June, 2008

I will let the video speak for itself.  Definitely worth checking out.

Looking to catch up on all things new with .NET and Visual Studio? 

Want to network with your peers? 

Local to the tri-state area?

Well come join us at VSLive! New York this September.  Lots of topics to be covered:

I will be doing a session Tuesday morning after the Keynote on Silverlight and Expression Studio from a Developer’s point of view.  Stop on by and say hello. =)

Silverlight 2 with Expression Studio - a developers point of view.
Tuesday, September 9th, 9:45-11:00am

“You’re a developer, not a designer, but the media side of Web development is getting more intense.  How can you keep up?  A basic understanding of Expression Blend and Encoder, which you’ll have by the end of this session, will get you farther along this path than you thought possible.  Start leveraging these new design tools with your existing .NET  skills to create engaging RIA experiences today.”

Early bird and group registration discounts are available today.

See you there!

From a marketing perspective I think Microsoft does a pretty good job in the enterprise of creating awareness around our products.  Most people know about Office, SharePoint, Communicator, Windows Server and what they are capable of.  But, when it comes to consumer products there isn’t much info out there.  Sure I have seen a couple really good X-box commercials but most of them aren’t even ours.  Where are the Apple like commercials for all the Live Services out there?  For Smartphone technologies?  Media Center? How about bringing it all together? 

When I was out in Seattle last summer at an internal Microsoft conference they showed off a consumer video that did just that.  It was impressive in that it brought a lot of the consumer facing technologies together in one place for the first time.  I wanted to share it with you, Check it out here in Silverlight or here in Flash.  Thanks Michael (Synergist) for finding this!

When I stop to think about it, I use a lot of these products on a day to day basis:

Zune

• Yes for those that know me I have an iPod Touch.  But I’m sorry Steve, I (and my family) listen to too much music to buy every song individually. DRM free subscription plans work.
• My Zune is loaded with almost every Coldplay, Dave Mathews, and U2 album created (both live and album versions) and I only paid my monthly subscription.  And the stuff I did buy like Radiohead - The Bends I got cheaper and DRM free.

• I also use it when traveling to watch videos.  Feel like catching up on some WPF or Silverlight? Sites like VisitMix.com offer most of the sessions going all the way back to Mix06 online and in Zune format.  You can also grab shows off Channel9 and Channel 10 in Zune format.
• But what about all the movies from DVDs I own.  My entire collection on the Zune without having to purchase them again?  You bet! Check out this Uber coolness.

• I like making my own games for it too. Thanks Andrew!
• Oh, and welcome home NBC and hello my beloved Revision3 shows.

Live Maps (check out the bird’s eye view)

Windows Live

• Livewriter for this blog
• Messenger to IM
• Skydrive to host all my presentations/code – 4 gigs and ad free can’t be beat.  No more worrying about a singles ad popping up when I want to share out a powerpoint with someone.

Windows Media Center

• Every photo and video I’ve taken of my girls since they were born is viewable on my big screen tv via remote.  I can’t tell you how cool it is to show recent events/trips to family on the screen when we get together.
• How about a free program for importing all those images and videos that works a lot better than iPhoto ever will.  Kudos to Google for gobbling them up.  Check out Picasa here.  Easy enough to use even my wife can load pictures on it - lol.
• My entire movie collection is now digital!  I have every Disney DVD I own instantly available for viewing and safe from being destroyed by my 4 year old.  Not only that all those annoying previews, menus, and nag screens are all gone it starts instantly when I select it.  I used Slysoft’s AnyDVD and CloneDVD software to back them up – real easy to use check them out here.
• I also watch Blu-Ray movies on it.  Got the HDDVD/Blu-Ray drive here and the player here.

Blackjack 2 Smartphone 

• Besides having all my Work E-mails on it I also get all my Yahoo Mail, access to my Flickr photo albums, and Dilbert comics on it with Yahoo Go! 
• Additional geek creds for walking around NYC and Philly with my GPS Enabled Mobile Live Search. 
• Web browsing at 3g speeds is a lot of fun too.  How about a free browser that works exactly like the iPhones

Amazing User Interface in Windows?

• I always get a chuckle when people talk about the UI of an Operating System being set in stone.  An OS to me is about a kernel, frameworks, io, threading, task scheduling, software development experience, and what applications I can run on it.  The way it looks should be easily changed and modified to how the user wants.  For anyone who has seen me present they know my machines don’t look like your normal window boxes.  =)
• This is how I did that:
  • Re-skinned the entire windows UI on all my machines thanks to WindowBlinds.
  • I unlock the start menu and move it to the right side of the screen (like the old Next workstations)
  • Changed the way my logon screens look with LogonStudio.
  • That cool “Mac like” dock I use that everyone asks about?  That’s Objectdock of course.

-Dave

You will need to do get three updates.  The plugin itself, Expression Studio 2.5 June release, and the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio.  You can grab all of that here.  The updated release of the Silverlight Tools now works with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 beta so you have my official blessing to go ahead and install that too. 

In a nutshell, beta 2 has added:

· UI Framework: Beta 2 includes improvements in animation support, error handling and reporting, automation and accessibility support, keyboard input support, and general performance.  This release also provides more compatibility between Silverlight and WPF.

· Rich Controls: Beta 2 includes a new templating model called Visual State Manager that allows for easier templating for controls. Other features include the introduction of TabControl, text wrapping and scrollbars for TextBox, and for DataGrid additions include Autosize, Reorder, Sort, performance increases and more.  Most controls are now in the runtime instead of packaged with the application.

· Networking Support: Beta 2 includes improved Cross Domain support and security enhancements, upload support for WebClient, and duplex communications (“push” from server to Silverlight client).

· Rich Base Class Library: Beta 2 includes improved threading abilities, LINQ-to-JSON, ADO.NET Data Services support, better support for SOAP, and various other improvements to make networking and data handling easier.

· Deep Zoom: Beta 2 introduces a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles, as well as a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom. Better, event driven notification for zoom/pan state is another improvement in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. 

ScottGu has a post about the new features you can check out here.  Tim Sneath points us to an addicting new Beta 2 game (anyone remember Maniac Mansion or Day of the Tentacle?)

A lot of the changes you will notice are to keep the Silverlight API in line with WPF.  Things have also been simplified a bit.  One consistent gotcha I have seen people run into in Beta 1 was when they were calling a Web Service.  The need to change their website config file to support basicHttpBinding instead of the default wsHttpBinding (Silverlight only supports basic currently) was often forgotten.  There is now a new Silverlight WCF Template that gets installed with the Beta 2 tools that will take care of this for you.  Tim Heuer has more info about updated web service changes here.

For a full list of changes you will need to make to update your application from beta 1 to beta 2 check out this post on the Silverlight SDK site (downloadable word document here).

Have fun!