Mix 07 Day 1 Wrap

By Donald Burnett

The first day at Mix was quite a great day.. The following things happened notably..

• Expression Studio 1.0 shipped
• Blend 2.0 was released for preview support both Silverlight Javascript and Silverlight CLR project types.
• ASP.net with Silverlight support was released
• Silverlight 1.1 alpha was released with full .NET CLR supported on both Mac and PC
• Silverlight 1.0 beta was announced
• New Visual Studio "Orcas" Silverlight support was added
• The Dynamic Language layer was added to .Net meaning you can now program in Ruby, Python and a number of different languages that work interactively.
• A new Expression Web with full Silverlight support was demonstrated.

All in all it was a great day. The amazing thing about Silverlight (with CLR integration) is you can now do basically full blown Windows apps in a browser and they run on the Mac with Safari. What does this mean, well Microsoft Windows applications done with Silverlight are just as cross-platform as Adobe Apollo applications. Linux suport is also expected to follow. During the keynote we saw an amazing online video app capable of high def 720p video editing from a web browser. The amazing thing is the whole application was less than 50K.. This was followed up by CBS News talking about their new HD content news aggregation service which allows viewer contributed video and how it can be immediately made available in a newscast.

Probably the most cool thing being shown was NetFlix new online movie viewer which incorporates "DVD-Style" extras with information right from their site.

Expression Studio 1.0 Ships!

Expression Studio 1.0 Shipped. The 1.0 version I received came with Visual Studio 2005 Standard edition, so you don't have to worry about being able to be productive with this set of tools if you don't own Visual Studio. Some of the versions of the software (after I uninstalled the pre-releases before loading up the studio, still said Preview or release candidate after it installed. A change of the product-key seemed to solve this issue. The new UI for Expression Media seems improved over the older iView Media version.

Other Cool Things Category
Microsoft announced it is planning a Windows Mobile platform version of Silverlight.

Must-Have Downloads from Mix 07

Silverlight 1.1 alpha with CLR support (works on a Mac and PC)
Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Software Development Kit (SDK)
DLRConsole- Write IronPython code in this dynamic editor written in IronPython! You can also edit and view XAML too.
Video Library 1.1 - Custom media player built on top of Silverlight. Select from a list of WMV videos and play them in the browser.
Chess- This sample pits Javascripted Silverlight apps against the NEW CLR support and shows hundreds of times faster performance.
Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Beta 1
Microsoft Silverlight Tools Alpha for Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” Beta 1-Update Visual Studio “Orcas” with the JavaScript and managed code functionality needed to develop Silverlight applications.
Microsoft ASP.NET Futures (May 2007)-Compatible with both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio “Orcas,” this package contains ASP.NET-based Silverlight controls.
Microsoft Expression Blend 2.0 free Preview- with Silverlight CLR and Javascript Project Support. Other new features. I'll be reviewing this in the next two days when I have time for full evaluation.
Microsoft Expression Media Encoder- Encode your videos, now with live video thumbnail support and overlay functionality.
ASP.NET Silverlight Media Control- Add rich Silverlight media to your existing ASP.NET application.
ASP.NET XAML Control- XAML +ASP.NET = WOW!