June 15, 2009 – MSDN Freedom Roadshow in Pittsburgh

Session 1: Developing on Microsoft Windows 7

Building applications that are easy to use, visually appealing, and offer high performance is a challenge that developers face every day. Innovative applications can greatly improve the user experience, empowering companies to differentiate their services and solutions. However, developers are increasingly asked to do more in less time, while also optimizing the power and performance requirements of their applications. 

The Windows 7 platform makes it easy for developers to create engaging, user-friendly applications by providing familiar tools and rich development features that allow them to take advantage of the latest PC capabilities.  In this session we will explore the new Taskbar and Jump Lists, the Scenic Ribbon, file management with Libraries, and Windows Web Services among many other enhancements to the new operating system.


Session 2: What’s New in Internet Explorer 8 for Developers

With any new browser release, there are two questions of interest to most web developers –
     1.Will this release break my site, and if so, how do I fix it?
     2. What shiny new features does it offer to add value for my visitors?

In this session, we’ll address both of these questions, first showing how developers and users both benefit from improved standards-based rendering in Internet Explorer 8, and how developers can ensure that their sites will render properly for users using IE8. Additionally, we’ll take a look at some of the new features of Internet Explorer 8 that open up new possibilities for web developers, including Accelerators, Web Slices, and Search Providers, as well as AJAX and DOM improvements. Accelerators are helpers added to the browser that allow users to access your web-based services from anywhere, via a simple right-click on any page. Web Slices allow you to designate parts of your application for the user to consume and keep up-to-date in the browser without having to visit the full site. You can leverage these features to add value to your site and make it easier than ever for users to take advantage of the services and content you have to offer. 
 
We'll also look at the new Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools, which provides you with killer tools for examining and debugging your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, all without ever leaving the page, plus profiling for finding and fixing the performance bottlenecks in your client-side code. The IE 8 Developer Tools also aid in compatibility testing, by allowing you to change the layout and compatibility modes on the fly. Lastly we’ll look at some best practices.

Session 3: Making JavaScript Fun Again

Let’s face it; most web developers avoid JavaScript at all cost. We do everything we can do avoid it and if we can’t, we typically try to keep things as simple as possible just to write the least amount of JavaScript code possible. This hinders us from creating the best user experience possible which translates to unhappy/unsatisfied users.

Well, you don’t have to avoid it any more. Thanks to jQuery, writing JavaScript code is fun again. In the session we are going to go over the basics of jQuery. I will show you how easy it is to traverse the document object model (DOM), add animation to your UI, handle events and add AJAX functionality to your web applications. Finally, we will discuss the support Visual Studio provides for working with jQuery as well as its integration with ASP.Net

Full info at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032415478&Culture=en-US