John Papa invited me on to Silverlight TV to discuss a key premise of WP7: Silverlight Programmers are instant WP7 programmers. To demonstrate this, I created two applications side by side: a traditional Silverlight (Web) application and a WP7 application using the same code.
Windows Phone 7 For Silverlight Programmers
This is the first in a series of mini-tutorials on Windows Phone 7 Programming for Silverlight Programmers.
The Kinney And I – Boston Thursday May 13
I’m very pleased to announce that Adam Kinney and I will be at a Special Boston Spark event, Mix 2010 Recap
Silverlight HVP – Next Steps and Community Involvement
The Silverlight HyperVideo project ran full steam from January through the day before Mix, and then went on hiatus while we all recovered, and while I pondered three critical questions:
- What features and changes are needed to bring the HVP up to the point that we can offer it for use by Silverlight.net and related sites (version 1.1)
- How do we involve volunteer developers from the community more successfully?
- What is in the next release (version 2)
MVVM – It’s Not Kool-Aid*
[ Revised with C# and VB.NET code]
Okay, first, understand that I’m in the position of running through the streets yelling at folks “c’mere! ya’ gotta see this!” and what I’m pointing to is the incredible new invention of… a laptop computer. Something that is undeniably amazing and cool, but everyone else on my block has already got one.
Second, and much worse, I’m about to show you how I used a “pattern” that you either have already embraced, or that you’ve been avoiding like the plague because the folks who are running around shouting “MVVM! MVVM!” sound just like the folks who were running around shouting “MVC! MVC!” and “OOP! OOP!” and “COM! COM!”… you get the idea.
Many of us are still recovering from the last five fads that caused us to go out and buy dozens of books and break our head on the latest/greatest trend, only to have it be “oh so last year” by the time we fully grokked it.
MEF, Silverlight and the HVP
![]()
This article is part of the Mini-Tutorial Series
Executive Summary
This article continues the design and exploration phase of the Silverlight HVP project by beginning to examine the role the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) will play in solving a number of challenges in the project.
Screen Scraping – When All You Have Is A Hammer…
I had decided to create a list of what videos were already available on the Learning Pages of Silverlight.net. When I clicked on the page for the entire list, however, I was quite daunted by the sheer number. I opened the “source” for the page, and found that there was an easy screen scraping capability, however. The name of each video was also a link to its landing page, and so I could grab the HTML and search for the appropriate links.
The Next Six Months
Enough is going on that I thought I’d lay out my plans for the next six months, especially as a few of these items involve community contributions.
My principal focus from now until the end of 2010 will be:
- Silverlight On Ramp
- Windows Phone 7
- Silverlight and Data
- Best Practices: MVVM, Test-Driven Design, Agile, MEF and more
These four areas of intense concentration have spawned a number of projects, many of which address more than one area. The principal projects are…
UK and Ireland Slides and Links
I promised to post the slides I used during my SLHVP and Robust (MVVM/TDD) Silverlight Applications presentations. As noted at the time, they don’t stand on their own terribly well, and beyond that, they make extensive use of images that are under license through iStockPhoto.
That said, here are the slides for the SLHVP presentation, and here are the slides to the Robust Applications presentation. The Getting Started presentation was all code with no slides.
Useful Links
These links will provide additional information on topics covered in the presentations.
Diary of a trip to the UK & Ireland – The Final Chapter
The ferry to Belfast was uneventful, and Belfast itself is a beautiful, scarred city, caught between decades of violence and flickering hope for the future.
Diary of a trip to the UK and Ireland – Thanks for all the fish
This is the penultimate entry in my on-going diary, a 90 second recording, in which I take a moment to thank everyone and capture for a good laugh, my absurd tendency to unconsciously modify the way I speak, wherever I go.
[This post is just one line, offering a link to the recording]
Help Wanted
I’m hoping to find volunteers to help me catalog and create a comprehensive, up to date guide to Silverlight resources.
Specifically, I’m hoping you’ll take on the task of itemizing resources for one of the following areas
Getting Started With Silverlight- Transitioning to Silverlight 4
- Forms, Controls and Events
- Displaying Data
- Graphics and Animation (and the VSM)
- Understanding Silverlight Internals (e.g, the Property System)
- Silverlight & Windows Phone 7
- WCF RIA Services
- MVVM
- MEF
It is my hope that each volunteer will be able to list all the resources you can find for one of these areas, and mark each resource by Source, Type and Status:
