UX Confidential

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.

Dave Bost at The Chicago Silverlight Users Group

 
Dave Bost discusses Windows Phone development at The Chicago Silverlight Users Group.
 

MIX It Up! at The Chicago Silverlight Users Group (Updated)

There was a lot of buzz and a number of great announcements at last month's MIX10 event in Las Vegas, especially around Windows Phone 7 and one of its development platforms, Silverlight.

Register now and join The Chicago Silverlight Users Group this Wednesday, April 7th at 6pm where we'll review and discuss announcements and demo content from MIX10, including Windows Phone 7!

The Chicago Silverlight Users Group meets on the first Wednesday of each 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: [email protected]

Date: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM (CT) 

Location: The Illinois Technology Association, 200 S. Wacker Drive, 15th Floor, Chicago, IL 60606

UPDATE: You can view all the videos and presentations from MIX10 here: http://live.visitmix.com/videos

Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview Now Available

Along with the release of the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Betas, comes the June preview of Expression Blend 2.5.

I am eager to install and test these new bits as Control Skinning has made its way to this version! I will be posting a review and thoughts on this new release after I have spent a few days with it. A list of known issues can be found here.

BTW, I still only recommend these betas for Silverlight 2 development. If you're working with WPF apps, stick with the RTM version of Blend 2.

Exporting XAML from Photoshop & Illustrator

From the mailbag…

John B. of Chicago asks: I am a UI designer that is interested in exploring XAML, WPF and Silverlight. Is there a way I can leverage my current set of tools (Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks) when working with Expression Blend, or do I need to start using Expression Design?

As a vector and raster graphic design tool, Expression Design is a great companion to Blend and it offers some advanced options and features when exporting artwork to XAML. But thankfully you don’t have to forgo years of Illustrator experience to get your designs into Blend.

There are several free plug-ins available that let designers export their existing files, artwork and layouts to XAML from industry-standard design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks:

• Michael Swanson offers a free plug-in that enables export from Adobe Illustrator to WPF and Silverlight compatible XAML. You can download his AI to XAMLExport plug-in here.

• Psd2Xaml from flowlabs.net is a free open-source tool for converting Photoshop .PSD files to XAML. Psd2Xaml saves vectors and layout data as in XAML and creates a folder containing the bitmaps from the PSD file. As a bonus, it also supports limited .SWF conversion to XAML.

• For Fireworks users, the Infragistics Fireworks to XAML Exporter is an extension that allows you to easily convert artwork created in the Fireworks to XAML.

 Thanks for your question, John.

Riapalooza Chicago

Join your fellow RIA professionals for RIApalooza, a invaluable two day event aimed at exploring and promoting the development of Rich Internet Applications.

I will be presenting on WPF and fellow Magenicon Corey Miller will be showing his Silverlight chops.

RIApalooza promises a platform agnostic and "PowerPoint-Free" zone, which means we are going to forgo the boring marketing pitches in favor of talking technology. RIApalooza is about creating Rich Internet Applications; how to go about building them and what is being built.

The event begins with a social meet-and-greet, Friday, May 30, 2008 from 6pm to 10pm. Presentations and sessions will be held Saturday, May 31, 2008 from 9am to 5pm.

The event will be held at the Illinois Technology Association, located at 200 S Wacker Drive 15th Floor Chicago, IL 60606.

Magenic will be co-sponsoring the event along with Microsoft, Adobe, the Chicago Area Adobe Group among others. Space is limited so head on over and register now.

UPDATE: For my presentation, I plan on demoing an ongoing WPF project... showcasing how the app is being built, and how to skin controls in WPF.

2 Flavors of Expression Blend

I had the chance to chat briefly with Pete Blois from the Microsoft Expression team about this week's announcements regarding Blend. He pointed out that there are 2 new versions of Blend now available: Blend 2 Beta and Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview. He recommended only using the 2.5 Preview when working with Silverlight 2 projects and sticking with the Blend 2 Beta when working with WPF. I will be installing both versions and have a comparison review of in the coming days.