In this episode, Corrina continues the Design Tips miniseries by sharing her insights on how to use wireframes to improve the design and development process for Windows Phone applications. She walks through why wireframeing is an important part of the process of creating a WP7 application. Corrina talks about the advantages of using wireframing and walks step by step through creating wireframes. Special Note: From the crew of Silverlight TV and Channel 9, we want to extend a special thank you to all of our viewers. With your support we recently surpassed 4 million views of Silverlight TV! We've learned a lot, and with BUILD just around the corner, it's time to refocus the show a bit. Silv...
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In this episode, Corrina continues the Design Tips miniseries by sharing her insights on how to use wireframes to improve the design and development process for Windows Phone applications. She walks through why wireframeing is an important part of the process of creating a WP7 application. Corrina talks about the advantages of using wireframing and walks step by step through creating wireframes. Special Note: From the crew of Silverlight TV and Channel 9, we want to extend a special thank you to all of our viewers. With your support we recently surpassed 4 million views of Silverlight TV! We've learned a lot, and with BUILD just around the corner, it's time to refocus the show a...
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Sundara Kumar and Mark Harper work on the new custom markup extensions (CME) feature in Silverlight 5. They explain how CME's allow you to extend XAML so that you can run any custom code. These guys (along with some other members of the team) literally wrote the feature. Mark was also instrumental in writing the CME that I used in many Silverlight 5 demos to hook events up to a method in a ViewModel. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Custom Markup Extension sampleFollow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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In this episode, Dave Crawford and Tom Eddings visit from the UK to contribute to the Design Tips miniseries. Dave and Tom have tremendous amounts of experience helping to create great UX for Windows Phone 7 applications in the marketplace. Topics they cover include tips on: how, when, and where to use (and not use) a Panorama control avoiding specific types of buttons and associations best practices for the Web Browser control, RichText, and the IE Web Browser itself how to make your brand shine through Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Dave on Twitter (@ThatUXGuy) Windows Phone Photoshop design templatesUX Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7Panorama des...
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In this episode, Jesse Liberty explains how Reactive Extensions work with Silverlight and Windows Phone. In order to simplify the code, Jesse suggests using Reactive Extensions whenever you are deep into using asynchronous programming. He covers exactly what Reactive Extensions are, why you'd want to use them (or not), how they relate to LINQ, and what you should know before using them. And of course, Jesse offers some tips and tricks. Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jesse's blog and on Twitter (@jesseliberty) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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Ever bang your head against a wall trying to figure out what's wrong with your data binding XAML? If so, then you will love the new data binding debugging features in Silverlight 5. In this episode of Silverlight TV, Jason Shaver joins John to discuss the data binding debugging features in Silverlight 5. They walk through how it works, the information that is exposed to you, and how to set various conditional breakpoints as well. Setting breakpoints on binding expressions Creating conditional breakpoints to break when errors occur Setting breakpoints when objects are null Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http:...
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In this episode, Corrina continues the Design Tips miniseries by sharing her insights on how to create tiles and splash screens for Windows Phone applications. She walks through the process of creating an icon in Expression Design and how to make tiles look good and quickly mesh with Metro. Corrina then shows how to create a splash screen and gives some good tips on how to make the splash screen provide a better user experience. Finally, she walks through some tips to help with working with gradients. This video is packed with tips from Corrina, including some great keyboard shortcuts she uses when working with Expression Design. The main topics Corrina covers are: Importing photos and usi...
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This week Aaron Oneal, program manager of the Silverlight 3D efforts, joins John to discuss the 3D APIs in Silverlight 5 beta. Aaron was instrumental in working on the 3D features and helped to create the 3D Solar Wind and 3D HouseBuilder demos. Aaron reviews the features and explores how they all work by demoing the Solar Wind sample application. This is a great walk through of a nice app that you can apply to your own 3D efforts.Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Aaron's blog and on Twitter (@aaron_oneal) Shawn Hargreaves' blog on game programming with XNA Solar Wind sample app Housebuilder demo Babylon Engine and Toolkit Balder 3D engine Silverlight.net Follow us on...
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Interested in creating a game for Windows Phone using Silverlight? In this episode, Jeff Paries, Silverlight MVP and author of the book Silverlight Animation, walks through the source for his Bird Hunt game for Windows Phone 7. He offers tips on how to create a game concept and keep your scope manageable while effectively dividing the game aspects into manageable pieces. Jeff covers the game concept, the six objects in the game, the game loop, and the animates/visual states. You can download Bird Hunt now from the Windows Phone marketplace. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jeff's blog and on Twitter (@jeffparies) Source code for Bird Hunt on codeplexFollow us on Twit...
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Interested in creating a game for Windows Phone using Silverlight? In this episode, Jeff Paries, Silverlight MVP and author of the book Silverlight Animation, walks through the source for his Bird Hunt game for Windows Phone 7. He offers tips on how to create a game concept and keep your scope manageable while effectively dividing the game aspects into manageable pieces. Jeff covers the game concept, the six objects in the game, the game loop, and the animates/visual states. You can download Bird Hunt now from the Windows Phone marketplace. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jeff's blog and on Twitter (@jeffparies) Source code for Bird Hunt on codeplexFo...
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Susan shares her insights on how to do quick and dirty UX testing to help your application be more successful. Susan (who works with great people on the UX team, including Corrina Black, Tsitsi Gora, and Arturo Toledo) has a lot of experience working on usability and spends a lot of time working with designers and application users to help determine what makes a good user experience for products like Visual Studio, Silverlight, and Windows Phone apps. In this episode, Susan discusses the following quick and easy ways to improve UX: Cognitive Walkthrough (does your work flow make sense to the user?) Heuristic Evaluations (testing the UI for consistency, visual design, communication, ease, e...
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In this episode, Deepesh Mohnani of the WCF RIA Services team discusses all of the new features introduced since the initial RIA Services release. These include expanded localization support, improved MVVM support, Windows Azure table storage, datetimeoffset, operation tag, jQuery client, and more. Deepesh dives deep into how to use custom code generation, complex types, and shared entities. He also hints at possible EF Code First support in the near future. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Deepesh's Blog and on Twitter (@deepeshm) More about RIA ServicesRIA Services Forums Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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Laurent Bugnion of IdentityMine appears on the show to discuss his latest additions to the MVVM Light toolkit for both Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone. Laurent covers several new features, including IoC (Inversion of Control) containers, new ways to implement INotifyPropertyChanged using lambdas and/or reflection, and changes to the Messenger class. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Laurent's blog and on Twitter (@lbugnion) Get MVVM Light Laurent's videos Understanding the MVVM pattern at MIX10 Deep Dive MVVM at MIX 11 Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.
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Laurent Bugnion of IdentityMine appears on the show to discuss his latest additions to the MVVM Light toolkit for both Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone. Laurent covers several new features, including IoC (Inversion of Control) containers, new ways to implement INotifyPropertyChanged using lambdas and/or reflection, and changes to the Messenger class. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Laurent's blog and on Twitter (@lbugnion) Get MVVM Light Laurent's videos Understanding the MVVM pattern at MIX10 Deep Dive MVVM at MIX 11 Follow @SilverlightTV on Twitter for the latest updates.
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Want to optimize how a list of images loads and scrolls in your Windows Phone application? Jobi Joy, UX Architect with IdentityMine and key contributor to the IRC chat app in the MIX11 Day 2 keynote, returns to discuss with John how he handles image scenarios such as this, as well as how he ekes out extra performance. Jobi has a blog post that explains how such optimization works by using virtualization, caching via Isolated Storage, and working with both preview and full size images. I won't spoil the episode (it's pretty cool), so you'll have to watch! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jobi's blog and on Twitter (@jobijoy) Jobi's source code Follow us on ...
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Laurent Bugion of IdentityMine, Luigi Rosso of Archetype, and Ward Bell of IdeaBlade join John Papa at MIX11 to answer questions about Silverlight 5 from the live viewers of Channel 9 Live. The questions span a wide range of topics but these guys cover it all, from Luigi and his deep 3D knowledge to Laurent and his MVVM roots and Ward with his solid business and customer experience. Definitely an episode to watch! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Laurent on Twitter (@LBugnion) Luigi on Twitter (@luigirosso) Ward on Twitter (@wardbell) Awesome 3D Housebuilder that Luigi developed for a MIX11 keynote Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http:/...
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Ever wonder how to use sockets or what they're good for? In this video, Peter Smith of the Silverlight networking team joins John to discuss these topics and demonstrate how sockets work by using them to play an "I Spy"-like game that Peter created. The game results and scores are updated instantly on two client PCs, and after Peter and John play, Peter jumps into the code and shows how the socket service works on both the client and the server. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Fiddler Netmon Peter's post with source code on the Network Class Library Team Blog Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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Ever wonder how to use sockets or what they're good for? In this video, Peter Smith of the Silverlight networking team joins John to discuss these topics and demonstrate how sockets work by using them to play an "I Spy"-like game that Peter created. The game results and scores are updated instantly on two client PCs, and after Peter and John play, Peter jumps into the code and shows how the socket service works on both the client and the server. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Fiddler Netmon Peter's post with source code on the Network Class Library Team Blog Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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In this video, Jobi Joy, UX Architect with IdentityMine, joins John to discuss some of the lessons his company learned while contributing to the very popular and successful IMDB and Twitter Windows Phone applications. Jobi covers a wide array of topics, including the design and the UX of the IMDB application as well as what "perceived performance" means, and he dives into the framework he put together for panorama controls. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jobi on Twitter (@jobijoy) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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Paul Stubbs, of Sharepoint Sideshow, joins John to discuss some new features the Sharepoint team have released for Visual Studio to make Silverlight development easier. Paul walks through the new Visual Studio extension that allows you to package and deploy your Silverlight for Sharepoint Web Parts. (You can grab the new VSIX file from the list of links below.) Paul also shows how easy it is to create a Silverlight experience that consumes and manages data from a Sharepoint source. Then he uses the Visual Studio extension to host and test the Silverlight web parts in Sharepoint. All pretty cool and very easy to do! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Silverlight S...
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Recently, UX legend Bill Buxton was in town and stopped by to share what he's been up to. In this video, he discusses how integrated devices with things that "just work together," UX, and touch might all be in our lives to a much larger degree in the near future. This is a short conversation with Bill where he touches on his thoughts about the next version of Surface, UX, and the new UX Lightning series at MIX11, which he compares to "speed dating." Bill also drops an interesting nugget—he's used nothing but slates/tablets since Nov 2002, and he even wrote his popular book on a tablet! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Bill's blog Bill's book, Ske...
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Recently, UX legend Bill Buxton was in town and stopped by to share what he's been up to. In this video, he discusses how integrated devices with things that "just work together," UX, and touch might all be in our lives to a much larger degree in the near future. This is a short conversation with Bill where he touches on his thoughts about the next version of Surface, UX, and the new UX Lightning series at MIX11, which he compares to "speed dating." Bill also drops an interesting nugget—he's used nothing but slates/tablets since Nov 2002, and he even wrote his popular book on a tablet! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Bill's blog Bill's book...
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Struggling with using bit.ly or logging on Windows Phone 7? Then you might want to learn about Phoney, a new open source project by Shawn Wildermuth that will be at Open Source Fest at MIX11 on April 11th. Shawn walks through the features that Phoney contains, including his Bitly helper, system resource helper, fading message helper, phone logging, and more. Shawn and John inspect the API and show how easy it is to use, as well as the results you get from coding with these features. These are great utilities in a tiny dll that can really shorten the development time for some pretty common scenarios with Windows Phone 7. You can get Phoney from codeplex and it works with Nuget, too.Relevant...
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Struggling with using bit.ly or logging on Windows Phone 7? Then you might want to learn about Phoney, a new open source project by Shawn Wildermuth that will be at Open Source Fest at MIX11 on April 11th. Shawn walks through the features that Phoney contains, including his Bitly helper, system resource helper, fading message helper, phone logging, and more. Shawn and John inspect the API and show how easy it is to use, as well as the results you get from coding with these features. These are great utilities in a tiny dll that can really shorten the development time for some pretty common scenarios with Windows Phone 7. You can get Phoney from codeplex and it works with Nuge...
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Do 3D and graphics get you going? The folks at Archetype created an amazing 3D application that we first showed in the keynote at the Silverlight Firestarter in December, 2010. In this episode, Danny Riddell, CEO of Archetype, joins John to discuss their recent work with Silverlight 5, 3D, and graphics. Watch as Danny dives into how they built the 3D medical application and takes John through a detailed tour of the application.Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Silverlight.net Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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In this episode, Nick Kramer of the Silverlight team joins John on Silverlight TV to discuss the application model, 64bit support, and security features with Silverlight. Nick dives into some of his favorite features, such as multiple windows, and discusses what each of his team's areas focuses on. He also shares how his team helped created some whitepapers that share tips on how to create secure applications.If you are going to be at MIX11 this year, be sure to say hi to Nick—he'll be there! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Nick's blog Silverlight team on Twitter (@silverlight)Silverlight.net Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv...
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In this episode, Steve Lasker of the Silverlight team joins John on Silverlight TV to discuss data and business features with Silverlight. Steve dives into some of his favorite features and shows off a great demo. National Instruments was gracious enough to permit Steve to show their Lab View product on the show. Steve shows how Lab View uses a ton of features and creates a very rich experience so the application can do things such as monitor fluid tank levels or monitor a building's stability. This is a great example of a robust business application that takes advantage of Windows features with Silverlight.If you are going to be at MIX11 this year, be sure to say hi to Steve—he'...
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In this episode, the Silverlight 5 Triad joins John on Silverlight TV to discuss their Silverlight 5 roles, some ways they receive feedback from customers, how they interact with each other, and to talk about some of their favorite features in the next release. Sam George (Development Manager), Larry Olson (Program Manager), and Vijay Devatha (Test Lead) share how the triad works together and how the structure of the team empowers everyone from top to bottom. This is a really insightful look at the leaders of the Silverlight engineering team unplugged. And if you are looking to join the team, Vijay mentions that they are hiring Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) ...
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Thinking about writing a touch intensive Windows Phone 7 application? In this episode, David Kelley of Wirestone shares his experience creating rich experiences with Silverlight. David has been involved with many high profile applications and he shows off both the Jordan Deep Zoom mosaic and his Simon for Windows Phone 7 application that's in the marketplace (for free). This is a great discussion with a Silverlight user experience expert. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) David's blog and on Twitter (@davidjkelley) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv
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Did you ever want to write a game with Silverlight for Windows Phone 7? Ryan Plemons, Sr Developer with Terralever, shares his journey in optimizing the Silverlight based Zero Gravity game to work on Windows Phone 7. Ryan shares how he built the application using Isolated Storage, how he applied tombstoning, and many other topics on how he and his colleagues created the app. Ryan also shares some tips on how he improved performance for the application as he shows the simple code changes he made to make some big improvements. The code is free, the game is free ... don't miss this one! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Ryan's blog and on Twitter (@ryanplemons)...
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Ever wonder what goes into making Silverlight? This week on Silverlight TV, we go behind the scenes with some folks who are responsible for testing and getting the Silverlight bits out to the public. Andy Rivas, Program Manager on Silverlight, shares what he does and how the bits get "baked" and into your hands. He also discusses the various ways you can provide feedback (bugs, requests, questions, etc). Other topics Andy discusses include: What is the testing process like? What's a GDR? How to leave feedback on a specific release How to vote for new features and suggestions Ask questions on the Silverlight.net forums Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@jo...
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