Last week Scott Hanselman posted the ALT.NET Geek code page which allows you to choose different processes and tools that make you happy.  After making your selections you are given to identify yourself and your interests to others who can translate the code. Scott's code reads as: IOC(SM):IO…

- read the full post

Two of my favorite events I attended last year were the SilverlightDevCamps in San Francisco and Chicago.  The DevCamp event is run in a community-driven barcamp style where conversation is open and free and results in intriguing dialogue and sessions. (my SF Recap, video from SF, photos from…

- read the full post

This is Part 3 in a series covering how the Xbox Gamercard application was made using Silverlight 2.  In this part I will cover how the interface is updated once the data is retrieved. In the first part of the series I showed a few highlights of how the UI was created.  In the second part…

- read the full post

This is Part 2 in a series covering how the Xbox Gamercard application was made using Silverlight 2.  In this part I will cover how the data is retrieved. First off, the Xbox Friends Watch series of experiments would not be possible without the existence of the Xbox Gamertag Data Service.&#…

- read the full post

I recently published an Xbox Gamercard based on Silverlight 2 Beta 1.  In that post a talked a little bit about the XAP model which now allows you to embed Silverlight applications via the object.  In Silverlight 1.0 application instantiation was handled via JavaScript and HTML with loose …

- read the full post

This Saturday I will be attending and speaking at the PDX Webfoot event. Webfoot is a web-focused event for all creatures, techie and non-techie alike. Bring the whole family for a day of education, entertainment, and fun! If you take a look at the schedule, you'll see that we'll be talking about…

- read the full post

At this time (version 2 Beta 1), in the life of Silverlight there is no 64-bit support.  I'm not certain if or when 64-bit support will appear, but I don't think Vista 64-bit users should go without Silverlight. And the good news is they don't have to. In most cases, running Silverlight applic…

- read the full post

Xaps One of my favorite new features of Silverlight 2 is the new Application model.  Moving on from version 1.0, where JavaScript instantiation was the only way to start your app and you were restricted to the same origin as the web page, enter the Xap.  The new packaging model, not only …

- read the full post

There are a few of us here, who really, really like Silverlight.  In some cases a little bit too much.  They filmed one of our group therapy sessions last week to raise awareness. I hope this video can help bring comfort to some of you, knowing that you're not alone. Silverlight Rehab - Y…

- read the full post

Download 1.2 now This is a very small update that is the same as version 1.1, except that a fix has been added to allow the sidebar gadget to run if you have installed the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 runtime. There was a small bug in path resolution that the team is aware of and will hopefully be able to…

- read the full post

In case you haven't heard, we meaning Microsoft threw a little party in Vegas this month called MIX.  You should really come visit MIX sometime maybe next year, say around March 18-20th in 2009? We like to have 72 hour conversations and talk about all the things we have going on for the web.&nb…

- read the full post

  Next week I will be presenting an overview of Silverlight 2 at the March PDXUX meeting in Hillsboro, OR, US. The PDXUX defines itself as: This is a group for both developers and designers, something unique in Portland as all other groups target either one or the other. The "UX" in the name …

- read the full post

PC World published a great article on the Olympics website last Friday which, before going into feature and technical details, begins with this: How would you like to be handed this IT project: create a website that will present 2,200 hours of live, interactive video, plus integrated broadcast cove…

- read the full post

Starting last week on March 5th after Silverlight 2 Beta 1 was announced, a lot has been said about Silverlight 2.  Presentations have been given, demos have been shown, bits have been released, tutorials have been posted and many conversations have been had.  As an attempt to catalog som…

- read the full post

One of the bigger announcements at MIX this year is Silverlight for Mobile Devices.  I had heard it was coming, but I wasn't able to spend any time looking into it before the conference.  So once I saw that there was a new session announced called "Mobile Devices and Microsoft Silve…

- read the full post

I won't do this after every Scott Guthrie post, but I received thankful comments on My notes from the First Look at Silverlight 2, that I thought I would share again. In his latest post First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2, Scott walks through the features of Blend that will hel…

- read the full post

In the Launch 2008 edition of MSDN Magazine, you will find an article by Jeff Prosise entitled Silverlight Tips, Tricks and Best Practices.  Even though its already been posted to Silverlight News, I felt compelled to point this article out. If you are developing Silverlight 1.0 applications,…

- read the full post

I am often asked which Silverlight samples are "great examples of using the technology".  And when responding I like to append that requirement "...to create a better experience."   My goal is to compile a list of my top 10 favorite Silverlight examples based on that criteria. And bef…

- read the full post

Today, Scott Guthrie posted a First Look at Silverlight 2 as an hearty appetizer before the first public beta of Silverlight 2.  (Notice the "2" and not "2.0" anymore.) Along with his overview he built a simple Digg client and 8 tutorials on how this is done using the new features in Silverligh…

- read the full post

We often talk about the the "rich experience" that Silverlight can deliver on the web, but we don't always see it.  Today I was pointed to a very nice-looking site that exemplifies "richness". The site is Live@edu, a portal site used to explain Live Services to global students.  Within th…

- read the full post

I just noticed Dave Campbell's post announcing the 3rd meeting of the Phoenix Silverlight User's Group Meeting tomorrow night.  Being one of the first dedicated Silverlight groups I've heard of, I feel compelled to send some Silverlight swag.  I bet we still have some of those Silverligh…

- read the full post

I've seen this request many times: How do I make a Chart in Silverlight? I'm going to show you that with some simple math and a little bit Silverlight knowledge, you too, can enjoy the clarity of a chart on your web page.  Technically, the goal is to build a simple reusable horizontal bar c…

- read the full post

A few days ago, I noticed this twit from Josh Russell: Is the proud owner of a Silverlight superhero costume I thought, "It couldn't really be.  Maybe 'Silverlight' is a UK-based superhero or something.  Kind of like our American Silverlight superhero." After seeing this picture on Flickr…

- read the full post

HHH stands for Heroes happen {here} which is a new site centered around events local and virtual where you can test drive Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008.  The site takes advantage of Silverlight  in a few places but one that I saw today grabbed my attention. …

- read the full post

Recently I've been talking about Silverlight News on Twitter and how you can add it to your blog and that's all up and running fine and dandy. During this time, I've also been continuing to post to the Silverlight Events Twitter account.  This works out great as I continue to find new events w…

- read the full post

HelloSecureWorld.com is a new Silverlight based site that is focused on educating developers about writing secure code.  Going beyond the basics of writing articles, this site also includes a comic strip, tutorials and video presentations, including some by security guru Tammy Green and some n…

- read the full post

Of course any day is fine day but while tracking events covering Silverlight, I've noticed that January 26th is an especially good day to learn about Silverlight.  There are three events this coming Saturday that include a lot of Silverlight goodness: Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter in New York …

- read the full post

No, not my Vista SideBar, at least not yet...I've added a simple script to my site to show the latest from Silverlight News in my blog's side bar.  Since each twit is formatted the same way, I was able to grab the URL and text from each post and mash them together in a simple anchor tag. If you…

- read the full post

For awhile now, I've been tracking interesting Silverlight links and articles using my del.icio.us account.  Another Silverlight fanatic Dave Campbell has been tracking worthy links to Silverlight content for awhile as well.  His activity morphed from his daily blog posts to its own site…

- read the full post

Mike Harsh posted about the Silverlight 1.0 video training he recorded with Lynda.com.  Not only does he announce that the training is now FREE (all caps so you can see the word from afar) but he also talks about the experience of the recording and alongside a few photos of the Lynda.com offi…

- read the full post

On November 29th 2007, a group of people gathered together to study Silverlight.  "What is it, really?",  "What can I do with it today?" and "There really is more than just a Media?" were all questions answered that day.  Video and audio of the event has been captured on the Silverl…

- read the full post

How would I use JSON data with Silverlight? I've been asked this a few times and it happened again today.  So tonight is the night to write a quick tutorial on how easy it is to do this.  You can start from scratch or from any Silverlight 1.0 template, but I will be walking through the st…

- read the full post

[UPDATE:My video interview is now live on Channel 10]A large amount of my time last week was spent on a little project called Microsoft CoolWall.  Tim Sneath already posted about the site going live this week and provided the story on how the app came to be: The application was originally prot…

- read the full post

In building 33 on campus today we have a large number of people who have come to learn more about Silverlight.  Luckily we, we being Mithan Dhar, Laurence Moroney, Arturo Toledo, Ernie Booth, Adam Nathan and myself, have prepared for this day.  We have a nice line up of sessions on the age…

- read the full post

Last week Tim posted about the new reference sample called Video.Show.  Its very cool sample that allows you to create a user-generated video site within minutes.  It smartly uses Silverlight, Expression Encoder, Silverlight Streaming and is overall a very interesting bit of code.&nbs…

- read the full post

Reading the release notes for Dojo 1.0, I found a line item that said "dojox.gfx now includes Silverlight support". For those in the know this was actually added back in v0.9, but it was a new to me and I've been wanting to give it a test drive since I read about it. From the Dojo docs …

- read the full post

Based on the fact that you are reading my blog, I'm guessing you have an interest in Silverlight. If only there was some sort of grand conference where you could hope to learn more about Silverlight and its future. Although content, news, plans and other details are still in process, Microsoft MIX…

- read the full post

I subscribe to the internet in general whenever the word "silverlight" is mentioned using a variety of search feeds such as Technorati and Bloglines.  This results in a lot of posts, many times duplicate posts, but I also get the chance to find blog entries I would normally miss. A grouping of …

- read the full post

Robby Ingebretsen stopped by on Halloween last week to not only discuss the holiday of tricks and treats but also the interesting story behind designers, developers and integrators.  Robby has done a lot of thinking and work in this space, especially since joining Identity Mine where…

- read the full post

Download 1.1 Now Performance Improvements A week ago, I posted the first version of the Xbox Friends Watch Gadget.  I received a lot of great feedback and feature suggestions.  The most noticeable was the excessive amount of memory consumed for some people.  I've gone through and …

- read the full post

Frank La Vigne has organized a Silverlight DevCamp in Washington, D.C. this Saturday November 3rd.  He has the full details on his blog and has been twittering speakers and their session descriptions.  "51 Attendees and Growing!" On November 10th there will also be a Silverlight DevCamp ta…

- read the full post

After enjoying the China Moon Festival Card, I wanted to try my hand at creating a holiday card with Silverlight.  I've also been looking for the opportunity to dive into vertex animation which is a big part of this demo.  I also wanted to add sound but the animation took a bit more tim…

- read the full post

Recently I posted about the Remembering the "yet to install" audience, in regards to creating an experience that provides context for those who have not installed SIlverlight yet.  The idea being that if your viewer visits your site and was greeted with the just the Silverlight instal…

- read the full post

Friday afternoon at work we were treated to a live band outside of our offices.  The Greenwood All*Stars were invited as an event that was part of our Employee Give Campaign.  We brought the people food and beer and the All*Stars brought the rock.  So much so they were having power …

- read the full post

Laurence Moroney, a prolific author on my team, has released his first book on Silverlight fittingly entitled Introducing Silverlight 1.0. Laurence has nicely posted the chapter summaries on his site which look to be pretty interesting.   I'm especially looking forward to Chapter 1 enti…

- read the full post

Wow, so much feedback on the Xbox Friends Watch Gadget its crazy.  Major Nelson did end up posting a link to the gadget (thanks Duncan) and the flood gates opened.  47 comments so far on my post, 120 comments on Major Nelson's, 1,388 views on the demo screencast on Channel 9 and according …

- read the full post

[UPDATE: version 1.1 has been posted, performance improvements and an auto version checker now included.] HALO 3 is out and my Xbox is now getting the love it truly deserves.  Multiplayer mode in HALO is a lot of fun and even more fun when you can play with friends.  Thus, a perfec…

- read the full post

Part of creating a good user experience involves thinking about the design from all different views.  Nice clean seams and edges on the underside of a seat cushion, for example.  Remembering the user who has yet to install or has disabled your plug-in of choice is another ex…

- read the full post

Silverlight 1.0 has been out long enough its time to get your hands on some books.  And luckily there are some folks who have spent their nights and weekends turning their experiences and lessons learned to words, sentences and all that authoring stuff. Silverlight 1.0  Written by Devin R…

- read the full post

This is another demo created for my "There's more than a Media Element in Silverlight 1.0" presentation that I gave at REMIX Boston.  This was a lot of fun to create.  I definitely pushing vector graphics to act organically. The demo shows off four different concepts: CreateFr…

- read the full post

The first time I posted this demo, I got a few confused comments on how to actually use it and what the purpose was.  This time around I've added a few more UI elements to better explain what is going on.  Tool tips when hovering over the mod and code buttons, a thumb and some depth was ad…

- read the full post

I created this demo for my "There's more than a Media Element in Silverlight 1.0" presentation that I gave at REMIX Boston. The demo shows off three different concepts: Retrieving dynamic content from packages Using SetFontSource for custom fonts Sound playback is simple Instructions:To fade the …

- read the full post

This week I attended REMIX Boston 07 and gave two presentations.  First time in Boston, "go Red Sox!", I felt left out since I didn't have a Red Sox hat like everyone else.  Maybe not everyone, maybe just 7 out of 8 people.  Next time I would like to see more of the city, as most of…

- read the full post

Let this day, or more accurately late last night, be known as the day of inline streaming media freedom for Channel 9.  No longer is the streaming media restricted to a Windows and IE combination.  Now if you open up a video page in Firefox, you are not restricted to the little butto…

- read the full post

I just posted a video on Channel 9 of my interview with Mike Sampson, the tallest member of the EvNet dev team.  Other than collecting LEGOs and adding them to his desk collection, he also spends a lot of time in the media pipeline for the EvNet sites which include Channel 8, 9 and 10 and MIX…

- read the full post

If you're like me and enjoying Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, you may notice that the Silverlight templates included with the Silverlight Tools for VS2008 are focused on the 1.1 alpha.  This is great, but what if you dig Silverlight 1.0 and still want to use the latest and greatest f…

- read the full post

The SilverlightDevCamp in San Francisco was a fun time and hopefully we all learned a lot.  It was very useful to hear the stories from people and their initial dive into Silverlight.  The DevCamp was also a good primer for a sequel, which is exactly what's happening this weekend. This Fri…

- read the full post

Tafiti is now donning a fancy HALO skin, showing that we (Microsoft) are just as excited about the upcoming release of HALO 3 as the rest of you who have pre-ordered the game and planning to take September 25th off of work. Unfortunately there is no treeview which would have been very in…

- read the full post

The ZamDes user group just had their first meeting and I found this in their slides: Impressive. Most impressive.

- read the full post

Filipe Fortes released a preview of Sistr, a script which will scan your html and provide a rich custom font overlay if you have Silverlight installed.  Very cool. You can check out the side by side demo here. Not only is it nice to have font choices other than the base web fonts, but this a…

- read the full post

Channel 8, Channel 9's younger sibling, is now sporting a shiny new Silverlight-based media player.  Nice job, EvNet Dev team! I've been listening to the progress of the team as they were putting this together, specifically One-Note Enthusiast Mike Sampson. The player was based on the base…

- read the full post

I had the opportunity to interview one of the interesting people I met at the SilverlightDevCamp in San Francisco this weekend (full DevCamp recap here). Tyler Ballance works for Slide.com, the group behind popular Facebook Apps like FunWall and Top Friends.  He knows a lot about Mono, Pyth…

- read the full post

I had a great time this weekend at the SilverlightDevCamp in San Francisco.  I had never before been to a DevCamp, BarCamp or any other type of camp that happens indoors.  The casual yet academic atmosphere was well set and provided for by our hosts Kurt Brockett, Kevin Marshall and Anand …

- read the full post

I mentioned earlier I would be attending the SilverlightDevCamp in San Francisco  (which starts tomorrow, I'm coming to see you Jeff Atwood!  Ok not just you but I felt like pointing). Well in two weeks, there will be another SilverlightDevCamp held in Chicago (9/28 - 9/29).  I…

- read the full post

In recent conversations the topic of interoperability between Flash and Silverlight has come up.  Even though you may be interested in using Silverlight in some situations you may not want to rewrite existing Flash components just yet. Smartly both integrate well with JavaScript so …

- read the full post

Telerik has released a game where you get to "add your weight to help the new Q2 release come up".  You sign in with your Telerik account, choose your weight and jump on the lift. My interpretation is that the game aspect comes in where you can reach out and try and get more people on the lif…

- read the full post

Silverlight 1.0 has been released and along with that a nice surprise announcement that Microsoft will officially be working with Novell on Moonlight. A lot have posts have already been written heralding the news: Official Press Release Sean Alexander Scott Hanselman Scott Guthrie - a meaty po…

- read the full post

Last Thursday I attended Brad Abrams' presentation about Silverlight on Visual Studio island in Second Life.  The experience was unique including a variety of attendees (top hats, wings, horns, etc.) a flying presenter and vertically stacked screens. Tim Heuer was not too impressed and due…

- read the full post

A few days ago Duncan added support for embedding Soapbox videos into a post in the Channel 9 forums using this simple BBCode style tag: [soapbox video="(soapbox video id)"] Very nice and simple.  And as he mentions in his next post, I bugged him about adding a tag for Silverlight Streaming App…

- read the full post

Watch the gritty, live action HALO trailer in HD now Now for those of you that know, I am not a huge fan of HALO for multiplayer joy (I'm still a UT guy (UT 3 trailer here!)).  BUT I did like the thematic single player mode and I do like the mythology of HALO.  So what better to see…

- read the full post

I just signed my name on the attendee list for SilverlightDevCamp San Francisco: SilverlightDevCampSF is an upcoming gathering, inspired by BarCamp, to build Silverlight applications, It's organized by volunteers & Silverlight enthusiasts, with attendance free to all. While similar to i…

- read the full post

Silverlight and many of its cousins appeared in a funny keynote animation during  the Web on the Piste conference.  The animation was created very skillfully by the Nectarine group out of Australia.  Taking a look at their portfolio certainly is inspiring.  Anima…

- read the full post

A new Wellington NZ based user group focused on WPF and Silverlight for designers will be holding their first meeting on Thursday the 13th of September.  This is awesome to see.  Now if only Wellington wasn't so far from here, I'd stop by :) From their about section: If you w…

- read the full post

One of the most noticeably missing features in the current Silverlight bits is the lack of controls.  They are planned for version 1.1, you can see a list here, but in version 1.0 or in the 1.1 alpha you need to roll your own. And that's exactly what ComponentOne has done a very thorough job of…

- read the full post

.silverlightHost { height: 300px; width: 500px; background-color:#FFF; } As I went to brew my morning coffee this morning I noticed something subtle but great.  Some kind kitchen engineer had stopped by and switched the locations of the microwave and coffee suppl…

- read the full post

Last night, I headed out with Erik Porter to attend the Facebook Dev Garage in Seattle.  Now as a disclaimer we did get there an hour late, but when we got there we ran into a wall (pictured to the right).  A wall of 3 people deep just to get into the standing room only room where t…

- read the full post

Shawn Wildermuth is touring the nation to spread the word on Silverlight.  A 3-day dive into Designing, Developing and Server interaction with Silverlight. I heard about the Silverlight Tour after listening to Carl and Richard interview him on .NetRocks!.  S…

- read the full post

Brad Abrams posted last month about events taking place in Second Life on Visual Studio Island.  After hearing about these, I added them to the Upcoming Events page on the Silverlight wiki.  Then it got it a little weird. Looking to spread the word about these unique events a little f…

- read the full post

Part of taking on this new role has involved a lot of research.  I'm consuming large amounts of inbound data from multiple blogs and search feeds, primarily focused on Silverlight.  I'm happy to see there is a lot of talk about Silverlight and RIAs in general, as well as plenty of people w…

- read the full post

I remember meeting Casey Chestnut from the aptly named brains-N-brawn site during PDC05.  You may remember his /cameraFlow Labyrinth game that took second place in the ShowOff competition.  It was an implementation of the old wooden version one using a webCam and a TabletPC.…

- read the full post

Two years ago on this very date of June 20th, I started my first day here at Microsoft.  It was an exciting day, it was just new employee orientation, but it was my first job in a technical company with more than 20 employees.  I was hired on to become the newest web developer on the coole…

- read the full post

Back in March, Scott Guthrie made his debut appearance in a Red vs. Blue video packaged in a WPF/e player.  Well since MIX07, WPF/e has become Silverlight and a new beta was released.  Along with the beta came a few breaking changes which did in fact break the RvB player. Last …

- read the full post

I just came from a session given by Nathan Dunlap and Robbie Ingebretsen entitled “ZAP!, WHAM!, KAPOW!”: WPF and the Next Genertion of Online Comic Book Reading.   And yes, it was as awesome as it sounds like as it should be.  They presented an experimental WPF app designed to cr…

- read the full post