Anaheim Silverlight presentation

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Anaheim Silverlight presentation

posted @ Tuesday, April 08, 2008 10:48 PM | 6 Comments

Firs, thank you for all that came to the presentation in Anaheim. The room was full, and hopefully you learned something while there (and hopefully it was along the lines that video in text boxes might not be good design, but is doable :-)).

I got a bunch of really great questions and concerns and hopefully answered all of them that were asked. I saw many more hands lifted than we could get to, so if you have more questions, feel free to send them to me, or join the forum discussions as well! The Silverlight community site is a great resource for learning, getting the tools, and participating in the conversation...head there today and bookmark!

I was asked to post the code from my presentation, so I'm doing it here. You can download the solution here. You'll need Visual Studio 2008, Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK, and the Silverlight tools to successfully run the application. The only files not included there are the media files from the first demo. Just add a few WMV files into the web applications /ClientBin directory and change the MediaElement attributes in the LameStuff.xaml file if you want to mess around with it.

The sample loads the final solution we had, but I also included the LameStuff.xaml file from the first demo. If you want to play around with that, look in the App.xaml.cs file and change lines 29/30 to load the appropriate RootVisual.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some things and wished we could have gone into another hour of cool stuff, like showing how the DeepZoom technology (what I used in my initial 'powerpoint') is composed. Please feel free to subscribe to my site as I'll be doing a lot around Silverlight here!

tags: silverlight, anaheim launch, xaml, datagrid, clientbin

Comments

Ben Hayat

4/9/2008 9:39 AM | # re: Anaheim Silverlight presentation

Hi Tim;
So, as you have been showing SL2 in public more and more, what's your impression of public acceptance of SL? Particularly, those who are Flash developers?
I ask this, because as I promote SL and I come across those who are very attached to flash, I like to know how to convince them about SL. What are other Flash people see in SL that has convinced them to switch to SL?
Hope you can elaborate on this!

Thanks!
..Bn
Jacek Ciereszko

4/9/2008 10:08 AM | # re: Anaheim Silverlight presentation

I added 2 video-files and I changed two names in LameStuff.xaml, but I still get error with URL in Page.xaml.cs -> GetVideos. Problem is with url: "http://catalog.video.msn.com/randomvideo.aspx?mk=us&vs=0&ff=99&c=10"
I see content in browser but application can't handle this.

p.s Can you make bigger frame to write comments? ;)

p.s.2 Sorry for problem, any help will be appreciated.
timheuer

4/9/2008 7:53 PM | # re: Anaheim Silverlight presentation

ben: i think SL2 has really opened up the doors for more developers (and designers). so definitely acceptance is higher than with the previous version because there is a richer platform (.NET) on which to build over javascript only. i haven't had a lot of 1-on-1 time with some flash folks yet, but am looking forward to those conversations to learn on both ends. to that extend for flash developers i like to refer to some more experienced in flash and get their opinions. rick barazza is a flash guru and did a session at mix 'from flash to silverlight' (http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=T30) where he talks about some of his learnings. he's also doing some wicked cool things: http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/rickbarraza
Bob Stokesbary

4/9/2008 9:41 PM | # re: Anaheim Silverlight presentation

Tim,
Your presentation was great! I had no idea what Silverlight 2.0 was bringing to the table. Somehow, I thought Silverlight was only going to be for videos and pictures so I never took that much interest. Now that I see it can have a real business application I am interested.

Thanks for your presentation,
Bob

p.s. I attended both the Data Platform and Developer tracks and yours was the only presentation with a LARGE crowd with questions. I think we all could have enjoyed an hour more.
timheuer

4/9/2008 9:43 PM | # re: Anaheim Silverlight presentation

thanks bob! i could have enjoyed an hour more of those questions as well...we never did get to some of the cool stuff even ;-)
Kenny J

4/11/2008 1:17 AM | # re: Anaheim Silverlight presentation

Tim,

I agree with the others, your presentation in Anaheim was incredibly insightful and useful. Thank you very much! I installed VS 2008 and SL 2.0 the next day and have been playing with it ever since.

Years ago, I messed around with Flash and ActionScipt, but as far as front end technologies I've mainly stuck with ASP.NET/C# and Windows Forms. I was making my way up the steep learning curve of Flash/AS, but development was just too slow for business apps. Last year I started getting into Flex which was a lot more "developer friendly". I was also messing around with SL 1.1 at the time, but found it really laborious to develop with. But after your presentation on Tues, I saw how much easier SL 2.0 is then it's previous version. Like I said, I installed it the next day and haven't been able to stop experimenting with it.

It will be interesting to see how adoption goes with SL 2.0. One of the first arguments I always hear is "but the end user will have to download the SL runtime, and they aren't going to do that". My answer is "for crying out loud!!! they do it for Flash all the time!!! Big deal, they download it once for their first SL site and they don't have to download it again!!!". In my view, it won't be the user, but the developers who use MS technologies who will decide whether SL or AJAX will win. Personally, I think AJAX is a hack. Same with the prototype library, scriptaculous libraries, etc. All those script library to make javascript and HTML do what they were never intended to do. Flash and SL have the end user experience in mind from the beginning, animation and graphics are built into the languages, it's not some afterthought. They are optimized and compiled. And for me as a programmer, SilverLight 2.0 so far is beating the pants off my Flash programmer experience.

The biggest hurdle I see is not data connections through webservices, but the whole Timeline/Storyboard paradigm. This is a different way of seeing programming for the traditional programmer. I was prepared by my experience with Flash and Flex, but it took me a while back then to wrap my brain around it. But hey, maybe I'm just not the sharpest tool in the shed, maybe others will pick it up quicker. Hopefully. I'm really digging SL 2.0 and think we can create some great apps with great user experiences tied to them.

Anyway, thanks again for the inspiring presentation.

~K