Karl’ Roadmap Nov – Dec 2010

While my blog has been a little on the quiet side, I’ve been going like a rabbit with his tail on fire.  Metaphorically speaking, “What lies beneath the water line of the iceberg is about to be unveiled.”

I’ve been getting emails, Tweets, and blog comments asking me about XAML Power Toys, Ocean, Mole 2010, my upcoming cruise, Prism, In the Box, patterns & practices 2010 Symposium code; so I thought a short roadmap post is in order.

Prism 4

Prism 4 will RTW either this Thursday, 4 November 2010 or early the following week.

The patterns & practices Prism team has invested a lot of resources in the Prism Library and written guidance.  The documentation has been completely rewritten with new topics added such as MVVM, MEF and navigation.

Once released, I’ll blog regularly on the features and content of the Prism guidance.  Additionally, I’m researching the possibility of conducting three Prism events; I’m thinking of using the two day event model, holding the sessions over a Friday and Saturday.  Once the dates and locations are firmed up, I’ll provide plenty of lead time to plan and register.

patterns & practices 2010 Symposium Code

On the day Prism v4 ships, I’ll post the MVVM Training that was package using In the Box.  In the Box is explained below.

This Friday, 5 November 2010 I’ll publish a blog post and video covering the Prism Region Navigation sample application that also demonstrated the Task Parallel Library Futures pattern that streamlines view model code.

XAML Power Toys

I was hoping to get to the next release in November but am putting this work off until early December.  I’ll release a new version with the suggestions and performance fix on 19 December 2010.  If you have a suggestion or requested fix, please leave a comment here.

Mole 2010

Team Mole has put in several hundred hours in this new release.  We have been cautious with our release, wanting to provide the very best product.  Mole 2010 is code complete, has a great new UI and many new features you’ll love.  Team Mole is completing the documentation and videos and hopes to ship very soon.

You can follow Josh Smith’s blog and my blog for the release announcement.

We can also be followed on Twitter:

• @kdawg
• @bach4life
• @nathandunlap

Ocean

I’ve already ported Ocean to C#, Windows Phone 7 and released it here.

I’m currently porting Ocean for WPF and Silverlight to C#.

While on my cruise over Thanksgiving, I’ll write a reference implementation that shows Ocean v3 in action.

Expect this to be released on Sunday, 5 December 2010.

Mexican Riviera Cruise

It has been a year and the time has come to set sail again; this time to the Mexican Riviera.  With three full days at sea and each night spent at sea, kdawg will have plenty of coding time!  No email, no phone, no Internet, just heads down coding.  The sounds and scent of the ocean breeze; gentle rolls of the ship and room service grill cheese, sets the stage for a week of creativity and productivity.

I’ve been wanting to update my Stuff application to consume Amazon.com data and to support many more item types.

The core scenario is to be able to look up movies, books, games, music and software I currently own using a phone.  This would allow me to see what I own, if I don’t have it, quickly check the price at Amazon.com and either purchase it at the store (automatically adding to my database) or put the item in my Amazon.com shopping cart.

To accomplish this, I’ll be taking these three patterns & practices assets out for a test drive, Prism, Windows Phone 7 Developer Guidance, and Unity Application Block.  To those, I’ll add Ocean v3 to the supporting cast.

The application will have an oData cloud services component with WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MVC3 front ends.  The cloud services component will be hosted on my Discount ASP.NET site.  Each developer wanting to have their own live service, will need to deploy the backend to their own hosted web server.

Developers will be able to compile and run the application locally on their system.  For Amazon.com access you’ll need a free developer account.  Again, to use the application remotely, you’ll need to host the cloud component on your web server.

What is exciting to me is the notion of a single cloud service consumed by the very cool UI stacks offered by Microsoft .NET.

It will a lot of fun working with the technologies that are new to me, Windows Phone 7 and ASP.NET MVC3.  When coding, I’ll be looking for code-reuse opportunities when writing the WPF and Silverlight applications powered by the above patterns & practices assets.  All-in-all, a very relaxing and fun vacation.

Just so you don’t think I’m insane and never stray from my keyboard, I’ve signed up for a 7 hour dolphin training experience and a day on the jet ski during my cruise.

The 7 hours with Flipper is one of those bucket list goals I can finally check off and is the main reason for visiting the Mexican Riviera.  The day on the jet ski will be one big nasty adrenalin rush.  The other day in port will be spent shopping for some cool shirts, a sombrero and tasting the local cuisine.

Expect this application to be released on Sunday, 5 December 2010.

In the Box

At the patterns  & practices 2010 Symposium and at the post PDC 2010 Windows Phone 7 Lab Day, I previewed, “In the Box” and the first training package, MVVM Training. So far response to this format and the content has been very favorable. The training is unique because it’s consumed within Visual Studio 2010.  The interface is pictured below. To create the content, I followed the training videos presented on Channel9 here.  For more information you can also follow Michael Lehman’s blog.

This will ship from the Visual Studio Code Gallery on the same day Prism v4 ships, either Thursday, 4 Nov or the following week.  My next planned training package for In the Box will be Prism v4.  Remember, every thing comes “In the Box.”

Click the image to view full size

Date Summary

Check my blog or follow me on Twitter for these announcements:

• 4 Nov – Prism v4 (could possibly ship the following week)
• 4 Nov – In the Box (could possibly ship the following week)
• 5 Nov – Prism Region Navigation with Task Parallel Library Futures example  (could possibly ship the following week)
• 5 Dec – Ocean v3, and the vastly upgrade Stuff application with multiple UI front ends
• 19 Dec – XAML Power Toys update

Close

WOW – what a way to close down 2010!  Looking to power down after the 19th of December; then crank back up January 2011.

Have a great day,

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.