Saturday, May 23, 2009

Microsoft Surface in the Spring

You may remember in February I was in Munich delivering Surface Training. I was back in Munich again this week delivering more Surface Training and it is a very different place in the Spring. I think I was lucky as the weather was fantastic.
Here is a picture of the same train station that was covered in snow last time I was here.


This month Surface Service Pack 1 was released and so in addition to all the usual goodness in the Surface Training I now have a session dedicated to the features in Service Pack 1. The course outline looks like this:
The Surface Vision
The Architecture of Surface applications
Setting up a Surface device and the out of the box applications
Working with the Simulator
Integrating with the Surface Shell
Designing Surface experiences
Using the Surface Controls
What is new in Service Pack 1
Vision Recognition with Surface
End to end building a Surface application

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I received an email from someone telling me I was just teasing them and I should divulge what I cover that is new in Service Pack 1. These are some of things in Service Pack 1 that we cover in the training:

  • Richer feedback of touch input, the built in visualizations that now indicate when the Surface receives input
  • Object Routing, how to launch an application by placing a tagged object on the Surface 
  • Single Application Mode, running only one application on the Surface and hiding the launcher and access points
  • Library container WPF controls, Library Bar and Library Stack. Discussion about what these are good for and how to use them
  • Element Menu WPF control, putting the GUI into NUI, why this control is useful and why it is not always a great idea. How to code this control.
  • Drag and Drop support, how to add drag and drop to your multi touch and (more importantly) multi user Surface application.
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If you would like some help building amazing Surface applications please let me know. We are providing consulting and support services to help you bring out the magic in your Surface applications.

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