Video.Show updated for Visual Studio 2008

By Don Burnett

 

Vertigo has been doing some excellent reference quality samples for both the Silverlight and WPF communities lately proving that you can create very professional applications and websites with not a lot of work.  One of the most exciting reference web applications I have seen in a very long time is their Video.Show application. It supports end-to-end functionality and the code is very well written and is a great example of how you can create a "videos" type site, in the spirit of YouTube.com. Now having said that this sample doesn't support the sheer volume of videos that YouTube.com does every day, but it will get you on your way to your own video site.

You can download and install the source on CodePlex and then start delving into all the great functionality this site offers. One of the most exciting features about this site is that the site will let you encode videos using Expression Encoder for the site (if it's installed on your webserver).

It supports uploading videos to the Live Silverlight streaming site..

If you are trying to build such a site for yourself it gives you some great how-to code samples, including:

• Video is hosting at Silverlight Streaming, which gives you 4GB storage and 700 Kbps bandwidth via Microsoft's worldwide Content Delivery Network
• How to add user comments to the site that are time-based and are synchronized with video playback
• Demonstrates how to a data layer built using Linq To Sql
• Broad media format support (avi,mp4,asf,mpeg,dvr-ms,mpg,m2v,ts,m4v,vob,mov, and wmv) via Expression Encoder. That means you can upload quicktime movies, MPeg, DVD assets, and many more.
• It will show you how to leverage the AJAX Control Toolkit to add animations and interactivity.
• Encoding properties are configurable via standard Expression Encoder job files. This means you have total control of videos size and quality.
• How to create a Cross broswer (IE 6 and 7, Firefox 2, and Safari 3)  application.
• It's Open Source!!! And it will show you how to create a webservice based architecture.

 

Technorati tags: Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight Streaming Service for video hosting, Silverlight Streaming integration via REST API, Expression Encoder, AJAX Control Toolkit, Visual Studio 2008, Packaging API (for Zip file creation), ASP.NET / .NET 3.5, Linq To Sql

Vertigo Rocks with Slide.Show for Silverlight

by Don Burnett

Vertigo is a great development firm they keep coming out with great application reference samples and code for the WPF and Silverlight Community.. In the past they have done such very work as Family.show for WPF (a genealogy program) and Video.show (a "mini" YouTube  style site for Silverlight that takes advantage of Expression Media Encoder on the server-side).. The Slide.Show control would be great for professional photographers looking to show of their high quality pictures on a Silverlight based website.

 

They have recently release version 1.1 of their Slide.Show Silverlight "control" for doing great commercial quality slide shows with Silverlight. They have also made this release open source and available for download on Codeplex.

 

Technorati tags: Family.Show, Vertigo, Silverlight, Silverlight Controls, Video.show, Slide.show

Cool WPF Twitter Messaging Application

by Don Burnett

Because of all of the time spent instant messaging, my favorite form of messaging is quickly becoming Twitter. All of my friends who I actually take time to correspond with are on it, and it has gotten a lot attention and there has been multiple clients for it. I think my favorite WPF twitter application is called Witty by Alan Le. I got to spend sometime with Alan at Mix 07 at the lunch table. He's very talented and an authority on WPF, he told us all about his experiences developing Vertigo's Family.Show Application, he is a developer with great insight and is very enjoyable to listen to..

Witty makes Twitter Wonderful..

Here's an example of the public timeline and the update function.. I recommend if you "TWEET" you check this one out.. If you don't know what a TWEET is, it's time you catch up! It's quickly become more than "jargon"..

If you wonder how this works you can look at the source code here... This is pretty much like the application I had started in Expression Blend a few months ago, but more supportable. So please check it out! Alan Le has done a wonderful job with the app, and it's a great example of WPF "R-I-A" coding. It's fast, and I like how it separates direct message replies.

Sure I could probably use something else, but I think it's cool looks smart and it is a Windows platform app and seems to be taking less of my system resources than other clients I have tried. I like Alan's work tremendously.

Tag.. Your It! ..More Goodness from Alan

If you have a data enabled WPF application, you might have a reason to create and TAG data in your application. Alan has not only created such a sample application but blogged about it and made the source code available for you to look at how it's done..

RichTextBox in WPF MIA?? No longer

To say that Alan Le is not a busy man is an understatement, in a really great article on his blog about Commands in WPF he has also released an enhanced RichTextBox based on the original WPF SDK sample and extended it nicely. It can be found here... If you are not subscribed to Alan's Blog you should be..

Technorati tags: Twitter, Vertigo, Alan Le, Witty, Rich Text Box, Tag Cloud, source code