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• Silverlight 2 Beta2 Released

  Silverlight 2 Beta2 was released today.  You can download both Silverlight 2 Beta2 and the Visual Studio and Expression Blend tools support to target it here . Beta2 adds a lot of new features (more details below), but is still a 4.6 MB download that takes less than 10 seconds to install on a machine.  It does not require the .NET Framework or any other software to be installed for it to work, and all features work cross-browser on both Mac and Windows machines.  These features will also be supported on Linux via the Moonlight 2 release. Silverlight 2 Beta2 supports a go-live license that allows you to start using and deploying Silverlight 2 for commercial applications. There will be some API changes between Beta2 and the final release, so you should expect that applications you write with Beta2 will need to make some updates when the final release comes out.  But we think that these changes will be straight-forward and relatively easy, and that you can begin planning and starting commercial projects now. You can build Silverlight Beta2 applications using the VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight and Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview downloads.  You can download both of them here .  The VS 2008 Tools for Silverlight download works with both VS 2008 and the recent VS 2008 SP1 beta release.  UI and Control Improvements Silverlight 2 Beta2 includes a bunch of work in the UI and Control space: More Built-in Controls In Beta 1 only a few controls were included with the core Silverlight setup.  Most common controls (including Button, ListBox, Slider, etc) were shipped within separate assemblies that you had to bundle with your applications (which increased the app download size).  Beta 2 now installs 30+ of the most common controls as part of the core Silverlight 2 download.  This means that you can now build Silverlight 2 applications that use core controls that are as small as 3kb in size - making Silverlight application downloads small and startup time fast. In addition to the core controls included with the base Silverlight 2 setup, we are also this week shipping additional higher-level controls that are implemented in separate assemblies that you can then reference and include with your applications.  This includes controls like DataGrid (more details on its new Beta2 features below), Calendar (now with multi-day selection and blackout date support in Beta2), and a TabPanel control (new in Beta2). We ultimately... Posted Jun 06 2008, 07:50 PM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: ASP.NET, Silverlight, .NET, Visual Studio, Community News

• May 20th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, .NET, Visual Studio, Silverlight, WPF

  Apologies for the sparseness of my posting the last few weeks - work and life have been busy here lately.  Below is a new post in my link-listing series to help kick things up a little.  Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Bulk Inserting Data with the ListView Control : Matt Berseth continues his awesome posts with one that shows how to handle bulk-editing of data using the ASP.NET ListView control in .NET 3.5. Master-Detail with the GridView, DetailsView, and ModalPopup Controls : Another great post from Matt that describes how to cleanly handle a common data entry scenario. Creating Great Thumbnail Images in ASP.NET : A really nice blog post by a different Matt that details an approach that generates high quality (and small) thumbnail images. Warning the User when Caps-Lock is on : Scott Mitchell has a nice article that describes how to automatically detect and warn users in login pages when the caps-lock button is on. ASP.NET Perf Issue: Large numbers of application-restarts due to virus scanners : Tess Ferrandez has a great post that details a debug session to determine why an ASP.NET application was restarting frequently (causing performance slowdowns).  The issue was a virus scanner that was causing files to be constantly updated.  Make sure to check out the logging code you can add to your application to identify restart causes like this. ASP.NET AJAX ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar Control : Matt Berseth has another great article that describes his new ASP.NET AJAX Progress Bar control. Faster Page Loading By Combining Multiple JavaScript files in Batch : Omar Al Zabir (founder of PageFlakes.com and author of the great Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book) has a good article that describes the performance benefit of merging multiple JavaScript file downloads.  Note that .NET 3.5 SP1 will include a new script combiner feature that helps make doing this even easier. Create ASP.NET AJAX Server Controls using the ScriptControl base class : Chris Pietschmann has a nice article that talks about how to build new ASP.NET AJAX server controls by deriving from the built-in ScriptControl base class. Inline Edit Box and Postback Ritalin Beta : Dave Ward and Mike Davis have created a new CodePlex project for their popular Inline Edit Box and PostBack Ritalin ASP.NET AJAX controls. .NET 7 Ways to Simplify your... Posted May 20 2008, 10:02 PM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight, .NET, Visual Studio, Atlas, Link Listing, LINQ

• April 28th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series .  Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Displaying the Number of Active Users on an ASP.NET Site : Scott Mitchell continues his excellent series on ASP.NET's membership, roles, and profile support.  In this article he discusses how to use ASP.NET's Membership features to estimate and display the number of active users currently visiting a site. ASP.NET Dynamic Data Update : The ASP.NET team last week released an update of the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature.  This update adds several new features including cleaner URL support using the same URL routing feature that ASP.NET MVC uses, as well as better confirmation, foreign-key, and template support.  ASP.NET Testing with Ivonna : Travis Illig blogs about a new testing framework named Ivonna that enables unit testing of ASP.NET web forms. ASP.NET AJAX ASP.NET AJAX UI Templates : Nikhil Kothari from the ASP.NET team has a cool post that shows off a prototype he has been working on that enables clean client-side AJAX templating of UI.  ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit TabContainer Theme Gallery : Matt Berseth has another of his excellent posts - this one shows off a bunch of cool themes you can use to style the TabContainer control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Reducing Page Load Times with UpdatePanels and Timers : Paul Glavich posts of a cool trick you can use with tab controls to asynchronously load their content in the background in order to improve perceived page load time. Why do ASP.NET AJAX page methods have to be static? Dave Ward has a useful article that talks about the page methods feature in ASP.NET AJAX, and explains why they are static methods. JQuery Intellisense in VS 2008 : Brad Vincent posts about using the VS 2008 Web Development Hot-Fix we released in February to get a nice JavaScript intellisense experience in Visual Studio 2008 when using the JQuery AJAX library. ASP.NET MVC Inversion of Control, ASP.NET MVC and Unit Testing : Fredrik Kalseth has a cool article that talks about the concepts behind inversion of control (IOC) and how you can use this with ASP.NET MVC to better isolate dependencies and enable better unit testing of your code. Stephen Walther's ASP.NET MVC Talk: Stephen Walther delivered a many-hour ASP.NET MVC post conference talk at ASP.NET Connections last week. ... Posted Apr 28 2008, 10:35 PM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: ASP.NET, Silverlight, Atlas, Link Listing, MVC

• Slides from my ASP.NET Connections Orlando Talks

  Last week I presented at the ASP.NET Connections Conference in Orlando.  I gave a general session talk on Monday, and then two breakout talks later that day.  You can download my slides+samples below: General Session The slides for my keynote can be downloaded here .  In the talk I demonstrated how to debug the .NET Framework source code.  You can learn how to set this up with VS 2008 here .  I also demonstrated building a site using the new ASP.NET Dynamic Data support - which you can learn more about here .  I also demonstrated using the new ASP.NET MVC Framework - which you can learn more about here . I also showed off the new Hard Rock Memorabilia site built with Silverlight 2.  You can try out the Hard Rock application yourself here .  You can learn more about Silverlight from my links page here . Building .NET Applications with Silverlight The slides + demos for Silverlight breakout talk can be downloaded here . You can learn more about Silverlight from my links page here .  In particular, I recommend reading my tutorial posts here and here . ASP.NET MVC The slides + demos for my ASP.NET MVC talk can be downloaded here . You can learn more about the latest ASP.NET MVC source refresh here .  Stephen Walther also just posted a really good set of slides + demos from his post conference tutorial on ASP.NET MVC here . Hope this helps, Scott Posted Apr 27 2008, 09:51 PM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: ASP.NET, Silverlight, .NET, MVC, Talks

• April 11th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio, Silverlight

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series .  Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page and Silverlight Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET More ASP.NET Security Tutorials : The last three of Scott Mitchell's excellent ASP.NET security tutorials .  His final three articles cover how to select user accounts, recover and change passwords, and unlock and approve user accounts. Building a VS 2008 Styled Grid with the ListView and DataPager Controls : Matt Berseth has a great article that talks about techniques you can use with the new ASP.NET 3.5 ListView control to create a nicely styled Grid UI - while preserving total control over the HTML and CSS used.  Also read his follow-up post here that talks about how to achieve the same UI with the GridView control. 50 Useful CSS Tips and Tricks: A useful page that provides a nice listing of various CSS tips, tricks and tools you can use for common web scenarios. Using a DataPager with the GridView Control - Implementing IPageableItemContainer : Matt Berseth has a cool article that shows how to use the new IPageableItemContainer interface to implement paging support with the new ASP.NET 3.5 DataPager control. ASP.NET AJAX Accessible UpdatePanel : Bertrand Le Roy from the ASP.NET team has an article that describes how to make the ASP.NET AJAX's UpdatePanel control accessible for screen-readers. ASP.NET AJAX Meets Virtual Earth : Alessandro Gallo, author of the excellent ASP.NET AJAX in Action book, has a nice series of articles that talks about using ASP.NET AJAX with Virtual Earth to implement mapping on your site. Faster Page Loading by Moving ASP.NET AJAX Scripts after visible content : Omar Al Zabir (the co-founder of www.PageFlakes.com ) has a great article that describes a nice technique you can use to improve the perceived loading performance of an ASP.NET AJAX page.  I also highly recommend reading Omar's great Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 book to learn some of his other suggestions and techniques. 3 Tips for Working with ASP.NET AJAX's TabContainer Control : Matt Berseth continues his great articles on ASP.NET AJAX with some tips on working with the TabContainer control in the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit. Building ASP.NET AJAX Components: Mike Ormond has written an excellent 8-part series that covers building re-usable ASP.NET AJAX components that work on both the client and server. ASP.NET... Posted Apr 11 2008, 12:04 AM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: ASP.NET, Silverlight, .NET, Visual Studio, Link Listing, MVC

• Controlling the Distribution of Silverlight Updates in the Enterprise

  I've posted a few times about issues relating to enterprise distribution of Silverlight , and I thought I'd mention one additional topic that came up during a customer tour that I've been on for the last ten days. If you're a systems administrator, one of the aspects of Silverlight that concerns you is probably controlling the distribution of updates. In general, enterprises like to control their desktop and laptop environments to ensure no sudden surprises are caused (for example, by a runtime update that breaks a commonly used application). So some people may wish to dial down the update settings that are optimized for end-users when Silverlight is running in a corporate environment. Silverlight supports enterprise rollout via WSUS and we provide guidance on how to roll it out across an enterprise via other means such as Group Policy (using the EXE-based installer). Silverlight is installed via a normal MSI plus an MSP-based patch which can be chained through a variety of means. Updating Silverlight to the latest revision can be done automatically or manually (by pushing out the latest MSP). There are two different knobs an enterprise administrator can turn to control how updates are applied to the runtime: Firstly, if the enterprise sets the UpdateMode DWORD registry value under the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Silverlight key to 2 then the Silverlight auto-updater will be disabled (i.e. it won't automatically check for updates or try to install them). This is the equivalent to an end-user choosing the Silverlight Configuration dialog and manually disabling auto-updates from the Updates tab. Second, the feature that allows a non-admin to patch Silverlight on Windows Vista without requiring admin elevation is not a Silverlight feature: it's a feature of Windows Installer which can be disabled if the admin wants to do so (and is indeed off-by-default in Windows Server 2008). You can switch this off using Group Policy by setting the DisableLUAPatching property. More information on UAC Patching can be found on MSDN. If an enterprise disables the LUA patching feature in MSI and does not give their users administrative access to machines then users will not be able to install, remove or patch Silverlight. Only the enterprise administrator could touch the files. Obviously, it's important that someone is actively monitoring and distributing patches; as with any runtime for any operating system, without any means to fix potential security vulnerabilities... Posted Apr 07 2008, 08:02 AM by Tim Sneath Filed under: Silverlight, enterprise

• Silverlight 1.0 - New Maintenance Release Available

  We released a minor maintenance update to Silverlight 1.0 over the weekend (internally known as GDR3 , where GDR stands for "General Distribution Release"). I'm sure most readers of this blog already have Silverlight 2 Beta 1 installed on their own machines, but if you're building a site for the tens of millions of users that already have Silverlight installed on their machine, you'll be pleased to know that we're continuing to service the 1.0 release to take account of customer-reported issues. The latest release is live now on the web for both Mac and PC ; it reports itself as 1.0.30401.0 (where the build number indicates that it was compiled on April 1st). The changes are minor in nature and shouldn't affect existing applications; they include an audio bug fix for nForce 4 motherboards , an update to support custom parameters in ASX playlists , fixes to font support on Mac OS X Leopard and improved multi-language support during installation and update. As ever, the way to check which version you're running is to right-click on some Silverlight content and choose the Silverlight Configuration context menu option; on a Macintosh, it's visible by browsing to the Silverlight run-time in its installation location in the browser Plug-Ins folder. Incidentally, it seems that most people don't realize that we publish release notes that highlight the deltas from one release to another (admittedly, the link is pretty buried, so it's worth adding to your favorites). Posted Apr 07 2008, 07:08 AM by Tim Sneath Filed under: Silverlight, changes

• Tip/Trick: Creating and Using Silverlight and WPF User Controls

  One of the fundamental design goals of Silverlight and WPF is to enable developers to be able to easily encapsulate UI functionality into re-usable controls. You can implement new custom controls by deriving a class from one of the existing Control classes (either a Control base class or from a control like TextBox, Button, etc).  Alternatively you can create re-usable User Controls - which make it easy to use a XAML markup file to compose a control's UI (and which makes them super easy to build). In Part 6 of my Digg.com tutorial blog series I showed how to create a new user control using VS 2008's "Add New Item" project item dialog and by then defining UI within it.  This approach works great when you know up front that you want to encapsulate UI in a user control.  You can also use the same technique with Expression Blend. Taking Existing UI and Encapsulating it as a User Control Sometimes you don't always know you want to encapsulate some UI functionality as a re-usable user control until after you've already started defining it on a parent page or control. For example, we might be working on a form where we want to enable a user to enter shipping and billing information.  We might begin by creating some UI to encapsulate the address information.  To-do this we could add a <border> control to the page, nest a grid layout panel inside it (with 2 columns and 4 rows), and then place labels and textbox controls within it: After carefully laying it all out, we might realize "hey - we are going to use the exact same UI for the billing address as well, maybe we should create a re-usable address user control so that we can avoid repeating ourselves".  We could use the "add new item" project template approach to create a blank new user control and then copy/paste the above UI contents into it.  An even faster trick that we can use within Blend, though, is to just select the controls we want to encapsulate as a user control in the designer, and then "right click" and choose the "Make Control" menu option: When we select the "Make Control" menu item, Blend will prompt us for the name of a new user control to create: We'll name it "AddressUserControl" and hit ok. This will cause Blend to create a new user control that contains the content we selected: When we do a re-build of the project and go back to the original page, we'll see the... Posted Apr 04 2008, 01:37 AM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: Tips and Tricks, WPF, Silverlight, .NET, Visual Studio

• Unit Testing with Silverlight

  One of the important capabilities we shipped with the Beta1 release of Silverlight 2 was a unit test harness that enables you to perform both API-level and UI-level unit testing.  This testing harness is cross browser and cross platform, and can be used to quickly run and verify automated unit tests: In addition to shipping this unit test harness for Silverlight, we also shipped the source to ~2,000 unit tests built with it that provide automated coverage for the Silverlight control source that we also shipped under a permissive license (you can take the control source, modify it, run the unit tests to verify the behavior, then re-ship the controls however you want). Learning How to Unit Test Silverlight Jeff Wilcox (who developed the Silverlight unit test framework and harness) has a great blog post that talks about how to add a Silverlight Unit Test project to a solution here . You can download the chat application that he shows testing from this expression blend blog post tutorial I did last month.  You can also watch this cool video post that Jeff created where he walks through the unit test framework and test cases we've shipped. As Jeff shows in his post, you can now add a "Silverlight Test Project" to your Visual Studio solution which encapsulates unit tests for an application you are working on: You can then add unit test classes to the test project that test APIs or simulate UI action within the Silverlight controls (simulate button clicks, etc). You can then run the test project and execute the tests within it to verify and report their status. Jeff's test framework automatically provides a browser based test harness and reporting system (which means you can run it on any browser/OS combination that Silverlight runs on): Jeff's test framework supports quickly re-setting controls after each test (and avoids needing to re-launch a new browser instance for each test cases - which makes it really fast). You can quickly rip through hundreds or thousands of automated tests in seconds: Green results mean the tests passed.  Red results flag that a test case failed and log the assertion failure and/or runtime exceptions that occurred. Summary If you've ever struggled to try and come up with a strategy for doing automated unit testing or TDD with AJAX applications, I think you'll find Silverlight provides some much nicer test options.  Using Visual Studio you can also separate your tests into a separate project... Posted Apr 02 2008, 02:01 AM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: Silverlight, .NET, Community News

• Silverlight Rehab

  Just loved the team's latest Silverlight video. Props to Adam, Laura, Nic, Monica, Dan, Scott and Tina. Posted Mar 31 2008, 01:47 PM by Tim Sneath Filed under: Silverlight, humor, silverlight 2.0, offtopic

• March 28th Links: ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Visual Studio, Silverlight, .NET

  Here is the latest in my link-listing series .  Also check out my ASP.NET Tips, Tricks and Tutorials page for links to popular articles I've done myself in the past. ASP.NET Three New ASP.NET Security Tutorials Now Available : Scott Mitchell continues his great ASP.NET security tutorials . These three new ones cover creating and managing roles, assigning roles to users, and implementing role based authorization.  You can also find more security articles by reading posts on my blog tagged with security . .NET Libraries to Digg, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 APIs : Scott Hanselman's latest "weekly source code" review looks at .NET APIs that you can use to call popular web 2.0 services. Hangs and how to Solve Them (Part 1) and (Part 2) : Tom has some useful posts that talk about deadlocks and request queuing in ASP.NET, and how to detect and debug what might be causing them. ASP.NET AJAX Building ASP.NET AJAX Controls (Part 1) , (Part 2) , and (Part 3) : Mike Ormond has started a nice blog post series that talks about how to build ASP.NET AJAX Controls.  Make sure to check out Part 2 - Components and Part 3 - Properties and Events as well. New ASP.NET AJAX "How Do I?" Videos : Joe Stagner has published a number of new ASP.NET AJAX "How Do I?" videos.  Learn about the re-order control , retrieving values from server-side AJAX controls , two techniques for triggering updates to update panels , and using the cascading drop down control . Real-Time Progress Bar with ASP.NET AJAX: SingingEels shows a technique for displaying real-time progress notifications using AJAX as a long-lived activity runs on the server. Using JQuery to Consume ASP.NET AJAX JSON Web Services : Dave Ward has a nice post that describes how to use the JQuery AJAX library on the client to call an ASP.NET Web Service on the server that is JSON enabled (using ASP.NET AJAX on the server).  ASP.NET MVC Kigg - Building a Digg Clone with ASP.NET MVC : Kazi Manzur Rashid published an excellent Digg-clone sample built with ASP.NET MVC last February.  He recently updated the code to work with ASP.NET MVC Preview 2 (full details here ).  You can download the latest version of his source code here . ASP.NET MVC In-Depth: The Life of an ASP.NET Request : Stephen Walther has a great post that details the exact steps that occur when an ASP.NET MVC request executes.  ASP.NET MVC Action Filters - Caching and Compression... Posted Mar 28 2008, 01:08 AM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: ASP.NET, Silverlight, .NET, Visual Studio, Atlas, Link Listing, MVC

• Uploading Silverlight 2 Content to Silverlight Streaming

  Following on very nicely from my last post on deploying Silverlight content to your own production server , I'm pleased to announce that Silverlight Streaming has added full support for Silverlight 2 applications. As well as adding the basic support, the team have put a lot of work into simplifying the process of uploading and validating your application. Here's a basic walkthrough: Create your Silverlight 2 application using Visual Studio or Expression Blend, do all the usual test / debug steps, etc. Create a manifest file named manifest.xml, that describes how you want the control to be hosted. Here's a simple sample you can use as a template: < SilverlightApp > < version > 2.0 </ version > < source > PopTheBubble.xap </ source > < width > 400 </ width > < height > 300 </ height > < background > white </ background > < isWindowless > false </ isWindowless > </ SilverlightApp > Zip your application .xap and manifest.xml files together into one file. Go to silverlight.live.com and upload the application. You're done! Now you can embed the resulting content in any web page with an iframe or the sample code provided. As a small example, here's a mini-game called PopTheBubble that you can learn to build by following the Silverlight 2 fundamentals hands-on lab . Click on as many bubbles as you can before the timer runs out - have fun! Posted Mar 18 2008, 06:24 PM by Tim Sneath Filed under: Silverlight, silverlight streaming, lab, silverlight 2

• Configuring a Web Server to Host Silverlight Content

  Deploying Silverlight content to a production web server is a pretty easy process. Despite occasional misconception, Silverlight doesn't require a Microsoft-based web server: Apache can host up Silverlight content just as happily as IIS. But there's one little gotcha: web servers are typically configured to only serve up a limited set of known file extensions as static content. That's all well and good, but Silverlight introduces two new file extensions (.xaml for loose XAML files and .xap for the zip-based binary packaging format). As a result, you need to add the MIME types for those file extensions to your web server so that it recognizes Silverlight content appropriately. Here are the MIME types you need to add to the server configuration: Extension MIME Type .xaml application/xaml+xml .xap application/x-silverlight-app That's all you have to do. Unfortunately, it's not possible to provide generic instructions for how to add MIME types, as it varies from server to server, but here are some links for various common web servers: Apache ( 2.0 , 1.3 ) IIS ( 7 / 6.0 / 5.0 / 4.0 ) lighttpd Sun Java System Web Server While you're updating the list of MIME types served, you might want to also add the relevant types to your web server to support WPF and ClickOnce applications. Here are the additional items you'll need: Extension MIME Type .manifest application/manifest .application application/x-ms-application .xbap application/x-ms-xbap .deploy application/octet-stream .xps application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument But what if you're hosting your Silverlight application on a shared hosting service and your hoster doesn't give you access to change these settings? The good news is that there are two options available to you. Obviously, you could take advantage of Silverlight Streaming , our free hosting service for up to 10GB of Silverlight content. Alternatively, you can "cheat" the web server by renaming the XAP file extension to a compatible MIME type. The XAP container is ZIP-based, so you can simply rename the output file from .xap to .zip and change the source param within the object tag contained in the HTML file to point to the new file location. Click on this hyperlink to see the technique in action - it's a plain HTML file that points to a ZIP file (containing the Silverlight content). One last piece of good news: IIS 7, included in Windows Server 2008, already includes all the relevant MIME types for both WPF and... Posted Mar 18 2008, 05:11 PM by Tim Sneath Filed under: WPF, Silverlight, XAML, silverlight streaming, windows, silverlight 2

• IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Module Released

  Video on the web is now one of those common scenarios that every user takes for granted, and increasingly every major site is incorporating in some form (product videos, training videos, richer advertising scenarios, user generated content, customer testimonials, etc). One of the challenges when adding video to a site, though, is delivering it in a way that doesn't cost a fortune.  Network bandwidth costs a lot of money, and the cost of high quality video usage can quickly add up. The blog post below provides a quick overview of some of the options you can use to reduce the cost of delivering video, and discusses a new free download - the IIS 7.0 Bit Rate Throttling Module - that was released a few days ago and which enables you to easily save money when serving video from an IIS web server using any video technology (including Silverlight, Windows Media Player and even Flash). Option 1: Using a Video Hosting Service One approach you can take to reduce video bandwidth costs is to use a video hosting service like YouTube or the free Microsoft Silverlight Streaming Service .  This allows you to use someone else's network to deliver the video content, and avoid having to pay the bandwidth costs yourself. If you aren't familiar with the Silverlight Streaming service, it allows you to upload up to 10GB of videos and download 5 Terabytes/year of video content (at up to a 1.4 Mbps bit-rate) for free.  You can build any custom Silverlight client player application you want to embed the video within it.  This means it doesn't require a specific video player look and feel, nor a service logo/watermark to play the video.  This allows you to fully integrate the video into your site and use whatever UI you want to host it. Option 2: Hosting Video on Your Own Servers Sometimes using a video hosting service doesn't make sense (for example: you want to use custom authentication to grant/deny user's access, you want to play really long video segments, or you want to serve up custom ads in your videos).  Instead you might want to serve the video up from your own servers and have complete control over it.  There are typically two options you can use to deliver the video from your servers: using a streaming approach or a progressive video download approach: Streaming Server Scenario In a streaming scenario a client (like Silverlight, Windows Media Player, Flash or Real Networks) connects to a streaming server.  The... Posted Mar 18 2008, 12:43 AM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: Silverlight, .NET, Community News, IIS7

• My Presentations in Arizona this Tuesday

  This week I'm visiting Scottsdale Arizona and will be presenting at a free user group event during the day.  I'm presenting two sessions myself: 1) Developing Applications using Silverlight 2 : This will be a drill-down into the new Silverlight 2 Beta1 release, and how you can build applications with it using VS 2008 and Expression Blend.  You'll leave this session with a good understanding of the basics of Silverlight programming and how to start building applications with it. 2) Developing Applications using ASP.NET MVC : This session will be a drill-down into the new ASP.NET Model-View-Controller framework option (which last week was updated .  You'll leave this session with a good understanding of what it is, how it works, and how to start building ASP.NET web applications with it. In addition to my sessions above, there will also be great sessions at the event from Microsoft employees on "Consuming Web Services with Microsoft Silverlight", "Encoding Video for Microsoft Silverlight", and "Serving Applications with Microsoft Silverlight Streaming".  You can sign up and attend the sessions for free.  Click here for more details on the events, and click here to register online to attend.  Hope to see some of you there, Scott Posted Mar 09 2008, 02:04 PM by ScottGu's Blog Filed under: ASP.NET, Silverlight, Community News, Talks