Ever since the WPF Facebook app was shown at PDC09 back in October, I’ve been wanting to get my hands on a similar demo. This is a Silverlight application which takes the Facebook API and makes an entire client for it. This is comparable to what Tweetdeck is for twitter. If you’re interested in either Silverlight or Facebook, you should check this out!
http://www.silverlight.net/content/samples/apps/facebookclient/
More screenshots after the break –>
Announced both at PDC and yesterday’s Scott Guthrie presentation. Silverlight now has a 45% market penetration. This is steadily climbing and will only gain momentum as more applications are released in Silverlight.
I’m holding a talk on Silverlight 4 tomorrow at work and I’d lie if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous. However, I’ve prepared by been scaring people all day by mumbling to myself in the street.
I’m going to post the demos and slides here when I’ve held the presentation. The demos will show off Drag-Dropping, Rightclicking, Printing and Webcam support. All this and more, in just under 20 minutes.
Today I’m making a demo application. It’s a simple PDF reader in Silverlight and it uses two new features. The Silverlight Out Of Browser (SLOOB) with elevated permissions, and the WebBrowser Control. Those of you who’ve written some WPF might already be familiar with the WebBrowser control and what it can do. In Silverlight, it’s basically an html-renderer for when you’re out of browser.
I love how when everyone’s complaining that MS Surface isn’t serious enough and how it can only be used for novelty this shows up:
(The clip is 6 min long but it’s enough to watch the first 60 sec)
I personally find this hilarious yet not really what needs to be shown right now. I think this video highlights what’s right and wrong with Surface at the same time. The negative aspect is of course that this is 100% novelty and that there is virtually no business application to this. The upside is that it illustrates very well the power and unique capabilities of Surface’s object recognition. This is in my opinion the most interesting aspect of Surface and what sets it apart from other multi-touch technologies. That said, I think what we all want to see is a concrete application of Surface for a real business.
Björn Eriksen recently showed off some of the possibilities Surface could have in healthcare. You can find his video here. This is interesting although it’s only conceptual. Even though the novelty factor is hard to escape I sincerely hope that we’ll see a solid functional Surface app before the end of 2010. If we don’t, I really don’t see where Surface could be heading.
As of yesterday, the Silverlight 4 beta is available to everyone (with VS2010). Since I’m currently working on this darned mobile app, I haven’t had a chance to test it but some of the changes seem very nice. I’ve been working quite a bit on a webshop created solely in Silverlight and know that some of the new features could be useful.
I think that I’ve personally most been wanting the Rich Text Editor for some time now. That’ll come plenty in handy when presenting and recording information. Data Grid is of course a huge item that many developers have been pining for which now will make “serious” apps more viable.
The fact that Silverlight is being enabled out of browser with elevated permissions is not only an interesting change of scope but also begs the question: now that Silverlight is OOB and WPF is enabled online, how big are the differences really and will we see a merger within a year or two of the two technologies? Of the two, Silverlight has by far the sexier name if nothing else.
I’ll be updating more as I try out the new beta sometime next week. Until then, all I can offer are a couple of nifty links.
