John Bristowe

Wednesday

Sep012010

Windows Phone 7 Coffee & Code in Calgary!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 3:30PM

An homage to the late Jan Gabriel:

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! Friday! Friday! Friday! Hold on to your hats and prepare to feel “mobilized” as the Windows Phone 7 Coffee and Code visits the Kawa Espresso Bar in downtown Calgary! Prepare to be blown away by the epic-ly awesome developer tools, including crowd favourite, Visual Studio 2010! (Echo: “Visual Studio 2010!”) Come for the caffeine, stay for the device! It will be a thrill spectacular! We'll offer you a seat, but you'll only need the eddddddge.

I’ll be at Kawa Espresso Bar on Friday, September 3rd, 9 AM to 12 PM with a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) device waiting to test out your apps. I’ll be there to chat about Windows Phone 7, our tools, and the overall experience from a developer’s perspective. If you have an app that you’d like to test out on a real device, this is a great opportunity for you to do it!

Windows Phone 7 Coffee & Code - Friday, September 3, 2010 at Kawa Espresso Bar

If you don’t live in or around Calgary, please don’t worry! Our team is working on ways to conduct Windows Phone Deployment Clinics in as many places across Canada, as often as our schedules and pool of phones will allow. In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to download and install the free developer tools from developer.windowsphone.com (this should be your browser’s homepage) and join the WP7 discussion on the Windows Phone Canada LinkedIn group!

See you on Friday!

Local Flavours Track at Microsoft TechDays Canada 2010

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 8:14AM

I love the technical community in Canada. In particular, I find that it's our collective willingness to share knowledge and insights with others that makes us special. I see this demonstrated on a daily basis through our team's interactions with user group leaders, Microsoft MVPs, Microsoft RDs, and influential members of the Canadian technical community.

"Developer Foundations" at Microsoft TechDays Canada 2009

Last year, my manager (John Oxley) and I spoke to many folks across the Canadian technical community about TechDays. At the time, many of you stated that you wished to deliver content that went beyond what was on offer in the other tracks that we were hosting. Many of you felt it was important to also address developer practices and processes; that is, to look beyond the products or technology and instead, to focus on the act of building applications and services. As a result of this feedback, we decided to create an additional track entitled, "Developer Foundations". This wasannounced by John Oxley on our blog earlier last year. Overall, the track was a tremendous success due to the hard work of Justice Gray, Peter Ritchie and all of the speakers who participated in this track. The feedback that we received indicated that this idea was something we had to revisit for next year. (Fast-foward to 2010.)

Local Flavours Track at Microsoft TechDays Canada 2010

Earlier this year, we announced some changes to TechDays that we made based on your feedback. One of the announcements we made was the creation of a new track entitled, Local Flavours:

We recognize that each city has unique characteristics and needs. This track is all about celebrating the differences while allowing those individuals passionate about sharing their knowledge and expertise an opportunity to do so to help grow the skills of their peers and showcase the great work that is happening in the region.

We are looking for passionate individuals who want to share their knowledge and expertise with others.

This call for presentations is open to all roles of the Canadian technical community: IT professionals,developers, database administrators, system administrators, architects... everyone! If you are part of the Canadian technology community and wish to be a part of TechDays, I want to hear from you!We're seeking submissions right now. This is your opportunity to deliver a presentation on a topic that you're passionate about.

We have ten (10) 65-minute breakout sessions and two (2) 30-minute turbo talks available in each cityso please plan accordingly when drafting your abstracts. We're looking for content that covers a wide spectrum of topics. If you're interested in sharing your story and expertise on technology that will help your peers, please download the documents below to find out more about the submission process and timelines for the Local Flavours track in your region. To submit a session, send a completed submission form to us by email at td_can@microsoft.com and let’s start the conversation.

Local Flavours Submission Information (PDF) (right click and save as)
Local Flavours Submission Form (XLSX) (right click and save as)

Please note that there's no limit on the number of presentations you can submit. We want to see them all!

Download the form(s) (above) and EMAIL US YOUR SUBMISSIONS (td_can@microsoft.com)!

Microsoft Ribbon for WPF RTW!

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 8:12AM

Yesterday, we announced the July release of the Microsoft Ribbon for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). You can download the installer for this release here.

WPF ribbon sample application, RibbonWindowWord

This is great news for Windows developers looking to build rich, fluent user experiences. From the MSDN documentation:

The ribbon is a command bar that organizes the features of an application into a series of tabs at the top of the application window. The ribbon user interface (UI) increases discoverability of features and functions, enables quicker learning of the application, and makes users feel more in control of their experience with the application. The ribbon replaces the traditional menu bar and toolbars.

In short, this control library gives you the ability to incorporate a ribbon user experience in your applications today.

A Quick Background About the Ribbon User Experience

The ribbon was first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 as a replacement to its traditional menu-driven design. At that time, customers were telling us that it was becoming difficult to navigate through the expanding features and commands that had been added over the years. This resulted in a non-optimal user experience as users had trouble finding what they were looking for. Even worse, the “cacophony” of options made it difficult for users to discover new functionality. Today, the ribbon has provided users of applications like Microsoft Word 2010 with a contextual and task-oriented user experience, allowing them to focus more on their work and less on the application itself (AKA, a big-time win for user productivity).

Microsoft Ribbon for WPF

For Windows developers, the ribbon provides a rich experience that you can incorporate quickly and easily for your WPF applications. What’s particularly cool about the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF is that it’s a control library that’s built 100% in pure WPF goodness.

File → New Project...

After downloading and installing the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF, you’ll find the WPF Ribbon Application project template listed for both Visual C# and Visual Basic:

New project templates for WPF Ribbon Application for both Visual C# and Visual Basic

This project template provides you with a very simple example to help get you started:

MainWindow example showing the Ribbon, RibbonTab, RibbonGroup and RibbonButton controls

For a deeper examination of the XAML and control library that’s used to build this application, I strongly recommend that you read Pete Brown’s excellent summary of this release in a post entitled,Announcing: Microsoft Ribbon for WPF RTW. Pete also provides an important point (with emphasis added):

The new ribbon control is compatible with WPF 3.5sp1 and WPF 4. This is a 100% WPF implementation, not a wrapper around native code. That means you get all the great WPF styling capabilities for the new control.

This fact cannot be underscored enough. A true WPF implementation means that you can incorporate styling and rely on assumed WPF functionality (i.e. RibbonButton support the ICommand interface – wahoo!). Having built my fair share of WPF applications in the past – in some cases, wrestling with control interop and styling issues – I love this news.

So, what are you waiting for? Download Microsoft Ribbon for WPF today and start incorporating it into your applications!

Related Links

PS: If you building applications with Windows Forms, check out Windows Ribbon for WinForms project on CodePlex.

UPDATE: The WPF team has posted a great overview of the Microsoft Ribbon for WPF here along with a series of blog posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

Monday, July 19, 2010 at 7:18PM

Great news! Earlier today, we announced Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0, a process template built from the ground up specifically for Scrum teams. From MSDN:

Your team can practice Scrum more easily by using the artifacts in Visual Studio Scrum 1.0. Each artifact serves a specific function and provides opportunities to refine your processes over time. These artifacts include work items, reports, and team queries, and your team can use them to track information, analyze progress, and make decisions.

This process template was first announced at Microsoft TechEd 2010 in New Orleans earlier this summer and was recently updated to incorporate a number of new capabilities. You can read Brian Harry’s blog post to read more about its motivation. For the v1.0 release, Aaron Bjork provides a good summary of what to expect in this release on his blog. Of the questions listed, I found this one particularly interesting:

Q: Did Microsoft work with Agile thought leaders when building this template?
Absolutely. We worked closely with a group of Scrum experts and trainers teaching the new Professional Scrum Developer Program including Ken Schwaber fromhttp://www.scrum.org/. It was very important to us that this template be recognized by the community (you) as a great option for Scrum teams. The Professional Scrum Developer Program is taught with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0.

A Quick Installation Walkthrough

First, download and install Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 from the Visual Studio Gallery. It’s a (small) 483KB MSI package that will provide you with the files required for both the Process Template Manager (to install the Scrum process template) and your project portal (for the Scrum reports). As an alternative, you can download Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 via the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010 (listed under Online Gallery → Tools → Process Templates):

Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 in the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010

Next, launch the Process Template Explorer in Visual Studio 2010 (Team → Team Project Collection Settings → Process Template Manager...):

Process Template Manager

Click the Upload button and select the folder where the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 process template is installed (i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0\Process Template). Once installed, the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 should be listed in the Process Template Manager as follows:

Process Template Manager with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Installed

For projects based on this template, you should see the following structure listed in Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2010:

Team Explorer Structure with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Process Template Installed

As you can see in the image of the Team Explorer window (listed above), artifacts (like work items) are defined in accordance to the Scrum literature. You can create bugs, an impediment, sprints, and many other artifacts, all from within the Team Explorer window. It’s pretty awesome; almost as awesome as ahot dog vending machine.

By the way, if you’re looking for move the data of an existing project into a new project built from Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0, you should check out the TFS Integration Platform project on CodePlex.

New Reports with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

Here are a few screenshots of some of the new reports available in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0:

Velocity Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

If your team has completed multiple sprints, you can forecast release and product completion dates and plan future projects more accurately by reviewing the velocity report.

Sprint Burndown Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

By reviewing a sprint burndown report, you can track how much work remains in a sprint backlog, understand how quickly your team has completed tasks, and predict when your team will achieve the goal or goals of the sprint.

Release Burndown Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

By reviewing a release burndown report, you can understand how quickly your team has delivered backlog items and track how much work the team must still perform to complete a product release.

In addition to these three reports (above), we’ve also included four new reports to the template that focus on engineering metrics:

These reports are included in the MSI package and take about five minutes to install. There’s a Scrum SharePoint solution package that’s included (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.SharePoint.Scrum.wsp) and requires deployment to your SharePoint server.

Looking for more information? Check out a detailed overview of Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 on MSDN. Also, if you're looking to learn more about Scrum, I'd recommend checking out thehttp://scrum.org/. From the site: Scrum.org's purpose is to improve the profession of software development so that developers love their work and our customers love working with developers.

Related Links

Note: This post also appears on the Canadian Developer Connection.

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Wednesday

Jun302010