DevConnections Nov07

DevConn Day #3

mike — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 02:32:57 GMT

ACS302: Building Custom ASP.NET AJAX Controls

I feared that this session might cover the basics of AJAX, but it didn't. The speaker covered two main ways to develop custom AJAX controls (using extenders and the AJAX toolkit or through your own complete customization). Not a bad presentation for someone like me who has done little that is useful yet with AJAX.

VWF306: Build Workflow Activities Using Objects

Rocky presented this one, and drove home the point that you should create your own custom activities (deriving from the Activity class) and use dependency properties when developing workflows with Workflow Foundation. There ended up being a lot of questions about CSLA from the audience ("what is that ProjectTracker.Library.Save method??"), and I don't think Rocky was able to really finish all of his presentation points as a result. That disappointed me because I hoped to get more out of the Workflow side of the presentation and not hear Rocky field questions on using business objects.

HDV301: Building and Incorporating Custom Applications in SharePoint v3 Sites

Another Andrew Connell session. Unfortunately it was very similar to his presentation yesterday on "prescriptive guidance" for SharePoint development. The general topic was the same, but the focus was more about strategies for developing custom apps within SharePoint rather than how to develop and deploy your project artifacts within the apps.

AGN302: Compression, Encryption, and Hashing

This session was a letdown as it was nothing more than a walk-through of .NET's encryption and hashing API's. The presenter suggested (generally) that you should use public key encryption and never use private key encryption, but only walked through a demo of private key encryption. ???? For the compression topic, he just walked through an open source .NET compression API to compress and decompress to/from zip, gzip, bzip, etc.

Rockets Super Hero

mike — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:59:44 GMT

A brief video with deep, hidden meanings. If you can't find the deep, hidden meanings then let me know.

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DevConn Swag

mike — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:52:23 GMT

my free stuff

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A day in the life of DevConn Day 2

mike — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:20:43 GMT

Some decent sessions today. I think I've gotten a little better at weeding out the bad ones by title :) By tomorrow I may have a complete day of worthwhile sessions.

AGN301: Dealing with Long Running Requests in ASP.NET

I wasn't sure if I was going to learn anything in this one, but I took away a few new things I didn't know already. Rick Strahl covered three main ways to deal with long-running requests (each may be better/worse to use depending on what you really need to improve): 1) modify the user interface (disable buttons after clicking, hide the UI and show an "in progress" message), 2) use ASP.NET Async Page Tasks to allow a single request to run on multiple threads, and 3) fire-and-forget and query another data source (e.g. SQL) for information about the process's progress as it updates. I know that Async Page Tasks existed before today, so that was a new nugget to take home.

HDV313: Advanced Feature Development

Fellow Inetiumite Neil presented this one. I'm completely biased, but he did an awesome job :) I actually learned a few things too. This presentation was on the SharePoint track, and covered all of the down and dirty ways to develop and work with Features in SharePoint. Neil covered the ridiculous number of caveats to Features, implemented a custom Feature receiver in C#, and demonstrated what will be now known as the most famous custom Feature you can add to SharePoint: the "Your boss is coming, look busy" menu item.

HDV303: Prescriptive Guidance for Developers Building Publishing Sites with WCM in MOSS

This one was about how to develop and author the non-compiled artifacts in a SharePoint project such that you can take advantage of things like source control and repeatable/automated packing and deployment. Andrew Connell presented this one. His presentation helped drive home the point that Web Content Management (WCM) artifacts such as master pages and page layouts can be authored in SharePoint Designer (SPD), but you should not rely on SPD as a means to promote those artifacts to other environments. SPD is a necessary evil for certain tasks within MOSS WCM, but it was relieving to hear Andrew say that SPD should not replace well-known (and much more comfortable) development tools like Visual Studio, even when working with non-compiled resources.

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DevConn Foyer Panorama

mike — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 01:56:33 GMT

Actually, it's more like half a panorama.

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Arcade Action at the Luxor

mike — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:57:14 GMT

Last night Neil, Vish and I stumbled across a video arcade at the Luxor. There was a bizarre game called "Flamin' Finger", which was an impossible game to beat. You had to trace your finger along a path before time ran out. Simple, but impossible. Vish came close quite a few times:

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Random DevConn Photos

mike — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:41:57 GMT

An almost-random selection of new photos from DevConn. You may wonder why I haven't taken many pictures from inside the conference. It's because the inside of the conference is nothing but gigantic ballrooms filled with geeks wearing backpacks.

Mandalay Bay Hotel from Below

Neil and Vish eat chips

Vish, Mike and Julie in Mandalay Bay casino

Vish plays "Flamin' Finger"

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Tapas in Vegas

mike — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:20:09 GMT

Last night Neil, Vish and I ate at Cafe Ba-Ba-Reeba!:

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I don't know a thing about tapas, but it was tasty and I'd go there again. Based on the website it looks like they also have a place in Chicago.

DevConn Day 1 Wrap Up

mike — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:00:59 GMT

I'm finding that the presentations aren't quite meeting all of my expectations out here at DevConn, although I think I've learned to weed out the less-interesting stuff based on the titles and short descriptions in the schedule.

VMS306: A Lap Around Visual Studio Team System 2008

This session did not meet my expectations. It was a run through of the basic features of VS TS 2008 - most of which are available in VS TS 2005. Work items, reporting, source control, etc. Ho hum.

HMS308: Microsoft ASP .NET AJAX 1.0 and SharePoint

This session was worth the price of admission. Mike Ammerlaan gave this talk and covered what you need to do in WSS/MOSS to get AJAX hooked up, how to make AJAX features useful/deployable in WSS, and also demonstrated some interesting ideas of what you could accomplish with respect to SharePoint. Specifically, he demonstrated extending the out-of-the-box edit form of a list item by replacing a long, vertical form that had basic controls with a tabbed form that utilized sliders and other controls. The AJAX magic to specifically implement the tabs and controls wasn't so cool as it was to see what he specifically chose to manipulate within WSS to make it happen.

HMS310: Search in MOSS 2007: Customizing and Extending

Thomas Rizzo presented this one. His content was accurate and he's a great speaker, but I personally didn't get much out of it. It was a little higher level than I was hoping for. He talked about what options are available in the SharePoint Search web parts to customize their appearance, walked through the search API, and wrote an app on the spot that used the API.

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Vish, Neil and Mike take a wireless break after Guthrie's DevConn Keynote

mike — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 18:11:11 GMT

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