Microsoft is making its platforms capable of running those HTML5 solutions.  Currently this means IE9 on the Windows desktop and now also IE9 on Windows Phone 7.5 (now RTM’d and due on phones this fall).  We’ll likely see more native platform support for HTML5 solutions in Windows 8 with IE10.  Given the right use of HTML of course, a solution for Windows desktop and phone, should also work on a large range of HTML5-compatible desktop browsers and mobile devices.

Here’s the same hardware-accelerated HTML5 content running on IE9 and Windows Phone Mango.

Getting started with HTML5 development on Windows

So what do you need?  On the desktop you can get IE9 and start ‘coding’ in something as simple as Notepad(!).  Use the free included F12 developer tools to explore and even debug your solution.  For something a little more productive, you can go for the free Visual Studio Web Developer 2010 Express SP1 largely for the HTML editor support and test web-server, plus you’ll want the community-based Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio SP1 for IntelliSense support.  For testing on Windows Phone, go to http://create.msdn.com to get the latest Windows Phone Tools/SDK (currently Windows Phone SDK 7.1 Beta 2) to be able to run the emulator on your machine which includes the mobile browser.  If you are not connecting to any web-based data services, or you are connecting to existing services, you may not need any other tools, but you’ll probably want the jQuery library to be more productive with your JavaScript.  Want some great slides on jQuery (from a Microsoft guy)?  Download Joe Marini’s Mix 2011 jQuery bootcamp slide deck.

Doing rich HTML5 stuff

The easiest way to learn about new HTML5 is to see some in action and check behind the scenes.  To demonstrate the great HTML5 and hardware-accelerated capabilities of IE9 on the Windows desktop and Windows Phone, Microsoft created two ‘testdrive’ sites.  They include some great and diverse examples as well as links to useful resources.

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive for IE9 on the desktop

http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/mobile (which works on the phone and the desktop)

Detecting desktop vs. mobile browsers

One of the key issues to tackle when creating an HTML5 application that will work on the desktop and on mobile, is getting the right layout experience for the screen size, ideally using the same markup.  CSS3 Media Queries are a great solution here.  The test site includes an example of this (see entry in screenshot above).  In addition I’d suggest watching this video from Mix 2011 as well as this blog entry from the Windows Phone team (by the same Joe Marini that did the jQuery bootcamp at Mix).

Dealing with down-level browsers/capabilities

Of course a good solution should deal gracefully with down-level browsers and missing HTML5 capabilities, especially given that the specification is still in flux.  On many existing websites, this is still handled on the server side by looking at the User Agent string provided by the browser application, and delivering browser-specific content.  In the new client-side world, it’s often better to detect the browser capabilities in the client code and enact progressive enhancements to the user experience based on what specific features the browser has.  If the browser cannot do some of the new HTML5 goodness, you may want to consider a ‘Polyfill’.  To help detect browser capabilities, there’s a library called Modernizr, and a number of Polyfills available to handle missing capabilities that Modernizr can detect.

I hope this has given you an idea of how you can start to test drive HTML5 experiences and development on the Windows desktop, upcoming Windows Phone 7.5/Mango phones and beyond on to other ‘HTML5-ready’ browses and devices.

This first came up 3 years ago and I blogged about it asking Will That New Electricity Meter Make you Poor and Fat?  It’s going to effect more and more people over time.  Let’s explore if I and perhaps you too, will end up paying more, or doing things to avoid paying more (like eating later at time) or working at home in more humid conditions during the summer…

That electricity meter was installed, has been feeding data to the electricity company – more on that in a moment – and they are ready to start complicating my bill.

Below is a chart showing the current rates (same all-day all-year, increasing after a level of consumption) vs. the new rates (changing over the day and the year).  It also shows how the rates and time-slicing has changed from the original proposals in 2008 to the rate that will go into effect in 2011.

For the visually inclined – here’s how the new 2011 rates work in a pie-chart as published by the electricity company.

I few things to note:

• Rates have obviously gone up a bit in 3 years – 36% on regular rates – as horrible as that is, let’s ignore that.
• The break point for higher rates has come down from 2000kWh to 600kWh – so paying the higher rate more quickly – let’s ignore that too.
• The average rate for a summer day on the new rates is 7.85c/kWh assuming constant rate of usage through the day.  This is higher than the current starting 6.8 rate and as high as the 7.9c/kWh rate.  Whether the real average rate is higher or lower for you, really depends therefore on your weekday daily-usage patterns.

The flyer includes the annoying statement: "In a 168-hour week, only 30 hours are at on-peak times.  There are three-times as many hours at off-peak periods."  This is annoying because, it’s of now benefit unless one can pick when the on-peak times are – the rates are most expensive at in-opportune moments for many – and it doesn’t mention that for 50% of week days (or 36% of the whole week), rates are now higher.

Let’s dig in to see what the consequences may be:

Some possible bill differences moving to the new rates for various power usage:

• To cook dinner, now costs more during weekdays: 8.9c/kWh compared to 6.8c/kWh (if you haven’t used up the 600kWh), that is unless, you are prepared to cook after 7pm and eat even later (and potentially get fatter) or pre-cook much of your food during off-peak. However, realistically across the week and year that’s (say 2kW for 0.5 hour in an oven = 1kWh) 2.1c per day more x 125 days (summer) + 3.9c per day more x 125 days (winter) – 0.9c per day less x 100 days = $6.60 per annum more. That’s not so bad, but what else do I have running that will now cost more…
• At one extreme – to operate air-conditioning at home (if you are at home during the day) now costs considerably more: 10.7c/kWh compared to 6.8c/kWh.  If the A/C is on 50% of the time (wild guess) from 7am to 7pm for 2 months at 3kW, that’s 3kWh hours at 2.1c more + 3kWh at 3.9c more x 5 days x 8 weeks = $7.20 more for the summer.  This doesn’t include the fan motor.
• In middle may be things like using the dryer which could be more or less going forward depending on your schedule.
• Anything that is a constant all-day, e.g. stuff-plugged in on standby, or the fridge, etc. is going to cost you more on average.  I use between 35kWh (winter) and 66kWh (summer) per day.

Real data check:

The new networked meter has been collecting data for a while and as a customer, I can go to the company’s website and check out my actual house usage.  So, we can actually see where the majority of my usage is, and therefore if my bill will be going up as a result of these new time-of-use rate on my existing household pattern…

They provide pie charts and bar graphs with numbers, but also exports to PDF & Excel. 

So for July so far, my average is: 7.4c/kWh which is higher than the current 6.8 (and a bit lower than the 7.9 for over 400kWh).

Off-Peak – 63%; Mid-Peak – 16%; On-Peak 21%

Extrapolating my online consumption of kWh the 21 days of July to 31 days and comparing the cost using my real average 7.4c rate to the cost with the current 6.8c (and 7.9c over 600kWh), I’d be paying $5 more in July under the new scheme.  My estimate of $7.20 more for 2 summer months of A/C didn’t look too shabby.. 

Conclusions:

• So, with no change in usage, the new plan does costs me more ($5+ more a month in the summer), but considering that a gas-powered furnace fan doesn’t do much more work in the winter and there’s no A/C requirement, it’s not looking like like it’s going to be a huge amount more for the whole year – perhaps $50 a year more – well see.
• Have A/C during the day?  You have to pay more to keep it the way you like it or turn down the thermostat to not pay more.
• Cooking dinner? The cost of doing this before 7pm goes up so you have to eat later (potentially less healthy) or pre-cook cook during off-peak or pay a little more over the year.  
• You will pay more over the year for all those 24-hours-a-day constant drain things you have plugged in.
• You could end up going either way for things like using an electric clothes dryer, depending on when you end up doing those things.  If you already do a lot of this over night or on the weekend, and you don’t have A/C (or other major power draws) on much during the day, you may see your bill stay the same or go down.
• Psychologically, I think some people may temporarily change their habits to avoid larger bills initially, but end up going back to their previous routine and paying a little more.

Next week will be an awesome week in Montreal.  DevTeach, the premier level-300/400 developer conference in Canada is on from Tuesday 31st to Thursday June 2nd.  This includes a complete additional MobileTeach track around Android, iPhone & Windows Phone. 

Not only that, but I’ll be running the 1-day post-conference training session on Friday dedicated to Windows Phone. 

This week Microsoft announced news about the upcoming Windows Phone ‘Mango’ release that really seals the deal on possibly the greatest smartphone user experience to date and enhances arguably the best mobile developer experience even further.

In this comprehensive 1-day post-conference for the agile mind, I’ll start by showing attendees (familiar with .NET), how to create a Silverlight application from scratch using the MVVM pattern (including advanced features like a templated items control and a custom panel), making design decisions for the phone and how to get an application published.  We’ll then dive into the platform features, figure out data access, sensors, location and notifications, conquer storage and tombstoning and wrap up with other new major Mango features.  Attendees will get access to samples.

Introduction

From 0 to published WP7 MVVM Silverlight app including:

• Development Tools
• Silverlight Development
• MVVM
• Data Binding
• Timers
• ItemsControl
• Custom Layout Panel
• DataTemplates
• Phone UI Design
• Marketplace policies

Accessing device features including:

• Input
• Shell Integration
• Sensors
• Location

Getting data and notifications from the cloud including:

• Data Access
• Building Phone-compatible Services
• Notification Services

Application Lifecycle & Tomb-stoning

Local Data Storage (including isolated storage, 3rd party and Mango options)

Other new major ‘Mango’ features

You can add on that extra bumper day to the 3-day main conference price at a discount or purchase direct 1-day access for $399.

As if that’s not enough, I’ll also be doing a demo in the conference keynote and a session on Silverlight 5 features in the conference Silverlight track (which I also lead).

Hope to see you there!

I’d seen the Firestarter demo, but I recently learnt about another aspect of this solution.  It would be reason enough to mention Dayforce because they use Silverlight for a rich client-powered experience.  Another reason to mention it, is that it also uses Windows Azure, a technology for which I have created and delivered training at Microsoft’s request.  The Windows Azure Platform is both an awesome platform and service for high availability and scalability and easy provisioning in the cloud or in a hybrid combination with on-premise system.

Dayforce epitomizes the kind of offering that is well suited to the platform.  They wanted to provide solutions that demanded zero IT maintenance for their customers and a scalable path as their customer base grew – they now have around 40 customers with some 150,000+ users.  Using Azure, adding more customers or users now involves merely deploying more Windows Azure instances with a few mouse clicks, rather than buying/licensing, racking/provisioning and adminstering servers.  Hosting the application on Windows Azure hosted services means running the services in an IIS environment that is great for hosting WCF-based services to which their rich Silverlight client can connect.  It’s a SaaS solution with a rich-client plus! 

This kind of Silverlight-Azure combo is the kind of thing I expect to see in droves with other successful offerings in the future.  Since Scott Guthrie is moving over to be a VP for the Azure platform, this awesome-sauce (hi John!) combination will no doubt get even better.

Want to know more about Dayforce?

About Dayforce – Dayforce offers a complete workforce management solution with functionality that includes time and attendance, labor scheduling, labor forecasting, labor budgeting, task management and employee self-service. The company has made waves in workforce management with a vastly superior user experience, a much faster application, and significantly greater business value.
In addition to being named one of Deloitte’s Companies-to-Watch, Dayforce has been named the winner of the Top HR Product of the Year by Human Resource Executive® magazine, the winner of the Microsoft BlueSky Award for Innovation Excellence, and one of the CIX Top 20 Innovative Companies. For more information, please visit www.dayforce.com.

Let’s do the FAQ thing…

So you’ve been hired by Microsoft? No.

You’re an MVP.  So this is another award like that? No.

Is it something like a Microsoft Certification? No.

Teasing pause.  Being a Regional Director is a role, external to Microsoft, but working closely with Microsoft, that Microsoft invites select external people to undertake under contract.

How much does the role pay? Nothing.

Do you get any specific benefits? "… working closely [very closely] with Microsoft… " at many levels,  a presence on http://theregion.com, various other invitations, offers and program awards, and working with fellow program members.

How many RDs are there in the world? Right now, a little over 125 (see http://theregion.com) and the program has been around for many years.

Can I apply to be one? No.  You have to be invited.  Start by getting to know your local Microsoft Evangelist/Advisors.

What are the attributes of someone invited to become an RD.

From http://theregion.com (the official site for RDs)

Regional Directors are members of an elite, worldwide group of technology thought-leaders known for their national and international speaking tours, their authorship of books, articles and blogs, and their business acumen. Regional Directors are well-versed on the totality of the software industry. They are recognized for their achievements in communicating the benefits of emerging technologies.

and further qualification…

RDs are seldom specialized around a single [can be multiple] technology, but rather are well-versed on the totality of the software industry. Regional Directors have a strong affinity for emerging technology and are known to be early adopters of Microsoft products and technologies. Around the globe, RDs provide strategic technical direction for their business community.

So what tasks does the ‘role’ entail?

RDs start by working their regular day to day careers with employers or customers.  On top of that, or in the course of doing that, they evangelize Microsoft technologies and products through various channels, either of their own volition or sometimes at Microsoft’s request.  This may involving blogging (duh!) or other communication mediums, tweeting, meeting with customers, speaking at events, attending conferences, meeting with Microsoft teams and executives , and advising companies or other institutions, etc.  RDs also bring valuable and trusted community and industry insight back to Microsoft.

In the last couple of monthly, I’ve been extremely busy lately with work and RD/MVP stuff.  I have a few blog series coming up around WP7, HTML5 & Silverlight, onto which you may want to keep an RSS reader tuned…

On day 2 of Microsoft’s Mix 11 conference, they explain how they will (in May) be “Delivering happiness” to Windows Phone developers. New Windows Phone end-user features will be announced at a later date.

Opportunity

Ecosystem

· Nokia will be bringing mobile billing expertise

Countries

· 16 more languages

· Developers in 38 (up from 30) countries can register to publish applications

· Phone users in 35 (up from 16) countries will be able to purchase apps

Discoverability

· New Program list – has the ‘long list’ initial letter jump buttons, a search button (inc. access to marketplace search in the results)

· Marketplace – Separates Apps, music, & Podcasts (US this fall)) and shows more details in list with publisher/price/rating

· Marketplace App page has a pivot: details, reviews, screenshots, related

· One-click install for free apps

· Auto-nav to apps list after install

· Search Extras – A Bing Search result can have extras deep linking into an app

Capability

Browser

· Browser uses same IE9 code-base for HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3

· Address bar at the bottom

· Background audio for HTML5 in browser (use phone controls too)

· H.264 video in video tag in full screen with controls

Phone integration

· Sockets

· SQL CE Database with ORM and Linq to SQL

· More launchers & choosers (inc. deep link to directions)

· Better access to contacts and calendar

· Pin to start of application deep links

· Raw camera access

· Access to compass

· Access to gyro (new optional hardware coming this year)

· Motion Sensor API (for ease of using compass and gyro)

· Ringtone API

Multi-tasking:

· Fast app switching – apps are suspending, and only terminated if necessary

· Background audio from apps (leveraging the standard phone media controls)

· Background downloads

· Setup alarms

· Live tile updating including animations

· “Live agents” occasionally run by a battery friendly scheduler (with user control of which ones can run this way) – gets events and can get location

Dev Experience:

New emulator features for Accelerometer (with 3D model of position) and location (with Bing maps input)

Performance improvement (for list)

· Scrolling and input

· Image decode

· Garbage collector (no pausing)

· Memory usage

Built on Silverlight 4 including RichTextBox

Local Database using SQL CE with ORM and LINQ to SQL

Can compose UI with Silverlight and XNA

Profiler (still free)

This year’s Microsoft Mix 11 conference is taking place from April 12th to 14th in Las Vegas.

I have 4 sessions proposals that have been selected for voting by the Mix panel, and with your help, I can present them at the conference for you to see in person or for free on-demand shortly afterwards.

As well as from commercial projects and published articles/shows, these sessions are based on my expertise as a Microsoft MVP for Silveright, a workshop trainer for Microsoft on the Windows Azure Platform & the developer of the first WP7 training bootcamp delivered across North America.

To vote for sessions by Feb 4th…

For each of the web links below, click on each one and then vote by first clicking on all of the animal pictures of the indicated type (usually cats awww) and then clicking “vote for this session”.  Repeat for each of the 4 links.  The picture clicking thing is to make sure you are human and not a cheating robot of course.  If you select the wrong animation by mistake, you can click it again to unselect it.

Thank you for your interest and support!

0 to Phone App in 60 Minutes (based on a popular TechDays session)

Windows Phone 7 devices are out there. Will you have an application in the marketplace this year? The tools are free to download but it helps to get a jump-start to get moving. Do you understand the MVVM design pattern and how it applies to Windows Phone? Would you like to see how it’s done from scratch? Come along and see Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, show you how to build an application step-by-step and answer questions along the way.

Getting to grips with MVVM on Windows Phone

You’ve downloaded the phone tools and created your first project. Now you’re venturing into the other project templates and have found all kinds of extra xaml files, bindings and classes. You’re in the world of MVVM architecture and you feel like you’ve fallen down the rabbit whole. The MVVM patterns in the templates are there to leveraged, but you need to know how to work with it. In this session Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, will cover the MVVM concepts, the templates and go beyond viewing data to using commands and explaining key choices.

Windows Azure Platform as the backend for Windows Phone experiences

The launch of Windows Phone has been a source of much interest and developer enthusiam. There are 1,000s of appplications in the Windows Phone Marketplace. However, not many of those applications interact with a service created by the same developer. In this session, Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, will show you how the Windows Azure Platform is a natural backend for Windows Phone experiences and how to use the various components.

On-Premise Data to Cloud to Phone – Connecting with Odata

You have corporate data to disseminate into the field, or service records that need to be updated in the field. How can you quickly make that data accessible from your on-premise system to Windows Phone users? Come take a look at OData with Microsoft MVP for Silverlight and leading WP7 trainer, Colin Melia, and see how you can expose data and services into the cloud and quickly connect to it from the phone, from scratch

These are 4 of just 14 sessions by Canadian-based developers highlighted by Microsoft Canada.  You can vote for all to 10 in total.

If you do this in Canada by Dec 31^st 2010 and tell Microsoft Canada about it (see below), Microsoft will give CDN$25 to your nominated user group AND send you a $25 gift card too!!

Let’s get a few questions out of the way first…

Is the Windows Azure Platform (and this post) for Developers or IT Pros?

It may not have seemed like it at first, but it’s most definitely for both, with a powerful set of tools for developers and a set of infrastructure tools for IT Pros. While I’m a hands-on software architect, I’m also a CTO, and that means making decisions from the view-point of an IT Infrastructure/Support (aka IT Pro) guy. The platform provides a fairly clean hand-off point between roles and this post is from the point where the person with IT Pro role should be involved.

Why bother?

The platform provides highly agile, scalable and available hosting of web sites/applications and storage, as well as a highly available database at competitive prices. There are also options to bridge the public and private cloud. It’s offered as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) with APIs and tools to automate provisioning, scaling and monitoring of applications.

There’s a concern that IT Pros will be somewhat ‘replaced’ by such a programmable hosting platform, but I’d say that forward-thinking IT Pros will embrace this platform as another offering in their arsenal of infrastructure capabilities. One of the sessions for IT Pros at the recent Microsoft Canada TechDays 8-city tour, was an Azure session about what the cloud means to IT Pros – it was packed out in several cities. In 15 minutes you too could have the head start you need.

Will it cost anything?

Microsoft is offering free trial offers for the platform. If you follow this guide today and closely follow instructions you will not be charged anything to go through this exercise.

What is “Windows Azure” anyway?

“Windows Azure” specifically is the cloud-hosted compute service component of the Windows Azure Platform that can run IIS-hosted applications (including ASP.NET applications and FastCGI-compatible parsers like PHP), Windows-Service-like applications and even your own Windows Server 2008 R2 VM. It comes will the ability to scale to multiple instances in minutes and includes automatic load balancing features.

That’s enough questions… let’s just get on with it! I’ll try to answer likely questions as you go.

Getting Ready

Before you sign up for some fun, you’ll need a Windows Live ID.

Live IDs are most usually thought of as being for personal services like Hotmail, Messenger or Xbox LIVE, but they are now increasingly being used on Microsoft’s business-services-related properties.  Given that, it’s probably a good idea to NOT use your personal Live IDs (that you may have to hand to someone if you leave!), but create business-specific ones that can be shared by people in the same role if necessary (e.g. accounting).  The Live ID you use here will be for both the subscription administrator and the primary service administrator.  You can also add additional Live IDs for service administration.

I suggest making one just for this by going to http://www.live.com/…

… clicking on Sign Up…

… and completing the form with a suitably strong password (of course!).

You are now ready to sign up for your Microsoft Online Services account and Introductory Special offer offer in one go.

Be sure you have the time (15 to 30 minutes) to complete this guide in one go so that you are not charged anything, but still get to experience Windows Azure administration.

So, let’s move on to…

Signing up at the Windows Azure Platform Portal… at http://www.azure.com

Click on "Sign up now" or go to "Purchase"->"Buy now".

You’ll see the Introductory Special that will let you play around for free just enough to try it out. I’ll explain what’s relevant in the offer for this guide as you go along.

You’ll see that there are a number of other discounted packages available as well as special pricing for Microsoft Partners and larger free trial offer for MSDN subscribers.

So, go for that Introductory Special, and click on Buy…

In the next 4 steps you are doing the equivalent of building/buying your own data center premises but without it costing you anything!!

Sign in with the Live ID you have created and you’ll end up at Step 1…

Complete this page as the entity (self or company representative) who will administrator the subscription and the services included (Windows Azure, Storage, SQL Azure, AppFabric, Data Transfer), if only temporarily. Only tick the two boxes if you want to.

Click Next onto step 2…

You should give your subscription a name, like “Intro Offer Test”. Once you get to the management portal, you’ll see that name there. View the agreement, click the box to say that you agree if you do, and click Next onto step 3…

OK… so the scary-looking part now. The Introductory Special includes an amount of free services, but if you go over the defined limits, then obviously you have to pay for that. TO BE CLEAR, if you follow this guide correctly and follow all instructions (as of today) you should not end up being charged for anything! I can tell you that I have had an account for a year and never been incorrectly charged and have used my personal credit card on at least one account. NOTE: you are not using any chargeable services just by signing up, so there’s nothing to bill you for at this point. ‘Do the business’ and click Next onto step 4…

Read the agreement and privacy policy and then check to say you agree to the subscription agreement if you do. Click Purchase to continue and get your confirmation…

Click Finish and you are now sent to a ‘provisioning in progress page’…

In a few minutes (typically 1 or 2), you’ll be redirected to your ‘virtual data center in the cloud’ ready for…

Deploying an Application Using the Management Portal at http://windows.azure.com

The portal uses a Silverlight application, showing Microsoft’s commitment to Silverlight as a rich application platform. If you don’t have Silverlight installed you can either quickly install it, or use the old style admin interface (which isn’t covered here).

This is your administration portal. Not all platform services have been integrated here yet, but you can stay here for Windows Azure specifically.

Now we’re going to create a Hosted Service, by clicking on "New Hosted Service"…

This is akin to setting up a FQDN (under the cloudapp.net domain) in DNS and a load balancer (without ordering, installing or configuring either!).  Fill out the form as shown, but you need to enter a unique prefix (and will be told if it’s already in use).  For a production application/site under a specific domain (e.g. mydomain.com) you would set up a CNAME record (e.g. myapp.mydomain.com) to point to the FQDN you have asked for, but you don’t need that for this exercise.

You can pick a specific data center to have your service run it, as shown.  Alternatively you can also create an ‘affinity group’ that can be used across multiple platform services (e.g. hosted app, plus storage, plus database) to ensure they are co-located in a single data center.  Think of this like VLANing everything together.  Using a single affinity group across servies also ensures that you are not charged for data transfer between components.

Note that you can do a lot more in this step all at once, but you should select "Do not deploy" in this case to follow the steps more manually below.

Click OK and in less than 30 seconds you should see the status shown here…

The certificates node is provided if you want to upload SSL certificates for your HTTP sites/services.

Make sure you have clicked on the "SilverlightApp" Hosted Service line and click, "New Staging Deployment"…

Windows Azure provides a ‘Staging’ and a ‘Production’ slot allowing you to first privately test a version of your deployment before hosting it for production use under the FQDN you requested earlier. 

You need a packaged deployment file.  I’ve made one for you to use here.  Download and unzip it to find the two files you need to select with the Browse Locally buttons.  The application is an ASP.NET 4 website hosting a small Silverlight application that simply loads the Bing Maps Silverlight control.

The .CSPKG file is a ZIP file with all the binaries and a definition of service being created.  The  .CSCFG file contains configuration for the service that can be changed independently without rebuilding the package.  More on these files as you go…

The Deployment name is a label for keeping track of each deployment you do; you may want to use something that matches up to your internal publishing/version tracking like the release label from a source control system.

Click OK… at which point the ‘meter is running’ using up the free included time (25 hours) and then billable time, so you must remember to follow the shutting down steps below before your included time runs out to avoid being billed!

The provided .CSCFG file states that initially, you only want 1 instance (or VM) of the ASP.NET application.  If that 1 instance were to fail, the overall application would be down, so it would make sense (in production) to have 2 to have a chance of achieving high availability.  Hence this message stating that the SLA only applies if you specify 2.  You can say Yes to ignore this warning right now.  Because the .CSCFG file is independent from the .CSPKG file, it’s possible to change the number of instance on the portal later…

The screen will show updating status and further levels will become available to drill into…

until everything shows as "Ready"…

At this point, the application is redeployed and available. 

At this point the hours included in the Introductory Special are being used up -  you have 25 hours to use the application before you will be charged anything.  Be sure to follow the instructions below to remove it before then!

To be clear, you have just done, in about 5 minutes the equivalent of:

• Ordering, waiting for and receiving equipment
• Racking equipment
• Installing the OS
• Installing and setting up IIS Role
• Deploying web application files
• Configuring the web application IIS
• Configuring the load balancer
• Configuring a temporary FQDN

The UI includes a number of nodes in the tree you can explore to see what was deployed and its current status.

A .CSPKG file includes a definition of the ‘roles’ to be run under the Hosted Service.  There are different types of roles including Web Roles (things running under IIS including multiple sites), Worker Roles (Windows-Service-like application including native code) or VM Role (using an uploaded VHD).  The .CSPKG file can include zero or more of each type of role (and corresponding files).  It also defines the size that each role should be from the following choices:

This sizing is set by the developer of the application based on the likely running requirements of each role.  With the .CSCFG file and the management portal, you can perform scale-out by changing the number of instances.

The provided .CSPKG file defines a single Web Role of size ‘Small’ and the .CSCFG file says that you want just 1 instance (or VM). The .CSCFG file defines the number of virtual instances of the service components (known as ‘roles’).  In the management portal, "SilverlightMapWebApp" is the name I gave to the Web Role.

Let’s try the application!  Under DNS in the UI, is a GUID-based URL for launching the application in the staging environment.  Click on it, to see it running…

Note that after a few seconds you may see an error message.  This is simply because you have not signed up for a Bing Maps developer key and configured it on the application.  You’ll see how this works shortly if you want to give it a try.

For your trial enjoyment, the Introductory Special includes 25 hours with 1 small compute instance.  It also includes 500MB of data in and 500MB of data out, which easily covers this experiment, especially since the mapping imagery is data transfer from Microsoft mapping services to your PC, and not billable data transferred out of your hosted service.

Getting Microsoft Canada to give money to your User Group (by Dec 31st 2010)

If it’s before Dec 31st 2010 and your subscription is registered in Canada, you can get Microsoft Canada to donate CDN$25 to your chosen user group by sending a simple email.  Plus, they’ll arrange to send you at $25 gift card.

Send an email to cdnazure@microsoft.com. 

Include:

• The name of your nominated User Group as the Subject.
• A screenshot of the map application running in your browser (you know ALT-PrtScn) – be sure to show full address bar!
• Any feedback you’d like to give on your azure experience.

That’s all you have to do!

So something like this…

Monitoring, Scaling Up and Scriping

As an IT Pro, you’d probably like to see what’s going on with your deployments, so click on the "Deployment Health" items on the left…

You can see that everything is fine, but you are warned that you are not covered by the SLA with just one instance running.

In terms of additional monitoring there are several choices:

• You can Remote Desktop into a Windows Azure instance VM for specific investigation
• The Windows Azure instance is generating entries for the Windows Event log, IIS log, and application specific diagnostic log.  The developer of the CSPKG file can line things up so that logs are periodically dumped to Windows Azure Storage for all instances and retrieved by monitoring applications (currently 3rd-party or made by your developers).
• Also, future version of SCOM should include the ability to monitor Azure deployments.

You can improve our availability very quickly.  You can skip to "Going into Production" below if you want to skip this step.

Go back to the "Hosted Services", select the "Silverlight App" Hosted Service and click "Configure"…

This is where you get to manually edit the .CSCFG file or upload a replacement.  In this case you can change the instances count to "2" as shown.

Other settings may be exposed by the .CSPKG file you are given, and this is something you should work on with your software team.  In this case, a setting called MapKey is exposed.  As an additional exercise if you wish, you can go to https://www.bingmapsportal.com/ to get a free trial developer key to put in the value for MapKey which should make the map’s error message go away.

Click OK and watch as everything updates until you get to this start…  noting that you will then be using 2 small compute instances per hour so your included Introductory Special hours will now last no more 12 hours before you must shut it all down (as explained below) to avoid being billed.

You now have 2 instances running.

You have just (in about 5 minutes) done the equivalent of:

• Ordering, waiting for and receiving MORE equipment
• Racking it
• Installing the OS
• Installing and setting up IIS Role
• Deploying web application files
• Configuring the web application IIS
• Configuring the additional equipment on the load balancer

Your life could get much easier this way…

Note that developer of the .CSPKG can decide whether roles will restart as a result of setting changes, therefore maximising downtime.

If once of the instances were to fail, you would see this kind of thing in the Deployment Health section.

On the MSDN Code Gallery you will find a set of PowerShell command-lets available for download along with a guide and sample.  This is possible because the management portal exposes a REST-based API.  These can be used to remotely deploy, control and change CSCFG settings on Windows Azure.  The same API is also used by the tools UI in Visual Studio for developers. 

Going Into Production

At some point, you may decide that your application is ready for prime time.  To expose the application on the FQDN you originally requested, you need to put something into the production deployment slot.  You could use the "New Production Deployment" feature or as shown here, you can switch the Staging and Production slots by selecting the "SilverlightApp" Hosted Service and then click "Swap VIP"…

Click on OK and after a few seconds you’ll see this…

Automated load-balancer configuration.

The environment has now changed to "Production".  Since there was nothing in production before, there was nothing to swap with, so there is now no staging deployment.  The DNS name for the application is the FDQN you requested.  You can click on it to try it out…

Shutting Down and Removing The Deployment (aka don’t charge me for this experiment!)

This is a two-step process; be sure to do both things.

First, stop the VMs running the application by simply selecting the "Version 1" Deployment and click "Stop" and you’ll (within a minute or so) see this…

To not be charged you must also do this second step – deletion of the deployment.  Microsoft charges for deployed hosted service based on the number of instances of all roles in all slots even when the service is not running because by deploying something you are asking Microsoft to reserve the capacity such that you can click Start or Stop at will.

So you must now click "Delete" and within a minute or so you’re back to this…

… and you are no longer ‘running up the meter’.

If you wish, you can also Delete the "SilverlightApp" hosted service, which frees up the FQDN you selected.

Managing Your Subscription(s) at https://mocp.microsoftonline.com

As you were signing up for the service, you created an account with Microsoft Online Service.  You can go there and see the status of your account and any billing on the account.  Sign in with the same Windows Live ID and click Subscriptions…

Click on Home and then View my bills to see what you have been billed.  Note that this billing history may be time-delayed a few hours.

Here’s my billing record showing that following this guide didn’t cost me anything

You can contact Microsoft Online Services to request removing the subscription completely if necessary.

Summary

So now hopefully you’ve seen how powerful Azure is, deployed an application, seen how quickly it scales, removed the application(!), got some money donated to your nominated user group (if done early enough) and can see why it’s a good to have the experience.

There are other services to explore from the Windows Azure Platform including including SQL Azure (that’s part of your Introductory Special) – you can get that up and running in the portal in just 2 minutes and connect to it from SQL Server 2008 R2 Management Studio or even Excel!

Azure can form part of a great solution from the client (with Silverlight on the desktop, web or Windows Phone) to the cloud.  If you are looking for such a solution then get in touch with me or Ace of Clouds, to give you an expert hand with solutions or training from the client to the cloud.

Media features

• Video hardware decode – better performance; better on low-power-cpu devices that have a GPU
• Trickplay – watch video at faster speed while preserving pitch
• Power management – hold-off screensaver when full screen (until paused)
• Remote control – for 10ft experience

Also, IIS Media Service 4 was recently shipped (and is free) – live and on-demand smooth streaming to desktop, Windows Phone 7 and iPhone (via live trans-muxing) – enhancements to Expression Media Encoder to support on-demand/live streaming to devices – also now announced is support on Windows Azure

New application features

• Data binding – breakpoints and inspection in XAML bindings (!!); custom markup extensions (from WPF, great for MVVM); implicit DataTemplates; Ancestor RelativeSource (from WPF); binding and style setters (great for dynamic theme changes); DataContextChanged event
• Inter-layout Transitions for list change animations
• Networking – WS-Trust support; low-latency networking; MVVM-friendly data source, end-to-end support for complex types, Windows Azure support
• Text – clarity; multi-column text; character tracking and leading; full OpenType support; vector PostScript printing.
• Pivot add-on for SL4 will be part of SL5 – dynamic pivot is awesome
• 3D Graphics (!!!!) – Immediate-mode graphics API; fluid layout transitions; hardware 3D acceleration of models & textures
• 
• 
• Multiple Windows Support – with child windows
• P/Invoke – can now call Win32 APIs
• Enterprise Group Policy Support – get full trust out-of-browser features, but in the browser
• Automated UI Testing – record UI, generate code, re-test – awesome!
• Improved Profiling – memory, CPU, thread connection
• Improved startup time
• Hardware acceleration in IE 9
• 64-bit version

Release Schedule!!!

Silverlight 5 Beta – Spring 2011

Release – by end of 2011

Get more details from Microsoft:

Scott Guthrie’s blog – http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/12/02/announcing-silverlight-5.aspx

Tim Heuer’s blog - http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/12/02/silverlight-5-revealed-at-firestarter.aspx

As a Microsoft MVP for Silverlight, I’m delighted to see the future of Silverlight 5 unfolding quite nicely (and stunningly in the case of 3D hardware acceleration) as well as an emphasis on what great applications can be built today with the existing Silverlight 4 technologies.

Note that there are no preview/beta bits available to download at this time.