Nate's Stuff : Silverlight

Silverlight 4 : A First Look

Nathan Zaugg — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:21:00 GMT

This past weekend I got to fly to Denver and present at the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta v2. It was a lot of fun! I can see why people get addicted to code camp!

My presentation was on Silverlight 4 and some of the new features in this release. There were so many new features that I couldn't possibly cover them all, but I did hit quite a few.

Here is the screen cast.

I got to Denver in on Friday afternoon and rented a car. The car rental place was a mistake…I could see that from almost the get-go. I saw a shuttle for every other rental care place before I saw one for E-Z Rent-a-car. I waited only about 20 min’s and I was on my way there. When I got there, I passed big shiny car lots, and then at the end of the big long line was a run-down looking building where my car was waiting! Yay! Good thing I found a place that was $5 cheaper than the rest. Undeterred – I’ll do almost anything for a good deal – I went in and got my car. It felt more like a used car dealer than a rental car place. The guy at the counter said that I should note any damage on a piece of paper and then he ripped it off and took the half they keep so I didn’t really get a chance to inspect the car. There seemed to be a lot of pressure to buy the rental insurance (even though your insurance carrier covers you for liability).

The car had other problems too. It was, by my reckoning, a couple of years old and was in pretty good condition for that age, but the dash board said that there was a tire pressure gauge fault and I couldn't see my mileage or trip meter. That is really useful when you’re following directions that have a mileage. It also made some pretty ugly noises at freeway speeds. This was not the last of the car issues, but more on that later.

I stayed at the Comfort Inn about 10 miles from down town. It was pretty nice. It was a bit on the small side, the desk chair was uncomfortable, but the bed was VERY comfortable and the bedding was very clean and fresh.

One funny thing was the flagpole outside my window. Check this out!

Notice a flag missing? Notice that thing in the tree? That’s right. The flag for the great state of Colorado is stuck in a tree! I also had bunnies outside of my window so it wasn’t all bad.

There was a party the night before the event for the presenters. it was lots of fun!

The Tech Trifecta is huge! Almost 4 times as large at the Utah Code Camp. It was a bit annoying that there wasn’t enough room for the Silverlight birds of a feather and there wasn’t enough room in the keynote. The only other complaint I had was that it seemed like Session 4 had a bunch of the Microsoft technologies bunched together so you had to pick and choose between ones that you only kind of wanted to see for earlier sessions and between ones you really wanted to see on the later ones.

Right after I finished my presentation I had to head to the airport. The rental car place will charge you $5 per gal of gas so you need to bring it in full! I figured I would take an exit or two before the airport and fill it up there. I took the exit before the airport and drove over 10 miles before I saw a gas station! No Kidding! I was starting to think that maybe cars in Denver were powered by batteries or something! Needless to say it was an unplanned detour that added 20 min’s to my trip to the airport. It was only then that I saw there was a gas station right next to the airport. Live & Learn!

Here is where things get really fun! I returned the car to the rental place where they inspected the car post haste. The lady handed me the inspection slip and I went inside. That's where I was told that somehow I must have scratched the rear bumper! I was VERY ANGRY!! There was no way that I damaged that car even a little bit! I guess that's what you get when you don’t buy the all-but-mandatory insurance. It took me another 20 min’s to put up enough of a fight that they waved the damage charges. I now had less than 1 hour to get to the airport. The shuttle driver sure took his sweet time and then dropped me off in the wrong wing.

I go to check in with Delta and it wouldn't let me check in (because my flight was within 45 min’s) so I had to wait at the ticket counter. The lady was going to reschedule my flight as it was leaving in just 30 min’s and I was departing from the C-gate. She eventually agreed to give me the boarding pass and told me to RUN to the gate. The rest of the passengers had already boarded. I ran to get through security and picked the shortest of the 6 screening lines. It wasn’t really one of those thing where you could jump to a different lines. The person in front of me took EVERYTHING for carry on including a cheesecake! Apparently it’s impossible to tell the difference between cheesecake and explosives? Yum, C4 with graham cracker crust and cream cheese frosting. After getting through security I only had 10 min’s to make it to the C-gate. I hopped on the tram, got to the C-gate, and they plan took off almost immediately after I boarded!

I hope to be able to go next year but perhaps I’ll drive up instead.

Creating a Silverlight 3 Out Of Browser Application

Nathan Zaugg — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Silverlight 2 is great! Silverlight 3 is AWESOME! My first experiences with the beta framework and tools have been overwhelmingly positive. In this post I’ll go over my experience creating an application using some of the new features and I’ll show how easy it is to make your Silverlight application available offline. To get started you’ll need the tools. Download the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 from the official Silverlight website. It is also recommended that you download and install the Silverlight Toolkit from the same site.

Getting Started

After installing the Silverlight tools open Visual Studio and click File –> New –> Project. Click Silverlight in the project types section and select Silverlight Application from the Templates group.

When prompted make sure you check the Host the Silverlight application in a new Web site checkbox and press the OK button.

Once your project comes up we can get started in code. Open the MainPage.xaml file, open the toolbox and double click TwilightBlueTheme. This will add some references to our project and update the background of our window. That is how you use a built-in theme. Any tool box item that ends with Theme will change the look of your application.

Another great feature of the Silverlight 3 runtime is that we finally have full binding support! The most useful binding feature is binding the value of one control to another.

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
    <twilightBlue:TwilightBlueTheme />
    <Button Height="30" Width="150" Content="This is my button Fool" 
            HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" 
            Margin="5" Click="Button_Click"  />
    <TextBlock Name="tbValue" Margin="50" 
               Text="{Binding ElementName=slider1, Path=Value}" />
    <Slider Name="slider1" Height="80" Width="300" 
            Margin="0 0 0 0" Value="3" />
</Grid>

Now, lets run it.

You can see that when you move the slider we can see it’s slider position value in the TextBlock we have on our form. Now that we have our ultra-simple app we want to make it available offline. We do that by opening the Properties\AppManifest.xml file and add the following:

<Deployment.ApplicationIdentity>
      <ApplicationIdentity 
          ShortName="Nate Test Application" 
          Title="Nate Test App">
          <ApplicationIdentity.Blurb>This is a test silverlight 
                        3 application out of the browser.</ApplicationIdentity.Blurb>
      </ApplicationIdentity>
  </Deployment.ApplicationIdentity>

Now run the application again. This time right click the Silverlight app and there is a new option to install the application.

You will then get a very simple “install” dialog. The install process is extremely fast!

And now we can launch our application from the start menu. Here is what it looks like when it is run outside of the browser.

To remove the application from your system, just right click to uninstall.

And that is it! Silverlight 3 works very well outside of the browser!

I am Certifiable!

Nathan Zaugg — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:54:12 GMT

It may come as no surprise to those who know me that I have recently confirmed that I am certifiable! After all, when you have been doing what I do for as long as I have been doing it it’s hard not to be affected. It happens to a very large number of people in my field and that number continues to grow.

Although I have been certified before, after some exhausting battery of examinations, this online examination is nice as I can quickly determine my status even if there is some kind of doubt – just for my minds sake.

Thanks to Microsoft there is now an online tool to check your IT status as Certifiable! What, you thought I meant mentally unfit or crazy? Nope, I’m talking about the uber-geeky Microsoft Certifications. For some time now they have had the Measure Up practice tests for study preparation, but now there is a new skill-building tool, Are You Certifiable. Rather than a boring, dry, practice test this new site is a game show!

This actually makes a lot of sense to me because when I was Microsoft Certification Coordinator for STG I found the best way to get the material to sink-in was to have fun with it. That usually included some form of study group Jeopardy. Facts just don’t sink in as well when your mind is not very stimulated and some of the questions can be quite dry.

Here is a screen shot of me capturing the high score for guests. It will ask you if you are an IT professional or a Developer and gives you questions relevant to your position. The questions vary greatly and it takes a very well-rounded skill set to do really well, but it’s fun regardless.

My only critique is that it is not practical to practice for a specific certification test you plan to take because you don’t get to pick which topics or banks of questions you get. It is a lot of fun and has some great “thinking music”! Leave a comment if you happen to beat my score.

I would like to also mention that it is built using Silverlight 2.0 as it is a great example of the power of Silverlight.

Silverlight 3 Announced

Nathan Zaugg — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 19:42:05 GMT

This announcement on Scott Gu's blog touts the success of the launch of Silverlight 2.0 and announces Silverlight 3.0. Out of the success stories noted on the blog one of the coolest applications is the new Netflix player! Having worked only a little in Silverlight but a lot in WPF I have been very disappointed with the lack of databinding in Silverlight 2.0! It sounds like I am not alone in this line of thinking so Silverlight 3.0 promises to fix a lot of that. Another great feature is hardware acceleration (using OpenGL?) which would be really sweet! These tools should be available early next year.

Here is a screen shot (taken from Scott's Blog):

I really hope that they bring WPF and Silverlight more in line with each other -- increasing capability and compatibility! It's ridiculous to think that we have three different but strikingly similar tools that don't interop! Of course the three being WPF, Silverlight and MCE Media Center.

Silverlight 2 Released!

Nathan Zaugg — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:42:00 GMT

Silverlight 2 has been released and boasts many new features. Silverlight is a cross-platform RIA (Rich Internet Applications) platform designed to enhance the web experience. Silverlight allows developers to use a familiar set of tools and technologies to deploy functionality via the web. Silverlight also has the best capabilities for delivering video over the web including support for VC1 (HD Format) over the web and DRM (Digital Rights Management) for delivering copyrighted content over the web. Another great advantage is it's Isolated Storage which could allow things like client-side resizing of images, etc.

Some of the enhancements from previous versions includes an Embedded CLR with full 3.5 functionality and a Base Class Library, Rich UI framework (styles, animation, layout, data binding, skinning, etc.), new controls, Networking support (including WS/SOAP, REST, POX, RSS, HTTP, and sockets), and Rich Media Support for Videos, Images, Isolated Storage, etc.

Most of what I really wanted in Silverlight made it into the release so that makes me happy. I haven't seen if my plea to implement all of the data binding features WPF has was granted so I'll write a post when I find out.

Will you be using Silverlight over Flash in an upcoming project? Let me know about it!

Light Up The Web With Silverlight!

Silverlight 2 RC0 Released

Nathan Zaugg — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:41:16 GMT

Silverlight 2 is not far from reality! With the first RC coming just months after the beta 2 release and promises of a full release coming soon we can start migrating existing beta 2 code to RC0 which is supposed to be compatible with the actual release. The announcement is posted on Scott Gu's blog here. I am excited to read that some of the major changes are making WPF and Silverlight. Also, they have promised a bunch of new controls which will make Silverlight more control rich than WPF (with some exception).

My computer is still messed up from the Beta 2 release so I'm hoping that installing the RC0 release will fix some things up -- I'll post on that later.

New Technology Meets Old Game

Nathan Zaugg — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:09:12 GMT

I am not a gamer! I would get killed playing anything modern! I was never very good at the games I did play (back in the 90's) like Marathon or StarCraft. I did like games before that but they were mostly DOS based games. I loved Cyberbox, a little game where you try to navigate your dot from one side of the screen to the other pushing blocks along the way. A couple of years ago I was introduced to Line Rider. A really simple game where you "draw" a track for our sledding hero to ride. A simple premise but a fun one! You can spend literally hours without realizing it just designing the most awesome ever track!

LineRider has gone Silverlight! It's been greatly enhanced with the new features of Silverlight and is pretty awesome. I am hoping that more and more Silverlight is adopted and ubiquity increases to match or exceed Flash. I know of no such place that keeps track of these types of statistics but it will be interesting in a year from now how much Silverlight will penetrate the market. It seems that they should be able to make it available as an update via Windows Update like the .net frameworks, but reaching a growing OS X audience may be more difficult. Hopefully there are plans in the works to get Silverlight on that platform.

If I can figure out how to post a capture video from Line Rider, I'll post it here.

Nathan Zaugg

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 Released & Installation Help

Nathan Zaugg — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:43:38 GMT

Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 has been released. This version is supposed to be pretty stable as I understand it. The tools on the other hand, still feel very much like a beta! I had a heck of a time getting this junk installed!

The link to download Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 for Visual Studio is here: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
(note: This installation package includes all you need including Silverlight runtime and SDK)

My Installation Issues

I got to know these dialogs pretty good as I'd tried this many times!

It makes you close all browsers! Ok, sure!

DANG IT! What now?

So you're telling me that I can't have a patch?

Here is the output of the error:

Created new ExePerformer for Exe item
[6/9/2008, 13:48:11] Action: Performing Action on Exe at c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe...

[6/9/2008, 13:48:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::Launch) Launching CreateProcess with command line = c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe /q /uninstall
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::PerformAction) c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe - Exe installer does not provide a log file name
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::PerformAction) Exe (c:\6472026481f78458c12aa62cd2\silverlight_uninstallrtmpatches.exe) failed with 0x80070643 - Fatal error during installation. :
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::ExeInstallerBase::PerformAction) PerformOperation on exe returned exit code 1603 (translates to HRESULT = 0x80070643)
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] Action complete
[6/9/2008, 13:49:11] (IronSpigot::LogUtils::LogFinalResult) Final Result: Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), Fatal error during installation.

so I hit the net and find these instructions: http://weblogs.asp.net/bradleyb/archive/2008/03/06/installation-tips-for-sivliverlight-tools-beta-1-for-visual-studio-2008.aspx

try to uninstall the KB:

(found under updates)

Kept asking me for some location! Wasn't going to work....what is the backup solution?

Ok, extract the files in the installer...sure.

I put them in a dir called "Install"

Then RUN: msiexec /uninstall VS90-KB949325.msp /L*vx VS90-KB949325-2.log

Double Dang! Ok, whats up??

Hit the web agian: http://silverlight.net/forums/p/17663/58925.aspx
and download MSI ZAP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Tripple Dang! Updates are not listed!

Downloaded tool: MSIINV

Download Link:
msiinv.zip

RUN:

msiinv.exe -p > Installed.txt

No luck! Still not giving me the GUID for KB949325!

RUN:

msiinv.exe -v > Installed.txt

Took SEVERAL minuets to run and created a 10MB text file! When it was done I tried to run msizap but it wouldn't go. I'm just going to install these packages seperatly now that I have them extracted from silverlight_chainer.exe.

RUN THE FOLLOWING:

Silverlight.2.0_Developer.exe
msiexec /p VS90-KB949325.msp /L*vx VS90-KB949325.log REINSTALL=ALL

(gave me an error -- ok, I'm skipping it!)
silverlight_sdk.msi
VS_SilverlightTools_Beta2_Setup.exe

Sat here for quite a while!
devenv.exe seems active though.

Install Completed!

This is also a good resource:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=50A9EC01-267B-4521-B7D7-C0DBA8866434&displaylang=en

This seems to only be a problem if you were an early adopter of the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta 1 fix.

Utah Code Camp Spring 2008 Retrospective

Nathan Zaugg — Fri, 02 May 2008 04:51:09 GMT

Code camp snuck up and bit me this year! I have been so busy with the new cuegle.net/cuegle.com site that I didn't get the preparation time I wanted. Although turnout was mixed (a little less than we had last time, but still pretty good) the sessions were pretty good this year.

The Good:

I got the large room again this time and a lot of people attended my presentation
There was a lot of good presentations on lots of different technologies
The speakers used up all of the time this year
The speakers were better this year
The topics were all very interesting!
The emphasis was on the code, not the power-point!
I think it got people energized about the new technologies
We had wireless and even if slow, it worked!
People didn't get locked out of the building this year.
My friend, Phil won a prize (I drew his name)
THERE WAS ENOUGH PIZZA THIS YEAR! YAY!

The Bad:

One of the presentations was supposed to be about how cool it is to have Iron Ruby-- instead we got a bunch of propaganda from a Ruby fan-boy about how we only use Microsoft technologies because "we fear anything else -- especially something that has power".
I wasn't as prepared this time around. I was doing Silverlight and didn't get my sample application working until the exact moment I was to setup for my presentation. As a result I wasn't really mentally prepared for the presentation and didn't present it well.
I didn't get to pay as much attention to the other presentations as I wanted or get to go to the ones I wanted because I was working on mine!
I didn't have near enough handouts (sorry, my printer is out of toner!)
I have some bugs in my XAML Cheat Sheet that I just distributed to 100+ people!
I've moved to Kaysville now and I'm quite a ways from Neumont University.
A lot of my "support" wasn't able to attend. I know it sounds crazy but when I give a presentation be it Code Camp or a Users Group I like to have 2-3 of my friends helping me get going. It allows me to focus my energy on mentally preparing.
I drew myself in the drawing which disqualified me! DANG!

The Future

There is a lot of feedback and a lot of talk around having this during work hours. This is probably the #1 request among developers. This is a two-sided sword we're very mixed about it. It is against the code camp manifesto that we loosely follow. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if we started doing it on a weekday.
I still think we need to have more than 3 rooms going at a time and that some presentations should be given twice.
It would be cool to involve people in another way, too. Have a code competition or a Linux Installation room, etc. Add some dimension to the conference.
Let's go commercial! Let some big-name sponsors in and give everyone free stuff! Why not a free PDA for those who attend?

Special thanks goes out to Phil Gilmore who helped me immensely in preparing for my presentation. He also took the photo's posted below.

Myself presenting Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1

Discussing the difference between Silverlight 1.0 and 2.0

They audience looks enthralled!

There I am drawing my own dang name!

The grand prize winner (Rock band)

Winner-Winner Chicken-Dinner!

Double score!

--Nathan Zaugg

Nate's Stuff : Silverlight

Silverlight 4 : A First Look

Creating a Silverlight 3 Out Of Browser Application

Getting Started

Links:

I am Certifiable!

Links

Silverlight 3 Announced

Links:

Silverlight 2 Released!

Links:

Silverlight 2 RC0 Released

New Technology Meets Old Game

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 Released & Installation Help

My Installation Issues

Utah Code Camp Spring 2008 Retrospective

The Good:

The Bad:

The Future

Photo's courtesy of Phil Gilmore.