Innovation, Renovation and Change

 

So, after some minutes of trying this and that, it is time to take stock and see what's working and what isn't. 

What's changing…

Tip of the Day: RIP

The Tip of the Day was a great idea, but I have yet to figure out what is the difference between a Tip of the Day and a blog entry, and I think it is causing more confusion than help, so I hereby kill it, put a stake through its heart, put a fork in it, bury it, liquidate it, drop a house on it. may it rest in peace.

But only in name.  I still intend to post at least 5 days a week with substantive tips, follow ups, explorations of issues, and all the material I'd have put into a Tip of the Day; I'll just call them…. er… blog posts; like every body else.

 

The Micro Blog

If I have your permission to stop experiments (like Tip of the Day) then I can experiment with truly wacky ideas. One, which was suggested to me in passing, I want to start right away: the Silverlight Microblog. 

This is the idea of a blog that posts very frequently but only a line or two, and posts through Twitter. It is not a "here's what I'm doing" or even a "look here" reference to a bigger post somewhere else. Rather it is a complete blog entry in the 140 characters you are given.  This will take some practice.

The Twitter account is SLMicroBlog and here's the first posting

SLMicroblog

What needs clarification….

Tutorials: Not in Order

The tutorials have been met with some enthusiasm, though it would be great to get more feedback and I invite you to send me email (jliberty@microsoft.com) or to post comments here. We're working on a way for you to post comments to the tutorials themselves.

In any case, it is not my intention to write the tutorials in "order" — I'm very aware that some folks would like to get to more advanced topics; though I do think it makes sense to go through most of the material at this level of depth before doing deep dives in the tutorials. 

In addition, Scott Guthrie and I have agreed that the tutorials will be supplemented by the book I'm writing with Tim Heuer for O'Reilly (Programming Silverlight 2) which will provide more depth. Of course the book will be static, so after it publishes I'll continue to write tutorial pieces here as changes and new features emerge.

Videos: Focus on:  Data and a mix of Intro and Advanced Topics

Much like with the tutorials; it is my intention to move quickly back and forth between introductory and more advanced topics. In the next few weeks look for a series of tutorials on event handling (see today's, it turns out last!) Tip of the Day for a look at one topic on event handling. ).  In addition I have a great video coming up working with Dan Isbitski on Deep Zoom which is truly wicked cool.

In the face of a series of requests, I will, however, focus over the next two weeks on making sure to include the following topics among the others I'll be filming:

  • Binding Controls using LINQ to SQL
  • Binding Controls using Linq to XML
  • Binding Controls to data through a Web Service using WCF

I'll also be looking at putting together some videos on using Expression Blend as a design surface for programmers — that is taking our designer tool and using it from a developers point of view.

About Jesse Liberty

Jesse Liberty has three decades of experience writing and delivering software projects and is the author of 2 dozen books and a couple dozen online courses. His latest book, Building APIs with .NET will be released early in 2025. Liberty is a Senior SW Engineer for CNH and he was a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft, a Distinguished Software Engineer for AT&T, a VP for Information Services for Citibank and a Software Architect for PBS. He is a Microsoft MVP.
This entry was posted in z Silverlight Archives. Bookmark the permalink.