Console.WriteLine("Hello World");

Developing in Silverlight 2? Try the new Deep Zoom Composer!

Wed, 07 May 2008 09:34:50 GMT

If you are working with Silverlight 2 Beta 1 already, I urge you to have a look at the new, second preview version of the Deep Zoom composer.

The basic concept has stayed the same (thankfully), you create a new Deep Zoom project, you add your pictures, position them on a work surface and then create the parts needed for the Silverlight "MultiScaleImage" control to show your Deep Zoom composition.

Improvements are numerous and great. First, when composing images, there are now guidelines to help you position the pictures relative to each other.

Then there is the improved export dialog.

You still have the possibility to select to export as Composition or Collection. The advantage of the collection is that you won't export one, large image but rather a composition of individual images that you can then programmatically address and manipulate - move, hide, show, etc.

If you choose to "Export Images and Silverlight Project", the composer will create a ready-to-use Silverlight project, remember that the MultiScaleImage control in Silverlight can out of the box show the Deep Zoom collection, but the functionality of zooming with your mouse wheel or left-clicking and dragging to move the picture is not part of it's functionality.

So in the previous versions of the Deep Zoom composer, these needed to be added manually. Now it's all there, including a few good sample pages.

This leads me to another great addition in the composer, the Export dialog that you are shown when the Composer has finished exporting your project. "Preview in Browser" takes you right to the sample Silverlight app generated, "View Image Folder" takes you to the "ClientBin" folder that you will need to put into your project if you want to publish the collection. The "View Project Folder" takes you to the generated Visual Studio Solution, the sample pages. "Edit in Expression Blend" opens this solution right away in Blend. Perfect.

Don't forget that you will need to have the Blend 2.5 preview installed to edit the generated sample application. Blend 1 & 2 don't understand the Visual Studio Silverlight project type nor know the new controls introduced by Silverlight 2 (Beta 1). You can get the preview version of Expression Blend 2.5 (which by the way installs flawlessly besides Blend 1 and 2 and works like a charm) here: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

Also, if you want to keep up to date on Deep Zoom, have a look at the excellent blog written by the Expression Blend and Design team.

Silverlight 2 Beta 1 - End-to-End Hands-On Lab

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:45:28 GMT

The Microsoft Switzerland DPE Team yesterday ran an all-day hands-on lab on the subject of Silverlight 2 Beta 1 in Zürich. This blog post's purpose in life is to share the lab with you in case you want to try it for yourself to quickly get started with Silverlight 2.

Goal of the lab was to build a full featured Silverlight application from scratch that acts as a rich, interactive data-driven car-finder application, based on the Comparis Silverlight Challenge sample solution. This challenge runs until June 22, 2008 and will award the best Silverlight solution that implement new and creative ways to use a RIA to visualize automobile advertisements.

The lab can be perfectly run without taking part in the challenge, but gives a great start to everyone looking to get up to speed quickly and to build a solution and participate in the competition.

The finished Silverlight CarFinder application built in the hands-on lab.

The lab itself consist of a 50 page document, explaining everything from installing the Silverlight SDK on your computer to building the entire application, step by step and a sample solution containing the necessary sample-data and web services.

The lab teaches the use of Expression Blend 2.5 from ground up to create Silverlight 2 XAML user interfaces, build custom controls and create skins and templates for the controls. Visual Studio 2008 is then used to create the C#-based application-logic, consume the WCF based web services and data-bind them to the Silverlight user interface.

The English version of the complete lab as well as the slides and the demo code that we presented before the lab can now be downloaded from the Swiss MSDN Site or via the following, direct links:

Enjoy!

Twitter in Plain English

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:27:47 GMT

What a great explanation of Twitter! I get asked a lot about Twitter, how it makes sense, if it will survive and if it isn't just a total waste-o-time as I am the only "Twitterer" here at the office.

(When mentioning Twitter, I also want to point out Twitxr (Photo-Twittering))

Guy Kawasaki & Steve Ballmer

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:52:57 GMT

I am not usually a fan of interviews, but the Mix08 dialogue between Steve Ballmer & Guy Kawasaki is really worth watching.

Get your streams here: 750 kbps, 300 kbps, 100 kbps

Getting started with Silverlight 2 Beta 1!

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:33:33 GMT

Mix08 is rolling and one of the hot announcements certainly is the availability of Silverlight 2 Beta 1. It's certainly worth having a look at the 2.5 hour keynote and/or read Tim Sneath's keynote live blog which covers all the important announcements.

To get started using Silverlight 2 Beta 1, the Silverlight "Get started" page has all the downloads you need (towards the bottom of the page). Note however that if you install the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008, you will not be needing the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK (which is already included in the VS Add-On and which blocks the installation if present.)

Make sure to remove Silverlight 1.1 Alpha bits (runtime) and SDK as well as the Visual Studio 2008 Add-On for Silverlight 1.1 Alpha before installing the new bits.

The SDK has all the Visual Studio help system documentation, but does not provide the stand-alone CHM file which I usually like to keep open in the background. You can however download the SDK's CHM from here.

In order to get the Silverlight SDK documentation to be displayed by the Visual Studio help system, you have to follow the following steps:

1. Open Visual Studio (you might have to open VS as an administrator).
2. In the Help menu, choose Index. Microsoft Document Explorer displays.
3. In the Filtered by: drop-down, choose to (unfiltered).
4. In the Look for field, type Collection Manager.
5. Below the Collection Manager heading, double click Help.
6. Below the Collections available for inclusion in VSCC heading, check Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK Documentation.
7. Click Update VSCC.

BradleyB has a great write-up on his blog on how to exactly install the bits and solve possible trouble you might be hitting.

Finally, to learn what's new in Silverlight 2 Beta 1, these links will provide useful:

And, totally off topic, check out the awesome Internet Explorer 8 shirt worn by Dean Hachamovitch during the Mix08 keynote:

3G iPhone looks?

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:06:37 GMT

[Edit: I would bet on a fake, as the logo doesn't look like Swisscom's, plus 9to5 Mac mentions a fake in their post...]

I just read the news over on 9to5 Mac and saw the following picture which besides the April 4 availability of the iPhone in Switzerland (by Swisscom), shows an iPhone of a different size! This thing's display is 3 by 4 "icons" big, not the original 4 by 5 "icons" on the home screen! Will it be smaller? Or is this a fake?

Wow! I can now park at Black Mesa Inc.

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:43:01 GMT

OK, this is an absolutely lovely idea. The Valve store now offers "Black Mesa" and "Aperture Science Laboratories" parking permit decals for car windshields. Black Mesa is the evil research company that Gordon Freeman started working for in "Half-Life". - Aperture Science is the mysterious company introduced in Half Life 2 Episode 2 and the main location of the i.m.o. most-amazing-game-ever-to-be-released "Portal".

I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of each of them and now my little monster:

is allowed to park at "Black Mesa".

Skydrive Capacity extended to 5GB!

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:28:25 GMT

Skydrive Capacity extended to 5GB!You may already be using SkyDrive, but if you are looking for a well done, free solution for online file-storage, http://skydrive.live.com has upped its capacity to 5GB per Live ID and is available in 38 countries *drumroll* including Switzerland!

Also, SkyDrive allows you to selectively configure folders for personal use, to share with some of your friends or the whole world and offers a really nice UI including thumbnails of uploaded image files.

Claiming this Blog!

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:52:56 GMT

Claiming this Blog in the name of ... *cough* ... myself!

Technorati Profile

Say hi to Twitxr Micro-Photo-Blogging!

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:17:56 GMT

My fingers really don't like typing the new URL after using Twitter.com for so long, but Twitxr.com is really worth a visit!

It is a Twitter-like micro-blogging site that includes photos and locations. Some of the very neat features include the friends-map/a>, showing where your Twitxr buddies are posting from. This also enables you to discover new Twitxr-ers in your vincinity.

Last but not least is the very cool iPhone Twitxr app - snap a photo, type a comment and hit a button - done. All you need is a Jailbroken iPhone (I recommend visiting Zibri and the brilliant iClarified tutorials for that). It works like a charm on my 1.1.3 iPhone.

AAlso, Twitxr will allow you to generate a unique email address that you can use to send your photos to if you have a different, internet-enabled camera-phone.

Micro-blogging sites are really growing like crazy... I wonder, where this is headed! So far, you can follow me on:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/techpreacher
Pownce: http://pownce.com/techpreacher
Twitxr: http://twitxr.com/techpreacher

The "Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit & Reader SDK"

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:49:43 GMT

A new, highly interesting project with a terribly long name: Microsoft now offers the "Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit & Reader SDK" for download.

If you know the New York Times Reader, you have seen what you will be able to build using this SDK - a WPF based fat *cough* smart client, that enables the visualization and synchronization of text, pictures, videos and podcasts with a server.

The strengths of the client are synchronization which uses the Microsoft Sync Framework based Subscription Center as well as visualization, that is completely configurable and optimized for on-screen reading of atricles.

The site also offers a great, free sample of what can be done with the Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit & Reader SDK: The MSDN Reader.

Image courtesy of windowsclient.net.

Debugging into .NET Framework Source Code

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:31:28 GMT

As mentioned a while ago, Microsoft is releasing parts of the source code of the .NET framework which will allow you to debug from your code directly into the .NET framework source.

One of the best things is that you don't have to install everything onto your PC but can tell Visual Studio 2008 to get the symbol files from a server.

All it takes is the installation of a Visual Studio 2008 QFE (KB944899) and some configuration inside VS. I tried it today, it works like a charm.

To get started, have a look at Shawn Burke's post "Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code". Make sure to have a look at his "Advanced Users" section which contains some very interesting information on how and when Visual Studio loads the symbols from the server and how you can influence that.

Scott Guthrie has written a good post on the subject as well. As always worth a look! (I feel like a suck-up now...)

Visual Studio 2008 and Web Projects. A true Romance.

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:32:56 GMT

With Visual Studio 2008 released, I was missing some features in the area of web projects – for example the ability to add AJAX extenders to regular ASP.NET Controls using a simple click on the Control’s “Tasks” icon.

This was possible in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 using the “ASP.NET Futures CTP (July)” which wasn’t built for Visual Studio 2008 RTM.

Now however, there is the “Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview” which re-enables these features – among a myriad of other amazing things, namely:

ASP.NET MVC (A model-view-controller for ASP.NET 3.5)
ASP.NET Dynamic Data (Build code-less, simple, data-driven apps)
ASP.NET AJAX (as described above)
ADO.NET Entity Framework (Modeling framework for database schemas)
ADO.NET Data Services (find, manipulate and deliver data using URIs)
Silverlight Controls for ASP.NET (two ASP.NET server-side controls to embed Silverlight XAML objects and Media elements into ASP.NET solutions without any scripting)

To fully benefit from the ASP.NET AJAX enhancements in this add-on, you should also get the “AJAX Control Toolkit for the .NET Framework 3.5” unzip it, build the project and add a reference to “…\AjaxControlToolkit\bin\Debug\AjaxControlToolkit.dll” to your Visual Studio 2008 Toolbox / projects.

I recommend reading Scott Guthrie’s excellenct posts on the subject and watching Scott Hanselman’s “ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions - plus MVC How-To Screencast” to get you started.

Live Labs announces Volta!

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:17:19 GMT

Metablogging via Live labs: The announcement of Volta, downloadable as technology preview for Visual Studio 2008 (release).

It is described as a developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques and patterns in a declarative manner. This makes it possible for developers do make architectural decisions on which parts of their applications execute in which tier (backend, middle, user-interface/browser) very late in the project. Furthermore, Volta offers great, built-in profiling tools, helping to support the late-bound architectural decisions.

This is perfect for Software + Services scenarios!

I highly recommend having a look at the Volta Fundamentals and following the "Getting Started:
Building an Application with Volta in 8 Steps" tutorial.

Social Networking gone Berserk? Or am I wrong?

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:57:06 GMT

This is really weird. I keep getting invitations from <meetyourmessenger dot ch> (sorry no link love from this site...) that presents itself to me as a page that builds a virtual map on top of the Live Messenger network, helping me to enhance my social network. Yay.

The first thing that I see is this dialog, that wants my name... check, my e-mail... okay, okay, my Live messenger account e-mail... hmmm. and - what? - my messenger password?

Let's say I use my live ID to sign in to several sites, for example my MSDN subscriptions where I can download all Microsoft software... Why would I simply give awaz my Live.com username and password into ANY site, that presents itself as YASNS (yet another social networking site?) Isn't this madness? Or am I getting this wrong?

Just the perfect Internet Radio

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:32:48 GMT

This is incredible! I like un-intrusive music to work as we are located in large, open offices - very nice but noisy at times (hello Rolf!). I listen to my albums on my UMPC, but they get stale after a while... I have now discovered "soma FM groovesalad" thanks to lifehacker. A continuous stream of great ambient music, great for work!

To fully enjoy it with Windows Meida Player, there is a little tweaking to be done however...

You get a .PLS (playlist) file from soma FM that Windows Media Player doesn't understand. No problem, John Galloway has blessed us with a tiny helper app that teaches the beloved media player to interpret these files.

Secondly, while you are at it, but fully optional is the installation of the K-Lite codec pack for Windows Media Player. Absolutely not needed for soma FM, but hey, What is a media player without all the codecs?

Third, and fully optional again, soundspectrum has a great visualization for Windows Media Player called "softskies". It produces real-time realistic sky/cloud-simulation to the music playing. The perfect office-Zen-addition!

Expression Blend 2 December CTP

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:18:35 GMT

Today, Expression Blend 2 December CTP has been made available! It's the tool for WPF, Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 (soon to be called 2.0) projects. It works smoothly with Expression Design (now in SP1) and Visual Studio 2008.

At a first glance, I am still missing the possibility to use the tool to add events to my Silverlight projects, but the new "Objects and Timeline" control is wonderful, allowing me to create, duplicate, reverse, delete and rename my storyboards.

Also, code synchronization in the split view is a good thing. As soon as I select a XAML object in the designer, the corresponding code is highlighted. Nice.

Remember that you will need to install the Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 to get the Silverlight 1.1 project tpye in Expression Blend 2.

Tame Internet TV with Miro!

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:07:37 GMT

This is one of the hottest applications I have downloaded in a while - Miro. Think of iTunes / RSS reader for Internet TV. It offers a wonderful channel guide, allows subscribing to feeds, plays most any video formats, does bit-torrent if the internet-video-site offers it, and most importantly, manages the lifetime of your downloaded videos. By default, watched videos expire after five days after which they get deleted automatically. You can tell Miro to automatically download new/all videos in a channel or just tell you if there is anything new.

Miro is a n open source project and runs equally well on PC and on Mac OS (a tad smoother on the Mac in my opinion).

ASP.NET MVC is coming

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:47:21 GMT

Metablogging. Call me a "fanboy" but these two articles by Scott Guthrie on the coming ASP.NET Model-View-Controller are too good not to mention...

ASP.NET MVC Overview and ASP.NET MVC Framework drilldown 1 (this is more of a whitepaper than a blog post. Amazing.)

Scott Guthrie's great Update for ASP.NET Developers

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:26:13 GMT

Metablogging: Scott Guthrie posted a very informative article on the upcoming changes to the Microsoft world of web apps and RIAs here.

It outlines

the soon-to-release source-code for the .NET framework libraries, enabling developers to debug into the .NET framework source, hosted on a Microsoft server
the announcement of "ASP.NET 3.5 extensions", an advance to the current "ASP.NET futures CTP"
The planned Silverlight 2.0 roadmap, replacing and greatly enhancing the current Silverlight 1.1 alpha and
Many news on IIS7.

If you are using Visual Studio 2008 / Expression Blend 2 September CTP and want to create Silverlight 1.1 alpha projects, there is now a download for the "Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio 2008 RTM". Yay!

SQL Server 2008 - Working with Geographical Data

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:10:21 GMT

I just learned that in SQL Server 2008, you will be able to work with geographical- and geometrical data as well as integrate with the Virtual Earth SDK. So it will be very simple to write a query that for example finds points of interest stored in a database that are within a certain range of a route - expressed as a multiline object and visualize the result in real-time on Virtual Earth.

Welcome to World of TechEd Craft!

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:01:32 GMT

Hehe, arriving at TechEd Developers EMEA in Barcelona, I walked by the delegates laptop work area and I see WoW everywhere. Everybody is doing their daily quests. Then, in the keynote, a demo is shown of a project that takes Visual Studio 2008 Shell and creates an integrated IDE experience for LUA/Add-on writers for World of Warcraft. Amazing.

Some other, interesting topics announced include the availability of Visual Studio 2008 already in November this year and today’s availability of Popfly Explorer Alpha for Visual Studio./p>

And I didn’t bring my WoW client with me! *sigh*