Just released, the latest in silverlight applications has been deployed on MediaCorp's Web Site. This site takes advantage of Rich Application technology through its use of MS AJAX Extensions and the Silverlight plugin.
We just finished another session of our Mini-Mix Program. Here are the resources from Day One, Day Two, and Day Three.
Hi,
Sorry for being a little late about posting this. Here are my slides and demo code from the recent Tech Talk event at Microsoft. The final demo was largely based off of some work a colleague of mine did on the topic. You can find his Blog here and a Webcast walking through the code as well.
I am really behind my blog posts this week and need to post my slides and code from both the recent Tech Talk we had at Microsoft and the Mini Mix event currently underway. Before I do that however I want to say a few words about streaming video and integrating that into your blog or web site.
Streaming is a confusing topic to most and there is a lot of mixed messages out there about how to go about it. The first thing to understand is the there two basic ways to "Stream Video" over the Internet. The most common way is to progressively download the file from a web server. This is basically a download that is cached behind the scenes by the browser. These are some issues you should keep in mind when using this approach:
- All the content is cached client side and this may create issues for those with digital rights management (DRM) concerns
- In most cases the content is downloaded at the fastest possible speed and will likely be completely downloaded well before the end of the video is viewed. If the video is not completely viewed than there will likely be wasted bandwidth.
- Users cannot arbitrarily navigate to the end and must wait until the video is completely viewed.
The alternative approach is to "Stream" the video from a media server. In true streaming, nothing is cached client side but there are things to consider here as well:
- Only the content that is watched is streamed. This better than the former option but only if the video is not viewed more than once within a given session.
- You need more than a basic web server to support .
- Does not work very well in cases of intermittent connectivity as nothing is cached to buffer the process.
In my case I wanted to be able to stream video to support my blog entries and my web site. The challenge I had with positing files on the web site was that I had no way to throttle the bandwidth and track the usage of the material. I also wanted to give my viewers the ability to return to a webcast at a particular point rather than having to download the entire video repeatedly. I therefore decided to look into obtaining some streaming services.
It may surprise readers to find out that even though I work for Microsoft, the support to post public content on corporate assets is somewhat constrained and I was forced to look outside for options. Silverlight streaming, YouTube, Soapbox and others are all basically progressive download. After a couple of false starts with hosters who claimed to have "Streaming" capability but were really progressively downloading, I have settled with StreamHoster. Time will tell if this works out or not. I would appreciate any comments about alternatives as well.
John
Well we have entered into the final stages of the development of out next platform for web solutions. Along with the server itself however a couple of add-ons have also been released. The first is Windows Media Services which provides the capability to stream video on demand. The second is the IIS7 Media Pack module that provides bit rate throttling for progressive video downloads.
Web, Standard, Data Center, and Enterprise editions of WS 2008 RC0 are now available for download along with Windows Media Services. I had the opportunity to configure a virtual environment showcasing the new caching capabilities of WMS and thought I would share a few of my experiences.
I started with the Idea of running WS Enterprise as my Origin Server and running the Web Server edition as the proxy. When you first install WS 2008, you will be prompted with the new management interface that makes configuration of role and feature specific functionality incredibly simple.
WMS is not available in the existing build, so the first thing you need to do is install the download OOB WMS module. Once that is done, when you select roles you will be presented with a selection to choose from (Note: the differences between the Web and Enterprise version). If you happen to select a role that has dependencies on other services, these will be added by default.
Enabling the caching functionality on the Web version could not be easier. You select the server you want to configure in our management interface, select the properties TAB, Select Cache/Proxy management, and Right click WMS Cache Proxy enable the functionality. You can then double click on the same place to get prompted with the configuration options as seen below. You can also go and do the same on the origin server to control aspects of the caching such expiry time and so on related to the individual publishing points.
Details on the configuration options available can be found in the help files so I will not go into that here but one thing to keep in mind is the way the proxy is expecting to get requests. Basically the scenario is that all streaming requests for content off the Origin server need to be routed to the IP of the caching server. This can be done through firewall configuration but if you are looking to do this in a virtual test environment the easiest way I have found is modify your LMHosts file to resolve requests to the origin server with the IP of the proxy server. Another point to keep in mind is that HTTP streaming (Only protocol supported by Silverlight!) is not enabled by default. You need to go into the Properties TAB for the server, select the control protocol and enable a specific open port.
Hope this helps in getting you started on using WMS in WS 2008!
John
As Silverlight becomes more prevalent in the enterprise, some challenges will occur for those considering wide scale deployment. David Tesar has kindly come to the rescue and written a very comprehensive white paper that answers all these questions plus many more. The Silverlight Enterprise Deployment Guide is available for download now.
Hi,
I recently gave a presentation at our Tech Ed in Kuala Lumpur and was asked if I could do a web cast of it. I am struggling a bit with the resolution right now but here is the first draft. I have also published the video and the source code for download.
Hi This is a demo of what is happening at Tech Ed in Malaysia using the new Iframe service from Silverlight Streaming. Use it yourself by embeding the following link as the source of an iframe element http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/<AccountID>/<ApplicationID>/iframe.html
Scott Guthrie has just announced on his blog the release of Silverlight 1.0 and support for Linux. Expression Media Encoder has also been released.
John
For those interested in experimenting with IIs7, take advantage of these free hosting offers available with Microsoft partners.
Microsoft has recently announced two new free services that can greatly enhance your web site:
Windows Live ID and Gatineau.
Windows Live ID provides the ability to leverage the Live platform to provide authentication services to your web site to enable personalization and profiling. More details can be found from the Windows Live ID team's release announcement or the Live Development site. Gatineau is Microsoft's new analytics tool that combines the demographic data enabled through Live ID with web traffic analysis.
If you want to see an excellent comprehensive overview the web analytics industry, check out this 50 minute presentation by Avinash Kaushik.
Hi,
I just completed delivering a three day event / work shop on emerging Microsoft Technologies. The slides from the presentations can be found here.
