Rants Tagged with “Silverlight”
The Silverlight SDK contains a couple of interesting gems that aren't appearent in the docs. I'll let everyone espouse the virtues of the runtime for the time being, I'd like to introduce you to a couple of tools in the SDK:
- Chiron: (\program files\microsoft sdks\silverlight\v2.0\tools\chiron): A command-line tool for generating .xap files. If you are building your projects without VS 2008 or want more control over the xap creation (including adding your own files), this is a valuable tool.
- Silverlight.js (\program files\microsoft sdks\silverlight\v2.0\tools\): This file still exists in the v2.0 SDK. Unlike most demos that use either the object tag or the ASP.NET silverlight control, some projects still need a client-side browser detection (and other features) of this JavaScript file. Notably the Silverlight.IsInstalled is a godsend for anyone that needs to optionally show Silverlight content.
What's missing?
- Seadragon: There does not seem to be any Seadragon tools or examples out of the box. Hopefully this is coming soon. To be able to create your own multi-scale images would be really useful right now!
- silverlight.xsd (or wpfe.xsd): You can use the Design surface in VS 2008 to edit your XAML by hand (and get intellisense) but it would be great if we could get the .xsd so we can use the XML Editor (you need the xsd to get intellisense) as its a lot faster than the "Cider" editor.
Now that Silverlight 2 has been released I can announced a re-launched Silverlight Tour site that includes a new outline for the Silverlight 2 classes. All stops of the tour are now all Silverlight 2. For a complete outine visit:
We will be teaching our first Silverlight 2 course in Dallas from March 17th to 19th, 2008 and soon after we'll be in Seattle from April 9th - 11th, 2008.
Mary Jo says that Microsoft and Nokia are working together to get Silverlight working on Symbian phones. It will be a fun next couple of years playing with Silverlight on a variety of devices...
More details on News.com:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9884398-7.html?tag=nefd.top
This story includes a quote that Silverlight will run on Windows Mobile by the end of the year...yum!
There has been a lot I couldn't talk about these last 4-6 weeks. Suffice to say that coming up Tuesday or Wednesday, I will be opening the floodgates of information that will be released at MIX 2008 this week. If you're going to be there, please look me up. I be around all four days if I am not at the poker tables.
I am very excited about this upcoming release of Silverlight and I will let you know what I think of it all. Please watch here if you're as interested as I am and i'll try to give you the gory details (without a minute by minute update that some websites are apt to do).
I've been contacted by a couple of potential customers about how the AIR story compete with Silverlight. This has also come up at several talk i've done recently. I am not an Adobe or Flash guy so I may be the wrong one to broach the subject, but it feels like they are not necessary competing. In a large way it feels like Microsoft is trying to get into the web space and compete for RIA, whereas AIR seems to be attempting to get onto the desktop.
From my casual observation, AIR is solution looking for a problem. AIR in some ways is the second attempt by Flash to get on the desktop but the last time they tried this it was a bad experience for users. I am not sure this is true now as the web is the real story IMHO. In fact, AIR seems poised to fight with Java (write-once, run-anywhere) and Google Gears (write for the web, run it offline). I don't know that Silverlight is a competitor here (though you never know what MS has in store for us at MIX next week).
AIR and Flex seem to be gunning for WPF or XBAP in the Microsoft world but not Silverlight.
Where do you think it fits?
My new article is now up on TechTarget's SearchWinDevelopment site. This article will walk you though creating your first Silverlight 1.0 project from scratch including preparing your machine. Enjoy.
Scott Guthrie and Tim Heuer have put together an eight-part tutorial on Silverlight 2.0! The bits are not available yet, but if you're intrested in what is coming in the new version, spend some time looking at this good tutorial.
I am speaking at the Alabama Code Camp tomorrow and I will be talking through many of the same features, but I can't demo any of it. You'll just have to join me at MIX if you want to see it working!
Here are the links:
Scott Guthrie's Blog - First Look at Silverlight 2.0
Enjoy!
My apologies but due to circumstances out of my control, I have had to cancel my "A Taste of Silverlight" event in Dallas. The event will be rescheduled. Watch here for the announcement of the rescheduling once we have confirmed a date.
I didn't realize that Moonlight had created prepackaged installs already. If you want to try out Moonlight (and you're running Linux of course), check out these builds. Note that they builds do not have any Multimedia support (no video codecs or audio support, though they are working on it).
Its been a crazy weekend. I've moved into my new servers at MaximumASP and I could not be happier. On the new server, I have full control over the box so I can make it work the way it should have. In the old system, I was doing all sort of re-routing tricks to host 8 sites under a single web site. It was a nightmare that made it difficult to use new technology (e.g. if the root site was using AJAX 1.0, I couldn't have one of the sub sites use 3.5). All that is over and hopefully you will see some new stuff on this site soon! .
Here comes the favor...there is likely some parts of the site that do not work as they did on the other server because I missed a file or two in the transfer...if you see anything that should work that doesn't, please email me at shawn@wildermuth.com.
One thing I noticed was that when using the VS 2008 Publish function, some files were inexplicably not transferred. It may have been the "Content" type or the Silverlight links in some of the project...I don't know. But I've attempted to find all the holes that the "Publish"'s missed but I could have skipped something.
Lastly, this new server has come at the kindness of Maximum ASP. They have graciously offered to give me a machine at a discount for my community sites including this one, GeekDinners.com, SilverlightData.com and SilverlightGuy.com (not all of these are active yet).
Last note: GeekDinners.com is almost fully functional. Look for an announcement this week when you can register your own GeekDinners and schedule event nights!
