Entries Tagged 'Silverlight' ↓

Cool heat map of traffic accidents across the US built on Bing with VisualFusion and Silverlight.

Lately there’s been quite a bit of buzz about SilverX, an application that claims to convert Flash files to Silverlight. The SilverX website does a good job of outlining the features and benefits of the application but there was little information on how it handles Actionscript.

Is this the Holy Grail for Flash developers looking to use the Adobe IDE to build Silverlight applications? We decided to put it through the paces to see what it’s all about.

Install
Installing SilverX is straightforward and it provides an uninstaller in the application folder if you decide to remove it. One thing I didn’t expect was that it inserted a splash page to Expression Blend. A nice touch, and useful as I wouldn’t have immediately known that it added items to my ‘File’ menu.

Converting a Flash file to Silverlight
For the first test I decided to load a fairly complicated Flash application that I had built as a prototype for a touch screen picture frame. The reason I chose this file was because it had no externally loaded assets, it was built as one fat .SWF with embedded images.

The Flash to Silverlight conversion process only took a few seconds

Oops, a warning that Actionscript was not supported. Not surprising.

Having a look at the output, it created a folder with 3 areas that were very well organized.

• Preview containing the original .swf, the .xap Silverlight app and supporting HTML/JS
• Resources containing all the placed assets in the .swf
• Solution containing the .sln and Silverlight project files

Running the application
Upon launching the application I found that none of the Actionscript was implemented, but all of the artwork came over nicely. Below is a preview of both the original .SWF and the .XAP outputs.

Note that this is a large file (2.7mb) with no preloader as it was originally indented to be run locally.

Original Flash version | Flash converted to Silverlight with SilverX

Another test
I knew that converting such a complicated app was a lot to ask, so I ran another test with something much more basic. This is a timeline based animation of a crane unfolding that I had used for the 1000CranesOfHope.com website.

As you can see from the examples the conversion of the animation was flawless. The only thing it missed was some Actionscript that sets the visibility of my guide asset to false and a stop action at the end of the timeline.

Original Flash version | Flash converted to Silverlight with SilverX

Conclusion
Considering that I was running version 1.2 of the application I’d say it’s very solid. Is it the Holy Grail for flash developers who are looking to build Silverlight applications with the Adobe IDE? No. But SilverX never said it was. Maybe in future releases we’ll see support for Actionscript conversion, but I imagine that is a huge undertaking and in the end may not be all that useful.

The strength of SilverX is in its ability to quickly and cleanly extract assets, vector graphics and timeline based animations from .swf files. If you’re a Flash developer that needs a jump start on a Flash to Silverlight project SilverX is a must have in your application toolbox.

Joel Neubeck has posted an article on capturing the Webcam in Silverlight 4. The article includes source code and covers JPG storage to the local file system via FJCore.

Starting today you can access Bing Maps via a new Silverlight interface by visiting this Bing Maps Beta URL

In addition to all of the standard Bing Map features the Silverlight interface seamlessly blends between map, satellite, and birds eye views. It also offers context sensitive links to Photosynths, online photo galleries and points of interest.

Eye on Earth is a joint venture between Microsoft and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) to make environmental information more accessible to European citizens. The application uses Windows Azure to gather information from 6,000 air quality monitoring stations and plot them to a Bing Map with a Sliverlight front end.

Microsoft announced that Windows Embedded CE, now has Silverlight included. Full article @ arstechnica.com

The Expression Studio 3 Trial is now available for download. The full version which costs $599 (or $349 upgrade) is available for preorder.

Expression Studio 3 includes:

• Expression Blend 3 with SketchFlow
• Expression Web 3
• Expression Design 3
• Expression Encoder 3

Michael Scherotter posts that MySpace and Microsoft will jointly release an SDK on Thursday, April 2.

The SDK will be available on CodePlex and consist of two Silverlight class library assemblies, OpenSocial.dll and MyOpenSpace.dll. Michael gives an example on his blog and there is a little more info on the MySpace Dveloper Wiki.

Wow, it seems like the web is a buzz about Blend 3 ever since I got back from MIX09. It’s great to see that the Silverlight community has a good head of steam leading up to the release of Silverlight 3.

Here’s a quick roundup of news, tips and tricks that I’ve happened upon this week.

Tutorials

• Introducing sample data support in Blend 3
• Communication between Silverlight applications on the client side
• Using Silverlight 3’s Writable Bitmap
• Using Behaviors : A Quick Walkthrough
• Silverlight Smooth Streaming: UX Simulator
• Controlling an object using the Keydown function in Silverlight
• Using Blur to make Dialogs Pop in Silverlight 3

Tips & Tricks

• Styling a slider control
• Using Integers for Layout Calculations
• Silverlight 3 Out-of-browser Update Model
• Having trouble connecting to localhost when running your application from Visual Studio?
• Team Foundation Server support in Blend 3

News

• What’s new on the DataGrid control in Silverlight 3 Beta
• SketchFlow – Sketching and Prototyping in Expression Blend

I really wish I had the energy to write a thoughtful piece about MIX09. But to be honest, it’s been more of a whirlwind than I had anticipated. After a 5 hour flight from Boston put us in Las Vegas at 1:30am, there was a mixup with my room. As it turned out, the first two rooms that I was assigned were already occupied. Of course I didn’t find this out until I walked into each one. It did teach me that people don’t appreciate strangers walking into their hotel rooms at 2:00 am though. Oops.

On the upside, after 2 return trips to the front desk I was upgraded to a pimp suite on the 32nd floor. As I’m writing this I’m sitting in the living room of a 4 room suite with 3 HD TV’s, 3 sinks, 2 bathrooms a Jacuzzi and full bar. Life is good.

One thing I can say is that the most impressive part of day was the keynote piece about SketchFlow in Expression Blend 3. I really can’t wait to get back to the office and start working with it.

Here are some random photos from the day, and a gratuitous shot of the suite. More later.