After a pretty crazy few days of sensory and information overload in Vegas, it’s time to look back and take stock of what has come out of the conference. I’m writing this from by the Pool at the Venetian – it’s nice to have time to myself again, and no obligations save making sure i don’t miss my flight in a few hours time.
Microsoft have done a great job in putting this conference together; keeping it relatively small and focussed made for a far better return on investment for those attending, as the real value in actually being here in Vegas was not in the sessions themselves, but in being able to connect with people. Having the keynotes streamed online (alongside a #MIX09 twitter feed on the same page), and making high quality videos of the presentations (with embedded slides) available soon after, meant that the conference content was as accessible (if not more so) to those tuning in from around the world, as it was to those here in Vegas.
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After a great couple of days spent chilling out in and around Boulder City, NV - I headed to Vegas, dumping the rental car and ‘enjoying’ a high-speed taxi ride to the Venetian. I think the driver may have had too much coffee, as he also drove off as soon as i had paid and got out of the back… before i had time to retrieve my bags. Cue much shouting and hollering from the Venetian doormen.
Over the last couple of days there’s been quite a buzz emerging around some big announcements to be made this week. It’s known what most of them are, just the details are a little vague still. There has also clearly been many long hours worked by those putting the event and sessions together. It’s all really rather exciting – the buzz from both those attending, and from those in the know – when combined with the crazy environment of Vegas – all adds up to that feeling you get as a child on Christmas eve. You kind of know what’s coming, and hope you get what you want… lets just say there’s quite an air of anticipation, and the potential for some tantrums if people don’t get what they want :)
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Having spent the last 9 months working with Silverlight on a daily basis, I’ve grown to love it and hate it – on a roughly 80% - 20% split. The love is down to its power and potential, the things that are possible – and (having gained expertise throughout our team) the speed with which we can now create something really cool (request in the morning scrum, prototype for lunch, integrated design and code by 5.30). The pain is found in Expression Blend’s ‘quirks’, the development process, and the struggle to allow a view led approach with our complex application architecture.
Regardless, having invested so much in a new technology – we’re very keen to see where Microsoft intends taking Silverlight, and us with it. So, it is with not inconsiderable anticipation that I look forward to MIX sessions like the following:
“What’s New in Microsoft Silverlight 3”
Take a tour of the new features in Silverlight 3 including a dive into some of the new experience oriented features like pixel shaders, perspective 3D, animation enhancements, bitmap APIs and improvements to the media stack. Also hear about new Silverlight base framework additions including updates to the style model, data binding improvements, improved resource handling and improvements to the web services stack.
It’s all understandably vague – ‘enhancements’ and ‘improvements’ are fairly subjective words, so I guess we’ll have to be the judges. It all sounds very positive though, and I’d guess that some of those improvements have been borne out of the feedback provided by the community.
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During the course of our current project we have been through a few iterations of our development process, with one goal being to find the best way for us Designers to work in Expression Blend on data driven controls. There has been a bit of pain involved along the way and we’re yet to find an ideal solution. As a result, I’ve been interested in the discussion taking place on blogs and Twitter on the subject of ‘Blendability’ and the proposal of the Model-View-ViewModel pattern as a route to this goal.
This post began as a review of a great video from Tim Heuer and Craig Shoemaker on the title’s subject of Implementing Model-View-View Model in Silverlight. On the whole it’s a great hands-on example of how to implement a simple Silverlight project following the MVVM pattern. I recommend checking it out - not least because the rest of this article will make more sense, but it’s also a great overview of some neat and efficient data binding techniques. However, it was the process followed which made me take particular notice, and a couple of quotes which prompted me to write this article.
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A very insightful, forward thinking set of talks in a great location, with informal and interactive atmosphere.
Or “A great day geeking out”.
This was the first of a more formal series of events put on by the Multipack community of web professionals in Birmingham, and my first time attending, having only recently discovered them via the medium of Twitter.
The subject of “Emerging Standards” is inevitably going to have a forward looking bias, and that’s what we got. All of the talks had a common theme around how existing open standard web technologies are having to evolve to provide the tools required to keep pace with the development of rich internet apps.
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Awesome… I’ve finally got a new look for space-scape.
The theme you’re looking at is something of an evolutionary leap from my old site; last updated over 5 years ago and still visible for the moment at www.space-scape.co.uk to give you some context. In fact, as a special treat - take a look at my first proper portfolio site from back in 2001: http://www.space-scape.co.uk/archive/mk1/ !
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I’ve recently spent some time looking around for information on reducing the size of the compiled XAP file for our Silverlight web app. We have a fairly hefty solution which compiles into a XAP of around 2.5meg. Given the size and complexity of the app – that’s not a bad starting point, and I’m still aware that there is a lot we can do to reduce its size pre-compilation.
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Shortly after FOWD last year, I was inspired to revamp my site, and start a blog (yes - this one, almost a year later!) Around this time, I caught a documentary presented by the inimitable Mr Stephen Fry about the printing press inventor Johannes Gutenberg.
It’s an excellent bit of presenting, and a great insight into the practicalities and motivation involved in the creation of a system which changed the world. The invention of his press allowed greater dissemination of knowledge by giving people easier access to shared knowledge through books which could now be more cheaply produced, and with consistency. It put knowledge into the hands of more ordinary people, and out of the control of just churches and highly educated scholars.
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So after over 5 years of stagnation, the old space-scape has been retired and I have finally got around to setting myself up with a blog. As with more or less everyone who starts blogging; I hope to make a regular (ish), and worthwhile contribution to the noisy wall of information that is the internet.
We shall see!