adamkinney

WPF 3.5 SP1 Tools with Erick Ellis and Mark Wilson-Thomas

AdamKinney — Fri, 16 May 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Erick Ellis and Mark Wilson-Thomas talk about what's new in the WPF editor for Visual Studio in .NET 3.5 SP1. Topics include faster performance both from WPF and optimizations of their own, new cool visualizers, the Document Outline (very useful for WPF Apps) and more.

And as Mark mentioned, if you want to get your feedback in for future updates, go to the Visual Studio WPF Designer Forum on MSDN.

Looking for more than tools? Check out the WPF 3.5 SP1 Overview video

WPF 3.5 SP1 Performance with Adam Smith

AdamKinney — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Adam Smith and Tim Sneath discuss a wide array of improvements made in WPF 3.5 SP1 concerning performance. Topics include Check out the WPF 3.5 SP1 Overview video

WPF 3.5 SP1 Deployment with Troy Martez

AdamKinney — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:48:18 GMT

Troy Martez and Dr. Sneath go on a deep dive into the new client deployment options available in WPF 3.5 SP1. Interesting new features include the Client Profile (something like a "diet .NET Framework") which allows for smaller setup packages and new customizations during the installation process.

Looking for more than deployment? the improvements and new features in WPF 3.5 SP1, now its time to see the new stuff. David Teitlebaum takes us on a tour of graphic applications that take advantage of the new and improved Effects, DirectX Interop, WriteableBitmap and more.

There is a bit of discussion in the beginning, so if you want to skip right to the demos jump to 05:45 in the video. I'm smitten.

Looking for more than graphics? Dr. Sneath speaks with Kevin Gjerstad about new improvements and features in WPF 3.5 Service Pack 1. Topics of the conversation range from Deployment, Application Model and Lawson "Mango" and Yahoo Messenger .

Not only does this video provide you with a great overview of WPF 3.5 SP1, but it is kicking off Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (Beta)

.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (Beta)

Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions SP1 (Beta)

Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 (Beta)

ALT.NET Geek Code badge

AdamKinney — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:29:27 GMT

After visiting the ALT.NET Open Spaces Conference in Seattle Scott Hanselman followed through on one of the open ideas there and created the ALT.NET Geek Code page. After selecting from the list of processes and tools you are given a code. Code which can be expressed in text like so:

IOC(SM):IOC(CW):IOC(Nin):MOC(RM):MOC(MQ):MOC(TM):MOC(!?):TDD(NU):TDD(Xu):TDD(Mb):SCC(Svn):SCC(Git):SCC(TFS):SCC(Lame):SCC(Gmail):ORM(NH):ORM(SS):ORM(L2S):XPP(++):DDD(T+):DDD(+):DDD(!?):JSL(Jq):JSL(MS):JSL(p+):JSL(s+):CIS(CC):CIS(psh+):CIS(bat-):GoF(++)

That's a lot of text though, and looks the right time for a little data visualization app built in Silverlight 2. This is the story of that little application that could.

Download Video (WMV, MP4, Zune)
Download Application Source

Usability Research at Microsoft

AdamKinney — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:58:08 GMT

Last week, Arnie Lund, UX Community lead for IT, Monty Hammontree, Director of User Experience for Developer Products, and Dennis Wixon, User Research Manager for Microsoft Game Studios. who were all speakers at the World Usability Day event at Microsoft.

We discussed what "Usability" means in the context of their position, how it affects the products they work on and what types of techniques they use to study Usability.

I found the talk very interesting and unique. Usability is an important topic when creating software, but is not often discussed widely. Watch the video and you might gain some insight into why you enjoy Visual Studio or even HALO 3 as much as you do.

Robby Ingebretsen : Designers, Developers and Integrators

AdamKinney — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:12:18 GMT

You may be a developer who sometimes does layout or has to spend time slicing images to stuff into your UI. Or you may be a designer who wants to get that control to function a certain way, so much that you crack open the code. These hybrid tasks exist and in my mind have become more pronounced with new client technologies like WPF and SIlverlight. Enter the Integrator or at least the recognition of Integration tasks.

Robby Ingebretsen has thought a lot about this and shares his ideas with us in the video. We cover the workflow and planning for these three roles, and how Expression Blend fits in.

As an extra tool for Integrators he shows off the Blendables tool set. A unique set of controls in the sense that they really seem to target UI designers and developers.

Xbox Friends Watch : Silverlight Sidebar Gadget

AdamKinney — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:28:58 GMT

Now that HALO 3 has been released, my Xbox 360 and I are hanging out together again, Xbox Live is in the picture too. Why? Best answer could be HALO 3 multiplayer mode, and what's better than multiplayer mode? Multiplayer mode with friends.

This resulted in a perfect opportunity to create a new sidebar gadget, which of course since I'm a big fan of Silverlight I used it as the UI for the gadget. I'm pretty happy with the results and this video is a quick demo of how the gadget works.

Learn more about the gadget...

Pascal Bourque - Building a rich datagrid in WPF

AdamKinney — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:38:32 GMT

Last week I met up with Pascal Bourque from Xceed. Pascal is senior developer who has been developing with WPF for two years. Xceed is a controls company famous for their free WPF Datagrid.

We talk about what its like to develop a rich control using WPF, mainly focusing on the custom theming of the grid. It really shows off the whole concept of seperating the UI interaction and style from the core code. And with that capability, diving into redefining a grid's purpose and how real-time visualization changes can be used effectively.

I'm hoping they take my suggestion of a custom themes contest and run with it. It'd be interesting to see what other type of skins people could create.

Building a Silverlight player for Channel 9

AdamKinney — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:08:50 GMT

version 4 of Channel 9.

He discusses how he was able to reuse the code that comes with Expression Encoder and how, as the developer, he can code the player while the designer David Shadle can work on the design.

A preview of the player is available on Channel 8 today and I'm expecting the player to go live on the Channel 9 beta sometime in the near future.

Beau Ambur: Developing a Silverlight application

AdamKinney — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 19:35:19 GMT

Here is Beau Ambur's session from the SilverlightDevCamp in San Francisco. He walks us through his iPhone replica he made for MIX 07 UK and then Top Banana, an app for editing videos with a very interesting UI.

I think Beau is interesting speaker who always seems to have great demos and applications to show. Normally impressed from a graphical and interaction perspective, I liked in this session how he touched on the value of the workflow from concept to implmentation.

This weekend I'll be heading to SilverlightDevCampChicago and plan to return with more videos like this one and SilverlightDevCamp in San Francisco and met R. Tyler Ballance of Slide.com. The DevCamp ran Friday night and then all day Saturday, but by the end of the first day Tyler was working on re-implementing one of their current Flash apps in Silverlight. Right before the DevCamp was over, I was able to interview him about his coding experience and learning the nuances of Silverlight.

Cider Beta 2 : Styling a WPF application with Blend and Cider

AdamKinney — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:28:24 GMT

Brief walkthrough on using Blend to style a WPF application originally created with VS 2008 Cider designer; see how you can seamlessly go back and forth between the two tools to get the best out of a developer (intellisense, code wiring, etc.) and designer ( styling, templating) tools for creating WPF applications.

This part 2 in a 2 part series, part 1 is available here: Jaime Rodriguez was the original creator.

Cider Beta 2 : Feature walkthrough

AdamKinney — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:21:18 GMT

"Cider" is the codename for the WPF designer in Visual Studio 2008. This screencast covers some of the new features in Cider and walks you through building a small application to apply the features.

This part 1 in a 2 part series, part 2 is available here: Jaime Rodriguez was the original creator.

Kevin Moore: New Features in WPF 3.5

AdamKinney — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 07:49:53 GMT

Although WPF is less than a year old, we’re already putting the finishing touches to an update that will add some neat features and improvements, improve internationalization support and increase performance. In this video, Charles Torre (and Dr Sneath, when he finally turns up) sit down with Kevin “Bag’o’Tricks” Moore as he provides a whirlwind tour of the improvements and changes you can expect to see in WPF 3.5 (which ships as part of "Orcas").

Creating a Video with an Ad Image Overlay

AdamKinney — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:19:06 GMT

In this screencast, Tim Sneath shows you how you can use Expression Blend to overlay an image with alpha-channel on top of Silverlight video content; this is a great way to provide a non-intrusive advertising model as well as to generate some neat graphical effects for videos.

MIX07: John Lam and the Dynamic Language Runtime

AdamKinney — Tue, 01 May 2007 22:31:32 GMT

Tim Heuer had a chance to sit down with John Lam and Tomas Matousek from the Common Language Runtime team. John finally breaks his silence publically about what he has been working on since coming to Microsoft earlier this year. He explains what the concepts around the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) are about, what challenges the team has faced while working on Python and Ruby implementations. Listen/watch to what John and Tomas have to say about Silverlight and how that will bring code execution in the browser in a cross-platform way.

Publishing Media Content to Silverlight Streaming Services

AdamKinney — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 21:25:13 GMT

This screencast shows how you can host media assets as part of a Silverlight application on the Silverlight Streaming globally-cached content distribution network.

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Real-Time Data Update with Silverlight and Web Services

AdamKinney — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:51:49 GMT

This screencast demonstrates how a distributed application can be built with an ASP.NET middleware, and a Web services back end. The middleware consumes the Web service and uses it and a XAML template to generate a Silverlight front end, delivering a stock quote. The front end combines with ASP.NET controls and AJAX in Silverlight’s windowless mode to provide a full UI, allowing the user to specify stock tickers which will then be passed to the ASP.NET middleware. It demonstrates how a full nTier distributed application can be built using ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight and Web services.

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Overlaying HTML and Silverlight Content

AdamKinney — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:49:08 GMT

While Silverlight v1 doesn’t support a full control suite, ASP.NET and HTML do, and in this example you will see how to use both in a Silverlight front end using Windowless mode. You will see how to construct a Silverlight application, and how, using DHTML you can overlay content on top of it.

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Creating a Video Playlist with Silverlight and ASP.NET

AdamKinney — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:40:07 GMT

This screencast demonstrates a dynamic Silverlight front end, where different video playlists, stored in a SQL Server database, can be generated and rendered for different users. In addition to generating XAML for the front end, an ASP.NET back end also generates JavaScript which is used to manage playing back the different videos. It’s a nice example of an nTier application with a Silverlight front end, showing how Silverlight and ASP.NET work better together.

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Using AJAX to Dynamically Update Silverlight Content

AdamKinney — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:37:40 GMT

This video demonstrates a simple notification system build using Silverlight, ASP.NET, AJAX and SQL Server. Silverlight is used at the front end to present a rich UI, which is asynchronously updated using AJAX based on activities of different users in the system. You are stepped through the full solution, from the text input to the back end through the asynchronous delivery service based on JSON-oriented Web services and AJAX proxies.

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Delivering Parameterized Silverlight Content with Java

AdamKinney — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:27:47 GMT

This video demonstrates how J2EE can be used to generate XAML which is then delivered to a JSP Silverlight front end. A XAML Generator was written in Java, and this fronts the Northwind database. Queries to the database can be triggered from the Silverlight front end, and these result in XAML being constructed from a template on the server. It demonstrates how dynamic front ends can be assembled server side due to the fact that XAML is XML, and how Silverlight can be used with disparate back-ends, including Java-based ones.

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