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Thoughts on Silverlight

As many of you will be aware, Microsoft’s PDC event this year occurred last week and with it came a comment from Bob Muglia that “our strategy has shifted” in relation to Silverlight. The impending release of IE9, Microsoft argues, makes HTML5 a viable option for “reach” applications based on the desktop Web browser, with Silverlight’s additional features making it the choice for more specialised scenarios such as Windows Phone 7, media-centric applications and line of business apps.

This comment has caused considerable concern in the Silverlight community. (Especially those who went into fainting fits at “Windows Phone 7″ and didn’t see that Bob Muglia went on to talk about all the other areas that Microsoft are still backing Silverlight for.) As usual with a new technology, Microsoft went into marketing overdrive with Silverlight and sold it as the solution to everything from Web development to stubborn stains. Which of course it never was. Silverlight was, and is, a great platform for certain kinds of application. If you’re building rich media apps, intranet applications or certain kinds of Internet application, then Silverlight is still in the sweet spot. But Microsoft are saying that for building Internet-facing, cross-platform Web sites with maximum reach, they’re shifting their backing to HTML5.

So what does this mean for Mindscape customers? It means the same great support and investment in Silverlight, and a continuing focus on the Silverlight sweet spots. As you’ll know, we’ve got a great suite of controls for Silverlight – we’re on the Silverlight bandwagon and have many customers delivering fantastic solutions with the help of our products. We are committed to improving our Silverlight Elements product and have a release planned shortly for a major new version that includes some of the best chart controls ever built for Silverlight. We will continue to support Silverlight Elements and to actively invest in it; in other words – it’s business as usual for us! :-)

Further to this investment, we are not ignoring Windows Phone 7. We have Windows Phone 7 hardware and our developers have been working on testing the capabilities of Silverlight on WP7. We will be releasing an update for our Silverlight controls that fully supports the Windows Phone 7 environment. This will go beyond just making sure the controls run, but making sure we ship with native themes to create an excellent experience for end users and developers alike.

In short, just as we’ve always done, we’re investing in Silverlight for the development of some rich web applications, Intranet applications and Windows Phone 7 development — exactly the areas where Microsoft recommends it.

What about HTML 5?

We’re not technology zealots. We know that every technology has its place: Silverlight, HTML 5, Flash, even ActiveX. (Well, okay, not ActiveX. But every other technology.) And we’ll always be working hard to deliver what our customers need to create the best solutions possible — using whatever technology is right for the job.

We think HTML 5 is pretty awesome — a huge step forward from what was possible in the previous generation of browsers. But the reality is that there’s going to be a big lag in adoption. (Let’s face it, it’s hard getting some people to move on from creaky old IE6.) Even ignoring consumer adoption, HTML 5 developer tooling doesn’t come close to what developers are used to on the Silverlight or .NET platforms.

Right now, we’re watching HTML 5, taking notes, kicking around ideas, planning and seeing what value we can add which would aid in the delivery of kick-ass solutions. We don’t have any news for you yet, but keep watching for announcements — HTML 5 is going to be big and we’re going to be there!

Back to the future: Even quicker turnaround

One of the benefits of using Mindscape products is that we make available nightly builds, so you can get fixes and enhancements turned around as quickly as a very quick thing.

To help our customers even more, we have moved the nightly build process to execute in the New Zealand evening, rather than approximately 3am New Zealand time. This means that the “next nightly build” should typically be available around midday for European countries and by start of business of US customers.

The cool thing about this which may not be immediately obvious is that New Zealand is geographically based at the international dateline meaning our day starts before customers in other countries. So, for example, when you wake up bright and early and stroll into work on morning of the 15th of October, the nightly build from the evening of the 15th of October, containing all the spiffy toys we added that day, is already waiting for you – freshly baked, from the future.

The pratical impact is you now get the nightly builds about 4 hours earlier. Another way of making development easier with Mindscape tools, we hope you like it :-)

Free software for user groups

Mindscape has always been very community oriented – many of the team speak at local user groups, Code Camps, Tech Ed, Unplugged events and so on. We’ve also been active in sponsoring community events like the Super Happy Dev House, NH-Day, Girl Geek Dinners and more. It’s time to do more however and we’ve been really pleased with the joint success we have had in helping user groups. Part of doing more is helping spread the word that we do want to help :-)

Our primary sponsorship method is to provide free software as prizes for user groups. We typically target Microsoft related user groups as our products are all in that space. So if you run a .NET/Silverlight/WPF/SQL Server/Microsoft Bob/C# user group, get in touch!

In retrospect, perhaps the Microsoft Bob user group was not quite ready for Ivan’s ‘Whirlwind Tour of LINQ Expression Trees.’

How does the process work for user groups?

Step 1: Get in touch
Email usergroups@mindscape.co.nz to tell us about your user group. We’re always keen to actually know the user group leaders and help them out in any way we can, so ping us an email and we can discuss what works for you.

Step 2: Eh? What?
There is no step 2. These are not the droids you’re looking for. Once we’re talking, we’re pretty quick to nail down our sponsorship based on your user group’s needs and organise how to provide the software.

What software do you provide?
We typically provide one free license to one of our products (excluding the Mega Packs) for each meeting. This works well because the folks running the event can choose a product that suits the audience. For example, if the topic is Silverlight related then our Silverlight Elements suite would likely go down well.

We also provide free software for speakers. Speaking for the first time in particular is really hard, we understand that, and we know user groups need a continuing stream of speakers in order to thrive. So to encourage people to take the leap, we offer a Mindscape Mega Pack — that’s every single developer tool we produce — to the speaker at each event.

Can you do me a favour?
Have you been to a local user group or do you know somebody involved in one? Please forward them a link to this post as we’d love to be connected with more user groups around the world. We currently sponsor about 15 user groups globally — and we want more right away :-)

Happy coding!

Coming soon: Charts for Silverlight & WPF

I wanted to give a sneak preview of some great new capabilities that we’re currently developing for WPF and Silverlight. In the coming months we will be releasing a suite of charting controls for both our Silverlight Elements and WPF Elements product lines.

Here’s some examples of what will be possible. Note that these are early screen grabs from our simple test harness – it’s only part of the story, and we’ll have more to say in the future as we get closer to a release. Obviously charting is about much more than just the visuals so we’re working hard to ensure that developers have a great experience with the controls – databinding support through out, infinite restyling and templating ability, animation support and more. Everything you would expect from tools designed and built specifically for the platform.

A simple line series graph showing various styles for lines and automatic legend generation for the various series.

A simple bar graph with category axis support in use.

3D bar graph – customising and styling the look and feel of your charts is easy with the flexibility of styles and templating in Silverlight and WPF.

Data labels can be displayed to make values more clear for the consumer. Data labels can be trigger to display on mouse over, all at once or however you would like. The display style is completely customisable.

A simple pie chart with lighting effects applied.

Doughnut charts are supported. They’re also delicious when consumed fresh from the bakery with sugar on top.

This marks the end of a short glimpse of what’s under development for the WPF Elements and Silverlight Elements products. We appreciate any feedback as it will directly impact the product development. As mentioned earlier, these are alpha screenshots and you can customise the look and feel considerably more than we have shown here (as they’re all being rendered from our test harness the legend, title, etc is all displayed in the same place with the same colours – this isn’t necessary! :-)

So when can I get my hands on this?

If you’re a Silverlight Elements customer, we’ll be rolling out the charts into the nightly builds soon. We’ve elected to start with supporting Silverlight as the Silverlight API is far more primitive than WPF and it will make releasing the WPF version shortly after we finalise the Silverlight version much easier. We will be posting updates to the blog in future when parts become available to play with (you can subscribe to the blog here if you use an RSS reader).

Mindscape at TechEd New Zealand

The signs of spring are here — lambs frolicking in the fields, occasional glimpses of the sun, and of course TechEd New Zealand. As always, Mindscape will be there in force! We don’t have a stand this year, but you’ll be able to find us around the conference floor — or, in the case JD at the drinks evenings, on the conference floor* — or you can catch us at the following sessions:

• From KLOCs to Ka-Ching – The Business of Software (Monday 11:50)
• What’s New in C# 4 and Visual Basic 2010 (Monday 13:45)
• Kentico, N2, Umbraco – CMS FTW! (Monday 13:45)
• Bringing the Web to Life with jQuery (Tuesday 9:00)
• Code Different (Tuesday 10:40)
• ASP.NET MVC – What’s New and Cool in Versions 2 and 3 (Tuesday 14:55)
• Parallelise Your Parallel Applications In Parallel With the Microsoft Parallel .NET Parallel Extensions for Parallelism (Tuesday 17:25)
• LINQ Confidential – A Deep Dive Into How LINQ Works (Wednesday 11:50)

If you’re at TechEd, truck on up and say hello!

And while we’re talking conferences, don’t forget CodeCamp Auckland the day before TechEd — it’s not too late to register!

The serious bit

Since we’ll be pretty busy at TechEd, there’s likely to be some delay in responding to forums posts between Monday 30 August and Thursday 2 September. Please be patient — we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

* JD has asked me to point out that this is a base slur. Last year, he reminds us, he was actually found in an Auckland pub trying to win a live crayfish to take home with him. Just so you don’t get the wrong impression.