Silverlight

WCF RIA Services V1.0 SP2–available

November 7, 2013 .NET, .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Microsoft, RIA Services, Silverlight, Visual Studio 2013, VisualStudio, VS2010, VS2012, WCF, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 No comments

Latest update for WCF RIA Services v 1.0 includes support for Windows 8.1 and VS2010, 2012, 2013.

Version: 4.1.61829.0 | Date Published: 11/5/2013

Little about WCF RIA Services

“ WCF RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier. “

[Quote – Microsoft]

Download WCF RIA Services v1.0 SP2

Download Windows Phone SDK 8.0 Final (Online and Offline standalone Installer)

October 31, 2012 .NET, All, C#.NET, Community, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, MSDN, Silverlight, VisualStudio, VS2012, Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7.5, Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone 8.0 SDK, Windows Phone Development, Windows Phone SDK, WinJS 7 comments

Microsoft has announced the release to manufacturing(RTM) for Windows Phone 8 on 29th OCT 2012 and as announced on the sameday – Microsoft has released Windows Phone 8 SDK for developers on 30th OCT 2012.

The Windows Phone SDK 8.0 is a full-featured development environment to use for building apps and games for Windows Phone 8.0 and Windows Phone 7.5.

The Windows Phone SDK provides a stand-alone Visual Studio Express 2012 edition for Windows Phone or works as an add-in to Visual Studio 2012 Professional, Premium or Ultimate editions.
With the SDK, you can use your existing programming skills and code to build managed or native code apps. In addition, the SDK includes multiple emulators and additional tools for profiling and testing your Windows Phone app under real-world conditions.

System Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 8, Windows 8 PRO/ENTERPRISE

CPU – 64bit Processor with Virtualization support required.

If you are a Windows Phone developer, you can download the new SDK from the below links:

DOWNLOAD:

Windows Phone SDK – Online Installer (packages will be downloaded while installing – *requires Internet Connection)

Windows Phone SDK – Offline Standalone Installer (FULL ISO DVD Image – 1.6 GB)

Note: this release is also available in .iso format. Choose one of the following options for handling downloaded ISO images:

(Recommended) Write the image file to a blank DVD.
(Alternative) Mount the image file virtually as DVD devices.

For Windows Phone SDK 8.0 documentation and samples, see the Windows Phone Dev Center.

Source and additional references: Windows Phone Dev Center & Microsoft Download Center

Windows Phone Design Guidelines

Windows Phone Developer Guidelines

Windows Phone Publisher Guidelines

Windows Phone Community

Introducing IIS Transform Manager & IIS Smooth Streaming – Stream your Media files through IIS

October 26, 2012 All, Community, Expression, Expression Encoder, Expression Encoder PRO, Featured, IIS, IIS 7, IIS 7.5, IIS Media Services, IIS Smooth Streaming, IIS Transform Manager, IIS8, MSDN, Silverlight, Windows Phone, Windows Phone Development, Windows Phone SDK No comments

Few weeks back one of my colleague asked for some help on setting up an IIS Smooth Streaming capability for an iOS application.

Users will be uploading the videos to Servers.
We wanted to stream videos on demand to iOS Devices such as iPhone, iPod, iPad.
Inorder to stream we have to convert the video in to a streamable format compatible for iOS Devices.
I introduced them to the IIS Media Services and Smooth Streaming.
What we have to look is creating multiple encoded files automatically upon video upload to the server.
Using Expression Encoder Tool we can manually encode video bits or create templates for different types of encoding, and stream them through the IIS Smooth Streaming capability.
Since Encoding is a manual process we need some kind of automated or scheduled job that would generate necessary client compatible compressed video bits based on the template we specified.
Automated or scheduled or OnDemand tasks can be achieved using IIS Transform Manager – you will read more about in below sections.

Read more About IIS Smooth Streaming:

Smooth Streaming, an IIS Media Services extension, enables adaptive streaming of media to Silverlight and other clients over HTTP. Smooth Streaming provides a high-quality viewing experience that scales massively on content distribution networks, making true HD 1080p media experiences a reality.

To create Smooth Streaming presentations, the same source content is encoded at several quality levels, typically with each level in its own complete file, using a compression tool such as Expression Encoder PRO.

Content is delivered using a Smooth Streaming-enabled IIS origin server.

After the IIS origin server receives a request for media, it will dynamically create cacheable virtual fragments from the video files and deliver the best content possible to each client.

The benefit of this virtual fragment approach is that the content owner can manage complete files rather than thousands of pre-segmented content files.

[QUOTING from Official IIS Site – Smooth Streaming]

Using smooth stream we can stream videos that are compatible for iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad, AppleTV[iTV].

I am not going to explain these in more detail, you may can refer to Scott Hanselman’s blog on Smooth Streaming and From Alex Zambelli’s blog for complete picture of the smooth streaming process.

IIS Transform Manager:

IIS Transform Manager is an extensible media transform engine that enables “watch folder” job submission, queuing, management, integrated media transcoding/container format repackaging, and batch-encryption of on-demand audio and video files.

IIS Transform Manager Runs encoding tasks to convert media files to on-demand Smooth Streams for Silverlight clients and Apple mobile digital devices.

One example of a media transform is transcoding Windows Media-formatted and MP4-formatted files, or other encoder-supported file formats, to on-demand Smooth Streams for delivery to Smooth Streaming-compatible clients (such as Silverlight).

Another example is repackaging Smooth Streaming fragments encoded with H.264 (AVC) video and AAC-LC audio codecs to MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-2 TS) segments for delivery to Apple® mobile digital devices.

Transform Manager can be integrated with the IIS Smooth Streaming feature in IIS Media Services, which delivers the converted content.

The default installation of Transform Manager includes a transcoding task that uses encoding presets that require the encoding profiles and Silverlight player templates provided by Microsoft® Expression Encoder 4 SP2.

You can choose from a variety of encoding presets, be sure to install the edition of Expression Encoder 4 that meets your needs:

H.264 encoding presets are only supported by Expression Encoder 4 Pro.

VC-1 encoding presets are supported by Expression Encoder 4 Pro and by Expression Encoder 4, which is included in a free Trial version of Expression Studio 4.

NB: After you install your edition of Expression Encoder 4, install Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 with Service Pack 2 (SP2).

DOWNLOAD:

You can download latest version IIS Transform Manager from the below link for appropriate architecture.

IIS Transform Manager 1.1 (RTW) – 32-bit

IIS Transform Manager 1.1 (RTW) – 64-bit

Additional References:

Smooth Streaming Architecture by Alex Zambelli
Installing and Setting Up and Encoding for IIS 7 Smooth Streaming and Silverlight – By Scott Hanselman
Getting Started with IIS Smooth Streaming

For step-by-step guidance about how to encode Smooth Streaming video using Expression Encoder and deliver it to clients from your Smooth Streaming Web server, see the Smooth Streaming Deployment Guide.

Content Sources & Credits: IIS.NET, MICROSOFT DOWNLOAD CENTER

How to–Install Windows Phone 7.1 SDK in Windows 8

September 10, 2012 .NET, All, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, Mobile-Development, Silverlight, Windows Phone, Windows Phone "Apollo", Windows Phone 7.0, Windows Phone 7.5, Windows Phone 7.8, Windows Phone Development, Windows Phone SDK 7 comments

I have seen people keep complaining that they are unable to install Windows Phone SDK 7.1 on Windows 8 and they ended up unable to develop Windows Phone applications using Visual Studio 2010.

I am going to give you some tips in getting Windows Phone SDK installed on your Windows 8 PC along with Visual Studio 2010(Express, Pro, Premium or Ultimate) according to your choice of development using Visual Studio IDE.

To get started with Windows Phone SDK on Windows 8, we requires the following installation packages:

1. Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable

2. Windows Phone SDK 7.1 – Web Install or Full ISO Download (Recommended: is full ISO download, some packages might get corrupted in download)

3. Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update (WPSDK-7.1.1-KB2669191-x86.exe – support for Windows 8, Tango build– 256MB and 512MB emulator support – Also this update fixes an issue that prevents the emulator in the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 from working correctly on Windows 8.)

Note:

Assuming that you already have Visual Studio 2010 RTM + Service Pack 1 installed.
The Windows Phone SDK 7.1 is compatible with the final version of Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

I am using a 90 day trial version of Windows 8 Enterprise for this article.

Step 0: Install Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable from http://www.xbox.com/en-US/LIVE/PC/DownloadClient. – this will help you with successful installation of XNA Game Studio.

Step 1: Mount the Windows Phone 7.1 SDK ISO file(WPSDKv71_en1.iso) (it is easier with Windows 8, just double click on ISO – Windows 8 will create virtual dvd drive and loads the ISO contents to it.

Step 2: Double click on “Setup.exe” , you will see a warning prompt like below – select “Run the Program without getting help”

Now the installation will continue as normal.

Step 3: Installation will complete and For some cases at the end of you will see a warning message that – the XNA Game Studio 4.0 and Visual Studio Extensions for XNA Game Studio 4.0 are failed, because you did not have Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable installed. That is fine – you would not be needing XNA Game Studio if you are only planning to develop Windows Phone application using Silverlight.

Alternate Steps to install XNA Game Studio

a.) Before continuing further, download and install the latest version of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable from http://www.xbox.com/en-US/LIVE/PC/DownloadClient. or you can install this setup first and then install Windows Phone 7.1 SDK.

b.) Now Go to the WCUWindowsPhone folder in the ISO,

c.) Right click on XNAGS40_Setup.exe – Select run in compatibility mode for Window 7 or Windows XP.

d.) Select Privilege Level –> “Run the program as an Administrator“

e.) Right click on the XNAGS40_Setup.exe – select “Run as Administrator” from the context menu, you will see the Program Compatibility Assistant warning

f.) Select “Run the Program without getting help”

g.) Click “next” to continue

h.) Specify the firewall setup as mentioned below or you can continue by selecting “No, I do not want these rules enabled.”

i.) Now the installation will continue and you will receive a completed dialogue at the end.

i.) After installation is complete successfully – install “sde_xde2-enu,msi”(for 32bit or x86) or “sde_xde2x64-enu.msi”(for 64 bit or AMD64) – depending on whether you have 64bit or 32bit OS.

Step 4: Now you can install Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update (WPSDK-7.1.1-KB2669191-x86.exe)

The 7.1.1 Update is really just that – it’s an update to the existing WPSDK: it doesn’t add much in the way of new features to your WPSDK installation; it updates your existing install to do a few new tricks:

The Visual Studio IDE is patched to enable selection from a list of emulators, and launching it (note that the WPSDK can only support connecting to one at a time, though)

The Windows Phone [512 MB device] emulator image is updated to use build 8773

A second, new emulator device image is included, allowing you to emulate running your app on a 256 MB device

The Microsoft Advertising SDK is updated to the latest version (previously only available as a separate install ), which fixes some issues devs were encountering at runtime

IntelliSense now supports specifying the 512 MB device requirement in your manifest file, should you choose to opt your app out from running on the new 256 MB devices

Language support is again consistent both in the IDE (the 7.1.1 Update supports all 10 of the WPSDK 7.1 languages) and in the emulator OS (Malay and Indonesian have been added)

Ref Source

Voila!, now you are ready to start Windows Phone 7.x development with Visual Studio 2012 SP1 on Windows 8.

1.) You can see the Windows Phone project templates in Visual Studio 2010

2.) Select the target version of your App

3.) Emulator Selection drop down in Visual Studio 2010

4.) See the debugging on Windows Phone emulator

Step 5: Sit and enjoy with Windows Phone Development

Hope this tips were helpful. Please leave your comments, if you are facing any issues. I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview opens for existing application developers Sept. 12

September 6, 2012 .NET, All, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, Silverlight, VisualStudio, VS2012, Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone Development, Windows Phone SDK 1 comment

In an announcement by Todd Brix Microsoft Windows Phone team blog has commenced that Windows Phone 8 SDK near to final preview can be available for existing Windows Phone application developers through Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview Program.

More details about Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview Program, and how existing developers can get going by subscribing to this program will be provided later by Todd.

<code>&lt;p&gt;You can read the announcement blog &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/windows-phone-8-sdk-preview-opens-for-applications-sept-12.aspx" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nitrix-reloaded.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/windows-phone-8-start.jpg"&gt;&lt;img style="background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px" title="windows-phone-8-start" border="0" alt="windows-phone-8-start" src="http://www.nitrix-reloaded.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/windows-phone-8-start_thumb.jpg" width="540" height="339" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;Looking through the announcement Todd has made it clear that only existing application developers with Published App will be able to join this program. &lt;/p&gt;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;u&gt;Just quoting from Todd’s blog for your convenience:&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;  &lt;blockquote&gt;   &lt;p&gt;Today I’m happy to announce that the time has come to make the near-final kit available to more developers through the Windows Phone 8 SDK Preview Program. Next Wednesday I’ll share detailed instructions on how current Windows Phone developers with published apps can apply. But I do want to set your expectations that program access will be limited.&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p&gt;The full Windows Phone 8 SDK will be made publically available later this year when we unveil Windows Phone 8. Until then, we believe this program offers more published developers a way to explore the SDK and get started on the next wave of amazing Windows Phone apps.&lt;/p&gt;    &lt;p&gt;Look for more details Wednesday, September 12.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
</code>

Facebook C# SDK v6.0.22 RTW with Windows 8 and .NET 4.5 is released

August 27, 2012 .NET, .NET Framework, All, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, C#.NET, Featured, KnowledgeBase, Microsoft, Microsoft SDKs, Silverlight, Social, VisualStudio, VS2012, Windows, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Windows Phone Development, Windows Phone SDK, WPF No comments

Facebook v6.0.22 RTW with official support for Windows 8 and .NET 4.5 released. The Facebook C# SDK helps .Net developers build web, desktop, phone and metro style applications that integrate with Facebook.

In order to use this SDK with your C# solutions you have the following options.

Download Facebook C# SDK from NUGET (NuGet is a package manager for Visual Studio integrated with Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and above. For a brief overview of what NuGet is, see NuGet overview.)

You can get Facebook C# SDK source from Github and build use the libraries on your own (see Building Facebook C# SDK from Source), and you may also have to read Facebook developer documentation. (Official documentation from Facebook)

You can see additional documentation on http://csharpsdk.org/ (Official website of Facebook C# SDK) and http://csharpsdk.org/docs/ (Documentations).

You can like and follow the updates about Facebook C# SDK @ Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/csharpsdk .

I hope this helps with your development.