Nigel Parker's Outside Line : Windows7

FTW IE6, IE7, IE8, Chrome and Firefox running together on Windows 7 in Windows XP Mode

nparker — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:56:00 GMT

When you buy Windows 7 (pro or ultimate) you get Windows XP "virtualized" for free.

What this means that if you are web developer you can finally have IE6, IE7, IE8 all running alongside each other as hardware supported virtual applications.

Take a trip to the Virtual PC site to read the hardware requirements and install Virtual XP Mode.

Check out the quick screen cast that I made to show how all the bits work together.

Donavon West has also done a good blog post on how to get this setup.

To aid with XP Mode we have recently launched http://protectmypc.co.nz a new website that provides more details of our new security offerings including the new free Microsoft Security Essentials that guards you against viruses, spyware and other malicious software on your virtual image.

Use this along with the free version of Expression SuperPreview or fork out the small upgrade price to Expression Web 3 and you get the the full version of SuperPreview, Expression Encoder 3, Screen Capture and Expression Design 3 thrown in as well.

Remember also to check out Giorgio’s MSDN Unplugged video on IE8 developer tools, it has already had an amazing 25,000 views!

Click Suite, Auckland Museum + the ‘Hybridiser’

nparker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:54:00 GMT

Click Suite has a long history of awesome interactive new media projects. Their front end weapon of choice has almost exclusively been Flash.

Zef Fugaz has always been one for pushing the user experience to the edge and delivered a great session at the Microsoft Expression for Art’s Sake event on User Centred Design with Microsoft Expression.

As it turns out this event was a bit of a turning point for Click Suite and their adoption of the Microsoft Expression Studio for front end design.

Since the workshop, Click Suite have built and installed at the Auckland Museum the ‘Hybridiser’. An interactive, multi-touch 3D application that allows visitors at the museum to create an orchid hybrid flower by selecting 2 parent orchids and tweaking its different parts in terms of pattern/texture, shape & colour.

The ‘Hybridiser’ is built using WPF (.NET 3.5), Visual Studio 2008 & Expression Blend 2. The application runs on the Windows 7 release candidate & takes advantage of the Windows 7 gesture APIs.

If you are in Auckland I recommend that you visit Wonderland: The Mystery of the Orchid and try it out for yourself. My creation is below.

Aren’t incrementing ID’s a beautiful thing!? I can browse through others peoples creations (currently at 565 at time of writing)… I was just thinking it would be cool to make a dynamic interactive deep zoom (possibly using eventr) of peoples creations on the Auckland Museum’s website but I digress.

For everyone else not able to make it to Auckland to check out the exhibition in person I have made a little video of my interactions with the ‘Hybridiser’ below.

Incidentally this is the first time I have used the new Encoder 3/ Silverlight 3 player. Tip try clicking the cog in the top right to check out the perspective 3D chapters.

Here are some of the technical details behind the build.

Pieter Bosteels from click suite wrote:

To achieve the hybridisation effect we are morphing 3D shapes, patterns & colours individually. Each flower part is covered by different layers of greyscale textures which are colourised individually by a custom made HLSL pixelshader to allow the user to adjust texture/pattern vs. colour. Shape morphing is achieved by interpolation between individual mesh points.

Multitouch manipulation is achieved by attaching a single-touch move to a camera rotation, a dual-touch panning gesture to a camera translation & a dual-touch zoom gesture to a scale translation.

We’ve built all the 3D models in Cinema4D & then ported them to XAML using ZAM3D.

Everything is build using WPF (.NET 3.5), Visual Studio 2008 & Blend 2. The application runs on Windows 7 RC & uses the Windows 7 gesture APIs. We hooked into the gesture events using the Multitouch Sample .NET Interop Library for .NET 3.5 & Windows 7.

We thought about using the WPF 4.0 beta to have multitouch support built-in into WPF, but in the end we didn’t want to risk using beta software on a live environment.

This is a great showcase for WPF, especially in terms of productivity. It’s a good demonstration of how advanced graphics that are typically not available in rapid application development frameworks can be achieved relatively easily using WPF.

It is also a good showcase for WPF performance overall, with 3D rendering especially.

Without WPF, we could have never dreamed of getting the advanced stuff to work like it does now in the time we did it!

Zef Fugaz followed this with a comment:

For me as an observer the design and development team had a working prototype up and running in around a week. Pieter was in his element working with the visuals/interaction through code in close collaboration with the designers.

The hardened Flash developers who hasn't worked with the Expression Suite and WPF before seemed impressed with the capabilities of WPF and by the end of the project I heard them saying - "We never could have done this so quickly/easily using Flash".

This could make a great case study on design-dev team-work, rapid prototyping and a stunning visual design (+ multitouch to boot!)

Great work team!

As a side note when I visited the exhibition I chose to make a photosynth of the event.

Representatives from the Auckland Museum were quick to find my comments on Twitter and responded directly. Furthermore I was presently surprised to see them pimp the synth.

Making a photosynth of something I want to showcase is starting to become second nature to me. With a portable camera in you pocket it can be done in minutes and IMO shares the experience deeply with others.

Windows 7 Media Center - Sky Digital + Freeview HD Setup.

nparker — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:21:00 GMT

I have been getting a lot of questions recently about my home media center setup since I told people that I have moved to the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

I thought the best way to address things is with a blog post.

You may or may not be aware that Windows 7 opens the door for watching Freeview HD natively without the need for any additional codec's to be installed inside of Media Center.

Prior to upgrading to Win7 RC I was running Vista 64 bit with a Hauppauge WinTV PVR500MCE card.

It was a good card (albeit a bit pricey) back in the day but all I can say now is DON’T BUY ONE!

This card is old and doesn’t have a 64 bit driver that supports >3GB of RAM so you need to limit your system RAM using msconfig if you want to make it work. Besides there are newer, cheaper and better options.

I replaced the card with a Hauppauge WinTV HVR2200 MC PCI-E $199 NZD which Windows 7 installs the drivers for automatically and eats as much RAM as you throw at it. This card gives you three tuners (1 S-Video that I use for digital Sky and 2 DVB-T tuners that I use for Freeview HD).

If you are planning on connecting digital sky in addition to Freeview HD you will need a couple more things.

1) A Microsoft MCE Remote Control with an Infrared Blaster (which unfortunately appear to have been discontinued so are very expensive at stores that still hold stock). That said you may be able to use the Hauppauge MCE Remote Control Kit instead, but I haven’t tried it.

2) Also you’ll need a S-Video & 3.5mm Audio plug to connect the sky digital to the HVR2200 card.

Once you have this setup the next challenge you face is getting your channels mapped with a working Electronic Program Guide (important for series linking and avoiding old VHS style manual recordings). Unfortunately there is currently no supported guide for MCE offered by Freeview or Sky in New Zealand.

That said if you have opted for a tuner that supports DVB-S you get a 7 day Freeview guide automatically via the satellite. Alternatively the DVB-T broadcast (Freeview HD) gives you a now/next guide automatically for the next few shows.

If you have access to a licensed EPG from a third party, Australian company mobilewares is offering a 3rd Party EPG Importer For Windows 7, signup to try the beta.

One of my favourite TV features of Win7 Media Center is the way that you can get captions on live and recorded TV when you press the mute button.

Also I love the audio pitch correction so that people don’t sound like chipmunks when you play back at 1.5x by pressing the >> button. This feature is great for watching news and long sporting events.

Another great thing about this setup is the extender story to get HD Freeview in other rooms of the house.

I own a Linksys Media Center extender that I brought a while back during a stock clearance sale. Again DON’T BUY ONE! Linksys, as far as I’m aware, are not updating their extenders to support the codecs needed to play TV in Win7. Mine now sits in the lounge on top of the MySky HDi box for playing music, photos and movies via HDMI from Win7 to my main TV.

A better extender solution is to buy an entry level XBOX 360 (currently under $300 NZD) and an HDMI LCD monitor with built in speakers for around $340 NZD.

Like any technology solution there have been a few teething issues. Namely when watching recorded HD TV on the XBOX extender audio sometimes gets a little out of sync. I find pressing pause and then play fixes this. Also for some crazy reason once you connect to XBOX live to download the hd codecs you appear to need to be connected to XBOX live from that point on when you launch media center! This isn’t a problem really except the other day when the login service for XBOX live was unavailable I couldn’t watch TV on my XBOX extender! I have raised this issue with the XBOX NZ team.

UPDATE:

arebee wrote: The Xbox 360 Live login requirement for the extender to work is Beta only and won't be required for release.
Tue, Jul 07 13:47:50

You will need plenty of hard drive space if you plan to archive programs after you view them.Win7 Media Center uses a new .wtv container which is about 3.5GB per hour for H.264 content.

Windows Live Movie Maker (currently available in early beta) is one of the few programs that I have found that can work with wtv files natively, also right clicking “convert to DVR-MS” works for content that is not HD.

All in all the solution I have is wife friendly (more so than MySky we’ve found) via a simple to use remote control and a very intuitive user interface.

Sneak Peak of the Windows 7 MSDN Flash Newsletter.

nparker — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:12:00 GMT

If you’ve been missing these updates previously subscribe to MSDN Flash...

If you have disconnected yourself over the holiday period you may not have caught up with the news that we have released the first beta of Windows 7.

I recommend that you join the Windows 7 Beta Customer Preview Program to get on the inside track. Brian Keller shows how to virtualize the Windows 7 Beta if you are that way inclined. Once you have Windows 7 up and running Tim Sneath has published a Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets.

The Windows 7 Beta was announced by Steve Ballmer at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas on the 8^th of Jan. You can watch the keynote on-demand.

Another interesting point is that some applications that have been included with prior releases of Windows (Mail, Calendar, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery) are no longer included and are instead offered separately (free of charge) as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite for Windows XP, Vista and 7. I personally love the updated Windows Live Photo Gallery application that ties in well with the new Silverlight 2 based photo slideshow.

Along with Windows 7 the first beta of Windows Server 2008 R2 is also available for download. Read how the new server is improving the Web Application Platform. Of note you not get a subset of .NET 3.5 with a server core installation. Check out the Developing with Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET for Server Core session from PDC.

As always the best way to get Microsoft news as it breaks is to subscribe to the Microsoft Press Pass RSS feed.

So what are you waiting for go get it!

Editor’s picks

The source code for the Silverlight 2 controls has been released under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). With the release of this source code as well as having access to the source for the Silverlight Toolkit, you should have some great base implementations to extend and learn from!

PhotoSuru is a new sample from the WPF team that provides a unique way to browse photos. The application takes advantage of some of the richer WPF features such as pixel shaders, adaptive layout, custom themes and offline storage. The sample is based on the SCE Starter Kit which is available for download and includes the full source.