Web Development Strategy @ Microsoft : ASP.NET / PHP / Silverlight / Java / UX : WPF/E

Introducing Silverlight 1.0 Book is now available...

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:14:18 GMT

Technorati Tags: Silverlight del.icio.us Tags: Silverlight My First Silverlight book: Introducing Silverlight 1.0 is now available. I have to say that I am very proud of this book, and I think it is the best book that I have written. It goes through Silverlight...(read more)

If you care about Internationalizing your Silverlight Applications...

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:32:09 GMT

del.icio.us Tags: Silverlight Technorati Tags: Silverlight You should really take a look at Justif-Josef Angel's blog, where he presents some brilliant work that he has done with Silverlight, in particular his work on supporting Right-To-Left languages...(read more)

Zero to Hero: How to Check if Silverlight is installed.

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 02:43:59 GMT

Technorati Tags: Silverlight del.icio.us Tags: Silverlight I've been getting lots of questions on how to check to see if Silverlight is already installed. This is actually very easy to do, but has somehow slipped through the cracks (I even missed it when...(read more)

Silverlight: The OnLoad event

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Thu, 31 May 2007 23:17:05 GMT

Lots of folks have been asking questions around their WPF/E applications and why the onLoad event that worked nicely with the CTPs breaks in the Silverlight 1.0 beta. Well, it's because the onLoad event signature has changed, and unfortunately the documentation...(read more)

Silverlight: Font Embedding

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Fri, 25 May 2007 02:32:12 GMT

There's some great stuff been put together by Slyi on his blog around subsetting and embedding fonts. You've all been asking me lots of questions about it, but he answers it better than I ever could! Check it out at: http://wpf-e.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2B248D261D0E0035!122.entry...(read more)

Silverlight: Convert Text to Path

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Wed, 23 May 2007 01:07:22 GMT

The WPF APIs provide a FormattedText object that allows you to export its contents as a Geometry, which in turn allows you to generate its contents in the XAML Path Mini Language.

Here's an example of a Web service that takes in the text, typeface, size and other parameters, loads them into a FormattedText, and uses this to generate a Path as a result.

You can then take the returned value from this Web service and load it into the Data attribute of a Path to get the desired text rendered in Silverlight. This will allow you to have any text from any font rendered in your Silverlight page.

This will allow you to:

Provide text from unsupported fonts
Provide text from languages other than English

Here's the Source Code for the Web Service:

[WebMethod]
public string Text2Path(String strText, string strCulture, bool LtoR, string strTypeFace, int nSize)
{
    // Set up the Culture
    if (strCulture == "")
        strCulture = "en-us"
    System.Globalization.CultureInfo ci = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo(strCulture);

    // Set up the flow direction
    System.Windows.FlowDirection fd;
    if (LtoR)
        fd = FlowDirection.LeftToRight;
    else
        fd = FlowDirection.RightToLeft;

// Set up the font family from the parameter
FontFamily ff = new FontFamily(strTypeFace);

// Create the new typeface
System.Windows.Media.Typeface tf = new System.Windows.Media.Typeface(ff,

FontStyles.Normal, FontWeights.Normal, FontStretches.Normal);

// Create a formatted text object from the text,

// culture, flowdirection, typeface, size and black

FormattedText t = new FormattedText(strText, ci, fd, tf, nSize,

System.Windows.Media.Brushes.Black);

// Build a Geometry out of this
Geometry g = t.BuildGeometry(new Point(0, 0));

// Get the Path info from the geometry
PathGeometry p = g.GetFlattenedPathGeometry();

// Return the path info
return p.ToString();

}

Here's an example of calling this Web service using some Korean Text:

This Web Service returns a String containing the Path Mini Language:

In Silverlight you use the <Path> tag to define a path. It takes a 'Data' attribute which takes a string in the path mini language format, so all you ahve to do is set it to the contents of the value returned from the Web service.

Here's the Korean text from earlier, being rendered in Silverlight using this path.

In the next installment of this blog I'll go into adding a text box to the page, overlaying it on the Silverlight content using windowless mode. It will support text input using an IME, and then use ASP.NET AJAX to call this service, get the response and load it into the path.

Silverlight Book

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Fri, 18 May 2007 07:03:16 GMT

There have been lots of questions since MIX07 about a book on Silverlight. I'm working on one for MS Press, which is designed to be 1/3 ASP.NET, 1/3 AJAX and 1/3 Silverlight. It's intended to be an introduction to the Microsoft Stack for folks coming in from PHP or other frameworks, or a refresher on ASP.NET and/or AJAX for folks who are familiar with them, framing up the last part, which is a deep dive into Silverlight 1.0.

I also have a Silverlight 1.1. book on the drawing board for publication later. The 1.1. book will concentrate on programming the .NET framework for Silverlight. If you want to build applications, learn XAML, Expression, JavaScript and everything else you need to put together cool stuff like that on www.silverlight.net, then read Programming Web.NEXT when it comes out.

Here's the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Web-Next-Pro-Laurence-Moroney/dp/0735624127/ref=sr_1_3/102-8985497-1143319?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179332533&sr=8-3

Laurence

Silverlight and Beijing 2008 Olympics

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Wed, 09 May 2007 22:35:47 GMT

I've been working on a project involving Silverlight and the Beijing 2008 olympics. We demonstrated this at MIX 07, and the session is online here: http://sessions.visitmix.com/default.asp?event=1011&session=2010,2011&pid=XB005&disc=&id=1557&year=2007&search=XB005

We also had a hilarious video interview with the Channel9 / On10 folks. You can see it here:

Silverlight Install Modes

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Wed, 09 May 2007 01:27:00 GMT

Did you know that there are two install modes for Silverlight -- inplace installation (aka 'Direct') and indirect installation.

When you build your site or application using Silverlight, you can use the 'inplaceInstallPrompt' property in your call to Sys.Silverlight.createObject and set it to true or false.

Here's an example:

function createSilverlight()
{  
    Sys.Silverlight.createObject(
        "plugin.xaml",                      // Source property value.
        parentElement,                      // DOM reference to hosting DIV tag.
        "myControl",                        // Unique control id value.
        {                                   // Control properties.
            width:'1024',                   // Width of rectangular region of control in pixels.
            height:'530',                   // Height of rectangular region of control in pixels.
            inplaceInstallPrompt:false,     // Determines whether to display in-place install prompt if invalid version detected.
            background:'white',             // Background color of control.
            isWindowless:'false',           // Determines whether to display control in Windowless mode.
            framerate:'24',                 // MaxFrameRate property value.
            version:'0.9'                   // Control version to use.
        },
        {
            onError:null,                   // OnError property value -- event handler function name.
            onLoad:null                     // OnLoad property value -- event handler function name.
        },
        null);                              // Context value -- event handler function name.
}

This will create a banner icon for Silverlight that looks like this:

Clicking on this banner will take your users to http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight where they can download and install the Silverlight runtime.

Alternatively you can have a direct install experience, by setting the inplaceInstallPrompt property to 'true'. This will result in a different banner, that looks like this:

As you can see this contains a Silverlight license agreement, which you agree to by using this banner to download the Silverlight runtime.

In this case, your users will start downloading the Silverlight runtime as soon as they click the banner, instead of being directed to the http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight site first.

Super Tuesday

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Wed, 02 May 2007 02:32:00 GMT

Tuesday at MIX07 has been phenomenal!

My session this morning on Silverlight and the 2008 Olympics went very well, we tag teamed 4 speakers from 4 companies who had three different primary languages, but it all went smoothly. We had huge inflatable versions of a couple of the 'Fuwa' mascots who ended up stopping traffic for people to take photos!

Then, the AOL team showed their email gadget application, and it was a stop the lights demo -- absolutely amazing. It was great to work with these guys (albeit a little) in getting it ready.

Now I'm sitting in Robbie Bach's keynote and am super excited that he's just shown the Hong Kong Disney gadget that I've worked closely with e-Crusade and Hong Kong Disney on -- it's a beautiful thing :)

Looking forward to more at MIX tonight with the PURE nightclub....

Illuminate the Web: Silverlight is unveiled.

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 05:17:00 GMT

Microsoft have announced Microsoft Silverlight, our next generation, cross platform, cross browser runtime for building rich media experiences on the Web. Silverlight, formerly known as WPF/E is the beginning of the next generation of the web, empowering Great user experiences.

There's a great post with a lot of details on Tim Sneath's blog -- including 9 of the top 10 great things about Silverlight. The tenth one is forthcoming! :)

I'm in China right now, working on a Silverlight event, including some great stuff that we will be showing at MIX. I hope you can join us!

Chinese, and other International Text in WPF/E

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:10:00 GMT

For our friends in the international community, text rendering is possible by means of the Glyph tag.

So, for example this XAML:

<Glyphs x:Name="GlyphDisplay" Fill="Black" FontUri="./simhei.ttf"

FontRenderingEmSize="48" UnicodeString="你好, 你好吗？" />

</Canvas>

Will render Chinese text in WPF/E.

Please note a couple of things:

1: You have to use the FontUri to specify the font, and you must use a font that supports the characters.

2: Make sure that you are licensed to redistribute said font.

I am working on a Whitepaper for MSDN to show how this can be used in conjunction with ASP.NET controls for IME-based text input in far eastern languages.

If you read Chinese, check out my colleague, Hong Chao Wang's blog for more details...

http://blog.joycode.com/joy/archive/2007/04/06/100553.aspx

WPF/E: Part of a bigger EcoSystem

lmoroney@microsoft.com — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 22:47:00 GMT

The neat thing about WPF/E is that it is not a standalone technology. It is based on standard, open, technologies such as XML (for XAML) and JavaScript (for programming).

This opens up some wonderful opportunities for integrating WPF/E with other applications, or building it neatly into existing infrastructures.

For one nice example, check out my friend Vittorio's blog, where he has put together a super cool WPF/E + Cardspace integration sample. Over the next few weeks I'll be publishing some more samples of WPF/E with ASP.NET, with AJAX etc.

Here's the link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/vbertocci/archive/2007/03/28/wpf-e-and-windows-cardspace-or-plugging-ria-in-the-identity-metasystem.aspx