Well, I get to be one of the lucky people that gets to go to the Microsoft PDC 2008 Conference in Los Angeles, CA on October 27-30. Since 1991, the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) has been Microsoft’s premier gathering of leading-edge developers and architects. Attend the PDC to understand the future of the Microsoft platform and to exchange ideas with fellow professionals. You’ll learn about upcoming products, meet Microsoft’s leaders and top engineers, and write some code.

At this year's conference, Microsoft will be giving a 160GB external USB2 hard drive with all of the bits from the conference to each attendee instead of a collection of DVDs as in the past. It is even rumored that a Beta version of Windows 7 will be included as well.

Channel 9 on MSDN has been producing a series of Countdown to PDC 2008 videos to help everyone get a great overview of what to expect this year at PDC. Here is just a few of the videos that you can watch about the upcoming conference:

• This is the Software + Services PDC: Mike Swanson
• By Developers, for Developers: Don Box and Chris Anderson
• Building Block Services, John Shewchuk
• Extending the Data Platform to the Cloud: Dave Campbell
• Amitabh Srivastava: Corporate Vice President of Cloud, Infrastructure, & Services

I blogged previously about some great Silverlight Tips of the Day that the Silverlight team has been releasing to help developers get started using Silverlight. Well, the team has released some new tips:

• GameFest 2008 - Silverlight Game Programming
• Tip of the Day #21 - How to work with Shapes, Brushes and Gradients
• Tip of the Day #22 - How to add Sound Effects, Music and Video to your Silverlight App.
• Tip of the Day #23 -How to Capture the Mouse Wheel Event
• Tip of the Day #24 - How to Apply a XAML Template to a Class
• 3D Simulated Terrain Tutorials for Silverlight Games
• Terrain Tutorial Part 1 - Creating a Scrolling Map
• Tip of the Day #25 - How to Build the XAP File to the Debug/Release Folders
• Tip of the Day #26 - How to Change the Output XAP File Name.
• Tip of the Day #27 - How to Change the Mouse Cursor

If you have worked with XAML outside of Visual Studio, you have probably wished that you could get Intellisense in your code. Microsoft Expression Blend is one of main tools that Microsoft expects developers to use when working with XAML. Blend doesn't have Intellisense for XAML either.

Stefan Dobrev has developed an addin for Expression Blend that will provide the auto completion and Intellisense in Expression Blend.

Stefan's code is based off another great free XAML tool called Kaxaml. Kaxaml is a lightweight XAML editor that gives you a "split view" so you can see both your XAML and your rendered content (kind of like XamlPad but without the gigabyte of SDK).

XamlPad is a basic visual editor for Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) and is installed with the SDK.  

I thought I would start posting a Virtual Lab Series with some links to some good virtual labs that I have found so that others might be able to make use of the labs. I also want to have the links posted somewhere as a resource for me to find later. I will try to add more of these posts as I find these labs.

I was able to find a good Virtual Lab to work with Windows Presentation Foundation on Visual Studio 2008. These virtual labs allow you to remote into the virtual environment to complete the lab and learn the option you have selected.

Event Overview  (90 Minutes)

• This lab provides an introduction to the development of a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client with Visual Studio 2008.  Visual Studio 2008 has a rich set of features to support the language integrated query framework for .NET (“LINQ”), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and design of WPF Applications.
• Furthermore, you will see how Visual Studio 2008 designer is used to build a WPF Client application. You will also see how LINQ features can be used against a SQL database, access a WCF-based service after generating a Service Reference, and you will also be introduced to some of the new language features in C#.

You can view the lab and more information by clicking here.