Last Day of MIX11

Well the slots have been evil but the tables have been kind.  MIX11 is drawing to a close.  There’s a full day of sessions ahead of me, immediately followed by a flight where I lose 2 hours due to the time change, immediately followed by a 3 hour drive back to Shreveport.  Good food, good swag, and good information.  Looking forward to next year…

For now, I’m off to check out Mads Kristensen’s talk on Bigger, Faster, Stronger:  Optimizing ASP.NET Applications.  If that name sounds familiar then maybe you’ve used BlogEngine.NET.  Mads is the founder.

Haack on MVC3

Phil Haack is giving a talk on what’s new with MVC3.  Even though it’s been out for a while now, I’m sure there are still plenty of developers who haven’t tried it yet.  MVC3 was my first experience with MVC.  I skipped MVC1 and MVC2 while trudging along with web forms and finally decided last December that it was time to make the jump.  A very wise decision, to say the least, and I haven’t looked back.

The first thing to note is the release of the ASP.NET MVC3 Tools Update.  One of the things this introduces is a new project template for intranet applications.  The main difference with this is that it uses NTFS authentication instead of introducing an account controller.  There is also a new option to use HTML5 semantic markup which will include Modernizr with your views.  There are other new features available with this update and you can learn more about it over on Phil’s blog.

Scaffolding

Steven Sanderson, Program Manager, is giving this talk on ASP.NET, NuGet, Entity Framework Code First, and more.  I’ve used CodeSmith in the past so we’ll see if this session will offer anything that could replace its usage.

…

Wow!  That was a whirlwind.  I don’t even know where to start.  For this one I’ll defer to a very detailed explanation that covers most of what went on in this session.

Building Data-centric N-tier Applications with jQuery

Brad Olenick is giving this talk and from the description he should go into using WCF with jQuery, something I haven’t tried yet.  Here we go…

RIA/JS is a jQuery client for WCF/RIA services and is available today via NuGet.

The demo looked interesting but it seems like there’s a lot of voodoo going on under the hood, which we didn’t get to see.  I’ll be downloading the plug-in to explore what’s underneath it, if for nothing else.

Hacking with the F12 Developer Tools

I spend a lot of my day in these dev tools so I’m hoping to learn some new tips and tricks to make my day a little easier.  Martin Beeby is presenting this session.  Here we go…

Well I learned one new thing, you can format JavaScript in the tools which is especially useful if you’re dealing with a minified version of that js file.  Turns out you can also use your up and down arrow keys to increment or decrement integer values like height and width.

The profiler and network tabs are nice additions to the tools and features I haven’t dealt much with yet.  The network tab gives you something similar to what Fiddler would.

One of the tools I use on a regular basis is the Screen Calipers from Iconico.  The dev tools now include a ruler similar to (but not as slick as) the Screen Calipers.  There is also a color picker which, again, isn’t quite as slick as the tool I normally use, ColorPic, but is functional nonetheless.

Good talk but quick.

Going Mobile with Your Site on IE9 and Windows Phone 7

With IE9 coming to Windows Phone 7 soon the gap between native apps and mobile websites will be that much smaller.  Joe Marini, Principal Program Manager for Internet Explorer on Windows Phone is giving this talk to explore the new capabilities coming this fall to Windows Phone 7 with the Mango update.

Time passes…

For the most part this talk mostly covered a common sense approach to web development regarding targeting mobile browsers.  Most of the things discussed were to be expected:  optimize images, use feature detection over browser-sniffing, don’t include gratuitous use of background imagery or fancy fonts, etc.

Lots of good things coming with Mango, including geolocation (with GPS), HTML5 audio/video capabilities, and CSS media queries.

MIX11 Day 2 Keynote

Day 2 here at Mandalay Bay and everyone is gearing up for today’s keynote with The Gu and Joe Belfiore.  Let’s see what kind of Windows Phone 7 announcements they have for us…

8:55 am

DJ Z-Trip is serenading us with some Led Zeppelin and Public Enemy, good stuff.

9:05 am

Joe Belfiore takes the stage to kick things off…

9:10 am

Joe is addressing the Windows Phone 7 update issues.

9:15 am

Joe is going through some of the new things coming with the Mango update coming this fall, including additional language and country support.

9:20 am

Live demo with a recent build of Mango…  The app jump list now has the same capabilities as contacts with search and alphabet shortcuts.  Podcast support from the marketplace will be available as well.  Similar to the feature currently available in the hubs, users will be able to, for example, do a web search for movies then select a “card” which could show additional information about the search as well as allowing the user to slide over to additional screens like “extras.”

9:30 am

Joe is now going over the biggest feature I’ve been waiting for…  IE9 will be the native browser with the fall Mango release.  Joe is currently demonstrating some HTML5 video and audio capabilities including playing background audio from the browser while using other apps on the phone.

9:35 am

Joe is now demonstrating the hardware acceleration capabilities blowing iPhone and Android away.

9:40 am

Ringtones!  Access to sensors, including the camera, compass, gyroscopes, etc.

9:43 am

Motion Sensor was just announced which will make it easier to work with the compass and gyroscope.

9:45 am

Multi-tasking – fast app switching, background audio, background downloads, alarms, etc.

9:47 am

May 25th – Angry Birds!

9:50 am

Demo now of Live Agents which is background app/task management balancing background functionality with battery usage.

9:52 am

The new phone tools will be available in May.

9:55 am

Scott Guthrie has just taken the stage.  Right into a demo…  The new tools will have an accelerometer available within the emulator and it looks great.  They’ll also include location options for the emulator to test location-based apps.

10 am

Scott is now demonstrating some of the new debugging features that will be available including performance logging and analysis.  The amount of detail available is insane.  You can drill down to a specific frame if need be.

10:05 am

Lots of performance improvements coming with Mango that will require no code changes.  Also, Mango will include around 1500 new APIs.

10:10 am

Local SQL with LINQ support!  Demo…  Network sockets will be available as well.  Demo…

10:15 am

Mike Roberts is now demo-ing Kik Messenger, a chat app which will be available in a few weeks.

10:20 am

Camera capabilities…  Ben Riga is demo-ing some new ways to interact with the camera on the device.

10:25 am

Silverlight and XNA will be able to exist in the same app.

10:30 am

Silverlight for the browser…  Silverlight 5 contains hundreds of new APIs.  Hardware-based video decode will be available.  Silverlight will also take advantage of IE9’s hardware acceleration.  Remote control input will be available as well.

10:35 am

Blue Angels' website demo.

10:40 am

Silverlight 5 new features demo with John Papa…  2D to 3D projection looks nice.

10:43 am

Silverlight 5 Beta and tools support is now available for download.  RTM will be available later this year.

10:45 am

Kinect – Kinect for Windows SDK will be available later this spring!  Demos….  I want that chair yo!

10:55 am

Worldwide telescope – wow!

11 am

We all get Kinects!  Sweet!

All in all today’s keynote was much better than yesterday’s, lot’s of good info.  I’m looking forward to working with some of the new phone tools.

On to the sessions…