Aug
26
2010
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!
3 comments | tags: Books, News, Silverlight 4, UX | posted in Rich Internet Applications, UX - Design
Aug
4
2010
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!
1 comment | tags: Books, News, Silverlight 4 | posted in News, Rich Internet Applications
Aug
1
2010
I’ve just finished some experiments using the Windows Phone 7 emulator and the “Microsoft Surface Manipulations and Inertia Sample for Microsoft Silverlight” in order to enable Multi-Touch gestures using Blend Behaviors:

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:

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!
1 comment | tags: Expression, Multi-Touch, News, Silverlight, Silverlight 4, Silverlight for Mobile, UX, Windows Phone | posted in .NET Programming, Microsoft Windows Systems, Mobile, New Technology, Programming, Rich Internet Applications, UX - Design
Jul
26
2010
Today I’ve finally found some time to make modifications in the “MEF MVVM” project on Codeplex in order to:

The source code is available for download on Codeplex.
Happy Silverlighting!
no comments | tags: Open Source, Patterns, Silverlight 4, WCF | posted in .NET Programming, News, Programming, Rich Internet Applications
Jul
8
2010
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.

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!
no comments | tags: New Technology, Silverlight 4, Windows Systems | posted in .NET Programming, Microsoft Windows Systems, New Technology, News, Programming, Rich Internet Applications
Jul
5
2010
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!
1 comment | tags: Expression, Multi-Touch, Open Source, Silverlight, Windows Phone | posted in .NET Programming, Mobile, New Technology, News, Programming, Rich Internet Applications, UX - Design
May
17
2010
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 Guthrie, Tim Heuer, John Papa and don’t forget to take a look at these new themes.
Enjoy!
no comments | tags: Silverlight 4 | posted in News, Rich Internet Applications
May
4
2010
Here you can find the sample code and slides (in italian) from my webcast around Silverlight 4 and MEF for the local XEdotNET user group.
The samples contain the following topics:
- Simple composition using the CompositionInitializer;
- Multiple Exports;
- Metadata;
- Custom Attributes;
- Dynamic object creation with ExportFactory;
- Simple MVVM example using MEF;
- MEF, MVVM and PRISM EventAggregator;
- Dynamic XAP loading using DeploymentCatalog;
- MEF, MVVM and Blend Sample Data.
Click here to access the recording of the Live-meeting (italian language).
Hope this helps and Happy Silverlighting!
2 comments | tags: .NET Programming, Patterns, Programming, Silverlight 4 | posted in .NET Programming, News, Programming, Rich Internet Applications
Apr
19
2010
If you are looking for a rich toolbar control for Silverlight, check out this project on CodePlex by Silverlight MVP Braulio Diez and Sebastian Stehle:
http://wintoolbar.codeplex.com/
1 comment | tags: Open Source, Silverlight 4 | posted in .NET Programming, News, Programming, Rich Internet Applications