Blogged live – now completed.

Check out further PDC coverage

Background

• Everything is about 3 screens (desktop, phone and TV) and the cloud.
• Day 1 focus – Backend, i.e. Azure.
• Day 2 focus – Office, Silverlight & Windows focus on Day 2.
• Microsoft emphasis will be on IE + Silverlight for all 3 screens – desktop, phone and TV.

Announcements

• Not going to announce Windows 8 stuff in the interests of being ‘responsible’ and ensuring that what is disclosed is actionable – not ready for that yet.
• FREE Windows 7 ‘PDC laptop’ (Acer machine with Microsoft’s preferred software image, resistive multi-touch, accelerometer) available to all paying PDC attendees (!!!).  Conditions apply ;).  Is this Oprah?
• ‘3 weeks’ into IE 9 development – Standards progress (HTML 5); performance improvements in JavaScript; Hardware-accelerated DirectWrite/Direct2D Graphics & Text
• IE9 already on 32/100 on Acid3 test, up from 20/100 on IE8
• Channel9 videos on IE9 being posted today
• Silverlight will be used this Winter for Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and Winter Olympics
• Silverlight will be used by Bloomberg, National Instruments, Siemens (medical diagnostic imaging)
• Silverlight now on 45% of the world’s internet-connected devices (up from 33% in the summer)
• Silverlight 4 – Media, Business Applications, Beyond the Browser
• Silverlight 4: Webcam & Microphone on the machine (including raw access); multi-cast streaming; offline DRM support
• Silverlight 3 media framework on codeplex this week
• Next version for IIS Media Services will support IPhone clients as streaming client – see iis.net/iphone.
• Silverlight 4 introduces support for: printing; rich text; clipboard access; right click; mouse wheel; implicit styles; drag/drop; bidi & rtl; html hosting (including content as brush); commanding/mvvm; additional controls (including rich text)
• Silverlight 4 includes: compile once, use in both SL and .NET 4; UDP multicast (p2p); rest protocol enhancements; improved WCF support (inc. TCP channel support); RIA Services; works better with OData (Astoria)
• Visual Studio 2010 Silverlight support: WYSIWYG Design Surface (not news), XAML IntelliSense Improvements; Improvements for Data Binding, Layout & Styles; WCF RIA Services Integration
• Silverlight 4 offline includes: Windowing APIs; Notification popups; HTML hosting; Drop Target
• Silverlight 4 offline ‘elevated’ includes: Custom Windows Chrome, Local File System, Cross-Site Network; Keyboard in Full Screen Mode; Hardware Device Access; COM Automation of local objects (and location APIs).
• Silverlight 4: Twice as fast; 30% faster startup; new profiling support
• Silverlight 4 supported on Google Chrome.
• Silverlight 4 still under 5MB to install.
• Will ship the Silverlight 4 Facebook-integration demo as reference sample
• 70% of voted-for Silverlight 4 features (including 9 of top 10) included
• Silverlight 4 Beta – announced as NOW AVAILABLE!!!!!!! at http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/ and see http://channel9.msdn.com/learn include (what’s new)
• Silverlight 4 RC – No Date
• Silverlight 4 Final Release – No Date (I think perhaps March 22nd with VS 2010)
• Office 2010 Beta and SharePoint 2010 Beta general availably announced – http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx – no new announcements yet though
• Silverlight can use client-side object model to talk to SharePoint 2010
• Office 2010 Mobile available on Windows Market Place for Mobile on 6.5 devices
• Outlook Social Connector (part of Office 2010 Beta): Get social networking in Outlook with people info, history, activities; SharePoint 2010 Provider, Windows Live Provider in 2010; Linkedin Provider in 2010; has general SDK for making providers

Demos/Information

• Silly video from Windows Management Team about collecting feedback/error report information – new non-lethal torture methods? 😉 – complete with entertainment-only disclaimer
• Lots of telemetry data from the Windows development cycle – they even monitored stuff like number of presses on Start button and Aero Snap/Shake uses.
• They analyzed the audio of the audience at the last PDC – best reaction was to the new Windows 7 slider control for UAC levels.
• Various usability study videos cut out from live feed to protect IP.
• Various demos of W7 new hardware-supporting features – touch, sensors, hardware-accelerated encoding, directx 11, etc.
• Using yesterday’s IE9 build: Acid3 test results’; GDI vs. Direct2D smooth text rendering and animation; Bing maps jittery in software vs. smooth in hardware (60fps)
• Recap video of SketchFlow in Expression Blend 3.
• Silverlight 4 demos: video/image capture from local webcam; live preview of effects on webcam capture (incl. chromakey, bulge effect based on sound level, alien effect) using pixelshader effects; opensource barcode scanning with demo of scan of barcode goes to amazon page.
• Silverlight 3 Demo (not shown on live stream) of PVR functions including pause and slow motion on live and pre-recorded events.
• Silverlight 4 Demo of rich text control (including direct copy from grid selection in Excel)
• Silverlight 4 Demo of Bing, Flash and even Silverlight hosted inside Silverlight including using it as a live brush (!!!).
• Demo of VS2010 features for Silverlight 4: RIA data services; OData in data sources (and drag/drop to design surface); datagrid; implicit styles; new resource picker; new databinding picker; client-side validation from entity attributes
• SnapFlow Silverlight app that allows building of online business applications hosted on Azure: DirectBuy example; HR example
• Silverlight 4 Demo of elevated app integrated with Facebook including: local automation of Office; webcam photo upload; supper thumbnail listing performance; drag and drop of pictures; direct device photo import (!!!)
• Demo of SharePoint 2010 Development with race track engineering/telemetry app: SharePoint on Vista/Win7; Sandbox solutions; VS Debugging; Read data from Azure; SP 2010 & Excel 2010 Client Object Models in Silverlight; show telemetry against video playback