WebDD 2009 - a review

Liam Westley — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:54:27 GMT

A tad later than I would have liked, but finally here’s my review of the superbly organised event that was WebDD 2009. Held at Microsoft UK’s Reading campus, it was held on Saturday, with around 200 delegates enjoying a free day of Web goodness. Hats off to the organisers on delivering another full day of great info for free, with Phil Winstanley and David Sussman working hard to make sure everything went smoothly.

ASP.NET 3.5 – Miss Something?

Dan Maharry (http://blog.hmobius.com/, @hmobius)

I like the idea of a session taking an older* technology and reviewing it to ensure everyone has spotted all the useful bits and has got up to date with the service packs and add-ins that they may have missed. Apparently it was Dan’s first presentation but it didn’t really feel like it, and he knows his stuff, having co-authored the O’Reilly book ‘Programming ASP.NET 3.5 Details and Downloads’.

Thanks to Dan I’ll be downloading the Lightweight Test Framework from the ASP QA team, available on codeplex; http://aspnet.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=22739. Dan also mentioned that Steve Sanderson (ASP.NET MVC author) also has some good blogs on how to use it; http://blog.codeville.net/2009/03/27/first-steps-with-lightweight-test-automation-framework/

* older is by no means a derogatory term, this means code which is actually released and can be deployed rather than a preview, CTP or beta in a state of flux

What’s good in .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010

Alex Mackey (http://www.SimpleIsBest.co.uk, @alexjmackey)

I’m not sure when Alex managed to get a chance to breathe during this presentation. Nearly 100 slides in the deck and he did a superb job of attempting the impossible; highlighting all the new stuff which we will have to play within in the next year or so. A walking, talking RSS feed for .NET 4.0/VS2010. Keep an eye out for his APress book ‘Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010’

P0wn3d! (Or how to redirect your friend’s website to katyperry.com)

Barry Dorrans (http://www.idunno.org )

Security sessions are always amusing for how the room becomes more subdued the more weaknesses in application development are exposed. You can almost feel the self doubt increasing as time goes by. It’s also great when specific comments get the biros scribbling hurriedly.

I liked the idea of using the PrincipalPermission attribute to decorate methods, especially in code that might be shared by a team of programmers. Defence in depth is always a better solution than the false assumption that you have constructed a single impenetrable barrier around the entire application.

An Introduction to jQuery

Andy Gibson (http://www.andy-gibson.co.uk, @ARGibson)

With the ASP.NET team encouraging the use of jQuery via blogs as well as decent intelligence docs within VS2008, I was looking forward to this introductory talk. I was not disappointed. This proved to be a great jQuery tour for people comfortable with solid javascript skills but not necessarily experience with jQuery.

As for jQuery itself, anything that makes my life easier on the client and is multi browser is a winner in my book.

ASP.NET MVC best practices

Sebastien Lambla

Seb managed to survive a complete BSOD on his Mac Book Air (Apple hardware, tsk!) with good grace and without it completely derailing his talk. It did mean the detail was somewhat compressed, which was a shame as this was a very relevant topic.

Best practices are hard to get right with the ASP.NET MVC framework partly because the default project structure and a much of the demo code that comes with the framework doesn’t actually do a good job of demonstrating good practices.

I know why the standard demo code takes a simplified view – best practices can result in quite complicated code to understand. Especially true when you add IoC containers which can be quite intimidating for programmers who haven’t had the experience of struggling to create their own mock objects and marshalling their creation.

It’s not quite the JFK quote, ‘We do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’. More like ‘We do hard things at the start, because in the long term it makes everything else easy’. We sometimes need hard to understand demo code if the end result is a greatly improved solution that is more reliable and easier to update with confidence.

ASP.NET 4.0

Mike Ormond

Well done to Mike for giving up a marvellous sunny day which could have been spent on the allotment, to be stuck in a room with us geeks. There were some good peeks at the next version of ASP.NET 4.0 and he coaxed a VS2010 interim build running under VirtualPC into life to provide some good demos of what will be possible in the next version of Visual Studio.

Post conference

Post conference it was off to Revolution, where the staff were again horrified by my request to add Tabasco Sauce to my Sol beer (honest, it’s really nice. I know you don’t believe me either). Then it was onto Pizza Express for a great finale to the evening. Seb Lambla was on great form as usual and it was good to be able to chat with Andy Gibson and Andrew Westgarth, both of whom travelled quite a distance to present at WebDD. I’m happily returning the favour, travelling up to Glasgow for DDD Scotland on May 2^nd. I’m less happy that I’m up against Andy Gibson with what I think will be another popular jQuery talk.

Thanks to all for a great day.

@westleyl

Afterthought; WebDD - a replacement for ReMix?

Someone at the conference did comment that due to the economic situation ReMix might not happen this year, and that WebDD might be a ‘partial replacement’. Unlike the first WebDD I attended, this second event did not have the content to attract designers, so I hope no one at Microsoft thinks that this is a replacement for ReMix. Microsoft do need to capture designer mindshare and get developers out of the mindset where design is an afterthought – that’s the duty of the ReMix events and with Silverlight as a potential platform it’s needed more than ever.

Interview with Liam Westley at WebDD - part of podcast from 4chapsfromblighty

Liam Westley — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:32:00 GMT

If you want to here my initial reactions to WebDD in person, check out http://www.4chapsfromblighty.com where I pontificate about the ideal of separating the roles of developers from designers. Thanks to Guy Smith-Ferrier for taking the time out to capture my opinion.

WebDD, 3 February 2007 - Another excellent community event

Liam Westley — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:38:00 GMT

Having spoken at the normal DDD community events in the UK I was looking forward to the combined nature of WebDD which was aimed at both developers and designers interested in web technologies. Similar to DDD Microsoft UK hosted the event in their UK headquarters in Reading, and provided a quality lunch and refreshments, and the excellent bonus of a fully licensed version of Expression Web for every attendee.

The hope for a 50/50 split between developers and designers wasn't quite achieved, developers did appear to outnumber designers. However, it's the first event, and with Scott Guthrie speaking in four out of the five time slots it was inevitable that developers would be quite keen to attend.

I have worked in broadcast television for over 15 years, and I'm very used to collaborating closely with graphics designers for on screen content. I can't wait for them to get closer to both web and application development (see Microsoft Expression highlight below), so that the programmers can stop designing user interfaces from hell. And I include myself in that group of programmers.

The most interesting development I saw was with Expression Design and Expression Blend, the new tools for creating designer lead applications, and the announcement of a new product Expression Media (previously iView MediaPro) for asset management and video encoding. When I saw demonstrations of Expression at TechEd 2006, I was stunned that anyone at Microsoft could believe it was a suitable product for graphic designers as it was clearly still a developer tool. Seeing the current versions clearly marks out Design and Blend as tools for graphic designers, and that these are applications aimed at creating Windows Applications for the initial releases. They will only target web applications when WPF/E is fully formed. I'll be blogging more detailed thoughts of the Expression product range in the next few days.

In summary, a very enjoyable day out and great to see some new faces among the usual suspects. Talking of which Guy Smith Ferrier took time out to record a pod cast on my opinion of WebDD so keep a lookout for that gem of modern broadcasting inflicted on an unsuspecting population. Hopefully my terrible cough didn't come across on the recording. Which reminds me, apologies to those who may have sat near me in any of the sessions if I had a coughing fit near you. Let's hope I didn't drown out any interesting parts of the sessions.