2007 April | Lazycoder

30Apr/070

My first Silverlight experience on Safari

Open Safari after installing the plug in.

Drag the “default.html” from the Chess/Run folder in the 1.1 SDK into Safari.

Wait while the beach ball spins.

Boom.

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0×0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0×0002) at 0×00000000

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 <<00000000>> 0×00000000 0 + 0
1 slr.dll 0x07b32dd0 CreateManagedRuntime + 656 (SLRuntime.cpp:52)
2 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x05987e94 CMacServices::CLR_Startup(CRuntimeHost*) + 212
3 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x058fe058 CCoreServices::CLR_Startup() + 320
4 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x058fbfc0 CCoreServices::DownloadCustomAssembly(unsigned long, wchar_t*) + 72
5 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x059b9734 CParser::StartElement(unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, unsigned long) + 520
6 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x059bae14 CParser::LoadXaml(CCoreServices*, unsigned long, unsigned char*, IDependencyObject*, IDependencyObject**, long) + 1252
7 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x058fe974 CCoreServices::LoadXaml(unsigned long, unsigned char*, IDependencyObject**) + 388
8 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0597ba44 CMacBrowserHost::put_Source(unsigned long, unsigned char*, void*, void (*)(void*, unsigned long, IDependencyObject*, IDependencyObject*, wchar_t*, long, IScriptObject*)) + 316
9 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0597be1c CMacBrowserHost::GotResponse(IPALDownloadResponse*, long) + 228
10 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0597a574 CMacBrowserHost::CallResponseCallbacks(RequestInfo*, unsigned long, wchar_t*, unsigned long, wchar_t*) + 536
11 com.microsoft.WPFePlugin 0x0596b438 PluginObject::Write(_NPStream*, long, long, void*) + 364

(sigh)

Futzed around some more. Now I get a Javascript error from Silverlight when I load the page, if I reload the page it bombs out and Safari crashes. Who says Macs don’t crash, they do if they are running Microsoft code! My guess is that the 1.1 version of Silverlight is Intel OS X only.(sigh again). Is it even worth it to try playing around with it at this stage? I may try on my Windows PC (after I create a Virtual machine and install the alpha there). Just when you think Microsoft has changed, same crap different platform.

Filed under: .NET, MacOS, Technology No Comments

30Apr/070

Downloading Silverlight for OS X

As of 10:15PM on 4/30/2007 when you download either Silverlight 1.1 alpha or 1.0 beta for OS X, the disk image downloads with a .BZ2 file extension. If you unzip the BZ2 file and try to mount the disk image, you’ll get an error message. To fix the problem, just remove the BZ2 extension and you can mount the image normally.

Filed under: .NET, Apple, MacOS No Comments

30Apr/070

What do you really get with Silverlight?

Microsoft Changes the Development Game

Microsoft now has an officially-supported cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework. That’s cross-platform folks, not just cross-browser. That means, in the not too distant future those cool .NET apps you’ve been working so hard on (you HAVE been building apps on .NET, right?) will run on a Mac too.

Everybody hold on with the “.NET Framework running on a Mac” stuff. What do you REALLY get in the Silverlight plugin for Safari?

The CLR in the browser – You get an embedded version of the Common Language Runtime. This means you can run IL code in the plugin. Remember the CLR is NOT the .NET Framework.
A subset of the .NET Framework. For sure it includes LINQ and some Networking classes. ~~I haven’t found a full list of what namespaces are included in the Siilverlight plugin but it’s still early.~~ Chances are your only options for getting data in will be JSON via Javascript or XMl. No live connections to SQL Server or Oracle databases from your Silverlight application.

Edit: The full list of namespaces and types included in the Silverlight plugin are listed in the .CHM documentation under the “Silverlight Managed Referece” section.

Filed under: .NET, Technology No Comments

30Apr/070

Mix 07 Keynote announcements

Well one out of three isn’t bad. Although you could stretch a bit and say that the embedded CLR in Silverlight qualifies as a “universal gadget platform”. One thing noticeably absent, any mention of time lines. We already knew that Silverlight was going to contain the CLR, they announced it last year at Mix ’06. So I’m not going to salivate over that too much. So actually that was a little bit of a non-announcement.

The ability to use dynamic languages in Silverlight applications is a bit of a non-starter. What does it really mean? Is it just another block on the “skinnable languages” aspect of the CLR? I think one thing it means for sure, you can’t just plop a Rails or Django application into your .NET project and have it run. The Rails framework is more than just Ruby code. One question that I do have: Does this mean that managed JScript actually supports closures and dynamic typing now? Is managed JScript ACTUALLY ECMA/Javascript?

What I’m really looking for is a chart showing me which technology I should choose when developing my next web application. ASP.NET + AJAX? Silverlight? WPF? Microsoft is falling farther into a technology maze.

Filed under: .NET, Languages, Technology No Comments

30Apr/070

Cnet touts the return of the “cloud”

Microsoft opens up on Web strategy at Mix07

The development of the Windows Live Platform is part of an ongoing effort, called Windows Live Core, spearheaded by Ozzie, executives said. The idea is to provide services to build applications that operate in the Internet “cloud” and that can tap into distributed sources of information, according to the company’s description.

Looks like someone at C/NET found their old Hailstorm brochure and decided to write a story about it. Considering they are also stating that Microsoft will release a web site about Silverlight …. Well, welcome to two weeks ago C/NET.

edit: well I’ll be, they DID release a web site for Silverlight.

Filed under: Technology No Comments

27Apr/070

People communicate more effectively visually

I found this comment by Charles Petzold (yes, THAT Charles Petzold) on a book review Jeff Atwood did of his latest WPF book to be … interesting.

I’ve been mulling over Coding Horror’s analysis of two WPF books, not really thrilled about it, of course. The gist of it is that modern programming books should have color, bullet points, boxes, color, snippets, pictures, color, scannability, and color.

Does that remind you of anything?

Apparently the battle for the future of written communication is over. Prose is dead. PowerPoint has won.

The part that I find interesting is that the book in question is about programming against the Windows Presentation Framework. The framework that lets the user communicate visually with your program. Human beings communicate most effectively using visual cues. Body language. A glance. A frantic hand waving can signal danger quicker than words. When we want to understand whether the stock market is going up or down. Which more effectively conveys that information? A long list of numbers for the last 5 days. Or a line chart with “time” along the bottom?

The color that Jeff mentions the Nathan book having isn’t light pastel pages with bright pink numbers. The words aren’t candy coated Comic-Sans. The color is syntax highlighting, something that has increased programmer productivity for years now. It quickly allows you to pick out the languages key words from your text. The pictures aren’t of kittens and puppies, they are pictures of the output of the code being discussed. It’s the same reason the instructions for your IKEA bookshelf contain a picture of the final product and hardly any words. If you don’t know what you are building, how do you know when you’ve built it.

If the visual aspect of communication wasn’t all that important Mr. Petzold, why didn’t you write a “building applications for the windows command line” book?