MSDN Event Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I'll be joined by Chris Love and Jim Duffy here in Greensboro for a developer-focused MSDN Event!  Check out the MSDN Events page for more info.  We'll cover the following three sessions:

Visual Studio 2008:
The next version of Visual Studio, Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008, will provide an industry-leading developer experience for Windows Vista and the Web, while continuing the Microsoft tradition of development language innovations. In this session, you'll get a VIP tour through the tools and features for Web development in Visual Studio 2008. You'll discover how the all-new Web designer easily manages CSS and experience the powerful IntelliSense for JavaScript – including type inference and support for external libraries. Next up, we'll put the JavaScript debugger through its paces and cover several effective new server controls, plus the basics of LINQ in Web applications, creating and consuming WCF services, and much more. Finally, we'll touch on several simple but powerful benefits, such as targeting multiple versions of the .NET Framework and support for nested master pages. Witness the future of Web development with Visual Studio 2008.

"Astoria"
Building the next generation of Web applications requires a next generation way of accessing data. Join us and learn about the latest data access technologies that will change how you architect Web applications. In this session, we’ll explore the ADO.NET Entity Framework and Microsoft code-name "Astoria." We’ll see how the Entity Framework raises the level of abstraction when programming data-aware applications, and how Astoria enables developers to create and consume Data Services for the Web, exposing them over a simple HTTP interface that can be consumed by various Web applications. You’ll also learn to develop AJAX-based Web sites and Rich Interactive Applications using the Astoria client libraries.

Silverlight and Ajax
Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight’s architecture enables you to take advantage of the latest web development techniques, because the rendered objects are full-fledged members of the HTML document in the browser. This session will highlight how you can enhance Silverlight applications by applying these techniques. We’ll explore how to use ASP.NET AJAX to provide dynamic updating and asynchronous server communications for a Silverlight object in a web page. We'll show you how to build ASP.NET AJAX controls (server and client-side components) to encapsulate the XAML, Javascript, ASP.NET code and managed code that comprise the Silverlight object, allowing you to incrementally enrich your ASP.NET applications while preserving a familiar control-based programming model. You’ll also get a sneak peek at some Silverlight server controls that are part of the ASP.NET Futures project.