Building Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML – Slides & Demos
Thank you to everyone at the Utah .NET User Group who attended my presentation on Building Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML. Here is a link to download my slides and demos. Thanks again to John Papa who let me utilize some of his slides and demos.
Download: Win8Demos.zip
Join Me Tomorrow for KnockoutJS and the WCF Web API
Tomorrow I’m going to be giving a presentation at the Northern Utah .NET User group on KnockoutJS and the WCF Web API.
Knockout is a javascript framework that can help you simply building dynamic UIs by applying the Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) pattern. In this presentation we’ll go over the basics of Knockout to bind data to html elements, including how to use jQuery templates. We’ll then quickly build out a small application using the new WCF Web API to provide our application a JSON service to work with.
Hope to see you there!
And yes, we may even cover the HTML5 vs. Silverlight debate!
(Parking is free and ample)
Weber State University Davis Campus, Room 114
2750 N. University Park Blvd.
Layton, Utah
84041
Topic: KnockoutJS
Presenter: Joe McBride
Date: Thursday July 07, 2011
Time: 6:00pm Birds of a Feather Round-table; Session starts at 6:30pm
Consuming WCF Web APIs in Windows Phone
At MIX, Microsoft released Preview 4 of the WCF Web APIs. They also provided an updated Async CTP that brings async Task support to Windows Phone. So, as a follow up to my “Consuming WCF Web APIs in Silverlight” I have updated the existing Silverlight sample to Preview 4 (with the help of Dustin Metzgar), and added a Windows Phone sample. The sample was built using the Mango Tools (get the tools).
The sample code is in a Mercurial repository and is a fork of the WCF Web API Contrib project. You can use a client such as Tortoise Hg to get the source. You’ll also need to have the Async CTP installed. After you compile the contrib project (using build.bat from the VS2010 command line), place the async libraries in the bin/debug folder that is created in the root of the solution folder.
Enjoy!
Push Notifications and Tiles – Slides & Demos
Thank you everyone for coming to my presentation, and thank you again to Telerik for having the webinar series! Here are the links from my slides and a download for my slides and demos.
Download: Windows Phone Push Notifications Slides & Demos
Push Recipe: http://joem.me/WP7PushRecipe
XML Messages Documentation: http://joem.me/WP7PushXML
The one question I didn’t have off the top of my head is about the file size of tiles. According to the documentation, the maximum allowed size of the Tile image is 80 KB, with a maximum download time of 15 seconds.
If you have any other questions feel free to ask them here or on twitter!
Upcoming Presentations on Windows Phone, Silverlight, and Agile
I’m going to be giving several presentations in the coming weeks. Hopefully some of you can join me!
May 19th 4:00 PM MST
I’ll be giving this presentation at the Agile Executives monthly meeting.
Veracity Solutions
6770 South, 900 East, Suite 202
Midvale, UT 84047
May 25th All Day Event
Windows Phone 7 Unleashed is an event sponsored by Microsoft, Utah Geek Events, and Veracity Solutions for free Windows Phone Training. Check out the Utah Code Camp website for more information.
Microsoft offices
3400 N. Ashton Blvd., Suite 300
Lehi, UT 84043
June 1st 9:00 AM MST
Telerik has started a Windows Phone Wednesdays (REGISTER HERE) webinar series, which I’ll be giving the presentation for week 3.
June 4th All Day Event
I’ll be at the Portland Code Camp 2011, and I’m hoping these presentation proposals are approved.
Portland Code Camp 2011
Eliot Center
1226 SW Salmon Street
Portland, Oregon 97205
Discovering Intrinsic Motivation
There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Traditional motivational “if-then” rewards can sharpen focus, though often destroy creativity. What science knows about motivation revolves around three key elements; Autonomy, Master, and Purpose. Autonomy – the urge to direct our own lives, Mastery – the desire to get better and better at something that matters, and Purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves. With the help of Daniel Pink and his book Drive, let’s explore a few examples of what science knows and how these three key elements of motivation can help us understand what drives us, and those around us.
Windows Phone 7 Unleashed
Windows Phone 7 is HOT! Come check out Windows Phone 7 Unleashed for everything you need to know to develop for WP7. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or you’re just starting with .NET development, there’s something in it for you. The first half of this deep dive event is lecture and hands on lab. At the half point mark of the day, you’ll have a solid foundation for building WP7 applications. The second half of the day is going straight to code.
Push Notifications and Tiles for Windows Phone
Windows Phone has provided a refreshing new interface in its use of Live Tiles. In this webinar we’ll demonstrate how to use push notifications to update Tiles, provide Toast notifications, and raw data notifications. We’ll take a look under the covers on how this done today, and what’s coming in the Mango update for Windows Phone.
How To Become a MEF Head
In this fast moving presentation we’ll cover what it means to be a MEF Head and how you can join this exclusive club. “Application requirements change frequently and software is constantly evolving. As a result, such applications often become monolithic making it difficult to add new functionality. The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) is a new library in .NET Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 that addresses this problem by simplifying the design of extensible applications and components.” We’ll cover the following features of MEF: • Parts • Catalogs • Metadata • “Stable Composition” • Integrating MEF into Existing Applications • Debugging Strategies • Application Strategies: Desktop vs. Silverlight vs. WP7 • MEF Futures
See You At MIX11
I’m looking forward to attending MIX this year.
I’m typically rather “what sounds interesting at the moment” with these types of conferences, however here are a few sessions I’m interested in attending. Unfortunately some of them overlap, so we’ll see who wins out!
Boot Camps
Sessions
Crafty UX – UX Lightning Series
Inspiring UX – UX Lightning Series
Application Design for Windows Phone
Designer and Developer: A Case for the Hybrid
Going Mobile with Your Site on Internet Explorer 9 and Windows Phone 7
The Devil Went Down to HTTP: Debugging with Fiddler
Good JavaScript Habits for C# Developers
ASP.NET MVC 3 @:The Time is Now
An Overview of the MS Web Stack of Love
If you’re headed to MIX, hit me up on twitter and lets talk about what you’re working on!
Coding 4 Fun: WordPress Metro Blog Theme
Last week I got around to converting my Metro Blog theme assets to a WordPress theme. The theme is based on the design by Chris Lindhartsen. I hard-coded several of the items since this was for my personal blog, however they should be fairly easy to change. If you end up using it on your site send me a link!
Download WordPress Metro Theme: metro-wp-theme
Download html/css Metro Theme: metro-html-theme
There are two themes available, a light and a dark theme.
How to Become a MEF Head – Slides & Code
Thank you again to everyone who was able to come out to the .NET User group for my MEF Head talk. Here’s the slides and code samples I used, as well as the links I cited.
Download Slides & Code – How to Become a MEF Head
http://mef.codeplex.com
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hammett
http://github.com/MefContrib
http://mefcontrib.codeplex.com
http://rapidmef.codeplex.com
http://pillbox.codeplex.com
Windows Phone – “Can’t connect to your phone. Disconnect it, Restart it, then try connecting again.”
After moving to a new computer I started to get this error message when trying to connect my Samsung Focus to Zune.
‘Can’t connect to your phone. Disconnect it, Restart it, then try connecting again.’
I tried that once or twice – didn’t help. Turns out there was a certificate issue. I used the Windows backup and restore to move my data from my old system, which included copying over the certificate created for my Windows Phone. After deleting the old certificate I was able to once again connect to the device.
What is frustrating is that the error message given was not helpful at all in providing me the information I needed to figure out what the issue was. I don’t think this would pass ‘my grandma could figure this out’ test. Since I typically reinstall my system about every 6 months I see this as a very relevant scenario.
Luckily there was at least a Security Event Log which pointed to the problem.
![[Console Root_Certificates - Current User_Personal_Certificates]](http://xamlcoder.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/8-Console1-Console-Root_Certificates-Current-User_Personal_Certificates-2011-3-9-Console1-Console-Root_Certificates-Current-User_Personal_Certificates.png "[Console Root_Certificates - Current User_Personal_Certificates]")
Cryptographic operation.
Subject:
Security ID: Joe-PC\Joe
Account Name: Joe
Account Domain: Joe-PC
Logon ID: 0xa7108
Cryptographic Parameters:
Provider Name: Microsoft Software Key Storage Provider
Algorithm Name: Not Available.
Key Name: zune-tuner://windowsphone/091e7f91%20-%202cc7f7fd%20-%20bfc37a51%20-%2069e23ca2
Key Type: User key.
Cryptographic Operation:
Operation: Open Key.
Return Code: 0×80090016
I’m not sure what the security implications would be, but since I’m allowed to connect my phone to multiple computers, upon failure to decrypt it would be nice if the Zune software removed the existing certificate and tried again.
Join me at the Utah .NET User Group – How to Become a MEF Head
Tomorrow, Thursday March 10th, I’m going to be giving a presentation on the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF). In this fast moving presentation we’ll cover what it means to be a MEF Head and how you can join this exclusive club. “Application requirements change frequently and software is constantly evolving. As a result, such applications often become monolithic making it difficult to add new functionality. MEF is a new library in .NET Framework 4 and Silverlight 4 that addresses this problem by simplifying the design of extensible applications and components.” We’ll cover the following features of MEF:
- Parts
- Catalogs
- Metadata
- “Stable Composition”
- Integrating MEF into Existing Applications
- Debugging Strategies
- Application Stragies: Desktop vs. Silverlight vs. WP7
- Your questions and specific features
Do you have a specific feature of MEF you would like to see presented, or an aspect of the framework that you’d like to see a deep dive? Contact me via my blog or Twitter!
Date: Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Time: 6:00 PM
Place: Neumont University (10701 South River Front Parkway, South Jordan, UT)
about me
Hello! My name is Joe McBride and I'm an Independent Consultant working out of Salt Lake City Utah. I'm a Silverlight Insider and was the Technical Editor for Foundation Expression Blend 4 with Silverlight by Victor Gaudioso. I frequently present at community events on design patterns, upcoming technologies, and Agile methodologies.
My enthusiasm for programming and software architecture was cultivated by writing scripts to automate my character in text-based MUDs that I played in high school (and secretly still engage in). I have run variations of this blog on since 2004 and can be followed on twitter as @xamlcoder.
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