here is some csharp code:

<UserControl.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary x:Key="Collection" >
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <ResourceDictionary x:Name="dict" Source="/Resources.xaml" />
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</UserControl.Resources>

public static T Load<T>(this string xaml) where T : UIElement
{
    T child = null;

    Canvas c = XamlReader.Load("<Canvas xmlns:sj='clr-namespace:Slidentity;assembly=Slidentity' " 
                                + "xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation' " 
                                + "xmlns:x='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml'>"
    + xaml + "</Canvas>") as Canvas;

    child = c.Children[0] as T;
    c.Children.Remove(child);

    return child;
}

dfad

In a few weeks I’ll be making the journey with Corrina and Arturo from ‘the states’ to Auckland, New Zealand for the WEB09 conference.  I’m honored to be joining some great folks like Ryan Stewart, Dan Rubin, Jarred Bishop and more.  I’m looking forward to learning a lot from this conference and having discussions about user experience and RIA development.

The team at WEB09 released an introductory video for the conference and I must say, someone put a lot of effort into this video: WEB09 Intro Video

I’m very much looking forward to my time at WEB09 and the time in New Zealand in general (I’ve never been, so if you have some advice, please share).  Hopefully some of you will be there and we can meet in person and chat about Silverlight! See you in a few weeks!

I’ve made no hiding the fact that my blog is build on Subtext and that I’m very happy with it right now.  Lately though my wife has been blogging more (that’s another story) and she also started her own business.  Being curious about all the WordPress love, I decided to start checking it out.

Thankfully, the Web Platform Installer helped me get started on WordPress without any troubles at all and I was up and running on my Windows server (I didn’t want to start another hosting account anywhere).  I have to say, I really like what WordPress has done, especially with the extensibility points and the administration options. 

That being said, I started looking at the various plugins available and was curious about anything for Silverlight…to be able to easily put Silverlight content within a post like other plugins have enabled.  Sure, it isn’t a difficult task to begin with, but sometimes different hosts/tools make it difficult for us to add <object> type content.  After some searching in the WordPress plugin library, I found one that was built back in the Silverlight 2 beta days.  The link to the author was no longer valid so I decided to create one using that as a base.

NOTE: I totally failed my Internet duties to look via any search for one…I kept my searching to the official plugin directory.  Apologies to Peter Loebel for not recognizing he also did some work, but admittedly it was also during the beta days.  I’ve credited both Peter and Juergen Oberngruberin my readme.txt for the plugin as contributors.

So after a few minutes, I was able to get it working and created the Silverlight for WordPress plugin.  It’s simple and you basically can input into your post data:

   1: [silverlight: <app>, <width>, <height>, <initParams>, <minVer>]

Where:

• app is the URI to your Silverlight application (XAP)
• width/height should be obvious
• initParams will map to the initParams of your application
• minVer maps to the minRuntimeVersion required for your app

The only parameter required is <app> and all others are optional and have defaults which you can change via the plugin settings:

I’ve applied yesterday to put the plugin in the official WordPress plugin directory, but haven’t heard back yet and they don’t really have any SLA.  I’m hoping to get it in soon, because they have a good discovery model for updates, etc. and authors can install in one click.  For now, I’m also going to maintain a link to the current version with release notes on my site here: Silverlight for WordPress.

UPDATE: Silverlight for WordPress is now available in the plugins directory…just search on Silverlight.

Like I said, it’s simple (and perhaps dumb to some), but I look to your input.  Hopefully some WordPress authors may be able to use it.  I know my wife’s new photography site will :-).

Hope this helps!

After looking at the options available for WordPress plugins for Silverlight, I found one that was outdated and the author’s URL looked to be broken.  So I adapted/updated the plugin to work again.

I’ve now provided the Silverlight Plugin for WordPress for an easy way to host Silverlight applications within your WordPress content.  You can get the plugin via the WordPress plugin directory by searching on Silverlight or clicking here.

Once downloaded, unzip the contents in your /wp-content/plugins directory.  You’ll then be able to activate the plugin and start working with it.  Adding content is as simple as adding this text to your post:

[silverlight: myapp.xap]

And you will have your content in your post.  You can optionally specify the width, height and minimum Silverlight version required.

Version 1.0.3 (31 MAR 2009) includes:

• Ability to add local/absolute Silverlight applications (XAP)
• Optionally set width/height/minRuntimeVersion of the Silverlight host plugin
• Optionally provide initParams to the plugin

Silverlight Media Player (new 2010!)

I also have a Silverlight Media Player for WordPress which is built on top of the Silverlight Media Framework.  It is also as simple as tagging content and supports any Silverlight-supported video type, including IIS Smooth Streaming:

[sl-media: http://mysite.com/myhomemovie.mp4]

You can find this and the installation/configuration details page in the WordPress plugin directory as well!

Please leave a comment for things you’d like to see or bugs you find!

Ok I’ve seen all the announcements and read all the buzz.  I know some folks on the team as well and had heard all their raving about their offering.  It wasn’t until today where I really realized what was going on.  In fact I was thinking about titling this post: WordPress installed and configured in under 5 minutes, but it’s much more than just that.

Introducing: Web Platform Installer 2.

The team at Microsoft has been working hard to make getting your web platform (server and client) up and running quickly and taking any pain out of the process.  In one click you can have Visual Studio and Silverlight Tools installed, IIS7 configured, Smooth Streaming enabled, etc.

But it’s much more than just that.  You see the team partnered with the community and popular Open Source projects to provide much more than just Microsoft offerings.  Earlier today I wanted to check out WordPress templates in more detail and wanted them on my own server.  Let me set the stage for you.  My server is Windows 2003, IIS6, and has no SQL Server installed.  That’s it…a bare web vanilla front end.  I fired up WebPI (as it is affectionately known) and look what you see:

That’s right, WordPress as an offering.  No, not some hacked “run as .NET” version of WordPress.  The real deal from the WordPress project site…Microsoft hosts nothing but a simple manifest describing the project.  I selected WordPress and the tool knew what was missing from my environment: MySQL, PHP, FastCGI, etc. 

I clicked “install” and literally in about less than 10 minutes I was running WordPress.  I’m not saying “installed” or downloaded.  In fact most of the time of that 10 minutes was from downloading the various bits.  When the “You’re finished” message came up, I had a working WordPress site, configured to MySQL, configured with a content database, etc.  I had to do nothing to configure my MySQL settings, I had to do nothing to my get PHP running on my site…WebPI did it all for me.  It was totally friction free.

It’s not just WordPress either.  Drupal, Umbraco, DasBlog, Subtext, ScrewTurn Wiki, etc.  And you can put your app there as well.  It really is a great resource not only for server components but also for client web platform stuff like I mentioned previously for Visual Studio and Silverlight developer tools.

Great job to this team and you all should definitely check it out.  They really did a good job.  My server didn’t get screwed up at all and everything “just worked.”  I think this installs WordPress faster than WordPress instructions! :-)