Funny - I'm sitting in the redo of the 301/302 talk by Don Box. First thing showing on the projected screens is a command prompt, in the Office directory. The last line typed was
DEL POWERPNT.EXE
Sweet !! There will be NO PowerPoint in this talk --- code, code, code...
Whew - tired from last night's attendee party at Universal Studios. Fun time - got there early and did the rides “downstairs” before it got crowded. Lines for buses to get “home” were hellish. Cut code for work when get back: bedtime = 2 AM
Longhorn / Whidbey “Deployment and Publish“ - still can't get this to work. Went to hands on lab and tried to publish and deploy a simple app. Interested in how things work when the network is not available. Simulate this by stopping IIS on the local machine, where I'm serving up the app. Using the “publish“ option in the Whidbey build menu -- set “check for updates at application startup“. When a new version is available on the server, but IIS is down, user gets error -- can't check for updates.
Argh !! in this case, shouldn't the client just run the older version from the “cache“?
Chris Anderson had a great talk this afternoon about the application framework that's built into the Longhorn OS. He struggled through a couple demos, but nonetheless, got the points across in an almost all-demo talk.
After the marketing mandated slides, it was just code, code, code. Avalon, along with the Longhorn OS, provide some services to prevent having us all write the same plumbing code over and over. Some highlights:
- It feels a lot like the MFC application framework, where we don't write Main function any longer. The runtime and Avalon take care of WinMain, Main, etc. Call us on the Application::OnStartingUp event. (We override when necessary, to create windows, etc.)
- Window management is handled (if desired) by Avalon core. We can have the app quit when the main window is closed, when the last window is closed, or only when we call the close method.
- Services provided to do system tray notification. Very simple -- on a button click handler for example, just send a message to the tray, get the bubble notification.
- Running the EXE in a browser. Just a tweak in the XAML file, and the exe is hosted in the browser as a doc window. Navigation is done by the browser.
Well, the last day of the trade show is definitely the big one. Many of the exhibitors are eager to get rid of their SWAG, just so they don't have to take it back.
Oracle for example needed to get rid of their red PDC bean bags. I scored one in a drawing! My first win of the week!
The Longhorn group was giving away the rest of their mini RC cars -- just had to fill out some survey.
Finally, a couple bookstores were unloading all their books -- presumably to not have to carry/ship them home.
All in all - a great day of SWAG !!!