Well this is my first posting from the RIAPalooza.com event. It's been interesting so far getting to know the attendees of this well attended event. There are Adobe folks (Flash and Flex developers and designers), Silverlight and WPF based developers, designers and integrators. You will never hear the term "DEVIGNER" on this writer!

Anyway, talking to a lot of the Flash developers, I am hearing comments like "Well I really like Silverlight and Blend but I don't know how to do something immediately like I do in Flash. Their problem being setting up a timeline in Silverlight and Blend is different than it is in Flash.. Once, you know a little about the differences you will find it just as easy and maybe offering more flexibility."

So I am going to make these suggestions aimed at the fledgling Adobe/Macromedia Developer who is starting on WPF or Silverlight....

Suggestions:

1) NO BITMAPS PLEASE for Blend Projects..In asset and screen comps for a Silverlight Project... DON'T USE A BITMAP tool, that means COMPOSE in a vector tool, like Expression Design, Blend, even Adobe Illustrator or Fireworks CS3. Scaling bitmaps doesn't look as nifty as VECTOR drawings when they are opened.

2) Flash timelines, don't assume a timeline works the same way. In Flash there is usually a global timeline, not so in Blend. The events model and timelines works differently in Blend. There is a routed events model, and you can attach a timeline to any trigger of any event. It's really not much more difficult, it is just different. In WPF there are many more triggers that can fire an event than other products that use the web model. What you'll find underneath when you learn this is that there is greater flexibility with events and what you can do and dependency properties are really cool..

Okay back to the Palooza, it's a very nice crowd with Adobe and Microsoft and even generic web fans alike..

Questions asked to me by attendees and answers so far:

Q: What happens when Beta 1 of Silverlight 2.0 Expires ?...I  have some sample apps I have been working up on my website...

"Visitors to your site will see the install button as usual, but when they click the link, they’ll be redirected to a page that warns them that they’re about to install an outdated version of the runtime." 

So port your application to the new version when it gets released... At some point after the initial change it will stop working...

Q: What is a Dependency Property?  

Microsoft's Definition: " Represents a dependency property that is registered with the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) property system. Dependency properties provide support for value expressions, property invalidation and dependent-value coercion, default values, inheritance, data binding, animation, property change notification, and styling."

Layman's Definition:

Silverlight lets you create a property in an object (such as a rectangle) that derives from an ancestor element (such as a canvas). For instance in XAML that might look like this:

<Rectangle Canvas.Top="10" />

Other vendors might also call this an attached property..

More to come from RIA Palooza... I am off to listen to Dave Meeker's presentation, A great look at where we have been and where we are now..