Aug 26 2010

Book preview: Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook

Check out the new book “Silverlight 4 User Interface Cookbook” by Vibor Cipan:

This is the overview taken from the publisher site:

  • The first and only book to focus exclusively on Silverlight UI development.
  • Have your applications stand out from the crowd with leading, innovative, and friendly user interfaces.
  • Detailed instructions on how to implement specific user interface patterns together with XAML and C# (where needed) code, and explainations that are easy-to-understand and follow.
  • Real world projects which you can explore in detail and make modifications as you go.
  • Written by Vibor Cipan – Microsoft MVP for Expression Blend and WPF, and Silverlight UX specialist.

I’ve just received my copy and I’m looking forward to read it in the next days!


Aug 11 2010

Windows Phone 7: Touch-based Gestures API in XNA Game Studio 4.0

Check out this great sample available in the XNA community site.

It includes code that uses the Gestures API to enable hold, drag, tap, flick, pinch gestures.


Aug 11 2010

My interview on MicrosoftFeed

I had the honor to be interviewed by MicrosoftFeed, you can read it here :) :

Meet Davide Zordan – Silverlight MVP from Italy


Aug 4 2010

Book preview: Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration

Check out the new book “Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration” by Gastón C. Hillar:

This is the overview taken from the publisher site:

  • Develop Silverlight RIAs that interact with SharePoint 2010 data and services
  • Explore the diverse alternatives for hosting a Silverlight RIA in a SharePoint 2010 Page
  • Work with the new SharePoint Silverlight Client Object Model to interact with elements in a SharePoint Site
  • Use Visual Studio 2010′s new features to debug Silverlight RIAs that interact with SharePoint 2010
  • Learn to perform CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) operations on SharePoint 2010 lists from Silverlight
  • Access and interact with external data sources and WCF Data Services
  • Use themes and work with multiple interactive animations and effects to create distinct User eXperiences (UX) in a SharePoint environment
  • Develop Silverlight RIAs that interact with SharePoint Visual Web Parts
  • A step-by-step, fast-paced book that guides you in implementing Silverlight 4 applications in SharePoint 2010 environments
  • A sample chapter is available for download here: Chapter No. 1 – Integrating Silverlight 4 with Share Point 2010

    I’ve just received my copy and I’m looking forward to read it in the next days!


    Aug 1 2010

    Windows Phone 7, Multi-Touch Behaviors and the Surface samples for Silverlight

    I’ve just finished some experiments using the Windows Phone 7 emulator and the “Microsoft Surface Manipulations and Inertia Sample for Microsoft Silverlightin order to enable Multi-Touch gestures using Blend Behaviors:

    WP7BehaviorExpression

    This new implementation, now available for download in the Expression Gallery, permits to enable Multi-Touch gestures (the usual translation, rotation, zoom and inertia) on separate User Controls available in the same container.

    In this way you can apply distinct Multi-Touch manipulations (inertia included) to single elements using a single code in xaml:

    <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1">
      <Canvas>
          <Image Source="Images/Desert.jpg" x:Name="image1">
              <interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
                   <WP7:MultiTouchManipulationBehavior IsInertiaEnabled="True" IsRotateEnabled="True" IsTranslateEnabled="True" IsScaleEnabled="True" MinimumScaleRadius="1" MaximumScaleRadius="720"/>
              </interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
          </Image>
    
          <Image Source="Images/Jellyfish.jpg" x:Name="image2">
              <interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
                 <WP7:MultiTouchManipulationBehavior IsInertiaEnabled="True" IsRotateEnabled="True" IsTranslateEnabled="True" IsScaleEnabled="True" MinimumScaleRadius="60" MaximumScaleRadius="360"/>
              </interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
          </Image>
      </Canvas>
    </Grid>
    

    Alternatively you can use Blend inserting a reference to the project MultiTouch.Behaviors.Silverlight.WP7 and then dragging the MultiTouchManipulationBehavior from the Assets section to the  control to be touch-enabled:

    Multi-Touch Behavior Blend

     

    Considerations

    This one has been an interesting exercise in porting code written for Silverlight to Windows Phone: I had only to create a Windows Phone 7 project and add to it the code already available for the Silverlight version and all worked well quite quickly.

    Limitations

    At this time the behavior works only in the fixed Portrait orientation of Windows Phone: if you change to Landscape the manipulation doesn’t work well. I’ll have to investigate further and currently I don’t have a physical device to test (I’d really love to have a device to try it :) ).

    Happy Silverlighting!


    Jul 26 2010

    Silverlight 4, MEF and MVVM: loading different “MEF Modules” in the same Container

    Today I’ve finally found some time to make modifications in the “MEF MVVM” project on Codeplex in order to:

    • create a new module using WCF RIA Services and dynamically load this it inside the “MEF module container” described in the previous post;
    • use the INavigationContentLoader interface and MEF Metadata to share the same container for the various “MEF Modules”;
    • use the new Cosmopolitan theme available for Silverlight Navigation applications;
    • refactor the code of the ViewModel base class using the one available in the latest Prism drops;
    • refactor unit tests inserting an apposite Mock service.

    MEFMVVMRIA
    The source code is available for download on Codeplex.

    Happy Silverlighting!


    Jul 8 2010

    Silverlight proof points: Smooth Streaming Technology, NBC Online Video Monetization and Highlights Creation for the 2010 Winter Olympics

    It’s now available a great technical whitepaper that highlights the usage of Silverlight Smooth streaming technology to stream live and on demand content for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

    This Whitepaper goes into the technical details on how NBC in US inserted midstream ads and monetized the online content.

    This is a follow on to the 4 case studies that were published in May 2010 on how NBC USA, CTV Canada, France TV, and NRK Norway  have used Silverlight and Smooth Streaming technologies during the Winter Olympics.

    OlympicsWorkflow

    The Technical Whitepaper covers the following topics:

    - A Solution Overview;

    - Clip Creation and Ad Insertion;

    - Rough Cut Editor;

    - Inserting Ads, Ad Templates, Ad Logic;

    - Ads delivered in VOD;

    - Monitoring Ads.

     

     

    Click here to read the article and… Happy Silverlighting!


    Jul 5 2010

    Windows Phone 7 Multi-Touch Behavior videos #wp7dev

    Some time ago I’ve started a Codeplex project dedicated to multi-touch, available on Codeplex at http://multitouch.codeplex.com.

    The goal of this project is to provide an unified interface for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone 7 in order to provide multi-touch support using a visual approach via the concept of Behavior available in Expression Blend.

    Recently I had the honor to welcome in the project a pillar of the Silverlight community, Laurent Bugnion, who is working on the Windows Phone 7 version of the Behavior:

    Laurent has just published on his blog two awesome videos to get started with this new Behavior, and has created a specific section on his site http://www.galasoft.ch/touch to announce updates and publish content.

    A special thanks to Pete Blois of the Expression Blend team for his help and contributions.

    Stay tuned as we’ll be posting updates very soon :)

    Happy Silverlighting!


    May 21 2010

    Enabling Multi-touch gestures in WPF using Expression Blend 4 RC and the TranslateZoomRotate behavior

    I’ve already blogged about adding multi-touch support to Silverlight applications using Blend behaviors (you can also read my italian language article).

    This is a powerful and simple approach which is now available in WPF using Expression Blend 4 RC and the TranslateZoomRotateBehavior.

    Let’s try to build a simple example:

    1 – Open Expression Blend and create a new WPF project:

     2 – Drag a Rectangle in the MainWindows.xaml:

    3 – Let’s add multi-touch gestures and inertia effects to the rectangle selecting the Assets->Behavior tab and dragging the TranslateZoomRotateBehavior inside the rectangle:

    4 – Let’s examine the Properties:

    It’s possible to set the supported gestures (All, None, TranslateX, TranslateY, Rotate, Scale), the constrainToParentBounds modality, the Minimum, Maximum Scale and the Rotational and Translate Friction associated to the inertia.

    Let’s select the constrainToParentBounds check box and run the project using the Project->Run Project menu:

    Cool, Multi-touch and inertia effects are now enabled for the rectangle without writing a line of code!

    And this is the generated xaml:

    <Window
    	xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/ 2006/xaml/presentation"
    	xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/ 2006/xaml"
    	xmlns:i="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/ 2010/interactivity"
    	xmlns:ei="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/ 2010/interactions"
    	x:Class="WpfApplication1.MainWindow"
    	x:Name="Window"
    	Title="MainWindow"
    	UseLayoutRounding="True"
    	Width="640" Height="480">
    
    	<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
    		<Rectangle Margin="149,106,133,191" Stroke="Black">
    			<i:Interaction.Behaviors>
    				<ei:TranslateZoomRotateBehavior ConstrainToParentBounds="True"/>
    			</i:Interaction.Behaviors>
    			<Rectangle.Fill>
    				<LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" StartPoint="0.5,0">
    					<GradientStop Color="Black" Offset="0"/>
    					<GradientStop Color="#FF8F98CA" Offset="1"/>
    				</LinearGradientBrush>
    			</Rectangle.Fill>
    		</Rectangle>
    	</Grid>
    </Window>
    

    The source code of the project is available for download here.


    May 17 2010

    Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 and WCF RIA Services 1.0 Released!

    The final releases of the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio and WCF RIA Services are available for download here.

    Read the original posts by Scott GuthrieTim Heuer, John Papa and don’t forget to take a look at these new themes.

    Enjoy!