November, 2007

Just added some serious bling to my blog - giddy up!

I wanted to show screenshots of the Windows Live Quick Apps but I didn't want boring static shots; and I remembered Doug Handler did something really cool on the Express website.

So how did I add the bling? (a transparent image carousel without writing any Silverlight or .NET code - just some CSS hackery).

• upload all the photos you want into a Windows Live Spaces album
• go to popfly and use the RSS block and the Carousel block and use the RSS Feed from spaces (just add feed.rss to the album path);
• share the mashup (mash out ) and get the iframe embed
• in Community Server add it as a RAW header

<div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; height: 235px; width: 1024px;"> 

<iframe style='width:100%; height:100%;' src='http://www.popfly.ms/users/alogan/Quick%20Apps%20Carousel.small' frameborder='no'></iframe> 

</div>

• now the smartness which Doug hasn't figured out yet on his Express site - you see the white flicker when you load it?

just add "allowtransparency" and background transparent:

<div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; height: 235px; width: 1024px; background: transparent;"> 

<iframe style='width:100%; height:100%;' src='http://www.popfly.ms/users/alogan/Quick%20Apps%20Carousel.small' frameborder='no' allowtransparency=true></iframe> 

</div>

Over in my skydrive I have put up my internal PowerPoint deck on the Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio:

PPTX (2.8 MB) | PPT (4 MB) | PDF (3 MB)

As previously blogged, original CTP did not work with the RTM version of Visual Web Developer 2008 Express or Visual Studio 2008 - this update provides compatibility.

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This is a refresh to previous November 2007 CTP Release. In this refresh, we have modified “ASP.NET Windows Live Web Site”.  Please give us your feedback! Let us know what you like and what you don't like. What are the things that are missing today that stop you from using Windows Live Tools? What are your "must have" features? Stop by and give us your feedback on the Windows Live Tools site.   

Uninstalling the November CTP

Microsoft Windows XP SP2

To uninstall this CTP release from Windows XP SP2:

1)      Click Start

2)      Click Control Panel

3)      Open Add/Remove Programs

4)      Select “Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio CTP” and Click Remove

Microsoft Windows Vista

To uninstall this CTP Release from Windows Vista:

1)      Click Start

2)      Click Control Panel

3)      Click Programs and Features

4)      Select “Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio CTP” and Click Uninstall

Uninstall Issues – Windows Vista

Uninstall on Windows Vista requires elevated privileges:

If you are uninstalling this CTP from Windows Vista, we recommend that you allow the Installer program to run under elevated privileges when prompted by the User Account Control settings.

Install the Prerequisites for Windows Live Tools

This CTP release only targets English (United States).

Operating System

·         Microsoft Windows XP SP 2

·         Microsoft Windows Vista

Development Tools

·         Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 RTM Release

·         Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Beta 2 Express Edition

ASP.NET

·         Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax 1.0

·         Microsoft ASP.NET Futures (July 2007)

Installing the November CTP Refresh

·         Please ensure that you have all the prerequisites described above installed on your development workstation.

·         Download the November CTP Refresh Release from here and install on the development workstation.

Installation Issues – Windows Vista

Installation on Windows Vista requires elevated privileges:

If you are installing this CTP on Windows Vista, we recommend that you allow the Installer program to run under elevated privileges when prompted by the User Account Control settings.

What's included in the November 2007 CTP Refresh

We have modified the “ASP.NET Windows Live Web Site” template. This template is now compatible with Visual Studio 2008 RTM Release.  Installer included in this release now includes controls from previous CTP release and updated project template.

Visual Studio Project Template

·         ASP.NET Windows Live Web Site (Updated)

 

ASP.NET Server Controls

·         Contacts

·         SilverlightStreamingMedia

·         IDLogin

·         IDLoginView

 

Contacts: The Contacts control allows developers to include Windows Live Contacts into their web pages. The control provides the ability to raise client and server events for sign-in/sign-out and data transfer activities. It also allows the developer’s webpage to get word of mouth through viral traffic. This control is an ASP.NET version of the existing JavaScript control available at http://dev.live.com/contacts. 

SilverlightStreamingMedia: The SilverlightStreamingMedia control extends the ASP.NET Futures Media control by allowing you to play videos from your Silverlight Streaming account. Now at design time, you can specify your account credentials and choose the video you want to display on your web pages.

 

    <live:SilverlightStreamingMedia ID="SilverlightStreamingMedia1" runat="server" 
        Height="240px" MediaUrl="streaming:/6579/INTERVIEW/Angus_Logan_500k.wmv" 
        Width="320px">
    </live:SilverlightStreamingMedia>

 

IDLogin: The IDLogin control quickly allows you to provision Windows Live ID authentication for your application. Now you drag and drop the control on your web page, provision your Application ID, and compile/run the project. This also provides for client/server side events for sign-in/sign-out user actions, a property to maintain your application context, and properties to specify background/foreground colors to mesh with your web page.

IDLoginView: IDLoginView extends the functionality of the ASP.NET LoginView control by adding support for Windows Live ID authentication. It allows you to associate a Windows Live ID with an ASP.NET membership profile to provide a single sign-on experience for your web site users. It adds new templates to provide richness in your web site based on the login state of your web site user.

<live:IDLoginView ID="IDLoginView2" runat="server">
    <AssociatePromptTemplate>
        Associate your user name for this website with your Windows Live ID?<br>
        <asp:Button runat="server" CommandName="associate_yes" Text="Yes" ID="IDLoginView2_livepromptyes"></asp:Button>
        <asp:Button runat="server" CommandName="associate_no" Text="No" ID="IDLoginView2_livepromptno"></asp:Button>
    </AssociatePromptTemplate>
    <LoggedInIDTemplate>
        You are Logged in with Windows Live ID
    </LoggedInIDTemplate>
</live:IDLoginView>

Technical Support and Community

·         You can participate in technical discussion with other developers in the Windows Live Controls Development Forum. 

·         You can provide your feedback and report bugs at the Windows Live Tools site.

References

·         Windows Live Contacts

·         Windows Live ID authentication

·         Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax

·         Microsoft ASP.NET Futures

We are pumping out some code, opening and closing tasks and doing a lot with the Windows Live Platform Quick Applications.

Its not just me doing work in the project there are several other developers in there (Mallik, Chak, Ed) - I can't be across everything :)

I love that I can be reading email at 10:30 PM (night before thanksgiving, what else would I do?) and I get a little alert telling me the latest build has been prop'd to the production server.

Way cool! Subscribe to the alerts here and check out the projects here

How did I do this? I configured Windows Live Alerts to consume the RSS feed from Codeplex, it took about 20 seconds to setup.

I did a MSDN Webcast you can either Watch it here or there are links below.

In this session, we cover the authentication and rich media services that Windows Live offers for developers. Join us as we explore Windows Live ID, Microsoft Silverlight Streaming, and Microsoft Expression Encoder .

I'm uploading all the webcasts I do to skydrive and Silverlight Streaming (but for some reason I can't re-encode the Live Meeting recording - i dont think the Voice codec is supported in SL) - I gave James Clarke a beating over IM about it :)

My Webcasts bucket (only 1 right now)

Recording download:

Deck used (PDF, PPT, PPTX)

Adventure Works Resorts (also known as WLQuickApps.SocialNetwork) is one of our Demo Sites of what is possible but its a HUGE APPLICATION, there are a lot of different things in this application.

The UX was recently enhanced and we've added a lot of code to it - go play with the demo hosted by SharpLogic.

I took my screenshots in Firefox just to prove it works :)

I built this a while ago and thought I'd share my hackery with the world - this is an example of using the JSON Presence API.

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This little facebook application shows Angus's Windows Live Messenger presence status.<br />

<p align=center>

  <a href="#" onclick="do_ajax(Ajax.JSON); return false;">Find Status</a>

</p>

<div>

    <span id="displayName"></span><br />

    Messenger Status: <span id="MessengerStatus">not set</span>

    <BR /><BR /><BR /><i>Debug: <span id="execution">Click Find Status</span></i>

</div>

<script>

<!--

function do_ajax(type) {

    document.getElementById('execution').setTextValue('Running AJAX Call');

    var ajax = new Ajax();

    ajax.responseType = type;

    switch (type)

    {

        case Ajax.JSON:

          ajax.ondone = function(data) {

            document.getElementById('displayName').setTextValue(data.displayName);

            document.getElementById('execution').setTextValue('Pre-Status Read');

            document.getElementById('MessengerStatus').setTextValue(data.status);

            document.getElementById('execution').setTextValue('Post-Status Read');

          }

          break;

        case Ajax.FBML:

          ajax.ondone = function(data) {

            document.getElementById('ajax1').setInnerFBML(data);

            document.getElementById('ajax2').setTextValue('');

          }

          break;

        case Ajax.RAW:

          ajax.ondone = function(data) {

            document.getElementById('ajax1').setTextValue(data);

            document.getElementById('ajax2').setTextValue('');

          }

          break;

      }

    document.getElementById('execution').setTextValue('Finished Call');

ajax.onerror = function(data) {

        document.getElementById('ajax1').setTextValue('error');

      }

  ajax.requireLogin = false;

  ajax.post('http://applications.messenger.live.com/users/dcc7f76fcd6c161a@apps.messenger.live.com/presence/');

}

//-->

</script>

A while ago there was a site built by some HARDCORE French developers called Blue Portal - it has been used as the foundation for several customer sites, but never got Shared Sourced.

Tim Sneath and the crew @ Vertigo took the Blue Portal codebase, tore it apart and rebuilt it, and the output was Video.Show - a sample that demonstrates usage of Silverlight, Expression Encoder, Silverlight Streaming and ASP.NET AJAX to create a video portal for user-generated content.

You can download the Video.Show in the WL Quick Apps 4.0 beta or collaborate on the code here.

I'm harassing Tim Sneath to host a demo version of the site to show the working experience, you should hassle him too (or the better way - vote on my issue)

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More details are available on Tim's blog

Visual Web Developer 2008 Express and Visual Studio 2008 are downloadable free only the web or MSDN subscriber downloads or trials downloadable - w00t!

Question: (which I've been getting all morning) is "Do the Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio work in the RTM builds?"

Answer: We don't know yet.

Why? We didn't want to do our final testing on an almost RTM build, so we wanted to wait until the real deal was available for download on the web. Our testers are looking into the compatibility and I'll post something in the next couple of days.

Watch this space.