Silverlight - Updates

• On November 29, Scott Guthrie announced that Silverlight 1.1 will now be known as Silverlight 2.0. This is really exciting news. I think it will really help clear up some of confusion that is currently surrounding 1.0 vs. 1.1. Because of this...


• May the book title Silverlight 1.1 in Action rest in peace. However, this does not mean the book is cancelled. Oh no! Instead it is being appropriately named:


• Silverlight 2.0 in Action. The book cover and information will be updated to match the new title shortly. When this book is in your local book store, it will have been in development for over a year. That is a pretty long time for a technical publication. This should be a hint as to breadth and depth of content you should expect. Because of this, I think there will be a number of individual who will want to discuss the content. To help assist in this, I would like to announce the
• Silverlight 2.0 in Action Facebook Fan Page. Become a fan today (man I get cheesier each and every day, just ask my girlfriend's dog, Buster):

Silverlight - The Interview

Larry Clarkin and Dave Bost are two of Microsoft's evangelists in the midwest area. They have started a new site called "The Thirsty Developer".

As it turns out, they were nice enough to discuss with me the Silverlight presentation I gave at the IndyTechFest. They have since posted the interview here. I should warn you that you will need to have QuickTime (Where's the 'Light :)).

I'm fairly happy with how the interview went. This was my first time doing this kind of thing, and because of it, I do not feel I got the point across I was going for. I wanted to be more explicit in stating how one of the really great things about Silverlight 1.1 is it's ability to work with data and communicate over the internet. Because of this, I feel that Silverlight provides some extremely valuable offerings even if you do not have a need for a rich visual experience. For instance, you could use Silverlight to simply work with your web services, in place of JavaScript (AJAX, DOJO, etc). You can learn more about this in my book (shameless plug, I know).

On an unrelated note, Mike Harsh posted a message mentioning a "Service Release" for Silverlight 1.0. To learn more about the features, go here.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Popfly and Visual Studio 2008

Greetings,

Today I saw something that I thought was incredibly interesting.
Visual Studio 2008 is supposedly going to have a Popfly tie-in called "Popfly Explorer". If this is what it sounds like, I am SUPER excited. In fact, I haven't seen really any other blogs mention this. I think this will add a lot more excitement around Popfly and encourage even MORE mashup components. This is like taking webparts and putting them on 'roids (that's Steroids).

The full article is here.

The fact that this is being included in VS 2008 is nudging me towards adding another section in the final chapter of my book. Check out the comments on it thus far in the nice little Silverlight Streaming application in the upper right corner. Oh yeah, and the final chapter has a walkthrough related to Silverlight Streaming.