Post Per Day PDC Challenge Derailed
Back in September I said I was going to try to post once a day until PDC:
http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/post/Taking-up-a-PDC-personal-challenge.aspx
Ok so it's October 17 and this is my 13th post for the month. Things started out pretty well, but have slowed down considerably in the past few days. The reason is that I found out this week that our company is downsizing because of the current economy and so I'm out looking for new opportunities. I forgot how time consuming that could be.
So if you're hurting because of the recent downturn, I wish you the best. Hopefully I'll land on my feet soon and get things back to normal.
Bad timing for my Silverlight 2 presentation in Tampa next Wednesday
I'm speaking at the Tampa .Net Users Group next Wednesday October 22:
http://www.fladotnet.com/Reg.aspx?EventID=316
So here I was, thinking that this is going to work out perfectly. Silverlight 2 was just released, I have over a week to make sure everything runs right on the latest, etc.
Now here we are, a week away, and who would have guessed that the Tampa Bay Rays would be one game away from the World Series? (Well actually I would, wanted to place a bet on the Rays to win the World Series when I was in Vegas before the season started for Mix'08, wife talked me out of it, but anyway...). Guess when Game 1 is, and they'll be playing at home if they make it since the American League won the All Star Game:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/schedule/ps.jsp
Yep, that's right, Wednesday October 22. Go figure. And go Rays! The show must go on but I know we'll have to go for a few soft drinks afterwards and find a TV.
PathTextBlock for Silverlight 2 RTW
So the Silverlight 2 Release is out there and you can get the tools here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=c22d6a7b-546f-4407-8ef6-d60c8ee221ed&displaylang=en
The announcement about PathTextBlock isn't really accurate, because it was developed and built against RC0, and I didn't even have to recompile. The sample "just works" at http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/page/PathTextBlock-Control.aspx
Now I've been told that it's a "good idea" to recompile against the RTW version, but in most cases since there were no breaking changes between RC0 and RTW, you have a good shot at your RC0 apps working as is.
'Windows 7' will be called Windows 7
In a return to simplicity, Microsoft has decided to name the next version of Windows "Windows 7". A while back, a Microsoft Evangelist told me there was only one product that kept its codename when it became an actual product. So I guess this makes 2. Any idea what the other one was?
Edit: Silverlight Travel writes: But Wikipedia says "Originally codenamed "Blackcomb" after the Whistler-Blackcomb resort. Renamed to "Vienna" in January 2006 and "Windows 7" in 2007."
Guess I should have done a few more minutes of research 
anyway the other product I was going for was Xbox but it looks like according to Wikipedia that was originally briefly called the "DirectX Box" so my info's off for that as well.
Find me at PDC for a Dr. Popper badge and maybe win a book
Adam Kinney, the PDC Badge Evangelist, had a post about creating your own badges for PDC, and so I decided to create one:
This is inspired by evangelists Joe Healy and Tim Heuer who have said that their daughters love Dr. Popper. I've actually also heard this from other people as well, and it's my daughter's favorite game too, she actually inspired the game because she played a similar game at school.
So if you want this badge, find me at PDC, and there will be a URL on the back with a secret code. If your code is a winner, you will receive a free copy of Hello! Silverlight 2 when it's published in the spring.
Great freeware fonts for PathTextBlock and Silverlight
So you want to use PathTextBlock but you don't want to worry about font licensing. It's important to note that even the fonts that come standard with Silverlight 2 are not licensed to be encoded and packaged in a XAP file, so you can't just encode Arial and use it with PathTextBlock.
What you can do, however, is go to the Absolute Fonts Archive at http://www.grsites.com/archive/fonts/ and find a font to use. All of the fonts on the Absolute Fonts Archive are "freely distributable", from the Absolute Fonts Archive disclaimer:
Disclaimer: Fonts found on this site were not created by the webmaster. They were obtained from various sources on the internet that labeled them as "freely distributable". If you should discover fonts in this collection which you recognize as copyrighted, please email the webmaster immediately so that they may be removed.
These fonts can also be useful if you want to embed a custom font for TextBlock or TextBox in your Silverlight application. There are about 6800 fonts available so you should be able to find what you need.
I'm speaking at the Tampa User Experience Group tomorrow night
Wednesday October 8 at 6:30 in Oldsmar at Answers Systems.
Driving Directions
http://www.tampaux.org/meetings.html
I'll be presenting on Silverlight 2 which I've done a few times but this time is a bit different since I'm trying to take it from a designer's perspective and will try to write as little code as possible. Later this month, I'm doing a developer centric talk at the Tampa .Net Users Group: http://www.fladotnet.com/Reg.aspx?EventID=316
Two completely different sessions, we'll see how it goes, hope to see you there.
At each session along with the other giveaways I'll be giving away some vouchers for my upcoming Silverlight book.
PathTextBlock posted on CodePlex
After a couple of gentle nudges, I've created a project on CodePlex for the PathTextBlock control. You can find it here:
http://www.codeplex.com/sltext
Finally, outlining text in Silverlight good enough for now
I've made the source code and sample project available for download here:
http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/page/PathTextBlock-Control.aspx
This class library lets you easily create text effects like warping, drawing along a curve, etc. and can be extended with your own transforms. You can also draw text with an outline. It is built against Silverlight 2 RC0, and can be used for free in your projects. This is the sample that's included with the download:
Or you can see it live here: http://www.bluerosegames.com/pathtextblocksampleweb/pathtextblocksampletestpage.html
Here's another sample from earlier:
PDC should be renamed CDC for Cloud Developers Conference
More sessions have been added to the PDC 2008 agenda:
https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/sessions.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.
Cloud computing is going to be the big buzz coming out of this conference, and it's started already. Steve Ballmer at a recent keynote said:
By the time we finish our Professional Developers Conference this month, I think you’ll have to say, that there is nobody out there with as wider range of Cloud Computing services as Microsoft including dare I say it, Google.
As I stated in an earlier post, I'm really excited about cloud computing, especially if I'm able to use the technologies that I'm most comfortable with, like C#, .NET, and Visual Studio. So we'll just have to wait and see if everything lives up to the hype, personally I count on it exceeding my expectations.
Hello! Silverlight 2 coming to a bookstore near you
Dave Campbell and I have been busy working on a beginning Silverlight book for Manning Publications called Hello! Silverlight 2. It's one of a new series for Manning, best known for their "in Action" series, like Silverlight 2 in Action by Chad Campbell and John Stockton.
This book is a different from their traditional books in that it's not meant to be a complete guide to Silverlight, but rather is meant to get you up and going quickly by highlighting important concepts. It also is meant to be a fun read, with humor from the User Friendly characters throughout the book.
Along with covering concepts for developing typical business applications, there are also a couple of chapters devoted to developing a game in Silverlight. These chapters take a simple game and cover everything from beginning to end in creating the game.
You can check out the first chapter at http://www.manning.com/affiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=1025_129 and can sign up for the electronic drafts if you want to get an early look and provide feedback as we finish the book off.
You can now write Silverlight apps in Visual Web Developer Express
One important improvement in the RC0 release of Silverlight 2 is that you can now use Visual Web Developer Express 2008 SP1 to create Silverlight applications. This has been anticipated for a while and I'm happy that they have followed through on their promise and delivered it.
So now you can develop Silverlight apps on a completely free platform which also happens to be one of the best development platforms out there.
You'll need to install Visual Web Developer (must be 2008 SP1) first, you can find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/#webInstall
Then install the RC0 Silverlight Tools:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=c22d6a7b-546f-4407-8ef6-d60c8ee221ed&displaylang=en
That should be all you need to get started creating Silverlight 2 applications.
The battle for the .NET cloud begins
This isn't directly Silverlight related, but most Silverlight applications are going to have to get their data from somewhere and have some server side business logic, and I've been anxiously awaiting news on Microsoft's cloud computing platform as a back end for Silverlight applications.
For those not familiar with EC2,it stands for Elastic Compute Cloud, and it's probably the leader in cloud computing right now. It's a pay as you go service, and can go from a very small test instance all of the way up to a bunch of cores and 64 bit. Up until now, you couldn't, however, run .NET code in EC2. This is about to change.
I just received an email from Amazon about a new offering on their EC2 platform announcing their new support for Windows Server and SQL Server in EC2:
http://aws.amazon.com/windows/
So let the games begin! Competition is usually a good thing for the consumer, and hopefully Amazon and Microsoft will push each other to implement features we can all benefit from.
Silverlight Sports Game Contest Results
The TeamZone Sports Silverlight Sports Game Contest is over, and the judges have weighed in. We had some great entries but could only pick 3, so here they are:
First Place: Hook Shot by Andy Beaulieu
Second Place: Ball Blocks by Matt Casto
Third Place: John Brummel University's Blunderbuss Olympics Vol. 1 by David Sushil
You can check out the winners and all of the entries here:
http://www.teamzonesports.com/silverlightgamecontest
Latest version of Silverlight Streaming helper classes and SLSExplorer
I wanted to do a bit more to this project before posting it, but there is so much going on right now I'm not sure when I'll have the time and I thought that it's pretty useful as it is, as a sample and also as an easy way to get Silverlight apps up to Silverlight Streaming. So here's the link:
http://www.bluerosegames.com/SilverlightBrassTacks/page/Silverlight-Streaming-API-Helper-Classes-and-SLSExplorer.aspx
Some new featured for this version:
- Subfolders are now handled properly, which is critical for DeepZoom and other Silverlight apps with assets in subfolders.
- Queueing of create and upload commands and a progress window for displaying the queue status. Also a sample of how to upload an entire Silverlight application including subfolders.
- When uploading a Silverlight XAP file, the application manifest will be generated for you and uploaded to the proper location.
- Directory listing calls have been switched to the PROPFIND method instead of GET to properly handle subfolders.
What it could still use:
- Queueing of other command types
- A way to view a file (probably by launching a browser window)
- A way to easily launch the test page for a Silverlight app instead of going to the Silverlight Streaming Admin site.
- Cleanup
- Exception handling