Silverlight: "Open in Expression Blend" in Visual Studio 8 doesn't work

Microsoft Expression Blend 2.0 is not compatible with Visual Studio 8. When you try to edit your XAML page in Expression Blend, there are some errors saying that XAML page is not valid.

The solution is simple, you have to download and install Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 June Preview. After installation, don't forget to run it once.

This should resolve the compability issue between Visual Studio and Expression Blend.

A first Silverlight step / Deep Zoom Composer

Since Microsoft decided to release millions of products, it has been confusing to follow all new names belong to them, but Silverlight is not one of these small tries: They take every chance to make Silverlight popular and in my opinon, they are on the right way. Every developer and designer around are aware of Silverlight these days.

If you want to have a very first step to Silverlight on your website, may something like this seem nice on yours;

Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia

So, if you want to make a image gallery very similar to this, Microsoft has a small and nice tool, Deep Zoom Composer. It produces pure Silverlight and HTML output and it's very easy to build up a custom gallery for your needs. Seems fantasticly cute.

If you don't like Flash and Actionscript, Silverlight & .NET has many opportunities and deserves at least a try.

Beginner! An easy start to SharePoint / MOSS 2007 development

I was only experienced on Microsoft SharePoint as a basic user, which was a part of Small Business Server. When my boss came with a contract to develop a SharePoint system for a serious chain of compaines in Germany, I said ok, how difficult it can be?

However, one of the difficulties that SharePoint has is, setting up the development enviroment. You have to install many stuff on your computer, including Windows Server 2003, SharePoint Server, Visual Studio and probably SQL Server and so on.. Damn, only installation will take more than one day and setting up the user accounts, permissions etc. will probably take another one too.

Microsoft made a great work to kick this out : They've created a virtual image (VHD) file including a 30 days trial version of Windows Server 2003 with all configuration done; including a very well configured SharePoint Server, a basic version of Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft Word etc. Here is the link :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=67f93dcb-ada8-4db5-a47b-df17e14b2c74&displaylang=en

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 runs it so fast and stable. Of course Virtual PC 2007 is free to download too.

For my purposes I installed Visual Studio 2008, SharePoint Extensions for Visual Studio too. Magic! I liked it.

Notice : Suddenly Windows Server 2003 makes a Windows Update and it stops SharePoint to respond. It's better to turn Automatic Updates off in first run.