Philly.Net hosted its second Center City meeting on April 11 at Structured Hosting.  Just like the last meeting in NJ, we had a capacity crowd again.  I think these new meetings/venues are a success!  If you missed the meeting (or if you need some details) here is my synopsis.  Thanks again to Dani and Mike for setting it up.

And don't forget our next meeting is April 18 at SEI in Oaks, Pa.  See the Philly.Net site for more details.

Note:  I'll add the slides and content to this post as soon as I get them from the presenters.

Presenter:  Jason Beres, Infragistics

Topic:  Understanding ASP.NET AJAX and the AJAX Control Toolkit

Jason is the Chief Technical Evangelist for Infragistics.  If you are doing .Net development, you probably have heard about Infragistics' popular control packages for Windows and web development.  In his presentation, Jason shared some of his expertise on ASP.Net AJAX.  He described the new framework (previously known as ATLAS) which provides infrastructure, javascript libraries, and server controls.  The coolest part (in my opinion) is that you don't need to write any javascript to do it.  Check out  www.asp.net for all sorts of info, tutorials, downloads, etc.  AJAX enabling a web site allows for, among other things, asynchronous communication for partial postbacks between the browser and the server.  This means that you can provide a much richer UI on the web.  Jason also recommends checking out the ASP.Net 2.0 Ajax Futures CTP as well as the Ajax Control Toolkit (the toolkit is open source) which both include a bunch of controls that are not included in the original download.  He demo'd the popular UpdatePanel which is the control that instantly "ajaxifies" (sorry, that's my word, not his) any controls that get put in the panel.  Instant AJAX, you've gotta love that!  He also showed us how to use samples included in the ASP.Net Ajax Control Toolkit such as the Accordion, AlwaysVisibleControl, Collapsible Panel, DragPanel, DropShadow and ModalPopup.  This is very cool stuff.  I have been using AJAX for a while as well and I recommend it highly.  It is a great way to make a better web UI.

Jason and Infragistics were kind enough to provide 3 licenses for Infragistics Net Advantage (I think this is valued at $995, sweet!) as door prizes.  Thanks Jason! 

Presenter:  Walt Ritscher, ScandiaSoft

Topic:  WPF -- Microsoft’s Magnificent New Graphics Engine

Walt was in town from Washington State for a few days and offered to stop by and do a presentation for us.  Check out his blog WPF Wonderland to learn all about Windows Presentation Foundation.  The stuff he showed off is not easy to put into words but the demo's were very cool.  Here is my attempt at summarizing what he talked about.  Sorry Walt if I've I'm not accurate.  I learned a lot tonight, even if I can't explain it correctly!

With WPF we will have the ability to create applications that look drastically and dramatically different then before.  He listed some of the benefits and concepts of WPF:  The Compositing Engine, Graphics Processor Unit, Drawing (animations are faster), DWM-Desktop Windows Manager (with Vista, applications don't render the graphics, the DWM does it for them).  With WPF you have only 1 windows handle, no refreshes, no paint events, and you can layer controls.  You get much better graphics (faster, vector based drawing, opacity masking).  WPF provides a model for templates and styles so that all controls are now style-able, sort of like CSS for windows.  He showed us how to use XamlPad (download it here) to quickly and easily create controls with features that would have been difficult or impossible up until now.  He even created a button with a checkbox inside it! 

Another topic he covered is WPF/E.  I think The "E" stands for "everywhere", so in this case we can apply WPF to the web.  He showed off come cool demos including some found at Channel 9.

He ended a few cool demos including  how to create a "cloth" (this can't be explained, it had to be seen) with text and a 3-D scatter chart in WPF.  This presentations had lots of "oohs" and "ahhs".

This was a great presentation and one thing is clear, we all have a lot of learning to do!

Meeting Sponsor:  Thanks for the pizza!  

Additional Door Prizes courtesy of:  and Microsoft