Silverlight - Discussion over X-Box Live (Halo 3)

Hello!

As this incredibly busy, yet exciting year winds down, I think some fun is in order.

I would like to once again organize an open discussion on Silverlight over X-Box Live. If you would like to participate, here is some info to put on your calendar:

Who: Anyone
What: Silverlight Discussion
Where: X-Box Live (Halo 3)
When: Thursday, December 27, 2007 @ 10 p.m. EST

If you would like to particpate, please post a comment with

1. Your Gamertag (this will not be published)
2. Anything specific you would like to discuss regarding Silverlight
3. Any game type preferences

Once I have received your comment, I will send you a friend invite using my gamertag. In addition, I will be trying to put together an agenda to make the time valuable and fun for everyone.

Sometime in the new year I will put together an old skool edition with Halo 2.

Merry Christmas,
Chad

Silverlight - Presentation

Hello,

I presented on Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 2.0 (previously 1.1) this evening. The presentation was given at the Kentucky .NET Developers Association meeting. As promised during the meeting, my slides are available here.

Overall, I was really encouraged to see the excitement swirling around Silverlight. The content in the presentation is slightly modified from the presentations I have given in the past. Regardles, there is one thing that I feel I need to reiterate to those who are just reading the slides.

As Tim Sneath has mentioned in his recent post, Silverlight 1.1 is not ready for use in production.

With that said, I hope to turn the content of the presentation into a webcast in the near future. This will allow those outside of the locations I've spoken at to see the content. When this occurs, you can bet I will make a post here. Because of this, make sure you are subscribed to the RSS Feed.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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/.

Silverlight 1.1 - October Speaking Events

Hello,

I have updated the Silverlight Events Wiki to show 2 upcoming events that I will be presenting at.
If you are in the Midwest area and have heard me present before, I would like to point out that these two presentations are going to present a VERY fast overview of Silverlight, however the majority of the time will be spent discussing the AWESOME potential for using the ASP.NET Futures to display Silverlight content, and one of the features that is one of my personal favorites, the ability to manipulate the HTML DOM via MANAGED CODE!

If you have the opportunity to join us, I hope you will. If you cannot, I will be posting my notes on this blog.

In addition, I felt I should inform everyone that my book (Silverlight 1.1 in Action) is coming along nicely. So far I am VERY pleased with the content and structure. I need to smooth out the transitions and content in chapters 1 and 2, however, after these chapters, I feel everything else is very smooth.
In order to proactively answer the question "when will it be available?", well, I cannot say. However, I can say that ultimately it depends on how stable the next Silverlight 1.1 public bits are. Once the 1.1 bits become available I will need to re-check the manuscript to ensure that the content is technically accurate and all of the code examples work.

I am writing A LOT of code examples, which will be made publicly available with the book. My goal with this book is not necessarily to be the first Silverlight 1.1 book (though that is definately a goal to shoot for), I am more focussed on being the first complete and accurate Silverlight 1.1 book.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Silverlight 1.1 - Controls!

In all of the hype of yesterday’s big announcement around the official release of Silverlight 1.0, something very exciting seemed to get lost in the mix. As it turns out, if you download the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha September Refresh there are some input controls! The refresh includes:

• Button
• RepeatButton
• ListBox
• ScrollBar
• ScrollViewer
• Slider

In addition, there is a little sample page that has all of the controls (screenshot below). Personally, I appreciate the non-operating specific default look of the controls, however, I sincerely hope that the finished versions of these controls have a little bit more sex appeal by default. Please!

Silverlight 1.1 - KY - Day of .NET Presentation

Hello,

On this past Friday, I organized and presented at the KY - Day of .NET. Overall, it was a great event and I am very happy with the participation from the attendees, organizers, representatives, speakers, and sponsers. Thank you so much.

As requested, the presentation I created can be downloaded from here.

For those that could not attend, you may find value in this presentation as it includes some material from the first chapter of my upcoming book "Silverlight 1.1 in Action". The material shows the number of computers that Silverlight can reach and some benchmarks related to performance.

Enjoy!

Silverlight - Events

Adam Kinney introduced me to the very useful Silverlight Events Wiki. This is a great way to learn about and post Silverlight related events. Enjoy!

Silverlight - August Presentations

Hello,

Over course of this summer, Jeremy Sublett and I have been organizing a "Day of .NET" event in Louisville. I will be presenting at this event, as well as, at Microsoft's DevCares event on Silverlight. The dates and links to events can be found here:

Date	Location	Event	Topic
08.28.07	Indianapolis	DevCares	Microsoft Silverlight In-Depth
08.31.07	Louisville	KY - Day of .NET	Silverlight Up The Web

I hope to see you there. Don't be shy, feel free to introduce yourself. I look forward to meeting you.

Silverlight 1.1 in Action - The Book Cover

Hello!

Today I officially selected the cover for my upcoming book "Silverlight 1.1 in Action". Here it is:



This cover is only a draft and I anticipate the "Silverlight 1.1" text will be fully exposed in the final version. The cover is consistent with Manning Publications Co. cover scheme. I specifically chose this cover because of the fact the guy is unsheathing a sword which is

• Awesome
• Consistent with the theme in the first chapter, which will be available on this blog fairly soon.

I hope you like it. If you would like to know more about Manning's cover approach, the information is available here

Silverlight 1.0 - Beta 1 to RC1 Breaking Changes

Hello,

I apologize for not having all of my samples migrated yet. I was having some difficulties and really scratching my head. As it turns out, I have pinpointed a breaking change that I do not believe is in the SDK. The breaking change is...

The width and height properties in the createObject function call must be string values, not integer values.

I had been using integer values in my samples and it caused me a bit of confusion while I was attempting to migrate my samples. I hope this post will help you avoid the same problem.

Silverlight 1.0 - How to Show a Line being Drawn

This example is an updated version of an earlier post. For information related to this item, please review my previous post.

I apologize for the delay, my previous file hoster seems to be on the fritz. Thankfully though, it seems like the Windows Live Folder service is up an running in beta form.

Project Information
Source Code:	here
Developed For:	Silverlight 1.0 RC

WPF - Point an Image to an Embedded Resource

This post has been moved to here. Thank you.

Silverlight 1.0 - How to show a line being drawn

Recently in the official Silverlight forum, several individuals have asked how to dynamically show a line being drawn. This post contains code that will animate a line to look just like the following:



The Silverlight model makes this type of animation very simple. Everything is handled within the XAML code. The XAML code looks like the following:

<Canvas xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Width="300" Height="200">
<Canvas.Triggers>
<EventTrigger RoutedEvent="Canvas.Loaded">
<BeginStoryboard>
<Storyboard Name="lineStoryboard">
<DoubleAnimation Storyboard.TargetName="mainLine" Storyboard.TargetProperty="X2" From="1" To="290" Duration="0:0:8" AutoReverse="false" />
</Storyboard>
</BeginStoryboard>
</EventTrigger>
</Canvas.Triggers>

<Line Name="mainLine" Canvas.Left="5" Canvas.Top="5" X1="0" Y1="0" X2="1" Y2="0" StrokeThickness="2" Stroke="#C0504D"></Line>

<Canvas Name="playAgainCanvas" MouseLeftButtonUp="playAgainCanvas_MouseLeftButtonUp" Canvas.Top="10" Canvas.Left="102">
<Rectangle RadiusX="5" RadiusY="5" Width="95" Height="40" Fill="#9BBB59"></Rectangle>
<TextBlock Text="Play Again" FontFamily="Verdana" Canvas.Left="5" Canvas.Top="10" FontSize="14" FontWeight="Bold" Foreground="white" />
</Canvas>
</Canvas>

The steps, which are derived from the Silverlight SDK, are as follows:

1. Create a DoubleAnimation. In our case, we are concerned about animating the line being drawn, so the following are key attributes are set:
   • StoryBoard.TargetProperty - Set to X2 because we want to make the line grow in length.
   • From - Set this value to the default X2 position.
   • To - Set this value to the end result (290)
   • Duration - Set this value to 8 seconds just to make it easy to see the line grow.


2. Place the DoubleAnimation inside of a Storyboard. We give the Storyboard a Name so that we can access it from the client-side code-behind file. This allows us to restart the animation through an event handler associated with the "Play Again" button.


3. Begin the Storyboard when the Canvas is loaded. This is accomplished through the use of a Trigger

Animation will be covered in Chapter 4 of my upcoming book "Silverlight 1.1 in Action".

I want to apologize to anyone who has been trying to access code samples over the past couple of weeks. I use StreamLoad to host my code samples and they have had some problems over the past couple of weeks. Everything seems to be working better now. If the problems persist, I will look into an alternative solution.

Project Information
Source Code:	here
Requirements:	Silverlight 1.0

Silverlight 1.1 in Action - Blend

I would like to begin this post by SINCERELY thanking everyone that posted a comment on the last post. Your comments were sincerely helpful and provided valuable insights.

After reviewing all of the comments, I wanted to provide an update with the direction that I think (no guarantees) I am going to take in regards to incorporating Blend within my "Silverlight 1.1 in Action" book.

Today, I thought of a different approach which I think is a happy medium between the two options mentioned in the last post. I believe I am going to end each chapter in the first part of the book with a section called "Blending It All Together". This section will add value by:

• Giving readers the option of learning Blend as they progress through the book
• Keeping the focus of each chapter squarely on Silverlight
• Reiterating chapter contents in an interactive, optional fashion.

I'm going to play around with this to see how it works, but I'm pretty excited about it. It feels right.

Also, somebody asked, "when will the book be available?" As of right now, I have completed approximately 6 or 7 chapters. Because the book is targeting Silverlight 1.1 the availability of the book will be dependent upon the timeline of the Silverlight 1.1 release. The book is targeting Silverlight 1.1 because, this is the version that provides the powerful .NET Framework. At the moment Silverlight 1.1 is in an Alpha state so it is difficult to squarely answer the "when" question.

I want to make sure I am providing quality content that you can use. I plan on providing Chapter 1, for free, on this blog very shortly. I know this does not squarely answer the "when" question, however, if I were to give an estimate, I would say an electronic version will be available in October with a printed version being available around the February timeframe. Please bear in mind this is only an estimate.

Disclaimer: The items discussed regarding the Silverlight in Action book are merely thoughts and will not necessarily be in the final version of the book.