November 2008 - Posts
Miel Van Opstal has built a comprehensive list of Microsoft product team blogs and announcement channels. If there is a particular Microsoft technology, you'd want to be the first to know, these are the blogs you have to subscribe to. I'm confident you'll find at least a couple of blogs that you'll simply find irresistible.
Microsoft recently released a cool new ASP.NET server control - <asp:chart /> - that can be used for free with ASP.NET 3.5 to enable rich browser-based charting scenarios.
<asp:chart /> supports a rich assortment of chart options - including pie, area, range, point, circular, accumulation, data distribution, ajax interactive, doughnut, and more. You can statically declare chart data within the control declaration, or alternatively use data-binding to populate it dynamically. At runtime the server control generates an image (for example a .PNG file) that is referenced from the client HTML of the page using a <img/> element output by the <asp:chart/> control. The server control supports the ability to cache the chart image, as well as save it on disk for persistent scenarios. It does not require any other server software to be installed, and will work with any standard ASP.NET page.
Full details on Scott Guthrie's blog.
You may have thought the best of the year to be over. If you look at the following community events, then you'll realize that that's not the case.
What are you waiting for? RSPV today!
As stated in a previous blog, we're in the planning phase for DevDays 2009 (South Africa), and the excitement is definitely building on our side!
In the current phase we want to finalise the session topics. We're considering doing 4 parallel tracks, with 5 sessions per track. One track is already reserved for a combination of interoperability topics like PHP on Windows, and SQL Server 2008 Development. That leaves us with 15 topics.
I would greatly appreciate your input in the process. We're looking for sessions that will appeal to the broadest set of Microsoft developers in South Africa. We unfortunately do not have enough sessions to cater for specialist or complex topics. Hence, here is our proposed list.
- ASP.NET: Dynamic Data, MVC, AJAX improvements and ASP.NET Routing
- Internet Explorer 8: Developer Features
- Vista: Building Vista gadgets
- Mobile: Building a mobile business application
- WPF: New features and improvements in SP1
- XNA: Building games with XNA Studio
- Silverlight: New and enhanced features in Silverlight 2
- Silverlight: Silverlight 3 and mobile support
- LINQ: Learning the syntax
- ADO.NET Entity Framework and Data Services
- Windows Azure: Understanding the vision
- Azure Services Platform: Building applications on the platform
- Current Team Foundation Server and Team System
- Future Team Foundation Server and Team System
- Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0: New features
Have I missed an essential developer topic? Which topic will you then rather drop in favour of your topic?
Deadline: I need all responses by Tuesday, 25 November.
SA Architect and the guys from BB&D are doing FREE readiness sessions for whoever is a member of SA Architect, of which membership is free :-) Check out their events calendar - look at all the sessions prefixed with "TR". It's straight one-hour sessions and may just give you that quick edge on a new or existing technology. The recordings for some of these sessions are also available for download.
“PLEASE” support the SA Architect community and complete the survey at http://www.saarchitect.net/Lists/Technology%20Awareness%20%20Readiness/overview.aspx ... will take you 2-3 minutes.
Your VOTE/FEEDBACK will be highly appreciated!
For those of you that attended the Devs4Devs event in Cape Town, here are some code samples Hans Appelo used in his "Aggregating and Pivoting data" session -
http://cid-ac65922fa2478490.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public. Enjoy.
The gathering of the developer force has been declared!
It will happen on 27 November 2008 at NMMU South Campus, Embizweni Building. Please be there at 3pm for 3:30pm, and it will end approx. 6:30pm.
Presentations will be from local Microsoft Gold Certified Partner emediaIT (http://www.emediait.com) and topics will be:
· ASP.NET MVC : What’s the big deal?!
· Telerik Sitefinity: How to use one of the best .NET CMS systems to create a custom designed website in under an hour.
· LLBLGen Pro: Rapid .NET application development using LLBLGen Pro
RSVP to Dave Coates (dcoates@qzcreative.co.za)
Good news. The planning for DevDays 2009 has kicked off. We're planning for more sessions, more tracks and more presenters than ever! It's most likely going to happen between February and March 2009.
One question. We have so much that we wish to share with Microsoft developers, that we may run out of sessions. Hence, let me test an idea with you. If we reduce the time allocated per session to 45 minutes, then we can fit in an extra session per track.
How would you feel about such a change? More sessions, but less time per session.