markm blogs here

TFS Error TF80042

2008-12-04T17:08:26Z

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

2008-11-07T13:06:47Z

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.

Hope to see you at the next one!

mark.

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!

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!

Whatcha lookin' at?

2008-10-27T16:00:50Z

"Whatcha lookin' at?" seems to be the common question over my shoulder while I try to watch a webcast and continue bashing out code.

"It's the PDC 2008 Keynote!" I exclaim, trying to shoo away yet another distraction...

Ray Ozzie is introducing Microsoft's new vision of computing in the cloud... Microsoft Azure
So rather than having to share my headphones around a gathering group; I mutter "Go to www.microsoftpdc.com/ and watch it live, its already started".

Peace resumes again.

In fact, each day of the PDC there is a keynote session and Microsoft are streaming it live over the web. It kicks off at 08:30(PST) which is 15:30 in the UK (lots of scratching heads while working that out, since our clocks changed an hour over the weekend).

Just go to the main page on the PDC website and click the "WATCH keynote live" in the large Silverlight panel at the top.

Oh, and also have a spin with the DeepZoom panel beneath it - it can get a bit annoying when trying to navigate around the page, but it's still worth a look!

Silverlight UK User Group #4 Agenda Revised

2008-10-16T14:16:41Z

As expected, the conference season has managed to put a couple of spanners in the works (in terms of the previously published proceedings). So, here is the revised agenda for the next Silverlight User Group meeting, we've decided on the venue and changed a speaker.

The next user group meeting will be held on Wednesday 5th November - that hasn't changed! We have about 70 signed up so the plan is to hold the meeting at Microsoft's office in Cardinal Place (nr Victoria). Registered attendees will be notified on Monday 3rd November (should this revert back to Conchango's Notcutt House).

You can register here or via Michelle.

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

The 'Tricky' Design Experience
Tricky from TrickyBusiness
Rich internet applications have changed the way that super-brands connect with their customers. If you want to compete in this cluttered marketplace it's essential that you evolve your product or service into a unique brand, creating a circle that people want to join.

People don't buy products, they buy experiences. Get the thoughts of Tricky on 'experience design' and the methods that his team have put into practice on digital projects for Audi, Alton Towers and John L Scott. Discover why design is an essential stage in the creation of rich interfaces, and how you can shape your product so that it's right for the people who really matter, your customers!

This session covers the iterative approach that Tricky and his team use to design experiences, including: Branding, ideation, research, sketching and conceptualisation. It is a great opportunity to check-out some exciting WPF & Silverlight projects, also to understand and discuss how designers are using Microsoft's Expression tools.

An engaging session for both designers and developers alike.

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

Real world Silverlight & Photosynth
John Penrose from Graphico
John is Technical Director for Graphico, a creative digital agency based in Newbury. As the RIA trend gathers pace, he has been working with key clients and Microsoft to help develop opportunities that will make use of these new technologies.

John’s session will be focused on the practical and commercial considerations of adopting new technologies, and will be based around two real-world examples. Firstly, he will be talking about a recent Silverlight project involving live streaming, multiple partners, assistance from the Microsoft team, and a lot of rum! Secondly, he’ll speak about working with the DPE and Live Labs teams on providing launch content for Photosynth.

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

mark.

*dependant on venue

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 2 RTW Released!

2008-10-14T10:37:00Z

"Hold onto your potatoes Dr Jones!"... We're off!

I thought that we might have waited for the PDC2008 to announce the newsflash, but no... surprise! surprise!

Silverlight 2 RTW (release to web) has been made public! Well done to Microsoft!

More information available from Tim Heuer, Scott Hanselman and Scott Gunthrie in their respective blogs.

Get it now:

Silverlight 2 will be available for consumers to download at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.

Customers already using a previous version of Silverlight will be automatically upgraded to Silverlight 2.

Developers can get all the "bits" from here: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

Silverlight UK User Group #4 Agenda Announced

2008-10-08T17:27:33Z

UPDATE - 16 OCT.
Agenda has changed! Go here for the latest!

Gosh, it seems that conference season has kicked in with the imminent arrival of the PDC2008 later this month followed by TechEd EMEA 2008 ... this means everybody is getting energised with Silverlight!

In time for the PDC2008, the product team have made "Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0 (RC0)" available to developers to test and prepare their Silverlight 2 Beta2 applications for the final upgrade to Silverlight 2 RTW. Futher details can be found here. This release should not be used for general public release though, since there is no end-user upgrade path from Beta2 to RC0. Even if it is not part of your readiness plans, give it a go and get ready for the next wave!

The next user group meeting will be held on Wednesday 5th November - right in the middle of PDC2008 and TechEd EMEA 2008. Dependant on numbers, the event will be held either at Conchango's Notcutt House (nr Southwark Bridge) OR at the Microsoft's office in Cardinal Place (nr Victoria). Registered attendees will be notified on Monday 3rd November as to the preferred location.

You can register here or via Michelle.

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

An engaging session for both designers and developers alike.

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

Silverlight & Mesh
Michael McClary from 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".

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

mark.

*dependant on venue

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 Meeting #3

2008-10-03T19:17:00Z

We had another meeting on Wednesday, particularly shorter than previous meetings but feature packed nevertheless!

Richard Costall and Pete McGann came down from the Midlands and presented "Silverlight, XNA and Gaming"; which was an informative reflection on how they went about rebuilding Manic Miner in .NET and XNA and then remapped the presentation layer to Silverlight. Audience participation has once again prevailed to keep the sessions interactive and tailored to what is of interest and it was no surprise that game development techniques eg: collision detection; were at the forefront of a lot of questions.

Recordings to the event are available on Michelle's blog (here).

FEEDBACK...

We asked for feedback at the start of the evening and thanks to those that filled out the cards and dropped in suggestions. We are continuously looking to maintain a high level of interest/involvement at the meetings, so please let us know of what we need to improve.. here are some examples.

Subject areas... Silverlight? Blend? Designer/Developer workflow?
Format... want more time networking? longer sessions? shorter sessions? demos?
Want to present?... let us know what you want to show!
Seen a presenter or session elsewhere? let us know who or where you saw it, maybe we can get them along too

You can send in suggestions/feedback through the links at the end of this blog post.

As promised; below is a selection of those from the night.

“Very informative, interested me greatly due to the background. Designers probably felt left out but the technical ability was outstanding. Really good presentation. Peter is a real talent!”

“Probably a bit less typical designer view as I am interesting in games and games graphics but although technical aspects of the presentation hasn’t completely lost me. Plus really useful to get a idea of what aspects of game graphics are affected by aspects of the games engine. How the way we make graphics can help the game developer, improve performance etc....”

“Really enjoyed the session, good mix, good ideas which can be used anywhere in general programming”

“As a dev and as a fan of retro games & Silverlight I enjoyed all aspects of the presentation. I also liked the tips about using the ASP.NET Providers”

“Well presented by both Richard and Peter. Great organisation of the event.”

“Very good demo, love to see new things in progress. Collision detection stuff was very useful for Silverlight. Would definitely come again!”

“I would like to see a more technical breakdown of how certain techniques were used to overcome problems encountered. Enjoyed the meeting – many thanks”

“Everything was great, can’t wait for the next one! Made gaming interesting to a non-gamer. Really interested in seeing Silverlight with mapping tools.”

Next meeting?

The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for the 5th November in London. There are number of big events in and around that date:

PDC2008 : 27-30 October, Los Angeles
TechEd EMEA 2008 : Barcelona

for IT Professionals: 3-7th November
for Developers: 10-14 November

VBUG 11th Annual Developer Conference : 4-5th November, Reading

We don't want to be in competition with VBUG we'll still hold the next meeting on the 5th November, so please come along if you are specifically interested in Silverlight. I'll post up the details as soon as I can.

Finally a grateful thanks to those that presented, those that attended and the team that works behind the scenes getting it all organised on the day (Michelle Flynn, Simon Evans, Matt Bagwell and Anthony Steele).

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 designer's perspective, working practices or showcase demo. If you think that you have a topic/presentation that ought to be shared with the community then please contact either me here and I'll see if we can schedule you in!

Dreaded "Server Application Unavailable" When Accessing A Web Service

2008-09-29T11:15:49Z

I was trying to access my local web service this morning and was getting back the dreaded, generic "Server Application Unavailable" each time I hit the service via my code or browser.

For Example:

http://localhost/mywebservice/endpoint.svc

Resulted in:

Server Application Unavailable
The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is currently unavailable. Please hit the "Refresh" button in your web browser to retry your request.

Administrator Note: An error message detailing the cause of this specific request failure can be found in the application event log of the web server. Please review this log entry to discover what caused this error to occur.

Recorded in the eventlog:

Event Type:	Error
Event Source:	ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0
Event Category:	None
Event ID:	1084
Date:	29/09/2008
Time:	10:14:22
User:	N/A
Computer:	--PRIVATE--
Description:	aspnet_wp.exe could not be started. The error code for the failure is C0000142. This error can be caused when the worker process account has insufficient rights to read the .NET Framework files. Please ensure that the .NET Framework is correctly installed and that the ACLs on the installation directory allow access to the configured account.

Solution?

Try reinstalling ASP.NET (2.0.50727) to refresh the ASP.NET settings, config, metabase and security/worker accounts on the local machine:

Open a command prompt and....
Stop IIS: iisreset /stop
Change to the .NET Framework 2.0 root directory: C:\windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\
Reinstall ASP.NET 2.0 by using the following command: aspnet_regiis -i
Start IIS again: iisreset /start
Try to access your web page again.

Note: there are many other fabulous options available to refresh your IIS settings... just give aspnet_regiis /? a run!

Silverlight UK User Group #3 Agenda Announced

2008-09-19T17:00:42Z

It's fast approaching the time for another meeting of the Silverlight UK User Group. The third session planned for Wednesday, 1st October 2008! The event starts at 18:30 and will be hosted by Conchango at the Notcutt House (nr Southwark Bridge).

The event might be a bit shorter than usual, probably testament to the fact that the Microsoft team are incredibly busy finishing off the Silverlight build as well as those waiting/upgrading in anticipation to get our hands on it!

AGENDA

Welcome/Kick off

Silverlight, XNA and Gaming (part I)
Richard Costall and Pete McGann
Matthew Smith did it in 6 weeks in the early 80's, now over 20 years later Pete McGann and Richard Costall have built Manic Miner in .NET, with an engine which works for Silverlight and also XNA. In this session Pete and Rich, talk about the .NET engine, implementations and issues on the two platforms - before Pete steps up to take the ultimate gaming challenge...
more...

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

Silverlight, XNA and Gaming (part II)
Conclude the presentation and questions.

Showcase (TBD) or Open discussion to finish.

Hope to see you there!

mark.

Loading and resolving assemblies

2008-09-01T10:16:27Z

We've been writing a tool on our project that requires late-binding to classes/types in our service layer. It's typical plugin style coding, similar to how much of the various Enterprise Library stacks are meant to be loaded when needed.

One of the questions raised was what happens if the assemblies containing our classes/types are not in the execution path? This usually occurs when the requested assembly has a dependency on another assembly.

After some playing about with explicitly loading assemblies into the current AppDomain, I found a couple of useful events; AssemblyLoad and AssemblyResolve. The real saviour is AssemblyResolve - hook this up up in your plugin loading code and they it gives you a chance to handle when the requested assembly fails to load. Both these events hang off the AppDomain.CurrentDomain and so catch any assembly load/failure that occurs within execution scope.

In the sample below, I've assumed that we know what the path to the assemblies are by setting a constant (if you don't know this you'll either have to set some predetermined hint paths or ask for user input). It's here that the AssemblyResolve event can piece together the missing assembly path, load it and continue.

          1: const string assemblyPath = @"C:\LoadingAssemblies\Model\ParentAssembly\bin\Debug\";

         2:  

         3: private void LoadTest()

         4: {

         5:  

         6:     AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyLoad += new AssemblyLoadEventHandler(CurrentDomain_AssemblyLoad);

         7:     AppDomain.CurrentDomain.AssemblyResolve += new ResolveEventHandler(CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve);

         8:  

         9:     Assembly pluginAssembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}", assemblyPath, "PluginAssembly.dll"));

        10:  

        11:     Type myType = pluginAssembly.GetType("PluginAssembly.ParentClass");

        12:     if (myType != null)

        13:         Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} -- {1}", myType.FullName, myType.AssemblyQualifiedName));

        14:  

        15:     //fails since it is not defined in this assembly and does not have a full assembly definition

        16:     myType = Type.GetType("ChildAssembly.ChildClass");

        17:     if (myType != null)

        18:         Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} -- {1}", myType.FullName, myType.AssemblyQualifiedName));

        19:  

        20:     //succeeds since we have the full definition - will fire the AssemblyResolve event which points to the assembly location

        21:     myType = Type.GetType("ChildAssembly.ChildClass, ChildAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null");

        22:     if (myType != null)

        23:         Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} -- {1}", myType.FullName, myType.AssemblyQualifiedName));

        24:  

        25:     //fails since it is not defined in this assembly and does not have a full assembly definition

        26:     myType = Type.GetType("SubAssembly.SubClass");

        27:     if (myType != null)

        28:         Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} -- {1}", myType.FullName, myType.AssemblyQualifiedName));

        29:  

        30:     //succeeds since we have the full definition - since the assembly is in the app path it will automatically load

        31:     myType = Type.GetType("SubAssembly.SubClass, SubAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null");

        32:     if (myType != null)

        33:         Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} -- {1}", myType.FullName, myType.AssemblyQualifiedName));

        34:  

        35:     //fails because we need to fully qualify the namespace of the class

        36:     myType = Type.GetType("SubClass, SubAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null");

        37:     if (myType != null)

        38:         Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("{0} -- {1}", myType.FullName, myType.AssemblyQualifiedName));

        39:  

        40: }

        41:  

        42: static Assembly CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve(object sender, ResolveEventArgs args)

        43: {

        44:     Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("CurrentDomain_AssemblyResolve reports that '{0}' was unresolved.", args.Name));

        45:  

        46:     // args.Name == "ChildAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null"

        47:     string[] parts = args.Name.Split(',');

        48:     if (parts.Length > 0)

        49:     {

        50:         Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom(string.Format(@"{0}\{1}.dll", assemblyPath, parts[0].Trim()));

        51:         return assembly;

        52:     }

        53:  

        54:     return null;

        55: }

        56:  

        57: static void CurrentDomain_AssemblyLoad(object sender, AssemblyLoadEventArgs args)

        58: {

        59:     Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("CurrentDomain_AssemblyLoad reports that '{0}' was loaded.", args.LoadedAssembly.FullName));

        60: }

Silverlight UK User Group Meeting #2

2008-08-23T08:38:34Z

We recently hosted the second meeting of the Silverlight UK Usergroup at Conchango in London. It was a pretty packed agenda with two excellent presentations.

Mike Taulty's usually busy being a Microsoft Development Evangelist, presenting at various conferences or recording Silverlight demos on MSDN's Channel9. He gave us a sneak preview of a presentation that he was preparing for ReMix08 about hooking up Silverlight applications to services and content beyond those that are embedded within the host application. The coding demos got deep, detailed and highlighted the many different options available of Silverlight's ability to get connected.

Update: Michelle Flynn has posted up the video recording of this session here.

The second session got at lot of attention, especially from the developers in the audience who where in awe over "designer elements" of putting together a slickly styled Silverlight application. It was no wonder Tim Hustler and Simon Sturgess recently won a Microsoft competition (the Web Harmony 'Be all you can be challenge').

Update: Michelle Flynn has posted up the video recording of this session here.

The attendance at the meeting remained at a good ratio of developers and designers and the interaction throughout the evening was excellent - Feedback afterwards was good to hear that we are able to get good presentations and the discussion flowing at these meetings. If you have comments or suggestions then please let me and the team know by dropping us a message here.

Finally a grateful thanks to those that presented, those that attended and the team that works behind the scenes getting it all organised (Michelle Flynn, Richard Griffin, Jamie Thomson, Felix Corke).

Silverlight UK User Group #2 Agenda Announced.

2008-08-01T13:45:00Z

It's been a while but the second session of the Silverlight UK User Group is happening on Thursday, 14th August 2008! The event starts at 18:00 and will be hosted by Conchango at the Notcutt House (nr Southwark Bridge).

AGENDA

Welcome/Kick off

No Silverlight (2) Application is an Island (of Richness)
Mike Taulty (Microsoft Developer Evangelist)
You have a Silverlight 2 application running on your web page and it's beginning to dawn on you that this is much more like building a client application than it is like building a web page. How does the Silverlight application get data? Can it grab files? Can it call services? Can it download images? Can it talk to the browser? In a nutshell - where can it get "stuff" and where can it put "stuff"? In this session we'll explore all the options.

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

Creating Silverlight apps using Blend & VS'08
Silverlight developer Tim Hustler and Expressions Blend designer Simon Sturgess plan to do a how-to on creating Silverlight applications using Blend and Visual Studio 2008. Simon will create some custom controls and Tim will demonstrate some DataBinding from a back-end datasource written in WCF. They both recently won a competition ran by Microsoft, the Web Harmony 'Be all you can be challenge' from which this session is based upon.

Showcase (TBD) or Open discussion to finish.

Want to join in?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested there are some spaces still available and Michelle Flynn 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 let myself or Richard Griffin know and we'll see if we can schedule you in!

Hope to see you there!

mark.

Silverlight 2 Beta2 now public!

2008-06-07T05:32:11Z

It's out! The Microsoft team have been incredibly busy but they've managed to make Silverlight 2 Beta2 public today!

Get your old versions of Silverlight uninstalled and upgrade to the new Beta now!

Like the previous Beta1, it comes with "Go Live" licence to allow developers and organizations authorization to begin deployment of their applications using pre-RTM code. The recommendation is for developers to use the "Go Live" license and the Beta2 to begin building applications with the knowledge that Microsoft will be updating the bits in the future. In fact those that already have "Go Live" licences should be rapidly upgrading to the new version this week.

You can download the runtime and development tools/addons at the Microsoft Silverlight site.

As always, Scott Gu and Shawn Wildermuth have done some outstanding blog posts on the pertinent/interesting changes in Beta2 and Expression Blend.

Enjoy and get Silverlighting!

Where's my Virtual PC console disappeared to?

2008-04-16T22:18:00Z

I run various Virtual PC systems from my laptop but recently, for some reason I lost the VPC 2007 console off screen. I thought that a new addition to my list of VPCs had trashed my configuration, since I could run a desired VPC by double-clicking it's respective ".vmc" file but the VPC console would briefly appear on the task bar but disappear off screen!

No matter how hard I tried to get the console back it remained minimised on my taskbar and the systray applet would just tantalisingly flash an outline of the console when selecting "Show Virtual PC Console". Gahhhh!

Then through a combination of uninstalling/reinstalling Virtual PC 2007 and changing my extended desktop settings I finally came across a settings file for the console. This file resides not in the "Program Files" folder as I had assumed... but rather in my local profile - try typing "%appdata%\Microsoft\Virtual PC" into the "Run command" box on the Windows Start menu. You should be able to see an "Options.xml", which contains a the following definition towards the end of the file:

    <window>
        <console>
            <height type="integer">254</height>
            <left_position type="integer">237210383</left_position>
            <top_position type="integer">237210383</top_position>
            <visible type="boolean">true</visible>
            <width type="integer">359</width>
        </console>
        <new_pc>
            <left_position type="integer">469</left_position>
            <top_position type="integer">254</top_position>
        </new_pc>
        <virtual_disk_wizard>
            <left_position type="integer">469</left_position>
            <top_position type="integer">254</top_position>
        </virtual_disk_wizard>
    </window>

Note, the values for the left_position and top_position are completely wacky! They definitely do not correspond with any screen position that is viewable from my laptop or extended desktop! Resetting these values to something sensible like 100 and restarting VPC 2007 solves the problem....

<left_position type="integer">100</left_position>
<top_position type="integer">100</top_position>

Console restored - Excellent!

By the way, if you want to ensure that your VPC runs in peak condition, check out Merrick's tips.

Silverlight UK User Group Kickoff

2008-04-03T08:48:00Z

What better a subject for my first blog post here than the kickoff of the Silverlight UK User Group?
Well, I helped facilitate the inaugural event here in our London office last night with Michelle Flynn and our main frontman Paul "awesome" Dawson.

Firstly, a massive thanks for all that attended because it was a really interesting and a very interactive evening - exactly what was wanted.
Then I would like to thank Microsoft who presented but more importantly, provided the beer and pizza midway through.

We a had a number of presentations but it was not all stare at the screen and fall asleep at the back, the audience participation was brillant.

In 'pole position' we had the tagteam of Richard Griffin and Felix Corke showing a Formula 1 website that they had knocked up in a couple of days for a real project that required RSS, news feeds, audio, video, Flickr, Twitter and Deepzoom! They were very keen to explore the experiences of the audience, with regard to the Developer-Designer relationship and how others had got round the technical problems they had faced while building the site.

Second up and possibly the highlight of the evening was a open discussion with Microsoft Evangelist Tim Sneath (over here from Seattle on a customer tour) who gave a status update on Silverlight 2 and WPF. Open questions from the floor got a fair and candid response too, reinforcing that Microsoft does want feedback for the product teams.

Finally, were all wowed by Mark & Alex from Shaxam who demo'ed some of their 3D work in WPF and Silverlight... Silverlight? YES! They did a fantastic job at showing off their 3D animating of MRI scan data - zooming in and out of the human foot slice-by-slice (very CSI). If you want to do some funky 3D in Silverlight then talk to these guys!

I'm now trying to get the next meeting organised, get a community site planned and a mailing list too. One interesting straw poll revealed that we were Developer heavy... out of the 50 people present only a handful were Designers. So, come on Designers... Silverlight is all about getting both designers and developers working side by side producing dazzling, sexy, interactive web applications... come and join the discussion!