Rob Windsor's Weblog

Okdevberfest

Break out the stein, dust off the lederhosen, and get ready to geek out German style at Okdevberfest! The guys and gals from the Canada’s Technology Triangle .NET User Group just announced that this code camp style event will be running in Kitchener/Waterloo on September 29.

For more information, check out their site at:

http://www.okdevberfest.com/

Using a Splash Screen from an External Assembly in Visual Basic 2005

This issue came up on one of email lists I'm involved in and I though the solution was worth sharing. The developer wanted to know how to use a splash screen from an external assembly (i.e. a DLL) in a Visual Basic 2005 Windows application. If you look at the Applications tab of the project properties, there is dropdown to pick the splash screen but it will only show forms in the current project.

To use a splash screen from an external assembly click the View Application Events button to get the partial class for the application and then override the OnCreateSplashScreen method. The code should look something like this.

My New Gig at ObjectSharp

My blog has been silent for a bit, not from a lack of desire to post but a lack of time. Back in April a signed a deal to work with ObjectSharp exclusively, adding Director of Training to my existing Senior Consultant role. So, for the last several months I've been learning the current business practices, sitting in on courses, reviewing and authoring material, and planning for future titles. All the while I was finishing out the remaining courses I had on my schedule for Learning Tree. Lots more work + the same amount of Rob (OK, maybe 5 lbs. more of Rob) = no blog posts and dust of the golf clubs.

Anyway, I did my last gig for Learning Tree last week and now I can focus exclusively on the task at hand here at ObjectSharp. I'm really excited at the opportunity and I'm looking forward to the challenges ahead. With all of the new stuff coming from Microsoft in 2008 (e.g. LINQ, Silverlight, Visual Studio 2008), I think the next couple years are going to be blockbuster for both the training and consulting sides or our business.

Tags: [ObjectSharp]

Getting Started with Windows Communication Foundation on the Visual Basic Community Site

An article/walktrough I wrote on Getting Started with Windows Communication Foundation has been posted to the Visual Basic Community Site.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s next generation platform for building distributed systems. It was released as part of the .NET Framework 3.0 and is designed to consolidate and extend the APIs from previous versions of the Framework (i.e. ASP.NET Web Services, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services (COM+), and message queuing).

Getting started with WCF isn’t difficult but there are a couple steps along the way that may not be obvious. This article will walk you through the process of creating and consuming two simple services. To achieve this goal we need to discuss service classes, service hosts, service configuration, and client proxies.

The complete article is available at:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vbasic/bb736015.aspx

Tags: [WCF]

Understanding WCF Contracts and Bindings at East Bay.NET - September 12

For those of you in the San Francisco area, I'll be doing a talk on WCF at the East Bay.NET User Group on September 12. This will be my first time in the Bay area and I'm looking forward to mixing geeky stuff with touristy stuff.

http://www.baynetug.org/DesktopModules/DetailXEvents.aspx?ItemID=284&mid=143