03.05.08

Mix ‘08 Report

Posted in Silverlight, WPF at 4:21 pm by TalynOne

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

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.