Nigel Parker's Outside Line : Silverlight2

NZsynth – How It Was Done

nparker — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:10:26 GMT

Previously I wrote and demoed the NZsynth application that was built for the WEB09 keynote. This post is detailing how it was made and introducing version two (Zoom all the way in using mouse wheel then double-click for popup image).

WATCH THE VIDEO that goes end-to-end on the development of the application (mainly building the mosaic and the extension that Tim Tate created to make the tiles clickable).

The video is also downloadable from Channel9

The Code

It goes without saying that this code is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights it is demo ware and should be treated as such.

Flickr Image Download Code

Mosaic WCF REST Service (Including Flickr Database File)

NZsynth

Demo at http://possi.bility.co.nz/ Hot keys in previous post

Tim’s Silverlight 3 Code and Demo

There is no “go live” for Silverlight 3 yet so what I’m going to do next is for “informational/ testing purposes only”. If you are a developer and happen to have either the Silverlight 3 Beta - Windows Developer Runtime or the Silverlight 3 Beta - Mac Developer Runtime installed pop over to http://possi.bility.co.nz/timtate/ to look at a running version of Tim’s solution.

NZsynth V2 Source (excluding image tiles)

Demo at http://possi.bility.co.nz/nzsynth (Zoom right in using mouse wheel then double-click for popup image)

Key tools

WEBPI to install Visual Studio Silverlight Development Tools & SQL Server 2008 Express
AndreaMosaic
HD Make
Deep Zoom Composer
WCF REST Starter Kit
FlickrNet

Other Resources/ Examples

Jellyfish Deep Zoom
Deep Zoom Image Generation with DeepZoomTools.DLL
My post DeepZoom-Tastic
http://tr.im/photosEFAS (DeepZoom Pix Photos from Expression for Art’s Sake)
Miss March and Other Distractions (Parental Advisory)
Deep Zoom++ : Build Dynamic Deep Zoom Applications with Open Source

All this got me thinking how this idea could be extended further?

National Geographic have been doing some interesting work with photosynth recently. Check out the Sphinx below.

This is why I was intrigued to see they too have developed a mosaic experience called Infinite Photograph. It is not as smooth or free flowing as the nzsynth mosaic demo but it has a great touch that it repeats on itself after a few layers giving you a “feeling” that you can zoom forever. Also double-clicking images brings up more details like in Tim and my examples.

I guess beyond this we then need to think about video and using dynamic frames in a form of “massive” stop motion animation. If you haven’t seen it yet the YouTube Mosaic Music Video may give you some insight into where my mind is heading.

Intergen, Buttercups and Silverlight Accessibility.

nparker — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:29:34 GMT

It seems fitting with Coldplay being in Auckland last week and Yellow producing a custom version of IE8 that we continue the Yellow theme.

Back in December 2006 Forrester released a report titled Smackdown: Rich Internet Applications Versus HTML

We found that, on average, RIAs outperform HTML interfaces; at the same time, RIA usability can fall prey to basic design mistakes.

The view that RIA’s are not accessible has continued for some but the W3C is working to change this with the introduction of the Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)

From the early stages of development of IE8 the team have worked closely with the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative group and Assistive Technology Vendors (ATVs). IE8 shipped with a bunch of new Accessibility Features including ARIA support.

So now that IE8 is supporting ARIA what does this mean for developers that are looking at building RIA’s using technologies like Silverlight and Flash and want to ensure that they are accessible as well?

Silverlight contains a number of accessibility features but there are few examples where these had been used to create a reference application so Microsoft approached Intergen who worked closely with The Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind to build one.

ButtercupReader - is a showcase of how Silverlight 2 can be used to build an application that blind and partially sighted folks can use to read digital books (DAISY 3.0 formatted books that is).

Andrew Tokeley does a fantastic job of explaining this project in detail on his blog.

Chris Auld and Reed Shaffner presented this project during a mini-breakout at MIX09 last week. If you are interested in more context for this project I recommend that you download and watch their half hour presentation Building Accessible RIAs in Microsoft Silverlight.

If you are wondering how to create DIASY content Reed has previously been involved in a project to build an Open XML to DAISY translator.

Deep Zoom Photographs

nparker — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 04:56:00 GMT

Back in May I delivered a session titled “MIX08: A Developers Perspective” where I first showed the programmability of Deep Zoom in Silverlight 2. Off the back of those sessions I have seen a few large scale developments take place in NZ using Silverlight 2 and Deep Zoom. None of them have come to market just yet but I’m very much looking forward to when they do.

Following the community blogs I’ve also seen that Robert Fonseca-Ensor from Datacom in Auckland has got right down to the nitty gritty inside of Deep Zoom Composer.

Anyone that has been following me for a while will know that I’m a keen photographer and I mentioned back in May that it would be cool to take Wilfred Pinto’s work and create a simple colour picker in blend to filter some of my photographs with.

Well I finally got a chance to updgrade it to Silverlight 2 RTW and deploy it to Silverlight streaming late last week. Enjoy!

View in new page http://tr.im/deepzoom

Source code -

Artist in Residence Melbourne Dec 1-5

nparker — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:43:39 GMT

Michael Kordahi and Shane Morris are holding an Artist in Resident (AiR) in Melbourne from Dec 1-5.

Michael wrote:

For those unfamiliar: AiR is a program whereby a developer and designer pair get together and build something in Silverlight from scratch.

It goes for 5 days where you start with some training (day 1), conceive an idea (day 2) and build (days 3 - 5) under the guidance of a qualified trainer.

It is a great way to get going on that Silverlight project that you’ve always wanted to do.

If you work as part of a dev/designer pair, have a project that you’re commencing (or want to commence) then AiR might be for you.

If you meet the criteria and are interested in crossing the ditch contact Michael or Shane to request a spot!

For NZ based designers wanting to get started with Expression there is a growing pool of resources that you can tap.

WPF/ Silverlight Control Toolkit - Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP

nparker — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:08:00 GMT

In today’s PDC keynote theGu announced a new control suite for Silverlight 2 and WPF.

The Silverlight controls announced today don’t exist in WPF just yet but have been written in a way that can be easily ported to WPF.

These releases continue to drive towards the arrowhead vision for WPF and Silverlight.

photo Dru!

Tim has a post demonstrating chart databinding in action. Laurent has gone deep on the Silverlight controls as well.

The WPF Toolkit includes out-of-band releases of high-quality WPF controls and features. Many of these will be rolled back into the platform with the next .NET Framework release.

Included in the WPF Toolkit are:

DataGrid

DatePicker/Calendar

VisualStateManager (VSM)

If you are interested with what is around the corner you can check out the overview and download Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 CTP today!

Watch Day 2 Keynote: Ray Ozzie, Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, and David Treadwell

IIS Smooth Streaming - Akamai AdaptiveEdge Streaming

nparker — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:16:00 GMT

PDC isn’t the only conference in LA this week also taking place is Digital Hollywood (yes that is their website!).

This morning in the US at Digital Hollywood Microsoft introduced “IIS Smooth Streaming”, an extension of IIS Media Pack for up to HD-quality adaptive streaming video delivery.

Initially this will be released as Akamai AdaptiveEdge Streaming for Microsoft Silverlight read more about this at http://www.akamai.com/smoothhd

You can try it out now for yourself by visting the "Proof of Concept" portal http://smoothhd.com but I warn you depending on which ISP you connect through in New Zealand your experience may vary!

New Zealand has an interesting peering ecosystem and although this system works flawlessly on my work connection it struggles on my home broadband connection.

This is caused by the point that Akamai has New Zealand based servers with only two of the large ISP's who leverage them exclusively for their customers.

Please let me know in the comments if you are connecting by a New Zealand based ISP and what sort of experience you are getting with the demo site?

In addition to the smooth streaming, we and others have joined with Akamai to build a best practices approach to online video player development I recommend that you download and take a look at the Silverlight 2 source code for the Open Video Player project.

Read the official press release Microsoft and Akamai Innovate on Consumer Video Experiences Using Silverlight

"The service is expected to be available to select Akamai customers in a beta release in early 2009. Akamai AdaptiveEdge Streaming for Silverlight will leverage IIS Smooth Streaming, which offers a simple-to-manage approach for adaptive streaming, and will be an upcoming feature of IIS7 Media Pack"

The timeline on media announcements and releases to date -

March 5th 2008 – Scott Guthrie announced:

1) “adaptive streaming” support in Silverlight 2

2) A strategic partnership with MOVE Networks.

3) DoubleClick In-Stream product for Silverlight 2

March 15th 2008 – IIS7 Bit Rate Throttling is released

April 17th 2008 - Silverlight DRM, Powered by Microsoft PlayReady is announced.

June 6th 2008 – Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is released

August 6th 2008 – Double Click announces the launch of DoubleClick In-Stream support for Microsoft's Silverlight 2 player framework as part of the NBC Olympic site.

August 7th 2008 - NBCOlympics.com on MSN went live with more than 3,500 hours of live and on-demand video. Leveraging adaptive streaming for on-demand video, DART for Silverlight 2 for advertising and Silverlight 2 Beta 2 as a player.

(The Silverlight player work and IIS7 Smooth Streaming heuristics (stream switching logic) represent Microsoft’s productisation of the work done for NBCOlympics.com.)

August 26th 2008 -

1) Announcement that Microsoft has taken an equity stake in Move Networks that builds on a strategic partnership announced in March of 2008.

2) The first demonstration of collaboration between MOVE and Silverlight 2 was shown as the Democratic National Committee delivered live HD video from its 2008 convention in Denver via http://demconvention.com/.

This site used Silverlight 2 for the player and MOVE’s own plug-in to support the VP7 codec. MOVE are evaluating Silverlight's codec options (VC-1 and H.264) for potential future versions.

September 11th 2008 – IIS7 URL Rewrite Module - Go Live release

September 12th 2008 – IIS7 Web Playlists Release Candidate (RC) Released

September 16th 2008 - International Broadcasting Conference 2008 in Amsterdam

1) Demonstration of H.264 video and AAC playback in Silverlight

September 23rd 2008 - Microsoft Announced Expression Encoder 2 SP1

October 14th 2008 – Silverlight 2 and Blend 2 SP1 are Released

October 27th 2008 - Netflix has just announced Silverlight 2 will power their streaming video service, which had been Windows-only until now. Silverlight 2 adds support for PlayReady DRM. The service will be available on Xbox 360 as well.

October 28th 2008 - IIS Smooth Streaming is announced and demonstrated.

UPDATE October 30th 2008 - Expression Encoder 2 SP1 is released

Silverlight Version 2 RC0 Released! Prepare Your Applications Now

nparker — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:55:00 GMT

Scott Guthrie has the low down!

Version 2 of the Silverlight developer runtime along with the Silverlight Tools is now available. This release candidate will give developers the chance to convert their sites from Beta 2 –> Release before the final release of the runtime is out. Also, included below is a link to a patch that will upgrade Blend.

Visual Studio 2008 Tools RC0
Expression Blend SP1 RC0
Windows Silverlight 2 Dev Runtime RC0

A document detailing the breaking changes between Beta2 and Release can be downloaded here.

H.264 video support And Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Coming in Silverlight!

nparker — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:56:23 GMT

Silverlight Shines at International Broadcasting Conference 2008 in Amsterdam

Later this week, at the International Broadcasting Conference (IBC) 2008 in Amsterdam, Microsoft Corp. will demonstrate an important new capability for Silverlight - playback of H.264-based video.

This is great news for content owners that are looking for greater flexibility and choice for their web delivery of video and audio.

Build A 10,000 x 10,000 Mosaic of Images with DeepZoom

nparker — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:50:00 GMT

Donavon West has created a killer deep zoom using tens of thousands of images making up the face of Barack Obama.

It is very cool and available to view at http://www.deepzoomobama.com

The great part is that Donavon has also released a "how to" build your own mosaic and host it on us for free using Silverlight Streaming.

Donavon picked up from, Soul Solutions in Brisbane who have been breaking new ground combining Deep Zoom in Silverlight 2 with Virtual Earth as a MultiScaleTileSource check out their DeepEarth project.

http://deepzoom.soulclients.com/VE/

They have Open Source'd it - http://www.codeplex.com/deepearth

Also their mosaic of the Sydney Opera House made up of Virtual Earth images used a free mosaic generator called AndreaMosaic to generate their image.

So you have all you need go make your own Mosaic and post it in the comments below.

ENJOY!

On Sunday Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Was Released

nparker — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:28:00 GMT

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 now provides everybody with a commercial go-live license.

Scott Guthrie has the lowdown as does Tim Heuer on how to get started. Scott Barnes throws in his comments as well.

Once you upgrade your browser to Silverlight 2 Beta 2 you will no longer be able to run Silverlight Beta 1 applications. This means that if you have published a running sample on the web built with Beta 1 you will probably want to update it to Beta 2 soon.

We have published a document that details the changes between Beta 1 and Beta 2. Also check out Shawn Wildermuth's What Changed in Silverlight 2 Beta2 and Upgrading your Silverlight 2 Projects to Beta2 posts for more details.

Best description on media enhancements including hooks to enable adaptive streaming is at http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/Silverlight-2-Beta-2-is-out/

I'm thinking I need to slowly go out an start converting my samples as well.

MIX08: A Developers Perspective... IT'S A WRAP!

nparker — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:25:00 GMT

Thanks all for coming out and participating in the conversation surrounding future web technologies and Silverlight 2 over the last week and a half.

As promised this is my post outlining the various things that I presented including source code when available and all that other good stuff!

Remember dozens of detailed session on all the cool new web stuff is available at http://sessions.visitmix.com. You can watch the "Olympic NBC Demo" as part of the MIX Keynote Video.

VIDEO

IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Module

EXPRESSION VERSION 2 - HAS LAUNCHED

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

"ARROWHEAD"

ScottGu has the lowdown on Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 Beta and the other Scott (who is coming to Tech.Ed NZ) asks the question of whether you should fear this release?

Scott also chips in with a 7 video Introduction to ASP.NET Dynamic Data.

Ivan Towlson, from Mindscape asked me a question during the Auckland session that I promised to publish the answer here. He asked: "Are we treating .NET 3.5 SP1 as a separate project type when it ships as part of multi-targeting in VS2008?"

Scott Guthrie responded:

No – you will still target it using the .NET 3.5 drop down in VS 2008. There is a separate checkbox though for whether you want to target the client-profile setup (which will allow you to get compile errors if you try and reference an assembly not in the client subset).

For the next release of VS we are hoping to expand multi-targeting so that you can target not just big versions of frameworks, but also individual SPs as well.

"DEEP ZOOM"

View the Hard Rock Cafe memorabilia site.

Take a look at BigPicture.

Check out the updated Deep Zoom Composer and the PhotoZoom service.

Also the code I based my Business Card demo (view it here - try tags "silverlight", "expression", "blue" or "card" to filter) was made available by Wilfred Pinto in his Dissecting Hard Rock Memorabilia post series.

The DeepZoom Composer Forum is great place to ask q's about this stuff.

SILVERLIGHT 2 - EXAMPLES

I showed some examples of Silverlight applications in my session.

Including the Magnify Glass demo that ships with Expression Blend 2

And the Microsoft Health Common User Interface (MSCUI) Silverlight 2 sample that uses a similar technique to magnify parts of a video of the heart.

Jaime Rodriguez has the word on the Silverlight in Financial's Demonstrator including source code.

I also showed the in some centres the Silverlight 2 Surface Demo that includes DeepZoom, with source code.

DIGG SAMPLE IN SILVERLIGHT 2

The Digg Sample that I stepped through in the session (available for you to try online thanks to "free hosting" at http://silverlight.live.com) was based on ScottGu's great 8 part tutorial series.

Dan Wahlin has taken these steps and made them available as bite sized videos.

If you want to Start Learning Silverlight 2 there are tutorials, hands on labs (Swiss End-2-End example) and videos available to help you.

Also if you are interested in design and UX Arturo has made his XAML Ready Agency training and also Silverlight Bootcamp For Designers available.

Corrina Barber does a great job of "re-skinning" the Digg Sample App, and shares some great samples of control skinning as well.

Jose from Cynergy took the demo much much further and also made his code available on codeplex.

For Silverlight 1, the Silverlight learning snacks have just been made available.

CHERRY

Oh yeah and I can't leave without giving you all a cherry!

Silverlight 1 (Moonlight) first source code release for Linux and Silverlight 2 said Hello in Linux

Bill Gates Demonstrates Touch Wall
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates demonstrates Touch Wall, a new hardware technology from Microsoft that creates a touch-based “white board” interface that lets users interact more naturally with data and applications on their computer. Microsoft CEO Summit 2008, Redmond, Wash. May 14, 2008.
.wmv file (27.7 MB) | .mpg file (279 MB)

Just think of the Silverlight Surface Demo running on Touch Wall!

TechCrunch coverage Touch Wall and Plex

Tags: mix08, NZWC

How Did You Do That Fancy PIP Reflection Stuff?

nparker — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:53:00 GMT

I've had a few people contact me asking questions about how I did that fancy Picture In Picture and Video Reflection stuff in my Vimeo and Facebook Videos linked off my my previous post.

Well the answer may not be what you expect.

I used Expression Encoder 2 (namely the new video overlay feature and marker meta data), Expression Blend 2.5, Visual Studio 2008 and Silverlight 2 Beta 1 to build an application.

The output from Expression Encoder 2 is a single video with two streams combined, and markers saying when the PIP was focused on me.

I then uploaded the video to Microsoft's streaming servers. You can view it in it's raw form using Windows Media Player. This technique vastly simplifies the sync issues that can get created when using two separate streams and would work for multiple cameras at live events as well.

I then used a single media element, clipping and two video brushes to produce the resulting application.

1 Video Stream + a 134kb XAP file is what produced the final effect.

Given the interest I thought I would post my source code and show you the Silverlight 2 (I could have used Silverlight 1) version of my application hosted online.

I used the free Silverlight Streaming service to host the application and you can view the finished product either online as a web page and as a Windows Application. I didn't put in any UI to show buffering so please be patient for the video to start. I also added code to pop to full screen triggered by the user clicking on the main video feed.

P.S. for the vimeo and facebook versions I used Hypercam Screen Capture software to record the screen while the Silverlight application was running!

Enjoy!

Training on all the Latest Stuff!

nparker — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:39:00 GMT

Great news the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training kit has been released containing six hands-on labs, made up of the following technologies:

ADO.NET Data Services
ADO.NET Entity Framework
ASP.NET AJAX History
ASP.NET Dynamic Data
ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET Silverlight controls

Also available is the Kigg Starter Kit (A Digg like application developed with ASP.NET MVC Framework, LINQ to SQL and ASP.NET AJAX)

Scott Hanselman's MIX session on MVC is also well worth a look if you are that way inclined. BTW if you want to see Scott at Tech.Ed join the Bring Scott Hanselman to Tech-Ed Australia group and make some noise.

I enjoyed the DNUG talk at Ellerslie last night on MIX08 a developers perspective especially building the DeepZoom SL2 project. Check out this video and http://photozoom.mslivelabs.com/ to learn more about deepzoom.

I was asked if you could bypass the DeepZoom Composer and create your composition using code. The Answer Yes, Included as part of the Deep Zoom are command line encoding tools that allow you to generate the output files needed without having to use the Deep Zoom Composer. Also if you would like to create collections that can randomise each image's location programatically "rather than one big image" you can do that to. Also Jamie has a primer on the deepzoom technology if you would like to go deep.

As I mentioned ScotGu has a great list of Silverlight 2 resources on his blog.

In fact after lifting the lid off SL2 yesterday I was inspired to "re-work" my video reflection demo from SL1 to SL2. The video is below, code is here (minus the video)

Download a better looking WMV version (14.5MB)

Also Silverlight Streaming now supports the free hosting of Silverlight 2 applications. Check this post on the Naked XAP upload enabled in Silverlight Streaming.

P.S. Those of you who aren't subscribed to the MSDN Flash the code from my recent VS2008/ ASP.NET presentation is on skydrive and you might also find this link useful.

If you want to see me present on the new stuff in person come along to one of my MSDN Unplugged events coming up in May.