Visual Studio is a complex tool used by a wide variety of developers. Customizing your tool makes you more productive, and Visual Studio is highly extensible. In this demo-heavy session you will see how to write your own Code Snippets, how to write and use macros, how to write a simple add-in, and how to create your own templates for projects and project items, complete with wizards. Streamline development to fit your processes and habits by writing a little code to ensure that Visual Studio works the way you do.

This is an introduction to Visual Studio Tools for Office using Visual Studio 2008 and Office 2007. (Note that Visual Studio Tools for Office also works with Office 2003)

Visual Studio Tools for Office allows you to build custom solutions that run on top of Microsoft Office products using Visual Basic or C#. For anyone who has ever said, "I wish Excel could..." Visual Studio Tools for Office is your solution.

Topics include an overview of Visual Studio Tools for Office, creating new Office add-ins and adding controls to the Office Ribbon.

3 examples include:

• Excel Add-in to pull data from Ole Db data sources for times when managers ask, "Could you put this in Excel for me... every week."
• PowerPoint Add-in to build an instant slideshow for Karaoke night
• Word Add-in to transpose guitar chord sheets - great for

This session will be conducted in Visual Basic but all concepts are directly applicable to C# development as well.

The Visual Studio Setup Project is going to be changing in Visual Studio 2010. Instead of fighting with the dependencies and being handcuffed to buy a multi-thousand dollar tool just to customize the user experience the developer division is looking within to WiX. Windows Installer XML (WiX) was developed by a couple of Microsoft developers in their spare time and has gone on to support the installation of Visual Studio, Office, SQL Server, and a number of third-party packages. We'll take a look at what WiX is all about and how you can get your app setup with WiX!

Truthfully there is much more to development with the SharePoint platform than the raw aspects of the technology. While I have been building enterprise-level applications on the top of this great platform for years, I have discovered that there are some common challenges that SharePoint architects and developers often face when building such applications.

In this session we will explore some of the toughest architectural decisions you may face during the development life cycle of a SharePoint project, how to deal with common real-life hurdles and how to utilize existing best practices, patterns and practices, tools and ideas to ensure that your SharePoint applications successfully transition from development to release.

You are a .NET Developer using Visual Studio and are tasked with extending your software to the Windows Mobile platform. You have never written a Windows Mobile application so where do you start? During this session we will go through what you need to get started, all the tools that are available within Visual Studio, the tools available with the Windows Mobile SDK, where to put your data, .NET Compact Framework, tips and tricks to make your applications perform and various other tools to make your quest to build your Windows Mobile software a breeze!

DotNetNuke is an ASP.NET framework for web site creation. During this session, attendees will see how the DotNetNuke Framework facilitates the creation of fully functioning web sites, like the Toronto Code Camp web site, in less than 30 minutes. The session will demonstrate the creation of a DotNetNuke site from the ground up including software installation, database configuration, site customization, and skinning. Specific focus will be given to some of the issues that can trip up the first time users of DotNetNuke Framework.

Are you ready to start building more complex applications in ASP.NET MVC? ASP.NET MVC Release Candidate 1 is out and it's a radical departure from what we've done with traditional ASP.NET development. Come and learn techniques that will help you move your MVC development skills to the next level.

In this session I will cover topics such as page validation, actions filters, and partial views. I'll also go over development best practices and demonstrate some of the common pitfalls that need to be avoided when using this framework.

Virtual Earth is a geospatial mapping platform produced by Microsoft. This session is intended to give an overview and provide developer tools to quickly build Virtual Earth applications. Topics covered will include:

• Overview and sample demos
• Mappoint Web Service and Virtual Earth Web Service
• Creating and debugging a Virtual Earth application
• Custom data overlays
• The future of Virtual Earth

In this session, we'll examine some of the new features of ASP.NET AJAX 4.0. Specifically, we'll take a look at client templates, enhanced data binding and the client-side DataSource and DataView controls. We’ll also see the new client-side integration with ADO.NET Data Services which makes performing CRUD operations, complete with change-tracking, almost trivial. Combined together, these new features make it possible to build fast and responsive AJAX applications that perform some, most of all of the data manipulation on the script running in the browser.

This presentation will show how to create custom plugins for Virtual Earth 3D. Custom plugins for Virtual Earth 3D can be used to import models, create animations, add custom navigation controls, and add custom shortcut keys.

Interested in how LINQ actually works, under the covers? In this session Jonathan Aneja (Microsoft Visual Basic Compiler PM) will take a close look at the VB2008 language features that enable LINQ. These features include Query Expressions, Type Inference, Anonymous Types, Extension Methods, Lambda Expressions, Closures, Expression Trees, Partial Methods, and Relaxed Delegates. He’ll also demonstrate examples involving LINQ to Dataset, LINQ to XML, Deferred Execution, and how to dynamically construct a LINQ query. By the time you leave this session, you’ll have a clear understanding of how queries and the individual VB2008 language features can be powerfully leveraged in your own applications to write less code.

This presentation explains how to easily test in a “test bed”, an application conceived with modular abstractions such as the “layer”. You will acquire fundamental knowledge about how to partitions into layers the concerns of the application. We will teach you the best practices regarding application architecture and modularity. We will demonstrate how to apply “top-down” as well as “test-driven” design techniques. You will learn how to correctly design the “velcro”, the visible interface of a module. In the same way, you will learn how to conceive a “fake” implementation, an efficient strategy to test a module in an autonomous way. Overall, you will learn how to design for testability and why we need a unit of modularity that goes beyond object.

Microsoft Reporting Services is the component of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 that provides an enterprise-ready and extensible presentation layer for the Microsoft business intelligence platform. Reporting Services now includes several new features that improve the report development, management, and delivery processes. The new tablix and chart controls give you more options for presenting data in a report, and the new server architecture makes it easier for administrators to manage server resources and for users to access and page through large reports. This session will introduce you to SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.

Implementing Data Services in ADO.NET 3.5 -> when, how and at what performance cost

Microsoft Sync Framework is a comprehensive synchronization platform that enables collaboration and offline access for applications, services and devices. It features technologies and tools that enable roaming, sharing, and taking data offline. Using Microsoft Sync Framework, developers can build sync ecosystems that integrate any application, with any data from any store using any protocol over any network.

C# Programming has never been more fun!

This session will teach the basic mechanics for 2D game programming with Microsoft XNA.

You will learn how to:

• setup your development environment
• create your first game
• implement basic 2D rendering algorithms
• leverage the XNA game programming model
• improve your productivity with TorqueX for XNA, a free game engine provided by Microsoft and Garage Games.

In this session we will have an overview of the Azure Services Platform and how you can use the Windows Azure Service to host your web application in the cloud. We will create a demo application to run in the Windows Azure platform and show all the stages from development to deployment.

F# is a strongly-typed multi-paradigm programming language that encompasses scripting, functional imperative and OOP programming disciplines that makes it a choice language for scientific, engineering and web-based programming. F# programs runs on top of the .NET Framework, but unlike other scripting languages, it executes at or near the speed of C# and C++, making use of the performance that comes through strong typing. The deep integration with the CLR and .NET together with its object orientation capabilities allows you to design and write code in a much easier way. In this session, we'll examine the syntax of F#, see how it maps to the underlying CLR concepts, talk about how F# implements functional concepts without losing many of the benefits of object orientation, and finally, how it can be used to make the CLR developer's life much easier.

Learn about the new capabilities of the next version of Visual Basic, including additional LINQ features, syntax simplifications, and a host of other improvements. You’ll gain insight into possible future features, including meta-programming and scripting.

We’ll also talk about VB’s relationship to C# and the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). Come see demos of the latest internal builds of Visual Studio 2010, including previews of what will be in Beta1.

Please join me for this great session on conducting transactions in the context of a workflow. OK, you saw my bio and saw I’m a “SharePoint guy”. But when you are writing any type of workflow you are writing them with the Windows Workflow Foundation. In this session I will first introduce you to WF (NOT SharePoint related) with a hello world application – just in case you are new to workflow. But then in the spirit of having something for everyone, I will cover the advanced topic of dealing with transactional workflow with ACID properties and we will create a compensating transaction. After first describing what all this means of course!

Do you need to build line of business (LOB) applications with WPF and Silverlight in 2009? Do you have the tools you need to be productive? Join Microsoft MVP and Telerik Evangelist John Kellar as he shows you how Telerik is delivering the tools you need to build high performance and visually stunning WPF and Silverlight applications. In this developer-focused session, you will see you how can leverage the RadGridView, RadGauge, and RadChart to build robust applications for both WPF and Silverlight. Since Telerik’s XAML RadControls share a common API, you can easily build an application for WPF and then quickly reuse the same Telerik code in Silverlight. Don’t believe it? Don’t miss this session!

A commonly asked question is whether it makes sense to use WPF when creating a typical data-centric line-of-business application. The answer is yes and this session will demonstrate one area that illustrates why – data binding. While data binding has been available in Windows Forms applications since .NET 1.0 (and indeed, even before that), WPF brings this simple idea to the next level. In this session, you will learn now only how to bind data to a WPF application, but also how to perform value conversions, multibindings, validations and non-primitive bindings within the WPF world. By the time you leave, you will be eager to put your new-found skills to use within your own environment.

In this session we will be looking at the new communication improvements made in Silverlight 3. We will be exploring the changes to WCF (binary message encoding, improved duplex client code, message credentials, fault exceptions, command line proxy generation tool, message credentials etc). We will also be looking at the new support for detecting changes to the network connections (useful for running out of browser). Finally we will take a look at the support for local messaging (which allows you to communicate between silverlight applications, running on the same machine). At the end of this session you should have a good idea of the new comms changes for Silverlight 3, and how life will be so much better for you.

At MIX09 in March, Silverlight 3 was announced and made available to developers in beta form. This session sets the stage with a lap around what's new in Silverlight 3, including innovations that empower richer experiences, improve RIA productivity, add out-of-browser capabilities, and update Expression Blend to make huge strides towards Microsoft's promise to embrace designers and improve their integration into the software development lifecycle.

Not a hint of Powerpoint to be seen in this presentation. Maybe some Photoshop though. Come for the Silverlight, stay for the cool stuff and get teed up for the rest of Code Camp's deep-dive Silverlight presentations.

Take your Windows Presentation Foundation skills to the next level! In this session, we'll start with defining the model-view-viewmodel design pattern, then dive into the code, creating a decoupled, unit-testable application core. Next, we'll create the user interface in Expression Blend, and finally, we'll merge the two portions together, showing how, with almost no code in the XAML code-behind, we can keep the data layer and the UI layer of the application separated. We’ll implement bindable UI commands, tackle the issues of multi-threading in WPF applications, and present workarounds and solutions to those issues.