Shine Draw

Today, I want to share an exciting news with all of you.

I got a MVP award from Microsoft for my activities on the online community, especially in the Silverlight category. You may find my MVP public profile here.

Frankly speaking, I have never expected my blog will bring me so many excitements. Many people say that I am talented. But I don’t agree on that. I don’t really know everything about Silverlight. I google for Silverlight every day on solving various kind of problems. More importantly, I enjoy sharing.

Anyway, Silverlight 3 is coming very soon. I will continue to devote to the community and share more valuable samples with you.

Shine Draw has released more than 60 samples. In order to make all the controls more presentable to all of the developers, I decided to create this Control Explorer.

All of the samples will be reimplemented for the ease of use. Therefore, it will somehow takes me 1 to 2 months before you can see all of the samples here.

Source code is not available yet. Be patient, I will release it very soon.

Enjoy it~

Click here to view Silverlight Control Explorer

Preview

JavaFx has been released more than 3 months. Today, I gonna release a new comparison on JavaFx, Flash and Silverlight.

I picked up one of my previous sample Fps Meter and clone it using JavaFx. To reduce my effort, I started my implementation using the Carousel Sample provided in JavaFx Website.

The development isn’t that smooth. I have spent more than 2 hours in modifying the sample. Anyway, before any further discussion, let’s take a look at the demonstrations first.

Comparison

Source codes

•   Carousel [JavaFx 1.1] (399 KiB, 984 hits)
•   FPS Meter [Flash 9, AS3] (129.9 KiB, 2,012 hits)
•   FPS Meter [Silverlight 2, C#] (139.6 KiB, 2,140 hits)

Silverlight

My Feeling

To be frank, I don’t have a very good impression on JavaFx development. I think that’s probably due to the following reasons:

1. There isn’t any UI Editing tool. I always have to work with the script. That isn’t fun if I can only deal with coding. May be I have to check with their milestone when they will provide Visual Editing tool.
2. The application takes too much time to load. I didn’t know why, but when ever I reload the application using IE, it will take a while before displaying anything.
3. In order to run the application, you need not only the .jar file, but it also requires the .jnlp files.
4. I have no idea what properties can be associated for a given object. (May be there is code suggestion for properties, but I just don’t know how to get it open.)
5. Sometimes, the debugger is not able to identify the correct line number of a syntax error.
6. JavaFx Script is a brand new script and it really take a lot of time to learn.
7. It will leave out some “ghost images” when you scroll between the page.

Actually, there are some more bad feelings, but I think I don’t list them all here.

Someone may argue that JavaFx is a relatively new technology and it’s normal to have usability problem. I agree with that. Therefore, I think I will just wait for JavaFx to evolve before spending more time on it.

I still remember that Silverlight also isn’t attractive in version 1.  So, what next will be for JavaFx?

After implementing more than 60 samples, I start feeling that I am running out of good ideas. Therefore, I have spent some time to research and organize new ideas.

Below are some of the comparisons I will make in the coming days. If you have any nice suggestions, please do not hesitate to leave me a reply!

List of upcoming comparisons

• Data binding
• Using datagrid
• Calling web services
• Upload file
• Posting multipart data
• Compares JavaFx with Flash and Silverlight
• Image manipulation (Rotate and Scale Image)
• JavaScript (Flash connect to Silverlight)
• Game: Bejeweled
• Particle engine
• Physics engine
• Deep linking application
• Localization/Internationalization
• Cross domain security
• Working with bitmap
• Search images from Flickr
• More image transition effect
• Mapping application
• Accessing all the text on a page
• Charting
• Interactive tree menu
• Drawing curves
• Event Handlings
• Working with XML
• Working with sound

Don’t forget to give me your suggestion!

An Open Source, feature-rich and professional RIA application development environment for Microsoft Silverlight in Eclipse.

Eclipse4SL has been out for a couple of months since the release of Silverlight 2. However, I didn’t do any testing on this tool until yesterday. I have a lot of findings and let’s see it one by one.

Installation

If you are currently doing Silverlight Development using Visual Studio, that will be great. You only have to download the latest version of Eclipse and install the plug-in on the fly. The complete installation guide can be found via http://www.eclipse4sl.org/download/.

Please note that if you are using Eclipse 3.3 or previous version, you will encounter plug-in missing error during the installation. Don’t attempt to solve it, just go to grab the latest version will save your time!

Eclipse Tools

Once you have completed the installation, go to the top menu and select File->New->Other->Silverlight Project. Then you will see something like this.

Generally, you will have all the basic tools you needed for development. They are namely Project Explorer, Control List, XML Editor, Application Preview, Coding Tool, etc.

There is no code suggestion?

The next thing I attempt to try is the code editor. It has syntax highlight, auto formatting. Oh, but where is the code suggestion?

Well, I am not C# expert, I give up coding immediately.

(No code suggestion for XAML editor as well.)

Debugging Tool

There is no debugging tool. That’s all.

Compatibility with Visual Studio

When I move to the Project Folder, I found that it contains a .csproj file. That’s what I anticipated. I can open the project by Silverlight and move on my development.

Let’s try the reverse order. I attempt to move my ColorPicker Sample into the Eclipse Workspace. A new Eclipse Silverlight Project is created successfully. However, when I run the application, nothing shows up.

I think the problem is probably caused by encoding problem of the files. After certain copy and past procedures, I can finally compile it!

However, I believe if your project is complicated, you will definitely have a lot of troubles.

Summary

Frankly speaking, it’s not fair to compare such a new plug-in with Visual Studio (which exists for years). However, I think this plug-in still has a lot of rooms for improvement before it can be adopted by the developers.

This is just the beginning, I believe it will continue to evolve and become much more powerful.