Rachel Hawley's DevExpress Community Blog

November 2009 - Posts

• The Name Game: WPF naming contest results

  Holy cow! WPF control names really get you guys going! A massive 147 comments were added to the contest announcement post, which as far as I can make out is some kind of DevExpress commenting record! Thank you so much for all of your suggestions. There were some really great ideas, and some particularly funny names that I would have loved to have used. We picked out a top 6 from the entries submitted and the winning suggestion is … drum roll please … Aaron Young with the name ThemeWheel Congratulations! You win a a copy of CodeRush with Refactor! Pro, a DevExpress goodie bag with a t-shirt, hat, 4GB USB pen drive and an iTunes voucher. And of course not to forget, you also get the fame and glory of your suggestion being associated with a DevExpress control.  Linton also agreed with the ThemeWheel suggestion, but as that comment came in a few posts later than Aaron’s we had to take the first occurrence. However, we’ll send out a goodie bag to Linton with a t-shirt and hat as a thanks to recognise your contribution.      I also wanted to pick out some of my favourite entries. Themeweaver was certainly one of them, but unfortunately someone else thought that too and has already used it. The following entries will get a DevExpress goodie bag for their great efforts: Brad James “TheWheelDeal” Chris Merritt “SkinnyDip” Jason Helman “DyeHard” Nate Laff “DXWpfPimpatron” Keep your eyes on the blogs for new of the v2009.3 release when the DXThemeWheel for WPF will make its debut in the DXperience control suite. Thanks again for all the suggestions. Posted Nov 18 2009, 06:34 PM by Rachel Hawley (DevExpress) with 6 comment(s)

• A look back at TechEd Europe 2009

  Microsoft TechEd Europe had a sell out event this year. Microsoft, the sponsors and the exhibitors welcomed over 7300 people to the event. It was undeniably an absolutely massive event, and the venue, the Messe Berlin, was positively humming with activity the entire week. DevExpress had a great event with swathes of customers coming to chat to us on the booth during exhibition hours about our plans for the future and what they can expect from our Silverlight controls that will ship with DXperience v2009.3. As expected, Silverlight was a on a lot of developers’ minds … and considering around 40% of the TechEd Europe audience were developers that’s a pretty big number of minds to be on!  Pre-con day, Monday, saw what I think was an unprecedented number of attendees coming to the Exhibition Hall. Despite the gathering crowds at Brandenburg Gate, waiting to get involved in the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, the TechEd attendees arrived at the convention centre in droves for the half day that it was open. How do I know that Day 1 was busier than usual? That’s easy, almost half of our DevExpress t-shirts we’re snapped up by early birds attending the opening day of the conference! And we spotted them around the Exhibition Hall for the rest of the week.  Gary, Oliver and myself were joined by John Martin from Professional Developer Training. John is a lynchpin in our plans for the European Training Roadshow in January 2010, where Oliver will be visiting London, Frankfurt, Zurich and Paris to deliver the DevExpress ASP.NET training course. John was a fantastic member of the team for the entire week and we were very grateful of his assistance. Anyone attending the DevExpress training courses is going to be met by a professional, affable and motivating friend for the duration of their course. There are still spaces for anyone wanting to attend the training sessions. You can find more information and register for the sessions by clicking here. Our technical booth staff were busy from the get-go with questions, feedback and the usual banter from the other exhibitors in the Visual Studio Partner Zone, but during the session times they were unusually quiet as they got down to planning demos for the next break in the sessions. Well at least that’s what I think they were doing. Knowing Oliver, he was probably searching Google for the best place to find a late beer for the evening. We ran a daily prize draw during the conference and we were really pleased to see that a huge number of attendees took 10 minutes of their lunch break to come and participate. Interest in CodeRush and Refactor! Pro was big, and not surprisingly considering all the news about VS2010. We gave away copies of CodeRush with Refactor! Pro to 4 lucky winners, and one such winner was pretty excited by his prize. Gavin Thomas had been in a session on agile development and had picked up a few tips from the speaker’s presentation about tools that could help him with productivity. Gavin came straight to us after the session closed and asked if he could check out Refactor! Pro. Luckily for him we were about to demo the tool to kick off our prize draw for the day. Gavin was made up when he won a copy of his own! DevExpress – making developers happy for over 11 years! More thoughts on the Microsoft TechEd Europe conference coming up later this week. Posted Nov 17 2009, 06:06 PM by Rachel Hawley (DevExpress) with no comments Filed under: Community, Conferences, TechEd Europe

• What’s in a WPF name? Why don’t you tell us!

  UPDATE: If you would like to submit an idea for us please put it into the comments by Friday November 13th I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be an artist. Being able to look at a blank canvas and just go to work creating something visually appealing. At school I really looked forward to Art classes … Not because I was any good at it, just because I shared a table with my best friend and it was the only lesson on the school timetable where we were allowed to sit together. It’ll come as no surprise to some of you that I was a talkative pupil, and most of my detention slips were written as a result of chattering when I should have been working. Well hey, Headmaster. Look at me now. I was employed to chatter and be nice to people!   As I have often said to our DevExpress designers, my creative talents are on a par with a puppy running riot over a sheet of paper with paint on its paws. In essence, I have a whopping “zero” creative talent. To be a developer I imagine you need to have the ability to tune into your creative side. I’d guess that web designers certainly have a tough time on their hands as you actively have to try to create an intuitive interface and pre-empt how users will find their way around your site, creating themes and color concepts that are both pleasing to the eye but also functional and familiar to users. It’s a pretty tall order if you really want to make a great job of your design. Luckily for our WPF developers, the DevExpress WPF team has eased the burden of color schemes design with the new Color Scheme Customization Dialog. The trouble is we think Color Scheme Customization Dialog  is a pretty rubbish name for it. Julian and I had a “name off” a few weeks back. We battled against each other’s linguistic talents and threw around some (really bad) ideas. We tried “Tint Tool”, “Color Spinner”, “Color Shader”, “Color Compass”, “Hue Hatcher”, “Theme Painter”, “Theme Artist”, … but none of them seemed to adequately sum up what this feature is all about. Eventually, after realising that naming a feature is actually harder than it first appears, we decided that we’d ask for some professional advice.  And that’s where you come in! We want you to name this new feature. It’s simple: if we like your name, we will use it. And we’ll give you a prize to thank you. * Check out Julian’s posts on the new control here and also here. Get a feel for what it is for and what it could be for as it develops, and then post your suggestions for its name in the comments below this post. The winner will receive a copy of CodeRush with Refactor! Pro with a 12 month subscription (to get your hands on all the latest updates over the next year) as well as a DevExpress goodie bag with t-shirt, hat, 4GB USB pen drive and an iTunes voucher. *Caveat: While we are really chuffed that you want to submit your name suggestions to us, DevExpress will reserve the right to select a name for this funky new feature that may not submitted as a suggestion below. We can’t really have a commercial feature named the WPF Funk-tastic Funk-a-tron Wheel just because we really like you guys … we do need to be a bit serious about it. But don’t let that stop you submitting your ideas to us! Posted Nov 05 2009, 06:00 AM by Rachel Hawley (DevExpress) with 148 comment(s) Filed under: newsletter, competition, WPF

• Microsoft TechEd Europe: DevExpress Contest Time!

  It is now T minus 5 days until Oliver, Gary and I depart the somewhat dismal shores of the UK for fun and frolics in Berlin with the Microsoft TechEd Europe attendees. The big news this week is that the event has reportedly sold out. The even bigger news this week is DevExpress’ daily contest and our Grand Prize Draw at the conference. I mentioned previously that if you want to win with DevExpress at TechEd Europe this year, you will need to come prepared. Oliver, Gary and I have a stash of t-shirts for you to pick up at the booth, and you will need those t-shirts, as well as any others you might already have, in order to win big with us. We’ll be holding daily prize draws at the DevExpress booth on the 3 full conference days: Tuesday through to Thursday at 1pm. All you need to do to enter our contests is visit the DevExpress booth in the VSIP Partner Zone (booths V3 and V4) and be wearing or collecting a DevExpress t-shirt. We’ll give you a raffle ticket to keep safe. At 1pm (after you’ve had your lunch) come back to the booth with your raffle ticket and we’ll be holding a daily raffle for a copy of CodeRush with Refactor! Pro and a free seat at one of our European Training Events in 2010. And on Thursday, the final full day of the conference, we’ll add all previous winners back to the pot for one HUGE prize draw. One lucky winner will take home… drum roll please … An exclusive 5th Generation iPod Nano  A free seat at one of our European Training Events Plus a full DXperience Universal Subscription – which will give you access to all of the upcoming v2009.3 additions and improvements. It’s like Christmas coming 6 weeks early! And what’s more, you can fit it all into your suitcase to take home! BUT REMEMBER: You must be wearing a DevExpress t-shirt to win your prize! Start packing guys and we’ll see you next week in Berlin. Posted Nov 03 2009, 03:14 PM by Rachel Hawley (DevExpress) with 2 comment(s)