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David Catuhe has announced the availability of Babylon, a 3D engine written to demonstrate the power of Silverlight 5 Beta.

The source code is available for download here together with many other samples for Silverlight 3D in the MSDN Code samples gallery.

Also check out these useful resources by Aaron Oneal:

• MIX11 / Beta Samples
• HLSL Syntax Highlighting
• HLSL Shader Build Task with Visual Studio Integration
• 3D Effect Class for Silverlight

Happy Silverlighting!

Great announcements today during MIX11 in Las Vegas: Silverlight 5 Beta is available for download!

This is a list of some of the new features available:

• Multiple Windows instances in Out-of-browser applications;
• GPU-accelerated XNA-compatible 3D and immediate-mode 2D API;
• DrawingSurface control for rendering 3D content;
• Double (and multi) click support via the ClickCount event data property;
• Low-latency sound effects and WAV support;
• ItemsControl search via the new TextPath attached property;
• New MarkupExtension base class for defining XAML markup extensions;
• Data Binding enhancements:
  • Possibility to set breakpoints in XAML;
  • Data Binding enabled in Styles;
  • Binding to ancestors in the VisualTree using the RelativeSource;
  • New DataTemplate.DataType property to bind data templates to the object type;
  • Binding to dynamically-generated properties via the ICustomTypeProvider interface;
  • Application model enhancements:
    • Trusted applications can now be enabled to run inside the browser;
    • Trusted applications can now access the local file system;
    • Multiple Windows instances in trusted Out-of-browser applications.
• Significant performance improvements, fixes and much more.

 Check out these useful links:

• Silverlight 5 Beta downloads;
• A guide to the new features by Tim Heuer;
• Announcing the Silverlight 5 Beta Release and the Silverlight.net Redesign by Pete Brown;
• Silverlight Firestarter;
• XNA for the Web – Silverlight 5 by René Schulte;
• Silverlight 5 and Balder by Einar Ingebrigtsen;
• Silverlight 5: 3D Physics Demo by Andy Beaulieu.

Happy Silverlighting!

A quick shoutout to point out that David Hill has just released a new version of the PRISM Template Pack now including both MEF and Unity support.

Other useful resources about PRISM 4.0:

• Prism 4 Download
• Prism 4 Home Page on MSDN
• Prism Community on CodePlex
• Prism Training Kit 4.0
• Prism 4 Hands on Lab – Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Prism
• NuGet package management system

Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Prism 4

Now available from O’Reilly

Version 2 of the “Native Extensions For Microsoft Silverlight” is now available for download here.

These libraries contains several COM wrappers and samples for:

• Touch APIs – Manipulation, Gestures and Inertia processing;
• Message Interception – Allow applications to intercept Window messages sent to the containing window;
• Sensor API - Provide full access to the Windows 7 Sensor API;
• Local Encoding – Allow applications to capture webcam audio/video input into a local H.264/AAC-LC encoded media file. Also allow capturing of application user interface activity as video with audio;
• Taskbar Access - Allow applications to integrate various Windows 7 taskbar features like taskbar button overlays, jump lists, taskbar button progress notifications, etc;
• Speech API - Allow applications to use Windows 7 Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech capabilities;
• Portable Devices - Allow applications to enumerate content on connected devices like music players, digital cameras etc.;
• Windows 7 Notification Area (System Tray) support;
• “Single application instance” pattern support.

Happy Silverlighting!

In these days I’m receiving several questions in the Multi-Touch Behaviors forums about enabling Multi-Touch manipulations in Windows Phone applications composed by more than one page.

Today I’ve modified the available sample inserting an additional page containing an image enabled for translation, rotation, zoom and inertia via the usual “MultiTouchBehavior“:

Starting from release 0.6.1 it’s now possible to use the Behavior in different pages of the application, in this way enabling multi-touch in different elements of a Windows Phone 7 application:

<Canvas>
    <Image x:Name="_image"
        Source="{Binding SelectedPicture}">
        <interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
            <behaviors:MultiTouchBehavior
                    IsInertiaEnabled="True"
                    IsTranslateXEnabled="True"
                    IsTranslateYEnabled="True"
                    IsRotateEnabled="True"
                    IsScaleEnabled="True"
                    MinimumScale="30" MaximumScale="200"
                    AreFingersVisible="False"/>
        </interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
    </Image>
</Canvas>

As usually the sample code is available for download on http://multitouch.codeplex.com, check out the Visual Studio solution “SilverlightWP7MultiTouch.sln” which contains all necessary libraries.

Happy Silverlighting!

Today ScottGu announced some new amazing features that will be available in Silverlight 5. The complete list is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/future/

Planned release date: 1H 2011 (Silverlight 5 Beta) – 2H 2011 (Final Release)

Useful links:

• ScottGu keynote at the Silverlight Firestarter;
• “Announcing Silverlight 5“ by Scott;
• “Silverlight 5 Plans revealed” by Tim.

A picture is worth a thousand words:

See you (on-line) on December 2, 2010!

Happy Silverlighting!

I’ve received several requests about the modalities of enabling multi-touch on a UI element using the Behavior available on my CodePlex project.

The traditional syntax using XAML is here:

<Image Source="Images/Desert.jpg" x:Name="image1">
    <interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
        <Silverlight4:MultiTouchBehavior 
            IsInertiaEnabled="True"
            IsTranslateXEnabled="True" 
            IsTranslateYEnabled="True"
            IsRotateEnabled="True" 
            IsScaleEnabled="True"
            MinimumScale="10" MaximumScale="100"
            AreFingersVisible="True"/>
    </interactivity:Interaction.Behaviors>
</Image>

What about if you want to achieve the same result using C#? Just obtain a collection of behaviors for your element and then add/remove the MultiTouchBehavior using the following syntax:

private void btnAttach_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var behaviors = 
        System.Windows.Interactivity
        .Interaction.GetBehaviors(image1);
    behaviors.Clear();
    var mtb = new MultiTouchBehavior
    {
        IsRotateEnabled = true,
        IsScaleEnabled = true,
        IsTranslateXEnabled = true,
        IsInertiaEnabled = true,
        AreFingersVisible = true,
        MinimumScale = 20,
        MaximumScale = 200
    };
    behaviors.Add(mtb);
    mtb.Move(new Point(200, 150), 45, 100);
}

private void btnDetach_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var behaviors = 
        System.Windows.Interactivity
        .Interaction.GetBehaviors(image1);
    if (behaviors.Count > 0)
    {
        behaviors.Clear();
    }
}

As usually the source code is available for download on the Multi-Touch CodePlex project (check out the SilverlightWP7MultiTouch Solution).

Oh, did I already say that it also works on Windows Phone 7?

Happy Silverlighting!

This year I’ll be presenting about “Silverlight, Multi-Touch and Natural User Interfaces” at the Techdays WPC 2010 conference in Milano on November, 25 2010.

The same day I’ll be also at the MVP booth, if you’re attending the conference come and say Hi!

Happy Silverlighting!

I was following this thread on the Silverlight forums and was asked to update the Duplex sample to Silverlight 4.

Click here to download the code.

More information about Duplex Services are available here:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc645027(VS.95).aspx
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee844557(v=VS.95).aspx

Happy Silverlighting!