Joe Stegman's WebBlog

Silverlight ICO/ICON Decoder (Parser)

2009-09-13T17:38:00Z

It turns out the Windows BMP file format is similar to the Windows ICO file format. Given that, it wasn't too hard for me to produce a Windows ICO/ICON decoder (parser) based on the work I did around a Silverlight BMP decoder. I didn't spend a lot of time making the source efficient, so if you make improvements, let me know and I'll incorporate them into my version. Click on the image below to run a live version of the Silverlight 3 based sample.

Silverlight 4 Feature Requests

2009-09-08T23:48:00Z

Tim Heuer and Scott Barnes have established a more community focused way of tracking Silverlight 4 feature requests. You can find their feature tracker here: Silverlight Feedback Forum. Other than a few items that our outside our control (iPhone, bundling), you're likely to see at least a few of the top items in the next version of Silverlight.

Silverlight 3 Sample Updates

2009-09-08T21:00:00Z

I finally got a chance to update both my Mix 2009 and bitmap samples to Silverlight 3. See the table below for links to the running samples as well as Silverlight 3 sample source code. Note the GIF decoder has been updated to support interlaced GIFs (thanks to Paul Tallett for the source).

Silverlight 3 Sample	Live Sample and Source
ICON/ICO Decoder	Live Sample, ICODecoderSample.zip
WriteableBitmap with Media	Live Sample, BitmapSample.zip
BMP Decoder	Live Sample, BMPDecoder.zip
Bouncing Balls (LocalConnection)	Live Sample (requires popups), BouncingBalls.zip
Chess Wars (LocalConnection)	Live Sample, ChessWars.zip
GIF Decoder	Live Sample, GIFDecoderSample.zip
Local Chess (Out of Browser)	Live Sample, LocalChess.zip
Mandelbrot (WriteableBitmap)	Live Sample, Mandelbrot.zip
MediaFlow (Perspective 3D)	Live Sample, MediaFlow.zip
Effects Sample (Pixel Shaders)	Live Sample, MoreEffects.zip

Silverlight 3 Out Of Browser Chess Application

2009-03-24T02:36:00Z

The final sample from my Mix 09 talk is an Out Of Browser version of the Silverlight 2 Chess Application. You can find the source for this sample here.

Local Messaging Samples

2009-03-24T02:18:00Z

I posted the Local Messaging samples I showed at Mix 2009 including the Bouncing Balls sample and the Chess Wars application. Click here to run the Bouncing Balls application (you’ll need to temporarily allow pop-ups). To start a ball, click on anyone of the 4 HTML pages that pop-up. You can find source for the bouncing balls application here.

To run Chess Wars, Click on the image below. To have browsers compete JavaScript engine to JavaScript engine, start two versions in two different browsers and have one be “Local” and one be “Remote” (both with JavaScript for the other player). You can find the Chess Wars source here.

Chroma Key Pixel Shader Sample

2009-03-24T02:15:00Z

Here’s the source to the WriteableBitmap and Pixel Shader sample I showed at Mix 2009. Click on the image below to run the sample (and have the Silverlight 3 Beta installed – you can get that here). Drag one of the images (or video) from the left and drop into the center area to see where WriteableBitmap is used. Drag the video on the right into the center to see the Pixel Shader in action. This sample will use a “shader” to mask out a chroma key (in this sample, the chroma key is black but the shader supports any color as a chroma key).

The demo shows the following new Silverlight 3 features:

WriteableBitmap
Pixel Shaders (chroma key shader)
Drop Shadow Effect

WriteableBitmap Sample

2009-03-23T05:25:00Z

Here's the source to the WriteableBitmap sample I showed at Mix. The sample uses WriteableBitmap to take a "snapshot" of the running video to make a thumbnail. Click on the image below to run the sample. When running the sample, click on the running video to create a thumbnail. You can find the video for this sample here.

The demo shows the following new Silverlight 3 features:

· WriteableBitmap

· WrapPanel (new SDK control)

Perspective 3D Sample

2009-03-23T05:05:00Z

Finally getting around to posting the Mix demos, and the first I’ve posted is the Perspective3D demo. I've posted the source here and you can click on the image below to run the sample.

The demo shows the following new Silverlight 3 features:

· Perspective 3D

· ElementName binding

· FileSaveDialog (to CSV which is consumable by Excel)

· Animation Easing

Mix09 Presentation and Deck

2009-03-22T03:16:00Z

I did a packed “What’s new in Silverlight 3” session at Mix 2009 and had a blast. I’m working on posting the samples but for now, you can find a video of the session here and my deck here. Samples and walkthroughs should all be posted by Monday…

Source Code for Silverlight 2 Runtime and SDK Controls Published

2009-01-08T05:42:00Z

Seema’s blog post has more details, but the source code for the Silverlight 2 controls, both runtime and SDK, was just released. This source code includes control source, source for support types (e.g. EventsArgs), Visual Studio project files and unit tests (unit test are only for the SDK controls).

Source is provided for the following controls:

Silverlight Runtime Controls

ButtonBase
Button
HyperlinkButton
CheckBox
RadioButton
ToggleButton
RangeBase
ProgressBar
Slider
ScrollBar
Thumb

Silverlight SDK Controls

Calendar
DatePicker
DataGrid
TabControl
GridSplitter

Update on Feature Requests

2008-12-28T04:11:00Z

I am continuing to aggregate the requests and have the updated and abbreviated list below (removed items with less than 1 or 2 requests). A couple of comments based on some of the requests:

I am tracking 3D even though ScottGu announced Silverlight 3 will support 3D. For Silverlight 3, we are introducing the ability to treat 2D objects as if they are in 3D space. You can view this support as being able to draw content (XAML) onto a postcard and then position that postcard in 3D space (this is also called perspective transformations or non-affine transformations). What I am tracking for “3D” is the ability to do full 3D – which is the ability to have full 3D objects/models (e.g. a 3D box vs. a postcard) and rotate/shade/light that object.

I have not included an item for bitmap effects as we have announced plans to support a pixel shader model in Silverlight 3 and Silverlight will include a few stock shader effects.

There are some things we are continually focused on and one is performance. For performance, we are scenario focused – meaning we pick the most important scenarios and then optimize those end to end. For general performance requests, including requests for hardware acceleration, it would be helpful to understand what scenarios you feel do not meet performance expectations.

There are numerous requests for mouse wheel and there was a comment that suggested the reason we do not support this is due to a security concern. To clarify, the reason we do not support this in Silverlight 2 is that mouse wheel events are not exposed to Silverlight in all browsers (see this post for more details). We continue to look for a consistent way to work around this issue.

Feature	Count	Comments
Web camera and/or microphone input	33	Includes requests for just microphone as well
Bitmap APIs	28	Support get/set pixels and/or rendering a XAML scene to a bitmap.
Full 3D	26	Full 3D support (full 3D models)
Printing	22	Printing APIs
Offline and/or out of browser support	17	Support running Silverlight when not online (or completely out of the browser)
Rich text support	13	Editing and display (and flow, multi-column, inline hyperlink)
Text quality	12	Includes requests for knobs on anti-aliasing
Bi-directional text and/or complex script	10
Right mouse button	9	Ability to configure the right click
UDP/P2P	9	UDP APIs generally for Peer to Peer support
Interactive designer	8	Support an interactive designer in Visual Studio
HTML Integration	8	Support HTML hosting (live HTML documents) and/or HTML translation
Support more than BasicHttpBinding	8	Most common request is for WSHttpBinding (session support)
Clipboard support	7
Improve Silverlight/WPF compatibility	7	Mostly feature requests for either Silverlight and/or WPF
More controls	8	Including navigation tree, multihandle slider
Selectable text	7
Improved DataGrid	6	Several different requests including support for Virtualization
Mouse wheel	6	API and support in existing controls
SaveFileDialog	6
Data and/or property triggers	5
Reporting services	5
Synchronous web service calls	5
ADO.NET DataSet/DataTable	4
Alpha video	4	Chroma key support
Custom markup extensions	4
Drawing APIs (immediate mode)	4
Element name binding	4
Local relational database (SQL)	4
Modal dialog	4
Assembly caching	3	Want a framework for downloading/managing assemblies
Binding support to anonymous types	3
Credentials/auth	3	Requests for networking stack and ASP.NET type integration
Multi-target DLLs for .NET/SL	3	Build a business object DLL once for both .NET and Silvelright
Multi-touch support	3
Path Animation	3
Speech and better audio decoder	3
VisualBrush	3

Silverlight Feature Requests

2008-12-24T00:59:00Z

Currently, there is not a general location to log Silverlight feature requests (we’re considering adding something on Silverlight.net for this). Given the lack of a central spot, I’ve taken a few threads on the Silverlight forums related to a Silverlight wish list as well as some comments from ScottGu’s Silverlight 2 blog post and Scott Barnes’ blog and aggregated the requests into a single list with frequency counts. I left off things that have already been announced in Silverlight 3 but left on others that have not yet been announced. There are numerous reasons why something will or will not appear in the next version of Silverlight including customer demand, time to implement, business need, security concerns, performance concerns, ability to implement consistently cross browser and cross platform, etc. Therefore, items at the top of the list below won’t necessarily appear in the next version of Silverlight – however, it’s likely we’re engaged in solving those problems in one way or another. Net result is the Silverlight product team does look at these requests and they do have some impact on shaping future Silverlight platforms.

Feel free to continue to make requests and I’ll try and update the counts every month or so. One thing that would help for requests is some insight into the scenario for the request (if it’s not obvious). For example, if you need UDP, include details on your scenario for UDP (e.g. P2P game and if so, we may be able to solve that with a more targeted API). One area to call out specifically for scenarios is requests for WPF and Silverlight compatibility. In general, if you want a WPF feature in Silverlight, call that out as a Silverlight feature request vs. a compatibility request (e.g. want triggers in Silverlight). If you have a need to share resources between Silverlight and WPF, call that out as compatibility and let us know what you’re doing that requires shared resources (to better help us determine how to focus our work in this area).

Feature	Count	Comments
Web camera and/or microphone input	33	Includes requests for just microphone as well
Bitmap APIs	26	Support get/set pixels and/or rendering a XAML scene to a bitmap.
Full 3D	24	Full 3D support (full 3D models)
Printing	20	Printing APIs
Offline and/or out of browser support	16	Support running Silverlight when not online (or completely out of the browser)
Bi-directional text and/or complex script	9
UDP/P2P	9	UDP APIs generally for Peer to Peer support
Rich text support	8	Editing and display
Right mouse button	8	Ability to configure the right click
Text quality	8	Improved text quality
HTML Integration	7	Support HTML hosting (live HTML documents) and/or HTML translation
Interactive designer	7	Support an interactive designer in Visual Studio
Support more than BasicHttpBinding	7	Most common request is for WSHttpBinding
Improve Silverlight/WPF compatibility	6	Mostly feature requests for either Silverlight and/or WPF
More controls	6	Random/general requests
SaveFileDialog	6
Data and/or property triggers	5
Reporting services	5
Synchronous web service calls	5
ADO.NET DataSet/DataTable	4
Alpha video	4	Chroma key support
Clipboard support	4
Drawing APIs (immediate mode)	4
Element name binding	4
Improved DataGrid	4	Several different requests
Local relational database (SQL)	4
Modal dialog	4
Mouse wheel	4	API and support in existing controls
Selectable text	4
Assembly caching	3	Want a framework for downloading/managing assemblies
Credentials/auth	3	Requests for networking stack and ASP.NET type integration
Custom markup extensions	3
Multi-target DLLs for .NET/SL	3	Build a business object DLL once for both .NET and Silverlight
Multi-touch support	3
Path Animation	3
Speech and better audio decoder	3
VisualBrush	3
9 Grid	2
Better keyboard APIs	2	Platform independent keycode
Better SEO	2
Binding support to anonymous types	2
Direct database access	2	OLEDB/ODBC equivalent
Flow panel	2
GIF support	2
Global/dynamic styles (skinning)	2
Integrated CTRL+F (in page search)	2
Sound APIs (equalizer)	2	Includes looping
TileBrush (Image Tiling)	2
XPS Support	2
64-bit platform support	1
Android support	1
Better N-tier support	1	Improved data access
Better SharePoint integration	1
Block style text	1	Bulleted lists, paragraphs
Cell based animation	1
CollectionView	1
Color management	1
Digital/XAP signing	1
Double Click event	1
Drag and Drop	1	Between the desktop and Silverlight
Full 5.1 sound	1	Currently fold down to stereo
IDataErrorInfo	1
Inverse kinematics (bones)	1	Flash 10 feature
MediaTimeline	1
Multi-binding	1
Navigation model	1	Includes browser history integration
Validation controls	1
XPATH support for data binding	1

Update on Silverlight and Opera

2008-12-23T04:39:00Z

After my previous post, I had a few folks email me to look at some of their sites that don’t run correctly in Opera even after the below fix. After more investigation and trolling through our bug database to extract all known Silverlight and Opera issues, there are 3 issues folks should be aware of related to Silverlight and Opera:

1. The MS AJAX issue described in my previous post.

2. Silverlight does not work in Opera when using windowless mode (<param name="windowless" value="true" />). This will show a blank page with the Opera status area saying “Click to activate and use this control”. This is being investigated by the Silverlight team and has also been reported to the Opera development team. The only work-around is to not use windowless mode.

3. The Silverlight TextBox cannot receive focus (and therefore you cannot select/change text in the TextBox). There is no current workaround to this issue.

Silverlight and Opera

2008-12-22T04:56:00Z

Although Opera is not an officially supported browser (see my previous post for more details), we do want a good Silverlight experience for Opera users (and a good Opera experience for Silverlight developers). As such, we do some level of Opera testing and look at customer reported Silverlight/Opera issues. In general, the Silverlight experience in Opera works OK, with a few exceptions and one that's easy to correct: when hosting Silverlight in Opera via the MS AJAX Silverlight control. When doing this, the Silverlight control will correctly instantiate in Opera but the Silverlight content won’t load and you’ll see a blank page. The good news is this is reasonably easy to work-around and we are investigating the root cause of this issue (a bug has been logged to Opera on this issue and the Silverlight product team will look at it as well).

The bug is manifested in Opera when loading dynamic source when there is a dynamically set onload handler:

<head>

function pageLoaded() {

var obj = document.getElementById('obj1');

obj.OnLoad = xamlLoaded; // Remove and this works in Opera

obj.Source = "source.xaml";

}

function xamlLoaded() {}

</script>

</head>

</body>

This is the way the MS AJAX control needs to load Silverlight in order to integrate into the MS AJAX framework. The best way to work-around this issue is to replace the MS AJAX hosting with plain object tag hosting:

<body>

<!-- Runtime errors from Silverlight will be displayed here.

This will contain debugging information and should be removed or hidden when debugging is completed -->

</a>

</object>

</div>

</body>

Silverlight Browser Support

2008-12-22T04:53:00Z

I occasionally get asked about why we don’t support browser X on platform Y and wanted to share a little background on Silverlight browser support. This post will provide a bit of details what it means to be an officially supported Silverlight browser and what experience you should expect from not officially supported browsers. One thing to clarify up front is that independent of being “officially supported”, Silverlight should generally run in all common browsers that support either the Netscape Plug-in API or ActiveX plug-ins.

Browser Plug-Ins

Silverlight plugs into browsers using standard browser plug-in APIs. The browser plug-in APIs are effectively the base platform for all plug-ins (including Silverlight). For example, when Silverlight makes a networking request, it’s really calling through to the underlying browser provided plug-in API to make the network request. In this way, plug-ins are generally subjected to the same sandbox and security restrictions as the containing browser as well as automatically pick up browser based configuration settings (e.g. proxy settings, security, caching). On the negative side though, these APIs are limited in areas such as networking which prevents the plug-in from doing some things developers generally want to do (e.g. limited HTTP verbs).

Silverlight Support Plug-in Models

There are numerous combinations of browsers and platforms. In an ideal world, all browsers would support the same plug-in model and have a consistent implementation of their plug-in APIs. Unfortunately, there are two main plug-in models, ActiveX for Internet Explorer and the Netscape Plug-in API (NPAPI) for most other browsers. Given that, ideally Silverlight would just need to support these two APIs and would then work consistently across browsers/platforms. Unfortunately, browsers don’t provide 100% consistent implementations of the NPAPI and therefore Silverlight generally needs to work around these inconsistencies (e.g. Safari doesn’t support byte range requests through their implementation of the NPAPI). In addition, as with any software, the browser provided plug-in APIs occasionally have bugs. What this means is that even if Silverlight provides a consistent plug-in implementation, it will still not work consistently across all browsers and plug-ins.

Silverlight Supported Browsers

One of the key value-propositions of Silverlight is that it works consistently across all browsers and platforms. As such, for Silverlight “supported browsers and platforms”, the Silverlight team works around plug-in API inconsistencies/bugs to ensure general Silverlight platform consistency (as well as does performance and stress testing on these browsers). Note that even though a browser is not an officially supported browser, we’ll often do some level of testing on the most popular non supported browsers as this will occasionally either turn up a product issue or will turn up a browser issue that we can then report to the browser manufacturer. One general question we get asked is why don’t we just support browser X on platform Y and the reason is that there is a real cost to this supporting any browser/platform due to the issues just described. From a Silverlight product team perspective, we have to trade off the cost/impact of supporting new browsers with the cost/impact of supporting new product features. In addition, each supported browser/platform has a slight impact on overall product agility – meaning the more browsers/platforms officially supported with each release, the longer it takes to release the product. As such, we try to balance the need for new browser/platform support against the need for more features and agility.

Adding New Officially Supported Browsers

There are a couple of factors that contribute to Silverlight adding new officially supported browsers/platforms: new version/update to an officially supported browser, expected or measured up-tick in a browser’s penetration (here’s one site that measures share but this data varies on region and by polling method) or, as described above, based on customer demand when balanced against other requested features. Note that “demand” is typically directly related to “expected or measured up-tick” in browser penetration.