Originally posted: 4/15/2010 at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/orville/archive/2010/04/15/channel-9-follow-up.aspx
During my Channel 9 interview at the Visual Studio launch I promised that I would follow up on a question for using XNA with Visual Studio 2010. If you are using Visual Studio 2010 Professional (or higher) and have installed the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP you will get XNA Game Studio 4.0 in Visual Studio.
Talk to you soon,
Orville | @orville_m
Originally posted: 4/12/2010 at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/orville/archive/2010/04/12/updates-from-devconnections.aspx
Today was a fun day in Las Vegas. It started off with the Keynote this morning where Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business President Bob Muglia announced the release of Visual Studio 2010. Sam Gazitt, Doug Seven and I gave demonstrations of the product. They all did a great job. After that there was booth duty where I had a great opportunity to talk with customers and learn more about how they use Visual Studio.
In between booth duty I also spent some time on Channel 9 with Jonathan Carter. I’m currently waiting to receive the list of questions that I said I would follow up on. My guess is that I will receive them tomorrow and should have an answer by Wednesday. Feel free to come back and check.
Today Charlie Kindel posted a blog post on compatibility issues with Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP and Visual Studio RTM. This issue will be addressed in the coming weeks but you can find more information at the blog post.
Talk to you soon,
Orville | @orville_m
Originally posted: 4/10/2010 at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/orville/archive/2010/04/10/visual-studio-2010-launch-at-devconnections.aspx
On Monday April 12th we are going to be launching Visual Studio 2010. This is an exciting day as there are a lot of new features in this release that will help developers simply create applications for the web, cloud, phone, Windows, database and other platforms.
There will be 5 keynotes throughout the world starting in Beijing and ending in Las Vegas with Microsoft president Bob Muglia. I will be one of the demonstrators during the keynote. You will have to tune in to see what will be shown. It will be broadcast live starting at 8:30am online at http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/watch-it-live.
After the Las Vegas keynote Channel 9 will be broadcasting interviews live. You can submit your questions via twitter @ch9live. The schedule is posted to the Channel 9 website. I will be there sessions on days 1 and 2.
Talk to you soon,
Orville | @orville_m
Originally posted: 3/16/2010 at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/orville/archive/2010/03/16/updates-from-mix.aspx
In yesterday’s blog post I talked about my fun with using the Windows Phone Development Tools. Working at the Windows Phone booth at Mix yesterday I met a lot of people who are actively using Visual Studio and have or were soon going to download the CTP bits. It was also enjoyable to demonstrate how to use Visual Studio. A lot of people were familiar with the product so it was only the phone functionality that was new.
The keynote had a lot of amazing demos and being in the crowd you could feel the excitement and the “wow” factor. Especially for the T-shirt cannon controlled by a Windows Phone. One demo that I was asked about was Jon Harris’ Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone. He developed a Windows Phone application all in Blend. For anyone who has not used Expression Studio, it is a set of designer tools that when combined with Visual Studio is outstanding for designing and developing applications.
Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone is a part of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP and although not included in the single install today, it will be in the future (the 5th discovery of my Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP discoveries). I talked with Jon about Expression Blend and here is what I got.
Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone provides exactly the same streamlined development workflow for Windows Phone that was previously only available for Silverlight and .Net applications; including features such as Behaviors, sample data, and the visual state manager. As part of this release two new project templates are included, one for standard Window Phone applications and one for applications that follow an MVVM pattern. To ensure consistency across development tools Blend leverages the Windows Phone Emulator installed as part of Windows Phone Developer Tools.
Get the tools at:
Time to get ready for Day 2 of Mix, keynote and sessions.
Talk to you soon,
Orville | @orville_m
Originally posted: 3/15/2010 at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/orville/archive/2010/03/15/discovering-windows-phone-developer-tools.aspx
Windows Phone 7 Series phones are designed for end users while providing an exciting development experience for developers. Today at Mix 2010 Microsoft announced the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP. For the past few months I have had the joy of using the tools and it has been difficult to contain my excitement. Now that it has been publicly announced and is available for download, here is my list of “discoveries.”
Discovery #1: Silverlight Developer == Windows Phone 7 Series Developer
Silverlight developers can use their existing skills to develop for Windows Phone 7 Series starting today. Silverlight is used for developing rich internet applications and is easy to learn if you are familiar with .NET development. When I first started developing for the phone I didn’t know Silverlight programming but the familiar controls, C# and XAML familiarity (must be from looking at so much ASP.NET code) made it really easy to pick up. Add Intellisense in Visual Studio on top of that and I was quickly discovering functionality and being productive. Silverlight is a proven technology that is also easy to use.
Discovery #2: One Download
Everything you need to bring your ideas to life on the phone is available in the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP. For Silverlight and .NET developers all of these tools will be familiar to you and for people new to the platform they are pretty intuitive. Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone gives you the power of Visual Studio for designing, developing and debugging your phone applications. For developers already using the Visual Studio 2010 release candidate for development, the Windows Phone Add-in for Visual Studio will plug into your existing VS installation. To test your application without needing the physical device, the Windows Phone Emulator gives you a functioning phone environment. Silverlight and XNA Game Studio are both included as well if you do not have them installed already.
Discovery #3: Write Once, Optimize Everywhere
Existing Silverlight applications can be moved to different platforms with some optimizations giving you more places to run your code. This lets you create high-quality experiences for all major browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems and now the phone is included as well.
Discovery #4: Easily Beautiful Interfaces
Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone includes the design tools needed to make visually appealing interfaces. First, there are the templates that use the Windows Phone design system by default. As you drag & drop controls they automatically adopt the same design as your interface. If you have your own preferred style you can also use that instead. With side-by-side layout and XAML views you can edit the interface in your preferred way. The layout view provides a precise way to align controls for meticulous user interfaces.
Now that you have seen some Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP “discoveries” you should download the tools and start exploring. As you find features that you like feel free to leave me a comment.
For additional information on Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP you can also go to:
Talk to you soon,
Orville | @orville_m
Originally posted: 3/5/2010 at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/orville/archive/2010/03/05/new-beginnings-start-of-my-next-pursuit.aspx
It is common to write a “Hello World” application when starting on a new platform. This is my first MSDN blog post so I would like to start by saying “Hello MSDN” and to thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope you will find my posts useful and feel free to send me comments.
So here are a few things about me to start the conversation:
1. Spent most of my career as a program manager working on web services, most recently Windows Live ID. It was amazing to work on web services that impact people all over the world.
2. In delivering web services to the world I still had a yearning for driving businesses forward. So I decided to pursue a career change and go into product management.
3. I’m a technical product manager in Visual Studio focused on both Windows Phone 7 and Web development.
4. Outside of work I am a MBA student at the University of Washington focused on marketing and finance.
Over the past few months that I have been here I’ve been playing with the phone tools and I can’t wait for Mix so everyone else can see them. My blog posts will focus on technology, business, product management and other random musings as they arise. J There will be lots of fun tidbits about announcements, technology, etc.
Talk to you soon,
Orville
Orville McDonald 