Silverlight 2 - Getting Started with the Chart Control

This post has been moved to my new blog. You can find this post at http://blog.ecofic.com/?p=155.

Thank you for reading!

Silverlight 2 - Introducing the Chart Control

This post has been moved to my new blog. This post can not be found at http://blog.ecofic.com/?p=133.

Thank you for reading!

Silverlight 2 - Templating Video

Greetings!

Today we released a free video that covers templating in Silverlight 2. This video is just under eight minutes in length and can be found here. It covers some of the high level concepts of templating in Silverlight 2. A lot more of the technical details can be found in Silverlight 2 in Action.

Thank you for reading and watching!

P.S. I apologize if I sound congested in the video. I was under-the-weather when I shot it. I'm better now though :)

Silverlight 2 RTW - Forward Ho!

Greetings!

I am excited about two things right now. First, as you have probably heard by now, Silverlight 2 has reached RTW (Release To Web). Second, Silverlight 2 in Action is finished. Over the course of this post I will provide you with some details surrounding these two thrilling announcements (at least IMHO).

Silverlight 2 RTW
The lead up to Silverlight 2 has been pretty amazing. In fact, I hadn't realized how amazing it was until I reviewed the official press release. Even more incredible though is the RTW milestone that was just reached. The honest-to-goodness, full-blown, install-it-on-every-machine version is available here! In addition, there are some more goodies coming as described in the press release. These goodies include:

• More controls through the Silverlight control pack. This control pack will be released under the MS-Pl and should be available around the PDC. The controls in this pack include: Accordian, AutoComplete, DockPanel, ViewBox, TreeView, and more to be annnounced later.
• Eclipse Tools for Silverlight. Personally, this makes me think of my Java days. I am very excited to see the Silverlight tool set extend beyond Visual Studio. I believe this will help the Silverlight development community flourish. If you are a Java developer, or know of a Java developer, and have questions about Silverlight, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am more than willing to share my experiences working with Java on a number of levels and comparing and contrasting them to my experiences with .NET / Silverlight and Flash

As excited as I am about the release, I have to say I am personally more excited about the completion of Silverlight 2 in Action

Silverlight 2 in Action
This project started in May of 2007 and the time requirements have steadily increased. Most recently, John and I have been working feverishly to finalize Silverlight 2 in Action, while ensuring technical accuracy with the RTW release. At this time I am pleased to announce that I literally just gave my "go-ahead" to push the print button. Printing will begin tommorow (Wednesday). Print copies will be available at the PDC conference if you are going. If you have ordered it through Amazon.com or another channel, thank-you, and you should receive your copy around the PDC time period. I am sorry, I do not have more specific dates to announce at this time. I am working to get the code for the book posted this week.

There are a lot of individuals to thank. Those individuals are listed in the book itself. However, for the individuals that generally read this blog, I would like to specifically thank the Silverlight team and John Stockton.

The Silverlight team at Microsoft was incredible throughout this process. To those individuals that say Microsoft is not committed to openness and interoperability, I say horse dung. From January of 2007 on I have personally witnessed a commitment to these items. I am confident with the announcment of the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight that this is a direction instead of a reaction to some naysayers. In the future, I hope to write a blog post about my experiences working with Microsoft over the course of Silverlight 2 in Action.

Next up is John. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, John had to sort of step in at the last minute and take the reigns of chapter 6. I think John did an incredible job with chapter 6. I sincerely hope you enjoy John's efforts and I definately appreciate his help with this. He has had to endure quite a bit in a small amount of time. Without John's dedication, I think this book would have been lacking in some areas. However, because of John's commitment, I believe we have a book that we are both happy with and others seem to be happy with as well. If you enjoy it, I hope you'll join us in the Facebook Fan Club.

What's Next
I have been asked what I plan to do next. I really don't like to talk about myself and I think that is beyond the scope of this blog. However, I will share what I plan to do with Silverlight now that Silverlight 2 in Action is done.

First off, I will not be writing Silverlight 3 (or whatever the next version of Silverlight is called) in Action. This experience has taken a lot of energy out of me. It has challenged me in so many ways and pushed me to my extremes. I know it sounds cliche, but I would have never guessed it going into the project. Instead I will be focusing more on the Silverlight platform itself.

This blog will return to its format before Silverlight 2 in Action. Among other things, I would like to post some details on the ListControls in Silverlight. I would like to talk about templating in more detail. I want to blog about my experiences working with MS during Silverlight 2 in Action. This is just a sampling of how I want this blog to focus on Silverlight going forward.

I also plan to more regularly speak and provide webcasts. However, providing all of this content does not directly drive adoption. That is what Silverlight needs now. In order to do that we as developers need to create applications that users want. Because of this, a lot of my time will be focused on a side project I hope to finish in the March 2009 timeframe. This project will use Silverlight and I think it will help drive some adoption. Or maybe I'm just being overly optimistic :)

Either way, go and download Silverlight 2 now. Get your development environment setup. Learn about the details of Silverlight 2 and build something smoking hot! :)

Silverlight 2 in Action - RC0 ready!

Greetings,

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the first release candidate of Silverlight 2 was made available late Thursday evening. This exciting release includes a bevy of enhancements and changes from Silverlight 2 Beta 2. A lot of these enhancements and changes are outlined here and here. It is important to acknowledge that Silverlight 2 RC0 is only intended for developers and should not be used for applications that are publicly visible yet. This release is designed to help you migrate your Beta 2 applications to the RTW release, which will be coming in the near future. To further help you in this migration, John Stockton and I have been burning the midnight oil on Silverlight 2 in Action.

Silverlight 2 in Action has been carefully reviewed to ensure consistency with the Silverlight 2 release candidate. Because RC0 is feature complete, we will be printing the book based on this build. If you would like a jump start on the fun, the content is available right now to MEAP customers. If you would like to become a MEAP customer you can do so by visiting here. When you do this, make sure to use the coupon code "slso35 " to save an extra 35%. Please feel free to share this code with others. This is a gift to those of you that are just as excited about Silverlight 2 as we are.

At this point, John and I are running through the book one final time to ensure accuracy before we hit the physical “print” button. There is a lot of content including:

• 12 chapters
• 423 pages
• 295 snippets

A website with all of the code from the snippets and walkthroughs should be available later this week. Because of this, if you are a MEAP customer, you can get the code associated with the snippets very soon.

Chad

P.S. I’m speaking on 2 separate topics at the IndyTechFest on October 4. If you are visiting this great day of events, stop by and say “hey”.

Silverlight 2 - Discussion and Halo 3

Greetings...

I hope your summer is going well. Mine has been busy finalizing Silverlight 2 in Action. I have been working closely with John Stockton to make this book as solid as possible. John has stepped up and has been working really hard to provide deep and informative content around communication and services for Silverlight 2 in Action (chapter 6). I'm working with John to ensure that the content and structure is consistent with the rest of the book. This is really important because chapter 6 really glues together the content from some of the previous chapters.

With that said, we are nearing completion. We are doing a lot of editing and filling in the holes. We will wait until the release candidate (mentioned in some comments by Scott Guthrie) to actually finalize the content. While Beta 2 is looking pretty good, we really want this book to be as accurate and complete as possible. With that said, we have some time and I would like to get some feedback from YOU.

On Sunday, July 20th at 9 p.m. EST I would like to discuss Silverlight 2 with anyone interested. I would really like to find out what you really want to know about and make sure that it is in the book. I figure if one person has a concern, there are certain to be others that share that concern. The forum for this discussion will be Halo 3 over X-Box Live. I've been itching to play it as I have been disconnected due to the book. If you would like to party up, please post a comment on this post. Please include your email address and gamertag. This comment will NOT be published in order to respect your privacy. Once I receive your comment, I will send you an email and a friend invite.

Have a great day!
Chad

Silverlight 2 in Action - Co-Author

Greetings,

In an effort to ensure that Silverlight 2 in Action becomes available in a timely fashion, I have asked to bring on a co-author. I am excited to announce that Michael Schwartz will be writing one of the chapters in this book.

Michael is a Microsoft MVP and seasoned Silverlight professional. In fact, I believe that Michael was one of the first three non-Microsoft individuals to get on board with Silverlight. That number may be off slightly. However, I do not think by much. Michael was an extremely early adopter.

We are hoping to MEAP some more content very soon. Thank you for your patience.

DataGrid and DeepZoom Info Available in Silverlight 2 in Action

Greetings!
Today we released two new chapters to Silverlight 2 in Action MEAP customers. With that in mind, I want to give you some information related to the new content, as well as the previous content. In addition, I also want to let you know what you can expect moving forward.

New Content

The new chapters cover two very exciting and important aspects of Silverlight: Data and Media. This information is covered in chapters 4 and 7.

• Chapter 4 – This chapter covers a wide range of data-related topics in-depth. These topics include: data binding, data templating, using the DataGrid, and an overview of LINQ. The content in this chapter is pretty meaty. This has personally been my favorite chapter to write thus far. The reason why was primarily because of data templates. Data templates are really, REALLY cool (if you don’t believe me, come to my presentation in Indianapolis, IN on April 26th). In addition, I am pretty impressed with the DataGrid, even though it is still in its infancy.
  
  
• Chapter 7 – The focus of this chapter is media, including deep-zoom. In this chapter you will see an old-friend from Silverlight 1.0: the MediaElement. This will include information related to the properties and lifecycle of this element in Silverlight 2. You will also see information about playlists and interactive playback. In addition, there is a high-level overview of the content access (a.k.a DRM) features of Silverlight 2. From there you will get a detailed tour of the imaging and deep zooming features.

Collectively, these two chapters span 61 pages.

Previous Content

I have received some comments / questions regarding the current MEAP content. These items have generally expressed concern that the content was outdated with Silverlight 2. In fact, if you mentioned this, you are correct.

I’m still not sure what happened, but some previously released content was re-released. This was unintentional because the content originally covered Silverlight 1.1. I will say that the MEAP content that has just been released still has some Silverlight 1.1 stuff (especially in chapters 1 and 2). However, the necessary changes have been made to be consistent with Silverlight 2. I hope that by the next MEAP release, this will be resolved.

With that said, if you still feel there is content out-of-date beyond chapter 2, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Roadmap

Another common question that has been asked has been “is the MEAP version the final version of the content?” The answer is definitely NO. For instance, in chapter 4, I already know that I will be updating the DataGrid section and fixing up the LINQ portions a bit. Currently, both of these sections provide a lot of content as-is. However, there is still more that needs to be included in this book (like the sorting features of the DataGrid coming in Beta 2).

I really want this book to be a solid resource. Because of this, if you want something or feel something is missing; please do not hesitate to let me know. I will see if it can be worked in.

Currently, I am working on chapter 10. This chapter covers resources, styles, and templates. I’m hoping to finish this chapter up by the end of this weekend. From there, MEAP customers will get the content approx. 1 week after I finish the chapter.

I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen thus far. Now, I’ve got get back to writing the actual book.

Silverlight Info

Greetings,

Today I noticed two awesome Silverlight-related items that I think you may find interesting. These items are a great way to pass the time if you are chomping at the bit for Silverlight 2.

1. Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint - Very cool stuff if you are doing line of business applications.
2. Using Web Analytics with Microsoft Silverlight - Some really great information if you have a Silverlight application you want to expose to the search spiders.
   

A quick update on stuff I'm personally working on.

• Silverlight 2 in Action - When the Silverlight 2 Beta becomes available (we know its soon), I will have a total of six chapters of my book available. I am pretty excited about these six chapters. I personally feel they are VERY solid however, I will let you decide for yourself. The remaining six chapters will come rapidly afterwards. However, we will NOT release a printed copy until we are confident of the quality and technical accuracy of the book (I have worked very hard to make sure things are as accurate as possible).
• Over the next 2 weeks, I have two other FREE surprises up my sleeve. Stay tuned to this blog for more info
  

Thanks for reading.