Silverlight Developers in Denmark

Det går godt for brugergruppen for danske Silverlight udviklere. Fremover skal der dog laves nogle flere arrangementer, nogle flere workshops vi skal gøre klar til et stigende antal medlemmer. Det er derfor med stor glæde at jeg kan sige velkommen til 5 nye kernemedlemmer!

Kernemedlemmerne I gruppen er nu:

Thomas Martinsen
Selvstændig. Arbejder til dagligt med Silverlight, WPF og Windows Phone 7.  Underviser i Silverlight og Expression Blend. Er I kernegruppen for CNUG, Silverlight Developers in DK, Phone7 Developers in DK og Surface Developers in DK.
http://dk.linkedin.com/in/thomasmartinsen
http://twitter.com/thomasmartinsen
http://xamlgeek.dk/

Mads Laumann
Selvstændig. Arbejder til dagligt med.NET og Silverlight. Mads er i gang med at lave et XNA-baseret spil til Xbox (og Silverlight) og bruger desuden en masse tid på at lege med Phone 7.
http://dk.linkedin.com/in/madslaumann
http://twitter.com/Laumania
http://www.laumania.net/

Henrik Lykke Nielsen (aka .Henrik)
Medejer af Captator. Arbejder en masse med .NET og Silverlight og underviser om alle hjørner af .NET. Henrik er desuden Microsoft Regional Director.
http://dk.linkedin.com/in/henriklykkenielsen
http://twitter.com/dothenrik
http://captator.dk/captator.aspx?blog=dothenrik
http://www.captator.dk/

Martin Madsen
Udvikler hos Timelog. Arbejder til dagligt med en Silverlight klient til TimeLog systemet. http://dk.linkedin.com/in/martinmadsen42
http://twitter.com/mraaskov

Frederik Brøns
Konsulent hos BridgeConsulting. Arbejder med SAS til dagligt, men en del med Silverlight i sin fritid.
http://dk.linkedin.com/pub/frederik-uldall-brøns/0/745/401

Christian Lensbjerg
Selvstændig. Arbejder fuldtid med eget produkt udviklet i Silverlight. Christian kommer fra København.
http://dk.linkedin.com/pub/christian-lensbjerg/2/340/1a1
http://twitter.com/lensbjerg

Kernegruppens funktion er at gøre noget godt for Silverlight communitiet og vi vil I fællesskab arrangere og afholde en masse Silverlight relaterede events. Har du nogle gode ideer til events, så hører vi selvfølgelig meget gerne fra dig.

Har du nogle spørgsmål eller kommentarer så er du altid velkommen til at kontakte kernegruppen på info@sldev.dk.

by xamlgeek 
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen

Vind et 1-års guld abonnement til TV 2 Sputnik

TV 2 Sputnik har udlovet en række 1-års guld abonnementer til CNUG’s medlemmer.

Med et guld abonnement får du både Sputnik Basis, TV 2 News og udvalgte Live TV-udsendelser på Sputnik. Alt det bedste fra TV 2 er med i guld abonnementet. Var der noget, du ikke fik set eller vil du bare se et godt program igen? Du får også udvalgte live tv-udsendelser, så du kan følge med, mens det sker.

CNUG afholder en twitter konkurrence i dag, fredag den 2. juli, samt mandag den 5. juli og tirsdag den 6. juli. For at deltage skal du blot skrive noget relevant om Sputnik og eller CNUG og anvende #CNUG i dine twitter beskeder.

Held og lykke!

(vinderne får direkte besked og bliver offentlig gjort dagen på LinkedIn gruppen)

Tags: Sputnik, TV2

Kom og hør Mads Torgersen snakke om parallelism i C# 4.0

I CNUG har vi været så heldige at få Mads Torgersen (Program Manager hos Microsoft) til København og fortælle om parallelism i C# 4.0. Der er meget få pladser så tilmeld dig med det samme!

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/723262297

Tags: CNUG, Mads Torgersen, Parallelism, C#

One-day session at Tabulex

Today I had a one-day session with a group of developers from Tabulex in Roskilde, Denmark. Tabulex develop administrative systems to schools and municipalities. I have had several of the developers attend one my Silverlight workshops and they’re using Silverlight in more and more systems.

It was a pleasure to see how well Tabulex have adopted Silverlight and how passionate their developers are about it. I’m really looking forward to see the systems in production.

by xamlgeek
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen

Tags: Tabulex

Slides and demos from CNUG talk about Windows Identity Foundation

Today Jesper Hvid from Globe Team held a CNUG talk about WIF. It was a really good talk and Jesper gave a thorough introduction to the different aspects of WIF and how to use it.

The event was hosted by Valtech and included barbecue :) thank you very much for that!

You can download slides and demos here.

by xamlgeek
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen

Tags: CNUG, WIF, Jesper Hvid

Speaking at JAOO 2010

Again this year I have been invited to give a Silverlight tutorial at the JAOO conference in Aarhus, Denmark. The tutorial will learn the participants how to developing a Silverlight business application in the browser, on the desktop and on a smart phone.

http://jaoo.dk/aarhus-2010/speaker/Thomas+Martinsen
http://jaoo.dk/aarhus-2010/presentation/Silverlight

There will be lots of great talks and I’m looking forward to be part of it.

http://jaoo.dk/

by xamlgeek
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen

Tags: Silverlight; JAOO

A day with Windows Phone 7 in Copenhagen

Today I attended a full day event about Windows Phone 7 in Copenhagen arranged by Microsoft, Denmark. The agenda was packed with sessions about Silverlight and XNA related to WP7 development. The sessions were presented by James Rodriguez.

It was nice to get a full walkthrough of the thoughts behind many of the design decisions on WP7 but I missed some deep dives in some areas. In the breaks I met with lots of people from my network which always is a great.

All-in-all a good day :) Thank you, Microsoft.

by xamlgeek
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen 

Remember to join the usergroup “Windows Phone 7 Developers in Denmark”.

Tags: Windows Phone 7; wpdev

Why I would buy an iPhone

First of all, I wouldn’t buy an iPhone. But then again maybe I would… No matter how much I don’t like the Apple business model, I have to respect the amount of iPhone devices that they have sold*. Obviously Apple is doing something right! The design is unique and the user experience is amazing.

With the launch of Windows Phone 7 just around the corner, I’m getting ready to build applications on devices that are somewhat different then what I’m used to. To get inspiration and a better knowledge about this new type of applications, I have bought two books about iPhone application design and user experience:

• iPhone User Interface Design Projects
• Starting an iPhone Application Business For Dummies

Back to the main question, why I would buy an iPhone. I would do it to experience and learn about the application design and user experience. I’m looking forward to read all about it and get some hands on experience on how to do it related to Windows Phone 7.

by xamlgeek 
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen 

*) of course that will stop overnight when Windows Phone 7 is launched ;)

Tags: IPhone; WP7

Issue with Silverlight OOB warning

With Silverlight 3 we got the opportunity to create Silverlight applications that install on the client machine. With Silverlight 4 we can require that the applications get elevated permissions to the client machine. We are able to access local files on the client machine and communicate with hardware and installed applications using COM under the same privileges as the logged in user.

It’s important that the user understands that an installed Silverlight application that runs with elevated permissions should be considered just like any other installed application. It’s no longer a web application that runs in a sandbox!

Scenario 1 – install without signed application

By default, when the user choose to install a Silverlight application that requires elevated permissions she get a security warning that the publisher of the application could not be verified.

“This application does not have a valid digital signature that verifies the publisher. You should only run software from publishers you trust.”

The security warning does not tell the user anything about the harm that this application potentially can course. Instead it has focus on the missing certificate.

Scenario 2 – install signed application

If we try to sign the application with a certificate and install the application again we will see a much more accurate security warning.

 “This application can potentially access your personal data and harm your computer. Only install applications from sites you trust.”

The security warning now inform the user about the harm that this application potentially can course. Why isn’t the user warned in the first scenario? I hope (and believe) that this be fixed in a future version.

by xamlgeek 
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen

Tags: out-of-browser, security, Silverlight 4

Use MEF to load ViewModel in Silverlight 4

It has become increasingly popular to use the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) in Silverlight. It’s easy to use the MVVM in Silverlight and it opens up for some extended testing scenarios. With Silverlight 4 we can also use some of the features from MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework). One scenario is to use MEF to load the ViewModel to a View.

How to do it

For this demo I have created a Silverlight project with a view called CustomerView.xaml and a viewmodel called CustomerViewModel.cs. The view contains an ItemsControl with an ItemTemplate that I will use to display a list of Customers and their address. I have bound the ItemsSource to the Customers property from my viewmodel.

In the code-behind of the MainPage.xaml file hosting the view, I have created a property called ViewModel. When the ViewModel property is set it will set the DataContext of our view to the provided value. I have added an Import attribute to the ViewModel. The Import attribute declare that this property relies on a service provided by some other component.

I have added an Export attribute to the CustomerViewModel class. The Export attribute declares that this class provides a particular kind of service.

To connect the components together I need to resolve the Imports and Exports. It is done by a class called CompositionContainer. In most cases you will just call CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports method to try and provide components that export all the things you need to import.

You can write your own CompositionContainer explicitly if you want.

My viewmodel will now be resolved and an instance will be set the DataContext of the view.

The consequenses

This is a very simplified sample and can seem a bit like shooting birds with cannons. In larger scale you will really see the power of using this solution where your views do not need to know about its viewmodel.

This solution will let you use an other viewmodel in designtime supporting the use of using a viewmodel and Expression Blend.

On the other hand this solution will add some complexity to the project. It will be harder to follow the code and it is often not clear from looking at the code what sorts of objects you’re really using or how they were instantiated.

Sample code

Get the sample code here: http://bit.ly/bxZ1Ly

by xamlgeek 
twitter.com/thomasmartinsen

Tags: MEF, MVVM, Silverlight, Silverlight 4