UX Strategy Musings from Will Tschumy, Microsoft User Experience Evangelist

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Firefox3 and Silverlight misbehaving on your site? Read this

July 3rd, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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Silverlight logoSo this is, admittedly, a little outside of what I usually talk about, but wanted to share with you, my dedicated reader(s):

In order to support Firefox 3, websites built using the Silverlight 1.0 Sivlerlight.js file must upgrade that file to the latest version. In addition to supporting Firefox 3, the latest version of the file also adds several new features including the ability to automatically refresh the browser once the user installs Silverlight. You can learn about all of the new features in the readme file.

If you have already updated your website to use the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Silverlight.js file or you instantiate Silverlight using the ASP.Net Silverlight control then no further action is needed. Otherwise, to obtain the latest version of Silverlight.js please visit the Silverlight.js MSDN Code Gallery Web site:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/silverlightjs

For most pages, the upgrade process will only require that you replace the current Silverlight.js file with the new version. However, the latest version of Silverlight.js removes several deprecated members from the file’s object model:

o Silverlight.ua

o Silverlight.available

o Silverlight.detectUserAgent

o Silverlight.supportedUserAgent

If your website uses any of these members then you can find workarounds in the readme file associated with this release.

You can also check out this blog post from my friend and colleague, Tim H.

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Related Posts:
-  Silverlight and Expression Resources on the web
-  “WPF/e” is Silverlight
-  Linerider Launches today – powered by Silverlight 2 and Windows Live Services
-  Announcing Express Yourself
-  Great Post from Cynergy, A RIA-focused UX agency

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Linerider Launches today – powered by Silverlight 2 and Windows Live Services

June 30th, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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www.linerider.com – Click “Play Now”

clip_image001Today, InXile launched the redesigned LineRider.com, exclusively powered by Silverlight2 and Windows Live Services.

Line Rider is a casual gaming site with between 1.5 & 2M Monthly Unique users.  In addition to the old, Flash based game, they have also just launched console versions of their game for the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3.  In Late May, they began a contest with McDonald’s, supported by a nation-wide television ad buy.  Check out the nationally broadcast commercial here.

WR DPE began working with Line Rider several months ago, converting applicatioclip_image002n environment from LAMP to Windows 2008 / SQL Server 2008.  In late April, I was approached by Line Rider’s Director of Online Businesses to explore a Silverlight port because of usability problems inherent with the Flash version of the game.

Over the course of 2 weeks, we developed a scope of work that included substantially enhancing the social aspects of the game through integrating Windows Live Messenger, Contacts and LiveID.  You can now save your game

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tracks locally or in the cloud, send those track to your friends via Live Messenger, and chat with friends while in the game.  Once we established scope, we engaged Cynergy Systems (Winners of the Phizzpop Design Challenge) to design and build the application.  This was a roughly 6 week engagement.

clip_image006

Line Rider, powered by Silverlight2 and Windows Live Services launched today!

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Related Posts:
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-  About Will Tschumy
-  Why I’m excited about the next version of Windows, code name "7"
-  Firefox3 and Silverlight misbehaving on your site? Read this
-  XBox 360: Back to nostalga

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Why Design Matters

June 25th, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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I gave this presentation at Incubation Week on Monday at our Silicon Valley campus.  I hope you enjoy it!

 

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Related Posts:
-  Phizzpop Design Challenge LA: December 6th
-  Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed
-  See Will Here: TiE Panel discussion on July 26th, 6-9pm Santa Clara, CA
-  Come to MIX08 - see the sights, follow the UX track, take in a panel
-  The question I keep getting asked…

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Silverlight and Expression Resources on the web

June 17th, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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I’ll admit, I can’t take credit for pulling this together - Arturo Toledo, one of our great Technical Product Managers (he’s also an awesome guy), did and I wanted to share it with you, our loyal reader(s).

Silverlight

· To learn more about Silverlight visit the Silverlight Community site. This site includes tons of tutorials, videos, getting started information, samples and a showcase where you can see the latest sites created with Silverlight

· One of the best online resources is the library of videos from the latest MIX event in Las Vegas. These are many dozens of hours of videos that talk about Silverlight and User Experience - http://sessions.visitmix.com/

· The Silverlight Reference includes the nitty gritty of Silverlight. Covering both versions of Silverlight you will find detailed information on all functions, events, properties and objects as well as useful examples - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404708.aspx

· Microsoft Learning has also created some fun Silverlight Snacks that provide you with high level information on Silverlight

· Mike and Mike’s Silverlight Webcast series is great (mainly aimed at developers but also useful for you as a designer) - http://www.miketaulty.com/SLVideos.html

· Tim Sneath is one of the most popular bloggers in Microsoft. He is a developer but his posts will be very useful for you too: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/

· Lynda.com has produced a free Silverlight series. Please note this is Silverlight 1 but might still be useful for you in order to understand some basic concepts of Silverlight - http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=473

· Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 Feature Matrix. Learn more about the differences between Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 - http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/overview.aspx

Expression

· Visit the Microsoft Expression site for more information about the Expression tools, video tours, feature lists, trials, preview versions and to purchase the products.

· Visit the Expression Community site for more learning and technical resources for designers. Visit the forums, download the samples and check out the blogs from some Expression product team members.

· The XAML-Ready agency session at MIX will help you speed up in understanding Silverlight and Expression concepts from a Flash designer point of view - http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=C01

· To learn more about DeepZoom check out this post which talks about the latest version of DeepZoom Composer.

Microsoft UX and Design    

· Microsoft Design site. Learn more about different designers who work for Microsoft in different areas.

Community

· Kirupa is a Program Manager in the Blend team. You will enjoy his blog and will found lots of great tricks in there: http://blog.kirupa.com/?cat=13

· Arturo is a Product Manager for Expression. You can also get news and announcements in his blog: http://ux.artu.tv

· All the Expression product teams also own and post news and tips & tricks in their blogs:

o Expression Blend and Expression Design

o Expression Web

o Expression Encoder

o Expression Media

New Resources

This online resource list for Designers will continue to be updated and expanded. You can visit http://ux.artu.tv/?page_id=70 to get the latest version.

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Related Posts:
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-  Firefox3 and Silverlight misbehaving on your site? Read this
-  The process works: Expression is now part of MSDN Premium
-  My favorite MIX07 sessions
-  From ClickOnce to Deep Zoom, the interview

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Hey Will, Where ya been?

June 14th, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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Sorry for the delay in posting, I promise I’ll be back soon.  As you can see, I’ve got my hands a little full at the moment :)

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From ClickOnce to Deep Zoom, the interview

April 28th, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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image Hi all.  So now that I’m recovered from MIX, SxSW, Adaptive Path’s MX conference, and Web 2.0 Expo, maybe I’ll get a chance to blog again.

In the mean time, check out this interview I did with Tony Sokolowski, Design Director at Vertigo.

Check out the rest of the Expression Newsletter here.

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-  Build your own deep zoom gallery
-  See Will interview Lou Carbone
-  Silverlight and Expression Resources on the web
-  Problem Statement for Phizzpop Design Challenge LA

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Cynergy’s winning entry, Ben, posted

April 7th, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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As I mentioned before, Cynergy won the Phizzpop Design Challenge Nationals.  Over the weekend, they posted a screen cast and voiceover for their suite of applications, Ben.

Check out it out here.

UPDATE:

Check out the Microsoft Press Pass on Cynergy’s win!

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-  Cynergy wins it all!
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-  Crazy cool stuff from Cynergy Labs
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Build your own deep zoom gallery

April 3rd, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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image In case you missed it, one of the big features of Silverlight 2 (aside from a compact, cross-platform implementation of .Net, advanced control set, and further enhancements to its already impressive streaming capabilities) is Deep Zoom.

Deep Zoom used to be called “Seadragon”  - gotta love code-names.  If you running IE, you can check out an earlier implementation of the technology in a project called Photosynth.  Incidentally, this was was also featured at TED07.

Our launch example is a great project we did for Hard Rock.  As some of you may know, Hard Rock owns a massive amount of music related memorabilia.  Working with one of our partners, Vertigo , we created Hard Rock Memorabilia.

Now, you too can create your own with this handy new tool: The Deep Zoom Composer

I’ll post my own Deep Zoom Gallery once I’m back from Redmond tomorrow.  Enjoy!

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Related Posts:
-  From ClickOnce to Deep Zoom, the interview
-  Silverlight and Expression Resources on the web
-  Firefox3 and Silverlight misbehaving on your site? Read this
-  Linerider Launches today – powered by Silverlight 2 and Windows Live Services
-  Express Yourself: The problem, personas, rules & criteria

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Cynergy wins it all!

April 2nd, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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Cynergy won the Phizzpop Design Challenge Nationals at SxSW with their fantastic entry, Ben.  While all the contestants had interesting and compelling entries, Cynergy’s was truly a cut above.

Winning more than 85% of the people choice vote, the Cynergy team created a series of interconnected applications - a desktop WPF application, a Silverlight application and a Facebook application.  Check out the screenshots here!

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Related Posts:
-  Cynergy’s winning entry, Ben, posted
-  Crazy cool stuff from Cynergy Labs
-  Great Post from Cynergy, A RIA-focused UX agency
-  Cynergy’s crazy coolness that keeps on giving
-  Linerider Launches today – powered by Silverlight 2 and Windows Live Services

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Scenes from the Phizzpop Design Challenge Nationals at SxSW

April 2nd, 2008 by Will Tschumy
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imageWe had 941 people attend the Phizzpop Design Challenge Nationals at SxSW on March 10th, 2008.  We were lucky enough to secure the famous Maggie Mae’s as our venue, and all had a great time! 

Check out the photos here

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Related Posts:
-  Phizzpop Design Challenge LA: December 6th
-  Cynergy wins it all!
-  Cynergy’s winning entry, Ben, posted
-  Crazy cool stuff from Cynergy Labs
-  Problem Statement for Phizzpop Design Challenge LA

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