Rich Clients

If you're building Rich Client applications today it either means Windows Forms or WPF for the desktop, or Silverlight (a WPF subset) or AJAX for the web. So this category focuses on WPF, Silverlight, AJAX and related technologies. You'll learn about AJAX custom extenders, using Silverlight in Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight Web Controls and using Silverlight in SOA applications. You'll also find sessions devoted to XAML and WPF Data Providers.

DT10Build a Silverlight 2 Application in an Hour
Jesse Liberty
Tuesday, December 9 – 1:45 p.m.
Targeted at the experienced .NET programmer new to Silverlight, this crash course introduces you to Silverlight by building an application in "drop-line" fashion – taking the most direct route: what 90% of developers do 90% of the time and resisting the tangential issues. You'll see how to create a form, create and place controls, use animation to convey useful information, bind controls to data, bind list controls to collections, display media, inject markers into video and respond to those markers at run-time, create multi-page applications and pass data between pages.

DW2Creating a Custom WPF DataProvider Control
Rockford Lhotka
Wednesday, December 10 – 9:45 a.m.
WPF has a powerful data binding mechanism, that you can leverage from XAML or code. But if you want to minimize code and maximize XAML, you'll need to use a DataProvider control to access your data. While WPF comes with some useful DataProvider controls, there are many cases where you may need a more specialized control, or one with slightly different behaviors. Fortunately you can create your own control, and in this session you'll learn how it is done.

DW6Silverlight Controls from Soup to Templates
Jesse Liberty
Wednesday, December 10 – 11:15 a.m.
Targeted at programmers with some knowledge of Silverlight (or at least some WPF) this hour focuses in on Silverlight controls: from responding to events, to adding styles, to modifying their appearance with templates, understanding transitions, and using in-state animation to enhance the control appearance. Examples include creating template controls, creating user controls and creating a skinnable custom control with a deeper focus on the necessary metadata to support the Parts and States model, the VSM and Expression Blend.

DW10IronRuby and Silverlight, Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate
Josh Holmes
Wednesday, December 10 – 1:45 p.m.
As the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) and IronRuby become more polished, it's time to start applying those technologies in new and interesting ways. One of my favorites is in a Rich Internet Application with a Silverlight front end. A perfect joining of two great technologies – IronRuby brings the dynamic abilities to your code that XAML gives your UI. From animations to logic to simple HTML DOM manipulation - it's all possible and a lot of fun. In this session, we will cover the basics of the DLR, a touch of Ruby and play with it all in the context of Silverlight.

DW19Silverlight, SOA and Objects
Rockford Lhotka
Wednesday, December 10 – 4:45 p.m.
Silverlight is a powerful UI development tool, but it is useful for far more than just building pretty web displays. By combining object-oriented design concepts and SOA with Silverlight, you can create incredibly powerful applications that provide high levels of interactivity with the user in the browser, but also tap into server-side processing as needed. Building such an application in a maintainable manner requires a solid architectural backing, along with clear design principals. Learn how to architect, design and build maintainable, powerful Silverlight applications for business.

DTH1Build a WPF Application in an Hour
Ken Getz
Thursday, December 11 – 8:15 a.m.
WPF makes it possible to build rich graphical user interfaces, but it doesn't necessarily make it easy. Getting your head around where to start, and how to display information, can be a daunting task. This session gets you started with WPF, and demonstrates creating a working video-player application, using data binding, templates, and more. Not the typical first introduction to WPF, this session actually shows you features you can use now to get started building WPF applications.

DTH10Best and Worst Practices for Building Silverlight Applications
Josh Holmes
Thursday, December 11 – 1:45 p.m.
Silverlight, as it's relatively new to much of the community, is putting people through some bumps and bruises as they create amazing experiences for their users. There are a lot of best and worst practices that are starting to emerge as the platform matures and more and more applications are being written. How and where to keep the state management? What networking stacks make the most sense? When does it make sense to use Silverlight or any Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform?

In this session, we will give a cursory overview of what it takes to build a RIA and dive deep into the best and worst practices with Silverlight.

DTH14Silverlight Design for Developers
Bill Wolff
Thursday, December 11 – 3:15 p.m.
XAML is the core markup language for a new wave of interactive applications enabled by the Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight. We start with a deep dive into the XAML schema and explore the core elements that provide containers, graphic objects, media control, and event triggers. We then explore the new Microsoft tools that enable rich graphical development. Expression Design is used to create vector graphic designs and import bitmap images. Expression Blend is used to orchestrate transitions and transformations as users interact with the XAML elements. Visual Studio 2008 interacts with Blend to build rich internet applications using Silverlight 2.0. We also look at the DLR client programming model, data retrieval methods, and datagrid binding.