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This a quick post to announce a few upcoming events for those in the UK. I’ll be presenting in Glasgow, Scotland on March 25th I’m doing a free 5 hour presentation in Glasgow on March 25th. I’ll be covering VS 2010, ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET Web Forms 4, ASP.NET MVC 2, Silverlight and potentially show off a few new things that haven’t been announced yet. You can learn more about the event and register for free here. There are only a few spots left – so register quickly. When the event fills up there will be a wait-list – please add yourself to this as we’ll be encouraging people who won’t be able to attend to let us know ahead of time so that we can add more people to the event. I’ll be presenting in Birmingham, England on March 26th I’m doing a free 5 hour presentation in Birmingham (UK) on March 26th. I’ll be covering VS 2010, ASP.NET 4, ASP.NET Web Forms 4, ASP.NET MVC 2, Silverlight and also potentially show off a few new things that haven’t been announced yet. You can learn more about the event and register for free here. The event unfortunately filled up immediately (even before I had a chance to blog it) – but there is a waitlist. If you’d like to attend please add yourself to it as hopefully a number of people will be able to attend off of it. UK Party at MIX If you are going to MIX and are from the UK send mail to phil@pixelprogramming.com (or tweet him @plip) for an invite to a party being organized for UK MIX attendees next Sunday (March 14th). Knowing the people involved I’m sure the party will be fun. <g> Cool MIX10 iPhone App Speaking of MIX (and UK developers), Chris Hardy has posted a cool new MIX10 iPhone application on the Apple AppStore. The free application helps track sessions, rooms, etc. You can learn more about it from Chris’ blog post here. The app works for everyone – not just those from the UK. :-) Hope this helps, Scott 
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[In addition to blogging, I’m also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Hope you all had a great holiday – welcome to 2010! Last month I did a blog post about some of the presentations I did in Europe and posted the slides+demo files from them. High-quality videos of the talks I did in Sweden were posted two weeks ago on the Channel9 site, so you can also now watch videos of the talks online as well. The videos use a nice format where you can watch me talking as well as the screen at the same time. The code is readable when running in full-screen mode. Below are links to the different talks along with the slides+sample files: ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010 Web Development This 90 minute talk provides a nice introduction to ASP.NET 4 and VS 2010 for Web Development. It is primarily demo-driven and walks-through a lot of the new features coming with the release. ASP.NET MVC This 2 hour talk provides a nice introduction to ASP.NET MVC, and explains it by walking through how to build a simple application with it from scratch. Along the way it highlights and discusses some of the new features coming in ASP.NET MVC 2. Silverlight 4 This 60 minute talk recaps the keynote I gave at PDC. It walks-through the new Silverlight 4 features and capabilities. Hope this helps, Scott 
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[In addition to blogging, I’m also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Last month I gave a Silverlight 4 keynote at the PDC conference. You can watch my keynote online here (my part of the keynote starts at the 53:30 mark in the video). I showed off a number of fun demos during the keynote that highlighted some of new features coming in Silverlight 4. Today we posted the samples online (with code) so that you can download and run them locally on your own machines. You can download the keynote demos here. Keynote Demos Below are some details about each of the demos now available for download: PhotoBooth Application The PhotoBooth application demonstrates some of the fun things you can do with the new WebCam and Microphone support in Silverlight 4. It allows you to record videos and take photos within the browser – and then optionally apply effects to them (for example: the bulge effect below). For kicks you can publish a photo of any of the pictures to Twitter :-) 
BarCode Scanner The BarCode Scanner application also uses the new WebCam support in Silverlight 4. It allows you to scan an ISBN barcode from the back of a book, and will then use Amazon web-services to look up details about the book online: 
Rich Notepad The rich notepad application shows off some of the new text editing features in Silverlight 4. It allows you to edit rich text within the browser, supports Bidi text (including Arabic and Hebrew), supports both left-to-right and right-to-left control layout (RTL is show below – notice how the scroll-bar is on the left hand side of the screen), supports programmatic copy/paste to the system clipboard, custom right-click context menus, printing, and drag/drop of files from the desktop into the browser to edit: 
HTML Hosting The HTML Hosting application shows off using the new Silverlight 4 webbrowser control in an out of browser application (note: you must run the application out of the browser for it to work). It allows you to use the control both interactively (meaning you can click the HTML within it and run it like an application). It also allows you to use the hosted HTML as a brush that you can apply to other Silverlight controls. For fun you can click the MSDN.com tab below and you’ll get rick-rolled to YouTube. You can still use the HTML as a brush and carve it up into a jigsaw – even though the video is still playing (using Flash hosted within the HTML): 
Learn More Keep an eye on Tim Heuer’s blog as well as John Papa’s blog. They post regularly about Silverlight, and will be doing some blog posts in the near future that cover the above applications in more detail. Summary You can download all of the above keynote demos here. They all work with the public Silverlight 4 Beta. They provide a nice way to relive the keynote on your own machine, as well as show off the demos to friends. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. The Facebook application we showed in the keynote will also be available for download in the future. We are still adding more features to it and polishing it up – I’ll do a blog post about it as soon as it is available. 
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This past week I’ve been traveling around Europe giving a bunch of presentations (approximately 5 hours in each country) – Norway on Tuesday, Sweden on Wednesday, Denmark on Thursday, and Belgium on Friday. I’ll then be presenting at the BizSpark Camp in France this coming Tuesday. Things went well with the talks, and I had fun meeting lots of new people (more than 3,000 attended the talks!). Below is a picture of my talk in Belgium – where everyone showed up in a red shirt :-) 
Download Talks My talks were filmed in a few locations – and I’ll update this post with pointers to the videos once they are online to watch. Below are copies of my slides + demos bits: Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I’m also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu 
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This past week was a busy one – with lots of announcements and cool releases happening at this year’s PDC conference. All of the PDC keynotes and breakout sessions are now posted online for anyone to watch for free. You can find sessions to watch here. My PDC keynote covered our new Silverlight 4 release and was on Day 2. You can watch it here (I start at the 1 hour, 2 minute, and 45 second mark). LIDNUG Online Chat Monday November 23rd I’ll be doing a free online web chat Monday November 23rd at 11:30am PST where you can ask any questions about anything (including PDC announcements). The chat is hosted by the LIDNUG user group. You can sign up and attend for free here. The chat will be recorded and I’ll update this post with a link to the recording when it is over. You can ask questions either through the chat tool – or by posting them to Twitter. To ask questions via twitter simply post a tweet using this format: @ScottGu #LidnugLiveQ question goes here Other PDC Resources I’ll be doing more blog posts about some of what was announced at PDC this past week. Below are a few good posts that summarize some of the announcements from my team in the meantime: Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I’m also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name) 
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I’m excited to announce a new program – WebsiteSpark – that Microsoft is launching today. WebsiteSpark is designed for independent web developers and web development companies that build web applications and web sites on behalf of others. It enables you to get software, support and business resources from Microsoft at no cost for three years, and enables you to expand your business and build great web solutions using ASP.NET, Silverlight, SharePoint and PHP, and the open source applications built on top of them. What does the program provide? WebSiteSpark provides software licenses that you can use for three years at no cost. Once enrolled, you can download and immediately use the following software from Microsoft: - 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
- 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
- 2 licenses of Expression Web 3
- 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
- 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
- DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)
The Windows Server and SQL Server licenses can be used for both development and production deployment. You can either self-host the servers on your own, or use the licenses with a hoster. WebsiteSpark makes it easy to find hosters who are also enrolled in the program, and who can use your licenses to provide you with either dedicated or virtual dedicated servers to host your sites on. In addition to software, WebsiteSpark provides partner opportunities to grow and build your business (including customer referrals through our partner programs). It also includes product support (including 2 professional support incidents) and free online training for the products. Who can join the program? WebSiteSpark is available to independent web developers and small web development companies. The only two requirements to join the program are: - Your company builds web sites and web application on behalf of others.
- Your company currently has less than 10 employees.
If you meet these requirements you can visit the WebsiteSpark website and sign-up today. As part of the enrollment process you can pick either a network referral partner (for example: a hoster or an existing Microsoft partner), or enter a referral code that you have received at an event or from a Microsoft employee. If you send mail to webspark@microsoft.com you can get a referral code quickly. You can then use that code to enroll in the program on the WebsiteSpark website. Once enrolled you can immediately download and use the software, as well as begin to participate in the network/partner opportunities. If you have any problems enrolling, you can also send me mail (scottgu@microsoft.com) and I can connect you with someone who can help. What happens after the 3 years? WebsiteSpark is a 3 year program. There is no obligation to continue to use any of the software after the three years is over, and there are no costs for the three years other than a $100 program fee at the end of the three years. At the end of the three years, WebsiteSpark participants can optionally choose to purchase all of the software in the WebsiteSpark program via a $999/year package. This includes 3 copies of VS Professional, 1 copy of Expression Studio (including Blend and Sketchflow), 2 copies of Expression Web, and 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 and 4 processor licenses of SQL Server Web edition that can be used for production deployment. Alternatively, if you want to purchase only the production server licenses, you can take advantage of a $199/year offering that includes both 1 Windows Web Server processor license and 1 SQL Server Web edition processor license. You can buy the quantity you need of this package at $199/year each. Summary The WebsiteSpark program joins the other two successful “Spark” programs we’ve previously launched - BizSpark for startups, and DreamSpark for students. Coming at a time when the current economic climate is still tough, WebsiteSpark will help support developers and companies by providing the business resources, training, and software necessary for companies to get started and grow successful businesses on the Microsoft Web Platform. Visit www.microsoft.com/web to learn more about the Microsoft Web Platform, as well as download and install the new Microsoft Web Platform Installer V2 we released today – which makes it really easy to quickly provision web servers and web development machines. You can then browse and download and use open source web applications from the Windows Web Application Gallery. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I have been using Twitter more recently to-do quick posts and share links. You can follow me on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name) 
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This is the fourth in a series of blog posts I’m doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. Today’s post covers one of the general IDE improvements that I know a lot of people are already eagerly looking forward to with VS 2010 – multiple-monitor support. Using Multiple Monitors VS 2008 hosts all documents/files/designers within a single top-level window – which unfortunately means that you can’t partition the IDE across multiple monitors. VS 2010 addresses this by now allowing editors, designers and tool-windows to be moved outside the top-level window and positioned anywhere you want, and on any monitor on your system. This allows you to significantly improve your use of screen real-estate, and optimize your overall development workflow. Taking advantage of the multi-monitor feature is really easy to-do. Simply click on a document tab or tool-window and drag it to either a new location within the top-level IDE window – or outside of the IDE to any location on any monitor you want: 
You can later drag the document/window back into the main window if you want to re-dock it (or right click and choose the re-dock option). Projects and solutions remember the last screen position of their documents when saved – which means that you can close projects and re-open them and have the layout automatically startup where you last saved it. Some Multi-Monitor Scenarios Below are some screen-shots of a few of the scenarios multi-monitor enables (obviously there are many more I’m not covering). Pretend each window in the screenshots below is on a different monitor to get the full idea… Code source file support: Demonstrates how code files can be split up across multiple monitors. Below I’ve kept a .aspx file in the main IDE window and then moved a code-behind file and a separate class file to a separate screen: 
Tool window support: Demonstrates how any tool window/pane within VS10 can be split across multiple monitors. Below I’ve moved the test runner tool windows to a separate screen: 
Designer support: Demonstrates how a designer within VS can be split across multiple monitors. Below I’ve moved the WPF/Silverlight WYSWIYG designer and the property grid to a separate screen (the code behind file is still in the main window). Note how the VS10 property grid now supports inline color editors, databinding, styles, brushes, and a whole bunch more for WPF and Silverlight applications (I’ll cover this in later blog posts): 
Summary If you work on a system that has multiple monitors connected to it, I think you are going to find the new multi-monitor support within VS10 a big productivity boost. If you don’t already have multiple monitors connected to your computer, this might be a good excuse to get some… :-) Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I have been using Twitter more recently to-do quick posts and share links. You can follow me on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name) 
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Over the next few months I’m going to be doing a series of posts that talk about some of the cool things coming with the VS 2010 and .NET 4 release. VS 2010 and .NET 4 are the next major releases of our developer tools and framework. Together they contain a ton of new functionality and improvements that I think you’ll really like, and which make building applications of all types easier, faster and better. The improvements range from nice small tweaks to major, major enhancements - and can be found across the .NET Framework, the languages, and the IDE. We are still a little ways off from the “Betat2” release of VS10 and .NET 4 - which is the version I’m going to be basing my posts on. I wanted to start ahead of the actual Beta2 release, though, because there are a lot of things to do blog posts about (and it is fun to get a chance to blog about a few of the new Beta2 things before everyone else does! :-). I will update this post with links to the individual posts I do as I publish them along the way. Hope this helps, Scott 
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Today we officially shipped the final release of Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 Features Silverlight 3 is a major update and delivers a ton of new features and capabilities. Some of the new Silverlight 3 runtime capabilities include: HD Media Silverlight 3 now supports hardware graphics acceleration – enabling both video and graphics compositing to be offloaded onto a GPU. This can dramatically lower CPU usage on a computer, and enables HD video to be played on older low end machines. You can now deliver and play 1080p HD video experiences over the web. Silverlight 3 includes new media codec support for H.264 video, AAC audio and MPEG-4 content. This enables you to easily play and stream media encoded using these standards. Silverlight 3 also includes raw bitstream audio/video APIs that enable you to create additional codecs (in any .NET language) that support playing any other media format. Silverlight 3 also adds a variety of additional media features that enable better logging (for media analytics and ad monetization scenarios), provide the ability to disable screen-savers when playing long-form video content, and enable content protection. IIS Media Services is a free server product that complements Silverlight and provides the ability to efficiently stream media over HTTP. It enables both on-demand and live HD video to be delivered using “smooth streaming” - which is an adaptive streaming algorithm that can deliver video at bitrates optimized for a client’s network conditions and CPU capabilities. Check out this demo to see a good example of smooth streaming in action with Silverlight. The HD support within Silverlight, combined with the Smooth Streaming support of IIS Media Services, enables a dramatically better video experiences on the web. This past week alone, we’ve had multiple customers broadcast live HD events using Silverlight and smooth streaming (up to 3MBits) including: Wimbledon, the Tour de France, AVP Volleyball, and the Michael Jackson Memorial Service. Immersive Graphics The new GPU acceleration capabilities of Silverlight 3 enable even richer and more immersive graphic experiences. Silverlight 3 also adds new perspective 3D support that can be used with graphic elements, videos and controls. Silverlight 3 also includes new bitmap and pixel APIs, as well as the ability to create and apply custom pixel shader effects (e.g. blur, dropshadow, swirl, etc) to any image, video element, or control. Easing support can also now be used to enable more textured motion within animations. Out of Browser Support Silverlight 3 enables applications to run outside the browser and taken offline. Users can safely install web applications on their computers, and create persistent shortcuts to them on the desktop, start menu and taskbar (this is supported on both Windows and the Mac). New network detection support within Silverlight enables developers to monitor the network status of a machine and switch between offline and online modes within their applications. Silverlight 3 also includes an automatic update mechanism for applications – so that clients who have installed applications are automatically updated when new application versions are deployed on the originating webserver. Application Development Silverlight 3 includes a ton of new application development features. The Silverlight 3 runtime/SDK combined with the Silverlight Toolkit now includes ~100 UI controls that enable common scenarios (layout, data, charting, child windows, etc) while also providing full styling and template customization support. Silverlight 3 enables richer data binding features. Element to element binding support between controls is now enabled. Validation error template support has been added to controls (enabling better error message display). Hierarchical data binding is supported by the DataGrid. And a new DataForm control enables better master/detail scenarios. Silverlight 3 also now enables SaveFileDialog support. Silverlight 3 includes a new navigation framework that enables deep-linking and forward/back button integration within the browser. This also enables search engine optimization (SEO) support so that content within a Silverlight application can be indexed by search engines – including Google, Bing and Yahoo. Silverlight 3 also supports the ability to cache assemblies on the client, and re-use them across multiple applications (decreasing the download size and improving the startup time of applications). Silverlight 3 includes much better text rendering and font support. Text rendered using Silverlight 3 applications is much crisper and cleaner than previous releases, and applications now have access to local fonts. The Silverlight 3 styling system also now supports merged resource dictionaries, BasedOn style inheritance support, and the ability for styles to be reset any number of times. Silverlight 3 also adds richer accessibility support, and is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability using familiar operating system controls. Silverlight 3 includes richer networking support. WCF error faults are now supported across the network. Server-side push duplex support is now easier to setup. Binary XML serialization of payloads is now supported. The new .NET RIA Services framework (which now has a go-live license) can be used to easily build multi-tier data applications that span the client and server. .NET RIA Services enables you to write validation code once and have it applied on both the client and middle-tier layers of your applications. Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Silverlight 3 Today we are also shipping a free download that enables Silverlight 3 development support for VS 2008 and Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (which is free). The VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight download provides project support, intellisense, compilation, and debugging for Silverlight 3 applications. The next release of Visual Studio - VS 2010 - will add to this and provide a fully interactive WYSIWYG designer for Silverlight (including data binding support within the designer). Click here to download the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight (this will also install the SL3 developer runtime + sdk). Click here to download the Silverlight Toolkit (which adds additional controls). Expression Studio 3 Today we are also shipping a release candidate (RC) of Expression Blend 3 (including Sketchflow) that enables rich editing of Silverlight 3 applications and projects. You can download the Expression Blend 3 + Sketchflow RC here. Expression Blend 3 is a major update and enables dramatically richer tooling support. Some of its improvements include: - Sketchflow: SketchFlow makes it significantly easier to create prototypes, experiment with dynamic user experiences, and incorporate feedback from customers. If you haven’t seen or tried it yet - you must. It really is a game changing new way to create great user centric applications.
- Intellisense: Blend 3 includes C#, VB and XAML intellisense support. You can now write code and event handlers within Blend without having to switch to VS.
- Behaviors: Blend 3 includes behavior support which can encapsulate complex design interactions into reusable components that can be directly applied to a control within the design surface. This enables designers to quickly add functionality and behavior to applications without having to write code.
- Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator Import: Blend 3 now has built-in support for importing Photoshop and Illustrator files. As part of the import process you can view and pick individual Photoshop layers to import, customize and regroup layers, and have Photoshop/Illustrator elements retain their original formats within XAML: including layer positions, editable text and font settings, and vector element conversion to XAML.
- Sample Data: Blend 3 adds design-time sample data support which makes it easy to mock up data-connected applications and see what they look like without requiring access to live data. You can generate sample data or import sample data from an XML file and it is available to controls on the artboard at design-time. You can customize your sample data details, and you can easily switch between using sample data and using live data at run-time.
- TFS: Blend 3 now includes Team Foundation Server (TFS) support – allowing you to use source control and enlist within projects. Blend shares the same project and solution format as Visual Studio – allowing both VS and Blend to work simultaneously on the same projects and enabling seamless editing between them.
- Other Improvements: Additional enhancements including improved animation and easing function support, 3D transform support, visual effects support, and an improved visual state manager designer.
Christian Schormann has a great blog post that describes Expression Blend 3 in more detail. The final release of Expression Studio 3 (which includes the Blend + Sketchflow, Web, Encoder and Design products) will ship within the next 30 days. Expression Studio 3 will be included as part of the MSDN Premium and higher subscriptions (meaning MSDN Premium customers don’t have to pay anything extra to get all of the Expression Studio products). Expression Studio 3 will also be available for standalone purchase for $599 (with discounts available for upgrades from previous versions of Expression and/or competitive products). Summary Today’s release is a major update of our Silverlight stack of products – and comes only 9 months after the release of Silverlight 2. You can learn more about Silverlight 3 and the tools that go along with it from the below sites: Hope this helps, Scott 
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Two weeks ago we held our MIX conference in Las Vegas. MIX is my favorite conference of the year – since it nicely integrates development and design topics together in a single event, and is usually accompanied by some pretty cool product announcements. I gave a first day MIX keynote again this year, and in it I talked about and announced a bunch of new Microsoft web development products. These included: My keynote also included a ton of demos and highlighted a bunch of great customers including: StackOverflow, NetFlix, NBC, Bondi Publishing, and KEXP. Click here to watch the day one MIX keynote online. Bill Buxton led off the keynote with a great talk about user experience for 20 minutes – I then talked for an hour and 50 minutes after him. You can also watch all the breakout sessions from MIX online for free here (Greg Duncan has an easy to navigate list of them here as well). I’ll be doing more in-depth blog posts in the days ahead on many of the technologies we introduced/announced and all the cool things you can do with them. Hope this helps, Scott 
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I am excited to announce that Novell today released version 1.0 of Moonlight, and is making it available for download at no cost with support for most major Linux distro’s (including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu). For those unfamiliar with it, Moonlight is a joint effort between Novell and Microsoft of an open-source implementation of Silverlight for Linux. My team has worked closely with Miguel de Icaza and his team on the project. We are also shipping the Microsoft Media Pack – which is a set of licensed media codecs that enable playback for all Silverlight compatible media (wmv, wma, mp3, etc.), as a free download for Linux users who run Moonlight. Moonlight enables Linux users to view Silverlight content and Silverlight applications. Recently the official Presidential Inauguration Committee broadcast the inauguration of President Barack Obama using Silverlight. Over 50,000 viewers using Linux installed Moonlight and watched the event live using it. Miguel de Icaza and the volunteers behind Moonlight made a tremendous effort to make sure that Linux users were able to watch the broadcast of the inauguration, even though the official release of Moonlight was still a few weeks away. 
I am really excited about the awesome work Miguel and his team at Novell have done, and we’re looking forward to seeing Moonlight 2 (a Silverlight 2 compatible implementation with .NET support) which the team is hard at work on. For more details on the Moonlight 1.0 release, check out Miguel’s blog post on it. Thanks, Scott 
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Tomorrow’s presidential inauguration of Barack Obama will be a truly historic event. Silverlight is being used as an enabling technology on several sites that will allow those of us who can’t be there in person to share the experience online. Presidential Inaugural Committee The Presidential Inaugural Committee has worked with iStreamPlanet to enable live and live and on-demand video streaming of the Inauguration events at the official Presidential Inaugural Committee web site: www.pic2009.org. It streamed its first live video on Saturday, with the train ride that took President-elect Obama from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. The official Inaugural swearing-in ceremony, speeches and parade will also be streamed live online on Tuesday, January 20. 
You can read more about the Presidential Inaugural Committee here. CNN and MSNBC with Photosynth CNN and MSNBC are both launching Photosynth viewers that will help capture the Oath of Office experience. They will combine pictures takes from professional photographers with pictures uploaded from people in the crowd to create an interactive Photosynth experience of the event using Silverlight’s built-in DeepZoom feature to deliver an amazing 3D viewing of it. Check out CNN’s and MSNBC’s pages a few hours after viewers send in their pictures of the inauguration crowd, the President-elect’s raised hand, and everything in between. 
You can learn more about Photosynth and Silverlight from the Photosynth team blog here. This week will be an exciting part of history. Hope you get a chance to enjoy experiencing it with Silverlight! Scott 
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I'm flying out later today on a pretty intense business trip (22,000 miles, 5 countries, 3 continents, 1 week, no sleep... :-), so my blog activity over the next week and a half will be pretty light. To keep you busy till I return, here is the latest in my link-listing series. Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET ASP.NET Dynamic Data ASP.NET AJAX ASP.NET MVC Visual Studio WPF / Silverlight Hope this helps, Scott 
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We shipped Silverlight 2 last month. Over the last 4 weeks, the final release of Silverlight 2 has been downloaded and installed on more than 100 million consumer machines. It has also recently been published to corporate administrators via the Microsoft SMS and Microsoft Update programs to enable them to automatically deploy across enterprises. Over 1 in 4 computers on the Internet now have some version of Silverlight installed. Silverlight 2 was a major release, and delivered an impressive set of cross-browser, cross-platform functionality for Media and Rich Internet Application experiences. It has been great watching new sites launch using it. Media Experiences Silverlight 2 enables the highest quality video on the web, and delivers it with the lowest TCO of any media platform. One of the capabilities built-into Silverlight 2 is its support for "adaptive streaming" - which enables video to be delivered at multiple bitrates (for example: 400Kbits, 800Kbits, 1.5Mbits, 2Mbits) with Silverlight dynamically choosing the optimal bitrate to use depending on the network bandwidth and CPU capability of the client (it can also automatically switch bitrates seamlessly if conditions change later). Silverlight's adaptive streaming support is extensible. Move Networks (who helped pioneer the concept of adaptive streaming) have already integrated their adaptive streaming solution with Silverlight. Silverlight 2 and Move were used to stream the Democratic National Convention live on the web this summer. Last month we announced that Microsoft will be adding adaptive streaming support as a free feature of our IIS7 web-server. IIS Smooth Streaming will provide an integrated way to deliver HD quality adaptive video over the web. Visit Akamai's www.smoothhd.com site to see some awesome examples of Silverlight 2 and IIS Smooth Streaming in action (with adaptive streaming up to 2.5Mbits). The NBC Olympics site used Silverlight 2 to serve more than 3,500 hours of live and on-demand Olympic coverage to over 60 million unique visitors this summer. Visitors to the site watched an average of 27 minutes of video - which is stunningly high for online video. The site used the new Silverlight adaptive streaming capability to support 1.5Mbit bitrates - which helped deliver an awesome video experience: 
In addition to powering the Olympics experience in the US, Silverlight was also used in France (by FranceTV), the Netherlands (by NOS), Russia (by Sportbox.ru) and Italy (by RAI). In addition to video quality, a big reason behind these broadcasters decision to use Silverlight was the TCO and streaming cost difference Silverlight provided. In the August 2008 edition of Web Designer Magazine (a Dutch publication) a NOS representative reported that they were able to serve 100,000 concurrent users using Silverlight and 40 Windows Media Servers, whereas it would have required 270 servers if they had used Flash Media Servers. Over the last month we've seen several major new deployments of Silverlight for media scenarios. For example: CBS College Sports is now using Silverlight to stream NCAA events from its 170 partner colleges and university. Blockbuster is replacing Flash with Silverlight for its MovieLink application. And Netflix two weeks ago rolled out its new Instant Watch service using Silverlight. 
Rich Internet Applications (RIA) Experiences Silverlight 2 delivers a cross-browser, cross-platform subset of the .NET Framework, and enables developers to build Rich Internet Applications. Developers can use either VS 2008 or the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express to open and edit Silverlight 2 projects, and get a powerful code-focused .NET development environment. Designers can use Expression Blend 2 SP1 to open and edit the same projects and use a creative tool to sculpt and create rich user experiences. I recently blogged about the nice developer/designer workflow this enables here. Two weeks ago at the PDC we also shipped the first release of our Silverlight Toolkit - an open source project which adds additional runtime controls and components for Silverlight 2 development (including new charting controls). A number of customers have already launched Internet-facing Silverlight 2 RIA solutions (including Renault, Hard Rock and Toyota). For example, last month AOL launched their new AOL Mail RIA using Silverlight 2: 
Silverlight 2 is also now being used in a variety of enterprise solutions. For example, K2 recently launched their new Blackpoint workflow management solution for Microsoft SharePoint using Silverlight: 
Microsoft is also deploying new Silverlight based RIA experiences. The Windows Live Team's new photo application (photos.live.com) and video communications application (videomessages.live.com) are both built with Silverlight 2, as is the new MSN Toolbar (it uses Silverlight to customize the browser frame). Last month at the PDC we also gave a first sneak-peak demo of some of the new Office 14 Web Companion RIA applications which use Silverlight. Silverlight 3 Next year we will ship our next major Silverlight release -- Silverlight 3. Silverlight 3 will include major media enhancements (including H.264 video support), major graphics improvements (including 3D support and GPU hardware acceleration), as well as major application development improvements (including richer data-binding support and additional controls). Note these are just a small sampling of the improvements - we have plenty of additional cool features we are going to keep up our sleeves a little longer. ;-) Next year Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer Express will also support a fully editable and interactive designer for Silverlight, and add tool support for data-binding: 
We are pretty excited about where Silverlight is today, as well as the roadmap in place over the next year. It has been really great to watch customers go live with cool solutions. The next year is going to be a fun one as more and more sites launch with Silverlight 2, and as even bigger scenarios are enabled with Silverlight 3 and beyond. :-) Hope this helps, Scott 
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Silverlight 2 provides a rich platform for building cross-browser/cross-platform RIA applications. One of the things that makes Silverlight so powerful is the ease with which developers and designers can collaborate together on projects. Developers can use Visual Studio to open and edit Silverlight 2 projects and get a powerful code-focused .NET development environment, and designers can use Expression Blend 2 SP1 to open and edit the exact same project and use a creative tool to sculpt and create optimal user experience designs. The WPF UI framework shipped in Silverlight further enables a great designer/developer workflow by supporting concepts like layout management, controls, styles, templates, and resources - which help avoid scenarios where designers and developers end up tripping over each other when integrating functionality, behavior and expressive design. Silverlight 2 Twitter Sample Last month I posted an in-depth blog tutorial on how to build a Silverlight 2 Digg application which you can read here. This tutorial was aimed primarily at developers, and focused on introducing the fundamental programming concepts involved when building a Silverlight 2 application. Today Celso Gomes and Peter Blois posted a cool 10 minute video tutorial that shows off using Expression Blend to stylize a Silverlight 2 Twitter Messenger application. You can watch the video here. You can download the source code for the completed Silverlight Twitter application here. The video does a nice job demonstrating how designers can re-style a Silverlight application without having to mess with the code behind it. In the process it shows some of the power and capability that Expression Blend 2 provides to build really rich user experiences. Celso starts with a developer version of the application, and then customizes and sculpts the UI to have a fun twitter character theme:  
The Application Model The Silverlight Twitter client is hosted within an ASP.NET server application that exposes a web service that enables the Silverlight Twitter application to communicate to the Twitter service (since Twitter does not allow direct access from client applications). Communication between the Silverlight client and the ASP.NET web server is done using Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). The client application uses a Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern (also known as the Model-View-ViewModel pattern) which is commonly used in large WPF applications. Even though this is a fairly simple application they wanted to take advantage of the flexibility that MVP allows and allow room for future growth. Maintaining the separation between the visuals and the application logic also enables designers to make fairly complex visual changes without impacting the basic application flow. The video goes through some examples of the styling flexibility this architecture facilitates. The Styling Process In the video, Celso highlights how Resources can help designers quickly change colors. A common Brush Resource, for example, can be used to change the color of all the text elements in the application: 
Celso shows how easy is to create new User Controls from graphics using Expression Blend 2 SP1 (just select multiple elements in the designer, right-click, and choose the "Make Control" menu option): 
And also how to create new states inside this new User Control (using the Visual State Manager feature - which is also now supported with WPF), to animate the bird (fly, blink, etc...) 
Celso also shows how to create animations for each state, changing advanced properties like Key Spline curves, and Repeat Behavior: 
He also shows how to create custom buttons from drawings (which can come from XAML or any other design tool like Photoshop or Illustrator). All the states of a Button Control are available out of the box. 
Expression Blend also enables you to easily change complex controls like List Boxes. Designers have access to all Styles, Templates, and states - and can completely customize all the parts of a List Box without having to write any code: 
You can watch the video and download the code to check out the above Twitter application. To learn more about Expression Blend, I also recommend watching the Expression Blend: Tips and Tricks presentation from the PDC conference two weeks ago. Hope this helps, Scott 
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