Rants Tagged with “Silverlight”
I am interested and excited about Moonlight. For those who are not familiar, Moonlight is a project to bring Silverlight (1.1 only) to Linux. Because Silverlight is so isolated into a single plug-in, I was surprised how much was actually required to get it working (in its early development phase) on Linux. The biggest surprise was that Mono is required to make it work. They've abandoned the entire "mini-CLR" approach and are just layering on top of their Linux CLR implementation. Probably not a bad strategy but it does mean there are more moving parts for installation. Perhaps since I am not a Linux-head, those users will be more comfortable to install a number of moving parts to get it to work on thier machine. I'd prefer to see a MS-driven mini-CLR on the Linux/Unix platform.
As I read it, to get started with Moonlight you need:
- Install Mono 1.2.4.
- Apply a Mono Patch for Moonlight.
- Install the Olive (.NET 3.0) package for Mono.
- Install GDK+.
- Install Cairo.
- Install ffmpeg.
- Install Mozilla NSPR, NSS and XPCOM development packages.
- Install Alsa.
- Get the Moon source.
I hope this is just going to be for the developer. I'd love to see the end-user experience be better than this.
While complaining about an open-source effort is fairly fruitless (I know, why don't I get involved...there is a long list of reasons I won't delve into here), I think its important to let the community at large understand how Miguel and company are approaching Silverlight. Most notibly they are skipping Silverlight 1.0 entirely. That's an important story I think.
What do you think?
via Mike Harsh's Blog...
MLB has released a Silverlight RC based video player. Take a look at Mike Harsh's Blog for the meat of the details...
We are proud to announce that the Silverlight Workshop Tour has added two new dates:
- Atlanta, GA - October 15-17, 2007
- Phoenix, AZ - January 21-23, 2008
Sign up today at www.silverlight-tour.com!
Tim Sneath reports that Silverlight 1.0 RC2 is going out today. While reporting that it is not to fix a security fix, he explains that it is mostly to test-out the update scheme the Silverlight uses. It looks like it is a 'runtime-only' update. Doesn't look like the SDK or code is affected. Hopefully they'll stick to thier promise of not introducing breaking changes as of RC.
Read the link for the full scoop!
We are taking the Silverlight Workshop on the road. Between now and January, we will be taking my Silverlight Three-Day Workshop on the road. We will be holding the Workshop in Boston, Washington, DC, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. Please visit the tour's website at http://www.silverlight-tour.com for more information.
I've been looking at different ways of using XAML in Silverlight and I finally got around to wanting to have that cool animated Silverlight Logo (note it won't show up correctly until they update their code from Beta to RC if you have updated to the RC).
I started diving into pages, XAML and IFRAME's until I could see what was going on. Unfortunately what is really happening is the rotating Silverlight Logo is a movie clip, *not* a Silverlight Animation. How disappointing.
I've updated my Silverlight area to be currnet with the RC released today. For those converting there are several things to be aware of but for most of my Silverlight projects I had to do several quick changes:
- Replace the old Silverlight.js with the new one
- Find/Replace "Sys.Silverlight." with "Silverlight."
- And change the version property in the CreateObjectEx call to 1.0 instead of 0.9
It was a quick upgrade...
UPDATE: I also updated and uploaded the LoadingDemo and the Silverlight Sidebar Gadget demo's if you're interested!
In case you don't subscribe to their blogs, Microsoft has released an RC of Silverlight 1.0 and a new updated Alpha of Silverlight 1.1. Included in this drop are updates to tools and such. Inlcuded are:
For Silverlight 1.0:
For Silverlight 1.1:
Expression Tool Updates for both versions:
See the Silverlight Getting Started page for links to all new downloads!
Head over to http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=258 to listen to my appearance on the .NET Rocks show with Richard and Carl. I talk at length about Silverlight and take on all comers.
This new
Silverlight samples shows how to use the Downloader to show a Loading page while downloading the
XAML for the page asynchronously. Let me know if this helps!
