- Posted by christhi on April 16, 2009
For those who didn’t make it to Mix 2009 or those who want to get a short “elevator pitch” version of the what sketchflow is and does I put together this screencast for you. In it I review the top features in sketchflow as announced at Mix. Sketchflow is currently not part of the blend 3 preview so hopefully this will help provide a closer look at what you can expect from this really cool rapid prototyping tool. As you can see you can now produce prototypes that won’t require interpreting what the designer had intended nor wasting work as now you can move from thought to sketch to production level detail in one tool much without writing one line of code!
- Posted by christhi on April 9, 2009
Fully supported by Visual Studio and Expression Blend, highlights of new features and functionality of Silverlight 3 include: major media enhancements, out of browser support allowing Web applications to work on the desktop; significant graphics improvements including 3D graphics support, GPU acceleration and H.264 video support; and many features to improve RIA development productivity. Also, in order to fully integrate all the .NET developer tools, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express will support a fully editable and interactive designer for Silverlight. New features in Silverlight 3 include:
· Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop. New and enhanced media features in Silverlight 3 include:
o Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming. IIS Media Services (formerly IIS Media Pack), an integrated HTTP media delivery platform, features Smooth Streaming which dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file delivered to Silverlight based on local bandwidth and CPU conditions.
o More format choice. In addition to native support for VC-1/WMA, Silverlight 3 now offers users native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio, enabling content distributors to deliver high-quality content to a wide variety of computers and devices.
o True HD playback in full-screen. Leveraging graphics processor unit (GPU) hardware acceleration, Silverlight experiences can now be delivered in true full-screen HD (720p+).
o Extensible media format support. With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.
o Industry leading content protection. Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM.
· Empowering Richer Experiences. Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals. Additional features include:
o Perspective 3D Graphics. Silverlight 3 allows developers and designers to apply content to a 3D plane. Users can rotate or scale live content in space without writing any additional code. Other effects include creating a queue in 3D and transitions.
o Pixel Shader effects. These software based effects include blur and drop shadow. In addition, you can also write your own effect. Effects can be applied to any graphical content. An example would be to make a button appear depressed on rollover you could use a drop shadow effect on the pressed visual state.
o Bitmap Caching. Silverlight 3 dramatically improves the rendering performance of applications by allowing users to cache vector content, text and controls into bitmaps. This feature is useful for background content and for content which needs to scale without making changes to its internal appearance.
o New Bitmap API. With Silverlight 3, developers can now write pixels to a bitmap. Thus, they can build a photo editor to do red eye correction, perform edits on scanned documents or create specials effects for cached bitmaps from elements on the screen.
o Themed application support. Developers can now theme applications by applying styles to their Silverlight 3 applications and changing them at runtime. Additionally, developers can cascade styles by basing them on each other.
o Animation Effects. Silverlight 3 provides new effects such as spring and bounce. These make animation more natural. Developers can also now develop their own mathematical functions to describe an animation
o Enhanced control skinning. Silverlight 3 provides easier skinning capabilities by keeping a common set of controls external from an application. This allows the sharing of styles and control skins between different applications.
o Improved text rendering & font support. Silverlight 3 allows far more efficient rendering and rapid animation of text. Applications also load faster by enabling the use of local fonts.
· Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity. New features include:
o 60+ controls with source code : Silverlight 3 is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with nine professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. Other additions include multiple selection in listbox controls, file save dialog making it easier to write files, and support for multiple page applications with navigation.
o Deep Linking. Silverlight 3 includes support for deep linking, which enables bookmarking a page within a RIA.
o Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Silverlight 3 enables users to solve the SEO-related challenges posed by RIAs. By utilizing business objects on the server, together with ASP.NET controls and site maps, users can automatically mirror database-driven RIA content into HTML that is easily indexed by the leading search engines.
o Enhanced Data Support Silverlight 3 delivers:
§ Element to Element binding : UI designers use binding between two UI properties to create compelling UI experiences. Silverlight now enables property binding to CLR objects and other UI components via XAML, for instance binding a slider value to the volume control of a media player.
§ Data Forms. The Data Form control provides support for layout of fields, validation, updating and paging through data.
§ New features for data validation which automatically catch incorrect input and warn the user with built-in validation controls.
§ Support for business objects on both client and server with n-Tier data support. Easily load, sort, filter and page data with added support for working with data. Includes a new built-in CollectionView to perform a set of complex operations against server side data. A new set of .NET RIA services supports these features on the server.
o Improved performance, through:
§ Application library caching, which reduces the size of applications by caching framework on the client in order to improve rendering performance.
§ Enhanced Deep Zoom, allows users to fluidly navigate through larger image collections by zooming.
§ Binary XML allows communication with the server to be compressed, greatly increasing the speed at which data can be exchanged.
§ Local Connection This feature allows communication between two Silverlight applications on the client-side without incurring a server roundtrip: for instance a chart in one control can communicate with a datagrid in another.
· Out of Browser Capabilities. Silverlight 3 offers a new set of features for building light-weight, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web that run on the desktop. Silverlight out of browser allows websites to build even closer, persistent relationships with customers. It enables the application to be placed in a restricted store on the user’s machine; and then provide a link directly to it from the user’s desktop, start menu or Windows 7 superbar (if the user chooses). This is all enabled within Silverlight 3 without any additional download of runtime or the need to write applications in a different way. An application can now be easily found on the user’s desktop or start menu, and launched with a single click. In addition, it can test if the network is connected, it can update itself, and can also have access to Isolated Storage. Taken together, these features represent a radical upgrade to the web experience:
o Desktop shortcuts and start menu support –place an application on the desktop and be one click away from your customer.
o Run outside of browser –no longer need the distraction of the browser chrome
o Safer, more secure, sandboxed – an application can be trusted without security warnings, keeping your customers safer.
o Consumer friendly non-administrator install – applications are held in a cache and do not require any privileges to run
o Built in auto-update – an application will check for new versions on the server and update on launch
o Connectivity detection (in browser, out of browser) – can detect a loss of connection and then chose to cache users work until the reconnect
o Windows integration – on Windows 7, support will be provided for superbar integration, multitouch, and location awareness services such as GPS support so that your application can react to the users location e.g. for mapping or location targeted information.
Enhanced Accessibility Features. Silverlight 3 is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by using familiar operating system controls.
- Posted by christhi on April 8, 2009
It seems as though there have been several issues for MLB.TV in their video delivery since they’ve converted from silverlight to flash.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/162805/mlb_in_social_media_stumble_with_mlbtv_blog.html?tk=loom_art
http://www.mlbsupport.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=32&sid=9918c1deb0497b6bb42cdba88be50c1c
maybe they should have stayed with silverlight.
- Posted by christhi on April 8, 2009
As you all have seen, we had a great deal of positive buzz coming out of SxSW this year. Microsoft’s investment in SxSW has been growing year after year, with more and more resources both coming to and participating in the event.
PhizzPop National Finale
Partnering with the local web creative group Refresh Austin on outreach, attendance exceeded 400 people at the event with live digital HD feeds servicing satellite events in Chicago and Minneapolis. The Minneapolis satellite event itself hosted 100 fans cheering for their hometown heroes, Zeus Jones. The event drew a veritable who’s who of web design luminaries – including Frog, Avenue A | Razorfish, Neudesic, Thirteen23, Round Arch, Projekt202, Sapient, and the competitors themselves: Zeus Jones, Manifest Digital, Vectorform, PhenomBlue, and Archetype.
The competitors did not disappoint! This year’s design challenged focused on the theme of environmental sustainability for the city of Austin. The designs exceeded all expectations and were widely considered the best work seen at a PhizzPop event. This year’s winner was Zeus Jones. Their winning entry, UseMore, can be viewed HERE. Besides being crowned as the national Phizzpop Design Challenge winners for 2009, Zeus Jones won a trip to the CRE8 Conference in Orlando, Florida, and tickets to MIX09, and each team member received an HP computer package.
In addition to having incredible talent showcasing incredible solutions, we also had some incredible judges. These included Jon Roskill, Microsoft CVP; David-Michel Davies, Executive Director of the Webby Awards; Gaston Legorburu, Chief Creative Officer, Sapient; Howard Tulman, President and CEO, Flashpoint Academy; Dave Wolf, VP Cynergy; and internet celebrities Julia Allison and Meagan Asha.
Buzz
The buzz and after-image of the event are resonating even now…
Over 168 pictures can be found HERE.
“I think Phizzpop is a fantastic idea for a competition. It really showcases the incredible possibilities that are possible great design is teamed up with thorough research and brilliant strategy. There was a huge amount of talent presented tonight, and we are very flattered to have made it to the finals. Winning was a fantastic feeling, and a solid reassurance that a smart and simple idea can prevail.
Zeus Jones was founded with the goal to ‘modernize business,’ and we are using the combination of great design with honest strategy to create flawless executions. A special thanks to Microsoft for putting this all together.” Chad Hancock, designer of PhizzPop solution, Zeus Jones
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Twitter – over 80 tweets (50% - 70% positive impressions, zero negative)
“Saw invention, agility and commitment at the Phizzpop final (www.phizzpop.com) last night that will fry your eyes. and all done in two weeks” -- PaulBurcher
“sxsw - phizzpop pretty dope. maybe silverlight is legit.” -- projectc
“Microsoft's party makes up for the red rings of death” -- futuretuesday
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All of the Red Couch Interviews can be found HERE.
Noteworthy videos: [Mark Hindsbo] [Joe Olsen (Phenomblue)] [David Michael-Davis (Webby Awards)]
Press
Reporters from a number of organizations, such as the Austin American-Statesman and San Antonio News, were in attendance at the event. CNet covered the event as well. Zeus Jones was welcomed back with an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Sponsors
Great events are all about bringing great partners to the table and delivering excitement. We were fortunate to have some wonderful partners who brought incredible value to the table, most notably Red Bull. Besides bringing liquid energy, they brought an outstanding DJ in the form of DJ Tina T (pictured below). In addition to Red Bull, Lucid Absinthe, and Austin local Tito’s Handmade Vodka were also sponsors.
Sensorium
Sensorium served as the official PhizzPop pre-event and VIP reception. Done in collaboration with Darren Mc Cormick at Microsoft, this event exceeded its 70 attendee reach target and landed 94 attendees from design powerhouses such as Frog, Avenue A | Razorfish, Neudesic, Schematic, and others in addition to customers and partners such as Dell, Catapult, Freescale, Ovation TV, Allianz, Convio, FlashPoint Academy, and many more.
Attendees were exposed to a number of new ideas in NUI computing from Joe Olsen of PhenomBlue. They also got to see a number of innovative and exciting solutions from David Lucatch of Intertainment Media who showcased IttyBitty – a system that was highlighted at SxSW as a unique and entirely new way of building brands leveraging social media and new online user experiences. Dave Wolf and Shawn Broxson of CynergySystems (last year’s PhizzPop winners) demonstrated a series of new designs and thoughts about touch computing and the potential for NUI to impact the market.
Icing on the cake!
In addition to this, we had other fantastic things result from our participation at SxSW:
· We gave away 1,000 copies of Windows 7!! That means one in every 12 people at the event walked away with Windows 7!
- Posted by christhi on April 8, 2009
if you are looking to build office applications in Silverlight such as an mail client, word processing, et al check out http://divelements.co.uk/silverlight/. Yes the following screen shot is actually running in a browser using Silverlight. Very nice. Add Silverlight 3 to the mix and you can run both in browser and OOB in offline scenarios and go so dynamically given the new network awareness APIs in SL3.
- Posted by christhi on April 8, 2009
Silverlight 3 Beta
· The Silverlight 3 Beta contains more than 50 new features and 20 new controls, including support for running Silverlight applications out of the browser, dramatic video quality and performance improvements, and features that dramatically improve developer productivity.
Expression Blend 3 Preview & Expression Web SuperPreview
· Expression Blend 3 contains a number of radically innovative capabilities, including SketchFlow, for effectively prototyping the flow and composition of applications. We will also demonstrate SuperPreview, a feature of Expression Web which enables developers to quickly and easily troubleshoot web page rendering across a wide variety of browsers.
Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta
· The Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta not only easily and simply installs the Microsoft Web Platform stack, but it also enables customers to easily install and configure PHP for current and new releases of community applications from the Windows Web Application Gallery.
Windows Web Application Gallery
· The Windows Web Application Gallery allows you to install the most popular community Web applications such as Acquia Drupal, DotNetNuke, and WordPress, which integrate with the Microsoft Web Platform.
ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) 1.0
· ASP.NET MVC enables developers to build Model View Controller (MVC) applications using ASP.NET and offers features such as support for Test-Driven Development, Fine-grained control over HTML and JavaScript, and intuitive URLs.
Commerce Server 2009
· Commerce Server 2009 enables the ability to create consistent user experiences across e-commerce channels. Developers can easily create online shopping experiences that engage, attract and excite customers by offering personalized content, social community and rich user experiences.
- Posted by christhi on April 8, 2009
MySpace Announces Support for Microsoft Platforms
1. What Happened?
· Today, MySpace announced support for Silverlight and Windows Mobile - http://in.sys-con.com/node/898377
2. Why is this important?
· It is important for MySpace because it opens up their platform to the .Net community, which substantially increases their number of potential developers.
· It is important for Microsoft because it’s the first major social media site to promote development of applications in Silverlight.
3. What’s Next?
· Later this week at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Microsoft and MySpace will make formally available the Silverlight Toolkit for MySpace on CodePlex - http://www.web2expo.com/webexsf2009/public/schedule/detail/9031 . This is an Open Source project jointly developed by Microsoft and MySpace to make it easier for .Net developers to create applications for MySpace.
- Posted by christhi on April 7, 2009
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Announcementok now that my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek I will admit this title is a little deceiving. Not the free software part, that is true. But the fact you have to be unemployed to receive it. To receive free Microsoft software you only need to be a startup with an idea to develop something; anything. Your company must also be under 3 years old, non-public, and under 1M revenue. Now where does the unemployed developer thing tie in? Well, if you are unemployed now would be a great time to start that company and we’ll provide you with all of the development tools to do it via our BizSpark program along with some resources to get your company off the ground. Starting a company is easy, here in Texas for example you only need to go http://www.window.state.tx.us/webfile/ to get started with the legal part e.g. corporation, LLP. The site even guides you on the steps and you can file online. Once you have your company go to http://www.microsoft.com/bizspark and we'll provide the software – that’s it. For more details on the program and how to enroll see my earlier post at http://www.flyover18.com/christhi/post/2008/11/05/Announcing-BizSpark-Microsofts-Program-to-get-Startups-off-the-Ground.aspx and http://www.flyover18.com/christhi/post/2008/11/11/BizSpark-Program-How-to-Sign-Up.aspx.