This is a quick update on the next steps for the HyperVideo Project that will touch on the following three sub-projects scheduled to be completed in the next six months:
Update to the web-based project (HVP v2)
Initial “port” of the HVP to Windows Phone 7 (HVP/WP7 v1)
Transmedia inspired WP7 application (HVP/WP7 v2)
I’m very excited to say that my discussion with John Papa about Silverlight as a Transmedia Storytelling Platform is live.
The advent of Windows Phone 7 is particularly exciting to current Silverlight programmers, because Silverlight (along with .xna) is the development platform for the new phone. I recently recorded two Silverlight TV episodes, and in one I created a typical form that might appear in any LOB application, but I created it simultaneously on both the phone and for the web using identical Xaml and C#. (This is not to deny that there are some differences in coding for each, but the overlap is very very high).
But does it make sense to create the same application on the web and on the phone?
The companion video to my mini-tutorial on Windows Phone 7 Animation, Master/Detail and accessing an oData web service, is now available.
… they don’t work unless they’re open
…Just because you lost yours, doesn’t mean you can borrow mine.
Here are two free utilities that are so incredibly valuable, it is stunning that they are both free (one is licensed under the Gnu Public License and the other is open source).
Okay, tough love: if you are serious about Silverlight development, the days of using one Integrated Development Environment for all you work are…. over. The benefits of adding Expression Blend to your toolkit, and getting serious about learning how to use it well are so overwhelming that you can no longer afford to ignore them.
So, get over it, it was nice, but the fat lady has sung.
This is the fourth in a fast paced series on programming Windows Phone 7. In this mini-tutorial I will demonstrate how absurdly easy it is to create a master page with a list of data, and a details page to display more information about the selected item, and to animate the transition from one to the other. To make it more interesting, we’ll get the list and the details from a web service, using oData.
I often receive email saying, more or less, “I am starting Silverlight, can you tell me what to read first.”
We are working hard on creating a path through all the material for Getting Started. For now, I’d recommend the following:
The single best place to get your questions answered about Silverlight are the Silverlight Forums. Now, I know that forums are often a company’s way of saving money on customer service, but the dev team and the Community PM’s & Evangelists monitor these forums carefully, so it really is a lot quicker than sending email.
That said, there are two aspects to having a satisfactory experience with the forums:
Its funny how sometimes there are pairs of products that contend for “best” and yet seem to be so evenly matched that the decision is often arbitrary, a pick made based on what your friends use, what you used first, which commercial (or Evangelist) is better. Some classics come to mind
I recently ranted on language police who enforce arbitrary or misguided prescriptivist “rules,” that compound their misunderstanding of how languages evolve with a misreading of the history of English, applying Latin rules to a Germanic Bastard Tongue.
That said, while I don’t think there are unchanging truths about how English “should” be written or spoken, there are useful observations about what causes confusion and what makes for clear and easily understood prose.
