In the next few weeks, I’ll be speaking at a few events.

• Tuesday November 17th: RIA Evening Seminar @ KHM

I’ll be speaking about Rich (Internet) Applications, mainly focussing on Silverlight. In this 90 minute session. I’ll talk about the “why” and “what” of rich applications, and show off a few of the features that make Silverlight stand out.

Location: Katholieke Hogeschool Mechelen (website)

• Wednesday November 25th: Microsoft User Experince @ Vitra
  
  For the second time, Microsoft is organizing this event together with Vitra & partners.  This event is aimed at developers & decision makers, and consists of in depth sessions on Sharepoint, Silverlight, WPF and Sketchflow in the afternoon (@ MS Corporate Village, Zaventem), and short introduction sessions in the evening (@ Vitra showroom, Diegem).  I’ll be presenting the Silverlight session: this is a 45 minute session, repeated throughout the afternoon.  In this session, I’ll talk about Silverlight 3 & its new features.

Don’t hesitate to say hello if you see me! :)

Last Thursday, I presented a BESUG session on RIA Services. 

Code & slides are online now, feel free to download them and have a look.  Most of RIA Services is covered, including but not limited to CRUD, Validation, extending generated code, Authentication and Authorization.  The Silverlight solution itself is built using a (pragmatic ;-)) MVVM approach.

Just now, I was surfing on the Infragistics site, having a look at their control suites.  I noticed their latest press release, concerning the development of a custom UI on Silverlight for MS Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3. 

I was amazed.  Silverlight, on Windows Embedded CE?  That’s new. 

So I assumed this was just an announcement for something that would be released somewhere in the future.  Nevertheless, I decided to surf around some more, looking for more information, and sure enough I stumbled upon this page on the Microsoft site, which explicitly states Silverlight for Windows Embedded has been released, “enabling designers and developers to create exciting and visually compelling user interfaces for embedded devices”.  This update to Windows Embedded CE has been available since last week, and it can be downloaded here (update).

So, how come this wasn’t announced with lots of bells and whistles??  Beats me (well, maybe I just missed it ;-)), but nevertheless: way to go, Silverlight! ;-)  We can now design Silverlight applications for thin clients, set-top boxes, VoIP Phones, GPS devices, handheld terminals, …!

Update!  This is NOT the same Silverlight version you’d use for developing regular Silverlight applications, more information can be found here – yet it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

When you’re working with the Model-View-ViewModel pattern in Silverlight, sooner or later you’ll run into the same problem most of us run into: what about animations?  Theoretically, if you want to follow the MVVM design pattern you’re using, your animation should be initiated from the ViewModel (no code behind on your View, remember?), but due the separation between your View and your ViewModel, the ViewModel shouldn’t know about a specific View.  It should exist indepently of it, so, for example, you can easily use the same ViewModel for multiple Views.

So, how do you solve this problem?  How do you get animations on your View while still respecting the MVVM pattern (more or less so, depending on your implementation)? 

Binary Bob has a very, very interesting post about this on his blog.  He talks about the problem, and then discusses several options on how to solve it, including sample code.  I especially like the StoryBoardManager-solution.  Make sure you check it out!

As I mentioned earlier, I submitted my Silverlight Drag Drop Manager to the Silverlight Control Builder contest.  I promised I’d let you know how it went, and… apparently, I won first prize! :-)

Should look nice on the codeplex page I suppose, and it’s always nice to get some appreciation.  So, thank you, Page Brooks and judges, I’m really, really happy with this! :)

As some of you might know, the company I work for is hosting a BESUG session on Silverlight & RIA Services shortly (October 15th / click here to register!), for which I am the speaker.  At the moment, I’m composing a few of the slides and writing up some code, and I was wondering: if you had the possibility to ask a question about RIA Services, what would it be?

I’m not talking about the more general things (like “how do I get to my data”), those things will be addressed.  I’m looking for more specific questions, like “how do you work around having to rewrite code when you regenerate your DomainService?“, or “what are good strategies to achieve X or Y?” Hoping for some input on this, I decided to quickly blog this. ;-)

So, in short: what would YOU like to know about RIA Services?  Let me know (mail, twitter, or by replying to this post).  Tnx!

Quick update: I’ve registered my Silverlight Drag and Drop Manager for the Silverlight Control Builder Contest, and it’s been accepted!  :-)  Check out all the entries here.

Entry deadline is September 19th, so I suppose I’ll know soon enough how it compares to the other entries.  I, for one, am quite curious about what the judges have to say about it – no matter where it ends in the contest, it’ll probably get me some tips and advice on what can be improved for future releases. 

Of course, I’ll keep you all updated!