Wow, if I thought that my brain was full after day 1, it is overflowing now. If the theme yesterday was convergence, the theme today in the sessions I went to was convenience. Below is my assessment of the sessions I went to.
Building Windows Store Line-of-Business Apps – Brian Noyes – @briannoyes
I expected this session to be a down and dirty demo of the grueling work that you had to do in order to create a Windows Store app. Was I wrong. This demo was for a tool called Prism. Prism is a framework that handles all those dirty little details that I thought the session was going to be about. The main topics were the MVVM app structure within Prism, Navigation and State Management, and Validation. If you have a Pluralsight subscription, Brian recorded an in depth training course on Prism.
Visual Studio Tips & Tricks – Dustin Campbell – @DCampbell & Scott Cate – @ScottCate
If you thought you knew how you use Visual Studio, you are woefully mistaken. This demo was given by two guys that have a mouse that is collecting dust by the side of their keyboard. Some of my favorites that I found out today are:
- Windows + # – toggle between items that are pinned on your taskbar
- ctrl + ; & ctrl + ‘ – toggle between team explorer and solution explorer
- alt +w then l – closes all windows
- ctrl + [ then s – sync the solution explorer with active document
- F12 – go to definition
- Shift + F12 – find all references
- ctrl + alt + down – document drop down. Beware though, on some video drivers this key combination will flip the screen .
- ctrl + i – invoke incremental search
- ctrl + shift + v – cycle through clipboard
- ctrl + . – will pull up smart tag [my new best friend] (the smart tag is the little blue box that is almost impossible to hit with the mouse)
- ctrl + F10 – run to cursor
- ctrl +shift + F10 – roll back while debugging.
- shift + alt + F11 – step into specific (when you have nested function calls and need to step into a specific one)
- magnify win + +, reverse win + -, jump to 100% win + esc
Microsoft ASP.NET SignalR: The Real-Time Web Made Simple – Damian Edwards – @damianedwards
If I thought that Prism was going to make building Windows Store apps easier, SignalR is ridiculously easy! I watched a simple real time chat system between two browser windows created with less than 20 lines of code. That being said, while the code he wrote right before our very eyes is not production ready code, it goes to show how powerful SignalR really is. The is a NuGet package that contains the sample code that will show you how to use SignalR.
I was also able to go to the Ask the Expert sessions as well to have some great conversations with some really smart people. I am looking forward to what the next two days have to offer. I will continue to blog as I am able.