March 2012 Schedule

This March is going to be as crazy as last October was! I am only home one weekend, and that's because my wife is at a convention and I'm playing Mr. Mom. Here's where I'll be and what I'm talking about: Utah Code Camp, March 12 Back to Salt Lake City, which will of course include a stop at Bohemain Brewery & Grill, who I dubbed the best microbrew in my Travel Food Awards. I'm presenting one talk:

Rocking WebForms with jQuery Reports of WebForms' demise are very premature; in fact, WebForms still rock! And by adding just a little jQuery UI magic, they can rock even more. Whether you're beginning a new WebForms application, or maintaining an existing one, it's very easy to add a little UI razzle-dazzle that can both make your code cleaner and the application more user friendly. In this session, we'll look at what jQuery is, how to use it in ASP.NET WebForms applications, and what it can do for our WebForms applications. If you've used the ASP.NET Ajax Toolkit in your applications, you'll want to see what is replacing it.

The last sentence is a hint about something we've known is coming for a while (but couldn't mention), which is jUICE UI. jUICE is a set of jQUERY UI powered control extensions for WebForms, and I'll have at least one jUICE sample in the talk. Pittsburgh .NET User Group, March 13 I finally get to go to my hometown user group! It's been many months since I've been able to. I'm presenting a new talk:

You Don’t Know JACSHT If 50,000,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong, then 25,000,000 websites (and every single browser) are pretty close to a sure thing. Since its release in 2006, jQuery has gained a tremendous following–so much so that in 2008, Microsoft made the decision to replace its then 20-month old ASP.NET Ajax framework with jQuery for all future client side programming libraries. Despite not having an official standard, HTML 5 is becoming the standard for cross-browser, cross-platform web applications. And although it historically has been implemented differently in every browser, CSS is essential for using and styling HTML elements. In this session, we’ll look at the fundamentals of this technology triumvirate, explore some of the main features of each, and see how to start new or enhance existing applications. This will be a technology agnostic talk, so whether you develop in WebForms, MVC, Ruby, Java or PHP, there’s something in this session to be learned.

BTW, JACSHT is an acronym coined by Dave Hoerster, it's short for JAvascript, CSs and HTml. Or so he tells me. Boise Code Camp, March 24 My first time ever in Boise, and I'm looking forward to sampling the cuisine. I'm giving two talks:

Building Windows 8 Applications with HTML and jQuery One of the many new advances in Windows 8 is the ability to create Windows applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. In this session, we'll take a look at the Windows 8 technology stack on which these applications run, how HTML/CSS/JS apps actually run, and discuss the implications of the different ways to utilize third party libraries such as jQuery. We'll then migrate an MVC application which utilizes jQuery into a Metro-style application. By the end of this session, you'll have a solid idea of what it means to have a Metro-style application built with web technologies. LightSwitch Onramp Microsoft's LightSwitch presents a radical new way of designing applications in Visual Studio. Applications can be quickly built using screen templates and prewritten code to handle routine tasks. Custom business logic can be added in VB.NET or C#. LightSwitch applications can access a number of data sources, including SQL Server and SQL Azure, and can be hosted locally or on Azure. LightSwitch will enable IT staff to quickly turn around those small-but-necessary enterprise apps end users are so fond of, and it's easy enough for power-users with limited programming experience to build their own apps. By the end of this session, we’ll understand what LightSwitch is, what we need to develop with LightSwitch, and how to get started developing a LightSwitch application.

VS Live Las Vegas, March 26-30 This will be my first time speaking at VS Live. I'm honored and privileged to be presenting three talks: LightSwitch Onramp (descibed above, Building Windows 8 Applications with HTML and jQuery (described above), and HTML5/jQuery Onramp (similar to the JACSHT talk above). VS Live has an awesome lineup, with Michael Washington, Adam Tuliper, Miguel de Icaza, Billy Hollis, Rocky Lhotka and more all speaking--see the full list of speakers and topics at http://vslive.com/Events/Las-Vegas-2012/Speakers/Speaker-List.aspx. If you're looking for a good conference this spring, check out the agenda. If you register with my speaker code (VLSPK10) you'll save $400 off the regular price, and $100 off the early bird price! Whew! That's a lot of miles in one month. But I look forward to seeing everyone when I'm on the road. Stop by and say hi, and if you know a place, I'm always looking for good BBQ.