Friday, June 8, 2007

Stuff Chris Auld Saw @ MIX07

Chris JT Auld
Director – Strategy and Innovation
Intergen

Stuff I Saw @ MIX07 – A 72 Hour Conversation

http://www.visitmix.com/

What is MIX?

  • Annual Microsoft Conference for Web/Design types
  • Held in Las Vegas
  • About 1500 attendees
  • Very MIXed crowd
    • Lots of stuff targeted at business decision makers
    • Lots of design oriented stuff – plenty of Mac users
    • Good showing from other platforms – PHP, ruby, etc.
  • IMHO: My favourite Ms conference

What about this session?

  • A whistle stop tour
  • A bit on each session
  • SilverLight
  • Live Services
  • Decision Maker Stuff

SilverLight

  • Re-badge WPF/E
  • Flash killer
  • A few things
    • WPF for the Browser
    • Cross Platform Runtime
    • A Great Video Platform
    • 1.0 in Go Live Beta
    • 1.1 in Alpha (has .Net support etc)

WPF for the browser?

  • Originally WPF/E
  • XML based vector mark-up language
  • Subset of WPF for the desktop
  • Lightweight Plug-in <2MB download
  • Full CLR (not Compact Framework)
  • Chopped down Framework libraries
  • Runs in IE, Firefox, Safari
  • Supported Languages (at 1.1 launch) = C#, Dynamic VB, IronRuby, IronPython, JavaScript
  • Cross Browser Debugging… Cross Platform Too!

Better Than JavaScript?

  • From 1.1 Use Managed Code with DHTML DOM
  • Can consume JSON web services – no SOAP yet L
    • Custom slwsdl.exe proxy generator
  • Isolated Storage
    • Up to 1MB of storage on client side (1 per XAML file)
    • Shared between browsers
    • Similar to .Net Isolated Storage classes
  • DLR
    • Currently IronPython + JavaScript
    • Ruby and Dynamic VB Coming

A Great Video Platform?

  • Self-contained media playback
  • Customizable transport controls
  • Non-rectangular, semi-transparent video with overlays
  • Windows Media Services support
    • Live and on demand streaming
  • Media markers / script commands
  • ASX Playlist support
  • Closed captioning support with Expression Media Encoder
  • Bandwidth throttling with IIS 7.0
  • Local file playback (Coming)
  • Content protection (Coming)
  • Alpha video (Coming)

SilverLight Media Formats

  • The following file formats are accepted by the MediaElement (regardless of the file extension):
    • Video: WMV v7, v8, v9, VC-1
    • Audio: WMA v7, 8, 9 (standard)

Demos

  • SilverLight Chess
  • SilverLight Airlines
  • SilverLight Fox

Windows Live Web Services @ MIX

  • Add contacts, video, photos, maps and search to your site
  • Service APIs
    • (REST) SilverLight Streaming
    • (WebDAV) Spaces Photo
    • (REST) Live contacts
    • (SOAP) Virtual Earth
    • (SOAP) Live Search
    • (HTTP/SOAP) Authentication

Windows Live Contacts

  • Shared Contact Store
  • 500 Million address books
  • 263 Million Messenger Users
  • Possible Scenarios
    • Friend Locator
    • Buying
    • Calendar
    • Trust
    • Burrowing

Windows Live Contacts REST API

  • Code Sample and Response
  • Method Call example – GET
    • /livecontacts/Contacts/contact(x)/emails/Email(y)/Address
  • Response
    • <Address>some@where.com</Address>

Other Good Sessions

  • PAN01 great User Experiences for Ad-Supported Content
  • PAN11 Services on the Web: build or Buy
  • PAN05 – Open Source Applications using the .Net Platform
  • DEV12 – The Megasite: Infrastructure for Internet Sites
  • http://silverlight.metaliq.com/topbanana/