My Silverlight

I hate to say it but it was just today that I downloaded and tried Visual Studio 2008 for the first time. Not too long ago I would have had a lot of experience with a new version of VS at that stage. However, my first encounter was a very happy one. I downloaded the 'Web Express' edition and the installation went through without any problems. And then I tried to open an existing solution (MWPSK J) in order to check out the compatibility with ASP.NET 2.0. And it was all nice and beautiful.

Best of all, I came to see my first new feature while starting up the website for the first time: Client Script Debugging – it rocks!

Since a couple of weeks I had the idea in mind to create a ‚Video Content' section for our the My Web Pages Starter Kit (MWPSK - http://www.codeplex.com/MyWebPagesStarterKit). Last Thursday I sat down to do it finally. I created a Silverlight video page using the Expression Encoder tool (which is actually a very cool utility) and then reengineered the files (static Default.htm based solution) to create the MWPSK Section. Of course I had to learn a couple of things about JavaScript along the way but finally it works: http://www.compisoft.ch/mwpskoverview.aspx. It now allows me to simply add a section to any page and upload a *.mwv which will then be played in the Silverlight video player.

The Section is available for download here: http://compisoft.ch/downloads.aspx

Microsoft will run a big event on October 4th 2007 where 10 events are going to take place at the same day. Starting in New Zealand 10 different countries will present the latest and greatest for designers with the Microsoft User Experience (UX) technology and tools. The highlight will be a presentation of Steve Ballmer at the Swiss event.

There is also a cool website about the event - based on Silverlight :-)

www.expressionevent.com

Today I was surprised by ‚my own company'. This is not happening very often and it is encouraging to see that these bright moments in my live at Microsoft are happening more and more often. Popfly is a cool idea leveraging Silverlight and live.com technology at the same time - demonstrating the combined power of these platforms.

I have played around with Popfly a few minutes but I need to spend a little more time with it next week: http://www.popfly.ms/users/MyPopfly (It seem the published projects are only accessible to registered popfly users by now)

Bill Evjen has written two comprehensive documents about the MWPSK. They are provide a lot of background information about the starter kit which is a cool way to get going with ASP.NET 2.0 or just with a simple but powerful website.

http://www.codeplex.com/MyWebPagesStarterKit

At MIX07 we distributed the Silverlight Developer Reference Poster. Now on Developer's Paradise in electronic form: http://vivekthangaswamy.blogspot.com/2007/05/silverlight-developer-reference-poster.html.

And here you can find it in much better quality in case you want to print it and put it on the wall in your bedroom: http://www.compisoft.ch/downloads.aspx

Peter Maurer, a friend of mine, has recently opened a new exhibition at the photoforum PasquArt in Biel (Switzerland). Attending the opening reception was an interesting experience because it inspired me to think a lot about the fine line between the interactive designers and artists (incl. photographers) like Peter? He also just recently published his website where we can see many of his masterpieces including the images of 'faceland':

http://www.peter-maurer.ch/Gallerie/Faceland/Faceland_01.htm

Probably the first starter kit featuring Silverlight technology

As a next step we are about to release the new version featuring a gallery component using Silverlight. Here you can see it in action on one of our customers websites: http://www.bernhardjaeger.at/MWPSK/penserjoch_2006.aspx. The gallery now also allows to upload multiple pictures in one step. We will release this next version (Production release will be 1.1.3) before the end of May 07.

Interview with the developer of MWPSK

Here you can watch the new video interview with Matthias Rambold, one of the developers of MWPSK. It includes a short demo of the MWPSK user interface and some internals.

Documentation about MWPSK

There is now a fair amount of ‘how to’ and ‘overview’ documentation about MWPSK published. Brand new is the ‘MWPSK Introduction’ by Bill Evjen.

Ok, after years of absence I’m back to blogging. Years ago Sascha has introduced me to blogging and all the technical background (protocols etc.). At that time I implemented my own web implementation of a blog engine. Now I decided to create my new weblog on the spaces.live.com platform.

• 1.       Because I’m a Microsoft Marketing Manager (MMM J) and in fact in charge to push the Microsoft User Experience platform (which includes the live.com strategy).
• 2.       Because spaces.live.com provides a pretty cool environment for such a blog.

The objective of this blog is in fact to publish about my perception of the Microsoft efforts to evangelize the designer community out there with Silverlight, WPF and Expression. This is my focus area and we are going to run a lot of exciting campaigns to have many people from that audience use our platform and buy our tools.

My job really is to get in touch with people from around the world…

And I have one of these cool ‘Expression Studio’ boxes that were distributed to all attendees at MIX07 last week…!