Hi folks, I thought I’d share something that captivated me on this rainy Easter day and that was

Visual Studio Asynchronous Programming - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/vstudio/async
(you’ll need VS2010 + SP1 before you grab the CTP)
There’s a new improved compiler + an extended library for us.

Hands up who’s done async programming in either VB.NET or C#??? It’s a pain! Thread management, Main UI threads can only update certain objects, passing values between main + background threads, determining whether a thread has completed its tasks… and so on…

Basically all these ‘issues’ keep us from delving further into the world of asynchronous programming cause it very rapidly becomes complex just managing the two worlds – sync + async.

Today I was pleasantly surprised!!!

About a year ago I saw a great presentation on F# and I was amazed at how if they wanted to run a bit of code async it was simple an extra character as in:

set results = …..   <-sync

set results! = ….  <- run this async

(don’t quote me on the above, but it’s something like that – let’s call it pseudo code)

Why are we interested in this? – that’s always the first question to ask when investigating. Too many times we here ‘this is really cool’ and ‘check this cool software out’ etc… but the real reason of WHY do we want to go down this road is never answered.

On a ‘developers machine’ looking at 5 items, running a single test client – you’d have to say “works on my machine” and you’d have no need to async anything. True. Let’s move beyond our beloved developer box and think about UAT/PROD environments and what your code is doing.

What happens if 4 concurrent requests come along – how is your code going to perform? (As developers we’d be thinking …’it’s in the hands of IIS, not my issue’ :) )
(I recently was presented with a solution that ran across 20 odd servers, the answer to everything was get more hardware to make the app more performant, scalable etc – couldnt be the code.)

So as the requests start to build (don’t know an exact number but let’s say 100/sec), what is happening to your code? how often do we sit down with profiling tools on our code in this space? must be the disks..slow…and as always we have definitive proof works on my machine says the developer!

It’s not until we see our code running under load that we get an appreciation for where things could be improved and are causing grief for not only IIS but other systems as well.

Scalability, performance and scalability – single threaded app/service vs multi-threaded. Multi-threaded tend to win all the time.

Let me give you a couple of suggestions where this stuff is great:

1. As part of a WF/WCF/Class where you want to ‘push’ some processing into the background – critical things can be done upfront, and you can push some of the ‘other stuff’ into the background.
   
2. Take advantage of some of the great multi-core/multi-cpu Servers out there – single threaded tend to run on the same core on the same CPU (known as thread affinity)

Anyway enough jabbering from me and let’s see some of the hidden gems…

Async Programming Framework

Let me show you a couple of examples (from my set):

1. Fetching a webpage

Here I go off to twitter and search for all the BizTalk items.

Couple of things to notice
- …Async is added to the end of routines for convention, indicating that these are Async callable routines.
- not a single IAsyncResult to be seen, no StateObject and no Callback routines!
– line 104 the async keyword indicating that this routine itself can be called async if desired (more for the compiler)
- line 108 the await keyword is used in the Async framework to ‘wait for the async task to complete’  then move onto the next line.
- line 108 WebRequest.Create(…).GetResponseAsync – it’s the GetResponseAsync that is the async method, no …Begin or ..OnEnd calls! Just write it as you read it.
- line 109 We get a reference to the response stream (I should check for the existence of data etc – demo code, demo code :))
- line 112 …await stm.ReadAsync(…) – reads the response stream into a buffer on a background thread and we wait there until this completes (await keyword). By all means there’s many other ways to program this, as in we don’t need to wait, we could run this guy in the background quite happy and then check on him periodically.

That’s it! Not too tough at all, multi-threaded goodness right there. You can have blocking and non-blocking calls etc.

2. What about a Chunk of CPU based code

NO Async Example – as per normal, doing some cpu things.

Written in Async….

Points to notice:
- line 63 async Task<int[]> … to the Async framework the async methods are wrapped within a Task class. We must ‘wrap’ anything we return from our routines within a Task<..> – here I’m returning an int[]
-line 66 … = TaskEx.Run(…something to run in a background thread…). As we’re dealing with a block of code, there’s a Task Extension class that allows us to run that bit of code Async.
-line 79 await matrix – this line ensures that our async routine has indeed completed (or errored) before we move onto the next line.

Too easy if you’ve lived in the other world.

As always remember this is CTP so I wouldn’t go rolling out into Prod just yet. The perf numbers I get are pretty much identical to rolling all of this by hand with ThreadPool.QueueWorkItem(…) and IAsyncResult etc.

Well done MS!

Enjoy and here’s my VS.NET Sample Solutions – I had great fun! Oh – this is also applicable to Silverlight + WP7 apps :)

Keeping the raging iCant do a thing; iCant fwd a txt msg or voice mail iPhone debate… the new Windows Phone 7 Tools are in here all its Silverlight glory.

Imagine being able to play a FLASH movie on the phone! shock horror.

So grab the next big thing and look out phone world….the way phones were meant to be ;)

Windows Phone Developer Tools

I got an email from David Marsh telling me about this new world from MS. Let me share a little…
Way back when…LOGO was one of the first languages I learnt as a kid.

Moving a turtle around on a page with commands such as PenUp, PenDown, RightTurn etc etc – pretty cool as a kid and then you could draw things (there was a big version of the Turtle that interfaced into an Apple II via a ribbon cable as wide as a 4 lane highway)

MS Dev Labs have released a great SmallBasic environment that is very simple to pickup (great for kids).
It’s got a very simple set of commands AND it outputs straight to Silverlight.


Pretty quick ways of building silverlight apps….nice!

Check out http://smallbasic.com –only if you have some free time

From time to time I check out on what’s happening in my favourite ‘moon lighting’ area – Silverlight.

Love the Silverlight potential – I’m a big fan.

So from http://silverlight.net – I found a Z-80 EMULATOR!!! (like what’s next an Apple II)

You hit the ‘Run’ button and far too many years has passed between me and my Computer Engineering Degree of Demorgans Theorem and Fast Fourier Transforms.

Great effort! (by someone whom had SOOO much time on their hands)

http://www.expertgig.com/slsample/sl_z80emu/SL_Z80emuTestPage.html

Recently at the SharePoint Conference (SPC2010) delegates were given a beautiful book with all sorts of developers bits.

The book stars 123 pages of great information, and improvements to many areas that we previously had pain with (lists, queries, and just CAML in general)

There’s also 6 walkthroughs (sort of like HOLs) with code etc. to give you a feel for customising SharePoint.

Grab the PDF version HERE

Some snippets which I found interesting from the book are:

1. Some great object model options now for integrating with SharePoint.
   
   
   Points to note here:
   - Client OM + Rest are exposed as WCF Services (based on Client.Svc) and the Client OM is a batched model, so you transmit only what you ask for within Object Collection Hierarchies (unlike SPSite.AllWebs etc etc)
   - LINQ to SharePoint is initially created with SPMetal to create all the LINQ classes (there’s no ‘designer’ support for this yet, like LINQ for SQL – at least in this beta)
   - External Lists are an interesting one, you can develop plugins to expose two-way data syncs within SharePoint. I’m looking to reach out to SAP + Siebel systems when I explore this option :)
   
2. Resource Throttling is turned on by default – previously developers could write code like SPList.Items… Usually on a Developer’s machine, with 5 items in a list this was not an issue, 8000 items in a list turns into a different story.
   
   SharePoint 2010 now has safe guards against this turned on by default.

Enjoy…I’m off to enjoy the sun.

Hi guys,

If you're looking to get into how to host WCF Services on Azure, showing some cool graphics, then these samples are for you.

Silverlight v3.0 (beta), and important samples showing how to take your existing WCF Services and hosting/housing them in Auze (there's a few gotchas - and these samples have work arounds :) )

Grab them here -

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wcfazure

At Remix09 there’s been news at the station.

Silverlight v3.0 is hitting the scene…I wonder whether the Adobe Flash support made it in… will dig through the details.

http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx#whatsnew

Hi folks - over the last week or so I've had many requests about what's happening around privacy and what does it mean to get a "Tag" this year.

Breeze Event System  

Reasons for Building the System
1. Breeze designed, built and owns the 'Breeze Event' System. I am talking first hand (and am happy to share details with you). A variant of the idea originated years back when myself and David McGhee worked on a very cut down alpha variation - together we cut the code and got about 5 mins of RFID activity from the devices we were using before our battery died.

Stepping forward to the current system, once we presented MS with the concepts of what we wanted to do - many folks gave some sensational support (such as Marcy Larsen & Rahul Garg) in integrating this new piece with 'TechEd proper'. We got there in the end and for me - it's a real eye opener to see how big TechEd is and how much planning goes into it.

2. As a speaker/delegate/MVP at many TechEds and other conferences my motivation was all about giving you the Delegate (& myself as a Speaker) a better TechEd experience. Taking the pain out of a lot of things. For example:

• TechEd to me is about experience technology, not just hearing about it. Here's your chance to play and experience some cool technology.
• Being able to see when rooms over capacity before you get there only to be told to go away
• Be given online evals just for the sessions you attended (currently we set 'attended' to be at least 15 mins within the session)
• I might be a new developer, what sessions do I go to? You could have information such as 80% of other 'new developers' went to SessionX. Great I might go to that one.
  
  A big one for me is that at the end of the conference Delegate's get a boxed DVD Set of sessions in other TechEds with thousands of hours of material on it. Wouldn't it be great to be given such things as '80% of other new developers have these sessions/webcasts etc as their top 10 list' - that way I've got targeted viewing.
  
• As a speaker - they will know the cross section of interests and technology tracks in the room. (there's a chart display we've created). So the classic question of 'How many developers are in the room? How many ITPros?' no longer needs to be asked AND as a Delegate the speaker will be able to have more information to tailor their material to the interests of the audience (hopefully reducing the amount - 'that just went over my head')
  
• Planning - future conferences/sessions and material will now have direct influence by the Delegates. What sessions you valued, and got the most out of.
  
• More...

As you can see, we've designed the system with us (delegates & speakers) in mind.

I digress.....Ok onto the main items......

Privacy Concerns - yours and mine

I wanted to fill you in as much as possible about the system (this is eating into my sleeping time :) so there is a clear understanding about the what is going on.

Some Details on How the System Works

1. Your tag - holds a number e.g. 1234 (we printed it on the plastic surface of your tag) end of story. Nothing else.  These tags are 'EPC Gen II' UHF Tags and operate between 920-926MHz.

Here is the actual Tag itself (it will be stuck onto a card to make it look beautiful :)
                

Some facts:

1. The tag is known as a Dog Bone by the way the metal aerial is shaped. Just above the barcode, there's the number and above that there is an indent the size of a 'pin head' in the middle - this is the chip.
   
2. The tag is a passive tag (as opposed to active - such as your E-Tags in cars) which means radio waves need to be sent to it, to excite the tag and so the tag can transmit its number. This distance in our case is around 2-3m. If there's no waves, then nothing is transmitted.
   
   What this generally means is that you should be able to walk straight through into sessions, rather than people scanning your individual barcodes as was in previous years.
   
3. The Barcode is there so we can integrate with your established Registration process. We printed the barcode there as a fall back mechanism.
   
   The barcode number is the only piece of information written onto your tag. (Printing the barcode + printing to the Tag at the same time doing around 5000 tags took a bit of development and H/W)
   
   In other Systems, things like temperature readings are frequently written to the tag, so that when the fish is delivered to the restaurant, they know the freshness and quality of it.
   
   Generally speaking in RFID based solutions there will be no sensitive information written to the tag (if it gets lost, crushed, drowned etc etc)
   
   Tidbit - the amount of data you can write to these tags is in bytes (like 96 bits), but other tags can store around 64KB!!!! (that was the total sum size of my Apple II as a kid!!)
   

2. Readers - come in many shapes and sizes for different purposes. Our Readers have a read range of 2m. There will be white pizza shaped 'boxes' mounted and these are the antennae. The reader is connected to local pcs that drive the system.

There will be 56 Readers and 118 antennae mounted around Session/Breakout rooms doorways and as I mentioned they have a range of 2m. This is designed to reduce the queues (with reading a barcode) getting into rooms as you should be able to just stroll through.
(there have been some ski resorts in Europe implementing RFID ski passes - ski straight on/off)

                                                                
                                                                   Shot of the Antennae

3. Local PC - each room with have one a PC where all the Readers are connected to. We designed our system so that if we have a network meltdown, each room will (hopefully :-) still be running. In fact each Local PC runs our solution on top of BizTalk RFID Server to drive the walk-in and chart displays.

4. Network - there will be a dedicated network for the RFID component @ Teched where these Local PCs and us will be connected to in isolation to the rest of the network.

5. The Information captured - the information that your tag number associates with in the back end is essentially the Conference profile information you entered as part of the Registration process.

This enables things like 60% of people like Jazz in this session.....ideally we're really interested in aggregates of information to help improve your experience.

(I'm hoping to get MS and MVP information as well - so you as a Delegate may be notified when a Windows2008 MVP is in the house)

Just quickly - we're using SQL Replication to frequently replicate the information from each Room back to our servers centrally.

Sneak peak....

Cause you read to the bottom of this post....here's a reward.....
Now according to my team - this information is available on All Rooms, or by Individual Room.
(my current challenge is how to expose these screens to you guys (approx 500-700 concurrent connections) without causing grief to our system.....nothing like a challenge a week out from TechEd......)

Looking fwd to a very different TechEd....see you there....nighty night.

 Register - here

Folks I hope you're heading to TechEd this year - it's a brand new breed! Why....????

Because myself and my team are covering the entire event with RFID tags, we'll give you tags - enabling you the delegate to 'live' the technology!!! (seen Tron lately) we'll set up some great RFID interactive capabilities.

Sample card TechEd tag

It all started when... I went to MS and said..."I've got an idea...." and the teched committee(s) saw the plan and loved it (there were some sleepless nights there as well :).

I've been to over 10+ yrs of TechEd (sometimes 3 a yr, US, Oz + NZ) and I figured it should be a chance to play with the technology! Hands on - get dirty. Build, break, play + learn...all that stuff.

As a MS Ptr Readiness trainer/Regular teched speaker - I appreciate the value of sessions but as a delegate I would be looking for the show me/talk to me/let *me* see how it's done.... a bit like plasticine to mould and meld the way that I (as a delegate) would need it!!!!!

So in light of this - Breeze is providing a (huge) BizTalk RFID based RFID Event System that you guys can interact with/we'll walk you through the making of, setup & how the system is put together. We're getting some posters made up and myself as a trainer, would want to share the knowledge around this system.

Let's see what the system does.....(as of 5pm today...nothing like moving targets... :)

The vision we have is:

1. You walk into a room and the welcome screen will say "Hi Paul" (and you'll fade out, do something special...we've got a couple of ideas here). This component actually is a 'real-time visual display' of out in the field events. In our case it's people walking past readers...or it could be boxes, trucks, palettes etc. Built in Silverlight 2 harnessing the WCF Eventing Services in real time. (We've been able to crank our code up to 150 people walking past *exactly* the same spot)
   
   Fellow Breezer.... Scotty (a member of the BizTalk Virtual TS team) has a blurb on some of the details on the initial RFID/Silverlight nuts 'n bolts
   
   (we've also got a webcast on how this is created)
   
2. So you guys as an interactive experience as you walk in the room with various graphs (developers in the room, it pros...) and charts - some DRAFT IDEAs
   All done in Silverlight
   
   
   We've actually got MS Shane Morris on the case here - he never gives up a chance to get down and dirty with Silverlight.
   Check out his thoughts at the moment - big thanks Shane :)
   
   So there may be an 'Avatar' thingy that gets displayed up on the screen (as Shane mentions).....a quiet secret .....you want to 'pimp your avatar'???? Come and see the Breeze room and we'll make it happen...only those who rock up - I've got a Windows Mobile App that will do it for you.....
   
   
3. Some other areas that may/may not make the final show are having things like:
   1. 'Information Points' - areas that you could simply be standing near, talking to someone and a screen may show where your collegues are, or what you may have in common with the person you're talking to. e.g. belong to community User Groups; where the next sessions of interest are for you.
      These may be distributed throughout the conference.
      
   2. As you go to a session - if you stay longer than 15 mins (for e.g.) the system contacts Commnet and makes a session eval available for you to fill out (could be done while you're sitting in the session :-)
      
   3. Breeze will have a room that will be driving all this - be sure to come and see us. Our guys will be more than happy to take you through 'the bunker'
      
   4. No more hold ups at the doors (hopefully :) with people individually reading your barcodes, you can just walk straight in (imagine if skiing chairlift lines were like that :)
      
4. The other major component to the system is an Exhibitor System which is run on a PDA equipped with a Kenetics RFID Reader built on BizTalk RFID 1.1 Mobile (still in beta - nervous who me?). The Kenetics crew have been very helpful and when I embarked on this application I was given the H/W and a C++ DLL....."What..you don't know C++?" - not since uni folks....developed the RFID component in 4 days!!!
   1. The application is for when exhibitors on the floor, they scan your RFID Tag and you can continue the conversation. The scan range is around 2-10cms.
   2. There is also local SqlCe storage, with store/fwd capabilities. I'm using SqlCe merge replication to keep the data safe centrally - which proved to be interesting.
   3. Currently - the MS Stand and the HP stand will have the devices, the RFID Reader + this mobile App (the other exhibitors are still reading barcodes)
      
5. TechEd Event information is to be made available through Analysis Cubes so you guys can pull up a pivot table (looks impressive to your boss) and play with the event data. Things like attendance in sessions, audience breakdown by interest or by technology etc. - it would be great to do something like an 'Amazon' - such as if you're a .NET developer having.... "Other people who are also .NET developers went to these other sessions...."
   
   So as a delegate I can get a 'group feel' for what sessions I should be seeing next - sometimes there's a time where non of the sessions are on my immediate agenda, it would be great to have this information available to help me make my decision on what session I should see in that time slot.
   (e.g. 85% of SQL developers chose this session....)
   
6. There's a whole bunch of H/W coming from Kenetics which we'll be giving a session at TechEd on how we built it all!!!
   
7. Lastly I thought I'd just mention a quick blurb on the RFID info.
   - there *may* be some apprehension about a delegate getting a 'tag' and the whole "big brother is watching" thing. Let me dispel a couple of rumours
   1. tags are similar to barcodes - they simply contain a number. read differently but from that respect the same (imagine if you could go into your favourite sporting store, and say "I'll have a new shoes" and they knew your size, your brand, and whether it's in stock instantly - now you could even have a self-serve kiosk around that as well!!!)
      
   2. Your tag can't be read from satellites - lots of physics comes into play here...namely a big one of power. If you think about when TV stations need to broadcast to space, they have a large dish somewhere, 50 guys peddling bikes to generate the power and then they transmit bursts.
      
      So...no. - simply cover the tag with your hand and you can't be read. (water and radio waves don't go that well)
      
   3. My vision is to make this *your* teched - as you can see we're being transparent and open about the system and how it works. Any time drop in and we'll show you through.
      

ON ANOTHER NOTE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT - my workflow session I'm delivering - you've got rare oppty....

SOA305
Getting Workflows Running and Talking in Your Applications
04/09/2008 2:00PM-3:15PM

Once you understand the basics of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and can put together a workflow using the built-in activities, you will need to know how to get that workflow running in a variety of hosting environments and communicate between the workflow and the host application or the outside world. This session gives you a solid foundation to get started with these techniques. Gain a better understanding of how workflows exist in a hosting process and how to control the hosting services. Learn about the various forms of communication that can exist between a running workflow and the hosting application as well as with outside Web and WCF Services. Also, learn about the persistence and tracking features of WF.

- I've got a technical session on Workflow Foundation.
- Of course you're planning on seeing my session :) - WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO COVER? WHAT DO *YOU* WANT TO KNOW ABOUT?

(You've got the opportunity to provide feedback and while I'm still 'building' the session - hopefully I can incorporate your needs!)

More later and I'd love to hear your thoughts on above with a comment or two.....be great to see you at TechEd!!!!

Over and out

Mick.

After the more than normal pain in getting this done for my previous post, I decided to post the fruits of my labour (not labor that my wife tells me about watermellons and men wouldn't know the first thing about birth....I'm not about to do the pepsi challenge on that :))

- this is a stock standard Web.Config for a MOSS install NOT a plain WSS install (there's about 3 lines different from a plain WSS install to a MOSS install - mainly anything that references SharePoint.Publishing....)

Grab this and these are the changes that WORK!

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Mick.

"Could not load file or assembly 'System.Web.Silverlight, Version=2.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies."

You're starting to Roll your sleeves up and get dirty with Silverlight 2 Beta 2, load up some of the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint Samples, run the installer (it's great that most of these examples have an installer) and Boom! you get the above error!!!

Here's a list I've compiled to get Silverlight working - I'm currently running this on Win2008 IIS7

(1) Install WSS SP1/MOSS SP1 on your SharePoint box if you haven't already. You need the SP1 to support .NET 3.5 calls through SharePoint - my guess is that these tell SharePoint not to intercept the calls and let them go to their rightful owners.

(2) Create a 'dummy' site collection on a test Web Application - e.g. http://localhost:81 - This is so you can see all the changes to the web.config that are made through the installation process, in isolation. By keeping this separate to your usual web.config, you'll be able to merge changes at a later date.

(3) Install the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 runtime and other developer bits - From http://Silverlight.net - VS2008 Developer Bits and just the runtime if you want from here

(4) Do one installation of a Silverlight for BluePrint Sample - the installer creates a 'virtual directory' under your Web Site called ClientBin where the various Silverlight 2 files go (*.js, *.XAP). This is a handy install so you can see what the directory execution settings are required to make this work through SharePoint. i.e. Execute permissions only. Take note of this directory.

(5) Add a IIS MIME type - With Silverlight 2 beta 2 - there is a new file type added which is a *.XAP file type. IIS by default doesn't know how to encode/translate or send these files down over the wire.
Add a mime type of: Extention: xap Mime Type: application/x-silverlight-app to your IIS Test Web Site

(6) Make Web.Config changes - there's a whole series of Web.Config changes to be made to your SharePoint Web Application to support AJAX/.NET 3.5 and now Silverlight.... fortunately other hard working folks have done this for you!!!! :) Bless their cotton socks! - grab the Feature that makes the modifications from here (** NB: you want the 3.5 config feature)

You're almost done........ :)

(7) EXCEPT for the error above!!! After much inspection of your system, you'll realise that you *don't* have that DLL (on a clean install). The Silverlight Ninja will know that this is from Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and not found in the Beta 2 kits!! Yay team!

The System.Web.Silverlight.dll is found in the Silverlight 2 beta 1 SDK - so download that puppy, extract out the DLL and either GAC it, or add it to your BIN directory on your SharePoint site. (I added it to my BIN directory - as I reckon when SL2 is released, this problem would have been resolved)
(**UPDATED: Due to how painful that was, I decided to package up the DLL for you - HERE**)

Here are the Compiled Files - FOR SL2 BETA 2 - they WORK!! :-)

(I grabbed the Blueprint Hello World Web Part and updated to work)

1. Silverlight Web Part DLL

2. Silverlight *.XAP updated for Beta 2, copy straight to the *sub-directory* under your client BIN

3. Sample SharePoint Web.Config with all the changes! :-)

There's a great line up this month that are too good to keep secret.

Some fellow CSD experts are lining up for some great topics to give all around Workflow and WCF!!!

Does it get better? Get on and register.

For more, check out the Live Calendar 

Live Webcasts

MSDN Webcast: Transactional Windows Communication Foundation Services with Juval Lowy (Level 200)

Monday, July 7, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:15 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Using Windows Workflow Foundation to Build Services with Jon Flanders (Level 300)

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: WCF Extensibility Deep Dive with Jesus Rodriguez (Level 400)

Friday, July 11, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: Bringing Enterprise Data to Life with SharePoint Server and Windows Communication Foundation (Level 300)

Friday, July 18, 2008

10:00 A.M.–11:00 A.M. Pacific Time

You might be wondering what do all these guys have in common....good question.... :-)

We're currently building an RFID enabled System where complex processes are handled by BizTalk Server, and data being pushed down to Silverlight V2.0 clients via a WCF Silverlight 'Eventing System' (which really is polling under the hood, but to us in developer land - it's cool and it's Events)

Scotty has the full write up of some of his learning experiences through this - well done Scotty, he's been in that place where there are no manuals, no documentation, no previous code, just a gut feel and a compass to sail the seas.

We demo-ed the system at our last user group (or more over used them a guinea pigs :)

Token Screen shot: (we've associated tags with people information and this is what is displayed when TagReadEvents are captured. We need a little work to avoid being underneath or on top of a previous animation)

FULL DETAILS HERE

http://blogs.msdn.com/webdevtools/Default.aspx

Some pretty cool features as I've previously posted

From my perspective I'm particularly interested in the supported 'WCF Dual HTTP Binding'.......more on that later :)

(updated**)

SILVERLIGHT 2.0 BETA 2 SDK is now available!!!!

Grab it here from the Getting Started section

Also get the videos, hands on labs, training material from HERE

Jesse has written a great little article on creating a popup control in Silverlight 2.0.

Nice way of doing it - I was also thinking, that quite simply you could also set the ZIndex of the element to a positive value.

Enjoy.

At TechEd 2008 in Orlando, an announcement Silverlight 2 Beta 2 will be publicly available later this week. 

Improvement areas are:

• UI Framework, including improvements in:
  • animation support
  • error handling and reporting
  • accessibility support
  • keyboard input
  • performance
  • more compatibility between Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation
• Rich Controls, including:
  • Visual State Manager, permitting the creation of controls as templates
  • text wrapping
  • scrollbars for text boxes
• Networking Support, including:
  • improved cross domain support
  • security enhancements
  • upload support for web client
  • duplex communications (a server “push” model from server to a Silverlight client)
• Rich Base Class Library, including:
  • improved threading
  • LINQ-to-JSON
  • ADO.NET Data Services support
  • improved support for Simple Object Access Protocol (SOA)
• Deep Zoom Support, including:
  • a new XML-based file format for Deep Zoom image tiles
  • a new MultiScaleTileSource that enables existing tile databases to utilize Deep Zoom
  • event-driven notification for zoom/pan state

Thanks Scotty for the reference to this.

Check it out from the Silverlight Horse's Mouth

Cheers,

Mick.

I was cracking into getting my machine setup for a Silverlight project that I'm working on and came up with the above error.

Now....I admit....running x64 Windows 2008 on my Fijitsu Laptop mighten be the best combination given the huge support for my laptop drivers that I have.

I installed all the new(er) Silverlight 2.0 Beta bits from http://silverlight.net (VS2008 Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 Bits) and opened up my VS2008 seeing all the new Silverlight project types - cool! (I thought)

Each time I either created or opened an existing project - boom! up came the error.

So I figured the installation didn't complete properly.........after running/re-running/uninstalling/installing countless times the error was still there!!!!

My one solace and saving grace was running the following command line:

devenv /setup

......"I'm on my way, on my way to happiness today.....ah huh ah huh ah huh"........

:-)

If you're thinking about cracking on with Silverlight - then here's the place to start.

This was covered earlier today(yesterday) in MIX08

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2008/03/05/download-links-for-mix08-announcements.aspx