This is not déjà vu(or a joke) -- we are finally executing on the training event we postponed last November
If you want to know why now, today Unity released their public beta of Unity 4.2, with support for Windows Store apps. 

The event is on; below, you will find the highest level details.  For hour by hour agenda, check the registration site.

It is a 2 day event at Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View, CA. April 9 and 10.
The event is optimized for existing Unity developers who want to get all the details on porting a Unity game to Windows Store or Windows Phone. 

Agenda:

• Pre-event (night before event)  - Unity will do an in-person “jumpstart” into Unity game development for those of us that are not experts, but want to keep up on the next two days.  
• Main Event (April 9th, 9AM  to 5 PM ) is mostly presentations from Unity, Microsoft and partners that have already ported their apps to both the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store. We will also have panels  and Q&A time.
• Game Jam (April 10th 9AM to 5 PM ) is all hands-on.  Bring your game and port it, or bring a concept and write a new game.  We will have Unity field engineers, Microsoft engineers and evangelists, all ready to assist you. We will also have production devices ( Windows Phones, Surface and other devices) for you to try your games on a myriad of hardware.

The event is free.  If you can’t attend in person,  you will be able to watch the presentations via live webcast at https://channel9.msdn.com.

Again, you should register here. It is first-come-first-serve.

Hope to see you there. Happy Coding! 

On December 13 and 14th,  Microsoft and the Big Nerd Ranch team are having a two day training on building Windows Store apps.

The event will be in Microsoft’s Mountain View (CA) campus.
To attend in person, register at https://aka.ms/iostoWindowscamp
Both days will also be streamed live at https://channel9.msdn.com

You can find a detailed agenda in the registration site.

My no-fluff description for the event follows:

• The training is aimed at iOS developers who want to start building Windows Store apps.  
• It starts from the beginning with intros to the programming languages, the platform and the tools. 
• We will try to build a bridge from iOS concepts to Windows concepts so that you can reuse your existing iOS knowledge as much as possible.  
• Event will focus on building apps with XAML/C#, but devs looking to build on apps with HTML or DirectX will also get a useful overview of the platform.   

If you are an iOS developer, we hope you can join us, it will be a beginning of a fun journey.. Bring your Mac Book (with enough space to install Windows using parallels or any other virtualization technology).  

To learn more about Windows Store app development, check out the resources for iOS developers page on the Windows Dev Center and check out Aaron’s Hillegass’ Build 2012 session: “Top 10 things iOS developers need to know about Windows Store apps”.

Happy Windows coding!

Our Windows Evangelism team is partnering with Unity to put a great two-day workshop on building Windows Store games with Unity. 

The two-day event will be on Nov 29th on Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View, CA.
To attend in person you will need to register at https://aka.ms/unitywindowscamp


If you can’t attend in person, we will also stream day 1 live at https://channel9.msdn.com 


Day 1 will be instructor led content (again, streamed live) and day 2 is an installfest, hands-on, expert Q&A and coding.
You can find a detailed agenda for the event at the registration site.    There will also be a social event on Thurs night, and some other fun activities on Friday.

Hope you can join us.  If you want to learn more about building Windows Store games with Unity, check out their build 2012 session  “Developing, deploying and monetizing Windows Store games with Unity”.

This coming Thursday (6/14) members of the Windows User Experience team are delivering an all-day, free, virtual training on Windows 8 UX fundamentals.

You can register for the event here.


Below is a brief excerpt from the registration site ( sorry for blatant copy paste ).. 

Metro style apps are the focal point of the user experience on Windows 8 Release Preview, and great Metro style apps share an important set of traits that provide a consistent, elegant, and compelling user experience.
Join us for this free, virtual training presented by the Windows User Experience Team, which helps designers & developers learn how to design great apps that leverage the full extent of the platform and adhere to UX guidelines. After this training, attendees will understand the tenants of a great app, how to think about information architecture, best practices for designing flexible layouts, touch, how to leverage contracts in the platform, and much more.

   
Agenda:
· Metro style design
· Commanding, Information Architecture & Navigation
· Designing for Touch, Mouse & Keyboard
· Animations
· Designing for view states
· Designing apps with adaptive layouts
· Using Contracts
· Connected and Alive
· Anatomy of an App: Case Study

We look forward to seeing you there. If you have any questions please email WUXFT@microsoft.com

Happy Windows 8 Coding (and designing)!! 

Now, a few colleagues in US DPE Central region are raising the bounty with a contest that gives free slates to the best apps that complete a lab by June 30th. Get all the details at Jennifer Marsman's blog.

By Microsoft’s definition, the states that comprise the Central Region of the United States are Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky)

Good luck & Happy Windows 8 Coding!

PS – Don’t forget, if you are not eligible to participate on the contest, you can still get the token by going to a lab around the world. 

PPS – If you go to her blog post, leave a comment asking if JaimeR will be a judge at the contest. Let’s start the rumor and see if it sticks. I want to see the apps. 

Updated on 6/7 with new links to the off-line recordings since these are all in the past.  

Monday May 14th, 2012  8:30 AM PST
Introduction to the Windows 8 platform and the Windows store
Jennifer Marsman
Windows 8 is Windows re-imagined!  Join this session to learn about the new platform for building Metro-style applications.  Get an understanding of the platform design tenets, the programming language choices, and the integration points with the operating system and across Metro-style apps.  We will also discuss the enormous opportunity for developers to make crazy money with the Windows Store.  You will walk away with the resources to begin writing Metro applications for Windows 8.

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012    8:30 AM PST
Designing apps with Metro style principles and the Windows personality
Chris Bernard
Metro style design has a set of five guiding principles to help you make the best choices when designing your app. These principles are the foundation for building great Metro style apps. Consider these principles as you plan your app, and always ensure your design and development choices live up to these principles.

Monday, May 21, 2012    8:30 AM PSTJohn WieseMonday, May 21, 2012    8:30 AM PST Monday, May 21, 2012    8:30 AM PST
Building Metro style apps with XAML: What .NET developers need to know   
John Wiese

If you are experienced with .NET or Silverlight and are already familiar with XAML, this session will teach you everything you need to know to create a Metro style app for Windows 8. This session will cover updates to familiar features and explore concepts that are new for Windows 8. We’ll talk about building reusable Windows Runtime Components in C#, Async programming in Windows 8 and both the Visual Studio and Expression designers. This session will show you how to turn your XAML skills into money-making Metro style apps.

Wednesday May 23, 2012    8:30 AM PST
What HTML developers need to know about coding Windows 8 Metro style apps
Michael Palermo
This session is perfect for any web developer wanting to leverage his/her skillset to develop Windows 8 Metro style apps. The session begins by proving how much web developers already know about building apps for Windows 8. The focus then turns to how to write JavaScript code with WinJS. Key points for Metro style app development will be highlighted by implementing popular feature requests using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.

Thursday, May 31, 2012    8:30 AM PST
Win as One: How Contracts in Windows 8 Help You Build a Killer Metro App
G. Andrew Duthie
Contracts are agreements between Windows and your Metro style app that allow you to integrate Windows 8 features into your app. For example, Windows 8 lets users share content from one application to another by using the Share contract.

In this session, you'll learn how contracts work and how to implement the built-in contracts such as Search, Share, Settings, and More. With Contracts, you can help users get more out of your app, and in a way that is consistent and intuitive, and they will reward you by coming back to your app again and again.

Monday, June 4th, 2012     8:30 AM PST
Bring Your Windows 8 Metro Style Apps to Life with Tiles and Notifications
Chris Bowen

Tiles and Notifications are important ways to draw attention to your app and improve your users' experiences.  Tiles can draw users back into your app when your tile comes to life on Start screen.  They can also let users personalize their Start screen by creating deep links to specific places within your app.  Notifications, delivered through the Windows Push Notification Service, can inform and draw your users back into your app even when it's not running. 
In this session, you will learn how to effectively implement Tiles and Notifications to help your apps shine.

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012    8:30:00 AM PST
Building Windows 8 Metro style casual games using HTML 5
David Isbitski

The intent of this session is to help HTML5/JavaScript developers with writing their first Metro Style App in a fun, immersive way. We will cover the basics of HTML5 Canvas gaming and how we can easily bring it to Windows 8.  We will then add additional game functionality as we introduce HTML5 Audio,  CSS3 styling and web fonts, implementing a game loop with JavaScript, 3rd party frameworks, touch, camera, accelerometer, and WInJS controls. 

I will be watching. I hope you join us.

Happy WIndows 8 coding!

Event sold out within a few days, and we got a lot of requests for it to be recorded (or broadcasted live)..  

I am happy to announce that the event will now be live.  Please pencil us in in your calendar. Event will be live on Friday May 18th, from 9 AM PST to 5 PM PST.

We will share details (the link) and the agenda later this week.  
We will aim to have two live Q&As (one around noon PST) and one around 4 PM PST, we will take your questions via twitter.. Just follow the #win8C++Camp (Updated on 5/10) #ch9live hash on the day of the event..

Please help us spread the word!! Hope you can join us on the 18th.

Happy Windows 8 coding!!

Whether you are a new C++ developer ready to learn about the writing Metro style apps, an intermediate developer who wants to hone your code and skills, or an experienced C++ developer eager to squeeze every ounce of performance out of your Metro style app and/or push the boundaries of Windows 8, then this event is for you. We will have pragmatic advice for every developer writing Metro style apps and games with XAML or DirectX and C++.

Agenda:

• C++ for Windows 8, Keynote by Herb Sutter
• Building Windows 8 apps with XAML and C++
• Building Windows 8 games with DirectX and C++
• Introduction to the Windows Runtime Library (WRL)
• Writing Connected apps: Writing networking code with C++
• Combining XAML & Direct X in a Metro style apps
• Writing WinRT components to be consumed from any language
• VC11 compiler flags for getting the most out of C++

Registration:
Register for this event here.  If is first-come, first-serve, and we are limited in space, so register soon.
If you want to learn more about other Windows 8 camps check the camps site.  

Details:
Location: Redmond WA, Microsoft campus, bldg 92.
Date:  May 18th, 2012
Time:  9 AM to 5 PM for sessions,  Q&A and a small social event afterwards.
Speakers:  We will update the list of speakers early next week, we are still negotiating session times & speakers to cram as much as we can into a single day. 
Rest assured most of them are from the product team and yes, Herb Sutter will do the opening keynote and the first session.
Meals:  We will have some light breakfast, lunch, snacks and appetizers + drinks at the end of the day.

My personal pitch on this event:
Even if you are already coding your Metro style app, you don’t want to miss this event. All the speakers are product team people, and we will have a very strong pragmatic angle during our sessions; we are aiming to answer a lot of the questions and help you avoid the common pit-falls that we have seen our early partners building Metro style apps with C++ have ran into.  There will also be ample Q&A time through out the day.

Happy Windows 8 coding.  Please help us spread the word on this event we are really excited to connect with C++ community.

As Antoine Leblond alluded to in the post, our store services are ramping up as planned--and of course the plan includes ramping up developer registrations to enable app submissions to the Windows store. Today, you need an invite “token” to register. This begs the question  - How can YOU get a token?

It’s easy! If your app is ready and you want to be among those developers who get to submit to the store early, simply attend one of the 100s of free Application Excellence Labs that DPE and Windows are holding around the world.

Follow these steps to get invited to an App Excellence lab:

1. Create a really great Windows 8 Metro style app (or game) immediately.  Get it as ready as if you were submitting to the store.
2. If you know your local DPE evangelists (maybe because you attended a Windows camp training), get in touch with them and ask them to nominate your app for a lab.
3. If you don’t know your local evangelist, then email the following information to win8aefb@microsoft.com:
   1. Your name
   2. City & country where you are located
   3. Brief description for your app (no binary,  screenshot is optional, but only send if the screenshot is public, non-confidential stuff )
   4. Your pledge that you’ve spent at least 8 hours devouring all the great UX guidelines we have at the design section in the Windows Dev Center¹ 
   5. Wait for our response letting you know where the closest app excellence lab will be and how to get in touch with the right evangelist to nominate you.

Hopefully, there will be a lab near you.  Right now, we have labs in 40+ countries and we may be adding more.

Of course, coming to the lab is not all you have to do.  I have to go back to step #1: You need to have a compelling, functional app that follows our UX guidelines, our performance best practices, and our store certification requirements²

The lab is a 4-hour engagement with a trained Microsoft Services Engineer.  This person will run your app through a series of tests based on a quality checklist to ensure your app is (or will be) in top-notch shape when you submit. You will also get a chance discuss ways to make your app even better and you will get answers to any questions you might have.
If your app meets the criteria, then booyah! You get a token to register your developer account and (once you have been verified and all that) you will be able to submit your app to the Windows store.
If your app does not meet the criteria, nothing is lost. You will still end up with a much better app³ and you will be able to submit it when registration opens for all developers.

Good luck. We are looking forward to seeing your apps and helping you to make them great!
Happy Windows 8 coding!!

[I am traveling today, so it might be a one-off due to low band-width at the hotel, but in case it helps others]

I was installing Live writer and got a prompt to install the .NET Framework 3.5, I agreed to do that and got a “following feature could not be installed. Error: 0x800F0906.

Fortunately, I still had the ISO from when I installed consumer preview , so I used the local sources.
If you see the error above, try this from an elevated command prompt.

dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /Source:h:\sources\sxs
where “h” is the drive where you have your win8 installation files (or where the iso is mounted, replace the path appropriately ).

Happy Windows 8 coding!