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• Check out our new Learn page!

  We listened, we heard, we acted. The new Learn page is designed to make it easier to get started, and easier to find what you are looking for. It is also pretty snazzy.  I’ve shrunk it to point out a few features that I think will go a long way towards making life easier for folks trying to find the information they need. (This image has been cropped and reduced to fit and to focus on the areas of interest) I personally think the folks who did this did a great job, and I’m very pleased and proud to be associated with it. That said, after a couple days of living with it, we’d be happy to have your feedback, suggestions, ideas and etc., as always! In the meantime, I’ll enjoy what I think is a pretty significant improvement. Hope you find it not only more attractive, but (much more important) more useful. Posted Jul 21 2008, 11:20 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Community

• Web 2.0 Run Amok

  In the past few months, I’ve dramatically increased the number of channels from and to the community and since they are likely to cause some confusion, this post will briefly review and explain my intentions. First, the list: Tutorials Books Videos Webcasts Presentations Silverlight Blog O’Reilly Blog My Other Blog Amazon Blog Private Twitter Silverlight MicroBlog Silverlight HyperBlog  +Email +Forum Portal Book Support Email Phone Emergency IM Other IM Technorati Facebook DotNetSlackers CommunityCredit Plaxo Linked In Del.icio.us DiggIt Wikipedia Flikr etc. Formal, Mostly One Way, High Value Communication A large part of my job is to produce what we call “content” (though I bet I’m not supposed to say that out loud) which includes our Tutorials , Videos , Presentations and Webcasts .  You can always find links tot he latest of these on the sidebar of my blog In addition, Tim and I are under contract with O’Reilly to write the forthcoming Programming Silverlight 2 which has been embraced by Microsoft and is also (isn’t this cool?) part of our job here. I try to keep my Blog reasonably focused on Silverlight, but I do include the occasional article on anything from technology rants to just rants .  That said, if the signal to noise ratio falls too low, let me know!   Other Connections In addition to the big 5 (Tutorials, Book, Videos, Presentations and Webcasts) I’ve created as many innovative connections as I can think of or steal from others. These include a few that require explanation… The Twitter Family Private Twitter – I use this for occasional outbursts, but mostly to let folks know where I am when I’m on the road Silverlight MicroBlog – an experiment in “how much blogging can you do in 140 characters” – that I’m still working on but that is an interesting idea I keep coming back to Silverlight HyperBlog – a new experiment in blogging my work day in some detail supported by a dedicated email address to get feedback and a dedicated community forum in case subscribers want to discuss anything that comes up in the blizzard of tweets.   This is clearly experimental, but interesting. Other Blogs O’Reilly Blog and author site is often neglected in favor of this one. However, it does  contains links to book information, old articles and can be useful (at least to me) from time to time. The  Amazon Author Blog is mostly a “fan” site, with reproductions of blog entries from elsewhere, the occasional original entry and such... Posted Jul 14 2008, 09:12 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Community

• Canonical Q&A

  Every day I get about 10-30 questions that I answer with a stock response (sorry) that says something like Hello and thank you for writing. I would encourage you to post your question in the Silverlight Forums . Be sure to include: * which version of Silverlight you are running, * which version of Visual Studio and/or Blend you are using and * whatever else you can add to help reproduce the problem. Meanwhile I’ll try to look into this as well. Thank you, I hate this answer; but it is the right thing; I can’t possibly do my job and also dive deep into all the questions I get; the forum s really are the right place and 1,000 brains are better than one. Oh, and  I do follow and I do look into many (though not all) of them. That said, some questions come up a lot, and today I received a note with 4 that I must get at least five times a week, so here are my quick responses (I’ve paraphrased some of the questions) I'd like to make my website a bit more "rich" and a better UI experience for the users and I'm considering Silverlight. It currently uses….  What would be your advice? Since you are new to Silverlight you probably want to work your way through a suggested learning path and then ask a lot of questions in the forums. I wish I could spend a day (or a week) working on the design with you For this website, with respect to your multiple page example...Let's say I have 30 existing .aspx pages. Would I make page1.xaml, page2.xaml, page3.xaml, etc. that would correspond to each respective page that I currently have? Not necessarily (and I hope you’d use better names <grin>). In fact, there is no reason you wouldn’t have a mixed model, using ASP.NET where it is working for you and Silverlight for enhanced (richer, faster, etc.) experiences. Are there any resources that tell you how to convert a complex ASP.NET web site into a complex Silverlight site? Not that I know of, but more information is coming every day. Be sure to keep an eye on silverlight.net and subscribe to Silverlight Cream , and Silverlight News . 4. This may sound odd, but how do I know that wanting to do this in Silverlight is not completely strange when it works and looks satisfactory now? Still make the change and why I guess is what I'm asking here. If it is satisfactory now, go do something else <smile>. But maybe it isn’t completely satisfactory; maybe a faster richer experience, in at least some parts of the application would be valuable. Take... Posted Jul 13 2008, 10:39 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Learning Silverlight, Silverlight Features, Recommended Resources

• Over The Top Twittering

  I see my job as, in part, community building, and as part of that, lots of experimentation. Today, I’m pleased to announce the launch of a new (experimental) HyperMicroBlog named SLGeek (join now) I will be blogging everything – all blogging all the time, at least while I’m working, often when I’m just thinking about work --- though topics may range beyond work, and you are fairly warned that you may learn ore about me than you care to know. (Intensive blogging begins later this morning and won’t stop for at least one week) The goal is that I’ll be recording not only what I’m working on but what I’m thinking about what I’m working on; as well as who I’m talking with, what we’re talking about (when it isn’t confidential), and anything else I can possibly tell you about what is going on.  Expect the blogging to come in bursts, but there will be lots of it. Sign Up Here To keep this from being entirely absurd, in this blizzard of words you should (if this goes as I hope) find tidbits about what I’m working on that won’t be posted for a while, what my team is thinking about that isn’t a big deal secret, what I find interesting that you might (or might not) and most important, have a chance to feed back to me and even more important discuss with others where I’m nuts, wrong or just off the rails.  To facilitate that, I’m setting up two places for community feedback: First, you can write to me directly, but I almost certainly won’t respond (except when I grab your email and plunk it into this blog) at slGeek@jliberty.com . Second you can post your thoughts, but I almost certainly won’t respond, and my not have time to even keep up to date)  on a public  discussion site I’ve created (you may have to join to post, but it is free). It is the forum that I hope will prove most interesting. Feel free to discuss anything there and if you need more folders, write to slGeek@jliberty.com and let me know.  NB: This is an experiment. We’ll see how it goes. Posted Jul 13 2008, 08:25 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: silverlight 2.0, Recommended Resources, Ramblings, Community

• Styles and Templates - Three Videos

  I’m very pleased to announce a three part video series (currently listed in reverse order) as companions to my new tutorial ). The three videos are Creating Styles Templates without Visual State Manager Templates and Visual State Manager   The new Visual State Manager and Parts model are very exciting and I’ll be following this up with a good bit more, including two up-coming Webcasts: July 23: Visual State Manager, Transitions and Animation in Silverlight August 27: Creating Skinnable Custom Controls in Silverlight (Designing for the Parts model and VSM) Posted Jul 11 2008, 06:11 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Digging Deeper, Blend For Programmers, Templates - VSM

• Green Eggs and Blend

  I’m pleased to say that the accident of not recording my first ( new series ) Webcast led to the opportunity to reformulate it as a video, which is now available for viewing or download. This is a brief, somewhat  tongue in cheek overview of  why I gave up a 15 year commitment to working in a single Integrated Development Environment and came to discover I do so Like Expression Blend . Posted Jul 11 2008, 05:57 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Presentations, How Do I Videos, Blend For Programmers

• Data Binding Webcast

  I presented a live Webcast today on Databinding and Data Templates, and a few resources were mentioned. As promised, here are links to all of them Learn Page Tutorials Videos Webcasts I have a tutorial specifically on data binding that is about to be completed, which should to be released in a few weeks, along with “How Do I” videos on the subject; I’ll post an update at that time. Thanks for joining me, and be sure to check the schedule for upcoming Webcasts.   photocredit: istockphoto, all rights reserved Posted Jul 09 2008, 07:23 PM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Webcast

• Live From Redmond – And Responsive To You

  In response to your feedback, a couple minor changes to the schedule… 1. I will enhance the presentation on Wednesday July 9 on Data binding with the material originally scheduled for July 23 (Data Templates).  2. The presentation on Visual State Manager, Transitions and Animation will move from September 10 to Wednesday, July 23 .      Mark Your Calendar! Overall, the presentations will move up from level 200 to level 300 to better meet the needs of the working professionals who are taking time from their day to view them.   Please send follow up questions via email and I’ll address them here in my blog. Please note, after  today, all web cast updates will be marked in the sidebar under Presentations, and from there you can link to a dedicated page that will be kept fully up to date. I am also hearing that video transmission time and quality  is somewhat uneven (you do all have 20mg FIOS, right?) so I will rely more on graphics and speech that better match the medium. Remote-A-Presenter You may want to consider spending a few minutes with the live-web  software, especially the feedback control that allows you to signal “slow down” or “speed up” – I can’t see you, so that is the closest contact we can make short of heckling through Q&A! As has been noted by others, you can’t meet everyone’s needs, but I am committed to making these Webcast presentations as useful to working Silverlight programmers as possible, so keep those cards and letters coming .  Thanks. Posted Jul 05 2008, 10:59 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Presentations, Webcast

• Camtasia Crash Tip

  [Updated 7/3] If you are using Camtasia (wonderful product) to create your screen captures and you do a lot of editing (especially zooms and call outs and cuts) you run the risk of overloading the project and causing Camtasia to slow and/or crash. Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide (Wordware Applications Library) ASIN : B000HCW6YE To avoid this, periodically grab a segment of your project and turn it into an AVI, cut that segment out and replace with the avi; then all the changes collapse into one as far as the project is concerned. Update follows… Pitfall #1 : if your project is complex enough, you'll find that when you mark a selection and tell it to produce an AVI it does not capture the entire selection! And, worse, it doesn't tell you. So be sure to check that you (a) back up the project before making the avi and (b) check the avi. If this does happen the work around is to mark the selection, then choose "Crop to selection" (very scary!) which deletes the rest of your timeline. Then produce your avi. Then restore (ctrl-Z to undo) the cropping. Now you can delete the selection and replace with your avi. Sounds more complicated than it is, but make sure you are backing up and giving good names to your template files. I now have a directory structure that looks like this for each project Pitfall #2: while you can edit the avi's you produce, each generation (each time you produce a video) creates some degradation in quality. Specifically if you make an AVI out of a camrec, and then edit that avi and make a 2nd generation avi which you then edit, and then make an avi out of the edited avi, pretty soon the sound quality is noticeably degraded. -j Posted Jul 03 2008, 12:55 PM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Tools, How Do I Videos

• Community Credit – Cool Idea, Cool Site.

  David Silverlight (isn’t that the second best name you’ve ever heard?) runs Community Credit whose slogan is “We give stupid prizes to smart people.”  The idea is to recognize and reward folks for participating in the geek community, and he has a fairly sophisticated point system  To give you a sense of how many things you can do to get points, I took a picture of the list, and shrunk it down to 5% (that’s it on the left!). Click on it to see the entire list. I would of course blow this off as the self-indulgent relentless pursuit of recognition, were I not a two time winner.   Given that, I think it is a great and wonderful service, that encourages participation from every aspect of the geek community.     Plus, I got this really cool (sorry)  USB desk-top  refrigerator that I can keep my Arnold Palmers cold in.  I never in my life even heard of an Arnold Palmer (ice tea and lemon-aide) until I went to dinner with Tim Heuer who knows more about Silverlight and about libations than anyone else. I am now hopelessly addicted. In any case, the refrigerator has blue LEDs so it should be great.   [Arnold Palmer was the Tiger Woods of my youth, only for some reason all his games were played in black and white.] Having said all that, be sure to go check out the Silverlight.net Community Recognition Program which is also wicked cool, but in which I’m not winning any prizes so I don’t like it as much.     Posted Jul 01 2008, 09:53 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Recommended Resources, Community

• Want To Follow Silverlight MicroBlog?

  SilverlightShow is featuring a brilliant Twitter tool written by Emil Stoychev that you can download here – you can grab the HTML or you can download the source. If you just get the HTML and plop it into your blog you are free to tell it whom you want to follow (e.g., SLMicroblog. Here’s the HTML: <div style= "width: 250px; height: 310px;" > < object data= "data:application/x-silverlight," type= "application/x-silverlight-2-b2" width= "100%" height= "100%" > <param name= "source" value = "http://www.silverlightshow.net/twitter/ClientBin/Silvester.xap" /> <param name= "onerror" value = "onSilverlightError" /> <param name= "background" value = "white" /> <param name= "initParams" value = "twitterUser= SLMicroBlog " /> <a href= http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=115261 style= "text-decoration: none;" > <img src= http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=108181 alt= "Get Microsoft Silverlight" style= "border-style: none" /> </a> </ object > </div> Suddenly, all the SLMicroblog you can eat… No muss, no fuss. Works great.  Reposted due to technical problems with the server Posted Jun 27 2008, 05:48 PM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: silverlight 2.0, Recommended Resources, Tools

• One Man’s Guide To Silverlight Nirvana

  Every day (honest) I am asked for a path through the learning material, even though the Getting Started page offers an explicit path. And that is not surprising. We all have our own way of learning. Here is the path that I personally tend to suggest to most Silverlight neophytes. Path of quick learning: Go to Getting started and get all the links shown here Then watch the video on the same page on getting started. Once Set UP, Writing Programs Read this tutorial on interface controls. Watch [forthcoming] this video on why I made the switch to coding with Silverlight and Blend and how powerfully they work together, and then watch watch these “How Do I” videos on Blend for Programmers: Part 1 Part2 Part3 and/or read this tutorial Data Next, it’s time to focus on this video on data and then this tutorial on creating n-tier applications and data binding. Follow that with a great video on Cross Domain issues and then read up on user controls which you can supplement with this video on keyboard input followed by this video on user controls. Styles and Templates You may then want to read my tutorial and watch my videos on Styles and Templates (to be posted in the next week or two) or check out Karen Corby’s excellent 4 part series on the subject. Freestyle After all that you can pretty much move freely among the other tutorials and videos . Best of luck Posted Jun 26 2008, 08:33 PM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: tutorials, silverlight 2.0, Learning Silverlight, Recommended Resources, Tools, Webcast, How Do I Videos, Beta 2

• Green Eggs and Ham Webcast Presentation

  I presented the first of a new series of live web casts today in which a number of resources were mentioned. As promised, here are links to all of them Silverlight.net Getting Started Page Learn Page Silverlight Microblog Scott Guthries’s blog entry on Expression Blend for Programmers Three videos on Blend For Programmers. One , Two , Three . Tutorial on Blend for Programmers Tutorial on Skinning and Styling Controls in Blend (to be posted soon) Register for next presentation on data binding with Blend The Traffic Light Video (silent!) Source Code For Traffic Light Posted Jun 25 2008, 12:03 PM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: Learning Silverlight, Recommended Resources, Presentations, Webcast, Digging Deeper, Blend For Programmers

• What is coming soon?

  You have noticed, I’m sure, that there has been a flurry of blogging, videos and more since the release of Beta 2. That is all goodness, though it can be hard to know where to start; and the road map will differ depending on where you are in your experience with Silverlight. This is a rapidly changing environment and I’m hesitant to make promises, because things can change, but after some thought I’ve decided that it would be helpful to give you an idea of what to expect with my tutorials, videos and webcasts.  So, here is my tentative schedule through the next couple months. WebCasts Styles and Templates   Wednesday June 18 9am UTC –8 (Pacific) Deep Zoom Wednesday, July 16, 2008 9:00 Tutorials All of the tutorials are updated to Beta 2 in their  pdf form and the HTML will be updated very soon. All of the source code is already updated.  The next couple tutorials will include Styles, Templates, the Visual State Manager Graphics, Transforms, and Animation Animation In Detail The DataGrid in Detail Book Tim and I are working hard to write and publish Programming Silverlight 2 .  Our hope is to be able to provide an early look very soon. Here is one paragraph from my non-introduction (unedited and unauthorized) We’ve set out to tell you the story of Silverlight and to teach you everything you need to know to program effectively with what we believe is an amazing new technology. We have not tried to replicate the documentation nor to provide a comprehensive definition of every property, event and method of the framework. But telling the story of Silverlight is more than just picking which parts are most important; it is threading our way through a very large and complex framework in a coherent and logical way, making sense of it, and providing a guided tour through the underbrush pointing out the dangerous spots, showing the shortcuts, and warning of the dead-ends . How Do I   Videos In addition to the many videos already posted it is my plan to create videos on the following topics in the coming weeks. Styles  Templates and Visual State Manager The Visual State Manager In Depth Basic Animation in Beta 2 (with Blend) Inter-state animation In-state Animation Graphics and transforms Animating objects Data and Animation DataGrid Advanced DataGrid Popup Control Calendar Control TextBox In Depth Scroll Bars If your favorite topic is missing, just drop me a note .  Please note that some of these topics are covered already, but... Posted Jun 08 2008, 08:52 AM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: tutorials, silverlight 2.0, Learning Silverlight, Recommended Resources, How Do I Videos, Beta 2

• Creating a Project from xaml and xaml.cs files

  I posted the code for the PageSwitcher app described in a previous blog post , but to save space and to make the download faster, I didn't include anything but the code (no solution or project files). A reader wrote asking how to create a project and it is a more than fair question as the answer is not obvious until you've done it a couple times, so let's walk through that example. When you download the code, you'll receive a zip file named  PageSwitcher .zip. Unzip that and you'll have a folder named PageSwitcher,   Open a new Visual Studio project and to make this example as clear as possible, let's name it something else (myPageSwitcher) and locate it in a different directory. Open Page.xaml in your new project and note the name of the project (MyPageSwitcher) <UserControl x:Class= "MyPageSwitcher.Page" Open Page.xaml.cs and note the namespace namespace MyPageSwitcher This is the information you need to hold on to for the rest of this exercise. Ready To Go There are many ways to do this, but the easiest is to delete Page.xaml, Page.xaml.cs and App.xaml and App.xaml.cs from your new project. (Don't panic!) Next, right-click on the project and choose Add->Existing items and navigate to the downloaded files and add them all. They are now in your new project. Click on all 4 xaml files and change the name of the project in the x:Class tag. Click on all 4 .cs files and change the name of the namespace (ignore the smart tag) If you want to get rid of the smart tag, use Build->Clean. Build->Rebuild Solution. You're all set Here is your new PageSwitcher.xaml <UserControl x:Class= "MyPageSwitcher.PageSwitcher" xmlns= "http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x= "http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Width= "400" Height= "300" > </UserControl>   And here is your new PageSwitcher.xaml.cs using System.Windows.Controls; namespace MyPageSwitcher { public partial class PageSwitcher : UserControl { public PageSwitcher() { InitializeComponent(); if ( this .Content == null ) { this .Content = new Page(); } } public void Navigate(UserControl nextPage) { this .Content = nextPage; } } }   Don't forget, once your code compiles, you can right click on the using statements and choose Organize Usings -> Remove Unused Using  which greatly cleans up your code. Posted May 31 2008, 06:12 PM by Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek Filed under: tutorials, silverlight 2.0, Learning Silverlight, Silverlight.net, Recommended Resources, Tools, How Do I Videos, Digging Deeper