GDC

I still haven't comprehended last weeks news. Iphone SDK 3 resides still untouched on my harddisk as well as the silverlight 3 beta.
The Microsoft Web Platform Installer told me I couldn't install Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio side by side with Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio. The Web Platform Installer can not, however, save me some trouble and automatically uninstall the Silverlight 2 Tools for Visual Studio. Waiting for new Ram Bars to arrive (yummy). I have to set up a new testing system for all those beta and alpha stuff from last week.

Still the information flow is far from depleting and instead crushing my mind for another week as this week's GDC is rolling big. Lots and lots and lots of information about independent and commercial games and game development. If you're interested, you can check on GAMASUTRA, they cover the conference really well.

MIX09

As I already assumed yesterday, the mix09 seems to bring up a very interesting week.
The keynote was packed with announcements, I will try to sum up the most important ones, also as a note for myself to keep track of what I have to try out or look forward to:

Expression Web 3.0

• contains "SuperPreview", a smooth way to check your web pages for browser compatibility, works for firefox, ie 6,7,8, safari, all inside expression web, seems to be a clever solution to adapt web pages to the different browsers.
• Superpreview beta as standalone for IE6,7,8 is available today if I got that right

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 AVAILABLE TODAY

Microsoft Web Platform Installer (available now!)

• with all the web tools and visual studio addons and stuff like that, Microsoft has finally put together a great tool to keep track what you have installed on your pc and what can install additionally or where updates are available without having to bother or check where you get all this stuff from. Very useful addition! Very nice!
  

Windows Web App Gallery (available now!)

• From the Platform installer or from microsoft.com/web/gallery there's also a lot of web applications available for browsing and install, applications, frameworks, all that stuff like dotnetnuk, wordpress, ...
  
• You can also add your own applications here
• asp.net and php applications

Azure

• inclusion of fastcgi/php
• .net full trust applications now possible
• raw ado.net support
• on track for commercial release later this year

Virtual Earth Silverlight SDK available today!!!

Worldwide Telescope Silverlight available today!!!

Silverlight3

• GPU support for scaling and transformation (for windows and mac!!!)
  
• new codec support
• raw bitstream audio/video api (for developing own codecs)
• improved logging support
• perspectice 3d
• bitmap and pixel apis
• pixelshader effects
• page-framework (deep search, navigation (browser back, etc))
• cleartype support
• multitouch support
• out of the browser support
• installer 40k smaller than silverlight2
• beta available for download today !!!

Expression Blend 3

• beta available today!!!
  
• Support for direct import from Photoshop or Illustrator
• Sketchflow (amazing workflow tool for the application design process)
• Generate Word Documentation from Sketchflow
• Eclipse Support for Silverlight for the Mac

IIS Media services (available today!!!)

And of course much more detail coming in the sessions during the next few days, ASP.NET 4, Visual Studio 2010, etc etc

Pretty much amazing.

Go check out http://live.visitmix.com/ for mor information.

I guess I will start downloading the Microsoft Web Platform Installer right away...


Have fun!

Lots of news for developers this week (?)(!)

This is an interesting week for developers. I am currently downloading the iPhone SDK 3.0 beta and the iPhone OS 3.0 beta.
What's new? Well a short list of the interesting new features:

• selling additional in game content (this is very interesting for developers who want to sell addon levels, content subscriptions, etc.)
• p2p connectivity via bluetooth (interesting for games or sharing data in applications)
  
• third-party-accessory-apps (allows developers to create and interface hardware extensions for the iPhone to be connected to the iPhone dock connector)
• push-notification (no real running in background for developer apps, but push notification support)
• api to utilize google maps in developer applications
• corelocation support for turn by turn for developer apps (but developer has to use his own maps here if maps are needed)
• cut and paste (well, at last...)
• mms (i never use mms on the phone, but a strongly demanded feature by iPhone users)
  
• landscape mode and landscape keyboard in most apple applications (mail, stocks, etc)
• voice memos
• spotlight search through all key applications and emails (local and on imap servers)
• support for stereo blutooth headphones (only iphone 3g)

iPhone OS 3.0 will be shipping in summer. beta SDK and beta OS are available now.

check arstechnica for more information (or any of the other billion news sites of your choice).

I will post some more on this topic when I find the time to play around with the new sdk or decide to install iPhone OS 3.0 beta on my phone.

Now waiting for MiX09 (with surely much developer news from microsoft (ie8, silverlight3, windows7 rc, asp.net mvc ... ?? ) to start...

XNA 2D games come to the browser via Silverlight

Wow, this seems to be an amazing piece of work. This is not about Silverlight 3 yet, but I suppose there might be some interesting announcements on MIX09 in a few days. Still hoping for some 3d support and stuff.
But what this post is about, is Silversprite, a codeplex project that actually will run your XNA 2D games in Silverlight with "no" code changes. I will try this out later. Seems pretty amazing.

Story on Ars

Link to Silversprite project on Codeplex

Video on Channel9

First Entry

Ok now... I'm going to try and post some thoughts in this blog. Let's see how this will work and how long I will be able to keep focus.

Cheers!