After the huge success of BarCampEdmonton it’s not surprising that another DemoCamp was in the works. The details have just been posted on the BarCampEdmonton blog. Add yourself to the attendee list on the wiki so we know how many people to expect.
BarCampEdmonton is coming this July 19th. Because of limited capacity we’re requiring people to register ahead of time. You can register online thanks to InviteRight, a great little Edmonton startup. More details and future announcements on the official BarCampEdmonton blog.
May is here already and with it comes DevTeach next week in Toronto. I’ve worked out a rough draft of my schedule. My objectives in this schedule are:
This schedule is subject to change based on the speakers and the buzz around the conference. You can also check it out on my Google Calendar.
I’ve been playing with Silverlight and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) a lot lately, and wanted to start sharing some of what I’ve learned to help make things easier for others just getting started.
The objective of this blog post is to describe how to create a WCF web service which can be easily accessed from Silverlight 2. Silverlight is an ideal web service client as it’s multi-platform and handles asynchronous web service calls. You can see the final app on my staging server.
This tutorial is divided into 5 steps:
These directions are written for developers using Visual Studio 2008. Since we’re using Silverlight 2, you’ll also need the Silverlight 2 SDK. You can download my source if you’re getting stuck.
I’m also assuming the reader already knows about web services, and has played with XAML and Silverlight. If you’re having problems please leave me a comment or send me an email.
A big thank-you to everyone who came out to my Silverlight talk at EDMUG last night. It’s a great crowd, and I was honoured to be picked to go to Toronto for DevTeach in May.
I’ve uploaded my presentation and source for you to download. To play wih the source you’ll need a copy of Visual Studio 2008, and the Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 installed. I’ve found the tools installed often hangs at 100% for 10-15 minutes, just let it go. It’s actually merging the help files and will eventually finish.
EDMUG Silverlight Talk (.pptx)
EDMUG Silverlight Talk (.ppt)
Silverlight Calculator Project (for VS 2008)
If you’re interested in learning more about Silverlight or WPF I recommend the following:
silverlight.net - the official community site, the forums here are invaluable
ScottGu’s blog - he does great tutorials using the latest Silverlight tools
Expression Studio Blog - a designer oriented look at Silverlight and WPF
WPF Unleashed - the nitty-gritty details for those who want to know
Designers will want to start playing with Expression Blend. You current need a preview of Expression 2.5 to work with managed Silverlight. I’ve found it unstable so for learning purposes you may want to run Expression 2.0 and learn in WPF since there are still bugs in 2.5. You can then transfer all your WPF knowledge to Silverlight.
Silverlight EDMUG Presentation by Mark Bennett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.
Hi all, just a heads up that I’m live blogging from EDMUG tonight. Check out my Twitter feed for updates. It’s a democamp style set of six ten minute presentations. I’m on of them so we’ll see how it goes!
Just a reminder that Edmonton’s first DemoCamp is happening tonight! Come to the Faculty of Business room B-9 early as we’re over booked. Doors open at 6:00 and talks start at 6:30.
Get all the details and sign up for our mailing list at our blog.
So after a week of experimenting I think the logo is finally done!
As you can see it extends the logo I posted a few days ago by adding some colour, a few tweaks to the font, and a gentle curve meant to suggest the top of a hill in the background. I’ve also applied some gradients and shading to the box surrounding the silhouette. These give the box a sense of depth and force the white tree into the foreground.
From a practical perspective I’m happy with this logo because it immediately catches the eye and challenges the viewer to recognize the outline of the tree. The red gradients look great in full colour and can be flattened to a solid red for low resolutions and small sizes. When printing in black and white the gradients can be removed entirely which recreates the old logo from a few days ago.
Though there are still a few concerns with this logo, such as how it should be laid out when the format requires something more horizontal, I’m sure solutions to those problems will evolve over time. I’m actually so satisfied with it I’m taking my first stab at a business card!
Like the logo design from a few days ago this is my first draft, and needs to be polished if it will make a good first impression, but I really like how it showcases the new logo. Again the red is very striking and should stand out well in a client’s wallet or on their desk. I’ll be passing around printed copies to some of my friends over the next few days and hope to send a final design to the printer next week. If you’ve got any feedback please let me know by leaving a comment on this post.
Download my source code
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