Rants Tagged with “Silverlight”
Rik pointed out to me that there is a new "Web Site" template for Silverilght (I don't use Web Sites but almost always use "Web Applications" so I never noticed it). So I fired up Visual Studio 2008 to take a look and this template is kinda wierd to me. It seems like a step backwards from other templates (and there still isn't a 'good' Silverlight 1.0 template in my mind). This template differs from others by doing two things:
- First, it creates the call to CreateObjectEx as inline script on the sample.html page. This is problematic as incorporating a Silverlight project into a larger project means you'll need to refactor this code into a separate .js file. Of course, perhaps this is to coincide with the ASP.NET Extension's Silverlight control (which I am not a big fan of either, but we'll see what this latest version looks like).
- Secondly, it overrides the onerror call to fill a DIV with the error information. Cool idea instead of a standard alert() but this is a lot of code that will likely be replaced over and over again.
If they are going to release a new tempalte, i'd rather they actually change the XAML and Load code since the default button isn't interesting and wiring things up by ordinal (as the template does) is not a best practice.
Thanks Rik for pointing me at it, but I am going to stick with my old template for now!
In case you missed it, Scott Guthrie announced in his blog this afternoon the fact that Silverlight 1.1 is going to be renamed to better position it as Silverlight 2.0. He details what is going to be available in this new version as committed to a Q1 2008 Beta (no doubt to coincide with MIX 08). Read the whole blog post to see where Silverlight, ASP.NET and IIS are going post-VS 2008!
The feedback system that Microsoft uses seems broken. It works well in letting us know what they are doing, but the MS team never seems to tell us why they aren't going to fix something. Its really frustrating to spend the time to try and alert them to a problem and to feel brushed off.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why development teams have to prioritize some bugs and features over another...but at least a single sentence from the team saying why they didn't think a bug is worth fixing isn't much to ask.
The bug I reported seemed to be such a simple one, that I am surprised its not fixed. The problem stems from the fact that Silverlight uses a completely different attribute for determining how a media file plays in an MediaElement than does WPF does. I can't imagine why its different but it is:
WPF:
<MediaElement Source="somefile.wmv" LoadedBehavior="Manual" />
Silverlight:
<MediaElement Source="somefile.wmv" AutoPlay="false" />
Any ideas why they wouldn't fix Expression to allow the designer to set this?
UPDATE: It seems that complaining can actually help! If you follow this link you'll see that a Blend PM (Steve White) apologizes for this. I hope that other bugs like this get the attention that Steve gave...especially for people who don't blog obsessively like I do.
As Scott mentions on his blog, the
Visual Studio 2008 Tools for
Silverlight 1.1 are now available for download. Get 'em while they are hot!
I try to avoid just linking to another blog entry, but this one is a big one.
Mike Harsh just announced a new version of
Silverlight 1.0 that had some key fixes. They mostly have to do with the way that Media is handled but there are fixes for a couple of other issues too. Check out Mike's blog entry for the full details!
If anyone is considering registering for the Seattle stop of the
Silverlight Tour (being held from December 3rd-5th), hurry up and register. Only five seats are left for that workshop. If you are interested in learning about Silverlight, from
XAML to Server-Controls, you can sign up today. Please visit
Silverlight-tour.com for more information.
I've had a number of people ask me about intellisense with Silverlight 1.0 on VS 2008. The trick is to *not* use the WPF Editor (the one that won't show Silverlight WPF anyway). To make it work:
- Right click the XAML file in the solution and pick "Open With...".
- Pick "XML Editor"
- Click "Set as Default" if you want it to always open XAML files in the XML Editor...
Voila...
I am rebuilding the VMWare images for my Silverlight Workshop coming up in San Francisco next week. With the melt-down of the Orcas Beta 2 VPC's, I've had to rebuild the image again (knowing that by the end of the month i'll get to do it again with the RTM).
One curiousity is that installing the 1.0 and 1.1 runtimes on a machine got everything very confused. Suddently my 1.0 apps would show the "install" Silverlight button. Thinking that something got fuddled, I clicked the button and tried to reinstall the 1.0 runtime to get the dreaded "installation failed, there is a newer version of the runtime installed". Huh?
To fix this error, I uninstalled all the runtimes and insalled *only* the 1.1 runtime. And it worked. Somewhere between Beta of 1.0 and RTM of 1.0 they merged the runtimes so the 1.1 runtime supercedes the 1.0 runtime. If you want both installed, just install the 1.1 runtime. Voila, everyone happy again.
To go with our Australian partner in the Silverlight Tour, I am happy to announce that the New Toronto Group is now a partner to teach the Silverlight Tour in Canada. I will kick it off with a Silverlight Tour stop in Toronto on December 17-19th.
We also have new tour stops through July of 2008. Be sure to stop by and see if I am making an appearance near you!
