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Posts Tagged ‘Development’

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HTML5 Canvas

Filed Under : Development by Joel Jeffery
Jun.23,2011

I’ve been a massive fan of Silverlight development since it’s first version. But HTML5 is an interesting new challenger to the graphics capabilities of Silverlight.

In this video, the Ubelly team demonstrates the HTML5 Canvas, and show how to animate photos and effects. The underlying techniques to make this happen are pretty cumbersome, but luckily there are freely available JavaScript libraries to help out, such as EaselJS from www.easeljs.com.

<canvas id="myCanvas" width="600" height="480">

If your browser doesn't support canvas, this text will show.

</canvas>

The HTML5 Canvas markup is relatively simple, but it’s the ensuing JavaScript to place and animate pictures, point by point, with each tick of the canvas clock that seems hard.

In this second video, Ubelly shows how Capital FM achieved more effects, such as creating a photo lightbox with rounded corners.

I’m sure when the tooling becomes available, it will make the whole HTML5 development platform more appealing, but in the mean time I think I prefer Microsoft Deep Zoom Composer, Expression Blend and Silverlight.

Technorati Tags: Development, HTML5

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The Cloud Hack: Microsoft Azure Hack Day, London, Saturday 11 June 2011.

Filed Under : Development,SaaS by Joel Jeffery
May.23,2011

I’m presenting at this year’s Microsoft Hack Day. This year’s theme is Microsoft Azure and using cool APIs to write innovative applications for the cloud.

Hooking Stuff Together

The Cloud Hack event is a celebration of all that is good about Web 2.0 development on the Microsoft stack. To paraphrase great all-round architecture dude and high priest of SOA, Microsoft’s Pat Helland, it’s really all about Hooking Stuff Together.

Microsoft Windows Azure gives us a great fabric upon which to deploy services and applications that make the best of Hooking web services Stuff Together. When you sign up for The Cloud Hack, you’ll get a 30-day free subscription to Azure.

The three APIs we’ll be working with on the day include National Rail, Bing Maps and Fantastic Tavern. At the very least, there should be enough API goodness there to plan an impromptu pub crawl. And if that’s not good use of Web 2.0, then feel free to leave comments at the end of this blog post and tell me what is. Smile

Getting There

If you’re reading this before the event, you can get free tickets here: http://www.thecloudhack.com/pages/get-a-ticket/

The location for the day is the Vibe Bar at the THE BREWERY, 52 CHISWELL STREET, EC1Y 4SD.


View Larger Map
The schedule for the has been published too:http://www.thecloudhack.com/pages/schedule/

Technorati Tags: Azure, Cloud, Development, Microsoft Architecture, Microsoft Azure

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Chart Zoom and Pan Extension for the Silverlight 4 Toolkit

Filed Under : Silverlight by Joel Jeffery
Feb.13,2011

Geoff Webber-Cross, one of my most excellent Silverlight and SharePoint alumni, has just started a blog and published a neat extension to the Silverlight 4 Toolkit to implement chart zooming and panning.

The Silverlight 4 Toolkit comes with a chart control of its own. There’s a demo that shows how to pan and scroll the chart control, but the axes scroll with your chart, which is usually not what you want.

Geoff’s example shows how to overcome this and also gives you zooming into the bargain.

Technorati Tags: Alumni, Development, Silverlight

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Getting Started with Web Development Using Microsoft WebMatrix

Filed Under : Development by Joel Jeffery
Feb.7,2011

Microsoft is really starting to get the hang of this Open Source malarkey, and that giving some things away for free can be tremendously beneficial to winning hearts and minds.

My 11-year-old son has started programming. He gave it a go a little while back, using HTML, Logo and also Scratch from MIT. He wanted something more. I stumbled across Microsoft’s WebMatrix. He’s now building his first web applications.

WebMatrix is a great start for anyone looking to get into Microsoft Web application development.

WebMatrix is Microsoft’s latest free development platform. If you’re a hobbyist or a professional, the WebMatrix can be for you. It’s a platform that you can start creating database-connected web applications from day one. Intuitive and professional, it lets you hone your development skills in technologies that can be applied to enterprise development as well.

WebMatrix also installs Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer, which gives you a choice of additional platforms and tools including WordPress, Dot Net Nuke, Ubraco, Drupal and many others. If the open source packages require MySql and you don’t have this installed already, WebMatrix will download this for you.

Most noteworthy, you can also download express editions of their flagship development tools: Visual Studio 2010 Express and SQL 2008R2 Express and use them seamlessly with WebMatrix.

WebMatrix lets you create sites using its own toolset that sits on top of ASP.NET. It comes with a variety of templates to get you started quickly, all using their Razor (.chtml) templating syntax. Razor provides a much more streamlines syntax than traditional ASP.NET, which new developers will enjoy. The client-side scripts can be HTML, JavaScript, AJAX/jQuery and others.

Out of the box, you get SQL Server Compact – a completely file-based version of SQL Server. WebMatrix has its own database tools to help build your tables.

WebMatrix comes with IIS Developer Express edition. When it’s time to reveal your web application and make it available on the Internet, it will allow walk you through all the steps to publish your site on the web. If it works in IIS Developer Express edition, it will work with IIS on a server.

WebMatrix also has features to help fine tune your search engine ranking by spotting common errors, for instance missing H1 heading tags. Another cool feature is that (optionally!) WebMatrix will take some of the leg work out of shopping for the best hosting deal, by serving you with a choice of hosting providers.

Technorati Tags: Development, Getting Started, Training, Visual Studio 2010 Express, WebMatrix

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Rich Internet Application Awesomeness at the Silverlight Firestarter 2010

Filed Under : Computers and Internet,Development,SharePoint,Silverlight by Joel Jeffery
Feb.6,2011

I love Silverlight. There. I’ve said it. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity for developers to write beautiful, client-side, apps using the tools they know and love – Visual Studio 2010. We can also use the gorgeous Expression suite (especially Expression Blend) to design and author rich, interactive applications.

Silverlight also plays delightfully well with SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 has the Silverlight Client Object Model – a rich API that allows developers to work with SharePoint 2010 objects in batches, remotely.

The two together make a very good partnership.

In this video Scott Guthrie talks about the developer community – did you know that there are over 1 million developers who use Silverlight today? There are also hundreds of recognised user groups around the world. Quite an impressive boast for such a new development platform.

Hang on. It *feels* new, but it’s not *that* new is it? Silverlight is now a mature platform that has been around in one guise or another since late 2006. It’s been a .NET platform since version 1.1/2.0 in 2007, and Microsoft have just unveiled version 5.0.

Silverlight has fast become the application platform of choice for the Web and Enterprises alike. The video shows what SAP have managed to do using Silverlight as a browser-based front-end for visualising data in a rich and impressively interactive way. Another familiar app Scott demos is the Silverlight Facebook app by Telerik, which is available at http://facebook.telerik.com.

Silverlight is also the language of choice for Windows Phone 7 development. There are now more than 3000 Windows Phone 7 applications available for download or purchase on the Microsoft Office Marketplace. I have an iPhone and an Android device, and I’m jealous.

Technorati Tags: Development, RIAs, Silverlight, Videos

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