If you’re looking to ramp up your skills in the land of XAML, I’d recommend adding these events to your calendar. Don’t worry if you can’t make the Live Meeting sessions as those will also be available on-demand.

Here’s a list of the great content you have to choose from…

XAML Continuum

XAML is the lingua franca of both Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft’s presentation technologies for the future. In this introductory session, learn how XAML empowers designers and developers to build rich Web and desktop applications. You’ll see how Blend can be used by designers to create assets and applications, and how Visual Studio 2008 to quickly implement an application’s functionality. What’s more, you’ll understand how Blend and Visual Studio work together to enable seamless workflow between designers and developers.

XAML for Designers

Throughout XAMLFest, you’ll participate by building a Silverlight application from the ground up. In this session, you’ll jump Microsoft Expression Blend to begin creating this demonstration app. You’ll learn the basics of project creation, see how to navigate within Blend, and how XAML defines an application’s user interface.

XAML for Developers

In this first session geared towards developers, use Visual Studio 2008 to create and explore a basic Silverlight application. You’ll gain a better understanding of Silverlight anatomy and architecture, and you’ll see how Resource markup extensions work. You will also gain a better understanding of the deployment model used by Silverlight, and the role of Silverlight’s cross-platform, plug-in-based CLR.

XAML Fundamentals

In this recorded session, you’ll gain a solid foundational understanding of how XAML is used to build applications. First, you’ll see how XAML’s layout containers can be used to create interfaces that scale and re-size cleanly and intelligently. Next, you’ll see how you can use a variety of built-in controls to quickly create a working user interface. Finally, you’ll understand the role of XAML in data binding, and you’ll see how you can bind controls and properties using markup or code.

Layouts and Controls in Blend

In this live session, you’ll continue to build the sample application that you started creating the previous day. Here, you’ll create your application’s layout and begin adding controls. You’ll explore basic element binding using Blend. At the end of the session you’ll have a working Silverlight application that exhibits some basic functionality.

Layouts and Controls in Visual Studio

This session will begin with an exploration of application layout in XAML, using Visual Studio. And although there is a lot of functionality built-in to the existing framework, API and controls, there are times when you need to add some custom functionality in order to get your application to behave just the right way. To that end, you’ll use Visual Studio to build a simple value converter that can be used by your sample application. Along the way, you’ll understand the role of value converters and you’ll see how you can use code-behind to create and manipulate XAML objects. 

Prototyping

With today’s emphasis on usability and appealing user interfaces, it’s more important than ever to prototype your applications. In this session, you’ll see how new tools in Blend 3 enable you to quickly create working prototypes that can provide a foundation for building the actual application. You’ll learn about SketchFlow, “Wiggly styles”, sample data, and you’ll see how you can create a prototype that allows you to easily gather user feedback. Finally, you’ll see how you can save hours and hours by using Blend 3’s spec generation tool.

New Prototyping Features in Blend 3

In this session focusing on practical guidance on prototyping, you’ll use Blend to add screens, compositions and navigation behaviors to the sample application. You’ll add sample data sources to screens, sketch prototype user experience, and generate a spec document. 

Building a Domain Model in Visual Studio

In this session, you’ll use the spec document that was generated in the earlier design session to build a domain model consistent with sample data. You’ll also add notification interfaces that enable consumers to subscribe to changes in the domain model. Finally, you’ll bind the user experience to the domain model.  Live Meeting on June 3, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 pm EDT)

Patterns and Practices

With the release of its Expression tools for designers, Microsoft has prompted a re-evaluation of user interface design and workflow distribution. Now that Expression is approaching its third major release, a number of patterns and practices have emerged. In this session, you’ll see an approach to workflow that plays to the strengths of both designers and developers. Also, you’ll understand the importance of the “integrator” role in making sure this workflow runs smoothly.

Styles, Resources, Templates and Animations

XAML makes it easier for designers to take on more responsibility when it comes to implementing user interface design. In the past, most everything beyond static screenshots and mockups required a developer to write behind-the-scenes code. In this session, you’ll see how Expression empowers designers to add styling, create templates, and define animations. You’ll see how the Visual State Manager is used to provide animation between element states. You’ll also see Blend 3’s new support for importing Adobe® Photoshop® content. Live Meeting on June 4, 2009 / 9:00 AM PDT (noon EDT)

Implementing the M-V-VM Pattern

The Model/View/ViewModel (M-V-VM) pattern is a modern variation of the classic Model/View/Controller (MVC) approach to UI design. In this session, you’ll use Visual Studio to implement M-V-VM for the sample application. You’ll bind the user experience to the view model, and explore templates and animations in both XAML and managed code. Live Meeting on June 4, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 PM EDT)

Upsizing

Up until this point, most of the work you’ve done in XAMLFest has been using Silverlight, with sample data. In this session, you’ll see how an application can leverage endpoints and Service-Oriented Architectures. You’ll also see how Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) fits into the picture – how XAML and .NET enable reusability between Silverilght and WPF applications, and how to leverage features that are unique to WPF. You’ll also get a sneak peek at some of the exciting innovations coming in .NET 4.0.

Using Blend to Create WPF Apps and Controls

You can build great Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps with Blend, too, and in this session you’ll see exactly that. You’ll build a rich desktop client to complement the sample application you’ve been working on, and in doing so you’ll learn how to migrate screens, resources, styles and assets from Silverlight to WPF. This session will explore the similarities and differences between Silverlight and WPF applications.  Live Meeting on June 5, 2009 / 9:00 AM PDT (noon EDT)

Code Reusability between Silverlight and WPF

In this final session of XAMLFest, you’ll gain a solid understanding of WPF application architecture and development. You’ll implement a service endpoint that provides a domain model that can be used by both Silverlight and WPF. In addition, you’ll get some hands-on experiencing developing controls and applications with Silverlight/WPF re-use in mind. Live Meeting on June 5, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 PM EDT)

You can download the bits, submit feedback to the Connect site and participate in the ongoing conversations on the Beta forums. The documentation has been removed from the download for Beta 1 but you can find all of the documentation online on MSDN.

Once you kicked off the download, be sure to read What’s New in .NET Framework 4 and What’s New in Visual Studio 2010.

You can install Visual Studio 2010 side-by-side with other versions of Visual Studio or you can drop it into a virtualized machine with something like Virtual PC.

Once you have everything up and running, download the Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit to learning about the latest features and enhancements. There are also a number of walkthroughs posted highlighting some of these new features.

Enjoy!

We received quite a bit of feedback from the MIX’09 conference on why Microsoft was pushing WPF aside and focusing their efforts on Silverlight. This is certainly not the case and the WPF story is stronger than ever. This is evident in the Visual Studio teams strategy (and several product teams across Microsoft) to bet on WPF for their front-end technology for Visual Studio 2010. MIX’09 is a conference focused on Web design and development and WPF is specific to building client-based applications.

For the vast majority of enterprise developers, their day to day efforts are spent applying their skills in building and maintaining line-of-business applications. Prior to WPF, these types of client-side applications have been built using technologies such as WinForms. WPF is focused on bringing the client-side technologies forward and providing the necessary tools and technologies to offer our users a better user experience and building the next-generation types of applications. However, there is a significant (but short-lived) learning curve in bringing your .NET skills to targeting WPF applications.

Thankfully, Karl Shifflet and Jaime Rodriquez are hitting the road across 4 cities across the U.S. as well as London to provide a *free* 2-day training class focused on building line-of-business applications with WPF. Karl Shifflett is a former Microsoft MVP and current Program Manager for Cider (Cider is the code name for the WPF designer in Visual Studio). Jaime Rodriquez is a Microsoft Technical Evangelist focusing on WPF and Silverlight. You can’t find any better instructors than the ones who are actually building the technology! If you’re interested in learning more about WPF and how it can help you bring more engaging user experiences to your users, I highly suggest attending this event.

Date, Location, and Logistics

Los Angeles, CA, 4/24 -4/25

London, UK, 5/15 -5/16

New York, NY, 5/29-5/30

Chicago, IL, 6/12-6/13

Phoenix, AZ, 6/5-6/6

Agenda

Day One:

• Lap Around WPF
• WPF Tools ( Blend, Visual Studio 2008)
• Graphics Subsystem
• Layout
• WPF Fundamentals and new concepts (Application Model, Dependency Properties, Trees (logical & visual),  Events, Threading)
• Resources
• Controls
• Styling
• Templating
• Q&A with instructors at end of day

Day Two:

• WPF integration with Win32 and Windows Forms
• Data binding
• Introduction to Model-View-ViewModel
• Commanding in M-V-VM
• Views, Navigation and Transitions
• Data Validation
• Error handling, Model dialogs, Logging
• Unit Testing
• MVVM & LOB tips and tricks
• Q&A with the instructor

My first session on A Tour and Discussion of CodePlex came awfully early in the  morning when Dan Rigsby dragged myself, Brian Gorbett and our new friends from Findlay, Ohio out for a night of pre-techfest festivities. As a side note, if you feel your ego is getting to bloated, just go to a bar where you are the oldest one there! Ugh. Here are a few links from the session…

Resource Links:

http://codeplex.com

Wikipedia definition for Open Source

CodePlex Team Blog

Article on CodePlex support for TortoiseSVN

Facebook Developer Toolkit Project Page

Sara Ford’s Blog

In my WPF session, WPF, WTF? No…WPF! It’s all about XAML these days, we had an amazing turnout – standing room only! There can only be a few explanations as to why… A.) the room only had 10 chairs available, B.) all of the other sessions at the time were canceled, or C.) there is a LOT of interest in building WPF applications. I hope it’s the latter! As with all my WPF sessions I’ve presented in the past, there was just WAY to much content to fit in a short amount of time. I need to either take this session and ask for two time slots to cover it, or just pair down the session to fit it into the standard 60-75 minute time slots. There is just SO much to talk about, it would be hard to pair it down. Here are the resources from the session…

Resource Links:

MSDN Virtual Lab on Building WPF applications

http://windowsclient.net learning resources

Expression Learning Resources