Well here it is I have been playing around with Silverlight2 and it is astronomically better than Silverlight1! This is an extermly simple feed reader with no design add more or less a proof of concept. I have been trying to do things in ActionScript and the do them in C#/SilverLight. I have leaned a great deal I have been studying the Silverlight Samples and found a feed reader. I got it installed it worked well but then I decided it would be better if I could add a combo box drop down that has options for the user So I went ahead and created one while doing this I also studied some more examples from Scott Guthrie’s (Maybe he should rename his blog Scott Gu to Guru) blog. So some of this example is just ASP.NET / C#. I found the necessity of crossxml kind of a pain but a necessary pain. So I have included an example of a clientaccess.xml with the source. I found Blend to be a little wonky namely I ran in to an issue with the Service Pack1 install you can read about that issue here. Although I don’t believe to many people will run into the same issue because Microsoft has resolved the issue. I find the integration between Blend and Visual Studio a little wonky but tolerable. I have also noticed for newbies who want to get started Microsoft has finally release a one click installer of their own otherwise known as the Microsoft Web Platform. So if you want you can install it and use it with this project. Here are a few of the numerous ways I can improve this feedreader add design make it look good. Create a webservice that allows for the input of the feeds and stores them in a database remove the Feeds.xml file and replace it with a database connection. Allow the database to input the Feed information and purge old information this would be better and it would resolve those tedious crossxml issues with silverlight. Little code snippet note you should download the whole project or this snippet really won’t do you any good.
public string myURL; WebClient client = new WebClient(); public Page() { InitializeComponent(); XDocument feedXML; feedXML = XDocument.Load("Feeds.xml"); var feeds = from feed in feedXML.Descendants("Feed") where feed.Attribute("status") == null || feed.Attribute("status").Value != "disabled" select new FeedDefinition { Name = feed.Element("Name").Value, Url = feed.Element("Url").Value }; foreach (var feed in feeds) { feed.Name.ToString(); feed.Url.ToString(); } ddlFeeds.ItemsSource = feeds; } itemsList.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; itemContent.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; object myFeed = ddlFeeds.SelectedItem; FeedDefinition MyFeed = new FeedDefinition(); MyFeed = myFeed as FeedDefinition; myURL = MyFeed.Url;
Somethings I will point out with silverlight it’s runtime is a 5.8mb download in comparison to Flash Player being 1.8mb. One thing that Silverlight allows you to do is leverage DirectX on the users computer but as you and I know DirectX will only work for Microsoft compatible operating systems. Which is a buzz kill I think they should have leveraged OpenGL or Both. So in short you won’t get the same experience cross operating systems. Linux has been working on Moonlight and Microsoft is supporting Eclipse for Silverlight so those are pluses. One thing that is nice about Silverlight is the ability to create WPF applications and deploy them with a Click-Once install:) This is extremely similar to Adobe’s Air platform. One excellent example I have been studying is Microsoft’s UniveRSS WPF application excellent example of an RSS feed reading using directX 9! So check it out here. You can also find numerous other examples of Silverlight/WPF out in the wild already like this cool Facebook application. So in all I have mixed feelings about silverlight and I will continue to explore it and utilize it. I think flash users will be upset because they won’t have support for all the cool adobe effects built in but I don’t believe it will be long before users start writing code for similar effects and then share them on codeplex. I have been working on various experiments and then redo my Portfolio site in both Silverlight and Flash.
In other news I have been working on my Papervision3D project and it is getting better not finished but closer. It was a beautiful fall weekend here and Lisa and I got out and took numerous photographs. I took several panoramic in Memorial Park maybe I will post them sometime soon. I have also been working on constructing my new computer that I am going to name HAL 9000 it is a Quad Core with a great deal of horse power will crush any apple when I am done with it. Will be a dual boot with Ubuntu / Vista Ultimate! I am going to have 1.5 terabytes worth of hard-drive space:)
My Ridiculously Simple Feed Reader Code Download Click Here
Links of Interest:
Shine Draw
Silverlight Code Examples
Popfly Widget Maker
Silverlight and the Combo Box
ScottGu’s Blog Excellent Place to learn Silverlight
UniveRSS
Visual Sage / Facebook App
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