Community developer blogs

Tim Sneath

Recent Posts

• A Developer’s Guide to Preparing for Windows 7

  Posted: 07 May 2009 at 01:13 by tims

  As everyone must know by now, the Windows 7 Release Candidate is broadly released and available for download from the Windows site. The RC build is essentially our dress rehearsal: we’ve hit feature complete, stabilized the release, followed the active bug glide path down to zero, and the build is essentially at a point where we’re looking for any last remaining “showstopper” bugs that might be lurking. To switch metaphors, it’s our last chance to verify that all systems are go before we hit the

• Extending Your Brand to the Desktop with Windows 7

  Posted: 25 Mar 2009 at 02:23 by tims

  What is Windows 7 doing at a web conference like MIX09? Last week I went along to the above titled session, in which Yochay Kiriaty, an irrepressible evangelist on my team, presented the case for a desktop application in an increasingly web-orientated world. He talked about how local desktop applications remain just as relevant as ever in the world of the web. For example, even though Twitter is often portrayed as the doyen of the Web 2.0 world, there are over 560 applications that use the Twit

• Overview of Windows Azure

  Posted: 25 Mar 2009 at 00:04 by tims

  Windows Azure isn’t particularly “on-topic” for this blog, but hey, just because I’m a client guy doesn’t mean that I can’t show any interest in other technologies, right? Manuvir Das presented a session on the subject at MIX09, and since I’m sat at home with a heavy cold feeling sorry for myself, I thought I’d catch up on some of the sessions that I’d missed via the free online MIX09 recordings. (In passing, I’d love to know whether these kinds of detailed session notes are helpful to you – fe

• Building an Optimized, Graphics-Intensive Silverlight Application

  Posted: 24 Mar 2009 at 21:07 by tims

  Seema Ramchandani works on performance as a Program Manager on the Silverlight team. She gave a fast-paced talk at MIX09 covering the graphics and media that contained some helpful tips for performance profiling, debugging and optimization. Silverlight Rendering Architecture When building a graphics-rich application, it’s first important to be aware of the underlying architecture of the rendering and media pipelines in Silverlight. To begin, there is one main execution thread that you need

• Exploring the CoreCLR Inside Silverlight

  Posted: 24 Mar 2009 at 00:07 by tims

  Brandon Bray gave an interesting presentation at MIX09 on how the CLR (the execution engine that underlies the .NET Framework) was refactored to support for Silverlight; I thought I’d share my distilled notes from the session. Bringing .NET to the Silverlight world was an obvious choice. Not only does it have a broad community and powerful tools ecosystem, but the CLR also offers many important and useful features for building RIAs: strong type safety, partial trust security verification and App

• MIX09 Day 2 Keynote Pt 2: Deborah Adler on Changing Behavior by Design

  Posted: 19 Mar 2009 at 18:27 by tims

  Deborah Adler presented a fascinating case study of how user experience design can really have a positive impact on the lives of those who touch our products. She was the principal designer behind Target’s ClearRx drug prescription packaging, which has had a big impact in avoiding drug prescription misusage. As Bill Buxton highlighted in his introduction, “she doesn’t come from our culture. To her, a developer is someone who turns your photos into prints!” Nevertheless, her talk was very relevan

• MIX09 Day 2 Keynote Pt 1: Dean Hachamovitch on Internet Explorer 8

  Posted: 19 Mar 2009 at 18:08 by tims

  Dean Hachamovitch is the General Manager for the Internet Explorer team. Amazingly, he managed to blog about IE8 at the same time as he was delivering his keynote – he must have been typing with his feet :-) Dean started with a humorous video on the “history of the web”. Last year at MIX, we made eight announcements about IE8 and we heard feedback that eight things were too many to remember. The IE team unsurprisingly gets lots of feedback, and does their best to respond to it! So today’s keynot

• Eight Reasons to Fall in Love with Internet Explorer 8

  Posted: 19 Mar 2009 at 17:37 by tims

  As announced at the MIX09 conference today, we just shipped the final version of Internet Explorer 8. If you haven’t yet given it a try, here are eight reasons that might persuade you to check it out: You want a web that moves as fast as you do: Highlight an address, click the blue "Accelerator" button (), and see all the things you can do instantly – like mapping, searching, and translating. Check out accelerators from Digg, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, and others. You want to know if it'

• About to Start Live Blogging the Day 2 MIX09 Keynotes

  Posted: 19 Mar 2009 at 15:50 by tims

  At 9am Pacific (GMT-7), I’ll start live blogging the second day of MIX09 keynotes. As with yesterday, I’ll post the live version at this location on the visitmix site, and then within a couple of hours of the end, I’ll post a better edited, linked version here. If you missed out on yesterday’s keynote and sessions, check out the following links to get a sampling of the event: Keynote 1: Bill Buxton – Return on Experience Design Keynote 2: Scott Guthrie – Advancing User Experiences Breakout: J

• MIX09 Day 1 Keynote Pt 2: Scott Guthrie on Advancing User Experiences

  Posted: 18 Mar 2009 at 21:16 by tims

  Bill Buxton talked about why user-centered design is so important; now we’re going to talk about the “how”. We’re going to be talking about three key categories today: web, media and RIA. One of the things we’re trying to do is to provide a single platform – the .NET Framework – that can be used to build applications for each different location and reuse code and development tools across each place. WEB EXPERIENCES Let’s start by talking about front-end development. Tomorrow, Dean Hachamovitc

• MIX09 Day 1 Keynote Pt 1: Bill Buxton on Experience Design

  Posted: 18 Mar 2009 at 20:47 by tims

  Earlier today on the visitmix site, I posted a “live blog” of the first two MIX09 keynotes here in Las Vegas. Now that the dust has settled a little, I wanted to provide an edited version for broader consumption. If you’re looking for a comprehensive, blow-by-blow account of what went down today, read on… First up was Bill Buxton, one of the leading design voices within Microsoft Research. He presented a passionate exposition of the impact of great design and the way that tools need to evolve to

• Tracking MIX09

  Posted: 17 Mar 2009 at 21:19 by tims

  In previous years, I’ve posted a live blog here of the major announcements at our flagship developer conferences. This year I’m going to try and do the same over on the MIX09 site, with “raw” regular updates of the key announcements; I’ll then wrap-up with a slightly more polished, detailed version on my blog here. If you’re looking for the action as it happens, check out the MIX site; if you want to come back later in the day for the full works, you’ll find that here. And then, after the keynot

• Announcing Family.Show v3 – Our WPF Reference Application

  Posted: 23 Feb 2009 at 17:32 by tims

  It’s been a little while in coming, but I’m delighted to announce that we’ve shipped the latest release of Family.Show, our reference application for WPF development. Family.Show started a couple of years ago, when WPF was in its infancy and a few of us were looking for ways to showcase the power of the platform as a way for developers to build beautiful Windows applications. We approached our friends at Vertigo Software with a request to partner with us in building a WPF sample that would be bo

• Silverlight 2 GDR1 Now Available...

  Posted: 19 Feb 2009 at 05:42 by tims

  Not a huge release this one, but we've just shipped an update for Silverlight 2 that fixes a number of minor bugs that have been reported over the last couple of months. Get it while it's hot, here: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx

• Silverlight is FIZZING, Not Fizzling

  Posted: 11 Feb 2009 at 19:30 by tims

  Any good politician, regardless of leaning, knows that the language you use to frame a topic is key to how it is perceived. By repeatedly using pejorative terms to describe your own position and that of your opponents, you start to move a debate onto your own terms. Of course, those with a little more critical insight can see beyond the rhetoric, and note that the act of saying something is just wishful thinking if it’s not actually backed up by facts. I was therefore somewhat intrigued to read

• What Can YOU Do with 10K of Silverlight or WPF Code?

  Posted: 29 Jan 2009 at 18:26 by tims

  A lot, it turns out. Some long-time readers may remember my post of a year or two back where I set a fun little challenge to test what could be accomplished with just a single element of XAML. In the preparation for MIX09, the team created a competition that offered slightly more room for creativity, encouraging contestants to come up with the most interesting demo sample in either Silverlight or WPF using just 10 kilobytes of code. It’s really exciting to see some of the samples that have been

• Windows 7 Theme Packs: Customize Your Desktop

  Posted: 26 Jan 2009 at 03:59 by tims

  Just wanted to take a moment to highlight Mike Swanson’s amazing theme pack for Windows 7. Mike is a colleague, friend who works just down the corridor from me. His primary role with the company is as a content owner for our developer conferences (he’s responsible for the MIX09 keynotes). When he’s not focusing on his day job, Mike is also an amazingly talented macro photographer; in particular, he has developed a reputation as the “desktop wallpaper” man. He’s one of the most popular and regul

• The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets

  Posted: 13 Jan 2009 at 05:05 by tims

  It’s great to see Windows 7 Beta finally released to the world! We're very proud of what has been accomplished over the last months; in many ways, it sets a new quality bar for a beta operating system release. Building on top of the Windows Vista foundation, Windows 7 adds a great deal of polish and refinement to both the user interface and the underlying architecture, while at the same time introducing many new features and improvements that support new hardware, give power users and casual use

• WPF Developers: PDC Wrap-Up and Visual Studio Tooling Update

  Posted: 04 Nov 2008 at 00:05

  Over the next week or so, I want to put a bit of context behind some of the announcements from PDC, particularly the ones that got glossed over amidst the excitement over Windows 7 and Windows Azure. I’m going to start with highlighting some of the work we’ve done around WPF over the last couple of

• PDC Proceedings: The Book of the Conference

  Posted: 26 Oct 2008 at 19:22

  It’s Sunday morning, and I’m sitting back-stage in the huge keynote room here at the PDC in Los Angeles. Watching some great demo rehearsals; things are shaping up well for the “software experiences” keynote which is my area of responsibility, and it’s going to be an exciting week. I wanted to take