Silverlight

Microsoft Tech Days Canada

colinizer Azure, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Windows 7

Today was the 2nd and final day of Microsoft’ Tech Days conference in Ottawa (the 6th city on the 7-city tour).  I had the opportunity to speak about two great topics:

What’s new in Silverlight 3

This talk focused on new features in Silverlight 3.  It was clear that many people have yet to take a look at any version of Silverlight.  This made for a fun challenge – trying to explain new features, while also explaining Silverlight basics, and say how it compares to JQuery with HTML 5.  Ottawa’s government-worker-centric population may explain the results of my straw-poll survey with the audience.  The snow-storm in the morning made a little dent in attendance, and given the audience make-up, a general introduction session for Silverlight would likely have received a bigger audience (and would probably still do so a year from now when talking about what’s new in Silverlight 4).

Optimizing your apps for the Windows 7 user experience. 

This session seemed to get a very positive response, most likely due to the fact that the Windows API Code Pack is available which provides managed wrappers to the Windows 7 native APIs such that making use of new Windows 7 features (like the Taskbar) is practically trivial.

 

It was a great experience working with the Microsoft Canada guys and my friends in the community.  I look forward to doing so again next year on topics such as Silverlight 4, Azure, Office 2010, VS2010/.NET 4.0, and hopefully in multiple cities.

Silverlight 4 Beta Available

colinizer Microsoft, RIA, Silverlight, Silverlight 4

Oh yes – announced at PDC yesterday.

I think perhaps March 22nd with VS 2010 fir the RC or final at a squeeze.  According to Scott Guthrie, the RC may have more hardware accelerateion.

Silverlight 4 features:

  • Webcam & Microphone on the machine (including raw access); multi-cast streaming; offline DRM support
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Offline features include: Windowing APIs; Notification popups; HTML hosting; Drop Target
  • New offline ‘elevated’ features include: 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).
  • Twice as fast; 30% faster startup; new profiling support
  • Support for Google Chrome.
  • 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

Visual Studio 2010 Silverlight support: WYSIWYG Design Surface (not news), XAML IntelliSense Improvements; Improvements for Data Binding, Layout & Styles; WCF RIA Services Integration

Check out the PDC sessions (video showing up in the near future) on Silverlight 4:

Check out further PDC coverage

PDC09 Announcements – Day 2 Keynote

colinizer Cloud Applications, Desktop Application, IE 9, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Office 2010, PDC09, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Web Application, Windows 7

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

PDC09 Announcements – Day 1 Keynote

colinizer Azure, Cloud Applications, Desktop Application, Microsoft, Mobile Application, PDC09, Silverlight, Web Application, Windows 7

Blogged live – now complete – curiously Bob Muglia’s closing remarks were cut off on the live feed.  Very much looking forward to the Silverlight stuff tomorrow.

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.
  • Ray Ozzie wants you to bet on Windows 7, IE8, Silverlight, Windows Azure, SQL Azure, 3 screens and a cloud
  • Bob Muglia talks at length about moving existing applications to the cloud (‘move, enhance, transform’) – partnering with Avanade & Accenture
  • Cloud application aspects being covered at PDC Self-Service, Elastic, Service-Orientated, Federated, Scale-Out, Staged Productions, Always Available, Multi-Tenant, Failure Resilient

Microsoft Announcements

  • Azure platform going live Jan 1 2010, but no charging until Feb 1 2010 – this is not news btw
  • Azure projects are available in Visual Studio 2010
  • Windows Azure has RESTful service APIs to manage configuration
  • Windows Azure Pricing: $0.12ph (1×1.6GHz/1.75MB); $0.24ph (2×1.6GHz/3.5GB); $0.48ph (4×1.6GHz/7.0GB); $0.96ph (8×1.6GHz/14GB)
  • Windows Azure now supports fast CGI support, PHP, MySQL
  • Azure – auto geo-replication in pairs – 3 pairs (NA, EU, Asia) going live in Jan 2010
  • Azure Storage Updating features – entity group transactions, snapshot, copy
  • Azure Storage Accessing features – block blobs, page blobs, leases
  • Azure Storage Serving features – shared access signatures, custom domain names, content delivery network (CDN)
  • Azure Storage – X-Drives – NTFS-like drive access to cloud storage
  • SQL Azure – Fuller DB, T-SQL, Stored Procedures, ADO.NET, works against Excel, support from SQL Server Management Studio (2008 R2)
  • Some customers will be able to go live today including WordPress
  • Microsoft PinPoint – catalogue of products and services targeting developers and IT (showing in Azure portal and partner network, and later into online portal for IT)
  • Codename “Dallas” (completely on Windows Azure and SQL Azure) open catalogue for data (public and commercial) with uniform discovery, trial and licensing – touted as a game-changer
  • ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) also now known as OData.
  • Project “Sydney” – connects Azure platform to existing private data-centre services together
  • Windows Azure creatable images (with admin access) coming in 2010 (Windows base, customise, snapshot, deploy)
  • AppFabric (Windows Server Beta 1 available now & Windows Azure Beta 1 in 2010) – create high availability, scale-out, multi-tenant, manageable apps (especially using WCF and WF) covering caching, Workflow hosting, monitoring, service bus, service hosting, access control – formerly called “Dublin”?
  • Windows Identify Foundation RTM
  • Go-live license for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 & .NET Framework 4 beta 2 – this is not news
  • Oslo now SQL Server Modeling Services
  • The stack is now: Applications – Exchange/SharePoint; Dev Tools – VS; Programming Model – .NET Framework; App Services, Windows Server/Azure AppFabric; DB – SQL Server/Azure; OS – Windows Server/Azure; Management – System Center
  • System Center Cloud Beta in 2010
  • SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM in 2010
  • Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 RTM March 22nd 2009 – this is not news

Demos

  • Seesmic.com demo of Twitter client using Silverlight and for Windows with WPF – will become a platform soon
  • WordPress (who hosts 10 million blogs) demo on Azure and how it can scale easily
  • OddlySpecific.com (from creators of ICanHasCheeseburger, FailBlog & PunditKitchen) launched today on Windows Azure & SQL Azure – also can use CDN
  • Codename “Dallas” – Showing discovery (by catalogue); explore data with REST, AtomPub, etc. and Excel 2010 PowerPivot; demo of service proxy it can build for you; 3D (!!) demo of mars image exploration – underwhelming reaction from audience
  • US Federal Chief Information Officer – talking about democratising information (like GPS and NASA Pathfinder);  http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov; Career finder application on mobile device (via data.gov) – yawn (despite the profound implications)
  • Silly fictional video about the cloud starring Bob Muglia – groan
  • Azure Low-level access (Don Box & Chris Anderson) – Windows Azure application in low-level simple C++ (and assembler!); Azure SQL accepting T-SQL from SMSS to create pdc ‘talks’ table and insert rows; Show OData javascript app (using o-auth wrap to .NET Services Access Control Service) on ‘talks’ table
  • Kelly Blue Book (kbb.com – 14M unique per month in 2 data centres) Silverlight App (showing filtering and zooming) – showing flexible cost model with Windows Azure; less than 1% code-base change plus Azure config file; also using SQL Azure (using same mechanisms as before) and showing SQL Azure Data Sync – most scripted/stiff demo of the keynote.
  • Video of how customers can use Azure platform: Dominoes (peaks on Superbowl and Friday nights); Siemens; RiskMetrics
  • Project “Sydney” demo – connection of Azure application to private data-centre SQL database
  • Increasing functional of the Tailspin travel app (.NET 3.5) with .NET 4.0 and VS 2010 tools: showing VS 2010 multi-monitor; using ASP.NET MVC diagram; adding single sign-on quickly with Windows Identity Foundation (uses AD token service); new find-in-files window; client-side validation with ASP.NET MVC 2; Intellitrace shows trace (e.g. ADO.NET) and allow navigation back to code that produced the trace; add AppFabric to use distributed memory cache feature; automated web-app UI test(!) which shows that the memory cache improved performance; new Windows Workflow 4 designer; AppFabric exposes WF 4 through a web service automatically with tracking UI shown in IIS Manager; MSDeploy integrated with Visual Studio for each single-file publish/deploy (to staging/live)
  • Moving Tailsping travel app (as enhanced above) seamlessly to Azure; creating an app model with designer in VS 2010 by adding web role, AppFabric role and database role and associating with projects; published to Azure (using Windows Identity Foundation to allow federation of AD identity); use System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) to monitor Azure application and help check for SLA violations

Silverlight 4 at PDC09?

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight

Tomorrow (or Wed) we’ll find out if a Silverlight 4 beta (or preview) is unveiled.

Aside from the already mentioned offline DRM support, will it have fuller 3D model support or webcam/audio capture support?

Cross your fingers…

UPDATE: The Day 1 Keynote focused on backend stuff.  The Day 2 Keynote will focus on Windows 7, Office, Silverlight.

I blogged the Day 1 Keynote announcements here. 

Check out PDC coverage which will include tomorrow’s live blog of the Day 2 Keynote including Silverlight announcements – or follow me on twitter as it happens from around 11:30ET on Wed Nov 18th 2009.

Another Tools Set-Back With Silverlight 3

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight

I previously mentioned how limited the tools are in Visual Studio for Silverlight 2 – particularly the read-only design preview, compared to the full WPF editor, forcing coziness with XAML or learning of another tool (i.e. Blend).

Silverlight 3 was released today, and I wasn’t expecting a non-read-only editor (not until VS 2010), but I certainly didn’t expect what I found in the Silverlight 3 release notes (which of course I read after installing):

Design Preview Disabled in Silverlight 3 Tools

Due to performance and rendering issues, the preview window has been disabled in the Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008. The functionality of the XAML editor remains intact, including IntelliSense, error messages, and the ability to drag controls from the Toolbox into the editor. WYSIWYG XAML design can be done by using Expression Blend or Visual Studio 2010.

One step forward and another one back.

So it seems that to get visual editing I need to install the RC of Expression 3 or a Beta of Visual Studio 2010.

Working with pre-release or sub-par tools appears to be the norm these days.

There is also a noticeable lack of readily discoverable web-hosted live demos for Silverlight 3’s new features.  It would be helpful if the silverlight.net showcase allowed filtering by version feature use.

I’m wondering why SL 3 was released now instead of waiting for the tools to be ‘fixed’ (or at least for the 30 days to pass within which that they say Expression Studio 3 will be final)?  Are we going to find that SL 3 is pre-installed in Windows 7 next week?

There’s also this in the release notes which was also the case for beta versions of the tools, though not an unheard of arrangement with technology versions in VS (or worse – think BI tools):

Silverlight 3 Tools and Silverlight 2 Compatibility
Silverlight 2 projects cannot be created with the Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008. To create Silveright 2 projects, uninstall the Silverlight 3 runtime and the Silverlight 3 Tools from Add or Remove Programs and re-install the Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008.

It’s a good thing VPC/Hyper-V exists.

Mix 09 Microsoft Announcement Highlights

colinizer Microsoft, mix09, Silverlight, Web Application

See the ondemand version of the keynote for the details

Expression Web 3 – Coming soon
Includes SuperPreview for seeing preview of web content in different browsers even if not installed (using cloud services)
Standalone SuperPreview for comparing IE 6,7,8 available today in Beta

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 – Available today (for .NET 3.5 and VS 2008)

MVC update within the ASP.NET 4 & VS 2010 timeframe

Web Gallery for ISV web server applications

Web Platform Installer V2 – free from microsoft.com/web today
Installer for web servers making latest (from feed) Microsoft platform components and 3rd party gallery applications available in integrated setup UI

Commerce Server 2009 available now

Azure Sevices Platform – on track for commercial release this year

  • SQL Data Services becoming full relational database API
  • Fast CGI support also in Azure this week
  • .NET Full Trust support coming

Silverlight 1 & 2

  • 350 Silverlight installs
  • 200+ Microsoft Products & Websites using it
  • 10,000s of apps globally (inc. Ebay, NBC, Careerbuilder, Aol, Intuit, BSkyB, Yahoo Japan)

Silverlight 3 – Beta available today with VS tools at silverlight.net!

  • GPU hardware acceleration (Windows & Mac) – 3D transforms and pixel shaders on controls, images and video – not clear if 3D model rendering supported
  • New codec support (H.264, AAC, MPEG-4)
  • Raw bitstream audio/videop API
  • Improved logging for media analytics (ads and monetisation)
  • Deep linking, navigation and SEO
  • Improved text quality
  • Multi-touch support
  • 100+ controls available
  • Live library caching
  • Merge resource dictionaries
  • Style inheritance
  • Running outside of the browser with connectivity awareness events!

4.4MB download – actually 40k smaller than Silverlight 2!

Expression Blend 3 Preview available today

  • SketchFlow (for idea sketching of states and transitions)
  • Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator Import
  • Behaviours and live data (not needing code or VS to get thing running)
  • Source code control
  • Intellisense added

IIS Media Services (free download via Web Platform Installer)

  • Lowest TCO for making adaptive smooth media streaming available through a web server
  • Support for live streaming
  • Support for edge caching – akamai has smooth streaming products available
  • Using shipping Expression Media Encoder 2 to encode/publish video
  • Includes PVR like functionality through Silverlight 3 player for live pause, rewind, archive.

Silverlight 3 goes 3D

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight

Scott Guthrie has now mentioned on his blog that Silverlight 3.0 will include 3D support with GPU hardware acceleration.  Flash 10 was recently recently with hardware acceleration, Silverlight is at least 6 months behind, albeit with the superior programming system and potential ecosystem.

He also mentioned, that the next release will have the fuller design surface in Visual Studio – a key weakness that I mentioned and potential source of revenue for Microsoft from developers (needing to acquire Expression Blend) in the meantime.

H.264 video will also be in there along with other mysterious improvements yet to be announced.  I wonder if the long overdue video capture will be in there?

Silverlight 2 Visual Studio Tools Somewhat Limited

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight, Web Application

I’ve been following Silverlight since it was called WPF/E, before this blog started.

My main point is that unless you are happy to shell out for Expression Blend and learn a whole new tool, or you love experimenting with raw XML (albeit with some intellisense), you may become frustrated with the currently available Visual Studio offering for designing Silverlight 2 application. 

The Silverlight website page on getting started currently points to a download for Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (RC1) – yes, that’s a Release Candidate.  Update: The Tools are now RTW, but the design surface is read-only.

What you get is a split XAML/Design view.  You can edit the XAML or drag toolbox items onto the XAML, but you cannot manipulate the Design area, it is a preview area only and you have to frequently refresh it manually – i.e. it’s not a Design surface.  This is in contrast to the WPF application experience which is.

What is needed for a proper design surface, if you are willing to invest in learning a separate tool, is Microsoft Blend 2 plus SP1 which is US$499 (and included with an MSDN Premium subscription).  Many people from Microsoft (including the SVP for the developer division) have pointed out that you can download a 60-day trial for free.

Note also that Expression Studio 2 (which includes Blend) is now included in the software benefits for Certified and Gold Partners – see Brian Saab’s comment on Soma’s (MS DevDiv SVP) blog – which is great news/value for partners.

I’m quite happy playing with XML and learning Blend, and many other eager adopters may not have an issue either, but I believe these tool limitations could serve as quite a deterrent to some developers.

Perhaps the RTM version of the tools with have a proper design surface…?

Even if that is the case, Microsoft has spent a LOT of time talking about the fact that they now support Designers and Developers with a common project format and dedicated tools, however there isn’t a very solid and low-cost story for the huge number of small or single-man shops where most developers are also the designers.  I may write more about this situation in the future including the significant cost to get the whole experience…

Perhaps PDC will reveal something.

Update: at PDC 2008 they announced that Visual Studio 2010 will have the full design surface experience.  A long time to wait unless you are happy using the CTPs/Betas.  A toolkit of CTP/Beta-quality controls for Silverlight 2 was also released.