John's Web Thoughts : Silverlight

New Silverlight Application Debut's

johnel@microsoft.com — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:00:58 GMT

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.

WS 2008 is Out of Beta with WMS and IIS7 Media Pack!

johnel@microsoft.com — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 11:18:27 GMT

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

Tech Ed Presentation on Silverlight 1.1

johnel@microsoft.com — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 13:22:00 GMT

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.

Surviving the Silverlight RC Release

johnel@microsoft.com — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:05:00 GMT

If you are like me, the recent release of the 1.0 RC version of Silverlight has been a mixed bag. Clearly the new version has a wealth of new features that make it event better but at the same time these improvements have also broken existing implementations. Here are some tips to resurrecting your demos and prototypes:

1) Remove Sys. from all calls to the helper js files. This namespace has bee deprecated.

2) Do a find and replaced on .Hidden with .Collapsed. Hidden has be deprecated as well.

3) Use the new silverlight.js files.

4) If you manually configuring the object/embed tag, use "x-silverlight" instead of "ag-plugin"

5) If all else fails....download the the 1.0 SDK

VS 2008 Beta 2 Released!

johnel@microsoft.com — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 04:38:12 GMT

Check it out. The latest in our developer Tools.

Building Silverlight Apps

johnel@microsoft.com — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:03:00 GMT

In a previous post I documented the steps to install the latest in tools and technologies to support development of Silverlight Applications. One comment I received was that it seemed like allot to do to just start developing Silverlight Applications. This may have mislead other people and so I will document how to get started with a minimal software install.

To begin with you can write a silverlight app in note pad! Here is an example: Open a new file and save the following with an .htm extension. Then open it IE and you can see the result!

<html>
<script type="text/xaml" id="MySilverlight">
    <Canvas xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"> 
        <TextBlock  Text="Hello World from my Script Tag"/>
            </Canvas>
</script>
       <object
           type="application/ag-plugin"
            id="myControl"
           width="400"
            height="100">
           <param name="background" value="Red" />
           <param name="source" value="#MySilverlight" />
 </object>
</html>

Obviously this is a simple example but we can see here how this simple xaml fragment and object tag can enable the basic UI instantiation. There is a lot you can do with XAML but to really enable interactivity you need to support some eventing framework. We will start with java Script. Add the attribute Loaded="Page_Loaded" to the base canvas element and the following script block:

<script type="text/javascript"> 
function Page_Loaded(){
alert("Loaded");
}

</script>

We could then extend the integration to other entry points of the control and embrace the full range of functionality in the Silverlight 1.0 framework.

Notepad is not the best tool for development and there are many more examples of tools for editing HTML and Javascript. Microsoft produces some express tools that have this functionality and are freely available for download. Microsoft's Expression Suite is also a good place to go to view some of our latest in design tools.

To take advantage of Silverlight 1.1 ability to host a subset of the .Net CLR functionality, we will have to compile assemblies and while this can be done with a command line interpreter, Visual C# Express edition is what I will use next. I will also need to download and install the Silverlight 1.1 SDK. This will provide me with the assemblies I will need in order to compile my project.

Start by launching C# Express and selecting File-New Project and select a Class Library Template.

Remove the auto generated class1.cs file and add three code files and Modify them as below:

SampleSL.xaml

<Canvas x:Name="parentCanvas"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"
           xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Loaded="Page_Loaded"
        x:Class="DemoSilverlight.SampleSL;assembly=bin/Release/DemoSilverlight.dll">
    <TextBlock x:Name="MyText" Text="This is the start"/>
</Canvas>

SampleSL.xaml.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Controls;

namespace DemoSilverlight
{
    public partial class SampleSL : Canvas
    {
        public void Page_Loaded(object o, EventArgs e)
        {
            Canvas can = o as Canvas;
            TextBlock txt = (TextBlock)can.FindName("MyText");
            txt.Text = "Hello from C#";
           
        }
    }
}

ShowMySilverlight.htm

<html>
    <object
           type="application/ag-plugin"
          id="myControl"
          width="400"
          height="100">
          <param name="background" value="Red" />
           <param name="source" value="SampleSL.xaml" />
     </object>
</html>

Remove all references in the project and then right click on the project file and select "Properties" and then "Build".

Click on the "Advanced.." button and check the setting to remove the automatic inclusion of mscorlib.dll during compile.

Now go to the references section of the project and add the following references from the directory you installed the Silverlight SDK in (default=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight).

agclr.dll

mscorlib.dll

system.dll

system.core.dll

system.silverlight.dll

system.xml.core.dll

Compile the project and then view the html file in the browser. You should see the SIlverlight 1.1 control and have an example of how to access xaml objects.

One thing to keep in mind is that in these examples I have avoided using the Silverlight.js helper file to instantiate the host objects to improve the clarity of what is happening. Therefore these examples will only work in an IE browser. If you would like to use firefox / safari to view them, replace the object tag references with embed tag or use the helper file provided. Details on this file can be found here.

Let me know if this helps

Video of the Top Banana Application

johnel@microsoft.com — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:41:08 GMT