Remember the final moments of the Scott Guthrie keynote presentation at PDC09? Where Brian Goldfarb came on stage and demonstrated a completed application using a lot of the features of Silverlight 4? Yeah, that Facebook application. Well, it’s here now!
The Microsoft Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook has been released as a developer preview sample. In order to use it you must have Silverlight 4 developer builds installed.
NOTE: When you run this application you’ll be installing the developer builds of Silverlight. When Silverlight 4 releases, unless you are a developer, you’ll likely want to uninstall this plugin and install the released software. This sample application is being provided as a developer preview to showcase and inspire.
The application is installed as a trusted application and does all the things you’d expect for Facebook.
Status updates:
Drag/drop pictures from your computer to a photo album:
A photo feed view:
Notifications for messages to you:
Add a photo to a post using your web camera on your computer:
And yes, anyone uploading video to Facebook can be played back in the app as well:
A lot of cool ways to explore your Facebook information (sorry, no mafia war games…for me that’s a good thing). You can also see some Outlook integration if you right-click on events that you may have to send an email and such (I don’t have any events in my Facbook account to snapshot).
So what’s NOT in there?
Good question. At PDC09 you may have seen a few things that I haven’t mentioned yet above. The chromeless (borderless application) aspect of the application is not in this preview. This is because the beta of Silverlight doesn’t include that feature right now. Additionally the plug-in the camera and have it automatically import the pictures is not in this preview as well. That was implemented using some COM integration and the team just didn’t clean that code up for this preview for the public.
What about source code?
At this time no source code is being provided…and probably won’t be. I’m not the decision maker on ultimately if it will or not, just my assumption. The Facebook client is meant to be a working demonstration/inspiration of what one could do with existing services and providing different views into an existing application framework.
How can I install this and will it work on my Mac?
You can play around with the app by visiting the Microsoft Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook app on the Silverlight samples site (which also includes the other sample applications from PDC09). As a reminder, this is a developer preview build and intended for developers. You will need to have Silverlight 4 installed on your machine (which is a beta plugin). The link to the app will direct you where you can get the appropriate download.
Yes, it will work on your Mac (as long as you have an Intel processor version). When you install the app you’ll see the Apple preferred install guidelines to drag the application to your Applications folder and can navigate to it there or use Spotlight search to find it.
This is a fun little application to navigate your Facebook account. The team had a good time building it and is excited to share it with others. Have fun!