A Glance into Gesture Based Interactions

I've been invited by the Costa Rican Human Computer Interaction Group, to do a session tonight on Gesture Based Interactions.

Lots is going on in the field of alternative interactivity and gesture and touch is probably the one in its vogue.

If you happen to be in Costa Rica and have a couple of hours free come and join me... it's going to be fun!

Remember to get back here after the session is ended for resources and links to further resources.

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Technorati Tags: Adobe,Microsoft,Microsoft Surface,iPhone,Windows 7,Multi-touch,Gestures,Interaction,Interaction Design

Silverlight 1.1 is now Silverlight 2.0 and more to come...

Today will be moved to history as the day Silverlight 2.0 feature set was made public along with the road map of what Microsoft feels like is the future of ASP.NET 3.5.

Just a week after Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 were released to manufacturing, ScottGu's team keeps working fearlessly in the next round of features that will mark ASP.NET and Silverlight as big contesters for the future of both the Web and the RIA world.

Silverlight 1.1 moves to be Silverlight 2.0 and will go into Beta on Q1'08; such release will ship with a GoLive license allowing companies to build upon it and move applications to production.

ASP.NET will see itself upgraded with an Extension Release that will sport a set of Framework Extension excelling manageability in the way we build applications and improvements to current technologies like AJAX, Silverlight integration, and Dynamic Data consumption.

Last but not least important, IIS 7.0 will present a new deployment strategy for applications residing both in single or over web farms that will allow version, deployment and roll back of features both from the command prompt or thru the management shell; all of this as part of the release of Windows Server 2008.

A lot of traction has gone into twitter during the last half an hour and I guess this are great news that we all welcome. Let's keep our eyes open to the future and how it all behaves.

Microsoft, and specifically the Visual Studio team has been doing a great job during this decade, sometimes even pushing the boundaries of the technology itself towards the developer community and the digital world itself. Keep up the good work!

For more info I encourage you go check ScottGu's blog post here.

Cheers!

G.

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight,.NET,Microsoft Expression,RIA,RIE,Microsoft,Visual Studio,Orcas,WPF,ASP.NET,XAML,IIS,Windows Server 2008

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 RTM is Out

I've been out during the last couple of months working heads down on the second phase of a great Silverlight video player that will be released early next year... but in the mean time I need to keep up with the news.

Last night the Visual Studio Team released its newly refreshed Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha matching the Visual Studio 2008 RTM bits, this way those of you who were waiting for it in order to upgrade to the latest version of the IDE, have no excuse as to move on.

Features match those of the previous version and were only upgraded to work with the final bits of Visual Studio. More features are yet to come as part of the next preview of the Silverlight 1.1 runtime, later this year.

So now, go ahead get the RTM bits installed and get the tools from here.

Enjoy!

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight,.NET,Microsoft Expression,RIA,RIE,Microsoft,Visual Studio,Orcas,WPF

Silverlight SEO Test

Jonathan Ramirez, a colleague of mine @ Schematic and whit whom I have done most of the Silverlight work lately, is conducting a test on Silverlight SEO. 

For such experiment he has published a really simple page hosting only a Silverlight control in it, part of the test is to get Google to index the word SilverlightSEO out of it for which there are no current results in it.

The page has not metadata nor text other than the control itself and the xaml file containing it - I am sure this post will get indexed but we want to get this post as an entry point to the test itself.

Now let's wait and see how long does it takes to get indexed if so happens...

We will keep you guys posted!

Cheers!

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight, Microsoft, SEO, Indexing

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 & .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 are out and with Go-Live License from Microsoft

Just today Microsoft made available its latest updates to its family of Platform Development with the refresh to the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 they are getting the Beta 2 label.

As part of this update Microsoft has also grant its Go-Live license to such products, allowing people to do production development and releases based on this bits, which will be a great step further to see production ready web sites using Silverlight and LINQ technologies.

Note: Remember that the final launch for this products is expected for February 2008. So we are still some good 7 months away from that state.

Based on this new evolution on Microsoft Development Technologies the company is renewing its statements associated to the mission they see this products playing in our dev shops:

Visual Studio 2008 enables developers and development teams to rapidly create connected, secure and compelling applications on the latest platforms, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office System and the Web.

As new community previews will raise along the year, we will see improved performance and better work flow with the ecology of tools like Expression Blend for creating compelling experiences that will allow the user to get immerse in usable worlds excelling its productivity... plus encouraging for the Software + Services worlds that Ballmer and Gates have been taking about during the last couple of weeks.

So, now lets go get the bits here.

Enjoy!

Update: ScottGu has a great post here, including some quick overview of this release and some post-installation notes as to make sure everything will work as expected.

Update2: Channel9 has a great video here with an interview with Soma and ScottGu talking about what's new and what is there to expect with this new release.

Update3: Here are my experiences getting this bits installed just as well as couple of tricks to get Beta 1 uninstalled.

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Technorati Tags: .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, Ajax, Atlas, Microsoft, ASP.NET, C#, Development, Programming, Expression Blend, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Visual Studio, WinFX, WPF, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL, Silverlight

Silverlight 1.0 RC is almost out... but before it hits the road be prepared!

As the Silverlight team gets ready to the lunch of Silverlight 1.0 RC in a couple of weeks, Tim Sneath et team want to make sure that before it hits the road, and the masses, you will be prepared and will make the changes to your application so that it won't break once its out... why is that?

Well, as Microsoft's Joe Stegman points out in this post, there are a few changes in the Silverlight 1.0 RC API that might make your application break, although rest assure that moving forward this API is locked so you won't have to go thru this process again.

Even though there is no preview of the RC release as for you to go and test your applications as of now, this guys have put together a small zip file with some reference material and resources, based on Tim Sneath's post, this package includes:

• A new silverlight.js file that detects both the beta and the RC version;
• A breaking changes document that highlights differences between the beta and RC;
• An updated Visual Studio template that demonstrates the correct way to embed the new control;
• A EULA that governs legal usage of the above items.

Which pretty much will guide your way between the RC bits hits their way out the oven.

More info in Tim Sneath's post, here.

Enjoy!

Update: Fixed the zip file reference.

Technorati Tags: AsP.NET, Silverlight, Microsoft, Web, Web2.0, RIA, RIE, Microsoft Expression, Expression Blend, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2008, Orcas

Creating an Outlook look-alike with WPF and C#

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on Microsoft Educational Resources available on the web, this post in intended to recompile educational resources associated to Microsoft technologies, so that it will help jump start on some of its new stuff.

As part of this post I pointed to this hands-on lab, that Tim Sneath had previously posted, demonstrating how to create an outlook look-alike application using WPF and C#.

Since then I've seen people coming to this site looking for it and somehow Google have not done a perfect job indexing it, that's why I am giving it its own post now, so it will facilitate people getting here.

Link to the hands-on lab is here and files needed are here.

Enjoy!

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Technorati Tags: Microsoft, .NET3.0, WPF, Outlook, Orcas, WinFx, C#, RIA, RIE

My first public Silverlight-enabled site

Even though this site ain't new (it has been live for a couple of weeks now), I somehow forgot to blog about it here... so today is the day!

If you follow this link, you will find my first real world Silverlight-enabled site. It was brought together as a branded showroom and career page for Schematic as it was presented as Platinum Sponsor for the Microsoft's Expert Zone event for Latin America.

This site was made in about 2 days between me and a fellow designer / animator, using Expression Blend and Visual Studio... the hows will come in a separate post Monday, so I will update here once is up.

Just wanted to let you guys know about it... cheers!

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight, Microsoft, Microsoft Expression, Expression Blend, Visual Studio

Microsoft Educational Resources for the Future

So I've been with not that much to do during the last couple of days and so I started to reach around the different Educational Resources I've seen lately around the web for Microsoft Technologies, specifically WinFx and Silverlight related stuff.

Update: I will try to maintain this bit as updated as possible.

First in the list is the Lynda.com set of tutorials available free for Blend and Design. The Blend set was taught by Lee Brimelow from thewpfblog.com and the Design one was done by Ted LoCascio. Between these two you guys you will find over 10 hours of video tutorials.

Next, Tim Sneath posted today about this Hands On Lab that will guide you on creating an Outlook-look-alike application based on WPF. With this lab you will go thru a bit more than 90 pages and by the end of this tutorial you will have a resemble of Outlook plus a vast experience in putting together a fairly complex application yourself using this new presentation framework.

- BTW Files needed will be found here.

Moving towards books, a few weeks ago I saw Chris Anderson published a new book on WPF called Essential Windows Presentation Foundation. From that book SearchVB.com is hosting Chapter 1 which I think serves as a really good introduction to this new way of building user experiences, I think this will go handy before the Hands-on 90-page-thing.

Anyway, I went also yesterday thru the Quickstart for Silverlight 1.0 (currently in Beta), I found it really nice and easy and holding a good structure as to guide you thru what the possibilities are with this first approach to building Rich Interactive Experiences on the web, with all its limitations and bugs, moreover I think it serves as a good ground base moving forward to the more powerful Silverlight 1.1 Quickstart (currently in public Alpha), which will be the more natural approach to all of us C# coders.

Celso Gomes, an interactive designer @ Microsoft, has also made available his website nibbles, which on his own words, it is a series of snack tutorials for hungry designers. Here you will find a good set of tutorials for creating both WPF and Silverlight applications using Expression Blend.

I also found this post from Tim Sneath on a series of training for Microsoft technologies going over this summer across the states, so if you happen to live near by any of this stops (they are quite a lot) then you might have the opportunity to attend one or more of those.

So here you have, a good set of resources to entertain yourself for a few days and get some new stuff in your Microsoft box of knowledge,

Cheers!

Recording Webcast @ Microsoft

Hi guys, just wanted to add a quick update... I've been asked to record a Webcast for Microsoft Caribbean and Central America for their next eXpert Zone event to be held later this month here in Costa Rica.

For this Webcast I will be talking about Rich Internet Applications and the .NET technologies around this approach: WPF & Silverlight 

I'll be posting the slides both in English as in Spanish, given that this blog is mostly written in the first one, and the Webcast will be in the second one...

Later!

Expression Blend Beta 2 is Out

I know I have been out for a while. Sometimes things don't go as you might expect in your day to day life, but then you have to recover and keep going... so here I am.

I have a few posts waiting in the baking room, though wanted to bring this one early since I just realized that Microsoft has silently released Expression Blend Beta 2.

For those of you out of the picture Expression Blend is the professional design tool to create engaging web-connected experiences for Windows; meaning that this is the WPF oriented application for Interactive Designers to go wild with their ideas and designs and come out with the next generation of inmersive applications for both Windows XP and Vista.

So go ahead, the following are some resources you might find interesting:

Expression Blend @ Microsoft Expression

Download Expression Blend Beta 2 @ Microsoft Downloads

Beta Overview @ Eric Lam's Blog