In my "spare time" I've been recording some screencasts about Silverlight 2 Beta 1 along with my colleague Mike.

This managed to reach critical mass in that we've now built up a list of 50 screencasts so I thought it was definitely time to share rather than plough ahead because I imagine that it won't be too long before they all get to be out of date. Things move pretty fast.

So, I've built a fairly simple custom application ( in Silverlight 2 Beta 1 of course :-) ) which allows for playing and download of those videos.

Note: I've noticed that if you don't have Silverlight 2, the application is currently prompting you to install Silverlight 1. I'll get that fixed but in the meantime, visit here to install Silverlight 2 B1 before launching the application. I'll fix the installation experience.

You can find the application by clicking here or by clicking on the picture below. It's also conveniently redirected from http://www.silverlightscreencasts.com;

Just as an aside, the application itself and all of the videos that it streams are all hosted up on Silverlight Streaming although the zipped WMV files for download are hosted from my site because I couldn't get a good way to extract a URL from Windows Live SkyDrive so you might well find that streaming a video gives you a better result than downloading one because there's a lot less infrastructure behind my site than Silverlight Streaming :-)

Note also that for streamed videos there is a maximum length of 10 minutes at Silverlight Streaming so for the few ( 7 or 8 ) videos that are more than 10 minutes long, I split them at 9 minutes and the application automatically loads the second part of the video when the first part ends.

The metadata for the application all starts off in an Excel spreadsheet where I've associated it with a schema in order to export as XML. I can then take that, package it into my XAP file and load it up using LINQ to XML at runtime before (pretty much) databinding everything from it. Very cool.

Here's a topic list;

1. "Hello World" with VS and Blend
2. Anatomy of a Silverlight Application
3. The <asp:Silverlight> Control
4. Controls - What's In the Box?
5. Why Controls have a Content Property
6. Width, Height, Margin, Padding, Alignment
7. Laying out Content with Grid
8. How To Use a GridSplitter
9. Laying out Content with StackPanel
10. Laying out Content with Canvas
11. Embedding Video and Audio
12. Handling Media Events
13. Simple Data Binding of UI to .NET Classes
14. List Based Data Binding
15. Data Binding UI to .NET Classes with Converters
16. Using Custom Types in XAML
17. Applying Simple Styles to Control Look and Feel
18. Templating a Simple Button Control
19. How to Build a Simple User Control
20. Controlling Animations & Storyboards
21. Accessing resources from XAP/DLL/Site.
22. Asynchronous Downloads with the WebClient Class
23. HTTP request with HttpWebRequest
24. Making Requests Cross-Site to Another Domain
25. Making Calls to Web Services
26. Calling Web Services over HTTPS
27. Using Sockets
28. Using File Dialogs & Files from the User
29. Using Isolated Storage for Application Data
30. Accessing and Changing Isolated Storage Quotas
31. Modifying the HTML DOM from .NET Code
32. Calling Javascript Functions from .NET Code
33. Calling .NET Functions from Javascript Code
34. Handling .NET Events in Javascript Code
35. Handling HTML DOM Events in .NET Code
36. Evaluating Javascript from .NET Code
37. How to Pass Initial Parameters from the Web Page
38. How To Display A Custom Splash Screen
39. Reading/Writing XML with LINQ to XML
40. Dynamically Loading Assemblies/Code
41. The <asp:MediaPlayer> Control
42. More on the <asp:MediaPlayer> Control
43. Loading Media at Runtime
44. Hosting an Application on Silverlight Streaming
45. Using Multiple Threads with the BackgroundWorker
46. Making Use of Custom Fonts
47. Getting Started with MultiScaleImage (DeepZoom)
48. Getting Started with the DeepZoom Composer
49. Getting Started with the DataGrid
50. Insert, Update, Delete with the DataGrid

Enjoy the videos. All feedback welcome. All mistakes, bugs etc. are mine and, if you let me know, I'll try and fix them as time allows.

Note - I've tested a little in IE7 and Firefox 2.0.0.13 on my Vista machine and also in Firefox 2.0.0.14 and Safari 3.1 on my Mac and the app seems to "basically work" in those places.

The Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 dilemma.

• I want to be able to continue to do Silverlight 2 Beta 1 development.
• I need to install Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 for Entity Framework and Data Services.

Just links....

ScottGu

Soma

Entity Framework

Data Services

Download

I will be at DevDays in Amsterdam the week after this ( i.e. the 22nd and 23rd May ) doing some sessions on;

• LINQ to XML
• ADO.NET Entity Framework
• ADO.NET Data Services

It would be nice to see you there if you're coming along. It's been a little bit of a hectic past few weeks for me in that schedule has involved a lot of travelling around. This week I'm doing;

• MSDN Roadshow in Glasgow on Tuesday
• VBUG Leeds on Wednesday
• MSDN Roadshow in Newcastle on Friday

and there's a few more dates in my calendar for June;

• 12th June - NxtGen Fest 08 In Reading on ADO.NET Entity Framework & Data Services
• 17th June - VBUG in Bournemouth on Silverlight ( or LINQ, still TBD at this point )
• 19th June - ACCU in London on Visual Studio 2008

and looking back across the past few weeks I've been doing;

w/c 14th April

• Silverlight lab with ISVs on the Microsoft Campus, Reading
• Rehearsals for our MSDN Roadshow ( yes, we do rehearse these things a little before actually doing them )
• NxtGen UG in Southampton on ADO.NET Entity Framework

w/c 21st April

• MSDN Roadshow in Cardiff
• VBUG Bristol on ADO.NET Entity Framework
• Oracle User Group .NET Special Interest Group in London on ADO.NET Entity Framework
• MSDN Roadshow in London

w/c 28th April

• MSDN Roadshow in Manchester

w/c 5th May

• NxtGen UG in Oxford on ADO.NET Entity Framework
• "Partner Company" Conference on ADO.NET Entity Framework and Data Services in Cheltenham

along with "regular" activities like paying the "Microsoft Email Tax" and the "Microsoft Internal Meetings Tax" and so on that you have to pay just for working for Microsoft UK :-)

To anyone that came along - thanks :-) and I hope to catch you at an event again in the future.

Matt Warren has an "interesting" post on how you could hack your way to a mocked implementation of LINQ to SQL - if I had a pound for every time someone's asked me how to do this then I'd have at least 3 pounds :-)

Seriously though, there is interest in doing this kind of thing and it's a good starting place if you're inclined to head down this route.