MIX

#MIX08: Wrap-up post

Laurent Bugnion — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 20:16:06 GMT

MIX08 is over, and I am home with what one could call the "post-MIX" mood. It's a mix (pun intended, haha) of various feelings

Obviously I am extatic to be with my family again, even more so because I was away for almost two weeks, which I usually try to avoid. It's just so good to be with them again. I wish I could take them with me every time I am abroad.
Excitement about all the new things we saw. Thinking all the time of what I'll be able to improve in my various projects using these new techniques and resources. Lots of planning to do.
Planning in my head debriefings with various key people in my office and in my project.
And around all this, a regret that it's over already, and longing for MIX09. The value of this conference is much more than "just" the sessions. It's the people you meet, People I knew already and whom I don't get to meet in person much because of the physical distance. And also the people I met this year for the first time. There are people with whom you just "click", you could call that friendship at first sight (wink at Robbie, Nathan, Chad, Mark, Jonathan, James, Scott, Josh (Holmes), Josh (Waggoner), Rob, Grant, Dr.WPF, Ryan, Dave, Neil and so many others!! It was great to be with you all, guys)
And a slight, very slight regret not to be in SXSW (but I would have died inside to be so long away from Alise and Laeticia)

I am just so grateful for all the nice comments I heard and read about my blog and my site. It's always kind of awkward and slightly embarrassing to be praised (I guess that's a remainder of my humble swiss roots) but also so rewarding. It's a new reserve of energy for the year to come, fueling new ideas and new projects. I really want to thank all the people met either in real, through Twitter, through comments on my blog (or all of the above) for their kindness. The conversations were wonderful. You all gave me great insights and ideas. Now I just need 50 hours per day to work on them all.

A couple of highlights I will not forget:

A lunch-conversation with John Gossman, Rob Relyea, Mark Feinholz and Ted Hu. Honestly, I cannot remember what I ate. The talk was so rich and intense that all my attention was on it. Talking about the MVVM pattern, about the way Blend was built made me realize even more how revolutionary Blend is to client application development.
The dinner thrown by IdentityMine, including a short but great chat with Miguel.
Meeting Neil Rowe and "clicking" so well. Looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.
The lunch with James Clarke on the last day and the great discussion about Encoder and also mobile devices.
The impromptu meetings in the open space area.
The Twitter experience. Really helpful. I met so many people through this means.

The keynote with Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki was great. I had never seen Steve nor Guy talk before, and I honestly didn't know what to expect. I am not a big fan of the "monkey" act, so I was kind of reserved about what I was going to see. It turned out that it was really, really great. I was amazed to see how much "on top of things" Steve is. How interesting and insightful his comments were. And also, beneath the ironic comments, the respect for Apple, Google, Adobe... Guy has it right when he talks of the new Microsoft, a message I always try to pass when I talk about my own collaboration with them. Microsoft is not in killer mode anymore, people (at least not the DevDiv). They are helpful, innovative, interested in what others do with their technology. Of course it's not perfect yet, but honestly, they have really come a long way, and they do it much better than many other companies (including our own Siemens) does. If only the journalists could get the message, stop the endless and fruitless bashing and give Microsoft's technologies the deserved attention. Of course it would need some work from their part, to even understand what these technologies are all about instead of simply rehashing the old messages.

MIX08 is done, let's look forward to MIX09: Wednesday, March 18 - Friday, March 20, 2008 at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada

#Mix08 Session: What's New in Windows Presentation Foundation 3.5

Laurent Bugnion — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:51:18 GMT

Check WindowsClient.net for updates

Some parts of the demos are not available yet in the current build - wait for the next beta
Compatibility with Silverlight is important
- Same tools, designers, code, markup...
This summer, .NET framework 3.5 service release
Improved setup
- Fuill install available
- Also client-focused ~30MB install
  - Parts of WCF
  - Parts of LINQ
  - WPF
- Deployment of application will be simplified
  - MSI, ClickOnce, XBAP
MSDN Reader demoed, looks really good. Source code is available
Add-In framework demo
HTTP requests, can access cookies in XBAPs and also standalone apps
WCF support in XBAPs
Lots of 3rd party controls available, check Brad Abrams blog
New virtualization model "Recycling virtualization"
- Uses the same UI elements already created
- Faster than normal UI virtualization
- Turned off by default --> must be enabled in code
- Deferred scrolling enables moving the scrollbar but the UI only scrolls when the scrollbar is released
Datagrid demo
- Won't be as powerful as 3rd party datagrids (such as Infragistics or XCeed)
- Multiselect
- Sorting
- ...
StringFormat property in Binding enables easier conversion of values (for example double to string formatted as currency)
Ribbon coming up
DateTimePicker 3rd on the list
Coming up sometimes after service release
Data improvements
- Much faster
Cool demo of a 2D textbox on a 3D mesh, with "jitterness". Pretty cool
Nice plug to the IdentityMine 3D blendable mix
Demo of SCE PhotoViewer, nice UI
- SCE stands for Syndicated Content Experience
Text in 3.5
- Better support for non-latin languages with IMEs
- Improvements to RichTextBox
- Support for new scripts
Major focus on performance in the service release
Many minor improvements in addition to big ones
MSFT looking for feedback in case of performance problems
- Use visuals efficiently
- Don't wait to focus on the performance
Smoother animations, especially slow moving animations
Layered windows much better performance
Much improved BitmapEffects, rendered in GPU
- New effects, for example magnifier, Brick effect, Ripple effect
- ColorKeyAlpha can transform a given color in transparent
- But unfortunately they still don't run in partial trust :(
Writeable bitmaps
- Write to in memory bitmaps on a per frame basis
- Enables some scenarios that would be impossible because of perf
Direct interaction with DirectX possible
- Better integration than with HWND

#Mix08 Session: Nerd + Art: Ten Code Snippets to Empower Your Inner Artist

Laurent Bugnion — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:12:53 GMT

Robbie Ingebretsen: "This is a creative experiment" "We didn't always look into best practices"
Talks about the Integrator role.
Nathan Dunlap: "Designers should probably use Visual Studio more" "It's a great tool to dive into the code,check the SDK..."
Snippets are distributed as a Snippet installer VSI file.
- Silverlight code snippets
- WPF code snippets
By the way, check Dr WPF's snippets too!
To access the Nerd snippets in the code, simply type "nerd". Displays the list of all snippets.
Custom Control to display image sequences, provided for free. "ImageSequencer.cs"
- Propery SourceFolder, points tothe folder containing the sequence of images
Snippet "Storyboard" allows to modify values of a storyboard from code.
Snippet "Sound player" provides a lightweight way to play sounds.
Value converters
- Provides a default implementation
Creating a new custom panel
- WrapPanel in Silverlight
DeepZoom snippet for Silverlight, looks pretty cool!
- Provides easy zooming into a DeepZoom prepared image.
Get the Snippets at www.blendables.com

#Mix08 session: Overview of Expression Encoder 2

Laurent Bugnion — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:37:00 GMT

Expression Encoder 2 is now a standalone product, not part of Expression Media like before.
Download it from the Microsoft Expression 2 website.
Live encoding, events, etc...
Smart recompression, for example if you just edit some of the video, only the cut will be recompressed.
Animations in XAML can be burnt inside the video.
Closed captions.
Improved Silverlight players, including a video gallery player.
More options for interlaced content.
.NET object model.
Demo
- New codecs
- Aspect ratio is easier to set up than in V1
- Very cool new "green" video player.
- Partial rebuild, builds only what is needed (for example only markers in the header, etc...).Much faster than V1
- Video player templates parameters
  - Don't start the video when the page is loaded
  - Download on demand of videos
  - Change stretch mode of player (fixed size, fill page, etc...)
  - Play button on the video.
- "Edit in Blend" feature.
  - Edits a copy of the template.
  - Save changes in Blend, they appear immediately into Encoder.
- WMV is pretty much the same as VC1 codec.
- New international icons for "add a trailer", "add a trailer"
- Leader and trailers can be XAML, images or videos!
- Overlays can also be XAML, videos, images...
- Icons on the timeline are now grouped by type.
- Templates are managed applications, who can declare their ability (like "I can show captions", "I can show polls", etc...)
- Extend the video player in .NET code (any .NET language supported, of course)
  - For example, add an interactive poll to the video, communicating with a web service to store results...
- Difference between markers and script command.
  - Markers live in the header only.
  - Script commands can live in the header or in the stream, so they can also be used during live streaming.
- Demo of A/B compare mode.
- Demo of live mode. Looks pretty good! I am not a specialist of videos, but the interface and the abilities are impressive.
- "Repurpose" live video and distribute it on demand.
  - Only the edits are being re-encoded!
  - Risk of losing script commands, but they show up red, so you can move them before cutting.
- Object model demo
  - Encoding a video and copying it directly to a Zune

#Mix08 evenings are pretty cool

Laurent Bugnion — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:05:30 GMT

So last night was the last evening for many (but not for me since I am flying only tomorrow, ha ha), and there was a number of dinners and parties going on. I was lucky to be invited to a great dinner at Zeffirino's thrown by IdentityMine. These dinners are always wonderful occasions to meet and talk to the big players in the field of WPF and Silverlight, designers and developers mixed. Yesterday was not an exception to that rule, with Scott Guthrie, Miguel Icaza (of Moonlight and Mono), Grant Hinkson of Infragistics, Rob Relyea, Karsten Januzsewski (can't believe that I missed you, so sorry about that!), Ryan Stewart of Adobe, and many others that I was really pleased to meet.

After that great time, I headed to the 40/40 club for the Together @ Mix party. It was a nice occasion to meet people from other regions than the US, including Switzerland (woo so many Swiss peopleare actually attending that conference), Belgium, Malaysia etc...

At this party I ran into Francois Bochatay of Sobees. It's a cool product that is currently available in Beta, and that is developed entirely in WPF. I really like their concept, and it's pretty cool to see startups working from Switzerland with that amazing technology.

Today features quite a lot of sessions again, and then MIX officially ends at 1PM (though I expect that a lot of people are going to stick around the Open Space and the Sandbox for a last chat and a last greedy look at the Surface devices.

By the way, yesterday Guy Kawasaki (not known for his particular dedication to Microsoft or Ballmer) actually paid a great compliment to MSFT when he said that this is a new Microsoft, with less arrogance and much more helpful developers. I can confirm that, these guys are really great and innovative, and they do help us (the community) a lot. I am not saying that all is good and perfect, but I (almost) always get the answers I need from them! I thought and talked about the keynote a couple of times since it happened, and it probably was the best I attended so far.

#MIX08 Session: Touch Me: Where Are Interfaces Going?

Laurent Bugnion — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:20:24 GMT

Cynergy.Labs, cool concept of "no touch gesture", with a "pinch" gesture to manipulate objects
Challenges with Touch-based interfaces
It's ambiguous. You're never sure where the next "touch" is going to be.
Dominant hand plays a role in tactile interfaces
"Now we can detect the shadow of the finger and know where it will land"
Voice is going to be the next big move in user interface
"Having a developer and a designer in a room is like having a humidifier and a de-humidifier in the same room" :)

MIX08: Keynote with Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki (7)

Laurent Bugnion — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:10:57 GMT

Ballmer really knows his facts. First time I see him speak, I find him impressive. Better than last year's keynote with Ozzie, and I would even say better than 2006's keynote with Gates and O'Reilly

MIX08: Keynote with Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki (6)

Laurent Bugnion — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:06:15 GMT

Ballmer: "Silverlight for iPhone is interesting, we want to have Silverlight everywhere"
Ballmer "But I am not sure that Apple will welcome a royaltie-free, open platform running on their phone"
Ballmer "All the relevant applications we have on the web will move to Silverlight"
Woman from the floor "I love it that there are no bathrooms line here"
Q&A from the floor is really going well. Ballmer did the monkey for web developers :)

MIX08: Keynote with Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki (5)

Laurent Bugnion — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:46:23 GMT

Questions from the audience

What about Adobe? Ballmer "Yeah, what about Adobe?"
- Adobe is a competitor for Silverlight with Flash and Flex
- Will remain an important company in the business for a long time
- We will look into supporting them well as an ISV

MIX08: Keynote with Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki (4)

Laurent Bugnion — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:43:15 GMT

Ballmer to Kawasaki "Get rid of that MacAir, we'll get you a real machine"
Ballmer is a a very good mood today, and Kawasaki is a great interviewer!
Kawasaki "It's a really different Microsoft today, not arrogant anymore, answer email faster than other companies, really helpful"
- Personal note: It's so true!