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SF Silverlight User Group

Jason — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:18:42 +0000

On May 13 the San Francisco Silverlight User group fires itself back up with a meeting at the Microsoft office at 835 Market Street, Suite 700. Starting at 7:00pm, this should be a regular meeting the second Thursday of each month.

More information will be available at http://www.sfslug.org

Hope you’ll come out to hear more about Silverlight.

Best,

Internet Explorer 9 – Preview 2

Jason — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:42:43 +0000

This morning we released the download for preview two of Internet Explorer 9. New features include CSS3 media queries, DOMContentLoaded, getElementsByClassName, and others. We aslo see some movement on the Acid 3 test now scoring 68 out of 100 so some positive progress there.

There are some new demos of the features available that I recommend you try out, my favorite is the Flickr Explorer.

ie.microsoft.com/testdrive”>Try it now!

Azure camp SF & LA

Jason — Mon, 03 May 2010 17:55:36 +0000

Azure – the cool parts! A BizSpark Camp.

Want to know what makes Azure different? Learn how to deploy your own application to Azure in this free developer’s training and you could win a Zune HD! Light breakfast and lunch included!

This event will have a heavy technical focus, so make sure you don’t leave your web development skills at home!

Schedule for the day:
8am – 8:30am …………………… Registration & continental breakfast
8:30am – 10:15am …………….. Azure presentations and demos
10:15am – 10:30am …………… Break
10:30am – 12pm ……………….. Azure presentations and demos, continued.
12pm – 1pm …………………….. Lunch
1pm - 4:45pm …………………… Azure walkthough followed by a “hackathon”.
4:45pm - 5pm …………………… Zune HD giveaway
5pm - 6pm ……………………….. Networking

Date & Registration Information:

May 7, 2010
San Francisco: Information here

June 4, 2010
Los Angeles: Information here

Design Toolbox

Jason — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:47:38 +0000

A little while back I had the pleasure of contributing some material to a new education site at microsoft.com/design/toolbox. Toolbox is a structured path of materials on design principles that also gives some insight into the Expression toolset in these processes. There is a great deal of really good information in these lessons and I highly recommend you taking the time to create a profile and dive into them.

Design Toolbox

Dynamic Prototyping

Jason — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:46:44 +0000

Sara Summers and Chris Bernard my friends and colleagues have published a book on prototyping applications called Dynamic Prototyping. I highly recommend checking that out.

For more information visit Sara’s site

IE9 Developer preview now available

Jason — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:40:09 +0000

The IE9 developer preview availability was announced during the day two keynote at MIX in Vegas this week. The download is available at the IE9 testdrive site along with some test pages designed to show off the abilities of the browser at this stage of its development.
I highly recommend you take the time to check it out.

Silverlight 3

Jason — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:07:14 +0000

The last two weeks have been a blur for me, I was in Austin for SXSW Interactive and we had a great time meeting everyone who came by the Silverlight lounge. We were joined with several Microsoft partners demonstrating their solutions built in Silverlight and applications developed for Surface. This was my first trip to SXSW so I didn’t know quite what to expect, I have to say that I was pleased with the turnout and the interest in these technologies.

We also held the national finals for Phizzpop, I was amazed, as always, at the quality of the entries by each of the five teams given the time constraints. It was a difficult challenge to be sure, to develop a comprehensive plan to move an entire city closer to the green column. Each team had compelling response that covered several aspects of daily life and crossed technologies and devices. In the end Zeus Jones, winners of the Minneapolis Phizzpop, walked away with the national win as well.

I enjoyed SXSW but the hardest part about being there this trip was not being able to talk about all the great things that were coming the week after at MIX09 in Vegas, another first for me, not Vegas but MIX. A Microsoft conference that brings designers and developers from across the US to learn about current MS technology and what is coming over the horizon and I picked an exciting one for my first MIX. Bill Buxton opened the event with a keynote about design that nicely alluded to one of the new features of Silverlight 3, SketchFlow.

SketchFlow

SketchFlow is a tool for application prototyping that is built into Blend 3, it allows for the quick layout of application screens and interaction flow. The app includes a set of functioning controls designed as though they were sketched, allowing you to layout a working application prototype data and all quickly and without concern that your interface will be mistaken for a final design.

Map out your application, define reusable elements across screens, add behaviors to make a functioning demo you can share with your client and team cross browser cross platform. If that isn’t enough you can output a word doc fully formatted with screen shots.

For more information visit the MIX09 website and view the video of the Sketchflow session.

IE8 RC1 Now Available

Jason — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:16:13 +0000

Microsoft has just released the Release Candidate 1 for Internet Explorer 8.

Internet Explorer 8 RC1 is much faster than previous versions of Internet Explorer, so you’ll notice that difference right away. But you’ll also notice some cool new features that will make your surfing experience faster and easier—not mention a whole lot safer.

Highlight a street address in your Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or other web mail account, right-click on the blue button that appears, and hover over “Map with Live Search.” Presto! You’ll see the map with the location right there—no more copying and pasting street addresses from web mail to a mapping site. Plus, you can choose what mapping service you want to use.
Go to the search box in the top right, and type a search item—see how the enhanced Instant Search Box is more helpful, providing real-time search suggestions, including images, from your chosen search provider.
Click on a new tab, and see the options that are presented there, including “InPrivate Browsing.” Click InPrivate Browsing and watch what happens—you are now in a browser session that is leaving no trail behind, so research gift suggestions for your significant other to your heart’s content without worrying about who might pick up the crumbs after you.

Harder to see are the many security enhancements that will help keep you protected against the ever-evolving online threats—things like protection from cross-site scripting attacks that no other browser offers.

Let me know what you think of IE8 RC1.