Headless Silverlight - A simpler way to do realtime data in html

I was out with the gang out at Yonge and Bloor and one of they guys started talking about Headless SilverLight. I was curious so I got the talking more. What a concept!! Instead of playing and hacking with a language you cannot easily code and debug, why not code in your native c# or vb.net code. You also get the valuable .net libraries to help you out.

That is the idea behind this headless SilverLight example. I thought I would pass it on and share it with others as this is an ingenius idea.

http://www.marcmywords.org/page/Marchitecture-Real-time-Data-in-HTML-with-Silverlight.aspx

If you have any tips, tricks, resources that you think will help other SilverLight developers please email them to susan@clinchportal.com and I will post them.

Silverlight 2.0 Release Candidate its about time!!!

As the Olympics ended many were sad they have to wait another 4 years but all the .NET
developers were excited as now the games really begin. Microsoft has now released the Silverlight 2.0 Release Candidate that it ran in beta for the games.

You can now download it at:

http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/sl2rc0.aspx

I am very much looking forward to the promised fixes such as easier install of the plug-in, better performance and all the other features. I am downloading it as I write. I will update you on my findings.

If you have already started to use it please comment on this posting and I will publish your findings too. You can also email them to me at susan@clinchportal.com

Perpetual Beginner

For those just learning some of the newer technologies such as subsonic, linq, mvc, etc this is going to be fast becoming the place to go. It is definitely a blog to keep an eye on. The perpetual beginner, Jesse Naiman, will soon be a name you will remember.

Here is the link to his blog: http://alt-net-guild.blogspot.com/

Moonlight: Silverlight for Linux

For those interested in Linux and Silverlight, it looks like the Mono folks have an answer.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/09/moonlight-silverlight-for-linu.html

http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight

Why Silverlight is still not ready for the big game

We were still up in the air about SilverLight over Flash for different reasons. We currently use Flash 9. Here are the big issues that are stopping our transition:

1) In flash you can use the div method so you can use alternate content for the user if they do not have flash. Most people use the download flash message but in some cases where flash is used to enrich the experience in the case of a menu. you can always show them an html menu instead. In Silverlight it

2) The second issue is that expression blend does not support source control.

Fixing these issues will make Silverlight a lot more usable.

Trouble installing Visual Studio or .net Framework

I was having trouble installing Visual Studio 2008 after installing earlier betas of it.
Unfortunately the uninstall in add/remove programs was broken. I came across this tool and used it to remove the older frameworks. I thought I would pass it on:

http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2005/04/08/406671.aspx