I was watching a talk given at MIX by Mike Harsh on Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight and I was intrigued by his first demo where he showed the effects of applying an InputScope definition to a TextBox control and how it effected what implementation of the Soft Input Panel (sip or keyboard) was shown. InputScope has existed in the .NET Framework since v3.0 but I’ve never had cause to use it, or run across it for any purpose for that matter. After watching Mike’s presentation, I’ve come to the realization that all of us building Windows Phone apps will soon become very intimate with InputScope.

As opposed to spending my time writing up what I’ve learned, I decided to take a crack at producing a quick video walkthrough of InputScope, in its simplest form, as it relates to Silverlight for Windows Phone 7.

I highly recommend watching Mike’s talk as well as the Part 2 follow-up by Peter Torr to learn more about building Windows Phone 7 applications with Silverlight. Mike was kind enough to provide all of the source code for his demos as well as the slide deck over on his blog.

What other samples would you like to see? What questions do you have for building Windows Phone 7 apps with Silverlight?

As stated, I borrowed from Karen Corby’s session at PDC as it provides a nice roundup of some of the great new features in Silverlight 4 including drag/drop, right-click handling, printing, web cam integration, network multicast support, as well as new rich text and Bidi support. Not to mention the new out-of-browser support for COM integration!

You can grab all of the resources used in last night’s presentation from Karen’s Blog as well as the PDC website. I sprinkled a few others in as well…

• Microsoft Silverlight 4 Overview from PDC2009
• Slide deck (PPT)
• Samples
• http://silverlight.net
• Get Started with Silverlight
• Silverlight 4 Beta Information
• A guide to Silverlight 4 (Tim Heuer)

The intention of the group from the beginning was to bring the conversations between designers and developers closer together from a platform agnostic approach. As Anthony expounds on below, the group started to gravitate to more discussions focused on a particular area – Silverlight. Changing the name only solidifies the charter of the groups intent to the community and provides a means to bring more people together around a common cause (a “community”).

We are still able to facilitate conversations and idea sharing between designers and developers through events such as RIApalooza. Myself, along with the leaders of the Chicago Silverlight user group and the Chicago Adobe user group are currently in the planning stages of RIApalooza 3. More details to come.

Here is Anthony’s message…

In the past 18 months, the Chicago Designers and Developers User Group has sought to walk the lines between design and development while remaining platform agnostic. We’ve had some great presentations and speakers in the past; however, it has become increasingly difficult to find and schedule topics that appeal to designers and developers in both the Adobe and Microsoft worlds. After careful introspection and evaluation, the CD2 leadership team have chosen to clarify our place in the community and focus on Microsoft Silverlight & WPF.

And so, we’re extremely excited to announce the creation of The Chicago Silverlight User Group. The core purpose of the group (better designer/developer collaboration) hasn’t changed, but includes a renewed focus as we concentrate on all that Silverlight and WPF have to offer as a rich platform. We invite all of CD2′s members to continue to join us in this new and excited SIG in the coming months.

In effect, this is the sunset of CD2 as we know it today. We realize that some of the content we sought to bring to CD2 is already capably provided by the likes of IxDA and the Chicago Area Adobe User Groups. We believe these groups also add value to the designer and developer communities.

The new user group’s inaugural meeting will be at 6PM on Wednesday, March 3rd at The Illinois Technology Association (ITA) 200 S. Wacker Drive, 15th Floor | Chicago, IL 60606

We will be launching a new registration website in the coming weeks. If you have any questions or comments about The Chicago Silverlight User Group, please contact us at the email addresses below.

I am happy to report that I will be speaking at the (re)inaugural meeting of the Chicago Silverlight user group on March 3rd. We will be discussing the new features of Silverlight 4.

My good friend, Tim Heuer, provides a comprehensive article on the announcements around Silverlight 4 including a feature review with links to videos and sample code as well as a list of all the bits you need to get up and running with Silverlight 4.

With opening the possibilities of Skype, we have the opportunity to open the list of potential guests on the Thirsty Developer. If you have a technical topic that you’re passionate about and would like to share with the audience, let us know. Send an email to thirstydeveloper@live.com.

Thirsty Developer #71: Talking Silverlight with Tim Heuer

Don’t forget, you can subscribe to the Thirsty Developer podcast through iTunes or Zune Marketplace, or you can grab the RSS feed and drop it into your favorite podcast downloading tool.

If you’re looking to ramp up your skills in the land of XAML, I’d recommend adding these events to your calendar. Don’t worry if you can’t make the Live Meeting sessions as those will also be available on-demand.

Here’s a list of the great content you have to choose from…

XAML Continuum

XAML is the lingua franca of both Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft’s presentation technologies for the future. In this introductory session, learn how XAML empowers designers and developers to build rich Web and desktop applications. You’ll see how Blend can be used by designers to create assets and applications, and how Visual Studio 2008 to quickly implement an application’s functionality. What’s more, you’ll understand how Blend and Visual Studio work together to enable seamless workflow between designers and developers.

XAML for Designers

Throughout XAMLFest, you’ll participate by building a Silverlight application from the ground up. In this session, you’ll jump Microsoft Expression Blend to begin creating this demonstration app. You’ll learn the basics of project creation, see how to navigate within Blend, and how XAML defines an application’s user interface.

XAML for Developers

In this first session geared towards developers, use Visual Studio 2008 to create and explore a basic Silverlight application. You’ll gain a better understanding of Silverlight anatomy and architecture, and you’ll see how Resource markup extensions work. You will also gain a better understanding of the deployment model used by Silverlight, and the role of Silverlight’s cross-platform, plug-in-based CLR.

XAML Fundamentals

In this recorded session, you’ll gain a solid foundational understanding of how XAML is used to build applications. First, you’ll see how XAML’s layout containers can be used to create interfaces that scale and re-size cleanly and intelligently. Next, you’ll see how you can use a variety of built-in controls to quickly create a working user interface. Finally, you’ll understand the role of XAML in data binding, and you’ll see how you can bind controls and properties using markup or code.

Layouts and Controls in Blend

In this live session, you’ll continue to build the sample application that you started creating the previous day. Here, you’ll create your application’s layout and begin adding controls. You’ll explore basic element binding using Blend. At the end of the session you’ll have a working Silverlight application that exhibits some basic functionality.

Layouts and Controls in Visual Studio

This session will begin with an exploration of application layout in XAML, using Visual Studio. And although there is a lot of functionality built-in to the existing framework, API and controls, there are times when you need to add some custom functionality in order to get your application to behave just the right way. To that end, you’ll use Visual Studio to build a simple value converter that can be used by your sample application. Along the way, you’ll understand the role of value converters and you’ll see how you can use code-behind to create and manipulate XAML objects. 

Prototyping

With today’s emphasis on usability and appealing user interfaces, it’s more important than ever to prototype your applications. In this session, you’ll see how new tools in Blend 3 enable you to quickly create working prototypes that can provide a foundation for building the actual application. You’ll learn about SketchFlow, “Wiggly styles”, sample data, and you’ll see how you can create a prototype that allows you to easily gather user feedback. Finally, you’ll see how you can save hours and hours by using Blend 3’s spec generation tool.

New Prototyping Features in Blend 3

In this session focusing on practical guidance on prototyping, you’ll use Blend to add screens, compositions and navigation behaviors to the sample application. You’ll add sample data sources to screens, sketch prototype user experience, and generate a spec document. 

Building a Domain Model in Visual Studio

In this session, you’ll use the spec document that was generated in the earlier design session to build a domain model consistent with sample data. You’ll also add notification interfaces that enable consumers to subscribe to changes in the domain model. Finally, you’ll bind the user experience to the domain model.  Live Meeting on June 3, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 pm EDT)

Patterns and Practices

With the release of its Expression tools for designers, Microsoft has prompted a re-evaluation of user interface design and workflow distribution. Now that Expression is approaching its third major release, a number of patterns and practices have emerged. In this session, you’ll see an approach to workflow that plays to the strengths of both designers and developers. Also, you’ll understand the importance of the “integrator” role in making sure this workflow runs smoothly.

Styles, Resources, Templates and Animations

XAML makes it easier for designers to take on more responsibility when it comes to implementing user interface design. In the past, most everything beyond static screenshots and mockups required a developer to write behind-the-scenes code. In this session, you’ll see how Expression empowers designers to add styling, create templates, and define animations. You’ll see how the Visual State Manager is used to provide animation between element states. You’ll also see Blend 3’s new support for importing Adobe® Photoshop® content. Live Meeting on June 4, 2009 / 9:00 AM PDT (noon EDT)

Implementing the M-V-VM Pattern

The Model/View/ViewModel (M-V-VM) pattern is a modern variation of the classic Model/View/Controller (MVC) approach to UI design. In this session, you’ll use Visual Studio to implement M-V-VM for the sample application. You’ll bind the user experience to the view model, and explore templates and animations in both XAML and managed code. Live Meeting on June 4, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 PM EDT)

Upsizing

Up until this point, most of the work you’ve done in XAMLFest has been using Silverlight, with sample data. In this session, you’ll see how an application can leverage endpoints and Service-Oriented Architectures. You’ll also see how Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) fits into the picture – how XAML and .NET enable reusability between Silverilght and WPF applications, and how to leverage features that are unique to WPF. You’ll also get a sneak peek at some of the exciting innovations coming in .NET 4.0.

Using Blend to Create WPF Apps and Controls

You can build great Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) apps with Blend, too, and in this session you’ll see exactly that. You’ll build a rich desktop client to complement the sample application you’ve been working on, and in doing so you’ll learn how to migrate screens, resources, styles and assets from Silverlight to WPF. This session will explore the similarities and differences between Silverlight and WPF applications.  Live Meeting on June 5, 2009 / 9:00 AM PDT (noon EDT)

Code Reusability between Silverlight and WPF

In this final session of XAMLFest, you’ll gain a solid understanding of WPF application architecture and development. You’ll implement a service endpoint that provides a domain model that can be used by both Silverlight and WPF. In addition, you’ll get some hands-on experiencing developing controls and applications with Silverlight/WPF re-use in mind. Live Meeting on June 5, 2009 / 1:00 PM PDT (4 PM EDT)

First… let’s point you to the slides presented at the Fall ‘08 series of MSDN Unleashed events. MSDN Unleashed is a series of events that the Microsoft Evangelist present across the country to keep you – the developer audience – up to snuff on what’s going on in the world of development around the Microsoft Platform.

I presented an overview of Silverlight 2 at both MSDN Unleashed and the St. Louis Code Camp, therefore, I’ll only link to it once here…

St. Louis Code Camp

The St. Louis Code Camp was great! I’d like to thank Scott Spradlin and all of the organizers for inviting me to participate in a great event. I’d also like to think Brian Moore for letting me crash at Chateau Moore. I look forward to participating at future events in and around St. Louis.

At the St. Louis Code Camp, I presented an overview on Azure and the Azure Services Platform. I also filled in for a speaker who had to unfortunately back out at the last minute and presented an overview of Silverlight 2 (see slides above).

The St. Louis developer community came out strong and I thank them for their hospitality. On to the slides…

Once again… my apologies for the tardiness of posting these slides. But if you haven’t figured it out by now, you can find all of my presentations up on SlideShare. You may also understand my tardiness once you read some upcoming news I have for you (my poor attempt at a teaser). Stay tuned!