# Sunday, 09 December 2007

On Tuesday, December 11th, I’ll be presenting Developing as a Non-Admin in the Ignite Your Coding series of webcasts. I’ll be showing Visual Studio 2008 and Vista and my focus will be on understanding the UAC consent dialogs, and how to keep your application from needing them. Register for it now, or later use the same link to come back and view the recording. But if you attend live, you can ask questions, and that’s often the best part of a webcast.

Kate

Sunday, 09 December 2007 16:19:29 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    
# Saturday, 08 December 2007

Wednesday December 12th is the Christmas Party for the East of Toronto .NET User Group. Mark Relph will come and talk about where he sees the industry going, your $10 cover charge will cover “nibblies”, and there’s a cash bar. Come and meet your fellow user group members and socialize a little. Please register in advance!

Kate

Saturday, 08 December 2007 16:17:34 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    
# Friday, 07 December 2007

Last year at Tech Ed Developers in Europe, I had a very impromptu Channel 9 interview. A “shop talk” conversation broke out in the lobby of the Hilton, and Charles decided to film it. This year we planned it in advance and I sat down with Steve Teixeira and Ale Contenti of the C++ team. Watching the video, I love watching the two of them get visibly happier as they start to talk about the product and the big changes and news they announced at Tech Ed. Steve was really quite sick and depending on throat lozenges to be able to talk at all. Despite that, it turned out to be a really fun interview.

Kate

Friday, 07 December 2007 16:15:53 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    
# Thursday, 06 December 2007

Here’s a little video I did with Paul Foster on C++ and Vista topics. 15 MB, 2.5 minutes. Short but sweet!

Kate

Thursday, 06 December 2007 16:14:03 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    
# Wednesday, 05 December 2007

The Virtual Side guys do a great job of capturing some of the fun and buzz from Tech Ed day by day. Here’s a roundup video that features a little bit of me judging Speaker Idol.  12 MB, 2 minutes.

Kate

Wednesday, 05 December 2007 16:12:43 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    
# Tuesday, 04 December 2007

Have you been missing your fix of Ale Contenti at the whiteboard?  Are you unclear on the differences between try and __try? Or between exception handling and structured exception handling? Watch two guys who really understand how all this works and learn why not handling an exception can be as important as handling one.

Kate

Tuesday, 04 December 2007 16:10:53 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    
# Monday, 03 December 2007

Everyone has UI woes. Users want more controls on the dialogs, or they want them simpler, or smaller, or larger, or combined, or split. The thing you think makes perfect sense they refuse to understand.  But it could be so much more complicated. Take this insightful post on the Shell Blog about one of the games that has come with Windows for as long as anyone can remember: Minesweeper. Some folks who use Windows don’t actually think that mines are funny things or that avoiding them is a game. Well, probably if you asked them, most people would agree that mines are bad, but for some people it's a far more personal and upsetting reality than for others. (BTW the mines in Minesweeper are apparently water mines, not land mines, but that doesn’t really increase the fun factor.)  So they changed it to give you an option to find flowers instead:

Be sure to read the whole post to understand why that was only the start of the work involved.

Kate

Monday, 03 December 2007 16:07:11 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    
# Sunday, 02 December 2007

There are plenty of webcasts on “what’s new in ProductName 2007” or “Introduction to XYZ Security” or various other technical topics. I’ve done my share and will continue to do so. But this is something a little different:

  • Becoming a Better Developer
  • Building Your Skill Set
  • Discovering Your Trusted Resources
  • Becoming Your Own Boss
  • Creating Your Own Start-Up Business

Some of the high flyers of the Canadian developer community are here... you want to watch these. The webcasts are available on demand and there are plenty of handy links as well for you to use as you’re following along.

Kate

Sunday, 02 December 2007 15:59:31 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #