Products

Last year (well, really early this year), Scott created a version of Conway's game of life in Silverlight.  Now he's created a physics simulation of a swinging rope using an algorithm he picked up from Gamasutra.  Note that this sample is written using the Silverlight v1.0 beta, so all of these calculations are performed using the browser's script engine and the perf is definitely respectable.

Chris Cavanagh, physics modeler extraordinaire, has created a Silverlight based physics modeler.  This is a fun sample to play with but I noticed in his blog post that he's using the HtmlTimer.  This class is a wrapper on the javascript setInterval method and as such has a relatively low priority for calling back to the user.  This is why the class is marked obsolete.  The best way to build a high priority timer in the Silverlight v1.1 alpha is to use a XAML animation and hook it’s completed event.  The Lumines video player I wrote uses this.

David Anson has created an XPS viewer using the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha.  This app is a very cool idea and really highlights the possibilities of the XAML ecosystem.  David's blog post has more information on how this app was created and he's also posted source.  Hopefully we can fix the downloader crash he found when opening an XPS .zip file before v1 of Silverlight ships this summer.  Click the image below to run the sample.

Jeff has been working to build an ASP.NET 2.0 sample app to search and index comic books called MyComix.  The design for this was done by Kevin Goldman.  Recently Jeff added a Silverlight based cover viewer for each comic that lets you flip the book over and see the front and back.  This is a very cool 3D effect faked using 2D transforms. 

For more information and source visit Jeff's blog posts on MyComix and the Silverlight viewer.

Curious about Silverlight application's source code? Ernie Booth has created great Silverlight plug-in for Lutz Roeder's Reflector.

It's cool to be able to look at the other guy's source code, but what to do when you want to protect your code? Using Obfuscation is the answer you are looking for ;) Have fun!

Ernie has created a Silverlight plug-in for Lutz Roeder’s Reflector.  Reflector can already be used to view Silverlight v1.1 CLR assemblies, but this plug-in enables you to look at the code for any Silverlight app (managed or javascript) simply by providing the URL.  This is very handy tool for anyone looking to get into Silverlight development as it lets you quickly answer the “How’d they do that?” question.  Of course with this comes the inevitable issue of IP protection.  Ernie’s post has more information on that topic and a set of good links for obfuscating managed code.

Dave has put together a great set of Silverlight controls written in C# that include layout containers a textbox with text selection.  The controls in the package are:

• Layout framework
• LayoutControl and LayoutContainerControl base control classes
• Border
• StackPanel
• Grid
• Label
• Button (XAML courtesy of Mike Harsh)
• TextBox

More information and source are in Dave's post.

Ok, as Blend continues its march, my mind starts moving to things I might do with it. And, naturally, one of the thoughts I've been having, is to write a game in it. There are plenty of technical aspects I need to work out... but here's what I'm thinking.

It's a "Turn Based RTS". Yup... let's start off with an oxymoron.

I can't remember the game, but in my old Commodore 64 gaming days, I remember a game where you'd give individual orders to each of your units, hit "End Turn", and it would go into RT mode and you'd see the moves carried out. I.e. you could tell unit A to move from location X to location Y, and consider enemy B to be the primary target.

Just a quick note to remind you that "WPF/E" is indeed a cross platform presentation technology. Look at the screenshots of the http://channel9.msdn.com/playground/wpfe/Sprawl/default.html samples on Firefox, Mac and IE7 (yes it also works also on IE6)