Martin Grayson: Adventures of a 'Devigner' : Links

Silverlight 2 RTW, the Patient Journey Demonstrator and Blacklight

Martin Grayson — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 13:20:00 GMT

What a week! Silverlight 2 is here - horray! This release really feels like it has come out of nowhere.

First up - where to get the stuff...

Uninstall the old Silverlight runtimes, Silverlight tools for VS, Silverlight SDK and Blend 2 (any CTP).
Get VS2008 SP1 installed, if you havent already, from here... http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/vstudio/cc533448.aspx
Install the Silverlight 2 tools chainer from here... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=c22d6a7b-546f-4407-8ef6-d60c8ee221ed&displaylang=en. This will install the RTW runtime, tools for VS and the Silverlight 2 SDK. It actually says RC1 on the page, but this is definately the RTW runtime.
Install Blend 2 from here... http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Overview.aspx?key=blend
Install the Blend 2 SP1 update from here... http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EB9B5C48-BA2B-4C39-A1C3-135C60BBBE66&displaylang=en... and you are good to go!

I have been pretty busy over the last couple of weeks getting my 2 current project up to speed with RTW, and they are now available.

The Patient Journey Demonstrator has now been upgraded to Silverlight 2 RTW...

The current release of Blacklight (v0.1) has also been updated along with the showcase. There is also now a pre-release showcase, giving you a taste for what is coming at the end of October! Check-it out now...

Finally, my UX buddy, Dave Crawford, has updated his Glossy Control styles for the RTW of Silverlight 2. The are real nice, and now, everyone, demand more from Dave!!! See them running live here...

Brand New Silverlight 2 Application: Healthcare Demonstrator

Martin Grayson — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:49:00 GMT

I have been fairly quiet for the last few months, and one of the reasons is that I have been working on a Silverlight 2 application, showcasing some future thinking for rich UI in the healthcare space.

The Microsoft Health Common User Interface: Patient Journey Demonstrator is the result of work from a very small team based here in the UK, and we think, is a great example of a Rich Internet Application demonstrating an LOB scenario, but using the power of Silverlight to provide beautiful, meaningful ways of representing incredibly complex data.

The blurb from the site...

‘The Microsoft Health Common User Interface (MSCUI) Patient Journey Demonstrator is a vehicle for Microsoft thought leadership in state-of-the-art User Experience for Healthcare applications. It provides exemplar implementations of Microsoft Common User Interface guidance on a Microsoft platform.

It is our showcase for new ideas, experimentation and an artefact for learning and thinking about future developments of the MSCUI program.’

The demonstrator is actually broken up into 3 separate applications, describing the ‘day-in-the-life’ of a patient from the perspective of a primary care administrator, a GP, and a registrar in a hospital. The UI is completely interactive and you are able to explore, manipulate, layer and scale the patient’s data to create rich visualisations.

Over the next couple of months, I want to blog about some of the things we have built here, how we did it, share snippets of code, and talk more about how we are developing it further.

Some of the cool things in Silverlight 2 that we are already using include (but are not limited to J)...

· Deep zoom to view complex ECG (electrocardiogram) data

· Intelligent, scaling layout

· Data-binding everywhere

· Animation and media

· Vector graphics enabling real time manipulation of chart data

A video covering some of this is in the pipeline, so watch this space!

Big thanks to the team invloved in building this...

Kirsten Disse - lead UX designer
Sergei Golubev - Silverlight UI developer
Joe Wardell - Silverlight UI developer
Neil Ashley & Tinisha Rocca - visual designers
Alam Rahman - lead test

In the mean time, head over to the site and please share any feedback / ideas either here or on our CodePlex discussion board here.

Martin

NOTE FOR USERS OUTSIDE OF THE UK:-

A few users outside of the UK are experience a bug with the Primary Care and Secondary Care demonstrators. The symptom is when they try to launch the either of these demonstrators, they see our default error dialogue stating: "This application has encountered a problem and needs to close. Please, try restarting it. Sorry for any inconvenience."

We have identified that the problem is due to current 'Regional and Language' settings. The reason is because we do various things with the formatting of dates, but have only extensively tested with the UK date format. We have now logged the issue and are aiming to release the demonstrator with the fix when Silverlight 2 Beta 2 ships.

There is a workaround though in the meantime. You can access the second parts of the demonstrator by changing you current language format to 'English (United Kingdom)'. You can access this in Windows Vista via...

Control Panel -> Regional and Langauge Options -> Formats (tab) and selecting 'English (United Kingdom)' from the drop-down.

Many thanks again, and please keep the feedback coming.

BETA 2 - Come and get it!

Martin Grayson — Wed, 24 May 2006 16:19:00 GMT

Tim Sneath tells us whats new in WPF Beta 2, and where to get just about everything!

Martin

Ten Websites of the Month - May Edition

Martin Grayson — Wed, 24 May 2006 15:50:00 GMT

Ok, so one of the things I hope to achieve with this blog is to share all of the little gems that I come across in the web, as well as highlighting some articles from the big boys' blogs, such Tims, Karsten, DanC etc.

So, without further adue... (and in no particular order!)

Adding Glass to a Windows Forms Application.

Superb article from Mr. Tim Sneath about how to get that beautiful Vista glass into the client area of your apps. Media Player 11 in Vista does this. Tim has also included all the source code to do this.

The Z-Index Property... At Last!

The May CTP has bought great new features - one of them, the Z-Index property. No longer to we have to remove children and re-add them to our scenes to get them to the front (see my post: RSS Postit Application). Karsten has shown us how to do it!

WinFX Vista: WPF 3D Samples

Although this site is a wierd and wonderful experience in itself, the webmaster, known as The R Hogue, has produced some great 3D samples, including various media and carousel samples, that are great for anyone wanting to take their controls to the next level.

Adobe Illustrator XAML Exporter

This Illustrator plugin needs no introduction. Check out the great work Michael Swanson is doing to ensure designers get the best possible experience when it come to creating WPF applications.

Bread and Butter 3D

Great tutorial giving you all of the basics for 3D in WPF, taking you from concept to realisation. A must for anyone starting out with 3D.

CodeProject: 3D Basics

Another great lesson in 3D, and great for all future reference.

A Collection of Useful Avalon Tutorials

Stuck on where to start, or have a specific problem? You can bet this post from DigitalNetBizz has an article that will help you out. Loads here, have a look.

Animating a Wrap Panel

Have you seen those funky, animating wrap panels in Microsoft Max? Dan Crevier explains how to create these, source and all!

IBloks. Mix, Share, Play.

This is set to be one of the first commercial WPF apps. Check out the demo at the Mix 06 conference too. A lotta fun.

BBC Demo at MIX06

While we are on MIX06, as well as all the other great sessions, the BBC demo is a must see. Myself and Paul Tallett got to work on this project, and it was a great peice for a great company. Check out the video.

Thats it for May. I shall drop some more interesting sites in June.

Peace.

Getting Started Using Windows Presentation Foundation

Martin Grayson — Mon, 22 May 2006 14:49:00 GMT

Get started here with this great MSDN article.

Martin