My Dad's Garden.

Tuesday was the Silverlight User Group at Microsoft offices in Edina.  Wow.  Lots of Men there!   ( OK, I counted three women, 123 men inside the presentation area.  But that's a topic for another blog post.  haha) 

Doug Nelson presented to us and very skillfully demonstrated how Silverlight controls can interact with the browser.  Doug's source code for the presentation will be here, I promise.  I have to corral him first, so give me a few.

Here are some notes I took while there, I apologize if my observations are not quite on topic - I'm a presenter in training , I get to give the next talk and I have a lot to learn.

Doug used a special coloring scheme for his Visual Studio environment which was nicely visible from the back of the room where I sat.  I noted the colors ( I don't know why)

SCREEN COLORS:  Black background, white regular writing, neon green comments.  blue keywords, pink class names.

The presentation title was "Kiss Your Javascript Goodbye". This is catchy, but to me it was more of a great tutorial on how the browser and Silverlight applications interact with each other. It was very ugly, but that's ok because all the functionality we needed to know about was discussed.

Here's just a simple list of how the topics flowed:

1. How Silverlight applications are structured, what they look like in Visual Studio.
2. What is App.xaml and what purpose does it serve.
3. The use of Window.Eval in the application error for error reporting (security - this is just a demo.)
4. Page.xaml. How is it constructed. How you hook into browser events.
5. Presentation Slide.
   1. a. Page, Window, Document
   2. HtmlPage
      1. Browser Information
      2. Document
      3. Window
6. Html Document
7. DEEP LINKING!!!!!!!!
8. NavigateToBookmark!!!!!
9. HtmlWindow
   1. Alert, Confirm
   2. Submit
10. Demo again. The bookmark is updating the url in the browser address bar. This is what I need to support deep linking.
11. HttpUtility
    1. a. HtmlPage.Window.NavigateToBookmrk
12. HtmlElementEventArgs
    1. Stop Propagation - Prevent bubbling
    2. Key State, Key Code
    3. Mouse Button
    4. Screen Offset Window Coordinate Info
13. Flying Div: the use of SetStyleAttributes to change pieces of the CSS in the html.
    1. Sets a DispatcherTimer - EventHandler. TimeSpan(0,0,0,0,10)
    2. Using{} cleans out the resources when no longer used
       1. Delete Service Proxy.Dll - Reinstall to replace it.
       • Notes: WCF Service gave some issues.
       • Silverlight Enabled WCF Service - Default Binding set for What Silverlight Supports.
         If you installed the Beta2 bits early on, you should check your SDK size. If your SilverLight Tools Install size is 1.14 or under, you should uninstall it and bring it down again from the download site. You want to see something the size of 1.17. This is what you want, not 1.13 or 1.14.
14. When building WCF services, inside Visual Studio you'll be able to use Tabs to build your stubs to save typing.
15. Talk about how MVC fits in
16. X-Domain, show clientaccessplicy.xml
17. The root is clientbin folder when loading from WebClient.
18. Isolated Storage Demo
19. Types for creating and using Virtual File System
20. Exists on Client between Browser Sessions
21. Clearing Cookies and Deleting Temporary Files doesn't delete these files.
22. Mechanism for examing contents???? Of isolated Storage. Yes. It allows us to iterate the file system. Allows disconnected storage
23. Finding the Isolated Data store on the disk. Local Storage. Appsettings / microsoft, isolated storage.
24. Promotes code reuse for data validation

This is a public service announcement. 

Tuesday, June 17th, 2008. 12PM-2PM   Sign Up Now
Silverlight 2.0 allows you to kiss Javascript goodbye
Presenter: Doug Nelson

Pizzas and sodas are provided as compliments of ILM.
 
Abstract:
When most people think of Silverlight, the thoughts and discussions are all about rich media, WPF support, Flash replacements. While all of this is certainly a significant part of Silverlight, there is also a very rich backend sub system, programmed in the .Net language of your choice and running on the client browser. This provides a headless side to Silverlight that traditional applications can incorporate to greatly minimize the amount javascript coding required for a rich UI experience. This presentation will focus on Silverlight HTML integration, network sockets support and isolated storage support. Finally, nothing but .Net from the bowels of the enterprise to web client interface.
 
Speaker:
Doug is a Practice Partner with ILM. He provides expert application development services for a growing number of clients with a primary focus on solving complex business problems. These applications developed are based on a Sql Server backend database with a web based front-end. He has been doing web development since 1996, transitioning from CGI applications to classic ASP and on to ASP.Net. In addition to the web development, these applications also support WinForms and Pocket PCs. He has extensive experience implementing truly distributed applications involving windows services, message queueing and web services.
 

On June 12, 2008, I got to take part in an ILM Event, the ILM Executive Briefing Session held at the Microsoft Office in Bloomington(Minnesota).  The goals of the session were to introduce Microsoft's Team System and Silverlight to the audience.  The introduction was well received and there were plenty of opportunities to network afterwards as well.

The topics were: Team System, presented by Bill Maurer (Microsoft) and Reid Gorder (ILM Professional Services)  and Silverlight, presented by Doug Nelson (ILM Professional Services).  

I was able to get a copy of Bills slide deck and Reid's.  If I can get my hands on Dougs, I'll put it up here too.

TeamSystemExecutiveBriefing.pdf (295.42 kb)

VSTS-ILMExecutiveBriefing.pdf (5.47 mb)

This beta of Silverlight that's out since last Friday (SL2B2) is so much better than the last version that I'm starting to get really excited again looking at the possibilities.  I'm really happy about the changes they've made to support skinning controls because that'll help me with reusability of my code. 

 But it's still kind of a guessing game, when you're creating your control skin, what properties are supported on which controls.  This blog post really helped me with that problem, http://blogs.msdn.com/delay/archive/2008/03/22/improving-everyone-s-access-to-silverlight-2-s-generic-xaml-resources-silverlightdefaultstylebrowser-tool-and-source-code.aspx 

The application that Mr. Delay wrote, SilverlightDefaultStyleBrowser, is now something I keep open while I'm working.  That and the documentation that's been released which is FABULOUS! 

So, here we go - let's burn some rubber.