i've been at OSCON all week (more day 3 posts coming up soon).  while i was out, if you are a microsoft dev, you no doubt saw the flurry of announcements of visual studio 2008 beta 2 (with golive), .net 3.5, and silverlight rc1 releases.

for the silverlight goodness, you can check out all the new stuff:

• Silverlight 1.0 RC1 / Windows (direct link)
• Silverlight 1.0 RC1 / Mac (direct link)
• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh / Windows (direct link)
• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh / Mac (direct link)

and some of the new tools releases

• Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
• Visual Studio Extensions for Silverlight
• Silverlight 1.0 SDK / Silverlight 1.1 SDK
• ASP.NET Futures CTP
• Expression Blend August Preview
• Expression Media Encoder Template Updater

silverlight rc1 also includes a 'refresh' to the alpha version (v1.1) of silverlight, so you'll want to grab that if you are doing the v1.1 development.  because there are breaking changes between beta and this release candidate, samples/sites you may have visited may not work as expected.  in fact, you may have the latest plugin installed (which is now self-updating btw), but go to a site and see the "install beta" image.  if you see this (and know you have the latest plugin installed) it is likely because the author hasn't updated their site yet.  you should contact the author/site...tell them to contact me, i'll help them get it updated and understand the breaking changes.

in fact, some of our great silverlight applications out there now have already been updated!

the guys at Terralever already readied their game, Zero Gravity, for the refresh of silverlight.  Lt. Bennett is back in the game ready for your high score attempts.  go check it out!

here are some others that have been updated:

• Zero Gravity, by Terralever
• Dr. Popper, by Blue Rose Games
• Balloons
• Nibbles Tutorials (with new samples)
• Python Cube (note: there is a python bug here, but essentially it works ;-))
• Jelly Graphs - this is a sample from an intern at Microsoft that rocks...i've offered to host the updates here on my blog for Richard...check them out!

know of others that were updated?  post them here!  with all of the updates, it is time for a re-pave of my machine for me...i've done a few too many betas/alphas/uninstalls in the past week to make me sick.  i'm going to drop the old box into the pep boys for a tune up...

yeah, i know, news flash.  there will be about 8 billion other blog posts about it so i have nothing more to add...but wanted to be sure you read scottgu's post on the subject which includes a special installation note.

what is windmill?  it is described as:

Project Windmill was created with the intention of reaching 100% automated testing of heavy Ajax web applications after trying desperately to make existing solutions work.

i'm eager to listen to this one.  i've used selenium as a web testing UI platform in the past and like a lot of what it offers...i'm expecting to see what windmill provides better/different and if it is more simplistic...here we go.

the guys behind this are mikeal rogers and adam christian of the cosmos web project(?) which is now the chandler server project.

so adam first is showing the demonstration of windmill testing the calendar feature of the chandler server -- showing automated testing of ajaxy drag/drop features, etc.  he points to a window that is open, calling it the 'windmill ide' which looks like.

requirements for the project:

• run single test on all target browsers
• easily debug tests
• easily fit into continuous integration

why windmill?

• needed to test heavy ajax application which changed dramatically
• existing solutions (selenium) didn't fill all reqs
• debugging/test authoring was difficult
• CI integration was a pain
• extending libraries wasn't easy

architecture... the service is completely written in python, ide is javascript and the test authoring library is anything.

what can be automated?

• OOTB support for: open, click, check, radio, wait, type, doubleClick, select, dragDrop
• all controller actions support a unified 'locator' to reference UI elements supporting xpath, link, name, id, and jsid (calls a javascript function which returns an element id).

the ide features:

• multi-browser test recorder
• multiple layers of support for perf info and metrics
• DOM explorer (much like firebug, but multibrowser)
• javascript shell (thank you mochikit)

service features:

• extensible logging
• 3 run modes: headless command line; shell mode; wx GUI
• browsing launching and configuration
• server level pre and post hooks for result parsing

these guys are working diligently on end-user docs and getting information out.  they know there may be bugs, and are hoping people use it and find them -- they are quick to respond right now.

adam is demonstrating this in action right now...recorder looks cool, ide looks good, they did a good job here, you should check it out!

forget it, i'm not calling it a keynote ;-)

the morning session (which started out being a very, very thin crowd -- parties must have been good) started with a data visualization talk by ben fry.  honestly, i wish you could have been here for that.  the demonstrations were awesome.  the visualizations weren't pie charts, etc.  they weren't mashups.  think data meets industrial light and magic, pixar, or your favorite animation/special effect/interactive big-dog.  ben showed a cool visualisation of apache log files that looked like a flower blooming and you could create new 'stems' on it (best i can describe it).  he also showed a cool one demonstrating a correlation between baseball salaries and performance...with the ability to change the point in time in the season -- so you can see who is worth the money...as a baseball fan this was cool (note: yankees don't appear to be getting a good ROI).  he did some other ones with music and images that was just unreal...it was very cool and i hope there are videos online you can search for.

next up is robin hanson on a discussion on 'overcoming bias' which i'm not really jiving this early in the morning -- especially after ben's demonstrations.  maybe it's me, but i want geek stuff.  i think his information is probably interesting, but let's be real, i just woke up -- and half these guys are probably hung over from hanging out with the mozilla party all night.  or maybe i'm just not on the same intellectual plane -- which is a fair assumption.  i'll probably go back to his site later, but for a 15 minute slot it is perhaps too much 'heavy stuff' for such a short discussion.

next up is bill hilf from microsoft.  see here for announcements.  even in the setup there are jabs at the mother ship, etc.

now is rick falkvinge (of the pirate party) with copyright regime vs. civil liberties.  irony that microsoft is wedged between 'overcoming bias' and a discussion on copyrights? ;-)  rick showed that during their last election in sweden, the pirate party yielded 0.63% of the vote...which got their party in the top 10, the youth vote putting them at 4th position.  "poor lady justice has a problem."  rick talks about the threat of losing postal secret as a result of ensuring copyright infringement doesn't exist.  what is the platform?:

• free file sharing and sampling
• shorten copyright time
• ban drm
• abolish patents
• strengthen privacy, due process
• transparent government

i like listening about copyright.  i initially became intrigued at different thought process at a previous presentation at oscon actually by lawrence lessig who has some opinions on the matter.  rick is very passionate about this topic and very well spoken.  i'm enjoying this dialogue.  rick ends by saying that no politicians presentation would be complete without talking about campaign donations -- and notes that donations in sweden are not regulated ;-).

final discussion is entitled 'how to ignore marketing and become irrelevant in two days' with steve yegge.  you may know the name as he is from google and ported the rails framework to javascript.  steve's here talking about branding and does it matter.  i love these conversations as well.  he talks about new coke vs. coke classic, turboc vs. quickc, etc.  great conversation, steve was entertaining and engaging...invite him back for longer times.

overall a good/better mix of opening session content.

at oscon this morning, microsoft unveiled a new web site outlining positions on open source strategy.  the goal is to provide transparency into microsoft's perspective on OSS and a place where evidence and information can be shared.

you can visit the new site here: Open Source at Microsoft.

you might ask, 'what about port25, isn't that what it was supposed to be?' and you'd have a valid question.  port25 is the site for the open source software lab at microsoft.  it will continue to be a source for technical information with the oss technical community versus anything outlining an oss strategy.

so what else is microsoft doing in oss land?

microsoft partnered with SpikeSource in an agreement to certify all the SpikeIgnited solutions on the Windows platform.

what else?  how about microsoft's intention to submit the microsoft shared source licenses to the OSI for approval?  more details will come as the licenses are submitted to the process.  personally i think this is great.  the OSI process is a very open and public process where the licenses are vetted/commented on in open forum with the OSI.  you can read about the shared source licenses here.  this is a good thing for microsoft and the open source community.  i love the microsoft permissive license (Ms-PL) and what it provides for developers as well as certain protection it provides...it's been described as BSD-like, and is pretty good and simple, easy to understand.

so that's what is going on in microsoft open source land...we're looking forward for more to come!  today john lam will be demonstrating and talking about ironruby and the dynamic language runtime at oscon...looking forward to that one!