Nuno Filipe Godinho : Silverlight

PDC09 – Day Two – Advanced Topics for Building Large-Scale Applications with Microsoft Silverlight

NunoGodinho — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:17:45 GMT

MVVM – Model-View-ViewModel

Separation of concerns
View = handled UI
Model = contains pure data
ViewModel = communicates between View and Model through bindings
Works Great with Silverlight and WPF

XAML based data bindings

Testable

Model

Represents the Data
The entity
Not required to know where it gets the data from

WCF service, WCF Ria Services

View

The Screen, the UI

ViewModel

Main source of logic for the MVVM triad
Connects the Model and the View
Abstracts the View
Public Properties that are bound to the View
INotifyPropertyChanged and INotifyCollectionChanged talk to the view through bindings
Listens for changes from the View made to the Model

Variations of the MVVM

View First

ViewModel is declared as StaticResource in the Views XAML

Works well in Blend

Another way is to create the ViewModel in the View’s code-behind

ViewModel First

View is injected into the ViewModel’s constructor
Doesn’t allow the possibility to use Blend

View and ViewModel Marriage

View must be paired with the ViewModel somehow
Doesn’t allow the possibility to use Blend

What don’t we have with MVVM

Commanding

Prism 2

Prism is a set of options
Use what you want and ignore the rest
Technical Concepts:

Modules
Shell
Commands
Containers
Regions
Bootstrapper
Event Aggregation
Unity and Dependency Injection

PDC09 – Day Two - Keynote

NunoGodinho — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:04:10 GMT

Steven Sinofsky

Developing Windows 7

Learning

Solving Problems + Innovation
“Engineering 7” Blog made a very interesting Dialog even without having any code of the product, just about the decisions that were being made
Ecosystem Readiness
Developer Pre-Beta, Beta, RC rhythm
Telemetry

Telemetry

Seed Feedback Button
Hardware and Device Diagnostics
Reliability Analysis Component (RAC)
Software Quality Monitor (SQM)
Windows Error Reporting (WER or “Watson”)

Developing Internet Explorer

Learning

Responsible Engineering
Trustworthy computing
Real-world Interoperability
Innovative Technologies

Updates

Standards Progress

ACID
HTML 5

Performance Improvements

Javascript

Ecosystem Innovations

IE 9 with 3 weeks of development is looking interesting in terms of performance and interoperability
Using Direct2D and DirectWrite to provide better graphics rendering and Hardware Acceleration without any change of the current sites

Windows 7 Call to Action

Integrate with Windows 7 Desktop
Develop 64-bit
Focus on fundamentals in your code
Build on new APIs in Windows 7
Watch more videos today on Channel 9 about Internet Explorer 9

Scott Guthrie – Developer Division

Silverlight 4

Focus

Media

Web and and Microphones

gives you access to the raw access to the input and so you can make the changes you want on that stream, like using PixelShader with it

Multicast streaming

IIS Smooth Streaming

Silverlight Media Framework available today on CodePlex

Output protection
Offline DRM support

Business Applications

Printing

Print Preview Dialogs
Printing Configurations
This is a Print API that you can change however you want and not only a screenshot of the screen

Rich Text
Clipboard access

Local and Central clipboard support

Right Click
Mouse Wheel
Implicit Styles
Drag and Drop
Drop Targets support
Bidi & RTL
HTML

Hosting HTML inside Silverlight application
We can interact with the HTML contents as being a brush

Commanding and MVVM
Data & Networking

Sharing Assemblies across SL and .NET 4.0
Data Binding Improvements
UDP Multicast support
REST Enhancements
WCF Improvements

Main one is TCP channel support

WCF RIA Services

All the capabilities of RIA Services and with all the capabilities of WCF
Works well with OAuth

Visual Studio 2010

WYSIWYG Design Surface
XAML Intellisense
WF and POCO Support

Additional Control
Beyond the Browser

Windowing API
Notification Popups
HTML support
Drop Target support
Opening the Sandbox

Trusted Application

Custom Windows Chrome
Local File System
Cross-file Network
Keyboard support in Full Screen Mode
COM object support in Windows

using dynamic keyword of C#

Access to Several devices form the client machine

Silverlight Performance

Twice as fast

uses JIT like the normal .NET Application

30% faster startup
New Profiling support

Google Chrome will support SL4 also

Schedule

Beta

All the features seen today
VS2010 Tools
Expression Tools

RC
Final Release

First half of Next Year (MIX’10 ????)

Kurt DelBene – Office and Sharepoint 2010

Microsoft Business Productivity Infrastructure

Unified Business Platform

Unified Communications
Business Intelligence
Enterprise Content Management
Collaboration
Enterprise Search

Office and Sharepoint Development Platforms

User Experience

Based in Services and in a Object Model that can be extended in order to create better User Experience

Application Services

Expose all the capabilities in the Applications as services to be consumed without loosing any of the features that we have access inside the solution

Content and Data Management
Interoperability with LOB integration

possibility to more easily integrate the external LOB applications inside the products

Tools and Deployment Flexibility

New Tools for Sharepoint Development
Debug capabilities are currently in the Tools

Now Debug really works. Awesome.

Interesting capability to import a Sharepoint solution to start the project
Possibility to deploy the solution in a sandboxed solution. Interesting in terms of security
Deployment

Simply upload the package generated by Visual Studio 2010 into the sharepoint – Real All-in-One working for deployment also. Now it looks really good for Sharepoint Development.

Announcing the Office and Sharepoint 2010 Public Beta to download www.microsoft.com/2010

Office 2010
Sharepoint Server
Project Server 2010
Visio 2010
Mobile is also available today in the mobile marketplace

Sharepoint has a Silverlight WebPart out of the Box.
Sharepoint 2010 now has the Office Ribbon

Announcing Duet Enterprise for Microsoft Sharepoint and SAP

Consume and extend SAP from Microsoft Sharepoint 2010
Available on the Second-half of 2010

Announcing the Outlook Social Connector

Windows Live, Sharepoint Server, Linkedin
Has an Open SDK that can be used to develop new connectors for this connector

Silverlight 4 Previewed in Amsterdam

NunoGodinho — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 19:18:17 GMT

Silverlight 3 just got out and already we are hearing about the new version, and this is one of the huge advantages that Silverlight has (IMHO of course), because we know that they are always trying to get more into there without sacrificing the size and the cross-browser and platform of the technology.

One of the first sneaks about the new Silverlight 4 was in Amsterdam as you can read more here, in this The Inquirer article.

“(…)In an early preview of Silverlight 4 media-specific features, the Vole showed off what its next generation of movie experiences could do even when saddled with its offline PlayReady DRM. (…)”

“(…) A spokes Vole said that Silverlight 4 will enable movie studios to offer network-delivered updates, special offers and live events, and flog more than just one or two movies to punters (…)”

I say, hum interesting, I would love to know more about the new features so I’ll keep blogging when that happens.

Prism and .NET RIA Services

NunoGodinho — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:45:54 GMT

Prism is a real interesting Guidance and was built for Silverlight 2.0, and some of the feedback I’ve received is if it works well with the new version 3.0, and so I remembered blogging about this.

The most usual questions are:

1. Does this work well with Silverlight 3 ?

Yes it works fine with this new version of Silverlight.

2. Does this work well with .NET RIA Services ?

Yes. They don’t only work well together, they actually complement each other, since one of the elements in the product backlog of the Prism Team was the access to server data, and since they didn’t had time to do this, .NET RIA Services can do this for them.

In order to know more about the subject read this David Hill’s post.

About how to have quick starts about Prism read this other David Hill’s post.

ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 usage in Silverlight

NunoGodinho — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:24:11 GMT

After all the information’s regarding the ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2, now the Product Team launched a tutorial in how to use this version with Silverlight from another domain and also out-of-browser. And so I think this is important for everybody that is working in Silverlight.

In order to know more about the subject read this post from the Product Team.

New Features in CTP2 ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 Explained

NunoGodinho — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:21:57 GMT

After yesterdays post about the availability of the CTP2 of ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 here are some more details regarding the Projections, Feed Customization and Data Binding.

As told before Projections, the possibility of getting only the columns chosen instead of retrieving all the columns. With this we have now a new set of expressions to provide this ability on the URI, and in order to achieve we have now two new keywords available, that are:

$select, allow us to define which columns we want to be get
- Instead of using only the http://127.0.0.1/NorthwindService.svc/Customers that will return every column of the Entity Customer, we want to define that we only get the CustomerID and the ContactName, and in order to achieve this we use the new $select keyword like this http://127.0.0.1/NorthwindService.svc/Customers?$select=CustomerID,ContactName
- The way to define the several columns is to use commas to separate the column names.
- If we want to use this keyword and define all columns is the following http://127.0.0.1/NorthwindService.svc/Customers?$select=*

$expand, defines that along with the results from the requested entity, we also want to get the results from a specific relationship
- Usage: http://127.0.0.1/NorthwindService.svc/Customers?$expand=Orders/OrderDetails

But in order for this to work we need to add the following 2 properties to the service:

First, make projections available using the URI.

  1: config.DataServiceBehavior.AcceptProjectionRequests = true;

Secondly, make the protocol version to V2

  1: config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = System.Data.Services.Common.DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2;

For more information’s regarding this subject read this post from the Product Team.

Feed Customizations are the possibility to customize the way the feed is created instead of using only the default AtomPub version.

In order to achieve this customization we must use the EntityPropertyMappingAttribute that will define the relationship between the Property and the name that will be used in the feed.

In the following sample we are defining that when building the feed, instead of using the complete type definition

  1: <author>
  2:    <name>Nuno Godinho</name>
  3:    <email>someone@company.com</email>
  4: </author>

we will have the Author element with the value that is on the Name Property of the Author class (considering that Author is a type that contains several properties and one of them is Name):

  1: [EntityPropertyMapping(
  2:        "Author",/*Source property path , the property of the Entity type to be mapped*/
  3:        SyndicationItemProperty.AuthorName,/* Syndication item to which the Source Property is mapped*/
  4:        SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext,/* Syndication content kind for the syndication item this property is bound to */
  5:        true/* If  false the property value is only placed at the mapped location & removed from the <content> section of the atom:entry*/
  6:        )]

  1: <author>Nuno Godinho</author>

Introducing Web Friendly Feeds aka Friendly Feeds (Updated for CTP2)

ADO.NET Data Services Friendly Feeds , Mapping CLR Types

ADO.NET Data Services Friendly Feeds , Mapping EDM Types – I

Data Binding is now simplified, because using the DataServiceCollection class we can bind it directly to the Data Service.

For more information’s regarding this subject read this post from the Product Team.

Interesting Diagram Generation Controls

NunoGodinho — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:14:45 GMT

Some time from now I was searching for controls that would made the generation of diagrams of several kinds, like for instance::

Network Diagram
Worlflow Diagram
Database Diagram
Hierarchy Diagram
…

Basically I was trying to find a control that would solve the problem of having to search for different controls depending on the type of diagrams I would need in my projects, an in this case the project was in Silverlight. After a lot of research and a lot of CodeProject and others that would just fit a specific problem, I came across one that solved exactly what I was needing, and I found it on MindFusion named DiagramLite.

The DiagramLite is a quite interesting control since it provides a way for us to make available any kind of diagram in Silverlight and with the possibility of editing that diagram, and this makes it possible to create a new Workflow designer for our solutions using Silverlight. (Of course I now that this was done without this control, but it seems to me that it would be a lot easier with it, but this is just from my experience).

You can find samples here.

Along with the Silverlight version I also found that they also have several other versions for WPF, WinForms, ASP.NET, .Net Compact Framework and even Java, and for this it seems that they are pretty experts into the Diagram controls, and it’s pretty interesting since their support is pretty quick as well as clear.

I hope this post comes handy for you, since when it was me I had to to do a lot of searching and testing for several possibilities.

Silverlight 3 with MEF support

NunoGodinho — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:07:23 GMT

One of the things that I really thing would be important for Silverlight in order to make easier the Modularity of the Business applications developed in Silverlight, since the Prism approach is nice but I think that the MEF approach is simpler and so this should be a breakthrough for Silverlight Business Application Development.

After some talks with Brad Adams from Microsoft and also posting some feedback I came to this very interesting post of Brad that talks about how can we use the MEF for Silverlight that was made available on the CodePlex site related to MEF.

Brad make a very good example of the usage of MEF in this blog post.

So enjoy the reading and good coding.

Update .NET RIA Services

NunoGodinho — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:55:25 GMT

Recently I posted about .NET RIA Services that is a framework that is associated with Silverlight and will make the development of business applications easier.

So here a some more links in order to understand .NET RIA Services better.

Have a nice reading about .NET RIA Services

Silverlight 3 related information’s

NunoGodinho — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:20:38 GMT

Silverlight 3 has been release and now we have also the Unit Testing Framework binaries here that will help making Unit Tests in our solutions when using Silverlight 3. More information’s here.

Also important is the release of Prism Visual Studio Templates that will help developers get using the Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight, and make what seems to be hard, simpler, and also with the new MVVM pattern available.

Download the Prism Visual Studio Templates here.

Update to the Prism Visual Studio Templates here.

More information about the Prism Visual Studio Templates here.

.NET RIA Services

NunoGodinho — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:32:15 GMT

.NET RIA Services is a framework that is associated with Silverlight and will make the development of business applications easier.

In order to know more I decided to compile a set of articles that I think are very interesting to understand .NET RIA Services better.

Have a nice reading about .NET RIA Services

Silverlight 3.0 RTW

NunoGodinho — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:04:29 GMT

As you might already know Silverlight 3 RTW is out and with it the great power of Silverlight 3 was unleashed.

The main features made available are:

Tools

Expression Blend 3 RC

Ability to Import Photoshop and Illustrator
SketchFlow
State Management

Visual Studio 2010

Still in Beta 1 version but with a strong design tools for Silverlight

Controls

DataForm

Simple control that enabled a flexible way to display data of a single entity definition. Support several methods such as Display, Edit and Update and navigating to data.

DataPager

This control gives Paging support such as Next/Previous and Numeric paging on elements that implement the IPageViewCollection interface.

Navigation Framework

A Framework that will provide an easy way to provide navigation to applications, and that introduces to Silverlight 2 new controls, called Frame and Page. With it we can partition views into separate XAML files and navigate to each view independently. Also integrates with Browser history providing Browser Back and Forward functions.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
Deep Linking

Possibility to navigate directly to a specific page in the Silverlight solution

New toolkit controls

Media

Support for H.264 and AAC encoding
Raw audio/video pipeline support that will provide audio/video decoding outside the runtime and render in Silverlight

Graphics

Perspective 3D

Support for 3D scenarios and putting object on a plane for various user experience scenarios.

Pixel Effects

Support for Pixel Shader Effects

Animation Easing

Provides a set of possibilities that will interpolate the animations and provide smoother animation transitions and other visual effects

Bitmap API
GPU Acceleration
Text/Image Improvements

Element-to-Element Binding
Local Connection API

Enable scenarios in order to Silverlight solutions to communicate with each other through an asynchronous messaging system. A pub-sub implementation for Silverlight applications.

Binding Validation API
SaveFileDialog
Dynamic Styling and Based On

Support for DynamicResource
Support for Based On Styles

Caret Brush
Merged Resource Dictionaries
Assembly Caching

Possibility of having the Silverlight solutions load core runtime from a runtime cache rather than having it on the xap file.

Network monitoring API

Possibility to check network status changes.

Out-of-Browser and Offline

Possibility to have the applications run on and off the browser and Offline also, having it work like a desktop solution.

Binary XML

Ability to communicate using WCF with Binary XML data format and providing smaller communications,

Web Service Utility

Slsvcutil.exe that works like the regular WCF svcutil tool but specific for Silverlight

.NET RIA Services (Still in CTP version)

A complete framework that will provide an easy way to develop using the n-tier pattern using the power of ASP.NET to help Silverlight to achieve this.

Know more on the Get Started session of Silverlight.net site.

Interesting articles regarding .NET RIA Services

NunoGodinho — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:51:46 GMT

.NET RIA Services are here to make our life easier and they were introduced as part of the Silverlight 3.0 but are not only for Silverlight.

Some interesting reading about it is this:

Getting started with the .NET RIA Services by Maurice de Beijer that talks about the what and the why of .NET RIA Services, as well as the problems that were addressed when designing this RIA Services.
Unit Testing Business Logic in .NET RIA Services by Vijay that talks about how to perform Unit testing on top of the .NET RIA Services elements
.NET RIA Services Samples that provides some samples and Walkthroughs about this new technology that started in Silverlight 3.0 but has a lot more to give.

MIX’09 – Reviewing – Building Microsoft Silverlight Controls

NunoGodinho — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 18:08:30 GMT

Karen Corby – Lead Program Manager on Silverlight Team - http://scorbs.com/work

“One major difference between site with a strong Brand Image … and one with weak Brand Image … is that brand positioning permeates every part of a strong site …” – Forrester, June 9, 2005

Styling
- “Property Bag” styling
- Through the <Style> element
- Works with Controls , UserControls, Shapes, Panels
- App.xaml now support the MergedResourceDictionaries functionality like in WPF
  - <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    - <ResourceDictionary Source=”Assets.xaml”/>
  - </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
- Styles now support BasedOn
  - <Style x:Key=”NewStyle” BasedOn=”{StaticResource BaseStyle}”>
Skinning
- Completely replace visuals
- Through <ControlTemplate> element
- {TemplaceBinding} extension
- Works with Custom Controls (not UserControls, Panels, Shapes)
- Based on a well defined separation with: (same way as in Silverlight 2.0)
  - Control Logic
  - Control Visuals
- Parts and States Model
  - Goals:
    - Make it easy to skin your control
    - Defined separation between logic and visuals
    - Explicit control contract
  - Parts:
    - Names element (x:Name) in Template
    - Why is it needed to be a named element? Because, code manipulates element in same way.
  - States:
    - Visual look of control in a particular state
    - Thought <VisualState> element
    - Not all ControlTemplates need a Visual State
  - StateGroups:
    - Set of mutually exclusive states
    - Different state groups are orthogonal
    - Though the <VisualStateGroup> element
  - Using States and Transitions
    - VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups
      - Attached Properties on root visual of ControlTemplate
    - VisualStateGroup
      - Contains group of related states
    - VisualState class
      - Contains storyboard that represents visual look
    - VisualTransition class
      - Contains duration for automatic transition animations
      - Contains storyboard for explicit transition animations
      - Default, or “To/From” transitions
      - GeneratedEasingFunction that is part of Silverlight 3 and that make it easy to define how an animation will work without the need to a storyboard
Data Binding
- Validation and Binding
  - Flags we need to enable
    - NotifyOnValidationErrors
    - ValidatesOnExceptions
  - Bindings
    - RelativeSource Binding was included
      - Self & TemplatedParent as source
      - Power of full binding in Templates
        
        Attached DP sources, converters, two-way, etc.
    - DependecyProperties as Sources for Bindings
      - Update based on DP changes
  - Out-of-the-Box controls with Validation enabled
    - TextBox
    - CheckBox
    - RadioButton
    - ComboBox
    - ListBox
    - PasswordBox
      - Currently isn’t bindable but it will be in the SL 3.0 RTW
- Binding and Styles
  - ElementName binding
    - “UI to UI binding”
    - FrameworkElement can be used as a binding Source
  - The Styles can now be changed in runtime
    - the “write once” style limitation was removed in SL 3.0
- Silverlight Styling vs WPF Styling
  - Currently not supported in SL 3.0
    - Implicit Styles
      - A workaround was used in the Silverlight Toolkit
    - Dynamic Resources
    - Triggers
      - Blend’s Behaviors
Custom Controls
- Based on Control class
- Add the Control Contract in the Control Logic Class
  - TemplateVisualState elements
  - TemplatePart elements
- Generic.xaml
  - Specific element and it must be placed inside a folder named themes on your project
  - Needs to be placed as a Resource on the project
- Define the DefaultStyleKey property
  - Informs the element that it should go to the generic.xaml to get the default style
- “Look-less” by default
- Silverlight and WPF Skinning Model
  - Same Model
From Silverlight to WPF
- Viewbox in Silverlight is part of the Toolkit and in WPF is part of the core runtime
- VSM in WPF is part of the WPF Toolkit and in Silverlight is in the core runtime – Will be part of the core runtime of WPF in the next version
- EasingFunctions are part of the Silverlight core runtime and will only be part of the next version of WPF
Layout
- Custom Panels
- In Silverlight is two pass algorithm
  - Measure
    - Check How much space do you need
  - Arrange
    - Having the space needed arrange your elements inside it

One more very interesting talk about Silverlight in MIX'09 and that showed up some very important new features in terms of Styling, Skinning and Custom Control definition.

MIX’09 – Reviewing – Future of Expression Blend

NunoGodinho — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:14:23 GMT

Douglas Olson – General Manager

Christian Schormann – Director, Program Manager

Expression Mission

Enable professional designers to create great UX with better productivity at lower costs.
Help integrate design and designers into the process of software creation

Expression Blend 3 Goals

Enable early-stage design & prototyping (SketchFlow)
- Created to address issues felt at the start of the software design process:
  - Top-down & bottom-ups design lets you experiments with ideas
  - SketchFlow Player lets you try your design at any time
  - Facilitate communication of design ideas
  - Easy to gather, evaluate and use stakeholders feedback
- Blend Elements
  - SketchFlow Application Flow
    - Important to think on pages like whiteboards to sketch, insert elements, and all what you normally do.
- Usage of SketchStyles that will allow us to maintain the Sketchy style of the Design proposal, that is very important.
- Export to Word
  - Dumps all the SketckFlow elements like Application Flow, Pages, Comments and so on.
Make visual design easier for designer
- Embrace the Design Ecosystem
  - Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator file format import with extensive support for layers
    - Preview of Photoshop in Windows Explorer even without PhotoShop installed
    - Possibility to choose what to do with each layer
    - Blend informs if the font is default or not and gives the possibility to choose other font or even the same font by specifying the path of the font
    - All content will be fully editable
    - Layer Groups are also maintained
    - By selecting an object we can make “Make into Control”
      - We choose the type of control we want to create
      - What’s done is:
        
        A style is created in order for the control to became what was defined when we selected the elements to generate the control.
        
        The control created will replace the selected element and gain the same properties that the original element had.
        
        The style is associates to the control
        
        Note: There’s now a problem when the controls have different parts, like the Slider, and this will generate all but we need to wire-up the style to the correct parts
  - Fast and Easy Control Skinning
  - Enhanced editing of visual States
  - Richer state transitions
- Focus On Your Art
  - Redefined artboard interaction
  - Better gradient editing
Design with Data (Data Generation / Sampling inside Blend)
- In the Data Tab we will have the possibility to define the DataSource structure that we want, and then just generate the data, and there are some templates like Phone Numbers, Strings, Dates, and so on.
- Make it easy to build a data-driven applications:
  - Sample Data:
    - Design applications without access to live data source
    - Create sample data on the fly
    - Populate with configurable random data
  - Drag and Drop Master-Detail creation
  - Better user experience for data binding
  - Design-time support for Silverlight 3 controls
- There’s a Master and a Details Mode in the Data Tab that will make it easier to perform the Master-Details view
  - in this version of Blend we need to wire-up the Master and Detail elements, and this will not be needed in the last version of Blend
Build interactivity without code (Behaviors)
- Introduction to Behaviors:
  - Production-quality interactivity applied with Drag & Drop ease
  - A design pattern for reusable interactivity
  - Example: MouseGestureBehavior
    - You can define the gesture that will be used and make changes to the elements based on that gesture
Enable Source Code Control (Integration with Source Safe and TFS by default) – This is available also inside Expression Web
- Design for Developers
  - Source Control
    - Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Support
    - New editor with Intellisense for code & XAML
Support for Silverlight 3

Note:

The same features are available for WPF and Silverlight in Blend 3.

It’s important to avoid having final or high-definition elements in the Sketch design because customers will start looking in the direction of the rendering instead of the functionality.

Microsoft Releases Roadmap

NunoGodinho — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 22:12:16 GMT

A lot is being announced this days regarding Microsoft Products and Technologies, and so this is a little summary of all those information's.

MIX’09 - Reviewing – Deep Dive into Microsoft Silverlight Graphics

NunoGodinho — Fri, 22 May 2009 23:55:19 GMT

Seema Ramchandani

Overview

< 1 year from Silverlight 2 release
Scenarios:
- Customer adoption blockers
- Ease key customer pain points
- Engage in the enterprise space
- Continue media momentum
Final Release will be at Summer 2009

In order to work in the “Customer adoption blockers” Microsoft defined 3 elements to be worked that were:

Effects
Projection
Hardware (GPU usage)

How we draw or how is Silverlight is Drawing elements

Threads
- UI Thread
  - User defined Code
  - Control Code
  - Animations
  - Layout
- Non-UI Thread
  - Frame Rasterization
  - Media Decoding
  - GPU work
Draw loop
- By default happens 60 time a second
- Elements (in Loop)
  - Event Handlers (Muscles of the Application)
  - Ticks (By default happens every 33 msec)
  - Any Property changes?
  - Layout
    - Pool for dirty flags
    - This will be changed from Pool version to Push in the RTM version
    - 2 Passes like in WPF:
      - Measure
        
        Check the size needed based on the children that are part of the control
      - Arrange
        
        After having got the size arrange the layout
    - Design for nesting
      - In the situation where you don’t know the panel layout were you are going have your control placed, you can opt-in to Measure and Arrange or not.
  - Queue up rendering changes
  - Rasterize in back buffer
    - Analyzing all changes at a time
  - Hey Browser, Show me the Frame
- Draw Steps (same as in WPF) in SL2
  1. Children
  2. Opacity Mask
  3. Opacity
  4. Clip
  5. RenderTransform
  6. Layout Offset (Internat RenderTransform)
  7. Parent Node
- Draw Steps in SL3
  1. Children
  2. Hardware Cache
  3. OpacityMask
  4. Opacity
  5. Effect
  6. Clip
  7. Projection
  8. Render Transform
  9. Layout Offset
  10. ParentNode
All three new concepts work on an Intermediate surface
- In there the effects will be applied
- Use the RenderToIntermediate

RenderToIntermediate

Effects
- Two types of effects
  - Built-in and Multi-pass
    - Blur Effect
    - DropShadow Effect
  - Custom Effect
    - Compiled HLSL pixel shader (2.0)
    - .NET Class invokes the shader
- Effects can pull content from any brush
- SL’s Shaders Engine
  - Consumes .ps files
  - Registers available:
    - 16 textures
    - 32 constants
- Pixel Shaders 2.0
  - DX SDK http://bit.ly/DXsdk
    - fxc.exe myshader.fx /Tps_2_0
  - WPF Build Task: http://bit.ly/buildtask
- Performance Overview
  - Blur and Dropshadow
    - When done, nullify UIElement.Effect
    - Smaple all pixels
    - BlurRadius impacts how wide the sample
  - Custom Effects
    - Math is easy
    - Pushing around memory is time-costly
  - Effects can pull content from any brush
    - Effects do not cache output
    - Change a pixel, run again
Writable Bitmap
- Way to replicate content
- A cache of the rendering pipeline
- In RTM it will be possible to save the output of the rendering
- A way to draw whatever you like
Projection
- SLIdentity – Slide Builder tool in Silverlight that uses Projection
- GlobalOffset Property is relative to the plane – Z axis
- LocalOffset Property is relative to the projection
- Layout Properties applied before:
  - Internal LayoutClip
- Layout Properties at the end
  - Panel.Zindex
  - Internal Layout Offset
GPU Caching
- Also called Hardware Cache
- Silverlight 3 GPU Acceleration
  - 3 Properties can be HW accelerated
    - Render Transforms
    - Rectangular Clipping
    - Blending
  - Platform avoid shuttling back and forth from the SW to the HW
  - Fallback to SW
    - Software-only path above the Cache point
- Hardware Acceleration
  - Plugin Setting EnableGPUAcceleration
  - UIElement.CacheMode Property set to BitmapCache
    - API: “Cache” element as a bitmap
    - Behavior: GPU handles Transforms, Blends and Clips
    - Ex:GPU handles Media shrink or stretch
  - Support:
    - Windows: Browser & Fullscreen (all DX9.0) – don’t have support for Windows Server 2000
    - MAC: Fullscreen
- Enhancing Media with GPU
  - Is the MediaElement doing any of these?
    - Streching
    - Rectangular clip
    - Blending via Opacity
  - If so, then:
    - Set the Properties
      - PlugIn: EnableGPUAcceleration=true
      - MediaElement: CacheMode=BitmapCache
      - Turn on EnableCacheVisualization
  - You can use XPerf to analyze the performance of the accelarations. Read how to use it in Siverlight
  - Test Results:
    - 360p Silverlight H.264 Video Stretched to FS
      - XP laptop 2004 with 1.3 GHz and Single Core
        
        CPU w/ SW Stretch = 70% CPU
        
        CPU w/ HW Stretch = 32% CPU
        
        Difference = –55%
      - Vista desktop 2004 with 2.4 GHz and Single Core
        
        CPU w/ SW Stretch = 88% CPU
        
        CPU w/ HW Stretch = 44% CPU
        
        Difference = –50%
      - Vista laptop 2007 with 2.3 GHz and Core 2 Duo
        
        CPU w/ SW Stretch = 60% CPU
        
        CPU w/ HW Stretch = 24% CPU
        
        Difference = –60%
    - 540p Silverlight H.264 Video Stretched to FS
      - XP laptop 2004 with 1.3 GHz and Single Core
        
        CPU w/ SW Stretch = 69% CPU
        
        CPU w/ HW Stretch = 59% CPU
        
        Difference = –15%
      - Vista laptop 2007 with 2.3 GHz and Core 2 Duo
        
        CPU w/ SW Stretch = 71% CPU
        
        CPU w/ HW Stretch = 37% CPU
        
        Difference = –47%

MIX’09 – Reviewing – What’s New in Silverlight 3.0

NunoGodinho — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:40:40 GMT

Joe Stegman – Group Program Manager

Silverlight 3.0 Tooling

Visual Studio 2008 Tools for Beta and RTM
- Include improved XAP Compression
  - 10-30% decrease in XAP size
- Interactive designer
  - In next Visual Studio release
  - See Visual Studio 2010 session for details
Expression Blend 3 Preview
- Final Release “later this year”
- See Blend session for details

H.264/AAC/MP4

Silverlight 3 supports H.264/AAC/MP4
Industry standard format:
- Hardware decoders on most devices
- YouTube, iPhone, Flash supported format
- Base format for QuickTime and iTunes
Silverlight 3 H.264 vs VC1
- DRM (only available for VC1)
- Windows Media Server (only available for VC1)

GPU Acceleration

Opt-in feature on Silverlight 3 plug-in
- Enabled final surface draw with the GPU
Opt-in feature per Element
- Use GPU to blend/composite multiple Elements
- Use GPU to stretch elements
Works in-browser and in full-screen mode
Where can we see this?
- Performance is highly enhanced

Prespective 3D

Prespective 3D
- Put a 2D objects in 3D space
  - Threat a 2D object as if it was in a 3D space
  - Not really 3D
  - Example:

                                      <Border>

                                        <Border.Projection>

                                            <PlaneProjection x:Name=”p3”/>

                                        </Border.Projection>

                                        <MediaElement Source=”Robots.wmv” Stretch=”Uniform” Width=”480”/>

                                      </Border>

X,Y,Z rotation and X,Y,Z rotation point
- Enabled the rotation of the 2D element on 3D Space based on the position or by placing the rotation on a specific point
- Properties for the Projection Element, that in this case is PlaneProjection:
  - Rotation
    - RotationX
    - RotationY
    - RotationZ
  - Rotation Point (changes the center of rotation)
    - CenterX
    - CenterY
    - CenterZ
Support Local/Global X,Y and Z offsets
Works not just with media but also with any other objects without losing the functionality

Animation Easing

Making animations easier and less mechanic, and based on the known standards this was placed inside the platform.

Added stock animation easing functions
- CircleEase, SineEase, BackEase
- ExponentialEase, PowerEase
- QuadraticEase, CubicEase
- QuarticEase, QuinticEase
- ElasticEase, BounceEase
Simplifies creation of new easing functions
Inside the Animation we now have a EasingFunction Property that defines the used EasingFunctions

</DoubkeAnumation

Save File Dialog

For security reasons there is never informations about the file localization and so on, just the Stream for the file and no more than that.
As the SaveFileDialog and OpenFileDialog that is used in Windows Forms we can filter the extension that we allow used in the SaveFileDialog

Effects and Pixel Shaders (version 2.0)

A complete set of effects that have been placed inside the framework and that can be easily used
- Example:

BlurEffect blur = new BlurEffect();

blur.Radius = 8;

this.LayoutRoot.Effect = blur;

Effects
- Impact the visual behavior and not functional behaviour
- Silverlight 3 supports Blug and Drop Shadow
Silverlight 3 supports custom “Effects”
- Custom “effects” are implemented as “shaders”
- Shaders typically authored using HLSL
  - Compiled into byte code using DX SDK utility
  - Silverlight 3 consumes the byte code
  - This shaders are also compatible with any Browser and Operation System
- Shaders allow developers to modify each pixel on a UI element before the pixel in rendered
- Shader = a per-pixel function or operation
Due to security issues right now it’s not GPU accelerated

Pixel APIs

Two Parts
- Dynamic bitmap generation
  - Read/write pixel in a bitmap
- Render a visual tree (elements) to a bitmap
Scenarios:
- Dynamic image generation (example: RT graphs)
- Image Editing and effects
- Clone Visuals
  - Examples: reflections, drag effect

Raw Audio/Video APIs

Similar to Pixel APIs but for audio/video
Scenarios
- Dynamic sound generation
- Custom audio/video decoders
Imagine doing effects on top of Video, like Drag and Drop, easily

Note: Silverlight Media doesn’t support an Alpha Key in the Video itself, and so we can use the Chroma Key to use with Shaders.

Local Messaging

Cross plug-in Silverlight communication
- Multiple plug-ins on the same page
- Multiple plug-ins on different browsers tabs
- Multiple plug-ins in difference browsers
Implementation
- Shared Memory
- Exposed as “named pipes”
- String based messages
- Secure because they are:
  - By Default
    - Can only talk to other plug-ins that came from the same domain
    - Based on an Handle
  - Can be extended by the developer
Scenarios
- Mixed HTML and Silverlight Architecture

UI Framework Improvements

Merged Resource Dictionaries
BasedOn Styles
Styles can be “cleared” (changed in runtime) – This means that we can re-arrange every style on runtime and do something like skinning
Multi-select ListBox
Listening to “handled” routed events
New VSM “Invalid States”
- Supported in TextBox, CheckBox, ComboBox, ListBox, RadioButton
- Provides elements like TextBox validation error definition

Other Improvements

SystemColors
- If we are in High-Contrast Mode this rather that what happens in Silverlight 2.0 will not only inform us of that, but also use the System Colors in order to present elements in the correct form
SaveFileDialog
Text Improvements
- ClearType Text (Post Beta)
- CaretBrush
- Flag to optimizing for animating text
  - Makes smooth animations to text
- Glyphs support for system fonts
  - Important for East Asian Scenarios
Image Refinements
- Possibility to bypass the cache
- Several other

New SDK Controls

Other Big Additions

Business Solutions
- Navigation Framework
- Data Control Additions
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Support
- N-Tier data Support ( .NET RIA Services)
Web Services Stack Improvements
- Binary XML, SOAP Faults, Credentials
Silverlight Toolkit

“Out-of-Browser”

Silverlight runs “Out of the Browser” (still sandboxed)
- Now new surface area, just the same restrictions as the normal Silverlight in the Browser
Built into the core Silverlight runtime
Enabled per “application”
- Manifest update
User Gesture to take “out of the browser”
- Right click support
- Custom Button in the application
New networking API’s
- Connected
- Disconnected
- Changed State
Offline APIs
- Launch state (Imported to detect if it was launched Online or Offline)
- Update APIs (Update Management like the Normal Web Application, or in other words, automatically)
Installation to “Out of the Browser"
- Install button can be changed and defined entirely by the developer
- Change the Manifest and define the Deployment.ApplicationIdentity Part
- This can only be programmatically, but this has to be based on a user Gesture like a click or something else, and just by calling:
  - Application.Current.Detach();
  - Application.Current.RunningOffline will inform if the application is running Offline
- The Icon of the Installation Box is customizable

Backward Compatibility with Silverlight 2.0 is granted in Silverlight 3.0.

This is an extremely important version for Silverlight and to be used as a real LOB Application technologies because it provides the same approach to Web and Desktop applications.

Improvements in Isolated Storage Performance.

Local Communications between InBrowser and Out-Of-Browser applications are also possible.

MIX09 – Keynote 1

NunoGodinho — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:26:21 GMT

Scott Guthrie on Advances in the Design Experiences

- Web

- powerful set of tools and technologies

- Expression Web 3

- Standard based web authoring

- Multi-language targeting

Erik Saltwell (Group Program Manager) about Expression Web 3.0

- Preview Feature that allows us to test the same design against several browsers and versions, and look at what are the differences

Announcement - Super Preview: IE 6,7,8 Beta Available Today also with a free version

Announcement - ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Already available for download

ASP.NET 4.0 and VS2010

- Improvements

- WebForms

- MVC

- AJAX

- Distributed Cache (Velocity)

- Visual Studio 2010

- Distribution

- Database deployment support

- Several versions of configuration files without tricks

Web Server Extension (all for free)

- IIS Database Manager

- New FTP Server with Security

- Request Routing

Microsoft Web Platform Installer

- Version 2.0 will be release this week

- Install latest versions of Microsoft Web Platform tools, server, database and so on

- Free download in www.microsoft.com/web

Windows Web App Gallery

- Allows us to find free web applications both in ASP.NET and PHP

- www.microsoft.com/web/gallery

- View, Review and Install the applications via Windows Platform Installer, possible to every known browser like, IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and so on.

- Customization of the install is possible inside the Web PI (Web Platform Installer)

Commerce Server 2009 (Available Now)

Azure Services Platform

- Preview launched in October last year

- User-demand driving new features

- Windows Azure: FastCGI/PHP and .Net full trust

- SQL Data Services: Relational Database

- .NET Services: More Web Standards

- On track for a commercial releases this year

BizSpark

Silverlight 3.0

- Netflix sample

- Media

- GPU hardware accelarated

- New codec support H.264, AAC, MPeg-4

- Raw bitstream Audio/Video API

- Improved logging

- IIS Media Services

- On-demand smooth streaming – with VC1 and H.264

- Live smooth streaming – Take software or hardware encoders that get live feeds and stream it on the network

- Edge Caching

- Web playlists

- Bit-rare throttling

- Advanced Logging

- Graphics

- GPU Acceleration and hardware composition

- Perspective 3D

- Bitmap & pixel API

- Pixel Shader effects

- Deep Zoom Improvements

- Application Development

- Deep linking, navigation and SEO

- Improved text quality

- Multi-touch support

- 100+ controls available

- Library caching support – Similar to GAC

- Design Workflow

- Expression Blend 3

- Sketch Flow – prototyping applications

- Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator imports

- File remain editable

- Behaviors

- Design with Data

- Source code Control support

- XAML, C# and VB.NET Support inside

- Data

- Data-binding improvements like element to element binding

- Validation Error Templates

- Server data push improvements making it possible for the server to notify the SL for changes being made on data used by the application

Announcement SAP NetWeaver support

Silverlight Outside the Browser

- Scenarios

- Both for Windows and Mac

- Extend Media Experiences

- Companion applications for your web site

- Capabilities

- Simple consumer friendly experience

- Safe, Secure, still sandboxed environment

- built-in auto-update support

- Built offline-aware applications

- An event is fired when the network change status

- Integrate with underlying operating System

Silverlight Download Size

- Thousands of new API

- Hundreds of new features

- New codecs

- Out of browser support

- Smaller 40k as SL2

Available Today

- SL 3 Beta

- Expression Blend 3

- SL3 Tools for VS2008

- IIS Media Services

MIX’09 – Keynote 1

NunoGodinho — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:20:49 GMT

Here we are for the start of great event MIX’09

Starting with Bill Buxton from Microsoft Research with “Return of Experience – By Design”

- This is the right time to think in Design

In this troubled times this is what drives the differences

- Examples:

- Raymond Loewy 1929, Coca Cola, and so on…

- Walter Dorwin Teague 1926, Vanity Kodak in 1928, iPod Mini 2003, learning from the past

- What’s Experience Design?

- It’s Balancing between multiple approaches and the value of them, by using Sketching

- Steps:

- Sketches

- State Diagram

- Define all things about the transition as well as the States because other way it will go wrong

- Six Degrees

- All teams in Microsoft are in the process, from the Design to the Development always thinking about the Experience