MIX is an annual conference for developers, designers and business professionals to learn all about the current and forthcoming technologies from Microsoft, particularly targeted at the Web and Web applications.
This years conference was held from March 5-7, 2008 in Las Vegas.
This package is an add-on to the RTM release of Visual Studio 2008 to provide tooling for Microsoft Silverlight 2 Beta 1. It provides a Silverlight project system for developing Silverlight applications using C# or Visual Basic.
This download will install the following:
Silverlight 2 Beta 1
Silverlight 2 SDK Beta 1
KB949325 for Visual Studio 2008
Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008
Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 includes:
An easy to use 2D Physics engine, originally designed for the Microsoft XNA framework, is also available for Silverlight.
Side Note: Microsoft XNA is composed of industry-leading software, services, resources, and communities focused on enabling game developers to be successful on Microsoft gaming platforms.
Features provided by the Farseer Physics Engine include:
Collision
Support for Concave and Convex poygons
Multiple Collision geometries per body
Collision Categories For Complex Interaction Between Physics Objects
A Collision Callback Mechanism
Dynamics
Joints
Revolute Joint (body to body or fixed to world)
Angle Joint (body to body or fixed to world)
Slider (Prismatic) Joint
Pin (Distance) Joint
Force Controllers
Linear Spring
Angular Spring
Easy To Build Custom Force Controllers (Explosions, Steering Behaviors, etc.)
Full details are available from the project page at CodePlex
I used the default Silverlight Project item in Visual Studio (Visual Studio 2008 beta 2 and Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Refresh) to generate the following example files which I’m calling a Silverlight Template.
TestPage.html is the main entry point for the web page.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
It references Silverlight.js and TestPage.html.js and embeds the Silverlight control on the page.
Silverlight.js is a Javascript helper file that enables Silverlight content to be viewed on multiple platforms and handles everything from checking if the correct version of Silverlight is installed to ensuring that the control is inserted correctly. It is available from the Silverlight Software Development Kit (SDK) and copied into the project location when using Visual Studio.
TestPage.html.js is an auto-generated Javascript file which contains the function createSilverlight.
// JScript source code
//contains calls to silverlight.js, example below loads Page.xaml
// Give the keyboard focus to the Silverlight control by default
document.body.onload=function(){
var silverlightControl = document.getElementById(‘SilverlightControl’);
if(silverlightControl)
silverlightControl.focus();
}
}
The createSilverlight method is called to insert the Silverlight control onto the web page. If you want to insert more than one Silverlight control onto a web page there are instructions in the Silverlight QuickStart guide mentioned above or there is another approach described at
This sample is using C# for the code behind so there is an associated DLL (created by building the project) which is located in the ClientBin sub-directory (relative the the HTML file not the XAML file).
Michael Foord (known about the Python community as Fuzzyman) presented a session on Python in your Browser with Silverlight at the recent MIX:UK. His blog is available at
Although I find it easier to view as a “normal” html page. This can be switched to from the slide version by selecting the 0 (zero) option from the bottom of the page (move your mouse to the bottom of the page and wait a few seconds for the options to appear).
IronPython is a Python compiler originally created by Jim Hugunin which runs on .NET and is now supported and developed by Microsoft.
To experiment with using IronPython in conjunction with Silverlight you can use the IronPython Web IDE sample created by Foord at
I’ve been experimenting with Microsoft Silverlight for a few months now and have just returned from the MIX:UK conference held in London Sep 11-12 to a “sell-out” crowd of 500. This is a Microsoft sponsored event where people get the opportunity to learn more about new and forthcoming technologies.
I found the talks by Scott Guthrie of particular interest which helped to consolidate my understanding of the Silverlight technology
He gave a number of talks at the conference, and makes the slides freely available. The slides can be obtained directly from Scotts Blog or from the following links
One of the more interesting applications using Silverlight to appear recently.
Tafiti, which means “do research” in Swahili, is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft, designed to help people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results. Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search to explore the intersection of richer experiences on the Web and the increasing specialization of search.
If you already have Silverlight installed (or don’t mind installing it) find out more at
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