Rants Tagged with “Silverlight”
After teaching Silverlight this week and spending my evenings digging into Moonlight, I am getting used to the fact that Silverlight fits into a graphically and functionally intense ecosystem that includes Adobe's offering (Flash, Flex, or Apollo) and open source equivalents (Moonlight, SVG, et al.). So I really wonder how many technologies are really at odds here. Of particular interest (because I am only now digging into how it works) is SVG.
SVG is a standard approved by the W3 folks and seems to have much of the same feature set as Silverlight XAML (not the runtime environment, but the language feature set). What really sets it apart is that it uses CSS as its styling syntax. It theoretically should be more seamless with typical web development than Flash and Silverlight, but there is a fly in the ointment. Firefox supports SVG (though there seems to be some disagreement as to what a well-formed SVG is), but in IE the Adobe SVG plug-in is being phased out with no obvious alternative. Sure you could say this is another reason why everyone should switch to Firefox but my perspective is the developer, not the user...which means if users can't see my SVG content in IE, why shouldn't I use one of the other technologies?
The SVG story seems to highlight the problem that all platforms need to solve (though Flash is the closest to solving this problem): ubiquity. The plug-ins need to be installed on as many machines as possible. The bug that most of these show to allow you to install it is a good way to solve this, but i'd rather see IE, Firefox, Safari (et al.) all bundle Flash, Silverlight, Moonlight and SVG in the box. Competition is good for all involved and bundling is a good deal for developers.
What do you think?
Don't forget you can register online for Monday's Silverlight Workshop in Atlanta. Only a few seats are left. If you want to get your hands dirty with Silverlight, come spend three days with me in Atlanta!
Atlanta's Silverlight Workshop - September 17-19th, 2007
via Silverlight.net
If you haven't had a chance to see this really sweet Silverlight app for the Emmy telecast, check it out now. Its a great example of what can be done with Silverlight 1.0.
I'll be speaking at the ReMIX Boston event on October 8-9, 2007. I'll be talking about the Developer/Designer Relationship. Don't miss it. Here's some additional information on what ReMIX is all about:
What to expect at ReMIX07 Boston
If you’re in the web business, learn about:
- Building a better user experience to unlock new revenue opportunities
- Forging tighter, stickier customer connections
- Building innovative media experiences into your site
If you’re a web developer, build:
- Silverlight applications quickly and easily
- Sites and applications that consume Windows Live services
- Rich, interactive sites made for the next web
If you’re a web designer, learn about:
- Using Silverlight to design gorgeous and highly functional user interfaces
- How a real-world application is built and the best practices associated with it
- The suite of Expression tools that revolutionize the way designers work with developers
If you attend, regardless of your job role, check out:
- Xbox Gaming Area where you can test your skills at Halo 3 and Guitar Hero among others
- Express Yourself Design Contest where key design agencies compete to solve a real-world design problem
- Stay tuned: We may feature some cool products and demos around XNA, Popfly, Robotics Studio and Surface
It’s Happening Here
Monday-Tuesday, October 8-9, 2007
Hyatt Regency Cambridge
575 Memorial Drive,
Cambridge, MA 02139
For directions click here.
Due to a conflict with ReMix in Boston, we've decided to reschedule the Boston stop of the Silverlight Tour. The new Boston Workshop will be held on February 5-7th, 2008. Sign while slots are still available:
http://www.silverlight-tour.com
I was reading Scott Guthrie's blog entry that announced the Silverlight 1.0 release. He preps everyone for the Silverlight 1.1 changes in a short blub. It looks like he's hinting at features that everyone really wants:
It will support a WPF programming model for UI - including support for an extensible control model, layout management, data-binding, control skinning, and a rich set of built-in controls.
This seems to imply:
- "Extensible Control Model": What 1.1 has today, creation of your own controls that are usable in XAML. Good, but not news.
- "Layout Management": Sounds like Grid, StackPanel and other containers from WPF. This is very good news!
- "Data-Binding": Very very nice!
- "Control Skinning": Templates?
- "Built-in Controls": Buttons, TextBox, etc.? Cool.
This would allow Silverlight 1.1 could complete with Flash/Flex on a level playing field which is cool. I am not sure its necessary, but I am in the minority. I fear tha the plugin will become bloated, but so far its stayed pretty svelt so I have my fingers crossed.
What do you think?
Great news today out of Novell-land.
Miguel and company have agreed to collaborate with
Microsoft to deliver
Silverlight on Linux (the
Moonlight project) within six-months!
Microsoft is providing the codecs for video and
Mono is supplying the guts of the
Moonlight implementation. Read up on
Miguel's blog for the details!
In response to a comment on my Scrollable Region example, I wanted to see if scrollable regions in CSS work with Silverlight. It seems to work ok if you leave room for the scrollbar (e.g. if the Silverlight asset is 160px wide, make the div 180px or so wide). For example:
No Scrolling
Scrolling in CSS (overflow: auto;)
Scrolling in CSS (overflow: scroll;)
Grab the example and let me know you what you think!
If you are playing with Silverlight 1.0 and Visual Studio 2008 like I am, you've probably noticed that the templates won't install without Visual Studio 2005. Luckily there is a good workaround. The templates are a simple .zip file inside the MSI installer that just need to be placed in a specific directory to work..that's all. If you want to walk through specific steps to get the templates to work with Visual Studio 2008, follow these steps:
- To open the MSI file you need a way to extract the right file. "MSIEXEC -a" doesn't work because the MSI file will fail with pre-requisites. My suggestion is to use Less MSIerable. This tool allows you to open an MSI file and extract specific files.
- Using the tool, open the SL10Template.msi file in the Silverlight SDK directory (usually "C:\program files\Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 SDK\").
- Choose the "Extract Files" tab and pick the SilverlightJSApplication.zip.
- You will want to open your personal template directory. This is usually "c:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#" for non-Vista and "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#" for Vista.
- Once open, create a new directory (called Silverlight).
- When you click Extract on the tool, it will ask you for a location. Select the new Silverlight directory you just created.
- Open this new Silverlight directory and you'll see that its extracted the file into a deep set of directories. Dive down into these directories and at the end will be the SilverlightJSApplication.zip file. Cut and paste it back in the Silverlight directory you created and remove the extra directories. NOTE: The file you're placing in the template directory is a ZIP file...that is fine! Don't extract it otherwise Visual Studio will never see it.
- Lastly, from a command-line run Visual Studio with a setup flag (*YOUR VISUAL STUDIO DIRECTORY\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /setup) to make sure it scans the template directory.
- It will churn for a minute then go away (without showing the UI). I use Process Explorer (or Task Manager) to wait for it to disappear.
Then you can run Visual Studio 2008 and under "Visual C#" is a Silverlight directory with the new template: "Silverlight JavaScript Application":
Let me know if you have any improvements on this process.
UPDATE: This works the same on Visual Studio 2008 RTM!
I got a request today to explain how the scrolling region works that I use on my Silverlight page. Instead of using a complex example (like showing you that code) I decided to create a really simple example.
The trick to creating a scrolling region is to create a Canvas with a Clipping Path (you can do this with Expression and I have a video that shows how here). So the Canvas with a clipping region essentially is a window to a larger set of content. For example here is a simple canvas with a clipping mask. The arrows on the left show the size of the clipping region (the window into the the object) and the arrows on the right show the full size of the object itself:
To create a scrollable region, you wil just move the elements inside the clipping region canvas. For example:
<Canvas Name="theClipRegion" Clip="..." ...>
<Canvas Name="theCanvas">
... Your Content
</Canvas>
</Canvas>
In this example, when you click on the arrows it simply adds or subtracts 10 from the Canvas.Top of the "theCanvas" to move it within the Clipped Canvas. You don't need to move the clipping region because that's a window on the content within so you don't move the window, but the content inside.
You can get fancy and use an animation to do so (like I did for the Silverlight page) or something simple like this. It works vertically or horizontally. Grab the code and check it out!
