Latest Listings

Microsoft's Download beta using Silverlight

The following site is clearly beta as I ran into a few issues, but glad to see Microsoft is moving to build Silverlight into their sites more than just an ad or two:

http://www.microsoft.com/beta/downloads/About.aspx

Mono 1.26 supports Silverlight 1.1

Mono 1.2.6 now supports developing Silverlgiht 1.1 apps.  Additionally, the new version now supports Windows.Forms development on Max OS X.  It also comes with ASP.NET AJAX libary.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/12/13/mono-1-2-6-released-supports-silverlight-1-1-development

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions CTP Preview Released

Blog post by Scott Guthrie says there is a new ASP.NET 3.5 preview out in the wild.  It brings with it:

ASP.NET AJAX Improvements
ASP.NET MVC
ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support
ASP.NET Silverlight Support
ADO.NET Data Services

The Silverlight support is as:

"You can integrate the rich behavior of Microsoft Silverlight into your Web application by using two new ASP.NET server controls: a MediaPlayer server control that enables easy integration of media sources such as audio (WMA) and video (WMV) into your Web application, and a Silverlight server control that allows an ASP.NET page to reference both XAML objects and their event handlers. "

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/12/09/asp-net-3-5-extensions-ctp-preview-released.aspx

My name is Jim and here at "KOAN Games" we've developed and published our first experimental game on Silverlight - "Alien Love Ship"

It took us about 1 and a half month to develop it and that was our first glance at Silverlight technology. There is no scrolling and scaling in the first part of the game - because we've faced some kind of irritable slowdown effect.

The game:
http://koangames.com/alien_love_ship

Screenshot
http://koangames.com/images/custom/koangames_alien_love_ship.png

The experiment with Silverlight was a success and we'll keep on experimenting with games. "Alien Love Ship" will get its sequel with several parts.

Try it and write your feedback!

Cheers,
Jim
www.koangames.com

Silverlight goes 2.0 in next preview

Wow!  They added so many new features they plan to just push the version number to 2.0.

* WPF UI Framework - Databinding, extensible control framework, layout manager, two-way data-binding, templates and skinning.

* Controls, Control, Controls - form controls, layout cotnrols such as StackPanel, Grid, etc), TabControl, Slider, ScrollViewer, ProgressBar, DataGrid, etc..

* Networking - REST, POX, RSS and WS*.  Also support for cross domain network access.

* .NET Library - support now for collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, LINQ to XML and extended HTML DOM API integration.

The beta 2.0 version is expected first quarter of 2008 with a Go-Live license!

Silverlight 2.0 will be available on XP, Vista, WS2004, WS2008 and Windows 2000.

You will find more information at:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/29/net-web-product-roadmap-asp-net-silverlight-iis7.aspx

Silverlight 1.1a Tools for VS 2008

Get your downloaded going.  The Silverlight 1.1a tools are updated for Visual Studio 2008 RTM:

Here is a post by Scott Guthrie:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/26/silverlight-1-1-tools-alpha-for-visual-studio-2008-available-for-download.aspx

Visual Studio 2008 availabe to public

If you do not have an MSDN subscription, you can download the 90-day trail version of VS 2008 Team Server or the FREE Express versions:

For a great overview and links to downloads, check out Scott Guthrie's blog post about VS 2008 at:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/19/visual-studio-2008-and-net-3-5-released.aspx

Brakes on for VS 2008 at the moment

If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development though, you might want to put the brakes on upgrading to VS 2008.  Scott Guthrie's post mentions:

"Two popular add-ins to Visual Studio are not yet available to download for the final VS 2008 release.  These are the Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha for Visual Studio and the Web Deployment Project add-in for Visual Studio.  Our hope is to post updates to both of them to work with the final VS 2008 release in the next two weeks.  If you are doing Silverlight 1.1 development using VS 2008 Beta2 you'll want to stick with with VS 2008 Beta2 until this updated Silverlight Tools Add-In is available. "

Visual Studio 2008 RTM Available!

Well, it is out now if you are an MSDN subscriber. At the moment of this posting though, they seem to have an error on this site, but I would image the downloads will continue shortly :)

Big News!

Scott Guthrie posted today an entry titled "Optimizing the Silverlight Install Experience".

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/30/optimizing-the-silverlight-install-experience.aspx

This is an interesting read, but for me, the big news is in the comments.  He mentions:

"Windows 2000 support will show up with Silverlight 1.1.  Our next public preview of Silverlight will be a big one (lots and lots of new features - which I'll be blogging about more later this year)."

Yes, Windows 2000 support and "lots of new features" being added to the 1.1 beta.

"I'll be doing a more indepth tutorial series on Silverlight development once I finish my LINQ to SQL series, and will talk about the complete feature set as part of that.  The beta of Silverlight 1.1 will have many, many, many new big features - including a lot of controls work."

He will put together an article series soon, which following his great LINQ to SQL series, promises to be very helpful!

Also notice the "many, many, many, many big features".  Oh, come on, how am I suppose to handle the wait now ;)

Finally, the "a lot of controls".  Cool!!!  Will be interesting to see just what wonderful gifts we receive ;)

One last point, when asked about Flex features, he said:

"In general yes.  Silverlight will pretty much have a superset of Flex functionality.  I'll be blogging more about some of the more application development features of Silverlight (controls, layout, databinding, styles/templates, application model, web services, data querying, etc) later this year."

Databinding!!!  That one feature will be helpful!

Looks like 1.1 will be prime time Silverlight.  Maybe they should have made it 2.0 Beta from the sounds of the feature increase.

I see many sleepless nights ahead :)

Beginning Silverlight 1.1 Part 1

Here is a decent quick start to Silverlight 1.1 from Andrey Baskov along with a simple drawing sample.  For those thinking about jumping in the pool, this could be a good look!

http://www.codeproject.com/silverlight/BeginningSilverlightPart1.asp