.NET Rocker

Yesterday morning Microsoft launched Windows 8 at the BUILD-conference in Anaheim. Windows 8 has a completely new tile- and touch-based UI with the Metro-Style we already know from Windows Phone 7.

For us as Developers the big question was how to develop applications for Windows 8. Microsoft already said something about HTML5 and JavaScript in another preview-video that appeared on youtube before. Yesterday they mentioned more about that topic. First of all:

All applications built for Windows 7 will still run on Windows 8.

Ok, know let’s look at the platform and the tools we’re using today with Windows.

Today we’ve classical Applications running on the Desktop built with .NET, Silverlight or just a Win32-App. There are also Web-Applications built with HTML and Javascript running in Internet Explorer or another browser.

The problem Microsoft mentioned here is that these three things don’t work together very well. Therefore Microsoft reimagined the Windows-8-platform. You can use any language you wan’t to build the metro-style applications like the picture below shows.

As you can see in the picture above, Microsoft has also reimagined the Windows APIs. They know are calling the Windows APIs the Windows Runtime APIs, or short, the WinRT APIs. WinRT provides over 1800 objects for us developers to use. These 1800 objects are in four blocks:

• Application Model
• Communication & Data
• Graphics & Media
• Devices & Printing

It’s important to mention that all these blocks are natively built into Windows. It’s not a layer on top of windows, it is windows. The APIs are reflected in C/C++, C# and VB and also in Javascript. So you can use any language you want. Use C/C++/C# or VB and built your view in XAML, or use JavaScript and build your view in HTML/CSS

There’s Version 11 of Visual Studio that let’s you create the same Metro-style applications in the different languages.

Expression Blend 5 will beside XAML also support HTML. So there’s a great tooling for all view-languages.

Applications can be published in an App Store called the Windows Store. Same principle as Apple has with their App Store in Mac OS X Lion. Visual Studio 2011 therefore contains a new store-menu where you can upload a package directly from visual studio.

Go and grab a Windows 8 Preview with all the tools installed to get started developing Windows 8 apps here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

Ok, the big question after knowing all of that is what happens to .NET, Silverlight, WPF in Windows 8? XAML stays, but Silverlight and WPF are just on the side, aren’t they? Let’s download the preview and discuss.

Thanks for joining my session at the .NET Developer Conference (DevCon) in Nürnberg today. As promised you find the slides of my session herer on my blog. Just click the download-link below.

download slides

Thomas

Thanks to all who attended in my session at TechDays 2011 in Basel. My Live-Demo is available via the link below.

TechDays Basel – LiveDemo – Download here

The .zip-File contains a .bak-File that you can restore via SQL Server Management Studio by chosing “Restore Database” from the contextmenu when right-clicking on “databases” in Object Explorer.

Yes, it felt like a very long time since the Firestarter-Event in December last year till now. As promised the Silverlight 5 Beta is available in the first half of 2011, and that’s now. Find the Links to the products below. Be sure to install SP1 of VS2011 first (you find that one here: VS2010SP1)

Silverlight 5 Tools
Dokumentation to Silverlight 5
Microsoft Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5

Have fun and enjoy.

Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund. Vielen Dank für den Besuch meiner Session diesen Morgen um 8:30. Wie versprochen stehen die Slides und die Live-Demo eine Stunde nach dem Session-Ende hier auf dem Blog zur Verfügung. Folgend die Links

Slides
Live-Demo

Falls es Fragen oder Anmerkungen gibt, immer wieder gerne. Einfach direkt per E-Mail an mich.

Thomas

Danke an alle Teilnehmer meiner Session, die mir zu so später Stunde noch sehr aufmerksam und konzentriert folgen konnten. Ich hoffe, jeder konnte was mitnehmen. Folgend die Links zu den Slides und dem in der Live-Demo entwickelten Beispiel.

Slides
Demos

Morgen früh um 8:30 Uhr geht’s weiter mit Silverlight und WCF RIA Services. Dabei wird auch das Windows Phone via SOAP mit Authentication an den WCF RIA Service “angehängt”.

Thomas

Today Microsoft announced in a press release that they’re planning a “broad strategic partnership” with Nokia to create a new global mobile ecosystem.

Nokia would adopt Windows Phone as it’s principal smartphone strategy. That’s an important and huge step for Windows Phone. Together with the experience and the broad range of Nokia it could be possible to play a bigger role in the market between iPhones, Androids and other mobiles.

Nokia is still very big in the mobile-industry. Many non-geek-people are using Nokia. And those people are a very big piece of the mobile-cake. Well done, looking forward to see my mother or my father with a Windows Phone.

Read the full press release here:

http://microsoft.com/presspass/press/2011/feb11/02-11partnership.mspx

Die “Beyondtellerrand Mobile”-Konferenz (www.beyondtellerrand.de) fand diesen Montag in Köln statt. Nachdem ich Sonntag Abend um halb elf im Hotel ankam entdeckte ich nach dem Zähneputzen eine Stofftasche auf meinem Zimmertisch. Welch Überraschung! Darin befanden sich ein Konferenzplan, ein Energydrink, eine Packung Dextroenergen und ein Snickers.

Die zweite Überraschung war das handgemalte Bild, das zusätzlich auf der Rückseite mit einer persönlichen, handgeschriebenen Nachricht von Sascha Wolter und Marc Thiele (die Veranstalter) versehen war. Auf dem Bild befindet sich ein einäugiger König, der – passend zur Konferenz – auf dem Tellerrand sitzt und über diesen hinausschaut.

Das war eine tolle Überraschung, über die ich mich sehr gefreut habe. Das Bild hängt bereits in unserem Flur. Lieber Sascha, lieber Marc, besten Dank!! Das war ein einmaliger Empfang und eine einmalige Konferenz, die ich bisher in dieser Form noch nicht erlebt habe.

Das war eine gute Entschädigung für das am Sonntagabend verpasste Steakessen. Die Konferenz selbst hatte spannende und meiner Meinung nach durchweg sehr gute Vorträge. Der Tag war sehr abwechslungsreich und intensiv.

Am Abend hatte ich die Session namens “Mobile Datendienste: Von Wolke bis heiter”. Inhalt war das Entwickeln von Datendiensten für mobile Endgeräte via Microsoft-Plattform. Von klassischen WCF Services mit SOAP über WCF Data Services und WCF RIA Services via OData ging es dann schließlich “in die Cloud”, wo sich bspw. auch der TableStorage via OData anzapfen lässt.

Danke an alle, die an meiner Session teilgenommen und bis am Ende durchgehalten haben. Ich hoffe, es konnte jeder etwas daraus mitnehmen. Die Slides meines Vortrags können hier runtergeladen werden.

Slides

Fragen, Anregungen und Kritik sind herzlich willkommen und können gerne direkt per Mail an mich gesendet werden: Mail an Thomas.

Besten Dank!

I switched from iPhone 3GS to a Samsung Omnia 7 with Windows Phone 7. Windows Phone 7 has  a really great user experience, especially with a great display like my Samsung Omnia 7 has. I even like the user experience of Windows Phone 7 much more than the user experience of my iPhone 3GS. And the development of apps with Silverlight is totally awesome.

There are just a few things I miss from my iPhone:

• A navigation-app like Navigon or TomTom. I think there’ll be one in the near future. (German Telekom already has Navigon, but it’s an exclusiv app that you only get there)
• The “Maps”-Application.

The second one is very amazing. On my iPhone I was able to open the Maps-app, enter a street and streetnumber and the app displayed me the route to it from my current location.

The “Maps”-Application on Windows Phone 7 just displays my current location, it can’t display a route. Oh, I can hear you say “no, that’s not true, it can display a route”. You’re correct, but for some users the functionality is not there. And as I found out, it’s based on regional settings. Is this a bug or a wanted behavior? I don’t know. Maybe Microsoft can give a statement to that. For me it doesn’t make sense to show a different set of buttons for Switzerland than for Germany/US and other regions.

When you’ve set up your Phone with region German (Switzerland), in the maps-app you can just look at your location, but there’s no way to get a route to another location. When the region is switched to German (German), you can enter a route to another location. Let’s look at the screens.

Here is the screen with German (Switzerland) setting. Notice that there are just two Buttons in the ApplicationBar. One to jump to the current location (Ich) and one to search (Suchen). The latter one just opens Bing-Search with the current location.

When I now go to the settings of my Windows Phone 7 and set everything from Deutsch (Schweiz) to Deutsch (Deutschland), I get an additional icon as you see on the following screenshot.

The additional icon allows it to search an address to get a route. And that was what I wanted. You can check it out on your handy. Just go to the settings and set all region-based informations to Deutsch (Schweiz). There are three settings under region & language:

• Region Format
• System locale
• Browser- and search language

If you’re a swiss guy, set all to Deutsch (Deutschland): Now enjoy your Maps-App.

September last year I gave a talk at the BASTA-conference in Mainz about Silverlight 4 and WPF in .NET 4.0. I also gave an interview about Silverlight. You can watch it here: http://it-republik.de/dotnet/news/Einem-WPF-und-Silverlight-Experten-auf-den-Zahn-gefuehlt-057911.html