Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Free Book Chapter - Silverlight 1.1 in Action Early Adoper Open for Business!

Hello,

I am excited to announce that we have opened up early access to "Silverlight 1.1 in Action." If you have an interest in joining or pre-ordering, please click here. If you are hesitant, you can read chapter 1 for FREE through here. I feel obligate to mention that the page count is just an estimation. There may be more, there may be less. Regardless, here is my personal overview and opinions on the first two chapters.


Chapter 1
This chapter is really an overview of Silverlight and describes what I call the three "Ps" of Silverlight. In addition it provides an overview of XAML as well as a walkthrough to give you a feel for the designer / developer workflow available within Silverlight. You will need to provide you own .wmv file to get the walkthrough to work. However, I will be posting a special surprise once the full book is completed.
Personally, I feel a large majority of technical books focus on the "what" and "how", but rarely address the "why". For this reason, I wanted to address the why right off the bat. Admittedly, this chapter is not very technical (there is still a fair amount of code), however, I still feel it is incredibly valuable.
One of the questionable items in chapter 1 has been the "color" or tone. It is incredibly upbeat. Personally, that was my goal. My feelings are, if you are buying a book, you should feel good about it (as long as the content is technically correct). If you feel it is inappropriate, please feel free to post a comment on this blog.
Chapter 2
This chapter jumps right into the technical details. Throughout this chapter you will unlock the mysteries of the Silverlight plugin. This chapter will also show you how to manipulate the HTML DOM from managed code, as well as, work with managed code from script. When all is said and done, you should be able to masterfully integrate Silverlight content within your web applications. Once again, this chapter ends with a walkthrough to give you a hands on way to solidfy the chapter's content.
Personally, I originally overlooked the significance of the ability to work between the HTML DOM and managed code. However now, I view it as probably one of Silverlight's most important features. It really is that cool.


For the early adopters, let me proactively answer the question "when will the rest of the content become available?" I want to release chapters, in order. They will be released based upon the accuracy of the content in relation to future availability of Silverlight 1.1. For this reason, I cannot give you an exact date. I can tell you that there are several other chapters completed or near completed. However, because of the structure of the book, I really feel it is important to release the content sequentially.

I look forward to your comments related to the content that has been posted. The good news is, the content has not been sent to the printing press yet, so if there is something you despise, please let me know. I will review it and see if we can work something out.

I want to thank everyone that participated in the book raffle. There were 157 of you and the winners have been notified. Now, back to working on Chapter 11 of Silverlight 1.1 in Action.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Popfly info and some humor

  1. Yesterday, Microsoft announced that Popfly has officially gone Beta. In conjunction with this, the invitation approach has been removed, and you only need a Windows Live ID to use Popfly. In celebration of this, a contest for creating Popfly creations has been announced. Personally, I have been using Popfly since about May or June and I'm pretty excited about the potential surrounding it. In addition, I think it is a great tool to show to individuals when they ask about Silverlight.
  2. Dave Bost has posted the Buck Foley Speech from the IndyTechFest. Personally, I found this to be a refreshingly humorous opening to a technical event. Great Job Buck!
  3. Don't forget to sign up for the FREE Ebook Raffle!


Lastly, this blog feels like it has been a spam machine as of late. Once the "Silverlight 1.1 in Action" book is completed, I promise I will be posting some more valuable content. Thanks for reading, I sincerely appreciate it.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Silverlight 1.1 Book Raffle!

Hello,

I am excited to announce we are VERY near opening up the early adopter program for my upcoming "Silverlight 1.1 in Action" book. In celebration of this event, I have been given TEN (10) coupons for one FREE Ebook. In order to provide everyone with an interest in Silverlight 1.1 an equal chance at this content, I have decided to create a raffle, where the winners will be randomly selected on Wednesday, October 24, 2007.

In order to enter the raffle, please send an e-mail with the subject of "October 2007 - Raffle" to "chads.email.is@gmail.com". Please provide your name within the body of the e-mail. It is important that you enter the subject correctly because I will be using a script to retrieve the participating e-mails. After the winners have been drawn you will receive one e-mail. This e-mail will either inform you that you have won, or someone else has won. If you win, you will be notified and you will have 48 hours to respond. If you do not respond within 48 hours, another particpant will be selected and you will not receive the coupon.

Your e-mail address WILL be kept private. In addition, I will NOT spam you to buy the book. You will receive only one e-mail stating whether or not you have won, unless you mention in the e-mail that you would like more communication related to Silverlight 1.1 in Action.

If you do not win, don't worry, you will still have the opportunity to get the content thanks to Manning Publishing's Early Access Program. If you are not familiar with this process you can find out more here. Once the early access program has opened specifically for my book, I will publish more information on this blog.

Good luck!

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Silverlight 1.1 - IndyTechFest Presentation

Hello,

In about 2 hours, I will be presenting on Silverlight 1.1 at the IndyTechFest in Indianapolis, IN. My presentation that I am giving is available here. This presentation is ever-so-slightly different than the ones I have given in the past. During this session I am highlighting the ability to manipulate the HTML DOM via Managed Code.

Also, in relation to my book, "Silverlight 1.1 in Action", which is where the content for my presentations is pulled from, I have some EXCITING news. We will be very shortly, as in any moment now (minutes/hours/a couple of days, but not weeks), providing Early Adopter content. Once the process goes live, you can be sure that I will post more detailed information on this blog about how you can access this content. So make sure your RSS readers are up-to-date :).

I have to say, I have been VERY impressed with the IndyTechFest event. There are approximately 500 software development professionals at this event. The breadth, depth, and quality of presentations has been phenomenal. We even had a surprise visit by Buck Foley. This motivational speaker gave us his unique, and highly entertaining perspective of the topics being presented today. If you're doing an event, I think he does an excellent job of meshing technology and humor and his website is available here: http://www.buckfoley.com/.