OK, I confess,  I made up that headline.  I haven’t made the money yet.  But talk to me this time next year.  We’ll all be sharing in the big Silverlight advertising jackpot if Ray Ozzie and Microsoft have their way.

Ray Ozzie spoke about the future of online advertising during the Mix08 conference.  He made several points during his keynote.

• Expected online advertising growth from $40B to $80B within the next three years
• Microsoft to offer better search and embedded advertising products
• Microsoft building framework for creating easy partner relationships with media providers

Today Microsoft announced a new program for embedding text ads within Silverlight streams.  You create a streaming media item, embed the ads, publish to the Microsoft Streaming servers and sit back and wait for the checks to roll in.  I’ve signed up for the pilot program.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

From the latest MSDN Flash:

Are you using Silverlight Streaming to host and stream your Web video content? If so, this free service has gotten even more attractive since the launch of Silverlight Streaming Content Ads - a pilot program that enables you to embed relevant text ads into your streaming video and get paid when people click them.

Learn more about Silverlight Ads

Silverlight developers love to talk about the cool features of their adopted platform.  But it’s also common for us to lament the missing parts. A big missing piece is the lack of official 3D support.  Note that I said ‘official’.  There are plenty of developers out there crafting 3D tricks or building 3D frameworks.

Robby Ingebretsen has a great summary of the current state of affairs in Silverlight 3D land.  Be sure and check out his code for faking parallax view while you’re over there.

WPF is fully capable of running a stand-alone XAML file.  You simply create a XAML file similar to the following listing and view it in Internet Explorer, Kaxaml or another WPF editor.

<Page xmlns=http://...
      xmlns:x=http://...>
    <Canvas>
      <Polyline Stroke="LightGreen"
                StrokeThickness='10'
                Points="330,100 160,150 100,240" /

    </Canvas>
</Page>

If you want to run code from your XAML file however you have to write a .NET class.  Today I want to explore the x:Class attribute and how the XAML parser, Visual Studio 2008 and you interact with this property.

Linking to .NET class

If you want to link your XAML file to a .NET class you use the x:Class attribute.

<Window x:Class="DemoApp.Demos.Blog.SimpleWindow"

You must provide a class with the same, fully qualified name as the property value or you’ll get a compiler error.  In my case that means I have to have a SimpleWindow class in the DemoApp.Demos.Blog namespace.  This is a basic XAML rule, and is spelled out in the MSDN documentation.  To be exact the MSDN docs say:

The x:Class attribute configures XAML compilation to join partial classes between markup and code-behind. The code partial class is defined in a separate code file in a Common Language Specification (CLS) language, whereas the markup partial class is created by codegen during XAML compilation.

So what does that mean?

XAML compilation

From Rob Relyea

In WPF, we compile XAML into a combination of C# (.g.cs) or VB (.g.vb) and a special binary form (.baml).  So at runtime, in most cases, there doesn’t need to be any XML parsing happening - baml is an optimized, pre-tokenized version of the elements that were specified in the .xaml file.

Hmmm.  Looks like my XAML file will be compiled into two extra files. 

Let’s see how this works in Visual Studio. 

1. Open Visual Studio and create a new WPF application
2. Add a XML file.  Yes, I said XML file instead of a XAML file.  Why? When you add a XAML file Visual Studio always creates a second file named xxx.xaml.cs.  I don’t want any extra files yet.

Compiling the XAML file

We need to add a few lines of XAML our file.

<Window x:Class="DemoApp.Demos.Blog.SimpleWindow"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
    <Grid>
        <Button />
    </Grid>
</Window>

Next, change the build action for the SimpleWidow.xaml to None.

Finally compile your application, open the Class View and look at the available classes.  There should be a few classes, but none with the name from our x:Class attribute.

As you might have guessed setting the Compile action to Page is what causes the compiler to generate the BAML and class file.    Since we changed the compile action to None we didn’t get these two files.

Change the Compile action back to Page and recompile.  Now you should see a new class in the Class View.

Finding the hidden files

Obviously the compiler must have created a class named SimpleWindow for us.  According to the MSDN docs there should also be a BAML file in our project.  Let’s go find them.

There they are - hiding in the obj/Debug* folder - out of sight and unlikely to be changed by curious developers.

* They’ll be in the obj/Release folder if you do a Release build.

Adding your own code

SimpleWindow.g.cs is generated every time you build your application so it would be a foolish place to write your code as it would get erased with every compile. Luckily for us Microsoft used the partial keyword when generating the class in SimpleWindow.g.cs. That means we can create our own class file in our preferred location.

1. Add a new Class file to the project.  Give it a name of your own choosing,  I picked CodeBehind.cs for the name of my class. 
2. In the code, put your class in a namespace and change the Class name in the code to match your x:Class attribute.  For my example, that means the namespace is “DemoApp.Demos.Blog” and the class name is “SimpleWindow”.  See the following example

using System;
usingSystem.Collections.Generic;
usingSystem.Linq;
usingSystem.Text;

namespaceDemoApp.Demos.Blog
{
    partial classSimpleWindow
   {

   public SimpleWindow()
   {
      InitializeComponent();
   }

    }
}

A couple things to point out.  First, the code file and XAML have different names.  The important part is that the fully qualified name of the class matches the string in the x:Class attribute. Second, I also added a constructor that calls InitializeComponent().     The InitializeComponent method is in the generated class file.  A call to this method is necessary to initialize any named elements that we add to our window.

Running the Application

1. We need tell the application to show our SimpleWindow on startup.   Open App.xaml and modify the StartupUri as follows.

<Application x:Class=”WpfApplication1.App”
   xmlns=”…”
    xmlns:x=”…”
    StartupUri=”SimpleWindow.xaml”>
</Application>

Run the application. You should see your SimpleWindow window.

Debrief

Now that we have a better understanding of what is going on in Visual Studio let’s look at what happens when you add a new Window or Page to your project.

Visual Studio adds two files; Window5.xaml and Window5.xaml.cs. 

Window5.xaml has its build action set to Page, which causes the compiler to create the BAML and *.g.cs files in the obj folder.  VS also adds the x:Class attribute to the root element.

Window5.xaml.cs:  VS also write a partial class with the correct name in Window5.xaml.cs  and adds a constructor that calls InitializeComponent.  In other words Visual Studio automatically does everything that we’ve seen so far.

One last tip

Here’s a neat little trick for arranging your code behind classes in the Solution explorer. 

1. Rename CodeBehind.cs  to SimpleWindow.xaml.cs.

If you look in the Solution explorer you wont see the nice nesting that the other Windows files display.

In order get this nesting behavior we need to modify the vbproj or csproj file.  Open your vbproj/csproj file in a text editor (or use Unload Project in Visual Studio) and add the DependentUpon element as follows.

<Compile Include="SimpleWindow.xaml.cs" >
    <DependentUpon>SimpleWindow.xaml</DependentUpon>
</Compile>

The next time you open your project you will see the little plus sign on SimpleWindow.xaml like all the other window files.

It’s official.  The newest and coolest version of Silverlight has just hit the Microsoft servers.   This highly anticipated second beta for Silverlight 2 is the best release so far of Microsoft’s RIA framework.

I’ve seen many of the interim builds the last couple of months and I’m happy with the progress Microsoft has made.  Overall the changes have been useful and timely. Not everything is rosy however. I’m still trying to determine if I like the new trigger replacement (Visual State Manager ).  I guess time will tell.

Control packaging

When Silverlight 1 shipped it had no UI controls.  That fact disappointed many developers.   Microsoft is making up for that oversight with the rich support for controls in Silverlight 2.   The plan is to ship ~100 controls in the final version.   Let’s see what in the box for this week.

The first thing you need to understand about the Silverlight controls is that they are packaged into multiple assemblies (DLLs).  Microsoft is trying hard to keep the CoreCLR small and lean.  The smaller the runtime, the faster the initial install.  There are trade-off however with this approach.  If you want to add functionality to your app that is not in the CoreCLR, you have to download additional assemblies to the client machine with your Silverlight page.  That, of course, will impact the download speed of YOUR app.

In Beta2 the thirty most common controls are packaged with the initial Silverlight install.  The other seventy controls will ship in additional libraries.

Many New and Improved Controls

Here are a few of the changes in Beta2

TextBox

There are few changes to the TextBox.  First, it supports multi-line content.   There is a new property called TextWrapping, and another named AcceptsReturn.  Together, these two properties enable support for multi-lines.  Rumors are circulating that it might support password chars and watermarks soon.  BTW the WatermarkTextbox has disappeared from the framework. 

TabControl

This is new to Beta2.   Works similar to it’s Windows and WPF cousins.

DataGrid

Yes, yes, yes…  There will be a datagrid control in Silverlight.  It now has support for column resize, data sorting  and better perf.

Other controls

To learn more about Silverlight 2 and download the latest release, head over to http://www.silverlight.net and http://expression.microsoft.com web-sites

I was at TechEd Developer in Orlando this week.  Didn’t have a minute to blog about the event as I was so busy.

There is a fabulous Code Camp here in Florida on Saturday May 7th and Sunday May 8th. , I’ll be be part of their ‘Day of Silverlight’ on Saturday.

If you’re interested in Silverlight, you won’t want to miss this event. Join three of the top Silverlight speakers for a morning of great content. We start off with Microsoft MVP and professional trainer Walt Ritscher giving an introduction to Silverlight 2. Next, acclaimed speaker Andy Beaulieu covers data access including using WCF, LINQ to SQL, and data binding. Finally, Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss covers Expression Blend tips and tricks and some of the latest features in Silverlight.

-Walt

Ah, summer is coming to Seattle.  Warm weather, mountain views, and the sun glinting off the lakes.  Best of all, if you are a Silverlight fan, our first Silverlight dev camp is now official.   There have been a few of these mini conferences already (Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington DC) and now we’re having one in Seattle! 
Kurt Brockett got the ball rolling by writing the requisite blog post an registering an Upcoming.com event.

A few hours later I heard from Adam Kinney about the same event… Guess it must be official.

The sad part,  I’m going to be in Florida that day.  I’m sure I’ll be missing a great event.

Portland Oregon is home to a batch of dedicated techies.   There seems to be an interesting programming event or conference every month in the Rose City.

A couple months ago I heard about a new family oriented conference, called PDX Webfoot, that is happening on April 12th.  The idea is to have a conference with lots of developer content, but also have sessions and activities for the rest of your family.  Games for the kids, general web sessions for the older kids and spouses.  This year there is more technical topics than family ones, but the concept is refreshing.

Webfoot is this weekend and there are still lots of seats available.  The event is free and scheduled on the weekend.  There is supposed to be plenty of good food (not pizza) and a Lego Mindstorm area. 

Looks likes sessions include Flex/AIR, Silverlight, XNA, Deep Zoom, ASP.NET 3.5 and IE 8.0

Oh, did I mention that Adam Kinney and I are doing a couple of Silverlight talks?  Adam is covering the design aspect and I doing my Touring the Silverlight API talk. 

Why not sign up today?

Details

When: Saturday, April 12th
1:00pm to 7:00pm (dinner provided)

Location: OGI School of Science and Engineering (map)
Wilson Clark Center for Lifelong Learning
20000 NW Walker Rd
Beaverton, OR 97006

There’s a new charting tool available for web developers.  The chart is shown via Silverlight.  You use the VisiFire chart generation tool.  It creates an XML for you.  Add your new data XML file to your web server and then add a small JavaScript element to your page.  BTW the script can be placed in any type of web page (HTML, ASP, ASP.Net, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails)

<script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript”>
        var vChart = new Visifire(”Visifire.xap”,600,400);
        vChart.setDataUri(”Data.xml”);

      //xml file name goes in the place of Data.xml
        vChart.render(”VisifireChart1″);
</script>

That’s all there is… 

Visifire is licensed under GPL, a popular Open Source license. Visifire can be freely used in your web sites, blogs and internal applications as long as you comply with GPL.

It seems that there is some confusion on how to add the Silverlight data controls to your Silverlight 2.0 project.

1. Add reference to System.Windows.Controls.Data.dll.

2. Add an xmlns attribute to your root tag.

3. Use the DataGrid control in your XAML.

I ran into some Silverlight install problems on one of my computers.   The Silverlight runtime installed fine. The SDK installer and the modifications to Visual Studio 2008 was where I ran into trouble.

Here are two blog posts that I found useful in solving these problems.

BradleyB
MichaelSync

Error Messages

“Could not load type. Microsoft.VisualStudio.Web.Silverlight.IVsSilverlightService”

“The project type is not supported by this installation”