July 2010 - Posts

• Learn iPhone Programming for Free with Wrox, Novell, and McClure

  Are you a .NET Developer wanting to get into developing on the Apple iPhone and iPad? Learn iPhone Programming for Free with Wrox, Novell, and McClure. Wrox/Wiley has released Wallace McClure’s Wrox Blox on Novell’s MonoTouch for free.  The MonoTouch Wrox Blox is available at: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-406371.html. For .NET Developers, Novell has produced the Trial Version of MonoTouch.  The Trial Version is a free download that allows a developer to write and build applications and test them in the iPhone simulator.  The Trial Version is available at: http://monotouch.net/DownloadTrial. Wallace B. (Wally) McClure, President of Scalable Development, Inc., is the author of the Wrox Blox on Novell’s MonoTouch and the author of the updated Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch recently released.  In addition, McClure has produced a downloadable video podcast introducing MonoTouch.  The video is available for download from http://aspnetpodcast.com or directly at:http://bit.ly/deMCoJ. "Want to program the iPhone? Want to share business logic between mobile devices? There's a language for that: MonoTouch." Posted Jul 29 2010, 08:15 PM by wallym with no comments Filed under: Community News, c#, mono, monodevelop, monotouch, monotouch development

• DevConnections in Las Vegas

  I'll be at ASP.NET Connections (aka DevConnections) in Las Vegas this November at the Madalay Bay Resort.  I'm really excited about this.  I'll be speaking on: ASP.NET 4 WebForms - What's New, Cool, and Hip! ASP.NET AJAX - UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control ToolKit. An Introduction to Windows Azure.   Posted Jul 28 2010, 10:30 PM by wallym with no comments Filed under: Community News

• Houston TechFest

  I'm looking forward to the Houston TechFest.  I'll be speaking on MonoTouch, ASP.NET WebPages, and MonoDroid (if its been available as beta at that point).  I'm excited about this. Posted Jul 28 2010, 12:00 AM by wallym with no comments Filed under: Community News

• VSLive Redmond Coming Up

  I'm heading out to VSLive next week.  I'm really excited about this.  I'll be speaking on: ASP.NET 4 WebForms - What's New, Cool, and Hip! ASP.NET AJAX - UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control ToolKit.  I'm really excited about this. If you are there, come up and introduce yourself. Posted Jul 27 2010, 10:15 PM by wallym with no comments Filed under: Community News

• Poem to MonoTouch

  If you missed my poem to MonoTouch this morning on Twitter, here's the full version: Oh MonoTouch, How do I love thee? Let me reference count the ways. I love thee to the depth and width and height of the threads I can run and my battery can reach, when awaiting an event to occur For the ends of Video and ideal Audio and Capture and Books. I love thee to the level of getting upto speed without learning ObjC. Most quiet gc, by getting an app done now and not spending days and days on a new framework. I love thee freely trial edition, as devs strive to code by day and by night. I love thee purely, as they turn from desktop and web to mobile with the world in our hands In my old griefs of html, and with my childhood's faith in all platforms. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose for WebForms, MVC, WCF, and all things religous development zealots argue over With my lost saints Miguel, and Geoff, and Joseph, and Novell --- I love thee with the breath Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if Steve Jobs choose, I shall but love thee better after Apple gives in and publically accepts us in the AppStore. (With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning) Posted Jul 22 2010, 01:30 PM by wallym with 3 comment(s) Filed under: monotouch, monotouch development

• DevConnections Las Vegas

  I'm happy to announce that I will be speaking at DevConnections in Las Vegas in November.  More info on this is coming. Posted Jul 16 2010, 08:15 AM by wallym with no comments Filed under: Community News

• VSLive Orlando

  I'm excited to announce that I am speaking at VSLive Orlando in November.  My two sessions are: What's New in ASP.NET 4 WebForms. AJAX with the UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control Toolkit. If you plan to attend or do attend, please send me a message.  I love to meet people and talk technology with them. Here's some info on each of my sessions: Session 1 Title: What’s new in ASP.NET 4 WebForms Abstract: WebForms has been a feature of ASP.NET since the 1.0 release.  Many successful applications have been built based on WebForms.  Recently, it seems that all of the excitement in ASP.NET has been on MVC.  With Version 4, the ASP.NET team has added a number of new features to WebForms.  This session will explore the new features in ASP.NET 4 WebForms with an emphasis on: Routing.  Routing allows an application to accept URLs that are readable to users, are optimized to improve search engine ranking, and do not necessarily map to physical files.  ViewState.  ViewState has been a part of ASP.NET since its initial 1.0 release.  ViewState allows an ASP.NET WebForm to respond to events during a post back.  Unfortunately, ViewState also can increase the size of page beyond what is actually required unless a developer is careful and pays attention to issues with ViewState. With ASP.NET 4 ViewState, we’ll explore improvements in the ability to control ViewState. Client IDs.  Before .NET 4.0, the generated Client IDs in WebForms can be very confusing.  With .NET 4.0, the ability to control the generated Client IDs in WebForms has been greatly enhanced.  We’ll look at these new features for Client IDs in ASP.NET 4.0 WebForms. CSS and HTML Improvements.  ASP.NET 4 WebForms renders HTML that is compliant with the last HTML standards.  We’ll look at how these improvements effect controls and what developers should be aware of. Benefit to the Attendee: By attending this session, ASP.NET Developers currently using WebForms will learn about the new features in ASP.NET 4. Developers will be able to immediately apply these features to their existing WebForms applications that they are upgrading to ASP.NET 4 and to new ASP.NET 4 applications that they are building with WebForms. Session 2 Title: AJAX with the UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control Toolkit Abstract: AJAX is a technology that provides a significant amount of user interaction within the web browser.  With ASP.NET 2 AJAX, Microsoft shipped a set of client side and server side AJAX technologies.  Recently, Microsoft announced that they are transitioning their client side AJAX technologies; however, they are keeping and will continue to build on the server side AJAX technology.  This session will focus on the server side AJAX technologies in the UpdatePanel.  With the UpdatePanel, the ASP.NET team has provided an easy way to integrate AJAX functionality into WebForms applications.  This session will focus on: UpdatePanel. Introduction.  The UpdatePanel will be introduced along with some of the rules that must be followed to use it properly. History.  Users have been trained that clicking on the back button will take the application to the previous state of the application. We’ll explore how to implement support for History, so that when a user clicks the back button they get the action that they expect. Client side events. The UpdatePanel exposes a set of client side events that are similar to server side events.  We’ll look at what these are good for and how to implement them. WebForms.  We’ll look at some of the improvements in ASP.NET 4 WebForms that make working with AJAX simpler. AJAX Control Toolkit. Introduction.  We’ll do an introduction to the AJAX Control Toolkit.  What is it and how it can help out WebForms developers. Creating your own control just like the ones in the AJAX Control Toolkit.   Posted Jul 15 2010, 06:00 PM by wallym with no comments Filed under: Community News

• Apple Section 3.3.1 and MonoTouch

  My frustration with Apple has been fairly well known.  I've blogged about it numerous times over Section 3.3.1. http://morewally.com/cs/blogs/wallym/archive/2010/04/09/dear-apple-why-do-you-continue-to-give-me-the-big-middle-finger.aspx http://morewally.com/cs/blogs/wallym/archive/2010/04/12/why-i-feel-so-strongly-about-the-apple-sdk-issue.aspx http://morewally.com/cs/blogs/wallym/archive/2010/04/13/it-looks-like-we-now-know.aspx http://morewally.com/cs/blogs/wallym/archive/2010/04/14/why-apple-won-t-change-section-3-3-1.aspx Now, I'm frustrated that Apple has Section 3.3.1.  I was frustrated yesterday, today, and will probably be frustrated tomorrow.  Having said that, up to the time of this writing, I'm not familiar with any apps that have been banned from the Apple iPhone App Store due to their being written in MonoTouch.  Why?  I'm not sure.  Only Apple can answer that.  My guess is that because MonoTouch allows devs to build apps that run natively on the device, its viewed as ok.  Will apps written in MonoTouch still be allowed into the App Store? I have no idea.  My guess is that if MT becomes really popular, Apple would be concerned that another company is controlling its destiny and might change, but remember, this is only speculation.  At the same time, remember, the Apple post on Flash is about Flash, not MonoTouch, PhoneGap, or anything besides Flash. Maybe the blowup (mine and others) was over nothing. Let's stop and see what happens over the next 6-9 months.  Right now, today, MonoTouch apps are being accepted.  Let's focus on that Posted Jul 07 2010, 06:00 PM by wallym with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Apple, monotouch, monotouch development

• MonoTouch Book is out

  Our MonoTouch Book is out.  It was great working with Chris Hardy, Craig Dunn, Martin Bowling, and Rory Blyth on this book.  With this book, you'll be able to use your existing knowledge of .NET to target the Apple iPhone. What .NET C# developers need to enter the hot field of iPhone apps iPhone applications offer a hot opportunity for developers. Until the open source MonoTouch project, this field was limited to those familiar with Apple’s programming languages. Now .NET and C# developers can join the party. Professional iPhone Programming with MonoTouch and .NET/C#is the first book to cover MonoTouch, preparing developers to take advantage of this lucrative opportunity. This book is for .NET developers that are interested in creating native iPhone applications written in .NET/C#. These developers want to use their existing knowledge. While .NET developers are always interested in learning, they also recognize that learning Objective-C and the specifics of the iPhone can be overwhelming. Those developers interested in MonoTouch will recognize that the cost of MonoTouch is easily made up by the ability to quickly target the iPhone using a language that they are already familiar with. This book is designed for .NET developers that want to target the iPhone. It is designed to help you get up to speed with the iPhone, not to really teach you about the .NET Framework or C# language, which we assume you already know. This book is designed with introductory material in Chapters 1 thru 4. You should read Chapters 1 thru 4 sequentially. These chapters introduce the MonoTouch product, the basics of developing with MonoTouch and MonoDevelop, and finally, the basics of presenting data to a user with screen and data controls and how to develop a user interface for the iPhone. Once you are comfortable with these concepts, you can typically move from one chapter to another and not necessarily have to read the chapters sequentially. Chapter 1 "Introduction to iPhone Development with MonoTouch for C# Developers"This chapter looks at how the largest segment of developers can target the smartphone with the highest mindshare, and that the smartphone is growing faster in marketshare than any other device. Chapter 2 "Introduction to MonoTouch"gives you a firm foundation in MonoTouch, MonoDevelop, Interface Builder, debugging, and deploying. Chapter 3 "Planning Your App's UI: Exploring the Screen Controls"teaches you about creating your application's UI and specifically how the UI on the iPhone can differ from UIs that you might have created before. You also explore the Input & Value objects from the Interface Builder Objects Library. Chapter 4 "Data Controls" shows the Interface Builder Objects Library Cocoa Touch classes for Controllers, Data Views, and Windows, Views, & Bars. Chapter 5 "Working with Data on the iPhone"looks at the SQLite database engine as well as strategies to store data off the device on a central server through SOAP and REST (using XML and JSON) without tying up the user interface. Chapter 6 "Displaying Data Using Tables"looks at displaying information in a table, using tables for navigation, taking advantage of UITableView's built-in editing features, and adding a search bar to a table. Chapter 7 "Mapping"covers CoreLocation and MapKit, using Location Services, and adding maps and geocoding to your application. Chapter 8 "Application Settings"focuses on application settings, and looks at two aspects of settings for your MonoTouch app: the Info.plist and your settings bundle. It covers what settings you might want to set in your Info.plist and why, and then looks at what code it takes to read and use the settings that you save in the settings bundle. And it also takes you through the building of the settings that you might have in a social media-type application. Going through each step, you will examine the Root.plist inside the Property List Editor and see the settings dialog that will result from it. Chapter 9 "Programming with Device Hardware" covers accelerometer device orientation, and proximity detection support, networking, and developing with battery life in mind. Chapter 10 "Programming with Multimedia" discussing integrating images and the image picker, watching and recording videos, playing and recording audio, and using animation Chapter 11 "Talking to Other Applications"discusses the ways you can use MonoTouch to talk to other applications on the iPhone, both Apple-built applications and those downloaded from the App Store. It also provides helpful ways of accessing the iPhone's Address Book and the iPod music library. Chapter 12 "Localizing for an International Audience" first defines internationalization and localization, then shows displaying translated text and images, formatting dates, times, and numbers, then extracting text for translation. Chapter 13 "Programming the iPad" the capabilities of the iPad are, what new APIs and controls have been introduced that you can use in iPad-specific applications, and how to build applications that can work on both iPad and iPhone devices. Chapter 14 "Just Enough Objective-C" provides you with a reference and introduction to Objective-C that will help you acquire an ability to comprehend Objective-C which is something that will come in very handy. Chapter 15 "The App Store: Submitting and Marketing Your App"discusses all things App Store. First, it talks about the process that you need to go through before you are ready to submit - this includes final testing with Ad-Hoc builds and a presubmission checklist. Next it addresses actually submitting to the App Store, and then finally what to do with your app after it's in the App Store. This chapter also touches on alternative monetization strategies such as ads or in app purchases. A Word About Apple SDK License #3.3.1 There has been a lot of discussion about Apple's SDK licensing restrictions and how they effect MonoTouch.  As of the time of this writing, Apple has not rejected any apps that are written in MonoTouch for inclusion in the Apple App Store. Posted Jul 07 2010, 06:00 AM by wallym with 1 comment(s) Filed under: .NET, Community News, mono, monotouch, monotouch development

• VSLive Redmond

  I'm excited to announce that I am speaking at VSLive Redmond in August.  My two sessions are: What's New in ASP.NET 4 WebForms. AJAX with the UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control Toolkit. If you plan to attend or do attend, please send me a message.  I love to meet people and talk technology with them. Here's some info on each of my sessions: Session 1 Title: What’s new in ASP.NET 4 WebForms Abstract: WebForms has been a feature of ASP.NET since the 1.0 release.  Many successful applications have been built based on WebForms.  Recently, it seems that all of the excitement in ASP.NET has been on MVC.  With Version 4, the ASP.NET team has added a number of new features to WebForms.  This session will explore the new features in ASP.NET 4 WebForms with an emphasis on: Routing.  Routing allows an application to accept URLs that are readable to users, are optimized to improve search engine ranking, and do not necessarily map to physical files.  ViewState.  ViewState has been a part of ASP.NET since its initial 1.0 release.  ViewState allows an ASP.NET WebForm to respond to events during a post back.  Unfortunately, ViewState also can increase the size of page beyond what is actually required unless a developer is careful and pays attention to issues with ViewState. With ASP.NET 4 ViewState, we’ll explore improvements in the ability to control ViewState. Client IDs.  Before .NET 4.0, the generated Client IDs in WebForms can be very confusing.  With .NET 4.0, the ability to control the generated Client IDs in WebForms has been greatly enhanced.  We’ll look at these new features for Client IDs in ASP.NET 4.0 WebForms. CSS and HTML Improvements.  ASP.NET 4 WebForms renders HTML that is compliant with the last HTML standards.  We’ll look at how these improvements effect controls and what developers should be aware of. Benefit to the Attendee: By attending this session, ASP.NET Developers currently using WebForms will learn about the new features in ASP.NET 4. Developers will be able to immediately apply these features to their existing WebForms applications that they are upgrading to ASP.NET 4 and to new ASP.NET 4 applications that they are building with WebForms. Session 2 Title: AJAX with the UpdatePanel, WebForms, and the AJAX Control Toolkit Abstract: AJAX is a technology that provides a significant amount of user interaction within the web browser.  With ASP.NET 2 AJAX, Microsoft shipped a set of client side and server side AJAX technologies.  Recently, Microsoft announced that they are transitioning their client side AJAX technologies; however, they are keeping and will continue to build on the server side AJAX technology.  This session will focus on the server side AJAX technologies in the UpdatePanel.  With the UpdatePanel, the ASP.NET team has provided an easy way to integrate AJAX functionality into WebForms applications.  This session will focus on: UpdatePanel. Introduction.  The UpdatePanel will be introduced along with some of the rules that must be followed to use it properly. History.  Users have been trained that clicking on the back button will take the application to the previous state of the application. We’ll explore how to implement support for History, so that when a user clicks the back button they get the action that they expect. Client side events. The UpdatePanel exposes a set of client side events that are similar to server side events.  We’ll look at what these are good for and how to implement them. WebForms.  We’ll look at some of the improvements in ASP.NET 4 WebForms that make working with AJAX simpler. AJAX Control Toolkit. Introduction.  We’ll do an introduction to the AJAX Control Toolkit.  What is it and how it can help out WebForms developers. Creating your own control just like the ones in the AJAX Control Toolkit.   Posted Jul 06 2010, 11:20 AM by wallym with no comments Filed under: ASP.NET, .NET, Community News, ASP.NET WebForms