Mike Taulty's Blog

50 New Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Screencasts

mtaulty — Thu, 15 May 2008 09:34:38 GMT

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definitely time to share rather than plough ahead because I imagine that it won't be too long before they all get to be out of date.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;

"Hello World" with VS and Blend
Anatomy of a Silverlight Application
The <asp:Silverlight> Control
Controls - What's In the Box?
Why Controls have a Content Property
Width, Height, Margin, Padding, Alignment
Laying out Content with Grid
How To Use a GridSplitter
Laying out Content with StackPanel
Laying out Content with Canvas
Embedding Video and Audio
Handling Media Events
Simple Data Binding of UI to .NET Classes
List Based Data Binding
Data Binding UI to .NET Classes with Converters
Using Custom Types in XAML
Applying Simple Styles to Control Look and Feel
Templating a Simple Button Control
How to Build a Simple User Control
Controlling Animations & Storyboards
Accessing resources from XAP/DLL/Site.
Asynchronous Downloads with the WebClient Class
HTTP request with HttpWebRequest
Making Requests Cross-Site to Another Domain
Making Calls to Web Services
Calling Web Services over HTTPS
Using Sockets
Using File Dialogs & Files from the User
Using Isolated Storage for Application Data
Accessing and Changing Isolated Storage Quotas
Modifying the HTML DOM from .NET Code
Calling Javascript Functions from .NET Code
Calling .NET Functions from Javascript Code
Handling .NET Events in Javascript Code
Handling HTML DOM Events in .NET Code
Evaluating Javascript from .NET Code
How to Pass Initial Parameters from the Web Page
How To Display A Custom Splash Screen
Reading/Writing XML with LINQ to XML
Dynamically Loading Assemblies/Code
The <asp:MediaPlayer> Control
More on the <asp:MediaPlayer> Control
Loading Media at Runtime
Hosting an Application on Silverlight Streaming
Using Multiple Threads with the BackgroundWorker
Making Use of Custom Fonts
Getting Started with MultiScaleImage (DeepZoom)
Getting Started with the DeepZoom Composer
Getting Started with the DataGrid
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.

VS 2008 Sp1 - Want Versus Need

mtaulty — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:15:25 GMT

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.

VS 2008 Sp1 Beta Links

mtaulty — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:54:46 GMT

Just links....

ScottGu

Soma

Entity Framework

Data Services

Download

DevDays Amsterdam & Events

mtaulty — Sun, 11 May 2008 21:59:28 GMT

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;

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.

Mocking LINQ to SQL

mtaulty — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:21:13 GMT

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.