Presentations

June 12, 2007 Inland Empire .NET Users Group, Riverside, CA
Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Same presentation as at the Windows Vista Party in February.?

May 10, 2007 East Bay.NET Users Group, Pleasanton, CA
Dependency Properties, Routed Events and WPF Built-In Commands

Same presentation as at the Southern California Code Camp in January

May 9, 2007 Central California .NET Users Group, Fresno, CA
Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Same presentation as at the Windows Vista Party in February.

April 4, 2007 SD Forum, Palo Alto, CA (with Peter Kellner)
Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Presentation Description:
We will introduce Microsoft’s shipping replacement for the forms API. An overview of what WPF (formerly Avalon) and XAML will be presented. Perspective from both the designers point of view as well as the programmers will be discussed. WPF is not just a Forms API replacement. It is a paradigm shift in client side programming. In this session we will look at WPF from the ground up. We will present an overview of the tools necessary to create sophisticated WPF programs and demonstrate some of the best programs already written for WPF and explain (by talking through the XAML and C#) how they work. Be prepared to see a lot of code and very cool applications.

March 27, 2007 Sacramento .NET Users Group, Sacramento CA
Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
Same presentation as at the Windows Vista Party in February (first part only).

March 21, 2007 Bay.NET Users Group, San Francisco, CA
Introduction to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

Same presentation as at the Windows Vista Party in February.

February 24, 2007 Windows Vista Party, Los Altos Hills, CA
Windows Powershell Scripting and Windows Presentation Foundation

Presentation Descriptions:
Windows Powershell
Windows System Administrators have long used scripting to automate routine administrative tasks such as adding new users to Active Directory or mapping network drives. Over the years Microsoft has expanded the toolset for administrative scripting to include Windows Scripting Host, WMI and ADSI. Now in Q4, 2006 Microsoft recently released a new scripting environment, Powershell, with a new built-in scripting language that is fully integrated with the .NET Framework. In the words of WindowsITPro Magazine “Unix administrators won’t be laughing anymore.” Powershell lets administrators string together lots of little commands to create complex commands via a process labeled as composition. Powershell also supports pipelining which sends the output of one command to the next command. Powershell is completely object oriented and all of its commands return objects, not text strings. The Powershell environment (an enhanced version of cmd.exe) includes a raft of built-in cmdlets which replicate and expand the functionality of familiar DOS commands. In addition, any administrator (or third party developer) can design and build additional cmdlets to augment the built-in collection. We will walk step by step through a series of tasks designed to illustrate the features and capabilities of Windows Powershell.

Windows Presentation Foundation
Windows Presentation Foundation is a new programming paradigm introduced in Version 3.0 of the .NET Framework as an alternative to traditional Windows Forms programming. WPF effectively permits the separation of user interface design (to be principally implemented by designers) from the underlying functionality (to be implemented by developers) using a new XML variant, XAML. WPF also permits almost any control to host any other control, thereby allowing dramatic user interface designs such as buttons hosting videos or 3D drawings. WPF also permits every control to be built in a scalable fashion so that an entire form — including buttons, graphics, labels, textboxes and the text which they contain — can be expanded or shrunken simply by dragging the sizing handle.

This presentation will attempt to clarify the following:
What is WPF?
How does WPF compare to Windows Forms Development?
Does WPF Require Windows Vista?
What are the Other Requirements of WPF?
What is XAML and how is it used by WPF?
What is WPF/E?
What is XBAP?
What are the Applications in the Expressions Suite?

This presentation will consist of two parts. The first part (in time slot 2) will explain what WPF is and where it fits into the .NET development field. The second part (in time slot 3) will consist entirely of a live demonstration of building an XBAP application. While this demonstration will (hopefully) be very interesting to watch, understanding what is happening will be greatly augmented by attending the first session.

January 27 - 28, 2007 Southern California Code Camp, Fullerton, CA
Dependency Properties, Routed Events and WPF Built-In Commands.

Presentation Description:
Windows Presentation Foundation is a new programming paradigm introduced in Version 3.0 of the .NET Framework as an alternative to traditional Windows Forms programming. WPF effectively permits the separation of user interface design (to be principally implemented by designers) from the underlying functionality (to be implemented by developers). WPF also permits great flexibility in designing dynamic user interfaces, for example, allowing almost complete scalability and flow control. As an illustration of this point, see the New York Times NewsReader (reader.nytimes.com.) Note how this application seamlessly scales, flows and repaginates — very impressive.

To implement these capabilities in WPF, Microsoft had to modify and supplement certain existing portions of the .NET Framework. In particular, the old method of independently setting the properties of each component object in a user interface had to be supplemented with a method of setting a property at one level and having that value penetrate down the element tree to propagate that value to various sub elements. When configured to achieve this goal, setting a new font size at the Window level can automatically and instantaneously change the font size of all controls hosted by the Window. This technology forms the basis of styling and animation in WPF.

This presentation will include a primer on why Windows Presentation Foundation is such an important new development along with an in-depth review of Dependency Properties and Routed Events — two of the most significant (and complex) technical areas of WPF. It will also include coverage of WPF built-in Commands which make use of Routed Events to provide amazing functionality with only a couple words of code.

October 2006, Silicon Valley Code Camp, Los Altos Hills, CA
Hands on Lab using Visual Studio Tools for Office

This presentation involved guiding the audience through the steps required to configure an Excel spreadsheet using C# instead of VB Script as the code behind. This project included adding Windows forms controls directly to the spreadsheet and creating a series of event handlers to respond to events for those controls. The project involved linking the spreadsheet to a SQL Server Express database for both reading and writing data.