- Posted by christhi on November 18, 2008
SilverLight is generating a ton of momemtum recently and when I first heard that 1 in 4 computers now has SilverLight installed I was blown away. I knew it would eventually happend but I had no idea it would reach this level so quickly. In my day to day dealings with custom development shops, design agencies, and customers I'm hearing the same thing over and over again that is "we are beginning to look seriously at SilverLight as an option" and not just for video. SilverLight 1 was sort of touted as the "Video" release as building full fledged LOB business applications or RIA were more challenging given the lack of .NET code behind. Now with SilverLight shipping last month that changed and it has changed in a big way. Not only can you develop SilverLight 2 applications with .NET code behind but with the release of SP1 for Expression Blend it is now easier than ever to do so. You have advanced controls such a datagrid and calendars as well as a myriad of other controls being release in the form of toolkits distributed as open source. Check out SilverLight 2 Toolkit at http://www.codeplex.com/Silverlight, there you can find a charting control, expander, auto complete box, and treeview to name a few and the list keeps growing.
The SilverLight wave is also directly aimed at providing pure line of business frameworks and samples with the likes of Prism 2.0 (www.codeplex.com/prism) for building composite applications in SilverLight (as well as WPF), and vertically targeted LOB samples such as our Microsoft Common UI for Healtcare which you can also download from codeplex (www.mscui.com to run the demos) and (http://www.codeplex.com/mscui) to download the code samples and source code.
SilverLight is also being deployed at an incredible rate within the firewall at our enterprise customers with Microsoft SMS and Microsoft Update so we can deploy SilverLight on the desktops in a seemless fashion.
Aside from the competive advantage of enabling better developer/designer workflow, SilverLight 2 provides other unique features such as support for "adaptive streaming". Adaptive streaming will be integrated as part of IIS7 and "Smooth Streaming" (HD quality video over the web) that will enable video to be delivered at multiple bit rates up to 2.5Mbits. You may have witnessed our adaptive streaming technology when watching the Olympics on msnbc.com which served over 3500 hours of live and on-demand action to over 60 million unique visitors this summer and that was only at a max 1.5 Mbits bitrates imagine with 2.5Mbits will offer.
The net of it is that my customers and partners are taking SilverLight seriously today with v2 and are having tremendous success doing it such as the recent announcement of BlockBuster replacing Flash with SilverLight for its MovieLink application or NetFlix with its instant watch service. I am very much looking forward to what lies ahead in SilverLight 3 (which I will be writing about next).
- Posted by christhi on November 5, 2008
Don't take my word for it but hear from a third party source like the following. I'm noticing a major uptake on SilverLight requests and SilverLight skillsets at my customers. The future is bright guys and if you need anything from our team please do not hesitate to contact me.
Microsoft’s Silverlight heats up fight for online video, USA Today
by Jefferson Graham
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-11-04-flash-adobe-microsoft-sliverlight_N.htm
- Posted by christhi on November 5, 2008
Today we are launching Microsoft BizSpark, an exciting new offering that will enable software startups to leverage Microsoft development and platform technologies to deliver Next Generation Web and Software + Services applications.
The Offer: Microsoft BizSpark is designed to accelerate the success of early stage startups by providing access to software, support, and visibility
· Software: fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products for immediate use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions with no upfront costs and minimal requirements
· Support: professional technical support from Microsoft (MSDN) and community support from BizSpark “Network Partners” around the world who provide a wide range of support resources for software startups (e.g., entrepreneur incubators, associations, & investors)
· Visibility: global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients, and partners. Startups will have the opportunity to complete a profile in the online Startup directory (BizSparkDB) which highlights promising companies, including the “BizSpark Startup of the Day”
Eligibility: BizSpark will be available to startups that fit the following criteria:
· A private company building a software-based product or service (not intended for consultants/SIs or customers/enterprises)
· In business for less than 3 years
· Less than $1M in revenue
· Nominated by a Network Partner or sponsoring member of Microsoft (feel free to contact me)
For more information go to http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/ here you can find a local "Network Partner" and they can enroll you in the program as long as you qualify
- Posted by christhi on October 24, 2008
Follow me on Twitter and get UX Tips O the day e.g. Blend Debugging Tips, Blend Tricks, SilverLight Dos/Dont's. http://www.twitter.com/uxarchitect
UX Tip O the Day: SilverLight Cross Domain Policy File Format
If your services site (WCF, ASMX) is not in the same domain as your SL application or you are calling an external site from SL such as an RSS Reader would do you will need a cross domain policy file. Here is an example (SL 2.0 final). This can be narrowed down of course. The reason this is "a tip" is because you may be trying to call an RSS feed and getting a security exception for some sites but not others. Rememeber SL supports the Flash domain file format as well so sites like reuters RSS may already have a Flash domain file. If you don't control the site and can't access the RSS feed stayed tuned and I'll show you how to get around this limitation.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<access-policy>
<cross-domain-access>
<policy>
<allow-from>
<domain uri="*"/>
</allow-from>
<grant-to>
<resource path="/"
include-subpaths="true"/>
</grant-to>
</policy>
</cross-domain-access>
</access-policy>
- Posted by christhi on October 23, 2008
I just put together this sample on creating a SilverLight 2.0 RSS Reader that leverages databinding and observable collections. I will present this at the Minsurf conference in Minneapolis on October 28th, 2008. You can also find this sample in the MSDN code gallery at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/flyover18 .
In a future post I will provide step by step instructions on how I built this to stay tuned...