British Library's Turning The Pages project now in Silverlight

The British Library's Turning The Pages project is currently featuring 5 treasures from across the United Kingdom. In addition to the Windows Vista version (specifically a WPF browser app a.k.a. XBAP) of the app, there's now a new Silverlight version for broader browser and platform reach.

I love this app and often use it as an example to explain what I do in Microsoft to lay persons. A tip for the authors of the Silverlight 1.0 flavor of the app: it'd be cool to see mousewheel support for the Zoom function. Here's a post from Pete that explains the approach.

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Unwrapping Silverlight 2

Ahead of the first public Beta of Silverlight 2, Scott posts this overview and follows up with a series of tutorials that will get you up to speed with the breadth of features being introduced:

Part 1: Creating "Hello World" with Silverlight 2 and VS 2008
Part 2: Using Layout Management
Part 3: Using Networking to Retrieve Data and Populate a DataGrid
Part 4: Using Style Elements to Better Encapsulate Look and Feel
Part 5: Using the ListBox and DataBinding to Display List Data
Part 6: Using User Controls to Implement Master/Details Scenarios
Part 7: Using Templates to Customize Control Look and Feel
Part 8: Creating a Digg Desktop Version of our Application using WPF

This is just an hors d'oeuvre before the Beta is available for public download. Soon! Hope you love what we've cooked.

Update: Adam does a CliffsNotes take on Scott's posts.

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Free Microsoft Software for Students

Microsoft is making professional development software available at no charge to post-secondary school and university students worldwide. The initiative called DreamSpark was announced yesterday starting with 11 countries, and will soon grow to more countries over the year.

Among the products available currently are Windows Server, the Expression Suite of products, XNA Game Studio, SQL Server and the new Visual Studio.

Students attending accredited university, college, junior college, community college, or a tertiary/higher education institution can go to the DreamSpark site on MSDN now to sign up.

PS: Kudos to Academic DPE.

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Life at Microsoft

Booyakasha. If you've ever pondered the question, then check this look at life at Microsoft, courtesy of the folks at On10.

Update: inline now...

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