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Archive for the ‘SilverLight’ Category

Yeahhh! Silverlight 5 is in RC!

September 2, 2011 Leave a comment

For those who tought that Silverlight was dead and that the announcements made last year were just a hoax.

There you go:

http://www.silverlight.net/learn/overview/what’s-new-in-silverlight-5

Keep in-touch I feel that there will be some nice announcements during the month of September!

UPDATE Sept. 3th, 2011:

I have got the confirmation that Silverlight 5 will be released with a go-live license be for the end of this year!

HTML 5 or Silverlight 5: Hey why not use them for what they are good at!


A few days ago, Scott Hanselman proposed a different opinion as well as a good way of deciding which of the 2 technologies to be used and when!

Read here: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ShouldIUseHTML5OrSilverlightOneMansOpinion.aspx

I personally think that HTML 5, will get there and do what browsers do best: Be used everywhere!

Yes it will bring awesomeness and shiny cool new things… and it will bring some new problems as well.

My fear is when people start talking about HTML 5 as a way to produce a business application that should be in fact a desktop version. Do you get me?

At one point, developpers have to stop trying to tweak their web app to make it behave behave like a desktop …. It’ll never be one!

A plugin based app IS sometime more appropriate than a web app just like a native platform app IS sometimes better than a pluging!

Desktop > Plugin > Web App

or if you prefer:

WPF > SilverLight > Asp.Net

All MIX 11 Session Video via RSS, iTunes, Powershell or Juice!


Thanks to Scott Hanselman, who brought this up!  http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Mix11VideosDownloadThemAllWithRSS.aspx

Like Scott said, If you really want iTunes in your life…you can subscribe in iTunes from Advanced|Subscribe to Podcast (look for MIX11 Sessions)

But I find it cooler with Zune! The video is super crisp in MP4 High! 🙂

Tell me the ones you liked the most! There is soooo much information. Almost everything applies on technologies available today!

My best (in descending order) are :

  1. An Overview of the MS Web Stack of Love,
  2. NuGet In Depth: Empowering Open Source on the .NET Platform
  3. ASP.NET MVC 3 @:The Time is Now
  4. Fun with ASP.NET MVC 3 and MEF
  5. Deconstructing Orchard: Build, Customize, Extend, Ship
  6. Good JavaScript Habits for C# Developers

My worse is:

  1. Application Design for Windows Phone (She is so nervous and thirsty…)

MIX 11: SilverLight 5 Beta?

April 12, 2011 2 comments

As every good web developer and web designer know today is the day!

Today is the first day of MIX 11

As part of MIX, SilverLight 5 beta will be release. I encourage you to watch the keynote live at http://live.visitmix.com/ starting April 12th at 9AM PDT (4PM GMT).

Silverlight 5?  but isn’t Microsoft following everybody with HTML5 ? If you are asking yourself the same question, read this post from April 4th : http://team.silverlight.net/announcement/standards-based-web-plug-ins-and-silverlight/

After reading this I am still not 100% convinced that Microsoft did not want to say goodbye to SilverLight last Fall in favor of HTML 5.

Anyway I find that both should stay! Both have a reason to stay. I just hope that Microsoft will leverage the “seperation of concerns” (designer and developer) that they have acheived in Silverlight with HTML5

For example, as a Microsoft Partner, I see very little incentive from Microsoft to build and deploy SilverLight applications on the other hand they would like me to move everything personal and professional to the cloud!

Have a good MIX11 day!

 

Categories: SilverLight, UX & UI Tags: ,

Silverlight / XAML Tools and Resources

January 26, 2011 Leave a comment

This is a work in progress but here’s a list. If you find more of them let me know!

SWF2XAML A free tool that converts Adobe/Macromedia Flash files to XAML
VisioExportToXAML An Add-in to Visio 2007 to create XAML directly. (Source code avail.)
XamlTune A svg to xaml conversion library.
XamlPadX 4.0 XamlPad is a basic visual editor for Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML).
ViewerSvg svg to xaml converter.
XAML Power Toys VS 2008/10 Add-In for form generation tools, Grid tools, DataForm, DataGrid and ListView generation really shorten the XAML form layout time.

Categories: SilverLight, XAML Tags: , ,

Beware of Remote Desktop when developping!

January 9, 2011 Leave a comment

I am currently working on a modular Silverlight application using SIlverlight 4 and Prism v4. Once you get the hang of it Prism combine with Unity or Mef allow you to create really cool loosely coupled and highly testable apps. But after having set the modules and regions in my app, I was faced with a bizarre problem.

Some of the regions in my app would behave correctly in terms of binding and respond correctly to interactions of the user. But they wouldn’t allow a mouse click????

Yes that’s right the regions in question wouldn’t get the focus using the mouse but would get the focus with the keyboard after tabbing to them…

The sSilverlight app was hosted in the browser so I tought, may be by resizing, or minimizing the browser window it’ll fix the problem but no joy. That didn’t solve the issue.

After a couple hours researching left and right on this issue, I tried minimizing and restoring the remote desktop window to my dev station. And boom suddenly the “injected” region would behave!

Categories: PRISM, SilverLight, XAML Tags: , ,

Seesmic Desktop 2, one of the top 3 best UX in 2010!

November 30, 2010 Leave a comment

Written in Silverlight, Seesmic Desktop 2 is an aggregator for social networks.

Mashable sais about SD2:

Seesmic’s Silverlight-built, Mac- and Windows(Windows)-compatible product also came wrapped in a gorgeous and functional UI with elegant and subtle details, making it a joy to behold as well as a pleasure to use.

More aboute SD2 here: http://mashable.com/2010/09/09/seesmic-desktop-2/ and official web page here: http://seesmic.com/seesmic_desktop/sd2/

More about the best Web Designs of 2010: http://mashable.com/2010/10/31/breakthrough-website-design/

Guess What? The mobile app supports:

  

Categories: SilverLight, UX & UI Tags: ,

I’ve been busy…

November 23, 2010 3 comments

I know I did not post to my blog for the past few days. But in preparation to SilverLight FireStarter, I’ve been revisiting a few technologies that I had seen in the past.

Namely:  SilverLight 4, MVVM, WCF, BDD, PRISM, Unity, and MEF.

This will help me in the development of my next few applications that I’ve put in my queue. I have envisioned, planned and refined the scope for 3 applications on the WP7 and one on browser/desktop.

 As a developper, I like to envision, brainstorm and implement my own apps. I’ve seen a gap (or a niche if you prefer) and I am getting ready to fill it!

Oh yeah, BTW, keep a watchful eye on ASP.Net MVC 3 and Ruby on Rails 3! These are 2 technologies that finally look like what should web programming be theses days.

Why, because they both put the  focus on “convention over configuration” and the “DRY” principle!

Categories: PRISM, SilverLight Tags: , , , , , ,

Microsoft announces project “Crescent”.

November 11, 2010 2 comments

Project crescent is a continuation on the efforts of Microsoft to bring self service business intelligence to end users. It brings a Silverlight based tool on board as a fun user interface to interrogate data wharehouse, interact with data through charts etc.

I knew Silverlight was not fading 😉


Project Crescent will be available at the same time as SQL Server codenamed “Denali”!

More on project Crescent here http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlrsteamblog/archive/2010/11/09/a-glimpse-at-project-crescent.aspx

More on the Denali project here http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/product-info/future-editions.aspx and here http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Unveiled-New-Generation-of-SQL-Server-165750.shtml

Categories: SilverLight, SQL Server