February 2007 - Posts

• WebDD Conference 07 - Feedback, Features and Freebies!

  I recently attended the WebDD '07 Conference at Microsoft UK HQ in Reading. At the time I promised I would give some feedback via the blog, so here it is. I'm normally reluctant to attend technical conferences on a Saturday but I'm glad I went to this one as it was well worth attending. Speakers Whilst there were many other speakers, the star of the show in my view,  had to be Scott Guthrie. Essentially he spoke non-stop for most of the day (about 6 hours plus)! His sessions were so heavily oversubscribed that he actually repeated some sessions during the lunch break. His presentations were always energetic, humorous and well targeted for his audience.   Topics covered included details of the forthcoming 'Orcas' Visual Studio update, cool features of .Net Framework 3.0 (such as LINQ, anonymous methods, lambda expressions etc) and features of AJAX, Control Adaptor toolkit, ASP.Net 2.0 and IIS 7.0. There was truly a lot of interesting stuff packed in.   You can find out more about all these technologies and lots more of what his Microsoft Product Group teams are up to via Scotts Blog. Scott's talk on WPF/e was so heavily oversubscribed, so instead I attended a talk by Charteris's own Barry Dorrans on Windows CardSpace. This lively talk clarified many of the confusions I had around this technology and how it related to other existing identity and security technologies. Microsoft Expression Web Finally, as an added bonuses all conferences attendees who completed a short on-line survey got a free full copy of the latest Microsoft Expression Web software to take away. This installed without issue on my Windows XP machine and so far appears pretty stable. I've been playing with some of the CSS design and editing features and these are certainly impressive. I'll post some more as I use it more extensively. Posted Feb 14 2007, 01:25 AM by rogerw with no comments Filed under: Programming, C# 3.0, AJAX, LINQ, ASP.Net, CSS Adaptor Toolkit, IIS 7.0, WebDD

• Windows Mobile 5 Alarms - Update - The Bells Are Ringing In the Cotswolds Now!

  Some of you may be aware of my previous post and resulting comments about how my Windows Mobile alarms on my Orange M5000 (AKA Htc Universal) device stopped working when I installed MobiMate WorldMate 2006 Standard Edition.  Eventually I got in-built Windows Mobile Alarms to work but still couldn't get WorldMate Alarms to trigger. I tried many more times since then to get a response from technical support from MobiMate but to no avail. In the end I have reluctantly given up and uninstalled MobiMate 2006 Standard Edition. This is a shame as my experience of a great product has been spoilt by an apparent defect and seemingly non-existent technical support.  The Windows Mobile 2003 version still is a great product on my old IPAQ 5550! In its place I have now purchased Fizz Traveller from Fizz Software . This effectively performs many of the same tasks as WorldMate and is something I've used very happily on my Orange SPV C500 albeit the Windows Mobile 2003 version. It has a slick, revised user interface and provides a great example of how to write mobile user interfaces that are highly adaptable to the various variations of device screen size and orientation (the M5000  twistable display has both landscape and portrait screen VGA support). Most importantly of all however, ALL the alarms now work first time, every time!  Posted Feb 14 2007, 12:09 AM by rogerw with no comments Filed under: Mobile Devices, MobiMate, Windows Mobile 5.0

• Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center for Vista Released!

  My fiddling with factories investigations into the Windows Mobile Client Software Factory area have been delayed a little so far. Recently this has been whilst I plan and implement the migration of my main machine to the new Windows Vista OS. One of the things holding me back  was the wait for the final release of the Microsoft Windows Mobile Device Center. This is effectively Microsoft's replacement for ActiveSync under Vista and promises a whole new user interface and increased stability! In the end the release crept out onto the Microsoft downloads site on 31 Jan 2007, the day after the official Vista launch, without me really noticing. I don't believe it is included in the RTM Vista release by default and therefore requires a separate download for owners of existing devices. You can get it at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=83d513ea-9df9-4920-af33-3a0e2e4e7beb&DisplayLang=en  I haven't got to the point where I can try it yet, so I can't give any exact feedback at the moment. It is unclear (at least to me anyway) exactly which versions of Windows Mobile are supported and with what features. I have few devices of various ages I can try it with, so I will soon let you know. Posted Feb 02 2007, 01:02 AM by rogerw with no comments Filed under: Mobile Devices, Active Sync, Windows Mobile Compatibility, Windows Mobile 5.0

• WebDD Conference 07 - Saturday 3rd February

  I'm attending this conference this Saturday at Microsoft Campus in Reading, UK. I'm particularly looking forward to the sessions on ASP.Net/AJAX development and Orcas (the next version of Visual Studio) by Scott Guthrie. For those who maybe don't know,  Scott works for Microsoft and runs the product teams that build IIS, ASP.NET, Atlas, CLR, Compact Framework, Windows Forms, Commerce Server, Visual Web Developer 2005 and Visual Studio Tools for WPF.  So a guy well worth listening to! He also has a great blog which is full of useful stuff about current and future product developments, particularly around ASP.Net and web development.   Other sessions I'm interested in, are the sessions by Hristo Deshev on Developing ASP.NET AJAX Components and another session by Scott Guthrie on WPFe. WPFe holds great promise for future web multimedia development using Microsoft tools. In Scott's own words "WPF/E is the Microsoft solution for delivering rich, cross-platform, interactive experiences including animation, graphics, audio, and video for the Web and beyond." Charteris's own Barry Dorrans is also giving a talk on Windows CardSpace. The WebDD conference is unfortunately now full and oversubscribed but you can find out more about it at http://www.webdd.org.uk. I'll let you know how it goes. Posted Feb 02 2007, 12:47 AM by rogerw with no comments Filed under: AJAX, Orcas, ASP.Net, WebDD