On the final day of NT Conference 2013 I had my last session. This time I was speaking about my experiences with building LOB (line of business) applications for Windows Store. As always, slides and samples are available here and from the conference web site.

At NT conference 2013 I hade 3 sessions in 2 different PreCon tracks. Apart from the one on connected apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 I had 2 consecutive ones, both covering the topic of design patterns, focusing on client application development.

In the first one I was comparing the three main approaches to developing user interfaces: MVP (Model-View-Presenter), MVC (Model-View-Controller) and MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel). Here are the slides and the sample apps.

In the second one I took the WPF sample app for MVVM design pattern from the previous session and modified it for injecting dependencies using an IoC container, arguing why this is useful and generally a good thing. Slides and samples from this session are available for download as well.

You can also find all the my slides and samples at the conference web site.

At NT conference 2013 I opened the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Developer Tales from the Tranches PreCon track with a session on Building Connected Apps. I addressed all aspects of network communications, focusing on available APIs but also spending some time on the expectations for mobile applications in respect to network usage.

Although the session materials are already on the conference web site, I’m also publishing them here to keep them available after the conference site is closed down: both slides and samples.

Today our local Microsoft DPE team organized ReBuild, a one day recap of the recent Build conference which was taking place in Redmond a little over a month ago. I had the last session of the day and focused on Windows Store apps: what they were and how to develop them.

As always I’m publically sharing the resources from the session: slide deck and sample source code.

This weekend a worldwide hackathon for Windows is taking place in over 100 locations. Among them is Ljubljana where the event started with my 3 hour Windows Store app development workshop. I split it in two parts:

• In the first half I focused on the basics of Windows Store apps, their features, development tools and the APIs available.
• In the second half I live coded a simple RSS reader app based on the grid app template featuring support for settings, share and search charms.

I less than an hour the developers are about to start their 24 hour development marathon. I wish each and every one of them good luck and lots of success.

To make their life a little bit easier here are the links to my slide deck and app source code.

The 5th Bleeding Edge conference was taking place in Laško. For my session I decided to take a different approach to the development of Windows Store apps: instead of talking about the design or the available APIs in WinRT, I focused on architectural best practices when using C#, XAML and the MVVM pattern.

The slides from the session are on SlideShare as always:

You can download the final sources for the demo application here or even better: access the Git repository with a separate branch for each demo from the session.

On Monday our local Microsoft subsidiary organized Visual Studio 2012 bootcamp as a preconference to Bleeding Edge 2012. For my talk I selected 3 new features in .NET Framework 4.5 that excite me most:

• Asynchronous programming with async and await keywords
• Portable Class Libraries - materials from a more detailed session on this topic can be found here
• Improvements in Workflow Foundation with focus on side by side versioning and C# expressions - materials from a more detailed session on this topic can be found here

Feel free to download the slides and demos.

Yesterday two local development user groups organized a common Visual Studio 2012 Community Launch event. I was one of the four MVPs speaking there. Each one of use prepared a talk on his favorite feature. My topic where Portable Class Libraries. As promised, I’ve put the slides on SlideShare:

You can also download the sources for the demo app consisting of three projects:

• A portable class libraries with the model and view model
• A WPDF desktop application using the library
• A Windows Store app using the library

Thank you to everyone who attended.

My second talk at NT konferenca 2012 was all about helping you get started with developing Metro style application for Windows 8 in C#. I’ve already put the slides on SlideShare:

Some additional details I’ve omitted during the talk:

• To switch from the default dark theme to the light theme you can use the RequestedTheme property of the Application class accordingly. Just set it at the top of App.xaml file:

<Application
    RequestedTheme="Light">

• To deploy and debug the application on another computer open up the project properties and switch to the Debug page. There you can select Remote Machine as Target Device and enter the name of the machine you want to connect to. All consecutive Deploy and Debug actions will from now on target this machine instead of your local one.

On Wednesday I had a talk at NT konferenca 2012 about the changes in Windows Workflow Foundation that we can look forward to in .NET Framework 4.5. The slides from the talk are available on SlideShare:

You can also download the sources for all the demos I’ve presented:

• Improved support for activity delegates
• State machine workflow
• Workflow service for an existing service contract
• Side by side versioning of workflow services
• Dynamic update of a workflow instance

Thanks to everyone who attended.