Console.WriteLine("Hello World");

Today I upgraded to the just released Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and as I was using various beta versions of the Service Pack and of the Silverlight SDK together with Visual Studio, I thought I should write down my installation experiences.

First, any beta versions of the "Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1" should be manually removed from the system. I also suggest, uninstalling the June edition of the "Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Tools for Visual Studio 2008", the "Silverlight 2 Beta 2 SDK" and the "Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Runtime". Don't worry, we will re-install the latest versions of all of these components again later.

Now, download and run the "Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 Preparation Tool". It will take care of removing any hotfixes that may not be compatible with Visual Studio 2008. This tool would also have uninstalled the items mentioned above, but I preferred to do that manually. Make sure to have the original Visual Studio 2008 installation media ready as it may be required during the clean-up process.

This is a good point to get some coffee. The preparation tool takes quite a while to run.

Next, get the Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 downloader. The various editions can be found here. Look for the version that matches your Visual Studio 2008 installation. The "SP1 Readme" mentions possible set-up issues when the Vista Sidebar is running, so I closed it before starting the installation.

Have a quick look in the Windows Task Manager to see if "mdm.exe", the Machine Debug Manager is running. If it is, terminate it before the process starts.

Let the installer work it's magic. During the installation, Vista may pop up the Windows Update dialog telling you that updates were installed and that it needs to reboot. Do not allow Vista to reboot at this time, it will terminate the still running installer.

Once the Service Pack installer finishes - and hopefully succeeds - a reboot is required and OK.

Another item in the readme points out that SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP1 for Devices Windows installer (MSI) is not installed with Visual Studio 2008 SP1, but it is available as a download.

Now re-download the Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008 - note that this new version has been released August 11, 2008 - and run it. It will re-add the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 runtime, the SDK and the Visual Studio Tools.

If you haven't done so before, I still strongly recommend downloading the offline documentation for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 from here. It's a 50mb CHM file that will answer most questions that may pop up when writing Silverlight 2 code.

There is no need to re-install the Expression Blend 2.5 June CTP, it continues to work with the new version of Visual Studio and the Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

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.

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:

• Silverlight Hands-On Lab & Manual
  
• Silverlight TechTalk Part 1: Intro & building a data-driven application - Demo Code
• Silverlight TechTalk Part 1: Intro & building a data-driven application - Slide Deck
• Silverlight TechTalk Part 2: Control templating, isolated storage & Deep Zoom - Demo Code
• Silverlight TechTalk Part 2: Control templating, isolated storage & Deep Zoom - Slide Deck

Enjoy!

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))

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

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:

• Silverlight gallery including Silverlight 2 Beta 1 samples
• Silverlight 2 Beta 1 quick starts / sample code
• Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Hands-on labs

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

[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?

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!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.