Sunday, April 15, 2012

Sample Applications from Designing Silverlight Business Applications

I've received a few emails regarding the book that the code files are not available from the publisher website. I've spoken with the publisher about this and they are working to correct it, but I wanted to provide a link for those of you who have been patiently waiting. As a backup to the main website, I've posted all of the sample applications online to SkyDrive and you can download them by clicking on this link. I appreciate you patience and hope you will take the time to post a review on the site you purchased the book from once you have read and worked through the examples to help others who are considering picking it up for themselves.

Jeremy Likness

Monday, April 9, 2012

CodeStock 2012

Thanks for everyone's support and votes. I have been selected to present two sessions at CodeStock 2012.

Per the CodeStock website:

CodeStock is a two day event for technology and information exchange. Created by the community, for the community — this is not an industry trade show pushing the latest in marketing as technology, but a gathering of working professionals sharing knowledge and experience.

This is always a great conference. I have the added bonus of getting close to the corporate headquarters for Wintellect and visiting company co-founder Jeff Prosise. This year there were quite a few Wintellect employees selected to speak. I'll be there with Mitch Harpur (Come Get a Message at the SPA), Rik Robinson (CSS3: How to Fake It While They Bake It and Touring the jQuery UI Widget Factory), John Garland (Putting the Cloud in Your Pocket: A Guide to Using Windows Azure to Build Cloud-Enabled Windows Phone Apps), and our Technical Director Steve Porter.

I'll be doing two sessions:

MVVM for Modern Application Development

The Model-View-ViewModel pattern was introduced for Windows Presentation Foundation applications (WPF) and later exploded in popularity with the introduction of various frameworks to support development on additional platforms including Silverlight and Windows Phone. The release of KnockoutJS the pattern has extended MVVM to the web and exposed it to the JavaScript stack, while the new Windows 8 Metro platform embraces the same XAML and C#-based technologies that WPF and Silverlight pioneered. In this talk, Jeremy Likness takes a deep dive into the history of the pattern, describes its benefits, and discusses how it relates to modern application development. Is it a bad fit for web applications? Does it belong in the Metro space? Learn the benefits and trade-offs to help decide if this pattern makes sense in your projects moving forward.

Top 10 Developer Features in Windows 8 Metro

Windows 8 presents a new platform for application development called Metro. This platform is specifically focused on the tablet and slate market and provides many advanced features including touch-friendly interfaces and advanced power management features. Metro also introduces a new runtime known as WinRT that exposes some incredible contracts and interfaces that make it easier than ever before to build connected, collaborative, touch-friendly applications. Jeremy Likness shares the top 10 features developers will love about this platform. This is based on my recent article here with live code samples and demos.

It should be a very good conference and I hope you are able to make it. I'm always happy to connect with blog readers and Twitter followers so please don't hesitate to pop over and say "Hello" even if you can't make my sessions. It's tough putting together a schedule for this event because there are so many good talks. If you think you may be going, why not drop a line in the comments or ping me on Twitter? I look forward to seeing some of you there.

Jeremy Likness

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Designing Silverlight Business Applications Officially Released

 

slbookcover

In June of 2011 I started the journey of writing a Silverlight book. The Silverlight team was about to release version 5 with an incredible set of new features that would revolutionize how it can be used in the enterprise. I knew there were already a number of books available to use a reference for fundamentals and controls, so I wanted to dig deeper and hit the topics I was challenged with in my job as a consultant as well as those questions that continually seem to surface on blogs and forums. I began with an introduction that analyzed client technologies available at the time, especially focusing on how HTML5 was evolving but not yet mature. The focus of the book is my “sweet spot” as I have been developing Silverlight applications for the enterprise since it’s version 3 release in 2008.

No one could have realized just how much change would take place over the following year. Silverlight 5 was released but without a roadmap for version 6 and Windows 8 was announced. Fortunately it was soon discovered that Windows 8 provides a path to build applications using C# and XAML, has full support for running Silverlight 5, and through the Portable Class Library even provides a path to create code that can be used to target both present state and future state applications.

I had the privilege of working with a phenomenal team at Addison-Wesley Professional along with two very experienced Silverlight developers as technical editors who helped shape the book to contain the depth and quality of information that is available today.

The book is in stock at Amazon.com as of today. There are a number of ways you can order the book:

The publisher’s website provides you with the table of contents and provides a sample chapter to download that covers the Model-View-View Model (MVVM) pattern.

The book also features the Jounce MVVM Open Source Framework I developed along with a sample application that covers quite a few features.

Is this book relevant? I believe it is if you’ll accept my biased opinion because companies have Line of Business applications today, they are not releasing Windows 8 applications right now, and Silverlight remains a very viable solution for these applications. The majority of concepts covered in this book translate to the C#/XAML stack used for Windows 8 Metro applications and apply to building enterprise applications in general. There has been tremendous support for this and I’ve included some of the most difficult patterns and problems to tackle with solutions that translate to other platforms as well.

I want to thank the community for their incredible support as it has been an amazing journey. I also would ask that if you have invested in the Rough Cuts, eBooks, paperback, or other editions, that once you’ve had time to read this book you take the time to post your review and comments online. It is your reviews and comments that other developers will trust when they are making the decision to invest, so honest feedback helps them decide whether or not this is a resource that will provide them with value. It also helps me improve how I deliver content to make it the best possible quality for you.

So what’s next for me? I’m already several chapters into my next book. It will cover Building Windows 8 Metro Applications with C# and XAML, and I’ll include information about how Silverlight developers today can take advantage of the Metro platform for tomorrow’s applications. This book will be available for early access to read, review, and provide feedback through the Safari Rough Cuts program. Stay tuned and I’ll announce when more information becomes available.

Thanks again!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Top 10 Features Windows 8 Metro Developers Will Love

Windows 8 Metro is a new platform for developing applications that are tailored to the devices on which they run. These devices may include traditional desktops and laptops as well as the new tablet and slate form factors. In this article I cover the top ten features developers will love about the new development environment. This is part of my work on the upcoming book, Building Windows 8 Metro Applications with XAML and C#.

Read the full article online at InformIT.

Jeremy Likness