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Silverlight UK User Group #10 Agenda

Mark.Mann — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:04:35 GMT

Conference season is here again… the SharePoint Conference recently convened in Las Vegas with plenty of news about collaborating with SharePoint 2010. Next is Tech·Ed Europe which kicks of very soon in Berlin for which there are a couple of new and interesting products becoming public. Finally, we’ve got the PDC for which I know that the guys at Microsoft are particularly busy preparing for… I expect there will be lots of announcements at the PDC around web technologies and Visual Studio in particular (.NET4, VS2010, Azure…).

A lot of these events will have live video coverage (via a Silverlight player and IIS7 Streaming of course) so I’ve included links for you below to experience the conference from your desktop if you are not lucky enough to attend in person.


Microsoft PDC09 16th – 19th November Los Angeles	Microsoft Tech·Ed Europe 2009 9th – 13th November Berlin	Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 19th – 22nd October Las Vegas

So, a little later in the calendar than expected due to conference season, the next Silverlight User Group evening will be…

Date:   Tuesday 1st December 2009

Time: Registration @ 18:00, Kick off @18:30 - please don't be late!
           Till about 8:30pm

Where: EMC Consulting,
             Notcutt House, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU.

You can register here or via Michelle.

Registered attendees will be notified with final details by Friday 27th November.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

“working together: designers & developers”
with Ben Morris from TrickyBusiness and John Donnelly from Dot Net Solutions

Ben Morris and John Donnelly will demonstrate how the M-V-VM pattern and scrum enable good designer-developer interaction with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 3. If time permits, Ben and John will also give insight into the graphic and software design decisions on the recently published profileme.pensiondcisions.com application.

Breakout for liquid refreshments and a bit of mingling!

End.

Most of our user group are Tweet’ers, so if there’s anything you want to share amongst the group, then check out our Twitter hashtag or user accounts:

#sluguk @mark_mann @michelleflynn

Please register and I hope to see you there!

mark.

About John Donnelly (the developer)

John Donnelly is a Senior Software Architect for Dot Net Solutions, with experience in many Microsoft technologies throughout his career as a developer, team lead and software architect. Recent roles have focused on WPF and Silverlight implementations with particular interest in developer-designer workflow.

www.dotnetsolutions.co.uk/blog | twitter.com/caffienated

About Ben Morris (the designer)

Ben Morris is the Creative Director of Tricky Business, his role includes leading the team to create unique and compelling brand experiences for their clients. His work combines his passion for new technology with his experience in interaction design.

www.trickybusiness.co.uk | http://trickybiz.tumblr.com

Want to join the discussion?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested in coming along then please contact either myself or Michelle Flynn (here) and we will be glad to take your details.

Want to present or showcase?
We are always on the lookout for presenters for future sessions - whether it be a high or low level coding walk through, a workflow perspective or showcase demo. If you think that you have a topic/presentation that ought to be shared with the community then please contact me (here) and I'll see if I can get you scheduled in!

Silverlight, HTTPS, and Certificates

Mark.Mann — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:57:00 GMT

Someone recently asked me at that last Silverlight UK User Group as to whether communication between Silverlight and a web service can be secured. Silverlight is a plug-in that runs in the context of the browser, and so only supports the HTTP protocol but this does include HTTPS too.

So first off, we’ll need to to add a service binding.. if you have a HTTPS service already setup, adding a service reference will do all the hard work for you otherwise you’ll need to specify:

It’s the security mode that is important, normally it is set to None for HTTP, however setting it to Transport turns on HTTPS.

Whenever we expose services for Silverlight applications, we need to define a cross-domain access policy that resides within the service’s website. If you are accessing a public web service, then you might have to check with the provider to ensure that there is the appropriate permissions set within this file since it can be configured to only allow access to the services from particular domains or protocols. Hopefully the cross-domain access policy is within your control, in which case a basic configuration is to have a crossdomain.xml file in the root of the domain hosting the service(s).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<access-policy>

<cross-domain-access>

<allow-from http-request-headers="*">

<domain uri="http://*"/>

</allow-from>

<grant-to>

</grant-to>

</policy>

</cross-domain-access>

</access-policy>

The line of interest is <domain uri="http://*"/>
which allows access to an HTTPS service from an HTTP application (normally this is omitted).

More details can be found on MSDN here.

Really, yes that’s it…

If you want to track the calls and information relayed between your Silverlight application and the HTTPS service, use Fiddler2 which has a filter option to trace and decrypt the HTTPS traffic.

However, what if you are writing your own HTTP web service? Visual Studio does not have a HTTPS enabled web server to debug against, so you’ll have to look into hosting your HTTP service from your local IIS instead. Setting up your IIS server for HTTPS depends upon a SSL certificate which forms the basis for the trust relationship between the server and any of the clients accessing the HTTPS hosted services.

SSL certificates are specific to domains, so trying to debug HTTP against localhost is not going to work. Getting round this is simple enough, just add an entry into your computer’s hosts file for the name of the domain you want the certificate to be setup against and match it against 127.0.0.1.

eg: 127.0.0.1 www.mytest.com

Your hosts file can be found at “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc” and if you are editing the file in notepad, make sure that you do so as an administrator since it is a protected system file.

IIS7 allows you to create self-signed certificates which are fine for regular web content but not for services – mainly due to the fact that the certificate is valid but the browser will not immediately trust the certificate because it does not originate from a recognised certification authority. Thus you’ll be presented with the following error in your browser, for which a user can navigate past, but a service call cannot:

So, to create a your own certificate for HTTP web service testing we’ll have to dig out the IIS6 Resource Kit and use SelfSSL.

I’m going to create a specific website for my testing, so open your IIS Manager and create a new website but add the name of your domain into the hosts name (what you set in the hosts file), so that IIS will look at the host headers if a match, it will redirect to this site.

Now, take note of the the new website’s ID, you can find this out by clicking on the Sites node in IIS Manager. The reason why I point it out is because you may have many other websites running and the SSL certificate can only be set against one of these sites.

Open up a command prompt (as an administrator if you’ve got UAC turned on) and run up the SelfSSL command:

SelfSSL /N:CN=<your domain name> /V:<number of days till expiry> /S:<site id>

thus following continuing my example:

SelfSSL /N:CN=www.mytest.com /V:365 /S:2

The command prompt will just state that a certificate was successfully assigned, but we can check this by looking at the Server Certificates panel in IIS Manager (click the Root node and then Server Certificates in the IIS section). Note that this is different to creating a self-signed certificate in the IIS7 Manager which creates a certificate issued by your computer’s name instead.

Although we have a self-signed certificate, it is still not trusted and we’ll get the following certificate error which can be overridden by the user when browsing to the site. However, we’re now in good stead, since we’ve a certificate issued by a domain name that can be configured to be be trusted.

So, going back to the Server Certificates panel, select the certificate just generated and click Export in the actions pane.

An export certificate dialog will appear and so fill in the destination for the certificate and a password (make it really secure if you want to use this for a live website). Note, give the destination file a pfx extension so that Windows recognises this as an exported certificate file.

Now, if this was a shared web server, you can pass the certificate to all those users that want to access the HTTPS services from the specified domain name. Open a command prompt (as an administrator if you have UAC enabled) and execute the pfx file. This will activate an install certificate wizard.

First step is just an introduction, the second specifies the certificate file we are importing:

The third step requires you to type in the password that was set for this certificate file, accept the defaults for the other options (as shown):

The fourth step is important. Normally, the “Automatically select” option is selected and to enable this trust across web pages and web services exposed by our secured server. If we did allow Windows to automatically select the certificate store it will pick a location for which only browsers can utilise the connection – not services. Thus, select the second option - “Place all certificates in the following store” and then click Browse.

Be patient, the wizard may take a little while to open up the certificate stores. Tick the “Show physical stores” and then select “Trusted Root Certification Authorities”, and then “Local Computer”. Click OK.

Note: if you don’t see “Local Computer” you did not run the wizard as an administrator!

The final step of the wizard is a confirmation for which clicking OK will add the certificate into the certificate store for this computer.

Wow.. look at that. Navigating to my default page did not ask me for a certificate… you’ll find the same for any web service calls no more un-trusted certificate warnings.

Additionally, looking in the IE Options panel, on the Content tab, click Certificates:

Cycle through the tabs till you find the Trusted Root Certification Authorities tab and somewhere in the list should be the certificate we imported.

This process of creating and installing a trusted self-signed certificate does not just apply to Silverlight testing, but is the normal process for adding a certificate to for any HTTPS website or web service testing.

enjoy!

Silverlight UK User Group #9 – Slide decks as promised!

Mark.Mann — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:02:00 GMT

Firstly, many thanks to all that attended or presented at the Silverlight UK User Group on Tuesday 29th at the EMC Consulting office in London. It’s refreshing to see a steady stream of new comers to these evening sessions as well as the familiar faces of the regulars.

Many of the established members of this user group are avid tweeters, please check out our Twitter hashtag:

#sluguk

You can either follow me using the Twitter widget in the right-hand panel of this blog, or on twitter as @mark_mann.

Normally we have Ian Smith on hand to video the event, however, he stepped in front of the camera this time for a talk on PRISM! Thus there is no video but as promised, I’ve put together all the slide decks from the presenters and any supplemental information that was discussed.

Silverlight UK User Group #9 Introduction

View more presentations from mark mann.

Ian Blackburn from bbits gave the first talk on Silverlightpulse.net and then .NET RIA Services with Silverlight - his two slide decks are below. For any further info on Ian, he maintains a trio of blogs: silverlightforbusiness.net, backofabeermat.co.uk and bbits.co.uk/blog.
Find Ian on twitter as @IanBlackburn

SilverlightPulse.NET [Silverlight UK User Group]

Ian would also like to share Silverlightpulse.net with the wider community and has posted up the code on codeplex (http://silverlightpulse.codeplex.com). He hopes to generate further interest and shared learning by extending Silverlightpulse.net. See what Ian has in mind in his session’s follow up blog post.

.NET RIA Services For Silverlight

After we all had a chance to recharge on pizza and beer, our second session featured a different Ian!

Ian Smith from irascian, gave his candid opinions on PRISM and its importance to .NET/Silverlight. Lots of good pointers in this one! Ian posted a pre-session note on his blog but I’ve added the link into his slide deck below.
Find Ian Smith on twitter as @irascian

PRISM and Silverlight

Finally, I would like to acknowledge and thank our current sponsors…

	for providing the venue.
	for providing the beer and pizza plus their continual support to the user group!

Want to join the discussion?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested in coming along then please contact either Mark Mann or Michelle Flynn (here) and we will be glad to take your details.

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

Silverlight UK User Group #9 Agenda

Mark.Mann — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 00:47:00 GMT

School holidays are nearly over, summer is probably trying to go for one last sun burst this August Bank Holiday and I’m making a dash out of office for 3 weeks. Therefore (rather hurriedly) the agenda for the next Silverlight UK User Group is as follows!

Date: Tuesday 29th September 2009
Time: Registration @ 18:00, Kick off @18:30 - please don't be late!
Till about 9:30pm

Where: EMC Consulting, (formerly Conchango),
Notcutt House, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU.

You can register here or via Michelle.

Registered attendees will be notified with final details by Thursday 24th September.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

“SilverlightPulse.net”
with Ian Blackburn from bbits

Silverlightpulse.net was created in an evening to reflect the Silverlight announcements coming out of Mix09 and to keep track of the tweets that were flowing about Silverlight Since then Silverlight 3 has been given a public release date of July 10 and silverlightpulse is being updated to take advantage over the numerous new v3 features and to truly realise the potential of twitter analysis. Come and see how Silverlight 3 has made this interesting application easy to produce, and powerful to use.

Ian Blackburn is founder and director of bbits who offer specialized .net training, development and consultancy in the UK. Ian has worked with a wide variety of clients ranging from small start-up companies, to blue-chip companies, and prestigious institutions such as the House of Lords. Ian has authored numerous articles and books and is available for technical consultancies and presentations worldwide; he maintains a trio of blogs: silverlightforbusiness.net, backofabeermat.co.uk and bbits.co.uk/blog

Breakout for refreshments

An introduction to PRISM and what it means to Silverlight
with Ian Smith from irascian

Ian is normally hidden behind the camera at Silverlight UK User Group evenings and he’s been coaxed out again to present his thoughts on PRISM and how it enables building composite applications in WPF and Silverlight. PRISM is more than just an evolution of the Practices&Patterns CAB and lends itself into the web space by enabling MVVM and MEF patterns in Silverlight. Its a broad topic, but Ian will be able to give a clear insight as to what PRISM is trying to achieve, what it can do to help your development, and how to get started.
Ian blogs frequently at irascianwork.blogspot.com/

End.

Please register and I hope to see you there!

mark.

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

Microsoft Expression & Silverlight UK Launch Videos

Mark.Mann — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:40:18 GMT

I was particularly proud to be invited to support the Microsoft Expression & Silverlight UK Launch on the 22nd July. Ian Ellison-Taylor (General Manager of Presentation Platforms and Tools Group at Microsoft) presented the keynote and oversaw the proceedings. Microsoft has just released the recordings/footage of the event which is available in its entirety here.

A project that I’ve been working on recently was showcased by Paul Dawson… Tesco BeautyRoom – powered by Silverlight 3 and the TescoAPI. BeautyRoom is not publically available yet due to final user testing against the latest version of the TescoAPI which will be revealed at the TJAM event later this week , but you can see the video here.

We also ran the Silverlight UK User Group in the evening directly after the launch event, with Ian Ellison-Taylor presenting and making himself more directly available to the user group members over a bottle of beer and pizza. Considering that Ian was only visiting from Redmond for a couple of days, he showed an impressive bout of stamina against the jetlag!

The evening’s session video is available to view below.

View on ExposureRoom

enjoy!

Silverlight 3 RTW out now!

Mark.Mann — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:26:00 GMT

Well, we knew it was coming soon and finally Silverlight 3 has been released. Its partner, Expression Blend 3 is not far behind as it has been updated to a Release Candidate level.

Silverlight 3 is backwards compatible with Silverlight 2 , so customers already using a previous version of Silverlight will be asked if they want to be upgraded to take advantage of all the exciting new features that we can bake into our Silverlight 3 applications. Upgrading can be done explicitly via direction through the plug-in or using the new Web Platform Installer.

Developers can get the new runtime, developer tools an loads of great information from http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Lots of really useful information can be found at the following:

Reference Sites	Key Blogs
Microsoft Silverlight website Microsoft Expression website SeeTheLight – Silverlight/Expression Silverlight.net Silverlight Geek Wiki	Tim Heuer Scott Guthrie

What’s new though? loads…

What’s New in Silverlight 3?

Fully supported by Visual Studio and Expression Blend, highlights of new features and functionality of Silverlight 3 include: major media enhancements, out of browser support allowing Web applications to work on the desktop; significant graphics improvements including 3D graphics support, GPU acceleration and H.264 video support; and many features to improve RIA development productivity. Also, in order to fully integrate all the .NET developer tools, Visual Studio 2010 will support a fully editable and interactive designer for Silverlight. New features in Silverlight 3 include:

Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop. New and enhanced media features in Silverlight 3 include:
- Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming. IIS Media Services (formerly IIS Media Pack), an integrated HTTP media delivery platform, features Smooth Streaming which dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file delivered to Silverlight based on local bandwidth and CPU conditions.
- More format choice. In addition to native support for VC-1/WMA, Silverlight 3 now offers users native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio, enabling content distributors to deliver high-quality content to a wide variety of computers and devices.
- True HD playback in full-screen. Leveraging graphics processor unit (GPU) hardware acceleration, Silverlight experiences can now be delivered in true full-screen HD (720p+).
- Extensible media format support. With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.
- Industry leading content protection. Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM.
Empowering Richer Experiences. Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals. Additional features include:
- Perspective 3D Graphics. Silverlight 3 allows developers and designers to apply content to a 3D plane. Users can rotate or scale live content in space without writing any additional code. Other effects include creating a queue in 3D and transitions.
- Pixel Shader effects. These software based effects include blur and drop shadow. In addition, you can also write your own effect. Effects can be applied to any graphical content. An example would be to make a button appear depressed on rollover you could use a drop shadow effect on the pressed visual state.
- Bitmap Caching. Silverlight 3 dramatically improves the rendering performance of applications by allowing users to cache vector content, text and controls into bitmaps. This feature is useful for background content and for content which needs to scale without making changes to its internal appearance.
- New Bitmap API. With Silverlight 3, developers can now write pixels to a bitmap. Thus, they can build a photo editor to do red eye correction, perform edits on scanned documents or create specials effects for cached bitmaps from elements on the screen.
- Themed application support. Developers can now theme applications by applying styles to their Silverlight 3 applications and changing them at runtime. Additionally, developers can cascade styles by basing them on each other.
- Animation Effects. Silverlight 3 provides new effects such as spring and bounce. These make animation more natural. Developers can also now develop their own mathematical functions to describe an animation.
- Enhanced control skinning. Silverlight 3 provides easier skinning capabilities by keeping a common set of controls external from an application. This allows the sharing of styles and control skins between different applications.
- Improved text rendering & font support. Silverlight 3 allows far more efficient rendering and rapid animation of text. Applications also load faster by enabling the use of local fonts.
Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity. New features include:
- 60+ controls with source code : Silverlight 3 is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with nine professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. Other additions include multiple selection in listbox controls, file save dialog making it easier to write files, and support for multiple page applications with navigation.
- Deep Linking. Silverlight 3 includes support for deep linking, which enables bookmarking a page within a RIA.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Silverlight 3 enables users to solve the SEO-related challenges posed by RIAs. By utilizing business objects on the server, together with ASP.NET controls and site maps, users can automatically mirror database-driven RIA content into HTML that is easily indexed by the leading search engines.
- Enhanced Data Support Silverlight 3 delivers:
  - Element to Element binding : UI designers use binding between two UI properties to create compelling UI experiences. Silverlight now enables property binding to CLR objects and other UI components via XAML, for instance binding a slider value to the volume control of a media player.
  - Data Forms. The Data Form control provides support for layout of fields, validation, updating and paging through data.
  - New features for data validation which automatically catch incorrect input and warn the user with built-in validation controls.
  - Support for business objects on both client and server with n-Tier data support. Easily load, sort, filter and page data with added support for working with data. Includes a new built-in CollectionView to perform a set of complex operations against server side data. A new set of .NET RIA services supports these features on the server.
- Improved performance, through:
  - Application library caching, which reduces the size of applications by caching framework on the client in order to improve rendering performance.
  - Enhanced Deep Zoom, allows users to fluidly navigate through larger image collections by zooming.
  - Binary XML allows communication with the server to be compressed, greatly increasing the speed at which data can be exchanged.
  - Local Connection This feature allows communication between two Silverlight applications on the client-side without incurring a server roundtrip: for instance a chart in one control can communicate with a datagrid in another.
Advanced Accessibility Features. Silverlight 3 is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by using familiar operating system controls.
Out of Browser Capabilities. The new out of browser experience in Silverlight 3 enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto their PC and Mac, with links on the desktop and start menu—all without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Further, the new experience enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not—a radical improvement to the traditional Web experience. Features include:
- Life outside the browser. Silverlight applications can now be installed to and run from the desktop as lightweight web companions. Thus, users can take their favorite Web applications with them, regardless of whether they are connected to the Internet or not.
- Desktop shortcuts and start menu support. Silverlight applications can be stored on any PC or Mac computer’s desktop with links in the start menu and applications folder, and so are available with one-click access.
- Safe and secure. Leveraging the security features of the .NET Framework, Silverlight applications run inside a secure sandbox with persistent isolated storage. These applications have most of the same security restrictions as traditional web apps and so can be trusted without security warnings or prompts, minimizing user interruptions.
- Smooth installation. Because Silverlight applications are stored in a local cache and do not require extra privileges to run, the installation process is quick and efficient.
- Auto-update. Upon launch, Silverlight applications can check for new versions on the server, and automatically update if one is found.
- Internet connectivity detection. Silverlight applications can now detect whether they have Internet connectivity and can react intelligently including caching a users’ data until their connection is restored.

New Features in Expression Blend 3: The designer-developer workflow took another major step forward today with major innovations in Expression Blend 3 including: SketchFlow, a rapid prototyping capability that makes it easy to communicate design intent to stakeholders; design time sample data that enables the design and testing of applications without access to live data; direct import of Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files; behaviors, extensible and reusable components that add interactivity to applications without writing code; a full code editor supporting C#, VB and XAML; and many more features that support an improved design and development experience. Features include:

SketchFlow. SketchFlow introduces a new set of features designed to make it easier for you to experiment with dynamic user experiences and create compelling prototypes. SketchFlow also helps communicate design ideas to other stakeholders, and makes it easier to collect in-context annotated feedback. SketchFlow enables the navigation and composition of an application to be modeled in a very visual manner from a simple prototype that uses a series of sketches, to something much more evolved. A prototype can be made as real and interactive as it needs to be to communicate design intent and SketchFlow can leverage all the existing features of Expression Blend.
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator import. The powerful importers for both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator enable smooth integration with workflows the designer already has in place. The designer has freedom to view and import Photoshop files layer by layer. Layers can be easily regrouped and elements retain their original formats; layers, layer positions, editable text and vectors remain available for editing within Expression Blend.
Behaviors. Add interactivity to your application, without having to write code. Behaviors can encapsulate complex design interactions into reusable components which can be directly applied to a user interface element in the application. Developers have access to a rich API that they can use to write their own triggers, actions, and behaviors for use in their Silverlight and WPF projects.
Sample data. Design time sample data makes it easy to build data-connected applications without access to live data. You can generate sample data or import sample data from an XML file and is available to controls on the artboard at design-time. You can extensively customize your sample data details, and you can easily switch between using sample data and using live data at run-time.
Improved design and development experience. Expression Blend 3 includes many features that improve the overall design experience including a brand new design surface making Blend more accessible to visual designers. Team Foundation Server support allows easier integration of the Blend user into Team System. Improved animation and easing functions, 3D transforms, visual effects and an improved visual state manager enable a great tooling experience.

Scott Guthrie’s Silverlight talks in London

Mark.Mann — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:26:00 GMT

Publicising a different user group for a change; the London .NET User Group hosted a couple of sessions with Scott Guthrie on the 2nd of July.

Ian Smith who is the cameraman for our Silverlight UK User Group was present, recording the event and has recently published the video below.

In Part 1 Scott summarises the key features of Silverlight 3.
In Part 2 he gives a walkthrough of the new SketchFlow product, including demonstration of some features "not previously shown in public".
In Part 3 he uses coding examples to show the core Silverlight 3 concepts, and takes a lively Q&A session.

London .NET User Group: Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 3 (Part 1 of 3) By Ian Smith
View in HD Download 720p HD Version Visit Ian Smith's ExposureRoom Videos Page

London.NET User Group: Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 3 (Part 2 of 3) By Ian Smith
View in HD Download 720p HD Version Visit Ian Smith's ExposureRoom Videos Page

London .NET User Group: Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 3 (Part 3 of 3) By Ian Smith
View in HD Download 720p HD Version Visit Ian Smith's ExposureRoom Videos Page

So are we now rubbing our hands in anticipation of the launch of Silverlight 3 and the Expression 3 Suite later this month?

If you’ve managed to get as far down the page and still don’t quite know who Scott Guthrie is… he offered this explanation in his opening session:

Scott Guthrie
Microsoft
Corporate Vice President – Developer Division

”I run a couple of the teams that build .Net and Visual Studio, specifically the core CLR and the core base class libraries both for desktop as well as the compact framework for mobile and also run the teams that build ASP.Net, Silverlight, WPF, IIS, Commerce Server, Media Server and the Visual Studio Tools team for both web and client projects… so a few things…”

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu

Silverlight UK User Group #8 Agenda

Mark.Mann — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:50:00 GMT

We’re expecting great things from Microsoft very soon… I feel like an expecting father pacing up and down the hall.

So, we’re delighted to have secured Ian Ellison-Taylor who is the General Manager of Client Platforms and Tools at Microsoft – that means that he’s in charge of WPF and Silverlight project programmes. We’re still figuring out the format of the evening, but Ian will be highlighting the new feature and insights to Silverlight 3 and the Expression 3 Suite with an opportunity to fire lots of questions at him!

Microsoft are kindly providing the facilities of Cardinal Place (nr Victoria) so that we can accommodate a larger audience. Microsoft are donating pizza and EMC Conchango will be providing the liquid refreshments!

So, the details are:

Date:   Wednesday 22nd July 2009
Time: Registration @ 18:30, Kick off @19:00 - please don't be late!
           Till about 9:30pm
Where: Microsoft London (Cardinal Place)
             100 Victoria Street, London SW1E 5JL

You can register here or via Michelle.

Registered attendees will be notified with final details by Monday 20th July.

We are continuing to grow our community so please forward this onto anyone else who may be interested, that includes your friend, your colleagues or even your boss! Please register and we hope to see you there!

mark.

About Ian Ellison-Taylor

Ian Ellison-Taylor has been working with Microsoft for about 18 years! In the early years he was a shell developer on Windows 3.1 (Channel9 interview) but more recently has been one of the principal guiding figures of WPF and Silverlight. Currently holding the title of “General Manager of Client Platforms and Tools” he’s responsible for both the WPF and Silverlight product teams. Ian remains quite elusive from the Microsoft blogs but can be hunted down on Channel9 talking about WPF if you look hard enough!

twitter.com/ianet

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

Silverlight UK User Group #7 Agenda

Mark.Mann — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:07:00 GMT

In the wake of all the glorious Silverlight announcements at MIX09, we’ve lined up a couple of sessions around the new features to be found in Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3. Microsoft are kindly providing the facilities of Cardinal Place (nr Victoria) so that we can accommodate a larger audience, and EMC Conchango will be providing the refreshments.

So, the details are:

We’ve practically
stopped
registrations now!

Date:   Wednesday 27th May 2009
Time: Registration @ 18:00, Kick off @18:30 - please don't be late!
           Till about 9:30pm
Where: Microsoft London (Cardinal Place)
             100 Victoria Street, London SW1E 5JL

You can register here or via Michelle.

Registered attendees will be notified with final details by Monday 25th May.

By the way, Michelle and I have created a group on Facebook for the Silverlight UK User Group so that we can all keep in touch with other, and she also created an event the next meeting too.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

“Expression Blend with Tricky”
with Tricky from TrickyBusiness

“We want to create something that the customer loves , enjoys and becomes an ambassador for” – there may be a thousand ways to do that and in this session you’ll hear from Tricky, Creative Director at TrickyBusiness about some of the ways that they go about designing unique experiences. We’ll include demos of real projects and go on to describe the functionality in the next version of Microsoft’s Expression tools to support it.

Learning opportunities:

Creative approach
Insight into Expression Blend 3 and SketchFlow

Breakout for refreshments

Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3: what’s new for designers and developers
with Paolo from Microsoft

In this session we will see what new features are coming in Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 to help create great user experiences, from the initial concept to production. We will take a look and dive into some of the new experience oriented features like SketchFlow, behaviours, sample data, pixel shaders, perspective 3D, animation enhancements, bitmap APIs and improvements to the media stack and the Silverlight 3 out-of-browser model.

End.

Please register and I hope to see you there!

mark.

About Tricky

Tricky has been designing interactions since 1995 and is the founder of UK studio; TrickyBusiness, where his team create unique brand experiences for their clients. His work combines his passion for exceptional brands with his experience in interaction design, clients include: Microsoft, RBS, Audi, Reuters and Electronic Arts.

Design is an essential stage in the creation of rich interfaces and Tricky’s team are uniquely positioned to partner with technology companies; adding ideation, sketching and prototyping to the development process. This ensures that the user-experience is ‘right’ and the brand message is consistent.

www.trickybusiness.co.uk | www.trickyblogs.co.uk

About Paolo

Paolo Barone has been working with Microsoft in the UK for the last three years. He joined as an Enterprise Strategy Consultant helping major customers to align their information technology strategy with their strategic business objectives and then moved in the Academic team to help Universities, Colleges and Schools to understand and learn the Microsoft Design and Development technologies and help them teach these to their students. Prior to joining Microsoft, he managed a team of designers and developers creating elearning content and management system for one of the world’s biggest corporations, supporting more than 20 countries and in 16 languages.

Paolo's main area of interest are web and media, interaction and graphic design and user experience.

blogs.msdn.com/pblog | twitter.com/pbarone

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

Silverlight UK User Group #6 Agenda

Mark.Mann — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:17:00 GMT

It’s MIX time again, and MIX09 kicks off in a couple days time (18th-20th March) in Las Vegas. I know a number of people who have been busying up their presentations and packing bags to rush on the last flights out to the US – sadly, I’m not one of them. We’re expecting some big announcements this year, with a four-strong squad of Bill Buxton, Scott Gunthrie, Dean Hachamovitch and Deborah Adler delivering the keynotes.

This has sparked off a thought…

Since the Silverlight UK User Group meetings generate a good conversation throughout the evening, we’ll be hosting a GROK TALK format – giving anyone the opportunity to take the centre stage for ~15 mins and discuss their Silverlight experiences/issues/demo/news.

It’s not expected that you need to put much preparation into your slot, but it should drive free conversation amongst the group to share ideas or find a answer to a Silverlight issue you’ve been facing. Thus if anyone is fortunate enough to go to MIX09 please step forward since I would be very keen for them to give the group a debrief on the news, session and general mood of MIX09 for instance.

It would be appreciated, that when you register for the this meeting, that you could let me know if you want a slot and what you want to GROK about and if there are any additional services that you require… eg: wireless connectivity, whiteboard, projectors etc. It will also help me see if there is a natural order to the subjects offered for discussion.

So, details are:

Date: Thursday 26th March 2009
Time: Registration @ 18:00, Kick off @18:30 - don't be late! Till 9pm
Where: EMC Consulting, (formerly Conchango),
Notcutt House, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU.

You can register here or via Michelle.

Registered attendees will be notified on Tuesday 24th March.

By the way, Michelle and I have created a group on Facebook for the Silverlight UK User Group so that we can all keep in touch with other, and she also created an event the next meeting too.

So what are you waiting for!
Get registered and I hope to see you there!

mark.

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

Visual Studio 2008 Intellisense for NHibernate v2+

Mark.Mann — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 10:13:00 GMT

I recently cleaned out my laptop and realised that I did not backup my Visual Studio settings or any of the other tweaks or enhancements that I’ve made over the years. Most infuriatingly my Intellisense for NHibernate mapping files disappeared, so to put them back in place:

If you haven’t got the latest version of NHibernate, you can get hold of v2.0.1GA here. Be sure to get the source archive because this contains the schema files which can be found in the src/NHibernate folder.

Find the 3 files:

nhibernate-configuration.xsd
nhibernate-generic.xsd
nhibernate-mapping.xsd

Copy them to Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas - there should be a lot of existing xsd files in there already.
Note: if you run a 64bit Windows OS, you’ll find that %ProgramFiles% will point to the wrong folder… Visual Studio remains 32bit.

Now the important bit….

Rename the above 3 files by adding the suffix “-2.2” – I guess that the standard build never renamed the files from 1.2, but Visual Studio / Intellisense needs this to map the namespaces. Thus:

nhibernate-configuration-2.2.xsd
nhibernate-generic-2.2.xsd
nhibernate-mapping-2.2.xsd

If you haven’t got Visual Studio open already, then open it up and play…. otherwise you might just have to close and reopen the mapping files.

Silverlight UK User Group #5 Agenda

Mark.Mann — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:07:12 GMT

Holiday season speedily approaches.... Christmas and New Year, my calendar is littered with people disappearing off on skiing/snowboarding trips. So, the next user group meeting will be held NEXT YEAR (yeah I know it sounds weird) on Wednesday 21st January 2009 at Conchango's Notcutt House (nr Southwark Bridge).

Last time, I was hoping to get Michael McClary for a session but plans were scuppered. This time I've pinned him down and he's confirmed to give us a whirl around Mesh and Silverlight. At one of the previous meetings, we noted an interest in DeepZoom, Virtual Earth and mapping data - so, I've also confirmed/press-ganged a couple of Conchango guys from a recent Silverlight project featuring the integration of DeepZoom and Virtual Earth. Finally, we've had quite a buzz round the offices at Conchango since we're one of the exclusive owners of a Microsoft Surface box - we're quite proud of it so we've decided to give it an airing and show off a couple of real world applications upon it.

So, details are:

Date: Wednesday 21st January 2009
Time: Registration @ 18:00, Kick off @18:30 - don't be late!
Where: Conchango, Notcutt House, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU.

You can register here or via Michelle.

Registered attendees will be notified on Monday 19th January.

By the way, Michelle and I have created a group on Facebook for the Silverlight UK User Group so that we can all keep in touch with other, and she also created an event the next meeting too.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

Silverlight & Mesh
Michael McClary, Platform Strategy Advisor at Microsoft

Mesh is a new and emerging Windows Live platform for syncing files and, eventually, applications across different devices. Mesh lets you set up a virtual desktop online, and connect different computers to it. Put any file into a Mesh folder and it automatically syncs between the online desktop and every connected computer. Select a file or folder and you can easily share its contents—photos, videos, music, documents—with any friend or family member. You can also remotely control a connected computer from the Live Mesh desktop.

Michael will explore the integration between Silverlight and Mesh and open our minds to Microsoft's vision of connectivity in "the Cloud".

Pizza and beer... a chance to recharge and discuss in the interlude.

Where Is My Train?
Stuart Harris & David Wynne, Conchango.
Stuart is a Technical Architect, David is a Silverlight Developer; between them they have specialisms in Silverlight, DeepZoom and Microsoft Surface applications. They are just two members of a comprehensive team that recently completed a proof of concept Silverlight application for National Rail Enquiries with Microsoft at Thames Valley Park.

Stuart and David will discuss how to blend Silverlight, DeepZoom, Virtual Earth and some live data feeds to locate and track trains across the UK rail network. This is a whole new level beyond timetables and live departure boards! If you thought that there wasn't enough new technology in the mix already, then add SQL Server 2008 too! In addition to demo and code, they'll talk about the pain barriers, potential pitfalls and hallelujah moments encountered during the rapid application development process.

Tesco 7 and Microsoft Surface*
Paul Dawson or Mark Mann or another!
At the second PDC2008 keynote in October, Nick Lansley (tesco.com) and Paul Dawson (Conchango) presented a vision of shopping at Tesco. (You can see a video of the keynote here). We'll be rerunning the demonstration and showing off the various different elements of the system - answering your particular questions as we go along.

Then, we'll move along to Microsoft Surface (which is a very fancy piece of kit) showing the basic principles of operation and then showing off its capabilities with some built-in and real world applications. You'll have the opportunity to interact and play with it a bit too!

*Please note, dependant on time and logistics we may run the "Where Is My Train?" and the "Tesco 7 & Microsoft Surface" sessions in parallel. With Microsoft Surface only being a coffee table sized device, it will be difficult to demonstrate it to 40 people effectively - we'll try our best to run all sessions consecutively but please don't be disappointed if we do decide to run the last two sessions concurrently and you get only get a glimpse of Microsoft Surface!

So what are you waiting for!
Get registered and I hope to see you there!

mark.

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

Exploring 2½ dimensions with Photosynth

Mark.Mann — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:35:59 GMT

I've been following Photosynth for a while now (amazingly nearly 2 years!), since seeing some early demos of Piazza San Marco in Venice to the announcement that Microsoft finally unleashed Photosynth upon the web (see article). At the last Silverlight User Group meeting, we had a talk from John Penrose about Graphico's efforts of synthing the London Eye; and this, coupled with my passion for photography and a upcoming trip to Hong Kong made me think of exploring the latest version of Photosynth (rather than the tech previews).

Photosynth provides the avid photographer with the opportunity to present photos as a relational composition -the end result is a 3D looking presentation of the images in the Photosynth composition, however since the images are actually the presented in their 2D slices, I like to think that its rather more 2½D!

It is presented as a Silverlight application that leverages DeepZoom to keep the image quality respectable to the area being actually viewed (allowing you to get 1:1 to large resolution images without the hefty download).

Photosynth looks like this below... (I did NOT prepare this one):

Maybe this is a good time to point out a rather fascinating feature - point clouds. These is the mesh to which Photosynth determines where corresponding points in the composition overlap. You can see the point cloud by pressing "P" and the results can be stunning... the more overlapping points there are in a composition the more spectacular is the resulting 3D model. You can see the corresponding point cloud for the synth above, in the picture below:

That is enough of an intro to Photosynth, what I really wanted to share was the results of a bit of experimenting with Photosynth. I just recently returned from vacation in Hong Kong - its an absolute joy taking photos there especially with the diverse array of subject matter, from culture/traditions, architecture/landscapes, to everyday people and family. I had planned to visit the Sha Tin Racecourse (one of the two horse racing venues in Hong Kong) and thought that this would be an interesting panorama to synth.

Normally, when I've taken panoramas I've had to resort to taking a series of panning photos and then stitching them together into a larger image. I'm sure that you know the sort of picture that you end up with... it kind of looks like the to images below:

Urrghh.... Although this is my normal method of stitching panned panoramas, I loathe those horrible black background fills where the lens distorts, and those "seams" where the stitching software tries to overlap the images. There are a number of tolerance settings that can be tweaked, but it takes time to get a decent seamless image that one can be happy with.

Now, I shoot with my DSLR which results in 3888x2592 sized images (~2MB each) - and to be honest is a bit big for posting on your average web site (of course Flicker and suchlike can help you out). Let me bring to your attention, that processing a collection of these images into a panorama is usually results in a grotesquely large file for the web... the two stitches above are reduced to 9% - yes! 9%! - since the full stitches are 11469x2729 (6MB) and 7572x2708 (3.2MB).

Roll in Photosynth...

With my Windows Live account in hand, creating a Photosynth space turned out to be really easy. It will download a tool to your computer to facilitate the processing and publishing of your synth. It's all very straightforward and there is plenty of help available.

I had taken about 200+ images throughout the day at the Sha Tin Racecourse, but for the purpose of these exercises I had selected about 50 images and 4 panoramic stitches. Many of these photos were actually from the same vantage point, just generally panning and scanning the surrounding area as I normally do - I also selected a few images from my wanderings about the racecourse too. Let me state here that, normally I do a fair amount of post processing to my photos and these have not been post processed otherwise I would be posting article weeks later!

Resisting a big bang approach, I selected 24 initial images that looked both interesting and what I "expected" to be reasonably suitable for my first synth. Wow, without even trying I managed to hit a 96% synth rate (which means that the Photosynth tool was able to match the majority of my images to the generated point cloud). The "unsynthed" 4% would site in their own point clouds if they could be grouped further. I don't need to list the images themselves, the synth itself can show you by pressing the "@" key (UK keyboard, since the US keyboard has "~" instead) and then you can DeepZoom from a neatly rendered high level view into the detailed image I imported.

After playing about with the synth, exploring the different angles/depths and getting a general feel for the navigation, I thought that maybe there was a better way of controlling the composition of the synth. I picked a even smaller control set of 14 related images and just added them in filename order (just a simple CTRL-A and 'OK') and was surprised that the synth rate had dropped to 58%. I imagine that Photosynth works best with either lots of images or at least those with good overlap - when I shoot panoramic compositions I do tend to reduce the overlapping margins so that I don't end up with many "stitch seams" - so I'll have to change my behaviour for future synthing. Using the same 14 images as before, but importing them in a random order, resulted in a drop in the synth rate which would suggest that when Photosynth is processing files for the cloud map, it does it in a sequential order expecting there to be a reasonable level of similarity between successive images. The previous synth worked pretty well since there were groups of related images already in sequence that I took the pictures.

Forming a notion of what makes the Photosynth tool construct the point cloud, I used the 14 images again but added them in my own "visual order", the result this time was a more successful 65% synth rate giving some proof to my observations that similar images should be added sequentially. Determined by getting an even higher synth rate out of the 14 images, I turned my attention to overlap. If Photosynth relies on a decent amount of overlap, then maybe, if I add in my whopping 13121x2660, 7.3MB panoramic stitch image which features at least 5 of the individual images, then this might get my synth rate up. This worked a treat and achieved a 100% synth rate, so you are able to navigate to all pictures within the synth. Using the stitched panorama comes at a disadvantage though because overall experience of the synth has been greatly reduced, since Photosynth displays the panoramic stitch in the initial view and makes it difficult/awkward to get round it. You win some and you lose some!

My endeavours have been summarised in the following table... including links to all the synths created.

Photosynth Name

Images
Synth Result
Conditions

Blog Test #1
24 96% Initial test of compiling a synth without any panoramic stitch images.

Blog Test #2
14 58% Reduced set of photos from Blog Test #1, added in filename sequence.

Blog Test #3
14 41% Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in a random order.

Blog Test #4
14 65% Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in a visually optimised order.

Blog Test #5
15 100% Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in filename sequence AND with a panoramic stitch image.

Blog Test #6
46 91% Same set as Blog Test #2 with additional photos - all added in filename order.

Sha Tin Racecourse
46 98% Same as Blog Test #6 but added in a visually optimised order.

Photosynth Name	Images	Synth Result	Conditions
Blog Test #1	24	96%	Initial test of compiling a synth without any panoramic stitch images.
Blog Test #2	14	58%	Reduced set of photos from Blog Test #1, added in filename sequence.
Blog Test #3	14	41%	Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in a random order.
Blog Test #4	14	65%	Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in a visually optimised order.
Blog Test #5	15	100%	Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in filename sequence AND with a panoramic stitch image.
Blog Test #6	46	91%	Same set as Blog Test #2 with additional photos - all added in filename order.
Sha Tin Racecourse	46	98%	Same as Blog Test #6 but added in a visually optimised order.

The last tests I performed were to add more photos to my previous set of control images, resulting in a total of 46 normal images with no panoramic stitches. The results we pretty good at 91%, but armed with my new found knowledge of how to order the imported images, I created my final synth by adding them in a visually optimised order.

You can see the final fruits of my labour, below (if you look carefully you'll find the horses galloping past!):

Embedding a synth as I've done above is easy, since each synth allows you to export a unique HTML snippet so that you can embed them to your own web site:

<iframe style="border: black 4px solid;"
        src="http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=64bfdb94-35af-437b-a201-277e2dd8d9be"
        frameborder="0" width="600" height="480"></iframe>

What next....

Well, the Photosynth team have a regularly updated blog which is a veritable mine of information on how to get the most out of your synthing efforts. What I did not know was that they published a tricks and tips guide not more than 2 days ago! I wish that I had been forearmed with this guide since it would have made me slightly modify my approach to composing the pictures to make up the Photosynth. Ensuring that overlapping your images by quite a wide margin was one of their top tips that I found out the hard way, but I'm pretty glad that most of the rules are straightforward and won't make me readjust my photography technique in a major way - I can continue taking my usual photos and still get some good Photosynth opportunities at the same time.

Now go and take loads of photos and get going with Photosynth!

mark.

I have added more information to my synths... keywords, Virtual Earth map tags..
I'm sure that the Photosynth team will be expanding more "attributes" that we can hang off our synths too. :-)

Map tags are particularly cool... look for the icon which will popup a mini Virtual Earth window for you to locate where your synth related to in the world.

To find and view mapped synths, go to Virtual Earth, type in a location eg: "Sha Tin, Hong Kong SAR", and then click "Explore collections" which will change the left panel to display a variety of items such as related photos, 3D models or synths in the map area. You can filter down to just the Photosynth items by clicking the right-most filter icon (highlighted below).

mark.

TFS Error TF80042

Mark.Mann — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:08:26 GMT

Yarrrggh!

I was trying to open up my product backlog in Excel - It is held in TFS through the Scrum for Team System process template.

I fell foul of the following error stating that I had an issue with Office, Excel or one of its components. I doubt that this is a particular fault of Scrum for Team System, but would occur whenever Visual Studio / TFS is trying to integrate with one of the Office products.

TF80042: The document cannot be opened because you do not have Microsoft Excel 2003 or later, or one of its components installed. For more information, see the Team Foundation Installation Guide.

Well, the solution is just to ensure that you have the Excel .Net Programmability Support installed - which I guess for me, was not installed by default. This is only applicable to Office 2003 or 2007, but the solution is the same.

1. Lookup your Office installation in "Add/Remove Programs" from the control panel.

2. Click "Change"

3. Select "Add/Remove Features" and click "Next"

4. Navigate the feature tree for "Microsoft Office Excel" and ".Net Programmability Support"

5. Click the item drop-down and select "Run from my computer" and click "Next"

6. Let Office do its configuration dance.

7. Restart Visual Studio.

Done!

Silverlight UK User Group #4 - Review

Mark.Mann — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:06:47 GMT

A slight change on the usual proceedings, in that Microsoft kindly provided conference facilities at their swish Cardinal Place office (nr Victoria in London). Despite a clash with bonfire night and sandwiched between conferences, 60 people attended the user group night.

Last week, at the PDC, there had been a number of important announcements around Silverlight - mainly in the Tuesday keynote.

Silverlight v2 had been officially released, just weeks before - an important milestone of achievement, especially since Silverlight was the main agent in providing live feeds and recorded sessions to those unable to attend the PDC in person.
Silverlight Toolkit was announced by Scott Guthrie, introducing a plethora of new controls and themes that will help to speed up the development time of Silverlight applications. An example of the more complicated/comprehensive controls now available include AutoCompleteBox, TreeView, Expanders and Charting!
Microsoft even showed a sneak peek of "Office 14 for Web" which is effectively the Office suite in a Silverlight host so that it can run on any browser! With Scott Guthrie's announcement that Visual Studio 2010 would be written in WPF, does this mean we might see Visual Studio ported into Silverlight???

At the PDC, there was a demonstration of a multi-touch, WPF application for Windows 7 on the Tuesday keynote (~85mins in). It was an application developed for tesco.com, by Conchango with the backing of Microsoft to showcase a possible glimpse of the future where shopping is not a "chore" but an embedded part of managing our day. I would recommend that you watch the demo by Nick Lansley (Head of Technologies at tesco.com) and Paul Dawson (Conchango) because the application is innovative, fresh and shows off many of the new Windows 7 features in action. I caught up with Paul on his return and he mentioned that although only 3 weeks was spent on development, the journey through "design and concepts" took much longer.

One of the underlying trends that seems to becoming increasingly apparent is Microsoft's commitment to user experience - from providing a richer platform to host our browser applications (Silverlight), bringing "killer" applications to the web (Office 14 for Web) or enriching the operating system to make it easier to design and develop highly intuitive, discoverable and interactive applications. This had in turn driven the user group to get a bit more brand and designer orientated...

I had quite a mental issue with calling our first presenter "Tricky", but nevertheless Tricky (Creative Director of TrickyBusiness) gave a thought provoking insight into experience design and the importance of giving experience/design concepts up-front consideration when creating software. Tricky's slick slide deck captivated the audience and contained plenty of examples of the iterative design process from projects with Audi and Alton Towers. He also set this also helped to visualise what should be the "Rules of Engagement" and important questions asked of the client when trying to plan and design their unique experience. From sketching out the initial concepts to fleshing out the designs with the Expression toolset, both designers and developers can see how to build the next set of innovative applications. <<Webcast of the session will be posted soon>>

After a break for refuelling - pizza (courtesy of Microsoft) and beer (courtesy of Conchango).....

John Penrose (Technical Director for Graphico) and Mark McDonald (Senior Developer) gave us insight to the development journey of a couple of web sites. They initially concentrated on how they went about the building the Barcardi La Fiesta site which was part of the Barcardi festival season. The event had already passed, so John and Mark took us back in time and demonstrated the site as it counted down to the event date with a promotional video and then switched to a live feed during the event. This presented a number of challenges such as keeping elements of the event secret until the last moment, security and streaming the live feed and portraying multiple camera angles.

Then, John walked us through a number of implementations of Photosynth, which is a marvelous new medium for navigating about your photo collection of a particular object/scene - it brings to life your panoramas and gives them an extra perspective. Photosynth has spent a long time in beta and was only recently released to the public in August, so John demonstrated the new synthing experience, and discussed how Graphico went about producing a set of new synths for the London Eye. Photosynth is still an emerging technology somewhat still looking for an appropriate use outside of the tourism/hobbyist/social web sites so watch this one closely...

Finally; two of my colleagues, Richard Griffin and Felix Corke, will be doing their Developer-Designer Workflow session at TechEd 2008 next week. If you are lucky enough to be in Barcelona for the conference, check out their session it generates a lot of interesting discussion!

Hope to see you at the next meeting!

mark.

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In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!