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Monthly Archives: January 2008

  • Mike Wolf on Silverlight and User Experience

    Mike Wolf will be speaking at CMAP this coming Tuesday. The topic is: "UX is the new UI: It's not the framework, it's how you use it"Abstract from Mike's blog:As developers we love our frameworks and the elegance of code. Yet we often spend so much time staring at code we forget the essential user centered problem were trying to solve. In addition, due to the amazing and e...

    Published Thursday, January 31, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • Links from Tonight's Silverlight for Developers Talk in Reston

    During the Q&A in Reston, Marc and I mentioned a few places of interest. The Silverlight Deployment Document. The Silverlight Showcase on Silverlight.net Tim Sneath's blog on Silverlight 2.0 Scott Guthrie's blog with some details on Silverlight 2.0 My essay on Silverlight 2.0, WPF and Development in the future For those of you who couldn't make it tonight, I hope to see yo...

    Published Wednesday, January 30, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • Mid-Atlantic Influential Architects

    I'm honored and pleased that three of us from Applied Information Sciences (Vishwas Lele, Frank La Vigne and me) have been chosen by Dr Z from Microsoft to be members of the inaugural group of Mid-Atlantic Influential Architects.There are a lot of impressive minds in that group, many of which I've run into before or have worked with directly - proving once again that despite its populat...

    Published Wednesday, January 30, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave comment

  • Silverlight for Developers

    Microsoft is presenting Silverlight for Developers in Reston tonight and in DC tomorrow night. Microsoft DPE will deliver some great content, and I've been asked to give some real-world experience closing remarks at both events. Hope to see you there! Event Overview (shamelessly lifted from the registration site) Abstract Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform ...

    Published Wednesday, January 30, 2008 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • Have You Visited the Silverlight Showcase Lately?

    The Silverlight Showcase is a great site for sampling what folks are doing in the current production release of Silverlight. If you haven't been there in a while, you might be surprised at the number of attractive, compelling Silverlight 1.0 applications that are out there. Click the image below to check it out.

    Published Wednesday, January 30, 2008 | Tagged: , | 4 comments

  • Windows Live Writer

    I finally decided to take a pop at using Windows Live Writer to write for my blog. While Community Server has a reasonable editor, it is an online in-browser editing experience and can suffer from the usual shortcomings that architecture has. Creating thumbnails and uploading images was definitely a chore, and Live Writer takes care of all that junk for me. Below is a random photo from my file...

    Published Sunday, January 27, 2008 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Simulating Drop Shadows in Silverlight using Expression Design

    Silverlight lacks the bitmap effects that are commonly used in WPF applications. Most can be simulated using pngs, but some can also be simulated using xaml. The example below shows a passable (but not perfect) drop shadow effect that relies only on vector content exported from Expression design.First, open expression design and create a shape that duplicates the extents of the object you want ...

    Published Saturday, January 26, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , | 2 comments

  • NYC Silverlight Firestarter

    If you are in the greater NYC area, don't miss this month's Microsoft Silverlight Firestarter. It's all happening Saturday January 26thI did the keynote and expression sessions at the Philly firestarter and had a blast. The speakers for the NYC one look to be a great lineup, so you know it will be good. While I won't be able to make it up to this one, I donated my slide decks, s...

    Published Friday, January 25, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , | Leave comment

  • Things I like about AIS

    At AIS (Applied Information Sciences), I am a Project/Engagement Manager, Architect, and self-proclaimed Client Platforms Evangelist (Windows Forms, WPF, Silverlight etc.). The last bit evolved because my background is in UX/human factors, and I'm always the guy talking to clients about how they should be looking at rich client apps, not html apps, for man...

    Published Friday, January 25, 2008 | Tagged: , | 1 comment

  • What Not to do to a Zune

    When I got back to my house from the Silverlight 2.0 TAP event in Redmond last week, it was about 4:00 am (love those airline delays). I dumped most of my stuff in a pile, and went to bed. The next day, I remember asking for my jacket to be washed as it picked up a lot of airplane cooties <g> I used the Zune on all four flights (connections each way) and really enjoyed it. I was...

    Published Friday, January 25, 2008 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Deploying Silverlight in the Enterprise

    Siverlight is now available as an optional download via Windows Update. This will make it easier for administrators to install within the enterprise. Yet another potential barrier removed.from: Tim Sneath 

    Published Wednesday, January 23, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • See You at MIX?

    I'm really looking forward to goint to MIX again this year. It's coming up quickly!I went to MIX both in '06 (remember "You've got to know your chicken"?) and '07. If you have never been to MIX, this is like the PDC for user interface / user experience folks. If you are at all interested in UX technologies (AJAX, Silverlight, WPF, etc.), this is the confe...

    Published Monday, January 21, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 4 comments

  • Department of Homeland Device Driver Faults

    I was in Redmond all last week for a Silverlight meeting. My connecting flight from Denver to Baltimore was delayed so many times that it was around 3:00am when I exited the concourse at BWI and passed through security on my way out. I always like to see the various applications running on the big screens at the airports. The ones at BWI are typically pretty boring, but I've seen ...

    Published Friday, January 18, 2008 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • Tracking Silverlight Performance - Redraw Regions

    Seema Ramchandani gave a talk back at ReMIX07 in Boston which conflicted with my "Real World Silverlight" talk, so I unfortunately didn't get to see her then. However, she just gave a talk this week in Redmond. In that talk, she showed how redraw regions can be turned on in Silverlight so that you can see how animation, video, property changes etc. all affect how large an are...

    Published Friday, January 18, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • .NET Framework Library 3.5 Source Release - And Silverlight Source to Come

    Scott Guthrie just announced the release of the .NET 3.5 source code. WPF and Windows forms are included in the list of DLLs. WF and others will be coming. As is often the case, his replies to the comments contain even more interesting information, including that Microsoft will release the Silverlight source code in the future. Cool! Also noted is that a packaged downloadable version of the sou...

    Published Thursday, January 17, 2008 | Tagged: , | 1 comment

  • Server Instability

    My server at home (which hosts this blog and my main web site) is on the fritz due to too many beta products installed, and the welcome but unexpected increase in traffic caused by my Silverlight 2.0 post from the 8th. Unfortunately, I'm at a Silverlight meeting in Redmond this week, so I won't be able to take care of it until Friday or Saturday.Sorry for any inconvenience.

    Published Wednesday, January 16, 2008 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • WPF In the Enterprise - the Lawson Smart Client

    This is a great example of what a real business-oriented WPF (and by extension, Silverlight 2.0) application can look like. Battleship gray this is not. The look and feel is beautiful, the visual feedback slick, and the workflow simple and appropriate. In all, it looks like a great user experience targeted towards a market many people ignore when thinking about user experience. Remember, U...

    Published Thursday, January 10, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 comment

  • Workflow Activity for Expression Encoder

    Now this is coolMichael Scherotter (Synergist) is doing a webcast on how to create a Workflow Foundation (WF) activity for encoding video. If you're trying to do any automated media submission workflows on your site (a la YouTube), this is a nice way to go about it.Be sure to check out the webcast information here. The webcast is tomorrow at 1:00pm Eastern Time so sign up soon :)

    Published Wednesday, January 9, 2008 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • Why Silverlight 2.0 will Change How We Build Applications

    I previously blogged about why I stopped coding in Silverlight 1.1. I want to make it clear that that is in no way an indictment of that technology. It's just that I've learned from it what I wanted to and have moved on.While I find 1.0 great for web gadgets and media, and found 1.1 very interesting to learn from, Silverlight 2.0, is what really excites me. It does for several reasons, ...

    Published Tuesday, January 8, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , | 43 comments

  • Why I stopped my Silverlight 1.1 Work

    You may have noticed that I stopped putting Silverlight 1.1 code out on my blog and stopped talking about 1.1 at local events. I even keynoted the Silverlight FireStarter back in December and barely mentioned 1.1 in the process (I think it rated one slide). There are a few reasons for that:1. 1.0 code is far more stable. It's not an alpha or even a beta, it's production. Silverlight 1.1...

    Published Thursday, January 3, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 7 comments

  • MVP!

    I'm pleased and excited to announce that I just received the 2008 MVP Award (Visual Developer - Client Application Development) particularly for my work around Silverlight. This, especially when combined with the success we had in getting AIS into several important Silverlight programs at Microsoft, has really made a great start to 2008.I'd like to extend my thanks to eve...

    Published Tuesday, January 1, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 6 comments