Barak's Silverlight News and Analysis : WPFE

MSN delivers Election Central with Silverlight

Barak Cohen — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 02:34:00 GMT

The Podium ’08 -- (http://election.msn.com/podium08.aspx) is Live on the MSN US Election Portal.

This is just the first of many innovations MSN (one of the largest online sited in the world) will deliver on Silverlight.

I had the pleasure of working with the MSN team on this and although this site looks simplistic, it actually encapsulate some innovative approaches to online application delivery (that leverage the Silverlight architecture):

The site is actually template driven, MSN integrated Silverlight into its publishing system and thus it can create template driven applications; the editors are just updating meta data in Infopath xml files and the application markup is generated by the publishing system accordingly.
The architecture of the application is an example of Software plus Services approach that uses Windows Live Search behind a modern user experience.
Search visualization and rendering of service generated dynamic content is an area that Microsoft is trailblazing (please take a look at http://www.tafiti.com which is another exploration of search visualization).

Barak

On the Surface

Barak Cohen — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 03:29:00 GMT

Microsoft.com today shipped is second brand campaign that is based on Silverlight.

This time the Microsoft Surface team campaign is powered by Silverlight.

Hurry up and view this over the weekend here: http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx

Once it expires I will update the blog with an alternative link.

Enjoy.

Under the Surface

Barak Cohen — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:14:00 GMT

This week Microsot revealed Microsoft Surface. A new computer platform that is based on Windows Vista and WPF that enables users to grab data with their hands, interact with physical objects that are positioned on the surface using natual gestures and touch.

You may ask, what is the connection with Silverlight? well, WPF and Silvelright share the same XAML based presentation markup. And shortly after Surface was released, a Silverlight sample that shows a similar interface was posted here.

Finally it is fare to note that the Microsoft Surface site is not implemented yet on Silvelright (due to the fact that Silverlightis not released yet).

The amazing story about timing and the Silverlight sites

Barak Cohen — Tue, 01 May 2007 19:14:00 GMT

(MIX 2007, Las Vegas) It was a busy day yesterday (Apr 30). With the exciting keyote by Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie (see the video here: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/video.aspx) and with 5 new external web sites that needed to go online (http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight , www.silverlight.net , http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight, the Silverlight documentation on MSDN at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb188743.aspx and the hosted Silverlight SDK documentation ar http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb188266.aspx and 1 internal one for Microsoft's intranet.

The momentum around Silverlight is great and I could hear the buzz for every person I interacted with here in Vegas.

It took a lot of coordination and effort of many good people in our web operations, designs agencies (Both Ascentium and Avenue A Razorfish and other Microsoft groups to get this going and I was still perplexed that the second Scott mentioned our web presence in his keynote, the servers went live.

I am thankful to all the people that helped with this.

Now we can get back to the day to day process of updating the content to help the world build better web experiences with Silverlight.

The story about Silverlight and aghost.js

Barak Cohen — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 09:50:00 GMT

As many of you already noticed, the official name for "WPF/E" is out there, it is Microsoft Silverlight. We are very happy to have something that is easy to remember like Silverlight instead the former code name. Note that if you have the Feb CTP version of Silverlight (Windows or Mac) installed, the site will look slightly different than the way it looks like if you do not have it installed (specifically the online video playback as well as samples are displayed with Silverlight installed).

Now that the brand is out, it is time to solve the old speculation on the source of the name aghost.js. Although we knew the name Silverlight for some time, we could not use it on the actual product. However, the product team came up with a clever idea to have the name already inside the product without actually saying it. Ag is the chemical sign for Silver; hence aghost is the hosting environment for Silverlight.

Let me know if any of you made the connection.

Happy times.

Barak

Internet Explorer Develoepr Toolbar is worth a spin

Barak Cohen — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:53:00 GMT

A new beta of the develoepr toolbar for Internet Explorer was released on Jan 12 2007.

The Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides several features for exploring and understanding Web pages. These features enable you to:

Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS Web feed links.
Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.
Find the style rules used to set specific style values on an element.
View the formatted and syntax colored source of HTML and CSS.

The Developer Toolbar can be pinned to the Internet Explorer browser window or floated separately. This Beta 3 version of the toolbar contains functionality and stability enhancements over previous versions, including:

Style Tracer: Right mouse click on a style value for an element and select Style Tracer to find the style rule that is effecting that value.
CSS Selector Matches: View a report of all style rules set and how many times they are used on the current page.
View Source: View the formatted and syntax colored source of the original page, currently rendered page, element or element with the styles that are effecting it.

Give it a spin. Download and install today.

Getting ready for the new year with a refreshed &quot;WPF/E&quot; SDK

Barak Cohen — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 02:12:00 GMT

Our SDK team just announced that the "WPF/E" SDK was refreshed today on the "WPF/E" Dev Center and MSDN Library.

The WPF/E SDK refresh includes:

- Updated SDK docs

- Updated QuickStart (which uses "WPF/E" for navigation!)

- Visual Studio Template support for Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1

See the new content at:

“WPF/E” (codename) Software Development Kit (SDK) Community Technology Preview (Dec 2006)

"WPF/E" on MSDN Library

In addition, the QuickStart is now available at the following publicly-accessible Web location:

http://wpfesdk.members.winisp.net/quickstart/

Barak

Season's greetings from the "WPF/E" team

Barak Cohen — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 23:13:00 GMT

Hello Readers,

With the spirit of the holidays, some designers we work with have created some nice greeting cards using "WPF/E". The first card I want to share with you is this one by Michael Höhn from Futurecom in Switzerland:

This card is customizable by the URL and you can customize it using this simple configuration page.

Send some "WPF/E" love to your freinds today.

I will follow up with more cards soon.

Barak

Refugee in Seattle that enjoys what the community is doing...

Barak Cohen — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 22:52:00 GMT

Readers,

It has been almost a week since a big wind storm hit the pacific northwest and my family is staying in an alternative house since our house is still without power (with sub freezing night tempratures). At least no trees ended on our roof. Well, now that we have some place warm to be, I could spend some more time looking at what people are doing with "WPF/E" and I wanted to talk about a sample on Mike Taulty blog that shows 12 videos playing and animating concurrently. Although it is simple we can learn two things about what you can do with "WPF/E":

1. "WPF/E" codec implementation is quite efficient. I do not have the best performing laptop and even though this is an early CTP, playback looks good.

2. Video (as represented from a Media element) is an integral part of xaml and the resulting experience. No more video islands.

What do you think?

Barak

Barak's Silverlight News and Analysis : WPFE

MSN delivers Election Central with Silverlight

On the Surface

Under the Surface

The amazing story about timing and the Silverlight sites

The story about Silverlight and aghost.js

Internet Explorer Develoepr Toolbar is worth a spin

Getting ready for the new year with a refreshed &amp;quot;WPF/E&amp;quot; SDK

Season's greetings from the "WPF/E" team

Refugee in Seattle that enjoys what the community is doing...

Getting ready for the new year with a refreshed "WPF/E" SDK