My team are organising a series of online events for developers next week, focusing on three of our key technology platforms (Windows Phone, Windows Azure, and Internet Explorer).
The Phone event focuses on user-centric design; it’s one thing to create an application for Windows Phone. It’s another to design an application for Windows Phone that centres on experience of the user and delights them at every turn. Whilst most developers are keen to wrestle with the complex challenges that creating the requisite functionality presents, many tend to overlook the importance of application design to the ultimate success (or failure) of their app.
In this conference we’ll be offering some recommended viewing / reading to help you familiarise yourself with different aspects of designing for Windows Phone (eg philosophy behind Metro, considerations for mobile apps, tools, control palate, design guidelines etc) and inviting you to attend an online session where we discuss the key principles and try to answer the questions you have related to applying these principles to your own applications.
It takes place Wednesday 5 October, 3-5pm, and you can register here.
The Azure event looks at getting developers up to speed with our Cloud platform: all the skills you possess as a developer aren’t made null and void by cloud computing and particularly Windows Azure. There are a small number of things you need to bear in mind when developing applications for this platform, but the vast majority of the logic you produce will be just the same as that you would produce for an on-premise environment.
We’ll show you what those differences are on this conference – things such as storage, and SQL Azure and get you over that initial hump of taking on something new, which on the surface can look scary, but with just a small amount of knowledge, you’ll find you can be very productive in this new environment.
It takes place Tuesday 4 October, 3-5pm, and registration is here.
Finally, we have a session to look at how Internet Explorer 9 can be used to develop services that function more like local applications: browser vendors are all currently wrestling with the same problem: How can we make web applications feel more like native applications. Chrome has created a marketplace where users download and install applications. Internet Explorer has Pinned Sites, which integrates the web into Windows 7. Firefox Labs has Prism, which allows users to split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop
In this conference we’ll be offering some recommended viewing to help you familiarise yourself with different aspects of using IE9 to make your website feel like native applications and inviting you to attend an online session where we discuss the topic ‘what makes a website a web app?
It’s on Thursday 6 October, 3-5pm, registration here.
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