Archive for March, 2008

March 12th, 2008

Silverlight Streaming SDK – What I’ve learned.


I’ve been working to deploy a Silverlight 1.0 project using the Silverlight Streaming beta service and I wanted to call attention to a few things I learned that weren’t explicitly mentioned in the Silverlight Streaming SDK.

  1. Do no include an encoding type in your manifest.xml file. example: I can’t confirm this 100% but I kept getting an error message on upload that says “The archive does not meet the criteria for valid applications. Refer to the SDK for detials.” Once I removed the declaration I didn’t receive the error again.

  2. Do not include any HTML files in your zip file. While html is not included in the list of allowed file types most templates create one just make sure you don’t include it in your zip archive

  3. Make sure to remove any Thumbs.db files that may be hiding in your folders. These hidden files are created when you browse through your application with Mac OSX. You may have to enable hidden files to show before you can see that they are there, or look through your zip archive before you upload it. If you don’t remove these you’ll get the same “The archive does not meet the criteria for valid applications. Refer to the SDK for detials.” error message. This one took me a while to figure out.

  4. Adapting the app for Silverlight Streaming was a learning process. I started the project based on a default Silverlight Web Template from Blend. Because of this I had to alter a lot of my code so my app would work in an iframe on the Silverlight Streaming beta service. Documentation to adapt my code was scarce so I had to piece together a lot of different information from working Silverlight Streaming examples into a solution. The two biggest pieces of information I wanted to share can be found in this code:

    Inside the shellOnLoad function is where the handleLoad function is called. The handleLoad function is called when the Silverlight Object is created and the XAML is ready. This is very important and if you use a default template from Blend or Visual Studio you will use this function. Also you’ll see the var obj line. This gives you the instance of the Silverlight OBJECT tag. Without it, you’re handleLoad function will fail. The tricky part is figuring out what the OBJECT tag ID is. I had to use IE7 Developer Toolbar to explore the DOM of my iframe to find it. I think the default is “appId” so hopefully this bit of information will save other the headache of figuring out why their custom app won’t run in an iframe.

Just wanted to share these tidbits of information so hopefully it will save others from having trouble using the Silverlight Streaming service.

Happy Coding.

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March 5th, 2008

MIX08 Keynote online – Silverlight 2


I wasn’t able to attend MIX08 this year, but I was really interested in hearing the keynote especially about Silverlight 2. Lucky for me the MIX Online Blog team had a live stream that I could watch. Scott Guthrie came on and started talking just about the time I showed up. He announced the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 which will be available later today.

I caught the tail end of the Internet Explorer 8 talk. www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8 link should be live later today.

Scott Guthrie talked in his keynote a lot about business and monetization of RIAs. How can you create ads, add Ads to your content (video, audio etc).

OMG there is a VS2008 Banner ad Template plugin that they demoed. It created all the crap that I’ve been working on for a month now that is all packaged up. Hummm…being on a cutting edge can be tough. Now how do I get a copy of this thing so our deployment can be simplified.

HOW DO I DEPLOY THE AD…Video.Show deploying a Silverlight app. Lots of tracking, lots of useful metrics to tell the ad manager about how effective the campaign is. Overlay adverts, Preroll, and much more. Encoder 2 has some potential for rich advertising scenarios.

Using DoubleClick and Silverlight…Ari Poparo talking about supporting media publishing and Silverlight. Has some rich reporting metrics but also cool because a dev can use these events to enhance the experience.

So far, all these cool features aren’t available yet…blech.

NBCOlympics.com Site Showoff…Perkins Miller, Matthew Rex. 22,000 hours LIVE ONLINE VIDEO…holy crap! AND VOD (Video On Demand) That’s a lot of content. Interactive Video and Video Delivery of the highest quality. DVR capabilities with the live video, rewind live stream and alerts to quickly switch between viewing experiences. Sharing these videos with others, that’s pretty damn cool! Picture in Picture hahaha…this thing is completely over the top. Will this create a new standard? HAHAHA 3 different streams of the same event…see what other people are watching…and he just keeps going…gawd. I will have to check this out when it goes live. PLUS, how crazy good will this be for Silverlight deployment?!

Now Scott is going into RIAs. Cross-Browser, Cross-Platform .NET Framework.

  • Multi_Language Support

  • WPF UI Framework

  • Robust Networking

  • Integrated Data Support

  • High Performance

  • Small Download, Fast Install (Beta 1 – 4.6MB download)

  • Rich UI Controls

the “dev-igner” very rich control templateing skinning model Custom Animations, Custom State Changes as well as CSS style changes. Making it very easy to customize and skin these controls. New VS2008 Silverlight support…boy I’d love to have that right now. So you can BUILD the application but then hand off to a designer to re-skin without having to write or update any code. YEAH new beta 1 updates for VS2008 and Expression Studio shipping later today.

Showcasing a new Mail Client from AOL using Silverlight to speed up performance, add custom-ability, create an experience much like a desktop application.

Create experiences that don’t exist today…humm…lets see where this goes.

.NET .NET .NET …

Line of Business – Application Cirque de Soleil using WPF.

HAHA Scott Guthrie circus talent was juggling two balls, and he even dropped um. Funny!

OK..Moving on to Mobile Devices. Silverlight for mobile, bringing Silverlight anywhere, same code, assets skills and tools, Next generation mobile experiences.
Mixer – Darren David, real time mobile based application. Where’s the party at…haha funny little app. Your cell phone telling you you’ve had too much to drink and then making you take a sobriety test…that’s funny. Nokia delivers Silverlight…not just for Mobile PCs.

silverlight.weatherbug.com is the Silverlight application that will run native on Nokia phones, on the web, or on WPF on your desktop. Wow…dis on Flash Lite…they said it was too costly to build the weatherbug app. Wonder why that was?

Time to go get all the new updates to get started with Silverlight 2.

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