by Bobbi Perreault
15. July 2008 08:07
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Today was the Minneapolis Silverlight User Group. It was my first user group presentation, so kind of glitchy! All the GUYS (ok there were Four women this time) were very kind and attentive. No one got up and walked out - so I'm a happy camper.
We talked about Search Engine Optimization and how to enable applications that use Silverlight to keep Search Engine Rankings as high as possible. Those topics are discussed freely on the web and I pulled a lot of the content from Nathan Buggia's Mix08 talk and Nikhil Kothari's blog. So thanks you guys.
But, the sample code is mine, at least. It's an Ecommerce site demo (minimal!!!) which is based off of an actual ecommerce site that is in development. So I hope it's helpful. I may pull some of the relevant pieces out of the app and write up some details - why it's there, it's operation, it's purpose.
Some of the features in the sample application are: web.Sitemap to Silverlight menu, WrapPanel for category listing, a sample of how to use the same .xap file for multiple page areas (those are the islands, look in app.xaml), registering your url (for deep linking) and turning off the html when javascript is enabled.
To see the page as a search engine would just turn off your javascript and the html formatting will be there.
Those links are at the top. Have a great day!
by Bobbi Perreault
11. July 2008 00:53
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FoodDigger is going live in limited Beta! I'm privileged to have been able to participate in some small way in the creation of this site and I'm so happy to see it launched.
If you love good food or just plain want to know where the kind of food you want is to be had at, this is the site for you. So Sorry, Twin Cities - it's only serving the Greater Los Angeles area for Beta. I'm working on getting us access for our fair Cities - I know there are many people here who care about what they eat and where they do it at.
The cool thing about the way they do things at this site is that you are able to tell them what kind of food you like and the site will recommend restaurants to you based on that information.
There's mapping and that gives you your option to find something CLOSE to you that you like. It's very cool, go on over and give it a whirl. Use it when you travel to L.A. and please, LET ME KNOW how it worked for you.
by Bobbi Perreault
8. July 2008 23:45
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008. 12PM-2PM Sign Up Now
Web Analytics and SEO for Silverlight Applications
Presenter: Bobbi Perrault (uh, Perreault)
Abstract:
In this session we'll cover best practices for optimizing your website to preserve analytics tracking data. We'll cover how to use XSLT to send web site xaml file contents to both the Silverlight object and html for search engines to index. We'll cover how to maintain page counts and track user interaction with your site. There will be some talk of generic SEO considerations which will apply to any website.
Speaker:
Bobbi Perreault is a senior technologist with over 14 years of programming experience with over 7 years in MS technologies. Not only does she have over 7 years of Internet eCommerce Systems experience, but she has significant server infrastructure and security re-design experience as well. Bobbi is a SilverLight and RIA enthusiast and spends all her waking hours learning and experimenting with these technologies.
by Bobbi Perreault
5. July 2008 02:53
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Silverlight applications make a great prototyping tool. For a project destined as an ASP.NET application, it seems it's faster to give your client an idea of the AJAX functionality you'll build into the final product if you mock up it's functionality really quickly using a Silverlight app and Blend.
I do this by setting the background of the default Page.xaml to my Comp screen. Then in Blend, I set all the page items over the top of their image, using Grids and StackPanels to position them precisely where they go.
A Note about the Imagebrush idea - this is what happened to me (twice) when I created my imagebrush as a resource and then set the background property to that resource: In design mode of Blend it shows fine - but in the compiled Silverlight application it's blank.
I found that the imagebrush works better for me in my prototype if I create it in Xaml within my Grid definition - in that case it shows up every time.
<Grid.Background>
<ImageBrush ImageSource="img/screen.png"/>
</Grid.Background>
Anway, after the items are set in their proper screen position, I can then add the events and the mocked data that makes it come alive. Clients can see what they'll get and programmers can see what they need to build. I like that.
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