I just got back from speaking/attending the Norwegian Developers Conference in Oslo, Norway.  It was a great time and a well run conference.  Like many other conferences I found myself looking for two things I wanted on my mobile: the schedule and a map/guide for the city (I’ve never been to Oslo).  You see every time I take a trip, here’s what I do:

1. Search for an app that contains the schedule (or offline version).  Ideally allows me to build my schedule and gets updates for changes
2. Find the metro/map/guide for the city because I know I’ll be lost.

Rinse, repeat.  I do this every conference, trip.  And then I end up with a multitude of apps installed that are single purpose throw-away.  Seesmic Desktop platform has spoiled me in thinking of this eutopia of a single-purpose shell which can have pluggable content.  For Seesmic, this is my ‘social media’ shell.  But I want more now.

You see, at MIX10 there was a great mobile app that was created by Chris Hardy.  It was written in MonoTouch, nonetheless!  It pretty much did everything I would want in a conference app.  But after MIX it is kind of dead.  Uninstall. (Yes I know it looks like someone repurposed the app for a REMIX event, but same purpose…delete.).  Same thing after my trip to Berlin last year.  After that trip I didn’t need the metro rail map anymore.  Delete.

But then I head to Norway.  I want the Oslo guide/metro schedule.  I want a conference app.  There is both, but again they are separate apps.  Is my vision that far off?

I have been bugging Chris to modify his app to be more of a shell.  I like everything about the structure and think he should make it a basic “Mobile Conference Guide” app – enabling conference providers to publish a feed of their data and personalization (i.e., for background, icons, etc).  As an end user I would have one app installed.  I could then launch the app and (perhaps) browse a catalog of known events (organizers can publish to a specific feed location) or enter a URL to a conference feed that conforms to the data specification.  I don’t care if that data specification is OData, RSS, whatever – just have the app define a standard.  What conference provider wouldn’t love to just worry about providing data and not worry about providing the app?!  Am I way off here?

Same goes for travel guides (I’m guessing this one is out there and I’m just not finding it).  I have an app called “Metro” that allows me to subscribe to metro/public transportation for various cities in a singular app.  That’s great, but what about city guide information?  Restaurants?  Museums, etc.  I want more.  You know I want the Rick Steves travel app (does it exist and I’m just an idiot) with in-app purchases for more guides for other cities…all offline.

Anyhow, just a rant as I uninstall, yet again, two very useful apps after a trip.  Please bombard Chris with requests :-).

In the Silverlight world, there are two types of “cross-domain” things that may leave some banging their head against a wall for a while.  The first involves making network-based calls (WebClient, HttpWebRequest, etc) to services hosted on a domain other than the one that is the site of origin for the XAP.  This is solved by ensuring the service provider enables a clientaccesspolicy.xml file for their service.  More information here: Cross Domain Policy Files with Silverlight.

NOTE: “site of origin” is a term you might see a lot with regard to Silverlight.  This refers to the URI domain of the Silverlight XAP file.  For example: http://apps.mysite.com/sources/coolapp.xap might be a URI that you have for an app.  The site of origin in this is apps.mysite.com (more specifically it is actually the entire URI usually when people refer to this term).  This might help when you read things about cross-domain issues.

The second issues is one of hosting Silverlight applications (XAPs) on your site that are from a different domain.  What I mean here is that your site (www.coolwebapp.com) has an <object> tag for Silverlight plugin that has the Source parameter set to apps.anothersite.com/foo.xap.  This is essentially the cross-domain hosting situation.  What happens in this situation is that the plugin loads but the app does not, presenting in just a big blank space where the app should be.

A recent head-banger sent me a note and I sent him my items to check on how to solve this.  I thought I’d share.  When I see issues with this, I normally tell people to check for one (or more) of three things:

HTML Access

If the Silverlight application is doing anything to work with the HTML DOM of your hosting page, this is the first place to look.  Don’t know if this is happening?  If the Silverlight application uses System.Windows.Browser anywhere it likely does.  By default the tools and templates from Visual Studio generate the bar minimum <object> tag.  There is one property of the plugin, EnableHtmlAccess, that is set (essentially) to true for same-domain applications.  However, for cross-domain applications, you will need to opt-in for this adding this parameter to the <object> tag:

   1: <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2">

   2:   <param name="source" value="http://apps.somesite.com/foo.xap"/>

   3:   ...

   4:   ...

   5:   <param name="enableHtmlAccess" value="true" />

   6: </object>

By doing this, you are granting the XAP access to the HTML DOM of the hosting page.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

XAP MIME type

When the plugin loads a XAP from another domain, it checks what the MIME type is.  If it is not a valid Silverlight type, it won’t load the app.  This is a security mitigation.

If you are loading a cross-domain XAP, make sure the site delivering the XAP is delivering it with the appropriate MIME type: application/x-silverlight-app.  By default this is set in IIS7/Windows 2008, but not in IIS6/Windows 2003.  You can put this on the server level or the application level…wherever you feel comfortable, just as long as it is delivering it with the XAP. 

Obviously on non-Windows servers, this will not be set at all regardless of the version.  If you are getting a XAP from a Linux/Apache server for instance, the server administrator will want to add the type.  This is simple and you can do it at the global level in the mime.types file.  Or on a per-site basis you can do it by editing the .htaccess (or creating one) in the directory level that will serve the XAP and add:

   1: AddType application/x-silverlight-app xap

If you are using a CDN like Azure or Amazon S3 or something else and they don’t have the type associated, you will need to be creative.  Most CDNs enable you to set the MIME type (or Content-Type) on the file during upload.  For Azure, Silverlight should already be there.  For something like S3, tools like CloudBerry Explorer enable this feature for you (and actually already have a list of types built-in to their tool).

This situation (identifying the MIME type) can be quickly tested using a tool like Fiddler to see what the response and Content-Type are being delivered.  Fiddler is an indispensable tool…go get it, it’s free.

ExternalCallersFromCrossDomain

This is the black hole property right here.  This one is probably a last resort for most.  This property, in the Deployment node of your AppManifest.xaml file controls Javascript and HTML DOM access to scriptable objects defined in the XAP.  Like EnableHtmlAccess, for same-domain situations the setting is irrelevant, but in cross-domain hosted XAPs, the default is the NoAccess option.

To enable this you’ll need to manually edit the AppManifest.xaml file to add the ExternalCallersFromCrossDomain attribute.  There are two properties: NoAccess (default) and ScriptableOnly.  You’d want to *add* the attribute and set it to ScriptOnly.

   1: <Deployment xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007/deployment" 

   2:             ExternalCallersFromCrossDomain="CrossDomainAccess" .../>

REMEMBER: This is is only if you need to.  Read the documentation to see if this applies to your scenario.

Summary

Sometimes debugging this stuff can be tricky. Having the tools and knowledge makes this easier to track down. Not all situations involve multiple of the above and if none of them fix it, then you might have another issue. Hopefully this helps provide some places to look.

Today (7-Jun-2010) at Internet Week in New York, Microsoft announced the general availability of Expression Studio 4 which includes upgraded versions of Expression Blend (including Sketchflow), Encoder, Web (including SuperPreview) and Design.

You can find out the details of each product and download a trial at http://www.microsoft.com/expression right now.

With this release comes a free Upgrade for licensed version 3 (Studio or Web) users!  All you need to do is install the trial version of v4 on top of your licensed version of Expression Studio 3 or Expression Web 3 and the installer will find your license and upgrade it to the full v4 product with no expiration.  This applies to customers who received their software through retail channels or electronic software download direct.  For customers who have broader license agreements (i.e., MSDN, WebsiteSpark, BizSpark) you should install the product using the software provided from your program site.

Here’s a quick break-down list of what’s new in this release:

Expression Blend 4 New Features include:

• VS2010 compatibility
• Windows Phone support
• Deeper Adobe Photoshop import (layer effects)
• New behaviors & conditional behaviors
• Enhanced sample data support
• Listbox path layout for designing with data
• Pixel Shader effects (including animations)
• Easier styling and customization
• Model View View-Model support
• Mockup controls for SketchFlow

Expression Web 4 New Features include

• SEO Reporting from inside of the application
• New extensibility model enables creating add-ins with HTML, JS, and CSS
• New SuperPreview online service beta for browser compatibility testing now supports Macintosh Safari

Expression Encoder 4 Pro New features include

• Live Smooth Streaming (VC-1 & H.264)
• New H.264 encoder from MainConcept
• Enhanced Screen Capture
• DRM (PlayReady) for Live Content

This is an awesome release for XAML, web and media developers creating interactive solutions. 

NOTE: If you are developing in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 and need/want to use Blend for this, do not install the released version of Expression Studio 4. You must continue to use the Blend 4 Beta and Add-in Preview for Windows Phone. This Beta will be refreshed with each Phone SDK pre-release and will be unified with released Blend 4 in a service pack which will release when the Windows Phone SDK releases.

There will be a bunch of information coming out about these features and tutorials by the Expression team along with videos, etc.  I would keep an eye on Adam Kinney’s site for details on some of this information.  As the Expression Evangelist, Adam is a ‘must subscribe’ resource that you should have in your toolbox!  So go check out an overview of Expression Studio 4 and get the trial!

Hope this helps!

The feedback from the Silverlight 4 application themes released and the latest in process have been overwhelmingly toward the positive.  We appreciate the feedback and hopefully you appreciate the transparency in the process.  As a developer I want my fellow brethren to appreciate good design and use it whenever possible … even as a default if you don’t have designers on board.

In the initial release we had some issues getting the RIA Services ones out at the same time but we’ve got those finished now for Silverlight 4 Business Application Template. 

Download the refreshed Silverlight 4 themes (inlcuding RIA Services templates) here.

NOTE: If the page still says version 1.0, then refresh a while or wait a bit.  Seems our servers have been having a bit of caching issues lately.

At the link above you’ll find 3 files to download:

• README_FIRST.txt – please read this :-) but basically I’m writing the same thing here.
• SL4Themes-templates.zip – this includes a folder for Expression Blend and Visual Studio templates.  The VS folder also has a sub-folder for the RIA Services templates.
• SL4Themes-rawassets.zip – this is another (optional) zip that includes the resource dictionaries for each template on their own without any Silverlight project.

We had an issue with the VSIX format (VSIX is the community installer format for Visual Studio to make deployment of things like templates a bit easier) and the RIA Services templates, so for now it is a manual copy process (see the README_FIRST file for location).  Thanks to Corrina, Tsitsi and Deepesh for their help in refreshing these templates!

ETA on the new template will be a few weeks.  I’ll post updates of the progress likely on my Twitter feed.

Hope this helps!

Today we released a service update for Silverlight 4.  This is a minor release that addresses some items found immediately after release that have now completed our test passes with those who reported them.  Most of the items found won’t affect all users, but media developers will want to get this update for their applications and encourage their users to upgrade.

This update (4.0.50524.0) addresses a few media-related items found by some of our media customers.  A few items were serviced for DRM users as well as 2nd monitor usage for media on the Mac platform.  If you are developing media solutions (or are a media application user), you’ll want to upgrade to this release and encourage your users to as well.  You can read more about the key specific issues in KB982926.

For Developers

If you are a developer and want to get the update, all you need is to update the developer runtime.  There is no tooling or SDK update for this release.  You can download the updated developer runtime here: Windows developer runtime or Mac developer runtime.  Once installed, your new Silverlight 4 applications will target this platform version.  No other changes to your tools are required.  On existing applications if you want your users to ensure they have this latest version, please ensure you update your <object> tag to increment the minRuntimeVersion attribute to the appropriate version (4.0.50524.0).

What about <fill-in-the-feature-issue-you-found>?  Why isn’t that in this update?!

Some may wonder how fixes get determined to be in which releases.  You may be asking hey I reported XYZ right after release and why isn’t it in this update!?  Our team, like other large teams, operates on a schedule of planned (and sometimes unplanned) releases. 

We have general timeframes for service releases in the event we need them.  Sometimes those planned cycles aren’t needed and the planned release is skipped.  This helps better plan actual resources, etc.  When an issue is identified from any type of customer, it is evaluated by the ‘triad’ for that release (a triad represents leads for program management, dev, and test).  Things like security issues are given obvious priority versus things that aren’t regressions or are new features.

Once that list of work items is determined (based on criteria set by the triad) the work begins.  This includes development, testing, compliance, security passes, etc.  Each time a change to the plan occurs, this process gets reset.  So once a set of work items is approved and determined to be the release it usually doesn’t change unless something significant.  Of course there are many other factors that are involved here and I’m generalizing.

Back to your question of where are my reported changes?  If they aren’t in this release, they are still being evaluated for the next cycle (or perhaps already being worked on and solved).  Once I have more information on future releases I’m happy to share them.

Hope this helps!