Each new technology inevitably has to reinvent the wheel - the wheel this time being the troublesome web-based Rich Text Editor. It is a wheel that has yet to be perfected! You’ll know what I mean if you were ever involved with integrating an editor with a CMS/LMS or had to deal with the formatting aftermath! So I guess the world wide web does indeed need a new editor on the block and hopefully Silverlight might just be up to the task. I will however reserve my verdict until I see the clean up from MS Word copy and paste functionality!

Silverlight seems to finally be ready to compete with Flex/Flash. Recent sightings that have led me to this conclusion:

• PNG Image generation
• Deep Zoom capabilities
• Graph/Network Visualization

Could Scott Barnes be responsible? Well he certainly knows what has been missing in the Silverlight feature set!

1. I installed Silverlight 2 in a few seconds.

2. It just works in Firefox.

3. Not an error in sight.

4. I tried the DeepZoom example and it worked in Firefox.

The DeepZoom ativity is useful within an educational context. Students can explore large images in a Problem Based Learning setting - medical, geographic, artwork, etc. Quick somebody make an extension/plugin for Moodle, Blackboard, etc.. Download the Deep Zoom Composer, if you’d like to explore these concepts.

Deep Zoom is possible thanks to the Multiscaleimage control. Controls are the key to the future success of Silverlight. We need simple to use controls that go beyond buttons and textboxes.

I’ve been meaning to post about ReMix 07 - a version of Mix brought to Melbourne, Australia. Essentially I changed jobs so most of the last 2 months was spent either handing over stuff, taking a break or getting inducted into a new work environment. ReMix was the conference I really wanted to attend. I felt it was time that I re-acquinted myself with Microsoft technologies and decide for myself if Silverlight warranted my attension. I learn’t a lot at ReMix, but almost two months after the event, 5 key points remain:

• SilverLight 1.0 means video. Full screen video, high quality video, overlays on video, triggers from video playback, custom video players and even video painted on other media with a brush……. Just take a look at the Top Banana video editing Silverlight example. Cross-browser video too! I am really happy that Windows Media (um Silverlight video) now plays on a Mac.
• Expression Blend rules. I love the way I can do data binding in Expression Blend. Latest release outputs to Silverlight. I’ve been looking at the output produced by the drawing tools to help learn XAML.
• Expression Web won’t be my best friend. Not just yet, anyway. It does a good job of replacing Frontpage, but not quite up to the task of matching Dreamweaver.
• I must make time for Popfly. Popfly is Microsoft’s answer for Machups, Gadgets and even Web Page creation. It looks simple, but is powerful at the same time. The Popfly interface needs a bit of UI input. Nick Hodge did a great Popfly presentation.
• Steve Marx got me interested in ASP.NET Futures. Steve built a functioning video site in under an hour. I was very impressed.