Chris Bowen's Blog : Expression

New Expression Web Community-Based Wiki

cbowen — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:15:17 GMT

An MVP based here in the northeast, Kathleen Anderson has announced on her blog that there is a new Expression Web Wiki. It features resources for learning and working with Expression Web, links to related blogs and sites, and more.

As with other Wikis, it's open for editing by the community and I'm sure will become an even more valuable resource over time.

Nice job, Kathleen!

-Chris

P.S. If you're interested in keeping updated on Expression-related news, you can subscribe to the Expression Newsletter.

Summary of MIX '08 Highlights

cbowen — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 19:37:33 GMT

It's been a busy week (getting ready for the 2008 Launch event in Boston next week), but I have a moment to share details from my trip to MIX '08 last week.

It was my first MIX, and incredibly, my first visit to Las Vegas! Not a lot of free time to absorb the city, but it was great.

Didn't get to go (or went but somehow couldn't be everywhere at once)? All content was recorded and is freely available at:

http://sessions.visitmix.com/

First, the featured products and tools:

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 is now available, with a non-commercial Go-Live license
Deep Zoom Composer CTP (used to create applications like Hard Rock's Memorabilia site)
Expression Studio 2 Beta - Requires and supports .NET 3.5
Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview - supports Silverlight 1.0, 2, and WPF
Expression Professional Subscription
- For pro designers, it complements the existing MSDN developer subscription
Silverlight 1.0 for Mobile
Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 with support for Silverlight 2 Beta 1
IIS 7 Media Pack - enhancements for optimizing media and data streaming
Internet Explorer 8 Beta is now available
- Cool new features include WebSlices and Activities
- IE 8 Virtual Machines are available to help with SxS testing
MVC Preview 2 is now available
Updated ASP.NET Extensions Preview

And the Demos:

This video of the keynote captures all of the demos
This post captures the play-by-play essence of the keynote
Companies:

Aston Martin
Cirque du Soleil
Hard Rock Memorabilia - An amazing demo of the Memorabilia site that uses Silverlight 2's native Deep Zoom feature
NBC Olympics
Weatherbug Mobile Weather using Silverlight (example for Boston)
DoubleClick
Nokia
AOL Silverlight-based Mail Client

And finally, to describe the pictures on the right:

The top one is a picture of a Surface machine to which a picture of our group was sent from a wireless camera and enlarged right on the table. (Left to right - Me, Brian Hitney, Glen Gordon, Joe Stagner, Zain Naboulsi, Rob Bagby.) Very cool.
My colleague in the southeast, Doug Turnure, gazes longingly at the Surface machine being demoed. Surface, you had us at hello.
Really, I have no idea who these guys playing Rock Band are, but they were having a great time. There was a pretty impressive setup - wonder if I can replicate it in my basement?
Finally, though I did eat here and had a nice meal, I'm only including this picture of the David Burke restaurant at the Venetian in honor of the incomparable Vermont-based Dave Burke. Who knew you had a restaurant, Dave?

Hoping I get to go next year!

-Chris

A Guide to the Newly-Released Developer Updates

cbowen — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:35:23 GMT

Though I managed to sneak away for some vacation time this week, it's clearly been a busy time for the product teams. Here's a summary of the recently-released betas and updates with links for more information:

Silverlight

Silverlight 1.0 Release Candidate (windows|mac)
Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh (windows|mac)

Details on Tim Sneath's blog.
Here's a useful guide to the Silverlight versions and supporting tools.

Expression

Both include support for Silverlight 1.0 RC.
Details on the Expression Site.

Visual Studio & .NET Framework

Now include "Go Live" license.
Full details in Scott Guthrie's post.
Scott Hanselman (BTW, now a Microsoft employee) has a simplified installation guide.

ASP.NET Futures

ASP.NET Futures July Update

Includes Silverlight support (asp:Media, asp:Xaml), AJAX extensions, application services, dynamic language support, and dynamic data controls.
Soma describes the release on his blog.
More details on Brad Abrams' blog (second half of the post).

Ajax Control Toolkit

AJAX Control Toolkit pdate

Update to support the Beta 2's of VS2008 and .NET 3.5.
Details on Delay's blog.

IronRuby

IronRuby Pre Alpha source preview

John Lam has the details.
Scott Guthrie has a helpful introduction/tutorial.

IronPython

IronPython 2.0 Alpha 3

Dino Viehland's announcement [via PLNews.org]

F#

F# Language v1.9.2.7 release (MSI/Windows | ZIP/Mono)

Don Syme's announcement of v1.9.2.7
Don Syme with the full release notes
F# Overview (i.e. why you may be interested)

Enjoy your explorations!

-Chris

Technorati tags: Silverlight, Expression, Visual Studio, .NET, AJAX, IronRuby, Development, ASP.NET, IronPython, F Sharp

Expression Web and Blend Available to MSDN Subscribers

cbowen — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:02:08 GMT

A common question I receive when discussing the Expression products is whether there are plans for availability to MSDN subscribers. I'm glad to pass along word of Soma's announcement that Expression Web is available (and Expression Blend will be available) to all MSDN Premium subscribers:

"Based on this feedback, I am pleased to say that we will be making Expression Web available starting today to all MSDN Premium subscribers. We will also make Expression Blend available to MSDN Premium subscribers shortly after the Expression Studio release later in Q2 2007. Expression Blend and Expression Web are intended to help creative professionals collaborate with developers to create rich user experiences for the Web, Windows Vista applications and beyond, which means we need to make sure both tools are readily available to our developer community."

Scott Guthrie has posted further details about this announcement as well.

Keep that feedback coming. As you can see, it can make a difference!

-Chris