Here is what my old apartment looks like for example (and click the link to play yourself – routes, free form drawing of geometries, reverse geo-code, etc. etc.

Here is the link.

So how is this possible? I’ll keep this short and if anyone needs more I’d be happy to help.

Look close at the versions. You need the new CTP of Extended Modes and the 1.0.1.0 of the two map controls.

And using Prism makes Deep Earth a joy to work with:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/ee794896.aspx

 

About Rx

Rx is a library for composing asynchronous and event-based programs using observable collections.

The “A” in “AJAX” stand for asynchronous, and indeed modern Web-based and Cloud-based applications are fundamentally asynchronous. In fact, Silverlight bans all blocking networking and threading operations. Asynchronous programming in by no means restricted to Web and Cloud scenarios, however. Traditional desktop applications also have to maintain responsiveness in the face of long latency IO operations and other expensive background tasks.

Another common attribute of interactive applications, whether Web/Cloud or client-based, is that they are event-driven. The user interacts with the application via a GUI that receives event streams asynchronously from the mouse, keyboard, and other inputs.

Rx is a superset of the standard LINQ sequence operators that exposes asynchronous and event-based computations as push-based, observable  collections via the new .NET 4.0 interfaces IObservable<T> and IObserver<T>.  These are the mathematical dual of the familiar IEnumerable<T> and IEnumerator<T> interfaces for pull-based, enumerable collections in the .NET framework.

The IEnumerable<T> and IEnumerator<T> interfaces allow developers to create reusable abstractions to consume and transform values from a wide range of concrete enumerable collections such as arrays, lists, database tables, and XML documents. Similarly, Rx allows programmers to glue together complex event processing and asynchronous computations using LINQ queries over observable collections such as .NET events and APM-based computations, PFx concurrent Task<T>,  the Windows 7 Sensor and Location APIs, SQL StreamInsight temporal event streams , F# first-class events, and async workflows.

Play with Rx, stress it, evaluate it, and tell us what you think.

This is now a complete media platform for synchronized content from Internet (MRSS, iTunes) as well as private sources with our integration Cloud support out of the box for Amazon S3.

Here is one of the framework generated experiences (you can do your own but not in this demo) which transforms the Apple Movie Trailers content:

Or click here to go direct:

http://media.tangentux.com/index.htm

Adobe has no reason to ignore Silverlight now…They do that at their own peril and eventual harm.

We will have a free version of this media center environment (yes indeed it is a lot like Windows Media Center, only completely built for Internet content). The demo above shows off some Deep Zoom integration, as well as some intelligent playback optimized for quality over M4v, MP4, and associated file types.

There is also a large demo with tons of smooth streaming content. Let me know if your interested.

del.icio.us Tags: adobe,f4v,flash video,Flex,flv,RIA,SilverLight,silverlight 3,silverlight 3 beta,silverlight adobe,Video

Technorati Tags: adobe,f4v,flash video,Flex,flv,RIA,SilverLight,silverlight 3,silverlight 3 beta,silverlight adobe,Video

Las Vegas, NV – April 20th, 2009 – BuyDRM, a Microsoft-licensed PlayReady DRM solutions and service provider, will unveil the world’s first Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS) Live Smooth Streaming content protection solution built on Microsoft Silverlight DRM, powered by PlayReady at the NAB conference on April 20, 2009. In a joint demonstration with Envivio, Inc., BuyDRM’s KeyOS rights management platform will provide Silverlight DRM support to the 4Caster C4 compression engine during NAB in booth #SL720.

IIS Smooth Streaming is Microsoft Corp.’s HTTP-based adaptive streaming solution that takes advantage of the Web’s existing HTTP infrastructure to bring superior performance and scalability to media experiences. With IIS Smooth Streaming, consumers get minimal buffering and faster start-up times, because IIS Smooth Streaming adapts the quality of the video stream in real-time, based upon the consumer’s changing bandwidth and CPU conditions.

“BuyDRM’s integration of PlayReady into its KeyOS solution enables strong protection, flexibility and control for content providers utilizing Silverlight for their offerings,” said Steve Sklepowich, group product manager for Silverlight Media at Microsoft. “BuyDRM’s offerings and Silverlight create new opportunities for content providers to monetize their content in a variety of models.”

“We are pleased to be the first to offer a live rights management solution that fully integrates Microsoft Silverlight DRM and IIS Smooth Streaming technologies,” said Christopher Levy, CEO and Founder, BuyDRM. “BuyDRM pioneered the use of Silverlight DRM technology for live and on-demand content. KeyOS provides the entire Silverlight DRM ecosystem including live and on-demand Windows Media and Smooth Streaming-format encryption, licensing and profile management, license delivery, geo-targeting and real-time statistics and reports, which will enable a broader array of media distribution opportunities.”

About BuyDRM:

BuyDRM, a division of Austin, Texas based NFA Group Inc., was founded in 2001 by Christopher Levy to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding pay media industry. Its flagship product KeyOS is both a service and solution, representing extensive research, development and practical use in deploying commercial digital rights management technologies. BuyDRM is a preeminent provider of Microsoft Silverlight DRM technology and a featured Microsoft partner, with more than 200 customers in the entertainment, enterprise and education industries. KeyOS was chosen by Streaming Media Magazine’s viewers back-to-back for the Reader’s Choice Award in 2007 and 2008

Contact:

BuyDRM – Media Relations
Jessica Sinn
Jessica@buydrm.com

All trademarks are properties of their respective owners.

Monday, April 20 2009 – By: slteam

This past month has been whirl wind to say the least! I’m so excited and amazed to see the support of our customers and partners on the blogoshere congratulating us on the advancements we’ve made within Silverlight 3 at MIX last month. We’ve made big leaps in video support by raising the bar for high-def consumer media experiences.

Highlights include: live and on-demand adaptive streaming (with IIS Smooth Streaming) including PVR-like functionality for pausing and seeking live feeds, better format support (including native H.264), a media pipeline that lets you plug in other third-party codecs, and GPU acceleration which improves full-screen “true” HD (1080p) playback. For a recap of all the goodness in media from MIX09, see Alex Zambelli’s blog post and Ben Waggoner’s blog post. Both provide great summaries with pointers to other resources and third-party press releases, including those from Akamai, Inlet HD and others.

At NAB this week in Las Vegas, we continue to make rapid advancements in media. With over 100k attendees expected, NAB is the 2^nd largest trade show in the country, and the biggest gathering for media and video professionals in the world.

Today at NAB, Microsoft is announcing the availability of IIS Smooth Streaming. Smooth Streaming is a feature of Internet Information Services (IIS) Media Services, our HTTP–based Web server platform for delivering, monetizing and caching media. You can check out the amazing quality you get today from Smooth Streaming by visiting the IIS MS site.  You can get started today with on-demand Smooth Streaming, and expect our final release for Live Smooth Streaming in the very near future.

We also have broad industry adoption for Smooth Streaming, with both top customers and media ecosystem partners.  Key early adopter customers for Smooth Streaming include online retailers and broadcasters such as HSN, NBCOlympics.com, RAI, TV2, CTV and others. They will be able to deliver true 1080p experiences – early testing has shown that engagement times far exceed those using other non-adaptive streaming platforms, so the upside for content monetization is very encouraging. Stay tuned for more info here on our findings!

In addition to customer adoption, we have been working hard with the third-party ecosystem, across encoding ISVs, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and DRM ASPs to ensure seamless work flow for protected and advertising-based content. Here are the partners announcing their support for Smooth Streaming today at NAB:

• CDNs-  Akamai, AT&T, CDNetworks, Internap, Level3, and Limelight
• Encoding ISVs- Digital Rapids, Envivio, Grab Networks (Anystream), Rhozet, Telestream, Vbrick, ViewCast, Winnov
• DRM ASPs- BuyDRM, CDNetworks, Entriq, ExtendMedia, Ipercast, iStreamPlanet

See our NAB press release for all the details.

In addition to all the great customer showcases we now have with Silverlight, here are two very cool demos to check out at NAB in our booth:

1. Live Smooth Streaming Encoding demo featuring Akamai’s AdaptiveEdge for Silverlight together with the Inlet HD encoding platform.
2. Protected Live Smooth Streaming using Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady. Envivio worked with BuyDRM to make this happen.

Look forward to meeting you at NAB. Booth SL 720!

Steve

Click Here to Watch What’s New

9 our of 10 studies prove: Resharper make your your hair grow back, your dog come home (yes even if he died), your wife will love you again and your kids will listen to you.

OK perhaps it is not a country music song played backwards.

BUT your nuts to even think about wasting all that time not using it. For someone who knows it is people not tools that always win, this is my only exception in 20 years that I will stand behind.

Why stare at a keyboard for hours wondering how to navigate a nasty tangled refactoring you know you must do when you can do the right thing AND make the 5:30 train.

Me? I hit the shift-ctrl-space repeatedly and am shocked when nothing happens. Then I install it and life is good again.

ReSharper 4.5 Released

April 8, 2009

In This Issue

Introduction
Performance and Memory Usage Improvements
Solution-Wide Code Inspections

VB9 Support
Extended Naming Style Configuration
Other Enhancements

Introduction

ReSharper 4.5 is finally out, so your next productivity upgrade is just a mouse click away!

As announced, the new version features major improvements in performance and memory usage. After all, what is a productivity tool for if not for being agile, robust and responsive?

In addition to focusing on performance enhancements, we also added a number of intelligence features and improvements.

We’ve prepared a short Flash movie to introduce the new features in ReSharper 4.5. Get the hang of things in just a few minutes!

For users of older versions we have a ReSharper 3.0 vs. ReSharper 4.5 Comparison matrix.

However, if you believe a thousand words say more than a picture does, or even a movie, go ahead and read the descriptions below :)

Alex Morozov
NET product marketing manager 
JetBrains

Performance and Memory Usage Improvements

We have managed to make ReSharper load and work faster and more smoothly in general, particularly on big (and we mean BIG) solutions:

• Wall-time measurements of solution loading show 20 to 40 percent acceleration until the solution is ready for code editing.
• Web site loading time has also been reduced by a third.
• For instance, a certain mixed-language solution consisting of about 15 thousand classes now takes only 70 seconds to load, and this includes making every ReSharper feature available.

The list of significantly accelerated operations includes:

• renaming symbols
• finding commonly used symbols
• creating symbols from usage
• analyzing large XAML files.

We’ve also cut down the volume of memory resources required to analyze jumbo autogenerated code files, which should especially benefit those who work with ASP.NET and LINQ to SQL.

Solution-Wide Code Inspections

To enable you to detect unused non-private members on the fly, we have enlisted the help of our ever-improving solution-wide analysis. We have introduced a set of specialized code inspections that only work when you let ReSharper analyze your whole solution. They help you discover:

• Unused non-private declarations
• Unused return values of non-private methods
• Unaccessed non-private fields
• Unused parameters in non-private members
• Abstract or virtual events that are never invoked
• Unassigned fields
• Members and types that can be made internal instead of public

Look for these inspections in your code and on the Marker Bar, highlighted as warnings or suggestions. In addition, new code annotations are available that you can use to mark certain unused non-private types and members to prevent ReSharper from fussing about them.

VB9 Support – We can forgive this transgression (Damon)

Visual Basic .NET developers can now benefit from VB9 language support that includes implicitly typed local variables, object initializers, anonymous types, extension methods, lambda expressions, partial methods, and embedded XML. VB9 support is all around you, courtesy of new context actions, code completion, refactorings, and Parameter Info, among other supporting features.

Extended Naming Style Configuration

Now you can define custom naming style settings for different languages and symbols including:

• types
• namespaces
• interfaces
• parameters
• method properties and events
• static and instance fields, etc.

For every kind of symbol, you can configure one of five casing options, prefixes and suffixes, variations for different access rights, abbreviations to preserve, or enable naming inspections. As a result, you can precisely align the way ReSharper completes and generates code with your specific coding guidelines.

Other Enhancements

• Go to Implementation – This new navigation feature lets you jump from usage of a base type or member to any of its end implementations, bypassing intermediate steps in the inheritance chain.
• New and Improved Refactorings – ReSharper 4.5 has added Inline Field to its family of Inline refactorings. Rename refactoring now provides name completion, and some of the other refactorings were thoroughly refactored themselves, to make them perform faster.
• Native MSTest Support – Initially available through VstsUnit Plugin and then Gallio, MSTest support has finally made its way to being provided natively in ReSharper, on par with nUnit.
• Wider Cross-Language Capabilities – Quick-fixes and context actions work better in many cross-language scenarios: for example, you can extend a control written in VB.NET+XAML by choosing "create from usage" right from a C# usage. Add increased coverage for XAML and ASP.NET, and you get a substantial package of improvements.
• Smoother Language and Framework Support – Following the tradition of ReSharper 4.1, we have improved compatibility with F#, Compact Framework, Silverlight 2, and other languages and tools.

Grab your all-new productivity – download ReSharper 4.5 now at http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/download.

ReSharper 4.5 is provided as a free upgrade from ReSharper 4.0. If you own an older version, please contact us to check your upgrade availability at sales@jetbrains.com.

JetBrains Team

• Sergey
  Anchipolevsky

• Igor
  Alshannikov

• Alexander
  Anisimov

• Dmitry
  Avdeev

• Sergey
  Baranov

• Yury
  Belyaev

• Natalia
  Belyaeva

• Elena
  Bukreeva

• Bulenkov
  Konstantin

• Jana
  Charif

• Nikolay
  Chashnikov

• Alexander
  Chernikov

• Roman
  Chernyatchik

• Sergey
  Coox

• Sergey
  Dmitriev

• Ilia
  Dumov

• Kirill
  Falk

• Michael
  Gerasimov

• Sergey
  Golovachev

• Alexey
  Gopachenko

• Peter
  Gromov

• Michaela
  Hroncová

• Dmitry
  Jemerov

• Maria
  Khalusova

• Valentin
  Kipiatkov

• Cyril
  Konopko

• Anna
  Kozlova

• Mikhail
  Kropotov

• Eugene
  Kudelevsky

• Alexey
  Kudravtsev

• Olga
  Lobacheva

• Vyacheslav
  Lukianov

• Anton
  Makeev

• Egor
  Malyshev

• Maria
  Marakulina

• Kirill
  Maximov

• Sasha
  Maximova

• Irina
  Megorskaya

• Lucie
  Morawiecova

• Alexander
  Morozov

• Maxim
  Mossienko

• Ekaterina
  Musienko

• Ann
  Oreshnikova

• Eugene
  Pasynkov

• Vaclav
  Pech

• Alexey
  Pegov

• Eugene
  Petrenko

• Irina
  Petrovskaya

• Mikhail
  Pilin

• Julia
  Repina

• Elizaveta
  Revyakina

• Ilya
  Ryzhenkov

• Andrew
  Serebryansky

• Ilya
  Sergey

• Maxim
  Shafirov

• Tatiana
  Slavina

• Olesya
  Smirnova

• Konstantin
  Solomatov

• Oleg
  Stepanov

• Pavel
  Sher

• Ekaterina
  Shliakhovetskaja

• Oleg
  Shpynov

• Gregory
  Shrago

• Eugene
  Toporov

• George
  Udov

• Sergey
  Vasiliev

• Natalie
  Yaremych

• Yegor
  Yarko

• Timur
  Zambalayev

• Sergey
  Zhukov

• Eugene
  Zhuravlev

• Alexander
  Zverev

This is the first post covering techniques for both sending data into your Silverlight environment from ASP.NET as well as getting data out of Silverlight without resorting to a lot of new elements in your architecture. The goal is to use what you already have with the least fuss.

You may think you need to resort to ‘pushing’ all data from Silverlight into say a service using WCF but that is not the case in many scenarios.

For example, you may have activity which the user creates inside Silverlight 2.0 that results in visual elements you want to send out to ASP.NET for persistence in your ORM environment (where Silverlight has no involvement).

From ASP.NET to Silverlight 2.0

First, let’s quickly review the easiest way to pass information into your Silverlight control.

InitParamaters

Here is the on-line help:

If parameters are included, they are typically in comma-delimited pairs and are available as a dictionary object in a Silverlight 2 startup event. These parameters are not used in a Silverlight 1.0-based application.

If an action on an .aspx page causes a postback to occur, the Silverlight plug-in will start again with its content specified in the Source property. The current value of the InitParameters property is sent to the Silverlight plug-in. This enables you to change the InitParameters property before a postback occurs.

The Silverlight 2 application specified in the Source property can access the initialization parameters specified in the InitParameters property in the StartupEventArgs parameter of the Silverlight Application Startup event.

We will walk through an entire example of this, including some content that will make sense in how we can move data back out of Silverlight 2.0 to ASP.NET.

Code for this Scenario

We will be using a web UserControl (.ascx) as our control in this example, because as you will see, we need more than just the Silverlight control to make this work.

ASCX Host

<%@ Control Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="SilverlightInt.ascx.cs"
  Inherits="SilverlightInt" %>
<%@ Register Assembly="System.Web.Silverlight"

 Namespace="System.Web.UI.SilverlightControls"
    TagPrefix="asp" %>
<asp:Silverlight ID="SilverlightView" runat="server" 

Source="~/ClientBin/AspNetIntegration.xap"
    MinimumVersion="2.0.31005.0" />
<asp:TextBox ID="SilverOutput" runat="server"  

 Style="display: none"></asp:TextBox>

ASCX Code Behind

    public partial class SilverlightInt : UserControl
    {
        [Browsable(true)]
        public String InitialText { get; set; }

        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            SetSilverlightInitParamaters();
        }

        void SetSilverlightInitParamaters()
        {
            // Note: We need the client ID for later...
            var InitParams = new Dictionary<String, String>
                             {
                                 {
                                     "outputcontrol",
                                    SilverOutput.ClientID
                                     },
                                 {
                                     "InitialText",
                               InitialText ?? "Hello World"
                                     }
                             };

            SilverlightView.InitParameters =          

         InitParams.ToSilverlightInit();
        }
    }

You might notice the extension method ToSilverlightInit(). Here is the code:

 public static class SilverlightIntegrationExtensions
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Parse the dictionary into Silverlight format
        /// for InitParams
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="target">The target.</param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public static String ToSilverlightInit(
             this IDictionary<String, String> target)
        {
            if (target == null)
                throw new ArgumentNullException("target");

            var stringBuffer = new StringBuilder();

            foreach(var kvp in target)
            {
                if (stringBuffer.Length > 0)
                    stringBuffer.Append(",");

                // Eliminate case sensitivity
              stringBuffer.Append(kvp.Key.ToLower()
                + "=" + kvp.Value);

            }

            return stringBuffer.ToString();

        }

    }

This is hosted in a normal ASPX page as follows (surrounding detail omitted):

  <form id="form1" runat="server" style="height: 100%;">
    <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server">
    </asp:ScriptManager>
    <div>
        <asp:Image Width="300px" ImageUrl="Silverlight_Logo_2.png"
           runat="server" />
        <br />
        <asp:Literal ID="sentText" runat="server" /><br />
        <hr />
        <integrate:SilverlightInt ID="SilverlightInt1"
           runat="server"     InitialText="This is a Test" />
    </div>
    </form>

Here is what it looks like:

Silverlight Code for Initialization

 public partial class App : Application
    {
        public App()
        {
            Startup += Application_Startup;
            UnhandledException += Application_UnhandledException;
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e)
        {
            var PassedInArguments = e.InitParams;
            RootVisual = new SilverlightView(PassedInArguments);
        }

The interesting parts are that we are accessing the InitParams off the Startup’s ‘e’ object. This is a Dictionary<String,String> which is what prompted the ASP.NET design.

Also, we do not use a paramaterless constructor on the initial RootVisual. Instead this is the code:

Silverlight View

<UserControl x:Class="AspNetIntegration.SilverlightView"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">

    <Grid HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top"
       x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Gray">
        <Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <RowDefinition Height="30" />
            <RowDefinition Height="30" />
        </Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
            <ColumnDefinition Width="150" />
        </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

        <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Center"       

     VerticalAlignment="Center"
             Grid.Row="0" Text="Inside Silverlight" />
        <TextBox LostFocus="SendResultBackToAspNet" Grid.Row="1"
          BorderThickness="2" BorderBrush="Black"               

  x:Name="initialText"  />

    </Grid>

</UserControl>

Code Behind

public partial class SilverlightView : UserControl
    {
        readonly IDictionary<string, string> _initParamaters;
        string _initialText =               

 "Nothing was Passed In - initialtext was empty";

        public SilverlightView(            

  IDictionary<string, string> passedInArguments)
        {
            _initParamaters = passedInArguments;
            InitializeComponent();
            Loaded += OnLoaded;
        }

        void OnLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            SetInitialText();
        }

        void SetInitialText() {

            if (_initParamaters.ContainsKey("initialtext"))
            {
                _initialText = _initParamaters["initialtext"];
            }

            initialText.Text = _initialText;
        }

        void SendResultBackToAspNet(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {

        }
    }

Notice the ‘SendResultBackToAspNet’ is empty.. That is coming next and is the tricky part.

Coming Next

The code will all be available for download and the much more interesting aspect of sending data back the other way will be presented.

Damon

But not just RIA style usability, I believe we pushed the envelope even further by incorporating not only DeepZoom (SeaDragon) for ‘zoom in to the pixel’ resolution, but the 3D extensions not present by default

(you have the essentials but only the amazingly talented people behind the Hard Rock Memorabilia site (vertigo) have shown this style of combined zoom/3d that we have seen in any largely deployed sample).

Click the image here to launch the Silverlight 2.0 cross-platform goodness.

NOTE: A prize goes to the first person to email us at: innovate@domaindotnet.com the exact number of seconds it would take to complete the ‘applying attributes’ to the .gif file (you need to see the demo to understand).

Related Posts

• Vertigo: DeepZoom

from tag wcf

• WCF Windsor Integration

from tag WCF

• Software as a Service – A Pattern Language Approach

from tag silverlight

• Will’s Blog – Silverlight 2 Birthday Widget, Part II
• The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

from tag SOA

• Advanced Concepts in Software as a Service / Service Oriented Architecture
• The Collision of Software Project Management and Agile

from tag sharepoint

• Business Data Catalog
• SharePoint RSS Alpha
• Templates for SharePoint
• Creating a Web Part with Custom Properties
• SharePoint Creating XSLT DataView
• SmartPart for SharePoint – Home
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

from tag Linq

• Speed Dial
• CruiseControl.NET
• The Pragmatic Bookshelf
• map
• Register – InnerWorkings

 can

you

find

the

ghosts?

click me and be prepared

Send a screen shot if you find them to : innovate@domaindotnet.com and the best image will recieve some swag! Non-trivial swag as well! 

Related Posts

• Business Data Catalog
• SharePoint RSS Alpha
• Templates for SharePoint
• Creating a Web Part with Custom Properties
• SharePoint Creating XSLT DataView
• SmartPart for SharePoint – Home
• Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

from tag C#

• Video Favorites
• S#arp Architecture: ASP.NET MVC with NHibernate – Home
• Skills Matter OPEN SOURCE .NET
• Home :: Castle Project
• NHibernate 2.0 gold Released – Must Wait for ‘Linq to NHibernate’ « ubiquitous fluency

(more..)

Expression Blend and Design : Blend 2 SP1 + WPF Toolkit = Visual State Manager for WPF

Now this is cool…(from the Blend team site)

Blend 2 SP1 + WPF Toolkit = Visual State Manager for WPF

The Blend 2 Service Pack 1 contains a secret ingredient that can be activated by installing the WPF Toolkit and then setting a Registry value.

In a nutshell, this ingredient is Visual State Manager support for Windows Presentation Foundation projects. As you know, Visual State Manager is built into Silverlight 2 but the WPF Toolkit gives you an early peek into the future of VSM-for-WPF.

The WPF Toolkit is a collection of WPF features and components that are being made available outside of the normal .NET Framework ship cycle. The WPF Toolkit not only allows users to get new functionality more quickly, but allows an efficient means for giving feedback to the product team.

Once you have the Blend 2 Service Pack 1 installed, here are the steps you need to follow to get to the VSM-for-WPF goodness:

Install the WPF Toolkit from http://www.codeplex.com/wpf/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=15598

Create the following registry value and make it non-zero. The value should be of type DWORD. Or run the appropriate .REG file attached to this post (or by clicking here).

32 bit OS : HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Expression/Blend/EnableVSM

64 bit OS : HKLM/Software/Wow6432Node/Microsoft/Expression/Blend/EnableVSM

If Blend was running during the previous step then restart it.

Create a new WPF project.

Add %Program Files%\WPF\WPF Toolkit\…\WPFToolkit.dll to the References folder

(Right-click the References node in Project, then click Add Reference…).

Close and reopen Window1.xaml. The States pane will now appear for the project.

Here are some VSM resources to get you going:

http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/archive/2008/07/11/more-articles-on-visual-state-manager.aspx

Even though the built-in WPF controls (such as Button and CheckBox) weren’t designed with VSM in mind, the toolkit works some event interception magic that means your Visual States are applied provided they’re given the standard names such as Normal, MouseOver, Pressed, Disabled, Unchecked, Checked and so on.

You can also use VSM-for-WPF to add interactivity to new custom controls you author yourself, although be aware that Blend will not read any default VisualState information out of the default template. And of course you can also add VSM interactivity to UserControls.

Expression Blend and Design : Blend 2 SP1 + WPF Toolkit = Visual State Manager for WPF

• Click the right mouse button to freeze the cube
• Move the mouse to zoom in and out while the cube is frozen
• See if you can get the Easter egg to display

NOTE: If this did not work for you before, please try it using the new launch page below. This will indicate if any .NET bits are missing on your PC. This will all go away when we finish moving this work to Silverlight in total.

Click here to see it live

This proof of concept gets us around a few hurdles we were struggling with to deliver a ‘Google Earth’ style view but into a ‘company as the earth’. In our opinion, you can navigate to almost any spot on the planet so why is it so hard to find documents?

For those invested in document management, categorization and meta information addition (part of building the taxonomies) the piece we found missing was a ‘modern’ way to navigate, discover, filter, pattern match, etc. all that semi-structured data.