March, 2008

Just a reminder that the 6th Annual Financial Developers Conference in NYC starts on Wednesday.

I will be one of the presenters on the first day.  My session will focus on how developers today have a slew of new tools and technologies to help aid them in the constant demand for better user experiences.  But which one should I use? SharePoint, AJAX, Webforms, Winforms, OBA, WPF, Silverlight?  Do the buzzwords not end?  This session will set out to give you a better idea of which tool fits the job as well some hands on coding and demos.  Should be a lot of fun!

With close to a 1,000 attendees, numerous partners, a live DotNetRocks podcast and a brand new 2009 Lincoln MKS showcasing Sync technology there is something for everyone.  Registration is free but space is limited.  If you are in the area please do stop by for a chat. 

First, you just have to check this out.  Seadragon technology comes to Silverlight in the form of Deep Zoom on Hardrock's memorabilia site.  In the keynote they were able to zoom down to the scratch marks on the guitar.

Then watch the keynote here.  I will let the video stream speak for itself.  Some really amazing technology and customer stories.

Things that caught my eye....

• ASP.NET MVC
• IE8
• Html 5 support - a back button that works in AJAX!
• Connection awareness - no more timeouts on a blog page)
• Script debugging built right in like Visual Studio
• CSS Styling
• Activities (inline maps and comments was very cool)
• Webslices (watching ebay and facebook I will definitely be using)
• Download it now, here.
• Silverlight is averaging 1.5 million installations a day. Version 2.0 beta is available now for download here.
• Controls, controls, controls!  All released to public domain with source as well.
• Skinning controls (AOL E-mail demo shows this off great)
• Adaptive streaming - adapts to bitrate of video based on network bandwidth and cpu
• Move Networks partnership (people who do Lost and Grey's Anatomy on NBC site)
• Media Services 2008 free and runs on top of Win Server 2008.  Can throttle easily in IIS.
• Bit Rate throttle, turn off and on. Stay 10 secs in front of user - no more wasted bandwidth.
• Advertising Templates! Very easy to embed an add now in Silverlight using Visual Studio
• Good use of storyboards via blend for ad animation.
• Video.Show site - Lots of best practices. Free off codeplex here.
• Ad Manager to track usage
• IIS can set playlists and turn off/on ad skipping for users
• Encoder 2 visual marker demo very cool
• Can use bitmaps, alpha encoded videos and xaml now then encode down to video
• Doubleclick SDK!  Fires off events inside Silverlight Video and you just add the handlers.
• NBC.com
• Amazing demo.  2,200 hours of Video On Demand.
• Encoder bookmark usage - jump to specific part of stream based on expert commentary
• Silverlight Webparts for Sharepoint
• WPF performance via Service pack this summer.
• Amazing shader model effects using gpu - can apply to images, videos and any control.
• Silverlight on Mobile
• Great demo - Mixer App
• Interesting announcement - Silvelright on a non windows mobile device via Nokia's Symbian OS.  Platform choice even on Mobile devices? You bet!
• Very funny Guthrie skit I won't give away but involves juggling and the circus. =)

Tim Sneath is running an excellent live blog of the keynote here as well.

This one is all about Silverlight, one of my favorite topics. =) I'll cover why I think it is so important, where the platform is headed and why you should be checking it out if you haven't already. If there is one thing I see time and time again in talking with people it is the confusion out there around why we created Silverlight. I hear things like.. "To compete with Flash".. "To take over the web with windows!".. or "You mean another web technology, but I just learned AJAX!"

My hope is that after watching this video you will have a clear understanding of where the Microsoft Platform is heading when it comes to NextWeb and presentation technologies as well as how we got there. There has been a lot of great new technology and tools that have just come out in the past few months. Stuff that will really change the way you think and work with user experiences and I try to touch on that. At the end, you should also feel comfortable creating Silverlight content in both VS2008 and Blend and how you can use it in your projects today. I know I definitely had a blast coding with it. =)

Some of the topics covered:

• - Why Silverlight? What is Microsoft up to?
• - Web Development today - the need for User Experience
• - What is this XAML stuff? WPF?
• - Good Overview and hands on with Expression Blend
• - What you need to get started today and where you can get it. Does it cost anything?
• - 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 - Is this stuff even done? Should I wait?
• - Demos sprinkled throughout to help reinforce concepts
• - I take you step by step in creating your first Silverlight application.
• - Storyboards, images, setting properties, firing/capturing events, using the VS2008 Tools, even adding Ink support.
• - Just for giggles I also show how easy it is to put the new control inside a Vista Gadget.
• - Lots of links to additional resources and where you can get more help.

Check them out on Channel9 here:

Part1:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=387614

Part2:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=387623

Part3:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=387654

Don't forget to stop by the Devs4Devs group on Facebook. With a couple hundred members now it is a great way to meet developers from all over the world including your local Microsoft folks!