Event : UX Options with Microsoft, 11th Dec 2008 (Dublin)
Event Invite: User Experience Options with Microsoft - a full-day seminar
If you've been reading a lot about Silverlight, WPF and all the various flavours of the Expression tools - you might be wondering about how they all fit together, and with more mature technologies like VB6 and WinForms. Well, this is your chance to find out! A free day-long seminar with Ronan, Martha and visiting expert Max Knor will be well worth it!
Where? Microsoft EPDC2 Auditorium, Microsoft European Product Development Centre, South County Business Part, Leopardstown (Bus transfer available from Sandyford Luas stop - leaving at 9:40am sharp!)
When? Thursday, December 11th. 10am -5pm (Doors open 9:30)
Event Overview:
Over the years, Microsoft has provided developers with many tools and technologies for building UIs for their applications, from VB6, WinForms to WPF and Silverlight. Come along to this free day-long seminar to get a great overview of all your options. Learn which tools to use in which situation from Microsoft technology experts Max Knor (TechEd favourite and developer from Microsoft Austria), Ronan Geraghty and Martha Rotter (Microsoft Ireland Developer and Platform Group). If you are interested in delivering excellent user experiences, either in rich clients or on the web – this seminar is for you!
Sessions:
10:00 – 11:15 The Microsoft Client Continuum
The Microsoft Client Continuum : a continuous series of client platform technologies available from Microsoft ranging from the very "rich" functionality of WPF to the greater "reach" of ASP.NET and of course Silverlight. Learn how the technologies compare and which one is the right one to use based on your needs.
11:30 – 13:00 Introducing the Windows Presentation Foundation
The Windows Presentation Foundation is a new GUI framework for desktop applications. Shipping as part of .NET 3.0 it addresses a lot of issues, Windows Forms developers have been faced with for years. With WPF, the UI is defined in an own language called XAML, whereas the code beside (event handlers,..) are written in C#. This concept allows better separation of UI and code, so that you can change the visual representation without a need to touch the corresponding code. WPF provides you with the ability to restyle all controls (even the built-in ones) and apply themes to them to create a unique user experience throughout your entire application. Besides that, you can compose controls, e.g. easily include images, buttons and other controls within lists, with the help of the new content model. Apart from visual stuff, WPF introduces a powerful data binding engine, an included command model, routed events and much more. Join this session to learn how to create your own UIs with the help of the Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), how to apply styles, and leverage the new features of WPF!
14:00 – 15:30 Building WPF composite smart clients
Windows Presentation Foundation is a powerful framework for developing smart client applications. It provides functionalities as a rich data binding engine, styling of controls, a built-in command pattern and much more. That's great for flashy demos, but when it comes to real business applications, you are facing some problems: What if the application consists of different modules, which need to be independent? Such a modularity allows parallel development of modules and enables more flexible deployment, as additional modules can be added later, with no need to update the original parts. Other problems are the separation of data, visualization and logic or the reuse of views. Microsoft Patterns & Practices Group has collected some of these real-world problems and has built the "Composite Application Guidance for WPF" (the project formerly known as "Prism"), which provides a set of proven patterns and components. In this session you will see how to leverage the blocks of the guidance to ease the development of your own WPF composite smart clients.
15:45 – 17:00 Building Rich Internet Applications with Silverlight 2
Silverlight provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we take a deep look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next-generation experiences for consumers and businesses, and demonstrate building a Rich Interactive Application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft .NET. We cover how to use Microsoft Visual Studio to create applications, how to create UI using XAML markup and code, how to build a custom control and how to retrieve data from a Web service.