UX Confidential

Microsoft Design Unification

Microsoft's Steve Kaneko on design unification and the challenges of moving to Metro:

Silverlight 5 Available for Download Today!

Silverlight 5 is finally gone RTW and is available for download starting today. New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives.

Head on over to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=149156 and download it now!

Using Expression Blend in Windows Phone Development

Join me at the Chicago Windows Phone Developer Group where I'll be discussing the ins and outs of Expression Blend over pizza and beer. I'll cover the fundamentals of the Blend UI, give an overview of SketchFlow and show how you can quickly and easily create beautiful experiences for Windows Phone with Metro.

The session will be held at the Illinois Technology Association on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 5:30 PM. Please visit http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Windows-Phone-Developers to register.

Windows Phone Unleashed @ TechWeek

Don’t miss this opportunity to get hands on with Windows Phone and the new features coming in Windows Phone “Mango”. Get help developing apps from the Windows Phone experts! This is a “hands-on” Hackathon where you will learn how to build, scale and publish your Windows Phone apps from the Windows Phone and Windows Azure experts. If you are a beginner or even an expert Windows Phone developer, you should not miss this event. Click here to register.

What’s New in Silverlight 5?

Note: This meeting has been rescheduled for July 6th. If you had previously registered, there is no need to do so again.

Just weeks ago, Microsoft unveiled new details as well as a beta for Silverlight 5 at the MIX11 conference in Las Vegas.

Join the Chicago Silverlight Users Group and Microsoft Silverlight MVP Corey Miller as he showcases some of the newest features and capabilities of the next generation of Silverlight. Click here to register now!

MIX11

I just returned from the city of sin where I attended the annual Microsoft MIX conference and I have to say it was a great experience as always.

The annual 72-hour conversation about the future of the web (which had a decidedly "developer-centric" tone this year) featured some fantastic content including the amazing UX Lightning Series as well as new info on Silverlight 5, Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft's vision for HTML5. As always, the event inspired and educated and it was great to see many long-time friends and other peeps from the geek world.

If you missed MIX this year, fear not. Microsoft will be posting videos of each session soon.

Update: The videos from MIX11 are now live and can be viewd at: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX11

Scott Seely to present at The Chicago Silverlight Users Group Meeting

Microsoft Regional Director Scott Seely will discuss best practices on how to send messages between Silverlight applications and WCF/REST services on Wednesday, April 06, 2011 from 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM. You can register for the presentation here: http://chicagosilverlight.eventbrite.com/

Additional agenda items we will discuss include community involvement and the future direction of The Chicago Silverlight Users Group.

About The Speaker: Scott Seely is the president of Friseton, LLC (www.fiseton.com), and is a Microsoft Regional Director. From 2002 to 2006, Scott was a developer on the WCF/Indigo team at Microsoft. Today, he is an active member of the .NET community in the Chicago area, helping lead the Lake County .NET Users’ Group, organize Code Camps, and speaking at user groups throughout the region. Scott has focused on distributed systems since 1995.

Windows Phone 7 Boot Camp Training

Local Microsoft evangelist Dave Bost has a blog entry about Windows Phone 7 Boot Camps being held in various cities throughout Sept: http://davebost.com/blog/2010/08/31/windows-phone-7-boot-camp-training/ 

If you're interested in bringing your Silverlight or XNA skills to the Windows Phone platform, this is a great opportunity to learn more. 

UPDATE 2: You can register for the Chicago events here and here.

The Chicago Silverlight Users Group presents: Managed Extensibility Framework for Silverlight

Join us at the Chicago Silverlight Users Group on Wednesday, October 6th as Microsoft MVP Damon Payne gives an overview and demo of the Managed Extensibility Framework for Silverlight. 

Click here to register now!

Please note that there will be no meeting on Wednesday, September 1st.

The Chicago Silverlight Users Group meets on the first Wednesday of every month and focuses on Microsoft Silverlight, WPF and XAML design and development.

If you have any questions or comments about The Chicago Silverlight Users Group, send an email to: chicagosilverlight@live.com

Announcing Riapalooza 3!

Following the overwhelming success of 2009's RIApalooza 2, we are proud to announce RIApalooza 3!

RIApalooza is a community-driven, non-profit, day-long event for professionals who design, develop, customize, maintain and maximize business value using rich platforms like Flash, SIlverlight and HTML5.

Join your fellow RIA professionals for an invaluable unconference aimed at exploring and promoting the development of Rich Internet Applications. RIApalooza promises a platform agnostic and "PowerPoint-Free" zone, which means we are going to forgo the typical marketing pitches in favor of talking technology. Our event is about creating Rich Internet Applications, how to go about building them and what is being built.

Presentations and sessions will be held from 9am to 5pm on Friday, July 23rd. A social meet-and-greet will immediately follow.

Register now at http://riapalooza3.eventbrite.com

Questions about the event? Contact Anthony Handley & Michael Schaffner at info@riapalooza.com