Microsoft has released the highly anticipated .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, along with Visual Studio 2008 SP1. This is not your regular service pack, it’s chock full of new features and enhancements across almost all the major components of the .NET? framework. Here are the goodies:

VS 2008 Service Pack 1:

o? ? ? Executable: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=122094 (Direct Link)

o? ? ? ISO: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=122095 (Direct Link)

VS 2008 Express Editions with Service Pack 1:

o? ? ? Executable: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123679

o? ? ? ISO: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=123680

VS Team System 2008 Team Foundation SP 1:

o? ? ? http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=124829

.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

o? ? ? http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=124150

Team Foundation Server

o? ? ? Team Foundation Server 2008 SP1 (TFS Installation Guide)

Here are some links you can read-up on to learn what’s new with SP1.

GPU-accelerated custom effects for WPF:

http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2008/05/12/gpu-accelerated-custom-effects-for-wpf.aspx

ScrollViewer.IsDefferedScrollingEnabled;AlternationCount;IEditableCollectionView:

http://blogs.msdn.com/llobo/archive/2008/06/05/new-features-scrollviewer-isdeferredscrollingenabled-alternationcount-ieditablecollectionview.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/vinsibal/archive/2008/05/20/wpf-3-5-sp1-feature-ieditablecollectionview.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/vinsibal/archive/tags/WPF+3.5+SP1/default.aspx

String Format:

http://blogs.msdn.com/llobo/archive/2008/05/19/wpf-3-5-sp1-feature-stringformat.aspx

Pixel Shader Effects in WPF SP1 Beta:

http://runtothehills.org/rob/archives/180

WPF WebBrowser:

http://blogs.msdn.com/llobo/archive/2008/06/12/wpf-webbrowser.aspx

Performance Enhancements:

http://phizzpop.visitmix.com/blogs/techniques/archive/2008/07/06/improving-your-wpf-3-5-sp1-controls-performance.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/jgoldb/archive/2008/05/15/what-s-new-for-performance-in-wpf-in-net-3-5-sp1.aspx

Tim Sneath’s Introduction of SP1 Beta (Lots of info):

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2008/05/12/introducing-the-third-major-release-of-windows-presentation-foundation.aspx

WPF 3.51 SP1 Graphics with David Teitlebaum:

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/AdamKinney/WPF-35-SP1-Graphics-with-David-Teitlebaum/

What’s new in VS2008 SP1 for WPF:

http://technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLO1md7CODno

Since most users will expect to have a standard set of controls to Play, Pause, Rewind, etc. Expression Encoder includes a collection of different styles for these controls.? These styles are called Templates and appear on the Output tab in the Expression Encoder UI.? While it is possible to preview each of these Templates directly in the Expression Encoder UI, the size of the preview in my opinion is too small to make a particularly informed decision in choosing which one is preferable.

So to help anyone who also would like to quickly review how these Templates look at a more convenient size, I have taken a series of screenshots which depict each option.? If you click on the images, an actual video will open in a separate window. Each such video offers a full size live preview of the selected style.

I just happened to have a few panorama photos which I have taken over the years (but never really done much with).? So I dug out these photos and using PTGui, a stiching application recommened by Scott, I combined my photos into some large panorama images.? Then after some minor touching up in Photoshop, I used the Deep Zoom Composer to prepare these panoramas for use with Silverlight.? You can see the results at www.travelswithcal.com/deepzoom/

The key to a successful DeepZoom photo is a large enough image that allows zooming in to some meaningful level.? If you just take a standard 8 - 10 megapixel photo,? a user won’t be able to zoom in for very far until the image begins to seriously degrade.? (In this respect, I strongly recommend putting an upper limit on the permissible zoom since it makes very little sense to allow a user to zoom in beyond the point where the image begins to completely deteriorate.)? ? Given that most stitching software recommends between a 33 and 50 percent overlap between the photos to be combined, I would estimate that in most cases a 3 or 4 photo composite would be the smallest possible image that would give you a satisfactory Deep Zoom result.? Obviously, the larger the original image, the more zooming that can be achieved.

A friend and I are planning to take some San Francisco photos on July 26 with a view to creating some Deep Zoom panoramas.? What we are hoping to determine is whether following the correct procedures for image preparation can lead to some stunning results.? Stay tuned.

1. Contact GoDaddy support and have them add the necessary MIME types for you. Some have had good luck with this, I did not.
   

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   <Bad Customer Experience Rant Start>

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   First, you should know, any support ticket under the Economy plan takes up to 24 hours to process (usually fewer than 12 hours). I guess you get what you pay for. Second, when I put in a ticket for them to add the MIME types they responded by e-mailing me information on how to do so myself using a web.config under IIS 7. That's all fine and dandy, but I was on a IIS 6 account, and the ability to configure MIME types using web.config files is only supported under IIS 7. So I got my support ticket re-opened and escalated. They responded that the MIME type would be added within 12 hours. After 12 hours, when my Silverlight application still did not work, I called in again and they informed me that the techs said the MIME type has been configured. When I explained that it had not been done properly, the rep, in not so many words, said, it is configured properly, I can't talk to the IIS admin directly, and that I don't know how MIME types work under GoDaddy. At this point I said screw it, I'm not going to get anywhere with this doofus, I told him to migrate me to IIS 7. Migrating from IIS 6 to IIS 7 under GoDaddy means canceling out my current IIS 6 web hosting account, getting a refund, and signing up for a new hosting account, this time choosing IIS 7 when setting up the account. After this was done, I was able to run simple Silverlight applications just fine without any additional configuration.
   

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   </ Bad Customer Experience Rant End>

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2. Brad Abrams suggests a workaround where you rename the .xap file to .zip, and change the reference to the new extension in the application's .xaml file, and in the .aspx/.html file that hosts the Silverlight control.

protected override ServiceHost CreateServiceHost(Type serviceType, Uri[] baseAddresses)
{                       
    // If more than one base address exists then return the second 
    // address, otherwise return the first address
    if (baseAddresses.Length > 1)
    {
        return new ServiceHost(serviceType, baseAddresses[1]);
    }
    else
    {
        return new ServiceHost(serviceType, baseAddresses[0]);
    }            
}

Factory="YourWebProject_Web.CustomHostFactory"

<buildProviders>
    <add extension=".svc" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.ServiceBuildProvider, 
         System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
         PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
</buildProviders>

1. Find the database host address, database name, user id, and password for the SQL Server you wish to connect to. Information on how to do that is here
2. Edit the web.config and find the "<connectionStrings>" section, change the "connectionString" attribute to:

   ---

   connectionString="Server=SQL_HOSTADDRESS; Database=SQL_DBNAME; User ID=SQL_USER_NAME; Password=SQL_DB_PASSWORD; Trusted_Connection=False"

   ---

1. Logon to the web hosting account ("Hosting & Servers" menu, "My Hosting Account" sub menu item).
2. Click on the "Manage Account" link next to the domain you wish to configure.á
3. Under the "Content" menu item, choose the IIS Settings sub menu item.
4. Click on the "Create" button and set the "Directory Name:" textbox value to the same name as folder you wish to place the ASP.NET application in.
5. Make sure to select the "Set Application Root" option.
6. Press the "OK" button.

1. Any .aspx and/or .html files that the application uses. A Silverlight web application project usually creates a default.aspx and default.html, which aren't actually used/needed for anything. You probably will want to rename the startup .aspx or .html file to default.aspx or default.html. When the startup file is named "default.aspx/default.html" then users can access the application without specifying the application file name (http://www.yoursite.com/yourappfolder/ instead of http://www.yoursite.com/yourappfolder/yourapp.aspx).
2. The WCF .svc file, this file associates a service with its implementation and is the means for IIS to create a ServiceHost for you. For further reading, this article details hosting and consuming WCF services.
3. The "web.config" file in the web project folder. Information on the web.config file can be found in many places, including here, here, and here.
4. The "bin" folder (ASP.NET assemblies) in the web project folder.
5. The "Clientbin" folder (Silverlight assemblies/assets) in the web project folder.
6. Any assets referenced by Silverlight, HTML, and ASP.NET sources, such as images, videos, etc...

1. Go to the Visual Studio Solution Explorer, and right-click on the server reference (under the "Server References" folder)
2. Choose the "Configure Service Reference" menu item.
3. Set the "Address:" text box value to the URL of the WCF .svc file (http://www.yourserver.com/yourappfolder/yourservice.svc).

• Enable full exceptions in Silverlight 2 Beta 1.
• Enable exception information in WCF as described here.
• Use Fiddler to help debug the service, and solve cross-domain issues.
• Check out this post by the Silverlight Web Services Team.
• Here's some creative ideas about WCF fault handling in Silverlight by the Silverlight.net forum users.
• Test and get the application working properly on a local server before deploying it on-line.

Mix is an annual event held by Microsoft to showcase and introduce their latest web and designer development technologies.

It’s being held right now (March 5-7) in Las Vegas.

I recommend watching the Key Note which has great demos showcasing IE 8 Beta 1, Silverlight 2 Beta 1, Silverlight for Windows Mobile and Nokia devices, and upcoming enhancements coming in a service release that builds on top of .NET 3.5/VS 2008.

Here’s some interesting news (updating as news comes in):

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1

• Video: First Look at IE8 Activities and WebSlices
• Available for download now
• It’s recommended that you don’t install this on any production machines. It’s best to try beta 1 on a test/virtual machine. You can get Virtual PC image of Windows XP SP2 with IE8 : HERE.
• IE8 will overwrite IE7. The browser does have an IE7 mode (who knows how well this works, since this is a beta version). Uninstalling IE8 beta 1 should restore your previous (IE7) installation, though your browser settings/preferences may be reset.
• Beta 1 doesn’t pass ACID2 Test. Though there is rumor that an internal build does pass it. mritche says that the reason IE8 doesn’t pass ACID2 is because it makes a cross-domain reference that the security model in IE8 doesn’t appear to allow right now.
• Per-site ActiveX controlled via the UI, registry, or programmatically within the control itself.
• Non-admin ActiveX on Vista so (1) you don’t need to elevate to install controls that don’t need it and (2) their scope is limited to that user rather than the whole system.
• Loosely-coupled IE - this puts the main IE frame and tabs in separate processes so that if one tab crashes it doesn’t take down everything else. There’s a lot more asynchronous calling happening behind the scenes which should make IE8 feel ’snappier’ (caveat: when in IE8 mode performance was not that great for me, as you’d expect out of a beta, but I notice things are more responsive under IE7 emulation).
• Automatic crash recovery so that if a tab crashes or hangs, it can be restarted without losing your work. For more serious failures, it’ll restore your set of tabs if the frame dies.
• Check out/contribute to the Microsoft IEBlog.

Silverlight 2 Beta 1

• Available for download now
• DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) support for Managed JScript, IronPython 2.0, and IronRuby
• Isolated Storage
• JSON, REST, SOAP/WS-*, POX, and RSS Web Services (as well as support for Sockets!)
• Cross Domain Network Access
• LINQ to Objects
• StackPanel, Grid, and Panel Layout support
• Managed Control Framework
• Full suite of Controls (TextBox, RadioButton, Slider, Calendar, DatePicker, DataGrid, ListBox, and others)
• Deep Zoom Technology (Video: Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia Site with Deep Zoom)
• Managed HTML Bridge
• Managed Exception Handling
• Media Content Protection
• Rich Core Framework (e.g. Generics, collections)
• Security Enforcement
• Type Safety Verification
• XMLReader/Writer
• Feature matrix comparing 1.0 and 2 Beta 1 : HERE.
• Flavor of Silverlight coming to Windows Mobile 6, and Nokia (S40, S60, and Internet Tablet) devices.
• For development visit Silverlight.net’s Get Started page (scroll down to the “Silverlight 2 Beta Runtime & Tools” section) to download Microsoft Expression Studio 2.5 Beta, Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 1 for Visual Studio 2008 Standard and above (or just the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 SDK for those that don’t have Visual Studio 2008).
• First look at Silverlight 2 by Scott Guthrie.
• First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2

Upcoming .NET Framework/Visual Studio 2008 Enhancements

• Support for writing custom WPF shader effects, hardware accelerated through the GPU for low CPU utilization. Can can be applied to videos, images, buttons, etc..
• Improved .NET Framework Setup for Client Applications (easily bootstrap a .NET framework install)
• Faster cold start times. Depending on the size of the application, .NET applications are expected to realize a cold startup performance improvement of between 25-40%. Applications do not need to change any code, nor be recompiled, in order to take advantage of these improvements so the benefits are automatic.
• Hardware accelerated WPF DropShadow and Blur bitmap effects (previously software rendered, APIs wil stay the same).
• Substantially faster Visual and DrawingBrush performance.
• Faster media and video performance.
• New WriteableBitmap API (enables real-time bitmap updates from a software surface).
• Container recycling and data virtualization support (for data scalability)
• Planned (later this year) release of a number of new controls for WPF. Included in the list are DataGrid, Ribbon, and Calendar/DatePicker controls.
• Servicing update of VS 2008 that includes a number of feature additions to its WPF designer. These include event tab support within the property grid for control events, toolbox support within source mode, and a variety of other common asks and improvements.
• Detailed Info : HERE

Other links of interest:

• Mix University - Get your learn on through videos and exercises covering Silverlight, WPF, ASP.NET AJAX, Gadgets, Expression, Internet Explorer Extensions, Media Center, RSS, Virtual Earth, and Windows CardSpace.

WPF All of Dice: 125
Silicon Valley: 4

Blend All of Dice: 1
Silicon Valley: 0

Silverlight All of Dice: 30
Silicon Valley: 1

C# All of Dice: 7834
Silicon Valley: 247

WPF jobs have more than doubled since I started tracking this five months ago and Silverlight jobs have more than doubled in just over two months.?

We have a broad selection of .NET related classes this fall including

? Windows Presentation Foundation (CIS-019M)
?
? Expression Blend (with coverage of Silverlight) (CIS-019K)
?
Windows Communication Foundation (CIS-019L)
?
ASP.NET (CIS-019W)

Windows Forms Development (CIS-019D)
?
? Visual Studio Tools for Office (CIS-019V)
?
Scripting for Windows Administrators (CNET-060J) ? ? ?
?
All of these classes will be available online.? ? In addition, two of these clases will also be offered in a traditional face to face setting.? WPF will meet every second Tuesday? evening from 6:00 - 9:00 PM starting on September 25, Expression Blend will meet every second Tuesday? evening from 6:00 - 9:00 PM starting on October 2.? Anyone attending either class is welcome to attend the other face to face sessions as well.? ?

Tuition costs are under $100 for California residents.? Even non-California residents need only pay around $400 per class.?

Here are this week’s figures from Dice for progress in job postings for C# and WPF:

WPF All of Dice: 116
Silicon Valley: 7

Blend All of Dice: 1
Silicon Valley: 0

Silverlight All of Dice: 22
Silicon Valley: 2

C# All of Dice: 7516
Silicon Valley: 252

Continuing improvement this week in the figures for WPF and Silverlight.? ?

WPF All of Dice: 98
Silicon Valley: 5

Blend All of Dice: 2
Silicon Valley: 0

Silverlight All of Dice: 15
Silicon Valley: 0

C# All of Dice: 7361
Silicon Valley: 245

Some more improvement this week in the figures for WPF.

Here are this week’s figures from Dice for progress in job postings for C# and WPF:

WPF All of Dice: 87
Silicon Valley: 4

Blend All of Dice: 4
Silicon Valley: 0

Silverlight All of Dice: 15
Silicon Valley: 1

C# All of Dice: 7240
Silicon Valley: 223

Very little change from week to week.