Nuno Filipe Godinho : Silverlight Offline

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

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.

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.

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.

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 – 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.