By Don Burnett
Here are some newer Silverlight Mobile samples I have found on the web obviously from Mix 08. Nothing really sticks out here as a great example of a mobile UI application but they are interesting viewing.. There is a Mix session viewer), and it is interesting..
Silverlight Mobile Demo - MIX
Here's one from last year's Mix Conference, the famous MLB.COM demo including video. Not sure where video was with these other demos this year..
Technorati Tags: Silverlight,Mix 08,Silverlight Mobile
Posted by Don.NET at 12:30 PM 0 comments Links to this post 
Labels: Silverlight Mobile Videos
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
by Don Burnett
It always helps to read up on blogs if you want to know the latest problems people are finding out there. Over at IanG's Blog, he has documented a bug in Silverlight 2.0b1, apparently if the service you wish to access has a semicolon in its URI, Silverlight won’t allow your client-side code to access it, no matter what the clientaccesspolicy.xml file says, however you can work around this problem using crossdomain.xml instead.
If you want to go into detail about the workaround for this problem please check out IanG's blog for more details..
Technorati Tags: Semicolon,Silverlight2.0,ClientAccessPolicy,web services issues,crossdomain.xml,work around
Posted by Don.NET at 10:33 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
by Don Burnett
Sockets in Silverlight 2.0
Over at Marc Holmes Blog, there is a great example of using sockets with Silverlight. This enables real-time push data communications from within the Silverlight Plug-in. Into the browser. The code is also available for download.
ListBox and DataGrids in Silverlight 2.0
Over at the UX Musings Blog there is a great tutorial on how to start wiring up ListBox and DataGrid controls to data in Silverlight 2.0.. Corrina Barber did a great job with this tutorial and she actually gives you many great screen captures and gives you the example in both C# and VB.NET...
Check it out...
Technorati Tags: DataGrid,ListBox,Sockets,Silverlight 2.0
Posted by Don.NET at 12:19 PM 1 comments Links to this post
Labels: DataGrid, ListBox, Silverlight 2.0, Sockets
Sunday, March 16, 2008
by Don Burnett
Brad Abrams has a link up on his blog to the Silverlight 2.0 developer poster including JPG, PNG, and TIF versions along with the (not so useful for me) deep zoom version.
It looks something like this thumbnail from Brad's Blog.. I found this immensely useful in version 1 and I am sure I will in Version 2.0 as well..
_3.png)
Check out Brad's Blog for the Download Links..
Technorati Tags: Silverlight 2.0,Developer Reference Poster,Brad Abrams
Posted by Don.NET at 10:27 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Brad Abrams, Developer Reference Poster, Silverlight 2.0
By Don Burnett
In case you haven't heard about it or don't know about it, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has a great Publication called "ACM Computers In Entertainment". Being that we focus here on advertising and Rich Internet Applications I thought you might find this quite the cool publication.. My old Media Station friend Newton Lee who lives out in California these days, is heavily involved in this organization and their work.
Here is the banner from the most recent publication below. If you aren't a subscriber, you probably should be..
-Don
ACM Computers in Entertainment, Volume 5, Issue 4
We are pleased to announce that the nonprofit ACM Computers in Entertainment magazine, Volume 5, Issue 4 has been published. In this issue, we feature 7 original papers on the technology, history, and branding of computer games, as well as the video interviews of our distinguished advisory board member Michelle Hinn and the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Joseph Olin.
In the upcoming 2008 issue, we will present a brand new section of ACM CIE, "Analysis: New Media and New Technology," a section that focuses on the business side of computers in entertainment, looking at the applications and impact of various technologies and trends on the entertainment industry. Thank you for your continuing support!
Subscription
Digital Library
Call for Papers
Scholarships
Conferences
Editorial Board
Technorati Tags: RIA,ACM,ACM in Entertainment,Most recent publication
Posted by Don.NET at 11:29 AM 0 comments Links to this post
by Don Burnett
Styling your controls so they fit within the confines of the page is important to keeping your overall design's integrity. It's very easy to do this in WPF, and now it's just as easy to do this in Silverlight 2.0 with Blend 2.5.. Let's look at how we can manage all of this.
The easiest way is to create a "GLOBAL STYLE" for a user control.. Let's look at this really quickly..
First I'll create a Silverlight 2 project..
My project is a simple one, now I'll drag a button and a radio button control onto the design surface..
Now I'll open my app.xaml file, It will look something like this...
The purpose of this tutorial is not to do a complete style change, but to show you how and where to do it, so for this demo I am just going to change a few setter properties..
Here I have created a button style that I have named "MyButtonStyle" and set the font wrapping and fontsize in the button. I could have easily defined color animation, any number of things including a full template..
Now I save my project.. Then returning to our page.xaml file I select the button to which I am applying this global style to..
I select my button that I have made then go to the buttons properties and click under miscellaneous on the "style" property tick
Then from the pop-up style context menu that appears
I select MyButtonStyle which I have defined.. And I am done, I have defined a global property for this button user control and it immediately changes the values in my project. Of course you can define more than one style, set the style according to a data set that you have databound. This makes creating applications with user personalization settings very easy.
Anyway, that's how you can do a simple global style change and apply it to a custom control.
Technorati Tags: Silverlight 2.0,Global Style,Blend 2.5,User Controls
Posted by Don.NET at 10:53 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Saturday, March 15, 2008
by Don Burnett
Anthony Handley has some great content over at his blog, and from there I learned about something called the "worldwide telescope" being developed by Microsoft Research as a free download at http://worldwidetelescope.org sometime this summer. This stitches together a 3d view in an all around the earth view of stitched together pictures from the worlds best telescopes in a completely immersive environment.
If you can't wait you can check out the video of the "worldwide telescope" in a video preview at (Standard Def) and (high def) download. I highly recommend Anthony's blog UXConfidential, he is an excellent UX Designer/Developer as well..
PS Oh and yes, some of these videos are done in Flash, just in case anyone was wondering..
Technorati Tags: worldwide telescope,microsoft research,UxConfidential,Anthony Handley
Posted by Don.NET at 5:21 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Microsoft Research, WorldWide Telescope
By Don Burnett
Expression Encoder 2 offers some significant advantages over the first version. The new functionality of the "Overlay" feature is pretty spectacular.. You can import many different video formats, and some new ones for overlay that were not expected..
The exciting thing is you can now import .xaml files into your media which can include full screen animation overlays and more. So for instance you could take a logo you did in Expression Design and animated in Blend and add that into your video. You can tell Expression Encoder how long that it will be onscreen from the timeline and it can span over an entire project with multiple clips if you like as well.. Here's an example I did of the XAML version of the Designing for Dot Net logo, imported into Expression Encoder 2, note you can set placement, sizing and cropping of the overlay at will with the green design rectangle handles.
This means you can add a lot of really great special effects to your encoded videos.. You can also make an overlay do picture-in-picture video..
Here are two videos back-to-back from the encoder preview..
Anyway that's just some of the new features, you can easily attach leaders, trailers, and the post-production support for tweaking and editing is really wonderful..
XAML support gives you great abilities to do some very cool things with masking and alpha channel that haven't been available before.
Technorati Tags: Expression Media Encoder,Version 2,XAML,Video,WPF,Silverlight 2.0
Posted by Don.NET at 2:45 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Thursday, March 13, 2008
by Don Burnett
Well it's only been a little while since the doors to Mix 08 closed, but let's look back at some of the cool things that were announced at Mix..
- Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 released - aimed at developers mostly includes .NET framework and DRM for Video, more custom controls built in, adaptive streaming support. Server distribution of Silverlight content, DRM for video, DeepZoom, Advertising models and tools to create ads quickly and easily. Controls (UI and Layout) and more. Nokia will be including Silverlight Mobile on their phones (note that Silverlight will *not* be restricted to run only on Windows Mobiles devices). This is very exciting for Silverlight's cross-platform future.
- NBC Olympics Silverlight Experience - For the first time ever in history when you’ll be able to watch over 2000 hours of live coverage, or after the event replays. The cool new interface was demonstrated at the keynote. The experience is built totally in Silverlight. This should drive adoption of Silverlight, with millions of installs of Silverlight.
- At the keynote the Hard Rock Cafe shown a new feature of their site that lets you peruse their memorabilia collection, using a new Silverlight Feature called Deep Zoom. Microsoft also released a new application for creating Deep Zoom collages. It doesn't seem to use HD photo support as first anticipated, but the Zoom/multi image feature really rocks and it's something not done by other web "plug-ins". There is a great example of the control out at vertigo.com.
- Silverlight 1.0 has achieved great momentum, with 1.5 million installs a day..
- WPF is going to see a service pack this summer with improved performance including new "Shader" FX capabilities.
- Aston-Martin has a cool customization site for buying your own vehicle from them using Silverlight and later WPF at the dealership..
- A Beta of Expression 2 was released. Each product has seen some major functionality upgrades, from Design's new Slicing, to Web's new PHP support and Layered .PSD import, to Blend supporting Silverlight, and Media's incredible cataloging features. Even Encoder saw a huge update with support for Overlays of video and XAML animations. It's more poised for work with live sources and creating track-able video ads for websites.
- Expression Blend 2.5 for Silverlight 2.0
- Internet Explorer 8, with Super Standards Mode, as a default. Also new features like activities and web slices all based on CSS standards and Acid 2 test passes.. The performance is way above IE 7 for rendering.. It's definitely something to look at. I am using the beta with no real gotchas or problems. If have an issue with a site I just re-open it with IE 7 emulation turned on and it works great..
- aQuantive's Atlas Ad Manager- for digital publishers, delivering a new-to-industry automated ad network control panel to publishers to increase revenue from under-utilized impressions. This is expected to be the first in a series of innovations resulting from integrating the best-in-breed resources of Atlas and Accipiter. AdManager, delivers billions of ads monthly across all rich media types to hundreds of leading publishers around the world.
Technorati Tags: DeepZoom,Mix 08,Silverlight 2.0,Top 10,WPF,Aston Martin,Hard Rock
Posted by Don.NET at 3:29 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: DeepZoom, Mix 08, Silverlight 2, Top 10 List, WPF Service Pack
By Don Burnett
This is so cool it's some of the easiest slicing I have ever worked with, whether it's for web bitmap formats or XAML.. Select an element on the screen, select "Create Slice from Selection"..
Set your editing parameters for the slice..
You can even specify the layers that are getting sliced as part of the slice contents..
Slice Layers appear on the Layers menu for manipulation..
Many formats are supported including HD Photo format, PSD and PDF..
And that's it, simple easy to work with, cool and quick to use..
Technorati Tags: Expression Design 2.0,Expression Studio 2.0,Easy Image Slicing
Posted by Don.NET at 12:19 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Easy Image Slicing, Expression Design 2.0, Expression Studio
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
by Don Burnett
Some people know that Vista comes with a feature called Volume Shadow Copy. Few people know what that is outside of server administrators. But nonetheless, Vista comes with the ability to load up and revert to older versions of files that you have saved on your hard drive. Accessing this feature has been a one file at a time kind of thing until now.. Here comes ShadowExplorer.
While this utility might not be as "glitzy" as Apple's OS X time machine feature, ShadowExplorer certainly is quite quick and easy to use to go back in time and revive old file versions that have been overwritten..
Technorati Tags: Time Machine,Vista,Shadow Explorer
You can download this goodie at GHACKS..
Posted by Don.NET at 1:35 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: ShadowExplorer, Time Machine, Vista
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
by Don Burnett
Over at the Expression Blend blog, Microsoft released a tool for Silverlight 2.0 to preview release called the Deep Zoom Composer. The user guide has also been released.
So what does this do for you? Well if you are developing HD photo applications for Silverlight 2.0 that uses the Multi-Scale Image control, it lets you compose an image or a collection of images.
As you notice, it offers layered views, positioning of images with a great deal of control. It's very easy to work with and I seriously recommend that you check it out.
You can download it for free right now right here.. If you just want to see the cool things you can do with it, you might check out the Hard Rock Memorabilia Collection web site that was completely built with the multi-scale image control.
Technorati Tags: Deep Zoom Composer,Silverlight 2.0,Hard Rock,Memorabilia,Mix 08
Posted by Don.NET at 9:41 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Hard Rock Memorabilia, HD Photo, Silverlight 2.0
by Don Burnett
PhizzPop Design Challenge Finale Winner
From Phizzpop.com:
"Microsoft is proud to announce that Cynergy Systems (www.cynergysystems.com) has taken the title at the Finale at South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas on Monday, March 10th. Presenting to a crowd of over 500, Cynergy presented 'Ben', a series of connected cross-platform applications that leveraged the power of Silverlight, Live Services, and VOIP. At one point, the team called Barack Obama from a Silverlight Facebook application using VOIP technology. Asking for some crowd participation, Cynergy had the whole room shout 'Hello from SXSW' to the Obama campaign's answering machine. Congratulations to Cynergy for the win! "
Congratulations to Cynergy Systems for coming up with this really rocking application. The original problem was quite a nebulous concept, but as many times before Cynergy navigated the waters and came up with a super solution, a modern example of social networking that gives us a great example of democracy in action.. SXSW sounds very over the top from all accounts, wish I could have been there. I am still working on healing from the auto accident.
However, if you missed out like I did, check out this VERY COOL website, with great content from the South by SouthWest (SxSW) conference.. It's done with Silverlight and will give you a great idea about the level of great content provided at the conference..
Technorati Tags: Cynergy Systems,Democracy and Social Networking,SXSW,Phizzpop Design Challenge Winner
Posted by Don.NET at 8:56 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Sunday, March 9, 2008
by Don Burnett
As a smaller design firm sometimes you spend more time dealing with client business issue than you actually do the creative design side of things. Well Microsoft has a new web based service that can help you save time with clients and handle things like project tracking and collaboration with clients with the efficiency of a much larger agency.
Most web-based creative businesses have their own websites to track client projects. If you are a smaller company, working with larger sized businesses it's always a challenge because they expect up-to-the minute updates on projects their progress and status information about work in progress. While this is something I didn't hear them talking about at Mix, I believe though it's something that smaller firms wrestle with every day.
Now there is a great solution for this, it's called Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Let's look at this and how it can organize your company and creative business.
Here is the Office Live workspace screen. Microsoft also offers an add-in for Office 2007 that lets you directly open workspace files from the FILE menu in your Microsoft Office applications. Even though this is very useable today, it would be nice to see this functionality included in Expression Studio, so you could upload files for client approval and collaboration right away...
It's also important to be able to control who gets access to your documents.. So you can set up who can edit and who can view project files.. You can also leave comments to viewers and editors on files in the workspace themselves, which is great for art approvals.
Now if you have ever worked on a project you know that version control is essential to keeping documents up-to-date and assets as well. Version control is not forgotten.. It's automatic in Office Live Workspace
Online file access for most Office file formats is also possible. It supports file formats such as PDF and Microsoft XPS formats. Even during File editing you have access to a lot of files. Right now XAML file types, and Expression Studio files have to be saved and opened in Expression Studio products directly, but can be directly from the workspace.. To support Expression Studio file formats all that will be required in the future is someone writing a preview module, much like people do for outlook file previewers today.
To-do list files directly integrate with Outlook's to-do function as well..
And that's the tour. If you don't have this connectivity with your customers through a company intranet/extranet or would just like a service that's accessible by clients anywhere, this is a great way to organize and get productive with your creative business..
Microsoft also offers Office Live's small business services that are companions to Office Live Workspaces offers the following services as well.
- Create an online presence, including free Web hosting, easy-to-use site design tools, site traffic reports, and more (please note this while great for small business may not handle advanced web site needs, but is great for the typical small business).
- Custom Domain and email.A custom domain and up to 100 business e-mail accounts—free for the first year .
- Contact Manager- Manage sales opportunities, contact information, and track every interaction with customers.
- Document Mangers- Store and share company documents in one central place for easy access and version control.
- Collaborate and share information with customers, partners, or employees with password-protected online workspaces.
- Project Planning- Plan projects, assign tasks, and monitor your progress.
Best of all it's FREE.. You can sign up right now.. Positives on this product for me the direct Office program integration (including all the new file formats) I don't have to leave Microsoft Office to post something and I use Microsoft Office products so I don't worry about incompatibilities, also we may see compatibility with Expression Studio format files in the future w. Microsoft is really pushing this for college campuses and students as well. I know there are other products out there, like GoogleDocs, and others but honestly I prefer to stay with the company that makes the Office products I use in the first place in this case. Also if they end up supporting Expression Studio file viewers my art approvals can go much faster.
Technorati Tags: Office Live Workspaces,Creative Business
Posted by Don.NET at 6:20 AM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: Creative Business, Office Live Workspaces
Saturday, March 8, 2008
By Don Burnett
New Setup.exe Brings Improved .NET Setup for Applications
Later this year, Microsoft is going to ship a new setup framework for .NET that makes it easier to build optimized setup programs for windows applications. This setup framework can be integrated with existing installation products (like InstallShield) and others. Offering a better setup user experience., and enables a smaller and faster end-user setup experience of the .NET Framework.
Windows Forms and WPF client applications will be able to use this new setup to cleanly “bootstrap” getting the .NET Framework installed onto machines. Improvements will also be made to "cold start" times for applications
WPF Performance Improvements
Later this year, Microsoft is planning to release an update to WPF that includes a number of performance optimizations that improve its text, graphics, media and databinding support. These include:
- Acclerated Graphics Support. Moving the DropShadow and Blur bitmap effects, to be hardware accelerated (making them many times faster). The APIs for these effects will stay the same, no recompile necessary.
- Faster text rendering, especially when used in Visual and DrawingBrush. The APIs for these will also stay the same. No recoding or recompiling.
- Media and video performance will be much faster again no coding changes.
- A new WriteableBitmap API will be introduced, that enables real-time bitmap updates from a software surface, and a new effects API.
- Microsoft will introduce new data scalability improvements for data editing. These include data virtualization support and container recycling, making it easier to build rich visualization controls.
WPF Control Improvements
With this update, Microsoft is planning to release a number of new controls for WPF. Included in the list we are working on are DataGrid, Ribbon, and Calendar/DatePicker controls. Bringing more parity with Silverlight 2.0 and requested improvements for speed to existing controls.
VS 2008 WPF Designer Improvements
Microsoft is planning a service release of VS 2008 that includes a number of feature additions to its WPF designer support. These include event tab support within the property grid for control events, toolbox support within source mode, and a variety of other common asks and improvements.
The improvements should make it easier to build great wpf apps. In most cases these will not require any code changes.
Technorati Tags: WPF,.NET 3.5,Service Pack,Summer,No Code Changes for Optimization
Posted by Don.NET at 9:07 AM 3 comments Links to this post
Labels: .NET 3.5, Improved Functionality, No Code Changes for Most Optimizations, wpf, WPF 3.5 Service Pack
Friday, March 7, 2008
by Don Burnett
Well, as some of you might know I was planning to go to Mix 08. My knee had other plans though. About three weeks ago I was involved in an auto accident. In the accident my knee was pretty tore up and damaged by the impact. I ended up being lucky to be here, with the car totaled. Well, my knee swelled up like a huge grape fruit and I couldn't walk on it. So instead of going to Mix I ended up in the E.R. and later having a procedure done to drain my knee of the blood and fluid that was collecting in there with no place to go..
Today (Friday) is the first day I have been out.. I have been attempting to catch up, so I watched the first two days of Mix sessions, and maybe it's just me but I haven't been as impressed with the content as I was the year before. Not to say it's not great content and Microsoft has a lot of impressive partnerships and "wins" to show off this year. There are a few things I have been hoping for and haven't seen as of yet..
If you want to see the sessions from the past few days check out the VisitMix.com blog. They are available for viewing over Media Player, your iPod, or Zune. So far there have been only about five or six sessions (out of over 20 something) that have interest me or told me something I didn't already know. So did I miss out by not making it to Mix? I am not really sure I did. Sure the parties and the people are fun, but if I had to compare the content to last year or even the Adobe Max conference I am not really sure that the topics really interested me on a personal or professional level overall.
Quite a few of the subjects have already been covered elsewhere in a more thorough way other places.
So did I miss out? I won't be at SxSW.com which looks like a more interesting show for designers. Considering the new technologies like Silverlight 2.0 (which seems like it's in the Phantom Zone still trying to get out and be a real product not in beta) and Silverlight Mobile. There should have been a few "silver bullet/red phone" moments, but those opportunities seem to pass by with not much happening. Mix 07 might have set my yearly expectations a little too high.
Some of my favorite sessions that I have viewed at Visitmix.com (editorial comment: yeah they could be better but they are great!)
Understanding Microsoft Partner Programs, for Designers, Developers and Agencies (BCT03)Encoding Video
for Microsoft Silverlight Delivery Scenarioes (BCT07)
Welcome to Internet Explorer 8.0 (BCT08)
Advanced SEO for Web Developers (BT03) (where's the Silverlight Analytics)
Building RIAs Using Microsoft Silverlight PT 1 (CT01)
Building RIAs Using Microsoft Silverlight PT 2 (CT02)
Adding Instant Messaging to any site (T03)
RESTful data services with the ADO.NET Data Services Framework (T07)
Developing Data Driven Web Applications using ASP.NET Dynamic Data (T24)
Great Presentation, but not what I was expecting..
Being a "Recovering Flash Developer/Designer" (to quote the presenter) I would say that while the "From Flash to Silverlight: A Rosetta Stone" was a good presentation on "beginning Silverlight", it did not capture what you need to know if you are a Flash designer/developer who is trying to translate their skills from Flash over to Silverlight.. Concepts in Flash itself that developers work with daily wasn't paralleled in the presentation and I really was disappointed because the presenter did a really great job on the content he had, it just didn't address what I was expecting to see.
I was really hoping for a more "conceptual" Rosetta Stone. One that talked about clips and symbols, and movies and how differently this works than multiple timelines and the bubbled event model in Silverlight. I expected some talk about browser/DOM integration and a Silverlight app can have multiple story boards and timelines based on events and the differences in Timelines conceptually and see both products on the screen and see the author doing work in both and showing where it all applies.
You could also tell the guy was more of a developer and ActionScript guy, than a designer because he immediately went into Visual Studio to do Silverlight, this I think is a big no-no if you are trying to convince a Flash guy on Silverlight's greatness, I think I could see from the video the designers in the audience's eyes glassing over at that very moment. Not how I would have started off to talk to people about transitioning to Silverlight from Flash. Flash is a GUI product and he should have been in Blend immediately. Visual Studio is a developers tool and a good turn off to a designer even with Cider..
Overall Impressions from Content Presentation at Mix 08
This Mix more looks like it was aimed at developers and the Microsoft developer community than it does the Designer community, and that's okay because we need everyone right? I believe after seeing this Mix and what Microsoft decided was "important" to talk about, that there is room for another Microsoft "Designer" event (maybe not even by hosted or sponsored by Microsoft) during the year..
Sure there were some great things here, the Astin-Martin, Hard Rock demos, the Olympics, Move Networks partnering with Microsoft, and of course the Atlas Ad Manager with Silverlight integration. It looks like the opportunity to capture some of the design folks that are heavily invested in other technologies were missed by mostly developer presentations.
Having said that if you are a developer it's a wonderful year for Mix. Managed code is finally cross platform with full data/entity connectivity from within Silverlight. There were great examples of how to get into all of those areas and there is a lot of depth to cover there.. This will bring the whole developer application world of Windows developers and web developers closer together with similar capabilities and Silverlight RIAs will start looking like their big-brother Windows applications. Certainly the UI capabilities, network services and data bound capabilities are way way better this year.
Questions I had (because I didn't get to attend!)
I expected to see at least something on Silveright analytics and there wasn’t anything about measurement or diagnostics.. Anyone see specific functionality for this while at Mix? Metrics and reporting are essential to Silverlight's success in the web community and it's a blocker to better adoption over other RIA technologies..
How much did you hear about the WPF service pack that is supposed to come out this summer??..
Was there a CTP of this with the improved WPF controls and improved performance it's suppose to offer? I assume it includes equivalents of the Silverlight Datagrid and Calendaring controls?
Is there and evaluation/ SDK/CTP out there available for the Atlas Ad Manager?
Is there more details on the "Expression Studio Professionals Program"?? (Please don't put us on a subscription model, unless you are really going to make QUARTERLY improvements and commit to them). I really disliked the Macromedia model for all of this, think DIFFERENT on this one please Microsoft..
Posted by Don.NET at 4:27 PM 2 comments Links to this post
Labels: Aarowhead, Ad Manager, Atlas Ad Manager, Cool online presentations from Mix that you can watch today, Mix 08, wpf, WPF 3.5 SP1
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
by Don Burnett
Wow what a keynote at Mix08, Silverlight 2.0, Silverlight Mobile (on non Windows Mobile platforms), IE 8, not to mention the cool memorabilia collection from Hard Rock, now immortalized as a Silverlight application using HD photo technology..
Here are some highlights of my favorite features in the new Expression Studio 2 in pictures.. which you can DOWNLOAD NOW
Expression Web 2.0
The return of Hyperlinks (from Front Page)
PHP Support (YEAH FINALLY)
Layered PSD Import (hello easy buttons and slices)
Silverlight 1.0 Import (it's smart and interrogates your JavaScript)
Broad Media format support
Expression Blend 2.5 preview (download link)
Expression Media Encoder 2
Technorati tags: Expression Studio 2, Favorite Things, Expression Studio 2 in Pictures
Posted by Don.NET at 3:37 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Expression Studio 2.0 in pictures, Silverlight 2
Technorati tags: Silverlight Mobile Plugin, Nokia S60, Microsoft demonstrate platform openness, Microsoft turns corner
by Don Burnett
The CAT is out of the Bag on Silverlight Mobile
Well as with most all Mix announcements that "cat is out of the bag" quite early. Yesterday this long announcement appeared on Nokia's Website.. It suprised me a bit because I expected to see this on Windows Mobile devices (those with a portable IE implementation first).. Though I am very happy to see this if I am reading this correctly this means in the Mobile space that Silverlight will be a full "applications platform" across many devices. As we already know "Moonlight" the Linux implementation of Silverlight can run Silverlight stand-alone outside of a web browser (or at least could with test versions). Nokia's Silverlight support will probably include support for Nokia Internet Tablets. Aren't those based on Linux? (wink)! Wow it's a new day and an open world.
I think this announcement underscores a huge change of thinking towards openness from Microsoft and signals that Silverlight will indeed be a very open multi-vendor supported product. This is very very exciting to hear... That along with IE 8 defaulting to "super-standards" mode, really underscores Microsoft's willingness to be open and compete on a level playing field with the many other vendors our there..
This represents a huge win for consumers choice, and a huge turning the corner for Microsoft. You can't not love the fact that they are working closely with others and forging very unexpected alliances..
-Don
PS Here's the announcement below..
"
Nokia to bring Microsoft Silverlight powered experiences to millions of mobile users
March 04, 2008
Extends choice for developers on the world's leading mobile platforms
Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, the world's leading smartphone software(1), as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.
"Today's consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device," said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President in Nokia's Devices software organization. "Nokia's software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole."
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight is already powering thousands of applications around the world and organizations including Entertainment Tonight, the NBA and NBC Universal to deliver superior Web-based experiences to their customers. The arrangement with Nokia will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.
Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keyote at Microsoft's MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees. This will allow S60 application developers to use an even wider range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS than today. Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java(TM) language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.
Microsoft Silverlight availability for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets will be confirmed later.
(1) S60 has already shipped on more smartphones than any other platform, enabling users to access and enjoy the Internet and Internet services. S60 covers the broadest product portfolio, with devices for a variety of segments and needs from different audiences. S60 is the clear leader in converged device software with over 53% market share globally in Q4 2007 according to the latest Canalys report (January 2008).
About S60
S60 software built on Symbian OS is the world's leading smartphone software, and is licensed by some of the industry's foremost mobile device manufacturers. More than 150 million S60 devices had been shipped by all licensees by January 2008. The flexibility of the S60 software allows for various hardware designs and software configurations, as evidenced by the multitude of S60 devices already available on the market. Through its award-winning user interface, extensive support for new mobile services and the innovation potential for partner solutions, the S60 provides an open and scalable business opportunity for mobile operators and 3rd party developers. For further information and news about the S60 and the S60 community, please visit www.s60.com.
About Nokia
Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. Nokia makes a wide range of mobile devices and provides people with experiences in music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business mobility through these devices. Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks. "
Posted by Don.NET at 11:50 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Nokia, Silverlight Mobile
Sunday, March 2, 2008
By Don Burnett
If you are an individual and want to meet me, or you are someone looking to get an announcement up on this blog, or on Phizzpop.com or the Mercury site..
Here's the best way to reach me:
email me at don@donburnett.com, I have direct email on my phone and it's the best way to contact me quickly..
You can also attempt to IM me..
don@donburnett.com 
Posted by Don.NET at 8:13 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Saturday, March 1, 2008
by Don Burnett
Scott is at it again, man this guy is amazing (he creates such cool tutorials) I think the word is "prolific" that I keep hearing when people describe him. He's got the scoop on Blend 2.5 and not only that he's got a great HOW-TO article on using it to create your own personalized Instant Messaging client.. It includes codes and classes in visual studio for the messaging and how to setup data binding with them in Blend itself.. Go read it for yourself... Note this is the Blend "2.5" preview not the Blend 2.0 release which apparently will only support Silverlight 1.0 release and currently released products..
Some pictures from his article:
Blend with the IM Client UI
Silverlight 2.0 controls for drag and drop
I can't wait to play with the release of this. I know I am going to love it..
Technorati tags: Silverlight 2.0, Expression Blend 2.5, new content controls, multimedia