Hoje tive o prazer de estar presente em mais uma edição das Jornadas Informáticas da Universidade da Beira Interior, organizada pelo NINF. Fui gentilmente convidado pelo MSP Lead João Viegas para realizar uma sessão sobre Silverlight 2.0.
Infelizmente só estive presente hoje na parte da manhã, tendo perdido a maior parte deste evento de 3 dias que decorreu ontem, hoje e amanhã. A outra sessão a que tive oportunidade de assistir foi realizada pelo MSP Alumni Gonçalo Chaves, tendo sido sobre XNA.
Tivémos uma excelente recepção por parte da organização, aos quais agradeço imenso pela atenção prestada. Também o público presente foi espectacular. Extremamente interessado, havendo desde pessoas que estão agora encaminhadas para dar os primeiros passos com a tecnologia, como pessoas que aproveitaram para tirar algumas dúvidas ou receber alguns conselhos sobre projectos em desenvolvimento.
Em relação à sessão de Silverlight 2.0 deixo alguns recursos que poderão ser úteis.
Demonstrações Realizadas:
Hello World, Acesso Web, Data Binding, LINQ to XML, Deep Zoom
Software para Desenvolvimento: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Recursos para Aprendizagem:
Vídeos das sessões do evento MIX 08, Silverlight 2.0 - Tutoriais em Vídeo
Show Case:
Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth, Microsoft Research HD View Beta
A while ago I talked about Slide.Show. Some one asked me how to dynamically look into a folder and create a slide show based on its contents. I suggested using an ASP.NET page that looks into the folder and generates a XML output that can be used by Slide.Show as a data source.
I’ve implemented a simple version that shows how to do it. Download it and change it as you wish.
Take a look at DataProvider.js where I have changed the Data.xml reference to Data.aspx file.
In the Data.aspx file I’ve deleted all the HTML output, and in the Page_Load event handler generated XML output.
Response.ClearContent();
Response.ContentType = “Application/xml”;
Response.Write(”{XML output}”);
Response.End();
I’ve included in the zip file only the required files to let the example work. It has only 1 image. I hope it will be useful to someone. 
Take a look to Artur’s post about the news.
Including Internet Explorer 8 Beta, Silverlight 2.0 Beta and Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview.
Finally I received an e-mail that told me that Office Live Workspace is available!
“Office Live Workspace is your online place to store, access, and share 1000+ documents. Use it to distribute meeting notes, work together on group assignments, or simply store documents that you can access from any computer.”
Take a look at http://workspace.office.live.com. A soon as I try it I’ll write a little bit about it.
Finally it is available! 5 Gb of space available for each user. Secured by an SSL connection. Available on IE and Firefox. Attached to your LiveID account.
Store files for yourself
Using multiple computers? No problem. Store and access your personal files from anywhere online.
Share files with friends
Sharing with friends, co-workers, or family is easy when you all add and update files in a shared folder.
Share files with the world
Some ideas are too good to keep to yourself. Share them in a public folder that only you can update.
More information at skydrive.live.com
I forgot to mention one important upcoming Adobe tool that will help a lot the designing/developing workflow.It is called Adobe Thermo. It is another point of view in MXML files manipulation, that is used in Flex applications. Thermo stand for Flex Builder as Microsoft Expression Blend stands for Visual Studio. It allows designers to create prototypes that fit perfectly the design they made, and then developers can add behavior without screwing up the design.
What is BlazeDS?
It is an open-source Java-based web server technology that allows using Remoting and Messaging services with Flex. A Release Candidate is available for download. It communicates using AMF (Action Message Format) natively supported by Flex (after all it is a format developed by Adobe). AMF serializes and de-serializes data in a binary format. According to what was said during Flex Camp this format has a great performance when compared to SOAP/XML. The messages must be shorter, since it is binary and not text-based.
Some BlazeDS functionalities:
- RPC (Remote Procedure Call) such as Web Services, Remoting, REST
- Messaging (Publish/Subscriber architecture)
- Web proxy (it helps to solve cross-domain security restrictions while working with Flash)
- Support for AJAX clients
- Support for clustering (for scalability)
- Is is a Adapters-based system, which allows to develop custom modules that are coupled to BlazeDS
What is Adobe LiveCycle Data Services?
It is a super-set of BlazeDS. This software is payed and adds some functionality to BrazeDS. It has the capability to deal with data conflicts, can compile source to swf on-the-fly and generate PDF files on the server-side.
What is AMFPHP?
It is a PHP library that allows to use Flash Remoting with PHP as the server-side technology. I’ll just quote a more complete description from the official website.
“(…) AMFPHP allows thin client applications built in languages such as Flash, Flex, and AIR to communicate directly with PHP class objectsPHP developers can leverage their PHP experience in server side code development by connecting to data sources such as web-services, databases, and business applications and return that data to the client. Client applications can also offload cpu intensive methods to PHP services and wait for the result set for presentation to the user. AMF allows for native data types and complex object mapping between the client and the server. (…)”
It is pretty straight forward to use. I really liked the demonstration.
As I have said before this was a great event. I’m looking forward to start playing around with Flex. I’m downloading Flex Builder 3 “as I speak “.
