Shawn Cicoria - CedarLogic : WinFX

MSDN Nuggets and ASP.NET How Do I Video Series

cicorias — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 22:52:56 GMT

In addition to these set's of videos, which concentrate on ASP.NET 2.0, there are a great bunch of short "nuggets" that Microsoft UK put together.

When I was learning Workflow, Mike Taulty's nuggets (that doesn't sound right) really helped me get through the basics and into the advanced features too, like compensations, transactions, etc.

The nuggets are short ~10 minute videos that you can see in action...

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/nuggets/

Workflow Nuggets (Screencasts on NetFx3.com)

ASP.NET How Do I Video Series

Electric Rain Harmony - Flash SWF to XAML Converter - For WPF and Silverlight

cicorias — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:31:41 GMT

Wow, could it be even easier to move to Silverlight from Flash? This is it, the next battle for the UI - Flash and Macromedia (I mean Adobe) are in the sights.

Link to Electric Rain Harmony - Flash SWF to XAML Converter - For WPF and Silverlight

New WindowsClient.com website...

cicorias — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:21:18 GMT

The www.WindowsForms.net website is no more; it's just been recast as WindowsClient.com - to take advantage of the SmartClient, WPF, etc. parts of the client side experience. Although, the SmartClient verbiage is light on the site - definate focus is WinForms & WPF...

http://windowsclient.com/Default.aspx

Netflix of the Future with SilverLight (fka WPF/e)

cicorias — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:18:01 GMT

I've been a big fan of Netflix for years, but definately see the horizon on their mail to home business model coming to an end, or at least siginificant contraction as video on demand becomes truly viable.

The Netflix folks have been working with SilverLight and at the Mix 07 conference they presented a demo of their new video player - saying it took about 2 weeks to build.

It was very slick, simple interface with all the controls you'd expect from a DVD player controls.

Take a look at it here: NetFlix Mix 07 Demo

Microsoft's Popfly - Taping the MySpace Generation.

cicorias — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:58:40 GMT

I tend to think the MySpace generation is already aged.

However, Microsoft has put up a site called Popfly (www.PopFly.com) that allows mashups of content based upon blocks.

There's a Popfly Explorer VS 2005 add-in allowing users to work with Popfly for building or extending. Silverlight (the old WPF/e) is in the mix as well.

Quoted in the Article:

"There's an obvious desire or need for people to want to create online applications, but it's too difficult today. So our goal is to democratize development," said Dan Fernandez, Microsoft's lead project manager for Visual Studio Express, of the Popfly project.
In an interview with eWEEK last month, S. "Soma" Somasegar, Microsoft's corporate vice president for developer tools, said what is now known as Popfly is Microsoft's attempt to tap the "MySpace generation."

Workflow Demo & Presentation from N3UG...

cicorias — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:14:08 GMT

The following links are for the Presentation & Demo's (and a whole bunch more) from the presentation that I did at SetFocus on May 8th, 2007 for the Northern New Jersey .NET Users Group (N3UG).

Presentation in PDF format

http://cicoria.com/CS1/files/folders/general/entry507.aspx

Demo's & Source Code

http://cicoria.com/CS1/files/folders/general/entry506.aspx

Excellent Series of posts on building a Custom Transport for WCF

cicorias — Mon, 01 May 2006 16:45:22 GMT

Nicholas Allen's Indigo Blog : Building a Custom File Transport, Part 7: Request Channel.

I was looking at building my own File Transport when I did a search and up comes this excellent series. Can’t wait till Nick’s all done.

/n software inc. - IP*Works! .NET Workflow Edition

cicorias — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 16:38:45 GMT

IP*Works is really extending themselves into the Integration space with BizTalk Adapters and now a bunch of Activities for Workflow….

IP*Works! .NET Workflow Edition [BETA]
IP*Works! .NET Workflow Edition for Windows Workflow Foundation includes activities that make it easy to integrate Internet capabilities into your workflow packages.
Transferring files, sending and receiving emails, consuming webservices, sending instant messages... all of the major communications technologies available in IP*Works! are currently available.

/n software inc. - IP*Works! .NET Workflow Edition.

Roadmap to the 'Atlas' Documentation

cicorias — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:59:09 GMT

Here’s a site from Microsoft covering Microsoft’s AJAX implementation support from a client and server perspective.

There’s also a section on using WCF with ATLAS here: http://atlas.asp.net/docs/atlas/doc/wcf/default.aspx

Roadmap to ASP.NET "Atlas" Documentation and Resources
ASP.NET "Atlas" documentation includes topics, tutorials, samples, and Webcast videos. We suggest the following documentation to help you get started.

Roadmap to the 'Atlas' Documentation.

Wiki on Windows Communication Foundation - Aaron Skonnard from PluralSight

cicorias — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 12:20:42 GMT

WindowsCommunicationFoundationWiki.

Shy Cohen's WebLog : Reliable Messaging demystified

cicorias — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 10:46:14 GMT

Reliable Messaging demystified
Recently I hear many questions about Reliable Messaging in WCF. In fact, I just had an IM chat with Clemens which resulted in this blog entry. I want to expand on his comments with a little more of the insight I got being a past owner for this feature.

The first thing we should clear out is terminology - Reliable Messaging means a lot of things to a lot of people so I like to use 2 separate terms when it comes to WCF features: Reliable Sessions and Queued Messaging.

Shy Cohen's WebLog : Reliable Messaging demystified.

Breaking changes for the Feb CTP

cicorias — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:30:41 GMT

Breaking changes for the Feb CTP
The Feb CTP is now available! A number of changes have been made that break existing code. The details have been posted here on our community site. Raw API change reports are available here for reference.

Here are some of the most popular things that you'll run into when you port your apps.

Breaking changes for the Feb CTP.

Virtual Labs Home: Windows Communication Foundation

cicorias — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 09:02:44 GMT

They’ve posted a couple of labs on WCF up on MSDN Virtual Lab environments. One covers Reliable and Transacted messages.

An issue is the labs are built with the November ‘05 CTP. Mostly they work, but if you want the labs offline it takes some time. So, I’ve posted the labs here built with the January 2006 CTP. I haven’t moved them to the February 2006 CTP as there have been a couple of minor breaking changes that requires config file updates.

File Attachment: MSDN Lab WCF Reliable Transactions 200602.zip (466 KB) *

Windows Communication Foundation

They're here!
Try out 2 new Virtual Labs that will walk you through the latest functionality of the exciting new features of Windows Communication Foundation.
Windows Communication Foundation (previously codenamed "Indigo") is Microsoft's unified framework for rapidly building distributed applications. With WCF, you can build secure, reliable, transacted Web services applications that interoperate with applications built on other platforms and integrate with the applications you're building on today's .NET technologies.
These labs will guide you through the fundamentals of building powerful WCF services. You don’t even need to install the bits—just use the Virtual Labs to see what WCF can do for you.

Virtual Labs Home: Windows Communication Foundation.

* Note: this just contains the lab source code as built by walking through the Lab Manual – to get the lab manual you must still signup for the lab and download the PDF direct; the projects where “snapped” at completion of Ex 4, 5, & 6

Message Compression in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

cicorias — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:02:01 GMT

I was looking at doing a quick sample on how to implement compression in Windows Communication Foundation, but, turns out, they’ve already put together a sample:

http://windowssdk.msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/WCF_samples/html/57450b6c-89fe-4b8a-8376-3d794857bfd7.asp?frame=true

Problem with Windows Workflow Foundation January CTP Installation Process

cicorias — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 18:07:25 GMT

I’ve been able to replicate an issue with the WF installation process that prevents you from using the WF designers in Visual Studio if you want the whole WinFX Framework (WCF, WF, WPF).

Basically, if you install the WinFX RTC you get Workflow assemblies Then, if you want to work with WF in VS, you’ll also install the Visual Studio Extension for WF – which installs: WF RTC, SDK, and Visual designer support.

So, the problem is with the VS Extensions for WF installation. It doesn’t update the WF Assemblies from the ones installed with the WinFX RTC.

The version of the assembly that is installed with the WinFX RTC Jan 2006 CTP is 3.0.3203.56. However, if you want to use the designers in the VS Extensions for WF, you need 3.0.3603.4.

To get it to work, you’ve got to skip the WinFX RTC installation altogether; or, install the VS Extensions for Windows Workflow 1st

I’ve tested installing in the following order:

Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for Windows Workflow Foundation
WinFX RTC
Windows SDK
Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX

So,
good version: 3.0.3603.4
bad version: 3.0.3203.56

Haven’t tried a de-install yet