Encrypt your AJAX traffic using Microsoft Silverlight and Ajax.NET Professional
Some of you maybe remember that I had added some security related features in Ajax.NET Professional [1]. It is possible to put an AJAX token or to simple encrypt the data that gets over the lines. With Silverlight [2] we get the System.Security.Cryptography namespace on the client – before it was not very easy to encrypt a string without any plug-in (well, there are some implementations of Blowfish available in JavaScript [3]).
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, November 13, 2008
Windows Media Center as a Silverlight Application
Yesterday I have noticed that the Windows Media Center web site [1] has added an Silverlight application [2] that is showing how the Windows Media Center on Windows Vista is working. Hey, I did this with one of the first beta versions of Silverlight, but not as impressive as the demo.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, November 13, 2008
Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Update - kb955011
Since yesterday there is an update available for Silverlight 2 [1]. This update improves stability, media streaming, and the auto-update component. This update also improves support for Firefox 3 [2].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, July 17, 2008
Silverlight Roadmap Questions
I came across a great post about updated Silverlight 2 roadmap [1].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 7, 2008
Silverlight Control Skin Sets
Corrina Barber [1] has publish four different Silverlight [2] control skin sets that looks very nice and shows the power of skinning in Silverlight [3].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, March 24, 2008
Download Surface Demo including DeepZoom
Well, I forgot to publish the source code [1] of the changed Microsoft Surface Demo written for Silverlight 2 [2] beta 1. The original demo can be found at the Silverlight community gallery [3]. I have added the video support from my first Surface demo and a the new DeepZoom control that enables streamed zooming of high resolution files inside Silverlight control.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, March 24, 2008
Breaking Changes in Silverlight 2
There is an MSDN article that focuses on changes that might cause your older Silverlight [1]-based applications to now fail or behave differently not on new features/enhancements for this release:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Surface Demo - Silverlight 2 Update and DeepZoom
Today I updated my Surface Demo [1] (original source from Silverlight examples [2]). Well, there are only some small changes since last beta 1.1. So I have added a DeepZoom [3] control (MultiScaleImage) to the demo [4]:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Getting Silverlight from Microsoft Update
Since some weeks Microsoft offers a Silverlight [1] update (KB946609 [2]) through Microsoft Update. As it is an optional component you have to select it in the Microsoft Update web site or with Windows Vista from the optional updates. As the knowledge base says it is an update it is working as new installation as well. I'm very happy about that because Silverlight gets on more client PCs.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Silverlight Socket Comments
During my experience with Silverlight 2 beta 1 [1] and the use of sockets I have collected some comments that may help you starting with sockets inside Silverlight:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, March 10, 2008
Silverlight 2 beta 1 and Socket Exception: Access Denied
Playing around with the sockets [1] in Silverlight 2 beta 1 [2] I found out that it works fine on my local host. When publishing my sample to a real Web server (I mean a Web server that is reachable in the Internet with a domain) I got always a socket exception saying that access is denied [3]. I looked around if I could find any help on that. I thought that there maybe is a restriction in the defaults of Silverlight and that I could find somewhere a configuration similar to the .NET and zones configuration, but I didn't.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, March 9, 2008
Maybe Socket Bug in Policy Code in Silverlight 2 beta 1
In my last post [1] I wrote about how you can use sockets in Silverlight 2 beta 1 [1]. Well, when publishing my application to a Internet domain the code didn't work. I always get a socket exception: error code 10013, access denied. I have put an example online at http://frankfurt.schwarz-interactive.de:4510/test.aspx [2].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, March 8, 2008
Silverlight 2 and Apple Safari for Windows
Yesterday evening I have played with the new Silverlight 2 [1] beta 1 bits and tried to run it on different Web browsers. The system requirements for Silverlight 2 [2] are:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, March 7, 2008
Silverlight 2 and System.Net.Sockets.Socket
The new beta of Silverlight 2 [1] introduces Sockets. The security model enforced by the System.Net.Sockets namespace in Silverlight 2 allows for a connection only back to the site or host of origin. So Silverlight 2 applications will be allowed to connect only to the host from which they were downloaded.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, March 7, 2008
Silverlight 2 not working on Production Web Server
I got some questions about why is Silverlight 2 [1] beta not working on my production Web server? Well, one of the most errors I found is the missing MIME type definition in IIS. Silverlight 2 doesn't compile a DLL as the beta 1.1 did. The new file extension is .XAP. The only thing you have to do is following step:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, March 6, 2008
Silverlight 2, Images,... running on .NET Micro Framework Web Server
The next beta of Silverlight 2 [1] is available online since yesterday. Another announcement appeared in the news [2] is that Silverlight (maybe only version 1.0 for now) will be available on Windows Mobile 6 and Nokia S60 and S40.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, March 6, 2008
Silverlight Web Site Updated
You may have noticed that the Silverlight web site at Microsoft.com [1] has been updated. Well, I looks nicer than before, I like it. The system requirements are available here [2].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Everywhere Microsoft Silverlight
To prepare my laptop for the next weeks I reinstalled my last image to get rid of all the beta software I tried the last months. Oh, I have to install Silverlight [1] to be able to develop and show some demos. While visiting some web sites from Microsoft I got a small popup showing me that I can get a better experience on that site when I install Silverlight 1.0. Here are some screen shots:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, January 6, 2008
Silverlight Rectangles, Paths and Line Comparison
More than half a year ago Dave Campbell [1], Luis Abreu [2] and I had a discussion [3] about the 1px line width problem in Silverlight and WPF [4]. A short summary of the problem when drawing lines with 1px and using an anti-alias effect:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, January 4, 2008
Volta - Microsoft Live Labs
On December 5th last year Microsoft Live Labs announced the Volta technology preview [1], a developer toolset for building multi-tier web applications using existing and familiar tools, techniques and patterns. You architect and built your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together. In effect, Volta offers a best-effort experience i n multiple environments without requiring tailoring of the application.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, January 3, 2008
Microsoft Download Center using Silverlight 1.0
Some weeks ago Microsoft already published a preview version of the Microsoft Download Center. Now, there is a new URL for the preview version (which is now called beta): http://www.microsoft.com/beta/downloads/ [1].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, December 23, 2007
Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Wish List (part 2)
I got a lot of feedback for my last post about Silverlight features that are currently missing [1]. Because it is Christmas time we are allowed to wish everything we want, what we get is another thing. Here are some additional features currently missing and are maybe important for everyone.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, December 21, 2007
Nintendo Wii and Silverlight: Tracking Your Fingers
While writing my Silverlight wish list I found a very nice project. Johnny Ching Lee [1] is using the controller (Wiimote) of the Nintendo Wii to track fingers [2]. The controller does not need the Nintendo Wii [3] console, simple the controller and a bluetooth connection [4] is enough. Combining this project with WPF or Silverlight would be the answer of one of my wishes. (Well, I know what I will try during the holidays.)
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, December 20, 2007
Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 Wish List
Well, the year 2007 is nearly at the end and I have my short wish list for Microsoft Silverlight [1]. The following (maybe not complete) unsorted list would be nice to see in 2008 with the next CTP or final version:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, December 20, 2007
Update Silverlight not working
I have noticed the last weeks that if you have an older version of Microsoft Silverlight [1] installed I get following error message when opening Web pages with Silverlight content:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, November 26, 2007
MSDN Webcast: Silverlight 1.0 Overview
Rob Bagby [1], MSDN Developer Evangelist, will present Silverlight [2] 1.0 on Wednesday, 15th August at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada).
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Silverlight Peformance Tips
A great post about some Silverlight performance tips: Silverlight: A few thoughts on minimizing CPU usage [1]:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, August 10, 2007
Upgrading your project to Silverlight Alpha 1.1 Refresh
Scott Hanselman [1] wrote on his blog about how to upgrade your project from Silverlight 1.1 Alpha to Alpha Refresh [2]. There are a couple of breaking changes in Silverlight 1.0 RC1 [3]. Because the 1.1 version does include the same core it will be necessary to change Silverlight Alpha 1.1 projects, too.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Silverlight Configuration Tool
With the latest Silverlight bits you will find a new configuration tool in the Silverlight application folder (i.e. c:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight) names slup.exe (SilverLight UPdate?). You can open the configuration from any Silverlight host, too, by right-clicking on the host control and click on Silverlight Configuration.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007
Updated My Silverlight Surface Version
I have updated the Silverlight "Surface" demonstration with video support [1], too. The only thing I had to do is to replace the Silverlight.js JavaScript file and change the boolean properties in the createObjectEx to their string representations (true becomes "true").
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007
[de] Kostenfreier Silverlight Workshop in Erlangen
Nachdem wir den ersten Workshop kurzfristig absagen mussten haben wir einen neuen Termin in Erlangen bei der the campus [1] am 9. August, ab 18 Uhr. Wir haben einen Raum, PCs, Kaffee und Kuchen! Anmeldungen über die neu angelegte Google Group NET-Workshops [2].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007
New Silverlight Links
The last weeks I was a little bit busy because of some projects and other work I had to do at home. But today I will publish some new links about Silverlight:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007
Silverlight 1.0 RC1 available
As you may have already noticed: the RC1 of Silverlight 1.0 has been put online on the weekend. Since the last beta there have been fixed around 2000 (!) bugs and added some more features. English downloads are available here:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 30, 2007
[de] Silverlight Get Together
(English: I will start new workshops about Ajax, ASP.NET and Silverlight in the next months, first will start on Thursday about Silverlight.)
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, July 23, 2007
Implementing Silverlight in 21 Days
Miguel de Icaza [1] is writing yesterday on his blog that he wrote a Silverlight plugin for Linux [2]:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 22, 2007
Expression Studio in German
The German trial versions [1] of Microsoft Expression Studio [2] are now available. The full versions will be available in about 6 weeks, Expression Web is already available.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, June 14, 2007
Silverlight and Infragistics
Infragistics [1] is already deeply involved in Silverlight development [2]. They are excited about the platform as the next-generation Web UI. They think there are several key wins in Silverlight [3] for Web application development and are exploring how they can best provide controls and tooling to complement what Microsoft provides in the box.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, June 14, 2007
Balder - 3D Engine for Silverlight
The source code of the 3D engine called Balder is available on CodePlex [1], now. The state of the source code is not 100% yet, but people can download it for now and have a look at how you could do a simple 3D engine.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, June 13, 2007
[de] .NET User Group Franken am 5. Juli 2007
Die .NET User Group Franken [1] trifft sich mal wieder, diesmal in den Räumen der evosoft GmbH (Dank geht an Igor Milovanovic [2]).
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Apple Safari for Windows and Microsoft Silverlight
Since yesterday you can download Safari 3 Plublic Beta for Windows [1]. "The world's best browser.", "the fastest, easiest-to-use Web browser in the world" - does this really be true?
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Silverlight 1.1 Plug-in installed
Well, during the weekend I added a small test to log how many visitors of my blog have installed the Silverlight [1] plug-in already.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 11, 2007
My Silverlight Weekend Summary
During the weekend I found several new examples about Silverlight [1]. Because I'm running several Web sites that need any kind of diagrams I was happy to see these nice examples from Richard: JellyBar [2], JellyGraph [3] and JellyPie [4].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 11, 2007
VistaDB with Silverlight
Today I read on the VistaDB blog [1] that their database engine will run on Silverlight [2]. I'm not sure if I want to put a complete database engine in Silverlight applications [3]. Do I have to put the database files into IsolatedStorage or will it be only in-memory?
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 8, 2007
New Examples and Tutorials
During the last days I have added some new tutorials [1] and examples [2] to my list. Dave Campbell sent me a short message that he has already a kind of Silverlight examples collection. Have a look on his list of Silverlight tagged articles he wrote [3] and external Silverlight examples as well [4].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 8, 2007
Silverlight Tutorials
There are a couple of great tutorials on how to developer Microsoft Silverlight [1] 1.0 or 1.1 Web applications:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Wednesday, June 6, 2007
How to create Silverlight Applications with Notepad
You may have read my post about how you can build Silverlight Web applications with Visual Studio .NET 2005 [1] instead of using the next verison codename Orcas. Until this time I used always a Virtual PC which was sometimes a little bit slow.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Updated Silverlight Surface Demo
Ok, it was a very simple bug on my side with the ZIndex property. I have updated the online version [1] and the download [2]. If you have a slow connection you may have to wait some seconds to see the video.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Microsoft Silverlight Introduction (LiveMeeting)
Tomorrow there is an online event for developers talking about Silverlight at 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada):
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Bubblemark Animation Test
Did you ever compared client-side RIA frameworks? Alexey Gavrilov [1] has written a great test to directly compare performance [2]: Silverlight (WPF/e) vs. DHTML vs. Flash (Flex) vs. WPF vs Apollo vs. Java (Swing):
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Silverlight Surface Demonstration (Video Support)
In one of my last posts [1] I wrote about the Silverlight Surface [2] demo of the "photo table". If you had a look on the live demo [3] you only see images, no video. I have added this because it is a very great idea to do it with Silverlight and the high media support inside.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007
Silverlight Examples
During the weekend I spent some minutes to collect some of the greatest Silverlight [1] examples. Most of them need the Silverlight 1.1 alpha runtime which is available for download here [2].
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007
Silverlight Surface Demonstration
Microsoft announced some days ago its Surface product [1]. If you didn't had a look on the videos you should watch it.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007
Silverlight with Visual Studio .NET 2005
Could Silverlight [1] 1.1 assemblies be generated with Visual Studio .NET 2005? Well, if you read the GetStarted [2] page of Silverlight you see only upcoming Visual Studio codename Orcas as development platform.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007
Silverlight Streaming
Microsoft Silverlight Streaming [1] is a new service by Windows Live that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich meda as part of their Silverlight applications. The new service offers web designers and developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows and Mac.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, June 4, 2007
JavaScript and .NET Arrays in Silverlight
During my tests with the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) in Silverlight 1.1 [1] I came accross several things that didn't work first. Most of them could be fixed by using small workarounds.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007
Silverlight and JSON
Silverlight 1.1 [1] comes with an built-in JSON serializer which can serialize common data types like string, numbers and arrays. It includes a object serializer, too, I think it is nearly the same as in ASP.NET AJAX or Ajax.NET Professional.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007
Call Scribtable Methods from JavaScript with Silverlight
Today I wrote a very simple example how to call a C# method from JavaScript code. I was using this because I'd like to access the IsolatedStorage with a small wrapper that is working similar to the registry.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007
Silverlight 1.0 and OnLoad
There are some changes for the OnLoad event handler from older beta versions (code name WPF/E). In Silverlight 1.0 beta you will use following event handler, now:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, June 1, 2007
IsolatedStorage and managed JavaScript
Today I tried to use the IsolatedStorage in managed JavaScript with Silverlight 1.1 [1]. The IsolatedStorage can be used to store data on the client. Currently the alpha version supports 1MB, which is more than storing data in cookies, but maybe will be changed in the future. Perhaps there will be a setting in a future options dialog where you can specify how much you will allow to store locally.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, May 31, 2007
DLR and Performance
The idea was to put all JavaScript libraries into the DLR of Silverlight to get better performance, but a first tests failed or is compared to JavaScript directly in the Web browser very slow.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, May 31, 2007
Running managed JavaScript in Silverlight
At MIX 07 Jim Hugunin announced a new level of support for dynamic languages on .NET that they're calling the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime). With Silverlight 1.1 you get support for dynamic languages today: Phyton, JavaScript (EcmaScript 3.0), Visual Basic and Ruby.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, May 31, 2007
Silverlight .NET Support
The Silverlight team has released a new version [1] today at the MIX with .NET support. Since Mike announced [2] this Web developers are waiting for this new feature.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 30, 2007
webinale 07
I will be available for Microsoft Silverlight discussions at the [webinale 07 [1] conference in Ludwigsburg/Stuttgart to talk and discuss about the latest version of Silverlight presented at the Mix07 in Las Vegas. Of course, you can talk with me about Ajax.NET Professional, too.]
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Saturday, April 28, 2007
Rich Media Platform Comparison
I found a nice table which will show a comparison between Microsoft products and Flash/Flex:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, April 19, 2007
Microsoft Silverlight
For all of you didn't noticed the name change of code name WPF/E, it is now Microsft Silverlight. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. Silverlight integrates with existing Web applications and, of course, almost all Web technologies you are already using like Ajax.NET Professional [1] or ASP.NET in common.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, April 16, 2007
WPF/E SDK (February CTP) available (and Windows Vista running in a web browser)
The WPF/E SDK [1] (February CTP) is now available, you can download the files from the MSDN web page [2]. The WPF/E QuickStart is not yet available as download.
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Sunday, February 4, 2007
The WPF/E Gear Keeps Turning
As you may have read on my blog I have added an animation to the gear example [1] from Mike Harsh. Now, the gear community is here! Read Bryant Likes's Blog [2] post about the gears:
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Friday, January 26, 2007
WPF/E Plugin Update: how does it work?
Today I had a look on how the WPF/E plugin will check if there is a new update available. Would it be in Windows Updates or is there any automatic update done?
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Monday, December 25, 2006
A short list of WPF/E exmaples
http://mtaulty.com/wpfe/ex2.html [2] http://mtaulty.com/wpfe/ex3.html [3] http://mtaulty.com/wpfe/ex4.html [4] http://mtaulty.com/wpfe/ex5.html [5] http://mtaulty.com/wpfe/ex6.html [6] http://mtaulty.com/wpfe/ex7.html [7] (nice video animation)
Posted by Michael Schwarz on Thursday, December 14, 2006