The MIX 10k Contest asks, "What could you create for the Web if you only had 10 kilobytes of code?" ... and offers some great booty to the winners: the Grand Prize is a pass into MIX, 3 nights at the Venetian, and a $1500 Visa Gift Card!

Given the possibility of such fortune and glory, I couldn't pass up making an entry into the 10k. I created a little game reminiscent of Kaboom! but with a little twist: it uses the FlickR Public Feed to get recent photos with certain tags. The object is to catch all of the falling photos into your photo album. The neat thing about using the FlickR photos is that they do not increase the 10k size since they're provided from a web service. Also, the FlickR photos make the little game dynamic because they change constantly.

Shameless Plug: I NEED YOUR VOTE!
Go to the submission page and Rate it Up! The community prize is based solely on community votes.

For more info on the 10k contest: Bill Reiss has some Thoughts on the MIX 10k Challenge Crocus Girl has some More Thoughts and Links to Similar Challenges Adam Kinney gives an Intro to the 10k Contest

The Physics Helper Library for Blend and Silverlight (more info here) now supports Farseer 2.0! Thanks to Ian Qvist (aka Genbox on the Farseer Project), I was able to resolve the tunneling issues with Farseer 2.0.

You can get the update (1.0.0.4) on the Physics Helper Codeplex site.

If you are using Farseer 2.0 outside of the Physics Helper controls and are seeing similar issues with tunneling (objects passing through each other and becoming "stuck"), then you might also want to try Ian Qvist's suggested fix:

In PhysicsSimulator.cs - change line 63/64 to the following:

internal int maxContactsToDetect = 10;
internal int maxContactsToResolve = 4;

Thanks Ian!

Today a new version of the Physics Helper library was released to CodePlex. This version adds a Camera Controller class and a couple of new demos: Camera with Rag Doll and Camera with Truck

Overview

The Physics Helper for Blend and Silverlight contains several user controls which allow you to draw objects in Expression Blend 2, and have those objects translated directly into Physics objects using the Farseer Physics Engine. You can even add Joints to your creations to create wheels and connect limbs. This can be a great timesaver for creating games, as it is traditionally difficult to line up underlying physics geometries with your Blend artwork.

Intro Video

Watch this short video to see how easy it can be to design physics using Blend 2, Silverlight, and the Physics Helper controls:

LAUNCH VIDEO (please give the video a few moments to display)

Download

Download from Codeplex (includes source and demos below)

Enter Feedback/Discuss on Codeplex

Demos

These demos were created with minimal or no coding using the Physics Helper (click images to launch demos):

What's New in Beta 3

1. A new Camera Controller has been added. Drop the Camera Controller on the same Canvas as your Physics Controller, and set the Body property to the object you want the Camera to follow. You can also optionally set ScrollSpeed and ZoomSpeed.

2. Two new demos have been added to show the Camera Controller in action.

3. Various other API changes and improvements

Known Issues

1. Elements that you want to have translated into Physics objects at run time must exist on the same Canvas as the Physics Controller. In the case of UserControls that are added dynamically, you need to have 1 instance of the UserControl on the Canvas at run time - other instances can be added through code.

2.  If you rotate or otherwise transform an object in Blend, the object will lose that rotation when running, and the Boundary determination will be incorrect.

3. This version does not work with Farseer Physics 2.0. I found that Farseer 2.0 has more tunneling issues (objects passing through each other and getting "stuck") when used with the Physics Helper, so I am sticking with Farseer 1.x for now. You can easily enough update the project to Farseer 2.0 if you need to (add a reference to the new Farseer assembly, and Resolve any namespace changes).

One of the new controls I'm working on adding to the Physics Helper library for Silverlight, Blend and Farseer is a camera controller. You'll basically be able to just set a few properties on the camera control, such as the Physics Body to follow and the Zoom factor, and presto - the view will follow that physics body and smoothly zoom in and out.

The next iteration of the Physics Helper for Silverlight isn't quite ready, but I thought I'd share this fun little sample of the camera in use with a ragdoll! Note that you can use the mouse to manipulate the doll if he gets stuck.

The Live Search API allows you to submit queries for Web Pages, Images, and other search types to the Live.com search service and then process results in whatever evil way you like :) When I'm training or presenting Silverlight, I like to use Live.com as a way to show Silverlight's web service integration and the power of RIA's in mashup scenarios.

The Live Search API was recently updated to version 2.0, and there are some changes to how you interact with the API. In this blog post, I'll give a quick and dirty step-by-step on how to interact with the new API.

1. Go to http://search.live.com/developers and create an API ID

2. Create a new SL solution and in the WEB project, right-click and select "Add Service Reference" and then enter this URL, where MY_APP_ID is the API ID you were given in step 1:

 http://api.search.live.net/search.wsdl?MY_APP_ID

 * When adding the service reference, be sure to enter LiveSearchService in the Namespace field.

3. In the Web Project, Create a new Silverlight-Enalbed WCF Web Service and name it LiveSearchWrapper.svc

4. In the Web Service, Add a new WebMethod to search for Web Pages, and a new Class to store and return results:

       [OperationContract]
        public List<SearchResult> DoSearch(string search)
        {
            LiveSearchService.LiveSearchPortTypeClient s = new LiveSearchPortTypeClient();
           
            SearchRequest request = new SearchRequest();

            // BE SURE TO ENTER _YOUR_ APP ID HERE!!!
            request.AppId = "MY_APP_ID";
            request.Query = search;
            request.Sources = new SourceType[] { SourceType.Web };

            request.Version = "2.0";
            request.Market = "en-us";
            request.Adult = AdultOption.Moderate;
            request.AdultSpecified = true;

            SearchResponse response = s.Search(request);

            // create a collection of results
            List<SearchResult> lstWebPages = new List<SearchResult>();

            foreach (WebResult foundItem in response.Web.Results)
            {
                // web page hit
                SearchResult result = new SearchResult();
                result.ResultUrl = foundItem.Url;
                result.Description = foundItem.Description;
                lstWebPages.Add(result);
            }

            // send 'em down to the client
            return lstWebPages;

        }

        public class SearchResult
        {
            public int HitNumber { get; set; }
            public string ResultUrl { get; set; }
            public string ImageUrl { get; set; }
            public string Description { get; set; }
            public double ImageHeight { get; set; }
            public double ImageWidth { get; set; }
        }

3. In the Silverlight Project, open Page.xaml and add some controls and layout INSIDE the <Grid> to search and display. Note that we are adding a search box, a search button, and a nicely formatted data template to the ListBox rows:

       <Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <RowDefinition Height="25" />
            <RowDefinition Height="*" />
        </Grid.RowDefinitions>

        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
            <TextBox x:Name="txtSearch" Width="200" />
            <Button x:Name="btnSearch" Content="Search" />
           
        </StackPanel>
           
           
        <ListBox x:Name="lstResults" Grid.Row="1" Height="257" Width="388" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" >
            <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
                <DataTemplate>
                    <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" Margin="5,5,5,5" Width="250">
                        <HyperlinkButton NavigateUri="{Binding Path=ResultUrl}" TargetName="_blank" Content="{Binding Path=ResultUrl}" />
                        <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Description}" TextWrapping="Wrap" />
                    </StackPanel>
                </DataTemplate>
            </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
        </ListBox>

4. Add a Click Event handler to btnSearch like so:

       private void btnSearch_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            DoSearch();
        }

5. Add code to call the web service DoSearch method asynchronously (note that LiveSearchNewApi should be replaced with your Project name):

  private void DoSearch()
        {
            LiveSearchWrapper.LiveSearchWrapperClient webSvc = new LiveSearchNewApi.LiveSearchWrapper.LiveSearchWrapperClient();
            webSvc.DoSearchCompleted += new EventHandler<LiveSearchNewApi.LiveSearchWrapper.DoSearchCompletedEventArgs>(webSvc_DoSearchCompleted);
            webSvc.DoSearchAsync(txtSearch.Text);
        }

        void webSvc_DoSearchCompleted(object sender, LiveSearchNewApi.LiveSearchWrapper.DoSearchCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
           
            lstResults.ItemsSource = e.Result;
        }

That's it! Run the solution and try entering some search terms and then click the search button. Note that in the web service search, we are specifying a SourceType of Web, but the Live Search service offers many other Source Types including Image and Video.

Silverlight 2 lays a great foundation for building line of business applications, but there is still a good chunk of grunt work when it comes to validation and workflow... but what if you had all of the power of XAML and the .NET framework _and_ the ease of rapid development like the Client/Server tools of the 90's gave us?

Well, it looks like Microsoft is hard at work to make this happen! Check out this Sneak Preview from Jamie Cool, recorded at PDC 2008, where he shows off a future set of project templates for Silverlight business app development:

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC11/

You might want to fast-forward about 30 minutes into the talk, where Jamie starts talking about "Silverlight Futures." Here are some interesting points from the video:

• Jamie uses a prototype Silverlight template to add a new "Silverlight Business Logic Class" to a web project, and then instantly use that class from the Silverlight project (without adding a web service reference).
  
• He uses an "ObjectDataSource" class to bind results from a Business Logic class to a DataGrid...And add sorting and paging... with no code!
  
• He shows a DataForm control and by setting a DataContext property, gets instant default validation type checking and feedback
  
• By adding MetadataType attributes to a server-side class, the Silverlight client automatically picks up those validation changes on the client - so by writing the validation logic in one place, it carries out to both client and server.
  
• He makes a single SubmitChanges() call to synchronize changes on the client to the server.
  
• He uses something called a "Frame" control and StackPanel to create a navigation workflow --- including Browser History!
  
• He adds a Login control to immediately generate a Login screen, and then uses an attribute on his business logic class to lock down access to data based on role.

Here is the session summary for Jamie's talk:

Silverlight Futures: Building Business Focused Applications
What if you could develop your solutions with the ease pioneered by Microsoft Office Access, deploy them like an Internet application, and take advantage of the power of Microsoft .NET? Learn about an exciting new technology that is all about making business applications for RIA (Rich Internet Applications) much easier to build. In this session, hear how we've made n-tier application development as simple as traditional 2-tier, provided application level solutions to developers, and how we're doing all of this with the same .NET platform and tools on both the client and server.

The Physics Helper for Blend and Silverlight contains several user controls which allow you to draw objects in Expression Blend 2, and have those objects translated directly into Physics objects using the Farseer Physics Engine. This can be a great timesaver for creating games, as it is traditionally difficult to line up underlying physics bodies and geometries with your Blend artwork.

Intro Video

Watch this short video to see how easy it can be to design physics using Blend 2, Silverlight, and the Physics Helper controls:

LAUNCH VIDEO (please give the video a few moments to display)

Download

PhysicsHelper is now on CODEPLEX!

Download from Codeplex (includes source and demos below)

Enter Feedback/Discuss on Codeplex

Demos

These demos were created with minimal or no coding using the Physics Helper (click images to launch demos):

What's New in Beta 1

1. The algorithm to determine UIElement boundaries is greatly improved (based on Johnathan Porter's boundary detection algorithm he introduced in Physics2D.NET)

2. You can now nest PhysicsJoint controls inside UserControls. This is very handy for creating game characters that need joints for arms, legs, etc. Just be sure to (a) use a Canvas layout inside your UserControl, and (b) give you UserControl a name when placing it into your main Canvas. See the RagDoll Demo for an example of this.

3. The PhysicsController now has a MousePickEnabled property which automatically allows manipulation of objects with the mouse. This is handy for testing/debugging your creations.

4. Various other API changes and improvements

Known Issues

1. Dynamically adding objects through code isn't as clean as I'd like (see the RagDoll demo code for an example of dynamic adding). The issue is that UI elements need to be drawn to the visible screen before their boundary can be determined. So the temporary hack is to have a timer to "wait" for the element to be displayed.

2.  If you rotate or otherwise transform an object in Blend, the object will lose that rotation when running, and the Boundary determination will be incorrect.

3. As always, there is room for refactoring and redesign, but you can surely do some fun things with Beta 1 :)

What's Coming

UPDATE 10/18/2008: Physics Helper is now available on Codeplex! You can submit feeback and enter discussions on the Codeplex forum. If you would like to contribute to this project and are familiar with Farseer, Blend, and Silverlight, please let me know!

I'm half wondering if the marketing folks had an itchy trigger finger, but according to this Press Release, Silverlight 2 is officially released!

However, at this time the Silverlight home page, and Scott Guthrie's blog have no reference to the official release.

At any rate, I'm guessing that today is the day :) So if you have some Silverlight Beta 2 or RC0 code out there, go get it ready for RTW!

UPDATE 10/13/2008: Oops, I should always read the fine print. At the bottom of the press release, it says:

Silverlight 2 will be available for download on Tuesday, Oct. 14, at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight. Customers already using a previous version of Silverlight will be automatically upgraded to Silverlight 2.