Awesome event great showing by our locals! I truly enjoyed this event and I hope you did as well.

#NwaCodeCamp was the best local event I have been to in a long time. I saw a lot of Very good sessions. I think Jason Vogel & @JaySmith ran an amazing event.

I had the opportunity to present on Silverlight DeepZoom. I wanted to post my PPT for anyone who attended and wanted the links. If you have any questions related to the event or to my presentation post away, I’ll either answer them or get you an answer.  I'm going to work on a blog post to go into some detail on using the Jellyfish Framework.

Silverlight DeepZoom PowerPoint Link: SilverlightDeepZoom.zip (382.51 kb)

**Also someone asked me what I was using to ZOOM on m desktop. Here is a link to that as well, it’s not in my PowerPoint.

Thanks
Jeremy

Join me at NWA Code Camp 2009 I have a session on “Silverlight DeepZoom applications with Jellyfish” (an open source library for DeepZoom). I will be presenting after lunch check out all the topics at the Agenda page. Still not sure if you want to make it? My session was inspired by @KENAZUMA talk at MIX this year. Cllick here to watch it. (DONT WORRY) my session will be different and just as informative.

Check out these random DeepZoom sites to get a better feel for the technology:

• http://memo.hardrock.com/
• http://DeepZoomPix.com

thanks,
Jeremy

It’s no secret that PDC will be where Microsoft announces their Microsoft cloud computing platform. But if you are like me you have heard that term abused throughout the industry. News on Microsoft's cloud computing platform as a back end for Silverlight applications will be some of the things I hope to key on throughout PDC. I wont be making the trip myself but have plenty of friends that are going.

Here is an interesting note I found on Bill Reiss blog that breaks down the PDC agenda for us: (http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/post/PDC-should-be-renamed-CDC-for-Cloud-Developers-Conference.aspx)

There are a couple of more Silverlight sessions, now with a total of 13, but what really struck me is that the category with the most sessions is Cloud Services, with 33. Windows 7 has 22, which is still a lot, but 33 is just incredible.

Microsoft’s platform has a collection of unannounced services that I’m sure will all come to light during the PDC keynote. Shortly thereafter I have no doubt someone will have these all listed out very nicely(more to come)!! 

Here are some links of some of the services if your looking to understand how and where Red Dog, Zurich, BizTalk Services and SQL Server Data Services (SSDS) all fit together, David Chappell’s White paper on  “A short introduction to cloud platforms: An Enterprise-Oriented View.”.  Is worth a look he does not mention Zurich & SSDS by name but there are details to help fill in the holes.

For those of you NOT wanting to dig into the 13 pages Mary-Jo Foley from ZDNET.com provides the cliff notes to Chappell’s white paper. Another nice link and picture provided from Mike Kavis – “The future is in the clouds”.

I woke up early this morning to start my exploration into this release and have already found people that could articulate this event much better than me…. So I have included links for the blogs I found most informative. I hope to have more information out this week walking through some of the guts of Silverlight 2. Hope you enjoy.

Check out a couple of these blogs to get a well rounded vibe on what's going on!

• http://wildermuth.com/2008/10/13/Silverlight_2_Released!
• http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Silverlight2IsOut.aspx
• http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/10/14/silverlight-2-released.aspx

If you would like the cliff notes for environment setup here it is:

• Visual Studio 2008 SP1 required
• Blend 2.5 has officially gone away and is to be replaced by Blend 2.0 SP1 
• http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/default.aspx

Honorable mention of things I didn't expect was a set of controls from Shawn Burk’s team (going to try to blog a follow up walking through these):

Shawn says: “We are currently working on a set of controls for a preview release at PDC 2008 in late October.”

• DockPanel
• WrapPanel
• ViewBox
• Label
• HeaderedContentControl
• Expander
• TreeView
• NumericUpDown
• AutoComplete
• Accordion 
  
  
  **All of these controls will use the new Visual State Manager templating model and be fully customizable in XAML by hand or through Expression Blend.  They will also ship with full, buildable source, unit tests, and an updated unit testing harness nicely wrapped up with a tasty OSI-Approved MS-PL license.

Happy researching, I know I will!!

-Jeremy

Well we're here ... Ready to see what this place is all about.. There is a lot of Texas orange around here??? Not for sure what that is all about but I’m sporting my classic white & red Hog shirt! No funny looks as of yet wait until I break out the PIIIIIIGGG SSOOOOOOOOIIIIIIEEEEEEE on them though.

First session - [Unit Testing in Silverlight 2.0 W/ Eric Hexter](@ehexter)

BIO: AspInsider , Director Austin .NET user group, Organized 07 Austin code camp
BLOG: http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/hex/

Notes:
There are 3 DLL's inside the controls that can be used for Unit testing...Its those Dll's that make Unit testing in SilverlIght possible.

No VS2008 CTRL + R + T in Silverlight apps for Unit testing must use an add-on

Using Silverlight Test framework builds the XAP file packaged and ready for you silverlight app

**Jamie Kinsdell using Nunit with Silverlight (need to change some references web config entries.

Jeff Wilcox on Silverlight Project - project template && Item template

Code is in the Austin Code camp repository

Not much to talk about from a coding perspective. Phase I was vanilla.  More to come soon Phase II will include some Silverlight features. The biker rally is later in the year.

http://www.bikesbluesandbbq.org/

1 of 4 part blog that will talk about a few of the neater features for this site. Please stay tuned.

Interesting links I found useful:

Blogged by Tim Sneath - Silverlight 1.0 - New Maintenance Release Available

Silverlight SDK - Make a Silverlight Timer (Silverlight 2)

Scott Hanselman mentioned this Silverlight Charts - link to Scott's Blog

Michael Sync - Silverlight 2 Known Issues and workarounds

Hope this helps.

Found this link to a pretty slick Silverlight 2 application complete with code. Compliments of J. Ambrose Little's blog. He also has a brief description as well.

Link to the app: Here

Link to the Code: Here

I have been diving into Silverlight 2.0 and the new Silverlight Controls beta 1 as of late, and while trying to pass on the glories of this new technology to my teammates, I have had some interesting conversations/points of discussion.  This isn't so much a "how to" blog but rather just some tidbits I ran across as a newbie to Silverlight. If any of these save you time my job is done. :) I’m not an expert in this new technology just simply a developer in the trenches. Here are some of my ramblings.

Please send me your feedback. I would like some other perspectives on what parts of Silverlight I should be researching.

A.Lets start with what I feel is the not so communicated compatibility facts for SilverLight 2:
(Found in the Runtime System requirements)

• Silverlight 2.0 is only supported on OSX on Intel machines.  Silverlight 1.0 works on OSX on PowerPC's, but version 2 is Intel only.
• The new support for Windows 2000 is only for Silverlight 2. Silverlight 1.0 apps will not work there.
   Correction: Pete Brown (Microsoft MVP) posted a correction that I wanted to add.   "Silverlight 1.0 applications will work on Win2k if the Sivlerlight 2 runtime is installed. The Silverlight 1.0 plugin won't install, but the Sl2 plugin is backwards compatible. You are correct in the lack of PPC support. Also note that SL2 does not support old x86 processors that have buggy or non-existant MMX instruction sets (like some old athlons)"
  THANKS PETE!

Question for my Apple friends:
Is the lack of SilverLight 2 support for PowerPC Mac OSX an issue? 

 B.I'm still trying to get my hands around where it makes sence to use silverlight I say "everywhere" the important concept is use it where you need added user experience :).   
Again, I'm still trying to figure this out, but I do make the argument that it most definitely has a place in your everyday internal business apps.  To that point, here is an interesting concept (one a little from the norm):

http://tocode.blogspot.com/2008/04/silverlight-2-simple-animation.html
**The implementation is not acceptable for dynamic data, but the concept is sound. Silverlight is not JUST for full blown RIA sites ... It can simply be for a richer user experience.

C. Teaser: I'm working on my own Tyson`ized version of memorabilia.hardrock.com using Tyson product packaging. It has been an interesting adventure. I have been documenting my findings as well as the workarounds I have had to implement based on the known issues of Silverlight 2 (BETA). Hope to have a blog entry on this very soon.

D.Interesting Related LINKS:

• Webcast - Silverlight 2 for Business Applications
• ScottGu - Creating Silverlight User Controls
• SilverPart - Silverlight wrapper Web Part

Thanks,
Jeremy