Silverlight Samurai Skills Follow-up
Thanks to everyone who came out to my Silverlight Samurai Skills presentations this morning in Toronto, and to Microsoft Canada for inviting me to present at this event. When the Canadian team does events, they do them really big – and really well!
I hope you found the sessions useful and engaging. They certainly provided a lap around a whole lot of the core features in Silverlight 2. I promised to provide code and links so you can follow-up, get connected with the community, and find out more.
The Code
As promised, click here for all the source code from the presentation, including start, end-of-part-one, and completed versions. Import the .vssettings file into Visual Studio to get the code snippets.
I’ll post the slide decks soon – I’ve been asked to hold off a little bit on those.
The Links
Note – this list is far from exhaustive, it just points to some things I’ve found really helpful.
Silverlight.NET – Get Started section has all the bits you need
Additional Silverlight Controls and Themes
Silverlight Toolkit (Microsoft, MS-PL)
Silverlight Contrib (Third-party, MS-PL)
see also
Blacklight, which comes from the Patient Journey Demonstrator
Layout
Silverlight Layout Fundamentals (DevDave)
VisualStateManager, Parts and State Model
Parts and States Model with VSM (scorbs, 4-part series)
IsolatedStorage
IsolatedStorage quickstart (wildermuth)
Browser DOM Integration
Forward-Back Browser Integration (webjak)
More Links [update 12 Nov]
Qixing and Laurent have also put together a FAQ based on feedback from the Montreal version of Silverlight Samurai Skills.
The P.S.
My consultancy, Carrington Technologies, specializes in Silverlight and WPF consulting and training, and we’re based out of Toronto. If you’re interested in finding out more, please drop me a line via the contact page, or through rob at robburke dot not.
p.p.s. Silverlight Streaming has now been updated to Silverlight 2 RTW, so the Deep Zoom FractLOL should now work. [Updated November 2nd]
final p.s. [update] I am greatly indebted to Microsoft’s Mark Rideout, whose excellent TechEd 2008 session on Silverlight 2 formed the basis for the core demo I used in these sessions. I’ve updated his demo to highlight some of the features added to Silverlight 2 between Beta 2 and RTW (including additions to the IsolatedStorage API, and an allegedly more compliant browser history implementation).
Goodnight, Mars Phoenix
This is relevant to my blog because (a) it moved me, and (b) it’s about passionate people engaging other earthlings about incredible technology.
The Mars Phoenix has been “twittering” for months. Or more correctly, its team has been twittering in the “voice” of the Phoenix for months. So I’ve followed the lander as it updates us back on Earth about how it’s hangin’ on the surface of another planet.
The lander is about to go into “Lazarus mode,” and unlikely to wake up again during the next Martian summer. And so Mars Phoenix twittered:
“Many questions about next Martian summer and will I wake up? It is beyond expectations. But if it happens you’ll be among the 1st to know”
and then, stepping out of character,
“In case we don’t get this chance again, thank you all so much for the questions, comments & good wishes over the mission. It’s been awesome.”
I was almost choked up by what might be the Phoenix’s final posts. Does that sentence read as a confession? We all knew it was going to pass away shut down eventually.
Today, there are over 37,000 followers of the Phoenix twitter feed, and at least one guy in Toronto who’s moved to hear the Phoenix is going to sleep, perchance to dream, and possibly for good.
Thanks to the Phoenix team’s Twitter personality, I’ve been engaged more frequently and deeply than I ever expected. And I don’t even Twitter.
Continue ReadingLOL+Arts Exhibit in San Francisco
I’m delighted to hear that the FractLOL, which blends Deep Zoom and LOLCats into a mosaic of hilarity, is going to be exhibited at LOL+Arts, a cross-media exhibit of artworks inspired by the LOLCat phenomenon. The exhibit will be open in San Francisco on October 23rd, and will benefit Partners in Reading and their work on adult literacy.
To celebrate, I’ve updated the FractLOL to Silverlight 2 RTW, and fully intend to subject you to it again. Here. Right now.
Note: Silverlight Streaming has now been fully updated to Silverlight RTW. The FractLOL can be viewed on the Mac or PC, so long as you install the lightweight Silverlight 2 plug-in from Microsoft. [Updated on the 2nd of November.]
I’ve also updated the FractLOL page on this blog with a bit more information about how this came to be.
Here are links to the LOL+Arts Site, curator Marianne Goldin’s blog, and the announcement on icanhascheezburger.com.
I love this image they used to promote the event on icanhascheezburger, and wish I had a high-res version for my desktop wallpaper:
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few months, it’s that if you want to drive traffic to your blog, technical articles can be pretty good, but you should really just save yourself the time and energy and just add cats.
LOLCats, akshuly.
Silverlight Samurai Skills at Microsoft’s TechDays Canada 2008
I’m looking forward to taking part in the Toronto stop of Microsoft Canada’s upcoming TechDays Canada tour.
On the morning of October 30th, I’ll be delivering a two-part presentation in Toronto called Mastering your Silverlight Samurai Skills, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun session.
About the Content
The two sessions will see us spending the vast majority of our time in Visual Studio (with a bit of Expression Blend as well), building parts of an end-to-end app to highlight the capabilities and features of Silverlight 2, while showing as many tips and tricks as I can.
Who is these presentations For?
If you’re new to Silverlight 2 development, these sessions will offer you a real lap-around, and by the time they’re finished, you’ll know where to go to learn more about whatever facets of Silverlight are relevant to your development interests.
If you’ve been working with the Silverlight 2 betas, let me say that I hope everyone in the audience will pick up and share some tips and tricks.
As always, I want the sessions to be useful, so please comment on this post or send me mail if there’s something in particular you think I should cover.
For More About The Event
Check out the TechDays Canada site, and if you’re interested, register as soon as possible, as there is an early-bird deal if you register before the 29th. It looks like a well-planned conference with a good variety of in-depth sessions for both Developers and IT Professionals.
If you’re in the Toronto area, I hope to see you at the Toronto Congress Centre on the 30th!
Continue Reading