Keith Smith's Blog : Silverlight

Celso Gomes launches Nibbles Tutorials

keiths — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 20:43:28 GMT

Designer extraordinaire, Celso Gomes, has created a new blog for designers on Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation and Expression Studio tutorials. The coolest feature is his tutorial engine is built in Silverlight as well. The first set of tutorials on creating Silverlight apps with Expression Blend is already available.

Celso does amazing work. His fingerprints are all over the Silverlight keynote & launch content. You can spend a few minutes learning how to do some really cool things from a masterful professional designer.

Silverlight Wins CNET Webware 100 Award

keiths — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 02:50:00 GMT

Well this latest news is enough to bring me back from my blogging hiatus. At 3:00 PM Pacific, CNET announced Microsoft Silverlight as the Webware 100 Award winner in the Publishing category.

We are very honored and excited about this award considering it seems like just yesterday that we unveiled Silverlight at the National Association of Broadcasters conference and we are busy putting the final touches on Silverlight 1.0.

It is always great to see one's work receive industry recognition when that recognition comes from actual user votes. There were many popular finalists in the Publishing category and having Silverlight come out in the top must mean we are delivering something useful and valuable to end-users, designers, developers and content owners.

It appears those of you who voted are as excited about Silverlight as we are. I am looking forward to seeing all the amazing things you do once all that creative energy is unleashed when Silverlight 1.0 is released this summer.

Silverlight Meets .NET at MIX

keiths — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 22:36:45 GMT

Today, during the MIX07 Keynote, Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie unveiled the .NET capabilities of Silverlight and previews of the latest Expression Studio and Visual Studio tools for building Silverlight applications.

This announcements comes on the heels of the rich media functionality announced 2 weeks ago at the National Association of Broadcasters conference. Everyone who has worked on this project is elated, excited, ecstatic, energized, and euphoric with all the buzz and clear designer and developer interest around what we are delivering. [Check out: technorati, flickr, twitter, facebook)

With Silverlight we are changing the conversations people have ]bout building RIAs and delivering rich media experiences in a broad, quick and easy way. No longer is it an either/or proposition where you have to make tradeoffs between:

High-quality animation or performance
Developer/designer productivity or skills reuse
Broad audio/video reach or low cost of delivery

With a cross-platform implementation of .NE T at its core and Windows Media as its foundation, Silverlight turns each of the ORs above to ANDs.

You want high-quality, performant vector animation? Check.
Your developers and designers want an efficient workflow that allows them to reuse their existing skills and maintain creative control? Check.
You need to deliver your existing media assets at a low cost? Check.

Exciting times.

Go check out the latest Silverlight news at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

Also, we have launched the Silverlight Community Site at http://www.silverlight.net where you can see demos, download samples and participate in the discussion on the Forums.

Microsoft Silverlight to Light Up the Web

keiths — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:38:00 GMT

Today, at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft unveiled Microsoft Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Helpful links:

Get ready to Light up the Web...

Nikhil Does it Again

keiths — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:57:34 GMT

ASP.NET AJAX Architect, Nikhil Kothari, has released 3 updated server controls (one existing, two new) for ASP.NET AJAX 1.0:

UpdateHistory

A non-visual control that allows you to add history entries to the browser's navigation stack selectively for some post-backs, and not for some others. This helps fix the back button to make it work, and allows you to implement Ajax patterns such as "logical navigation" and unique URLs.

StyledUpdatePanel
A simple derived UpdatePanel that adds CSS class semantics. A simple addition, but a useful feature, nevertheless, that didn't make the feature cut.

AnimatedUpdatePanel
Another derived UpdatePanel that displays new content using a variety of animations or effects: slides, wipes, cross-fades as well as a visual highlight. This allows you to implement the "visual notification" Ajax patterns such as the one second spotlight and one second mutation.

In addition to samples, Nikhil also includes a "WPF/E"-hosted video in his post showing all 3 controls in action so you OS X users can enjoy it too.

"WPF/E" == "Wow"

keiths — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:57:00 GMT

Now that the "WPF/E" February 2007 CTP is available, I'm sure many of you want to see how cool it is and want to know what all the buzz is about? Just point your browser to http://www.vista.si/ and experience the better Web of the future.

If your Slovenian is not quite what it used to be, first click the icon at the top (if necessary, to install the latest "WPF/E" CTP) then click the icon with the Vista ribbon to launch the app.

Go ahead and interact with this browser-based emulation of Windows Vista, Microsoft's new flagship operating system. You can resize, move, minimize & maximize windows; transparency is enabled; the clock in the Sidebar works as expected; you can even "launch" things from the Start menu. Amazing.

Of course, since "WPF/E" can be programmed with standard JavaScript, you can use it to easily enhance and interact with your existing ASP.NET AJAX applications.