8%2bs%3d&tabid=73&mid=411&language=fr-CA

Here are a few good resources to get you started:

Team blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/astoriateam/

Overview
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc956153.aspx

Using
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc907912.aspx

How to videos
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/cc300162.aspx

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 7:15:40 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Sunday, October 05, 2008

www.dotnetmontreal.com

Date: Lundi 6 octobre, 18h15
Sujets: ASP.NET Dynamic Data et ADO.NET Data Services
Conférenciers: Éric Moreau et Guy Barrette

Le SP1 du Framework .NET 3.5 nous apporte un lot de nouvelles technologies.  Parmi celles-ci, on retrouve ASP.NET Dynamic Data qui permet aux développeurs de livrer des applications Web centrées sur les données de façon très rapide et ce, sans écrire de code.  Parfait pour les pages de style gestion de données pour alimenter un site.  ADO.NET Data Services offre quand à lui des services permettant d’exposer et de manipuler les données sur le Web via REST.  Parfait pour alimenter en données des applications AJAX ou de style RIA.

Sunday, October 05, 2008 1:03:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
My good friend Mario Cardinal was interviewed on ARCast.TV about the Layer Module Injection pattern while he was at TechEd Developers 2008 in Orlando.  This is topic Mario's has been working on for a while now.

Nice work Mario!


ARCast.TV - Mario Cardinal on Layer Module Injection

Layer Module Injection is a new pattern to enforce separation of concerns between domain logic and infrastructure services. Mario Cardinal and Joe Shirey will explain why to use abstract classes and interfaces as a means to reduce dependency surface. Mario and Joe will discuss the techniques of dependency injection and inversion of control to reduce the coupling between classes. In the same way, they will discuss benefits to modularize and decouple with layers using namespaces. The goal is to explain a new approach to simplify managing dependencies between the modules which compose a program. At the end of this discussion you will understand why architects worry so much about coupling, cohesion and separation of concerns.

Sunday, October 05, 2008 10:59:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Accueil

http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

Guillaume Belmas: Team System Work Items

Nous discutons avec Guillaume Belmas des items de travail (work item) avec la plate forme Visual studio Team System. Entre autres, nous discutons en quoi les items de travail sont au coeur de la maîtrise du cycle de développement logiciel.

Guillaume Belmas possède une expérience de 6 ans dans le monde du service et est actuellement Architecte Logiciel chez Exakis. Gagnant en 2004 de la compétion mondial Imagine Cup dans la catégorie "Software Design", sa carrière se concentre principalement sur des problématiques d'architectures distribuées et sur l'industrialisation des développements. L’ALM et les Software Factories font parties de son quotidien et il travaille sur ces sujets avec plusieurs clients. Guillaume est d’ailleurs à ce titre Leader Technique de l'offre Team System et Industrialisation chez Exakis et anime de nombreux séminaires pour le compte de Microsoft France. Nommé MVP depuis 2004 sur la technologie C# puis sur Team System, il participe aussi depuis 2006 en tant que capitaine de la catégorie Software Design au concours Imagine Cup (organisé par Microsoft).

Télécharger l'émission

Si vous désirez un accès direct au fichier audio en format MP3 ou Windows Media (WMA), nous vous invitons à télécharger le fichier en utilisant un des boutons ci-dessous.

         

Si vous désirez utiliser le feed RSS pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous invitons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.

Si vous désirez utiliser le répertoire iTunes Podcast pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous encourageons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.



Sunday, October 05, 2008 10:29:02 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Monday, September 29, 2008

Microsoft has published some information about Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0 today.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/sep08/09-29VS10PR.mspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc948977.aspx

Visual Studio Team System 2010 Week on Channel 9:
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/VisualStudio/Visual-Studio-Team-System-2010-Week-on-Channel-9/

Monday, September 29, 2008 12:37:34 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share
Accueil
http://www.visualstudiotalkshow.com

James Lapalme: Le Web sémantique

Nous discutons avec James Lapalme du Web sémantique. Le Web sémantique désigne un ensemble de technologies visant à rendre le contenu des ressources du World Wide Web accessible et utilisable par les programmes et agents logiciels, grâce à un système de métadonnées formelles.

James Lapalme est architecte d’entreprise chez Investissement PSP. Il travaille depuis 2001 avec le concept d'ontologie et de «Domain-Specific Language» (DSL). Il possède une connaissance large et approfondie des technologies OO et du génie logiciel. Il compte à son actif plusieurs publications dans des conférences internationales IEEE/ACM. De plus, il est un candidat au PhD en informatique à l’Université de Montréal. A ce titre, il a été invité à présenter sa recherche lors de conférences internationales, notamment le Lang.Net 2006 Symposium chez Microsoft à Redmond.

Télécharger l'émission

Si vous désirez un accès direct au fichier audio en format MP3 ou Windows Media (WMA), nous vous invitons à télécharger le fichier en utilisant un des boutons ci-dessous.

         

Si vous désirez utiliser le feed RSS pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous invitons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.

Si vous désirez utiliser le répertoire iTunes Podcast pour télécharger l'émission, nous vous encourageons à vous abonnez en utilisant le bouton ci-dessous.



Monday, September 29, 2008 7:33:40 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #    Comments [0]  | 
Bookmark and Share

Theme design by Jelle Druyts