Web Application

Mix08 Major Silverlight 2.0 Announcements

colinizer C#, DLR, IronPython, IronRuby, JavaScript, Microsoft, mix08, Mobile Application, Silverlight, VB.net, Web Application

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 (formerly known as 1.1) is now available.

http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ (bottom of the page).

See the features matrix for overview of new features.

You can also get there:

  • Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008
  • Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK
  • Expression Blend 2.5 Preview

There is a Go-Live license for Silverlight 2 Beta 1

Sillvelight will be available on Windows Mobile and Nokia devices (S60/S40/Mobile Internet Tablet) – no availability given.

Silverlight uses a sub-set of WPF/XAML so you can easily create a full WPF desktop app from the same assets/code.

Mix 08 Keynote with Scott Gurthrie – Part 9

colinizer C#, Desktop Application, DLR, IronPython, IronRuby, JavaScript, Microsoft, mix08, Mobile Application, Silverlight, Web Application

Silverlight going mobile

Going to support Windows Mobile and non-Windows Mobile.

Demo of Mixer social app:

  • Mobile 6 device
  • App allowing you to find friends for a party
  • Aggregates twitter, photos and status
  • User ratings for venues over the night

Announcement of partnership with Nokia to put Silverlight on S60/S40 and mobile internet tablet product lines!!!

Finally something cool!

Shame about the boring SVP at Nokia reading his pre-recorded announcement.

Seems like Symbian 60 is the priority. 

Demo of WeatherBug app:

  • Nokia Symbian 60 and Windows Mobile device – same app
  • Weather icons and data
  • App done in 3 weeks
  • Animated snowy weather skin – a bit slow (‘tried to do it with Flash-Lite’ and didn’t work)

Nothing about availability for any mobile platform 😦

Mix 08 Keynote With Scott Guthrie – Part 6

colinizer Microsoft, mix08, Silverlight, Web Application

Silverlight Demo for Astin Martin website

The demo is about the experiences online, in the dealership and during ownership.

Website:

3D model of DBS car (fixed camera moves) – so 3D rendered into 2D factors – can change colours/parts.  Remember Silverlight 2.0 doesn’t do 3D polygons.

Deep zoom into 18GB photo of car interior.

Lots of video on ‘back of’ detail cards in carousel UI.

Dealership:

Samsung UMPC with full WPF application using XNA-based 3D-model with true 3D rendering.  UI on device and output on 2nd monitor.

Mix 08 Keynote With Scott Guthrie – Part 5

colinizer Microsoft, mix08, Silverlight, Web Application

Silverlight+Image Zoom/Pan Demo with Hard Rock (I hated the frozen crappy rip-off processed food I had there).

Seem-less image zoom in/out on 2 billion pixels of image.

So no need to look at memorabilia at Hard Rock now that I’ve seen it in detail 🙂  It will also be live at hardrock.com.

Zoom, zoom, yes… we get it.

There’s a toolkit for it.

Mix 08 Keynote With Scott Guthrie – Part 4

colinizer C#, CLR, DLR, IronPython, IronRuby, JavaScript, Microsoft, mix08, Silverlight, Software As A Service, VB.net, Web Application, Web Service

Silverlight 2 Details and Demo

Adds to Silverlight 1.0:

  • .NET language programming in Javascript, VB.Net, C#, IronPython, Ruby.
  • More to WPF UI Framework with animations, standard controls, layout, styling/skinning (visual tree templates) and data binding.
  • More network support including sockets.
  • Local storage.
  • High performance.
  • Small Download (4.3MB), Fast Install (6 to 10 seconds) – doesn’t need full .NET framework beforehand.

Open source license for included controls.

Shipping testing framework with 2000 open source unit tests.

Shipping today:

  • Visual Studio 2008 tools for Silverlight 2.0 preview – support for Silverlight 2.0 with intellisense (XAML and code) and debugging (on Windows or to Mac)
  • Expression Blend 2.5 preview – support for Silverlight 2.0

See Scott’s blog for more info.

Demo of building new AOL mail client in Silverlight:

Shows lots of control templating to show Halo skin – not much audience reaction, but good data performance (retrieval and sorting) – uses isolated storage for performance (e.g. contacts list).

Anyone else tired of seeing demos by huge corporations that build products with advertising revenue deals that only they can get?

Mix 08 Keynote With Scott Guthrie – Part 2

colinizer CLR, DLR, Microsoft, mix08, Server Application, Silverlight, Software As A Service, Web Application, Web Service

Silveright

Currently 1.5+ millions download installations of Silverlight 1.0 per day

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 available for download

Silverlight 2 stuff

1 Improving video experience

Adaptive streaming (to computer capabilities and bandwidth) – using appropriate bitrate – at initial video start and continuously (without buffering).

Plugable adaptive streaming algorithm.

2 TCO

HD Video is expensive – streaming and progressive download.

Windows Media Services 2008 released with Windows Server 2008.

Bit-rate throttling (with IIS 7.0/W2K8 for progressive download) – initial burst and then controlled stay-ahead (by x seconds) of playback throttling

Web Playlist.

3 Monetisation

VS 2008 project for silverlight advertising template – roll-down banner to playing video with tracking.

Demo of video.show for hosting video.

AdManager for tracking stats including interactions.

Demo of ad+video with skip control on web play list.

Overlay ads using Expression Media Encoder Two using XAML – add markers for ads (‘burned in’ or dynamic).

SDK for integration with Doubleclick Instream advertising.  Demo on NBA site with handling of user events like pause, mute, etc.

Mix 08 Keynote with Scott Guthrie – Part 1

colinizer DLR, Microsoft, mix08, Mobile Application, Silverlight, Software As A Service, Web Application, Web Service

Standards-based web development

Just launched:

.NET 3.5 (includes Linq), Visual Studio 2008, IIS 7 (very componentised), Windows Server 2008

Coming in 2008:

New APS.NET MVC, ASP.NET AJAX update, New ASP.NET Data Dynamic.  Information about this has been on Scott’s blog for a while.

IE8 – first public preview (mostly about standards)

1 CSS 2.1 support

2 CSS Certification – 702 test cases contributed by MS to W3C group because spec can have some ambiguous interpretations

3 Performance – modern sites are script-heavy – ie8 much closer to other browsers

4 Start of HTML 5 support – supporting back button in AJAX, (first demo applause), disconnection notification, local offline storage (applause)

5 Developer Tools – Debug developer tools in IE8 – Break points, watches, object model and applicable style tree syncing from selection (applause)

6 Activities – integrating experiences – select browser text and see popup-menu of activities (maps, purchase, ebay, etc.) declared through xml in minutes – OpenService Specification (through Creative Commons)

7 WebSlices – Subscribe to information related to pieces selected on a page (then carried in browser UI across any site), declared through WebSlice Specification (again Creative Commons).

8 Beta 1 available to developers microsoft.com/ie/ie8

Silverlight 1.1/2.0

colinizer DLR, Microsoft, Silverlight, Web Application

Hello again!

Tomorrow is supposedly a big day for Silverlight 2.0 at Microsoft Mix conference.

For those that don’t know.  Silverlight 1.1 and 2.0 are the same thing.

Silverlight 1.0 (a browser plug-in) was released last year – it uses a subset of Windows Presentation Foundation in the XAML format and can be scripted with JavaScript.  You can do lovely animated vector graphics, images and streamed video.  It is cross-browser and cross-platfrom.

Silverlight 2.0 has been in alpha for a long time and it has been very quiet except for a few recent posts by Scott Guthrie recently (the man in charge of it at Microsoft).  It has a mini subset of .net 3.5 in it, plus some other classes for talking to the browser.  There’s also control/layout support for complex controls.  It also should be cross-browser and cross-platform – you can use your Windows dev machine to remote debug silverlight running in Safari on a Mac!  It may also include the Dynamic Runtime (DLR) – think immediately compiled and run code – like a command prompt, but much cooler.  See the full details.

Silverlight 1.0 is like a web presentation competitor to Flash.  2.0 is like a web-application development platform.  The implications of bring the whole .NET development community to bear (without having to worry about HTML or Javascript anymore!) is HUGE!.

The rumour would be that Beta 1 will be released at Mix, and a Beta 2 has been talked about.

The big 3 questions for me are:

  • When will it RTM?
  • When will the mobile version (demo’d as WPF/E 2 years ago!)
  • When will video capture be put in (and on mobile!)?

Oh… and when will Microsoft manage to catch up with its development tools for all these new technologies.

Check out the mix website for the live keynote at 09:30 PT tomorrow (March 5 2008).