Web Application

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.

Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 RC0

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight, Web Application

So it’s getting there.

Today Scott Guthrie announced the RC0 release, along with some commentary on what’s new in that.  The bet has to be that the final release (RTW) will be on or before PDC 2008 at the end of October.  You can get the goodies on the silverlight.net site.  Note that it’s only a release for developers (using VS2008) and includes the runtime, but it’s not intended for public deployment – it’s a pre-RTW testing opportunity for developers.  There’s also a Blend 2.0 SP1 preview to target RC0.

Anyone with the 2.0 Beta 2 or 2.0 RC0 runtimes should get an auto update to 2.0 RTW when it’s available.

Windows Live Mesh Gives Legs or Wheels to Microsoft Sync and Auto PC

colinizer Desktop Application, Gadgets, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Server Application, Software As A Service, Web Application, Web Service, Windows Live, Xbox, Zune

Microsoft Sync has appeared in some Ford vehicles and is apparently coming to at least two other manufacturers soon.

It amazes me how utterly appalling the uptake is of Windows in the car industry.

Microsoft Sync with a Microsoft’s Live Mesh client opens up the ability to take contacts, music, continuous user experiences (such as phone calls, paused music and podcast bookmarks), to your car.

Combine that with a ‘Windows Live PC’ running on an ‘Xbox portable’ or Zune in the mesh as I’ve mentioned in this series of posts on Live Mesh, and you can really see the magic of software plus services coming together for a seamless user experience.

A ‘Windows Live PC’ gives the UMPC, ‘Microsoft PC’ or Xbox Portable a Future

colinizer Desktop Application, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Server Application, Sheep, Silverlight, Software As A Service, Software Development, Web Application, Web Service, Windows Live, Xbox, Zune

In this series of posts I’ve talked about my concept of the ‘Windows Live PC’ as the trojan strategy in Microsoft’s Live Mesh.

I’ve talked about how such a virtual PC could be available on an Xbox 360, a Mac or other platforms.

One of problems with the Microsoft UMPC initiate has been that cost of PC capabilities in a small form-factor, and the need to up the component cost to provide Vista in that form factor.  This has made many UMPCs (so far built not by Microsoft, but by IHVs) more expensive than many notebook computers and with less power at the same price.

With my concept of the ‘Windows Live PC’ and minimal SSD storage, the UMPC could stop growing in power (and energy consumption, resulting in longer battery life) and just turn into a ‘Windows Live PC’ client.

In previous posts I suggested that such a client doesn’t have to be very powerful.  I also said that the xbox 360 is good enough.  In fact the original xbox is likely good enough too in many ways – even perhaps a PS2 or PS3!!

How about a PC the size of a Mac Mini or the size of a Zune?

What if Microsoft sold its own UMPC with SSD storage, the form-factor of something like a Samsung Q1 Ultra but not much processing power – how about an Xbox portable?

An Xbox portable would be the ultimate convergent future of Live Mesh, Xbox, Xbox Live, ‘Windows Live PC’, Xbox portable, WPF, Remote App, Windows Server 2008, Windows licensing, ISV solution channel, etc. 

Robbie Bach, J Allard, Ray Ozzie, Bob Muglia, Steve Ballmer & Bill Gates – take a look at this series of posts on Live Mesh – I know what you’re up to 🙂 and if you’re not then you should be – it’s a vision I want to be involved in one way or another from the outside or the inside…

Add a ‘Windows Live PC for Mac’ to your Live Mesh with Silverlight

colinizer Desktop Application, Internet-based Service, Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Mobile Application, Server Application, Sheep, Silverlight, Software As A Service, Software Development, UMPC, Web Application, Web Service, Windows Live, Xbox

In this series of posts I’ve introduced the idea of a virtual ‘Windows Live PC‘.  I’ve talked about how your Xbox could be the ubiquitous PC in your household without any software application installations, thanks to a potential expansion of the currently disclosed Web Desktop (storage service) in Microsoft Live Mesh, with the addition of RemoteApp from Windows Server 2008.

Silverlight 2.0+ is the SUPER TROJAN HORSE onto the Mac, Linux and I believe there could be more platforms to come (see next post…)

Some developers may already be wondering why they should bother with HTML, AJAX, DOMs, DHTML, Javascript, etc. now that they can provide a hugely rich WPF Windows application in a browser using their existing .NET skills (plus WPF), and when that browser can be IE and Firebox on Windows, Safari on Mac, and whatever it is on Linux, without any of the nightmare that cross-browser standards-compatibility creates.

In previous posts I said that my notional ‘Windows Live PC’ will run (via RemoteApp) on anything that can handle the necessary technology stack with the xbox 360 being more than enough.  It seems to me that Silverlight 2.0 (or perhaps a later interation) could easily talk the Remote Desktop protocol.  Once that happens Microsoft can be selling you a ‘Windows Live PC’ subscription on your Mac and all those Windows-targeting ISVs can now license their product onto a Mac or Linux!!!

Note that there is already a Remote Desktop Client for Mac, but with the potential for Microsoft to offer a virtual ‘Windows Live PC’ running full screen, the Mac could fade into just a remoteapp client to a ‘Windows Live PC’ albeit a great new channel for the Windows and ISV software licensing – now that’s what I call leveraging!

Will You Get Caught Up in the Microsoft Live Mesh?

colinizer Live Mesh, Live PC, Microsoft, Sheep, Silverlight, UMPC, Web Application, Windows Live, Xbox

Over the next few posts I’ll explorer the trojan horse that (I believe) Microsoft is building, including in your living room, your car and on other platforms.

I’m sure many posts have been written about Mesh but I hope to succinctly tell you what direction this could all be going in, as I see it.

I’ve framed this as a trojan horse because Mesh appears to be aimed at the consumer or at least the mobile/home workers.  What it could turn into is a great online strategy for Microsoft and a real move to subscription based Windows everywhere!

It has been touted as a great platform for developers but my current feeling is that there will only be a handful of killer apps that can be built on top of this platform as currently explained, and Microsoft could well build those itself.  Keep ready this series for the real ISV opportunity…

Mesh was mentioned briefly at the Mix conference, which was a mostly empty delivery of news and rehash of Silverlight news.  See the Silverlight tag on this blog for a recap.  Announcing Mesh after the Mix may have been a timeline slip, or it may not matter since access to Mesh previews has been heavily limited.  Perhaps Microsoft has learned to temper excitement to new ideas… or the timeline slipped…

As currently explained Microsoft Mesh seems to approximate to FolderShare + FeedSync + Remote Desktop + Live Core Services.

Conceptually it’s a set of cloud-based management for shared folders, device membership and a central activity news feed.  XP and Vista machines can join your mesh (by installing components on each desktop – with support for other devices coming later), but your mesh starts with one special device up front – a web-based Live Desktop that has 5GB of storage – I’ll come back to this in subsequent posts, but for now think of it as virtual storage only (like Microsoft SkyDrive) with a Explorer-like web interface.  The cloud maintains information about notional ‘meshed’ folders that are made real on one or more real device file system and/or the web desktop’s 5GB.  A share appears on each device (selected for share) as a folder positioned in the file system by the user.

So, once you have devices in a mesh and folders appearing on devices you can start to work on your files on one computer and then pick up that work on another computer.  If that’s not good enough or you didn’t put a file into a ‘meshed’ folder then you can remote desktop (with addition of some NAT traversal goodness) to a device to place a file into a ‘meshed’ folder.

This is all very well if you computer is not in power-save, the file is not exclusively locked syncing is up to date, and the internet connection is available for syncing,

Got the idea?  No? Check out mesh.com for an introduction at this time.

Read on to more posts in this series…

My Kingdom for a Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 Go-Live License

colinizer Microsoft, Silverlight, Web Application

So you’ve got your Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 download and have synaptic marvels firing off about how to make a cool application with it, and perhaps some money.

On the Silverlight website you see that there’s a Go-Live license for this release – oh but there’s no information on how to get this.

Being a good boy you remember that there’s a software license with the SDK so you check it out – here’s a non-comprehensive sample:

a. You may install and use any number of copies of the software on your premises to design, develop and test your programs for use with Microsoft Silverlight.

b. You may not use the software to develop or distribute programs that work with the final commercial release of the Microsoft Silverlight 2, you must acquire the final release version of the software to do that.

c. You may also use the software to design, develop and test sample code and programs that you (i) make available to other designers and developers in source code form as examples of how to use Microsoft Silverlight or (ii) deploy to end users for non-commercial purposes. These license terms will refer to such sample code and programs as “Silverlight applications”.

Bummer – no commercially exploitive opportunities there.

But wait – there’s more:

If you want to use or distribute your programs for commercial purposes, you must do so under another agreement or an amendment to this agreement. For more information about applying for commercial use rights, please contact golive@microsoft.com.

Yippee… the words “golive” sound promising – time to send an email…

Then this:

Final-Recipient: rfc822;golive@microsoft.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Diagnostic-Code: smtp;550 5.1.1 User unknown

:(..

The next move will therefore to be to contact Mr Tim Sneath (evangelist for Silverlight, etc) or Mr Scott Guthrie (head silverlight man and circus performer wannabe – see mix08 keynote) directly…

For those that don’t know – you can’t just pick up the phone and call Microsoft and ask for the Silverlight team – you need to know someone’s name.

OK we have some names, but these are busy people, so best to try contacting them via their blog or possibly email first – these are busy guys after all. 

UPDATE:

Adam Kinney (formerly MS Channel9, now MS client platform evangelist with Tim) spots the post and forwards the issue to the appropriate people.

UPDATE 2:

Tim Sneath contacts me here and by email with a humble and helpful response – the golive@microsoft.com mailbox had an issue but should be working shortly.  A fantastic response experience.  Thank you Tim & Adam.