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Introducing the PivotViewer Control for Silverlight

Pete Brown - 29 June 2010

The Silverlight PivotViewer control is now available.

Jesse Liberty and I have been working closely with the Live Labs team to help transition the PivotViewer control out as a real product for the developer community. I'm excited to say that the control is no longer a lab project, but is now out and available for developers! My congratulations to the team; they worked really hard to get this control out and into your hands.

Super cheesy!!

Of course, it wouldn't be any good to launch a cool control like this without giving you guys everything you need to get started, so let's take a look at what else we put together for you.

New Site Content

As part of the launch, we've added a new PivotViewer learning section to Silverlight.net. This site will give you all the information about the control, including walkthroughs, background info, and the information on the SDK. The SDK documentation / help will eventually be on MSDN; we're hosting it on Silverlight.net until then.

image

In addition to the overview information and API documentation, you'll find a multi-page deep-dive into how to use the control. This is a great walkthrough created by the Pivot team themselves.

image 

In addition, Jesse's working on some great tutorials and examples, so be sure to check them out on his blog and on Silverlight.net

New Forum

Today, we launched a new Silverlight PivotViewer Forum on Silverlight.net. Jesse and I will monitor the forum to help get things started. In addition, we'll have several of the people from the Live Labs team there early on to help you with detailed questions and make sure you succeed with the new PivotViewer control.

Download the bits, visit the forum and ask your questions.

As I write this, I've got my browser open and pointing to the silverlight.net staging server, checking out the PivotViewer content. I'm really happy with what I see. The Pivot team did a great job with the control and the rollout.

   
posted by Pete Brown on Tuesday, June 29, 2010
filed under:    

35 comments for “Introducing the PivotViewer Control for Silverlight”

  2. Gravatar of M.AhrensReply
    M.Ahrenssays:
    Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 9:37:40 AM
    Yay! This will really great UXs in applications with great (big) datasets.

    Also, the site [http://www.silverlight.net/learn/pivotviewer/] links to a page (Under 'Creating a Collection', point 4: 'Share it - Download our PivotViewer SDK in order to build a Silverlight control to host the collection on your webpage!') [http://www.getpivot.com/developer-info/tools.aspx]. However this page does not contain the SDK Download link. (I did see the 'Download Now' button on the top of the Silverlight.net page, which works, however this linked page didn't have even though it seemed to imply so).
  8. Gravatar of PeteReply
    Petesays:
    Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 3:08:00 PM
    Thanks for all the votes for WPF!

    I've passed this along to the Pivot team as a feature request. Right now, the main issue is that WPF does not include MultiScaleImage (Deep Zoom).
  9. Gravatar of MikeReply
    Mikesays:
    Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 5:59:08 PM
    A page on silverlight.net that lets us play with it would go a long way. The videos are great, but people want to just play with it and see it in action without installing and configuring it on their own box.
  10. Gravatar of shaggygiReply
    shaggygisays:
    Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 6:29:06 PM
    Great! I've been waiting on this control for weeks. Thanks for the update.

    I have not had time to play around with the new SL Pivot control and not sure if announced during this release, but I wanted to know if there are any new tools on how to create collections ( both data and images )?

    The Excel tool is nice, but seems there are better ways to do this programmatically for nightly collection builds and publishing to server. Also, some of the Pivot guys from videos and Mix session mentioned there was a Photo Shop tool ( tab delimited file ) to create the images. I hope they are going to release a better tool to integrate within Expression suite and/or DeepZoom Composer. I don't have Adobe tools and don't plan on it, so all my collection images are blank until then:(

    Thanks again. Can't wait to use control and read Jesse's tutorials.
  11. Gravatar of JimReply
    Jimsays:
    Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 2:57:38 AM
    Hi Pete,

    If WPF does not include MultiScaleImage (Deep Zoom), then how did the Pivot client application work? This was a WPF application as far as I am aware and worked well. I think the community would love to see this in WPF. I was also considering hosting the silverlight control in our application but there is no possibility of local collections.

    Frustrating.

  12. Gravatar of Rui MarinhoReply
    Rui Marinhosays:
    Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 7:28:25 AM
    Hi, i already give my feedback on the forums, but i would express it here to.. it should be on top of the list to release the WPF Pivot control viewer ... i agree with JIm i really thought that the clien app was done all in wpf, and with a control for that, how was it made ? i can host the in a webbrowser the silvelright content, but i wont be able to fade in, fade out or aniamte it since webbrowaser don't let us do that in silverlight.

    Pete please help us pushing this to be release :)

    Regards
    Rui
  13. Gravatar of Arnoud van BersReply
    Arnoud van Berssays:
    Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 8:45:07 AM
    I vote for datatemplate support or having the possibility to add text to an image..
    My datasets are so dynamic that it is undoable to generate all the images in advance..
  14. Gravatar of PeteReply
    Petesays:
    Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 1:33:11 PM
    @Jim, @Rui

    The WPF demo app from the PDC included a custom port of deep zoom based Seadragon and the other bits that eventually became MultiScaleImage. As I understand it, that was not production-quality code, but more of a proof-of-concept / lab experiment.

    I've let the Pivot team know that there's a strong desire for this. Did any of you vote up adding Deep Zoom to WPF in the uservoice site? http://wpf.mswish.net (directl link: http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/40583-wpf-feature-suggestions/suggestions/478804-implement-deep-zoom-multiscaleimage?ref=title )

    @Rui

    For grins, check out the Awesomium + WPF wrapper for Chromium. It's a pretty good in-WPF browser implementation. Yeah, I know what it uses, but good is good :)
  15. Gravatar of MawashiKidReply
    MawashiKidsays:
    Wednesday, June 30, 2010 at 2:36:36 PM
    Wooow .... you guys are fast and don't miss an occasion...
    I haven't got a chance to really take a deep dive into Pivot...
    that a new forum on PivotViewer Control for Silverlight
    is already created. That's great...
    I've run the sample solution included the package... Woooow...
    Some pretty cooooool stuff we got here...
    I'll sure keep an eye on this forum...

    Thank's Pete...and Jesse... and to all the team at Pivot :)

    BTW M.Ahrens, the file you're refering to is
    Pivot Collection Tool for the Command Line
    "Pauthor-v1.1.zip"
    I haven't any problem to download it and install it.
  16. Gravatar of jjbravoReply
    jjbravosays:
    Friday, July 2, 2010 at 2:05:26 PM
    I'm getting an error running the sample.
    In the MainPage InitializeComponent() I get "Element is already the child of another element. [Line: 0 Position: 0]"
  18. Gravatar of LiliaReply
    Liliasays:
    Friday, July 2, 2010 at 6:09:48 PM
    @jjbravo Can you give more details on when you are hitting the error? You mention that you are running the sample code. Are you referring to PivotViewerSample.sln? When I load the project in VS2010 and hit F5, I do not see the error. Do you have Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 Toolkit installed?
  19. Gravatar of JimReply
    Jimsays:
    Saturday, July 3, 2010 at 3:31:22 AM
    Follow-up from non-WPF control.

    In the absense of a WPF control, I thought I had a solution. Performance was great, integration worked well. I hosted a Web Browser control in WPF that points to a webserver with the silverlight control and collection .cxml. All good so far

    However it seems there is a confirmed bug with the control that it cannot read the .cxml file IF it is stored on "localhost"

    Any ideas who to press for a resolution to this?

    Ideally you would allow loading from a locally stored .cxml file like the Pivot Live Labs client allowed.
  21. Gravatar of JimReply
    Jimsays:
    Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 3:28:39 AM
    Pete,

    I seem to have posted everywhere on this, but no closer to a resolution.

    Here is the thread for issues with the Silverlight Pivot control on localhost:

    http://www.getsatisfaction.com/live_labs_pivot/topics/collection_hosting_issues_on_iis

    Who can i progress this with? Where do I take this for a resolution?

    Thanks
  22. Gravatar of PeteReply
    Petesays:
    Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 6:41:09 AM
    @Jim

    Have you posted on the Silverlight forums at all? The Pivot team members are there, monitoring questions and helping out.

    We're trying to transition away from the getsatisfaction site now that the product has been officially released.

    Pete
  24. Gravatar of JimReply
    Jimsays:
    Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 9:16:10 AM
    Hi Pete,

    I posted the same issue to the Silverlight Forums. not one reply yet.

    The lenghty background to the issue is here.

    http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/190392.aspx

    All I need is someone at Microsoft to confirm that this configuration can work. That hosting a .cxml on localhost works.

    Looking at all the threads there is definately a pattern that people are having problems with hosting the .CXML on localhost.

    The original post from GetPivot is here:

    http://www.getsatisfaction.com/live_labs_pivot/topics/collection_hosting_issues_on_iis

    Can someone at MS confirm that hosting .CXML locally woks?

    Thanks
  28. Gravatar of LacaReply
    Lacasays:
    Thursday, August 5, 2010 at 2:52:05 PM
    Hi...
    great tool. How can I generate collection from wcf data service response?

    (as xml... it gives me error: "Root element is not <feed> or <service>" because I'm using another root element.

    Thanks,
    L
  29. Gravatar of ZulluReply
    Zullusays:
    Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 3:38:50 PM
    Lilia,
    I am having the same error "Element is already the child of another element. [Line: 0 Position: 0]" as jjbravo above.
    I have the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight 4 Toolkit installed, but I still get this error.
    I have added a AutoCompleteBox from the SDK.

    ANy guidance around this error.
    Thanks.
  30. Gravatar of MarcReply
    Marcsays:
    Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 2:18:52 AM
    I have found I can create a new Silverlight project, and as long as I always use 'Build' and never 'Rebuild' it works. If I ever do a rebuild I start getting this error. I've proven this by working with a project I created that works, making a copy of it, doing a rebuild, and then seeing the error. Delete the copy and restore, the problem goes away. Start the project from scratch and never do a 'Rebuild' and it works. So, my conclusion is that Rebuild is messing with something but I haven't figured out what yet.
  31. Gravatar of OlivierReply
    Oliviersays:
    Monday, November 29, 2010 at 7:08:19 AM
    Hi there!
    I have the same issue as Marc, jjbravo, Zullu ...
    and already spent hours on it (I'm not a silverlight pro yet)

    The sample provided with the PivotViewer control seems to cause problems.
    As soon as you change the given compiled xap , you get the error.
    "Element is already the child of another element. [Line: 0 Position: 0]"

    Has a solution been found by someone ?

    What can it be related to ?

    My guess is that, given the sample has been released more that 3months ago, the team who released it would a corrected such a major issue as a simple project not working. If they did not, it is perhaps becaude they dod not experience this problem, hence it must be related to the environnement ...
    In my case,
    I first installed the GetPivot application this summer on a computer running VS2008
    Last week , I installed VS2010 and the latest PivotViewer control.
    Maybe there is some mising in versions which would explain this issue?

    Once again, if anyone has a real clue, I'd appreciate a word from him ! (as would many others I guess !!)
  32. Gravatar of DaveReply
    Davesays:
    Friday, December 10, 2010 at 6:26:56 AM
    SOLUTION:

    I don't know if this was part of it but i'd just installed the April Toolkit also.... was still having problems afterwards but then did the following which seemed to fix it.

    When i extracted the sample file (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\PivotViewer\Aug10\Source) the resulting project as marked as read only... i just made the source writable (cascading changes to all subfiles and folders of the extracted source) and then in visual studio right click on the solution and choose rebuild... after that started working a treat.
  35. Gravatar of rehmanReply
    rehmansays:
    Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 8:51:53 PM
    Hi,

    I developed an pivot collect using Excel add-in. After long and searching through internet, I was also able to develop a Silverlight application with Pivot collection using Visual studio 2010.
    My main aim is develop a desktop application showing that pivot collection. I tried developing WPF application, but it is not working. I found some articles on internet saying that I can develop WPF application by just copy/pasting the XAML files from my silverlight application. but it is still not working; it shows some errors when I copy the same XAML files to WPF project.
    Can help/guide me how can I develop a desktop application with Pivot viewer.
    I also tried making the Out-of-browser application of my Silverlight application, but it does not give me any installable or exe file.

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