June 19th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | 1 Comment
Microsoft Press has released good introductory book for Silverlight 2.
More details on Amazon page.
Product Description
Get a jump on the next release of Silverlight with early insights from a Technical Evangelist on the Microsoft Silverlight team. This guide describes how you can simplify the development and deployment of rich interactive applications (RIAs) by using Silverlight 2 tools with Microsoft Visual Studio�® 2008 and the Microsoft .NET Framework. RIAs are Web applications with the features and functionality of full desktop applications. Processing tasks are performed on the client, but data is stored on the server. With Silverlight, RIAs install quickly via a small, on-demand plug-in. This book demonstrates how you can easily use existing skills and tools to deliver next-generation user interfaces and media experiences. You ll discover how to begin building different types of Silverlight-based solutions, generate Silverlight applications dynamically on the server, create an XAML service, and more. The book also features a companion Web site with code samples in Microsoft Visual C#�® and Visual Basic�®.
Key Book Benefits:
� Delivers practical, grounded advice from a member of the Silverlight team, including an insider s view of the evolution of this Web presentation technology � Describes how Silverlight 2 will simplify development and deployment of RIAs with the .NET Framework and Visual Studio 2008 � Provides context about the relationships among Silverlight and the various .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 technologies � Places RIAs in context for both Web and Windows-based developers � Features a companion Web site with code samples in Visual C# and Visual Basic
About the Author
Laurence Moroney is a Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, specializing in Silverlight and the user experience. He has more than a decade of experience in software development and architecture, and has written several books on Microsoft ASP.NET, Windows Presentation Foundation, Web services security, and interoperability.
There are no reviews on Amazon. C'mon guys is it worth spending time?
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June 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
2009 consumer PCs from HP will get Silverlight based Live Search toolbar.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has won a key distribution deal with HP, the world’s largest PC manufacturer, to install a Live Search-enabled toolbar on all HP consumer PCs planned to ship in the United States and Canada, beginning in January 2009. As part of this deal, the default search engine setting in the browser on all HP consumer PCs will also be set to Microsoft Live Search.
“This agreement with HP is a strategic indicator of our increased focus on securing broad-scale distribution for Live Search,” said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft. “This is the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft has ever done, and we are very pleased to be partnering with HP to help bring Live Search to millions of consumers across North America.”
Microsoft is building a custom, Live Search-enabled toolbar for HP customers that takes advantage of the exceptional user experience capabilities of Microsoft Silverlight. The toolbar will provide HP with customization capabilities within the buttons on the toolbar, providing quick and easy access to a variety of online services and tools, such as Snapfish by HP, the company’s online photo service, and HP customer support.
“This agreement provides HP customers with an outstanding search product in Live Search, as well as a user-friendly, fully customizable way to access their favorite online services,” said Ulf Claesson, vice president of Worldwide Attach at HP. “Microsoft shares HP’s passion for delivering world-class technology to consumers in meaningful ways, and today’s announcement will help to provide an even more personal computing experience for HP customers.”
You can download MSN toolbar from this site.
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May 27th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
New York Times’s new RSS Reader is built using Silverlight technology. It’s slick and works flawlessly. Reading news on Times Reader is a sheer delight.
There is plenty of instruction on FAQ page to understand how it works. This blog attachment has the Mac version of Times Reader.
From NYT FAQ page:
How do I install Times Reader for the Mac?
The Mac Times Reader installer will take about a minute to complete. The installer will direct you to a web install of Microsoft Silverlight, a required plug-in. What is Silverlight?
- Double click on the Times Reader.pkg file to start the installation process.
- Click the Continue and Agree buttons until you get to the Silverlight installation page. If you do not have Silverlight already installed you will be given a button to click. This will launch a browser window to the Microsoft website Silverlight installation page.
- Click the install now button. The Silverlight package will be downloaded to your Downloads folder.
- Double click the Silverlight-1.pkg and follow the installer instructions to install Silverlight.
- You will be prompted to restart your browser to complete the Silverlight installation. Shut down your browser. The Times Reader installer will now have recognized that Silverlight is installed. Click continue and then install.
- Wait for “Install Succeeded” to appear and then click close.
Why do I need to download Microsoft Silverlight?
We are using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology to render the pages on the Mac version. Silverlight includes a subset of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) tools we use on the PC version. This allows us to keep the look and feel of the Mac version very close to the PC version and also allows us to reuse code across platforms. However, text flow and copy/paste are not currently supported through Silverlight yet will be soon.
Download Times Reader
Blog Attachments
timesreader.pkg.zip (PKG.ZIP, 625K)
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May 27th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
Browsers have been slow in catching up with social media. Built in sharing options have been limited so far. Internet Explorer 8, which is still in beta, attempts to change that with new feature called Webslices. IE 8 site describes WebSlices in these terms -
Users commonly visit many websites several times a day to check for updates. The introduction of RSS feeds can make this experience easier for users, although RSS feeds requires a nontrivial amount of work on behalf of the developer.
WebSlices is a new feature for websites that enables users to subscribe to content directly within a webpage. WebSlices behave just like feeds in that users can subscribe to them and receive update notifications when the content changes. Websites are polled at user-defined intervals, similar to the way RSS feeds are polled. Website operators may also define a minimum wait time between polls to minimize requests.
Developers can mark parts of webpages as "WebSlices" and enable users to monitor information they rely on as they move about the web. With a click in the Favorites bar, users see rich "WebSlice" visuals and developers establish a valuable, persistent end-user connection. Get started building WebSlices at the Microsoft Developer Network.
It's bit surprising to see Facebook actually using this technology in status updates.
Check out detailed overview in scribd attachment:
Blog Attachments
webslices.pdf (PDF, 681K)
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May 19th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
Good resource list. Add to this if you can.
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May 19th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
In case you missed the action. All the links in one place.
With the release of WPF 3.5 SP1 Beta, many have written comprehensive text on the subject:
I was given the task of telling the story via videos posted on Channel 9. After drafting Dr. Sneath to aid with a few of the interviews and a fair bit of editing, we’ve come up with another round of WPF Week on Channel 9.
Please feel free to copy and past the image on your own blog.
If you haven't looked at WPF much before now is the time to do it. Granted I'm a graphics guy and this release has some major new improvements and features in that area, but overall this looks like an awesome release for WPF. Congratulations WPF team!
WPF Week Schedule:
- Monday: Overview, Graphics
- Tuesday: Client Deployment
- Wednesday: Performance
- Thursday: Application Model
- Friday: Tools
WPF 3.5 SP1 Download links:
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May 17th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
Blog Attachments
ibc_2007_show_guide.pdf (PDF, 419K)
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May 14th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
Icaza, Vice president of developer relations at Novell and head of the Mono project, announced on his blog the first public release of Moonlight.
- No-media codecs supported, but easy to install: head to http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight and click on the cute installer for Moonlight. This currently hosts builds for Linux x86 and x86-64 for Firefox.
- Source-code compilation, but you can optionally compile FFMpeg codecs yourself. To do this, download our moon-0.6.tar.bz2. And follow the build instructions.
This release supports Windowless mode
Moonlight supports "windowless" mode, a mechanism that allows Silverlight content to blend with other HTML ements on a page. This is only supported by Firefox 3, users of older versions of Firefox might run into Silverlight applications and web sites that do not work correctly as many Silverlight applications depend on this functionality (Flash sites have the same problem with Firefox 2).
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May 14th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
Silverlight continues to make steady progress. These two tutorials are handy if you want easy jump start to your Silverlight projects.
PhotoGallery document thanks to this link
Blog Attachments
visualwebgui-enterprisesilverlightapplication.ppt (PPT, 418K)
photogallerywallhowto.doc (DOC, 205K)
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May 14th, 2008 | Posted in Silverlight Community | No Comments
Introduction to Silverlight
Blog Attachments
introductiontosilverlight-2008-01.ppt (PPT, 2535K)
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