Mauro Pirrone | Blog

The first edition of the Digital Arts Awards was held on November 7, specifically honouring for the first time the digital arts and media industries in the Maltese Islands.

The awards celebrate creativity and excellence in a variety of disciplines, such as advertising, graphic design, print, audiovisual, photography and the World Wide Web.

I was part of the winning team honouring the Digital Arts Best Student of the Year Award for the Microsoft Imagine Cup project. I would like to thank the University of Malta, MITA for sponsoring our project, and finally but not least, my colleagues James Abela, Keith Galea and Brian Fenech, who have dedicated hundreds of sleepless nights to make this project successful.

Press Release: http://www.timesofmalta.com/technology/view/20091119/news/the-best-local-digital-creations-recognised

A few months ago I have discovered the new Microsoft technology called Dynamic Data. It is a web development framework which is suitable for rapidly building data-driven websites (or web applications).

The main feature of Dynamic Data is definitely the scaffolding feature. It works in conjunction with either LINQ to SQL or LINQ to Entities. It adopts the “Don’t Repeat Principle” by using what are called page templates and field templates. Everything is modular and you can easily re-use components. It is much like Ruby on Rails! We have to admit that Ruby on Rails is more complete and it supports MVC out of the box. On the other side, the nice thing about Dynamic Data (unlike RoR), is that everything is integrated within our friend Visual Studio :).

In general I believe Dynamic Data is suitable for building small web applications where performance is not an issue or if you are not dealing with huge amount of data. Personally I found Dynamic Data useful for rapidly building customised content management systems. Although, I had a learning curve it was worth it and will be using it in future projects.

We expect Dynamic Data to improve in future. There are also companies such as Telerik which are already creating controls for Dynamic Data. If you would like to find out more check out the offical website.

If you have used Dynamic Data and you would like to share your experience, feel free to leave a comment.

Dear friends,

Competitors from all over the globe have “imagined a world where technology has solved the toughest problems facing us today” and have spent the last year making their vision a reality through innovative software solutions. These finalist teams have competed and were crowned the best in their respective country or region. Each of them will be travelling to Cairo, Egypt to compete against one another at the 2009 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals. Although industry leaders will be given the difficult task of determining which team will be this year’s winner, we want to know what YOU think…

The People’s Choice Award was created to showcase the Software Design finalist team’s solution and to allow YOU to have a say in which team you think should be on stage as the winner in Cairo. Let your voice be heard.

On behalf of the Maltese Team, LogicArts I invite you to visit this website (http://peopleschoice.imaginecup.com/default.aspx) and vote for our team. NB: Ideally you should use Internet Explorer and you can vote once a day.

Please support us by forwarding this email to all your friends.

Thanks for your consideration.

All the best,
Mauro

I’m back from the Microsoft’s DevDays 2008 Conference which was held here in Malta at the St. James Cavalier. I was simply amazed by some hot new Microsoft technologies and in fact I am highly enthusiastic to write this blog post and try something from what I’ve learnt. Here’s a breakdown of what was covered in the conference.

Lap Around VS2008 & .NET 3.5

The speaker showed the difference between .NET framework version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. The idea behind the latest .NET Framework is simply an upgrade. Therefore, there is only added functionality to the .NET Framework 2.0 and no alterations. For this reason, Visual Studio 2008 supports multiple versions of the .NET Framework from version 2.0 and up. The latter is referred to as multi-targeting. One of the hot new features of VS2008 is that it allows you to create different solutions with a different framework version. You may also easily upgrade a solution to a new framework version (from example from 2.0 to 3.5). VS also enables / disables the framework features in the toolbox, project types, references, intellisense, and so on.

Note that you can easily upgrade to .NET Framework 3.5 by simply doing a windows update.

Building Windows Presentation Foundation Applications with VS2008

WPF is a technology which allows you to create rich users interfaces with media. All this is possible by the integration of Expression Blend with VS2008. Blend should be used to create a non-functional user interface by a simple drag and drop. There is support for colour gradients, animations, and much more! Although Blend may seem like a design tool, it’s more targeted to developers. The job of the designer should be to assist in colour schemes, layouts, graphics, and so on

VS should then be used to plug in the functionality and debug the user interface created using Expression Blend. The solution is synchronised between Blend and VS; therefore, a change in VS will be reflected in Expression Blend, and vice versa.

WPF works by using an XML technology called XAML and requires .NET Framework 3.x

WCF/WF

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) allows you to create services with a few lines of code! All you have to worry about is simply the business logic of service. Windows Workflow (WF) allows you to create the logic of a service much like creating a flowchart using Visio. This way, there is no need for documentations and it is more intuitive to non-technical people such as business analysts.

Introduction to Silverlight

Basically Silverlight is a cut-down version of WPF but runs in a web browser. It is completely independent from the .NET framework and runs by installing the Silverlight browser plugin. Silverlight has support for 2D graphics, animations, I/O, media, imaging, text, http downloader, XAML parser and JavaScript DOM. Silverlight is one of the hottest new Microsoft technologies.

Here’s a showcase of some Silverlight projects: http://silverlight.net/showcase/

Building Web Applications with VS2008

There is nothing much to say about this one. It is basically the traditional ASP.NET web pages with HTML, master pages, JavaScript, CSS and so on. VS2008 now has full support of colour coding, intellisense and debugging for JavaScript! In addition, it also shares the same CSS engine used in Expression Web.

The speaker here introduced how you can use the Linq technology in your web app. Linq may be used to access relational schemes or XML files in an object oriented fashion. This allows efficient paging and sorting as well as optional editing and deleting. Linq may also be used to do business validation.

Integrating Office and Line of Business Applications using VSTO

There is no need to re-invent the wheel! .NET 3.0 allows you to easily create office applications. All this is fully integrated in Visual Studio.

Introduction to Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio Team System

Visual Studio Team system allows you manage your software development, ensure software quality, and to have better collaboration among the team members.

Click here to download the conference presentations

Silverlight is a new “Flash-killer” technology from Microsoft which is likely to gain popularity among businesses and developers. Silverlight provides support for animation, vector graphics and audio. The nice thing about Silverlight is that it is a cross-platform browser plugin.

A conference is going to be held here in Malta about Silverlight. Here are the conference details:

Audience: Developer
Presenter: Tomislav Bronzin
Date: Tuesday, June 17
Time: 8:00 - 17.30
Location: St. James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Music Room Valletta, Malta
Cost: Free

Click here for more info and to book your ticket online for free