SPROUT OFFICIAL RELEASE

We would like to announce the official release of our web application prototype, Sprout! For the past twenty weeks we, the Xamlhouse team, have been hard at work exploring Microsoft Expression Studio software and the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in. Sprout, does not mark the end of our journey as interactive designers and developers, but rather the beginning to our careers.

Today we begin our real exploration, but we leave behind our knowledge via our blog, in hopes that it may help others who are designing for, developing for, or just enthusiastic about Silverlight.

Launch Sprout
Learn About Sprout

So this is a bit of a work in progress. I am working on this new Deep Zoom thing in using the Deep Zoom Composer, made by the same people that brought you PhotoSynth. And this is pretty cool, click a thumbnail image on the right to zoom in to the corresponding image in the zoom composer. There are still a few things to get sorted out, and a few bugs here and there (thus the ‘work in progress’) but I think this a great looking tool. Try zooming in, it looks really really nice:)

View

For my final senior project, a group of 3 developers (I being one of them) and 6 designers are working on a Silverlight project. During these 20 weeks we will be exploring Silverlight (2.0 version) and using C# …Our mission statement:

Together we represent the future of interactive media. We are the next generation of new media designers, new media developers, animators, 3D modelers, conceptualists, and directors. We are nine seniors from Rochester Institute of Technology who are looking for the next best thing.

For twenty-weeks we will be researching and experimenting with the Microsoft Expression Studio and the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in. You are invited to follow us, guide us, and interact with us, as interactivity is what we have grown to love.

Our goals are:

1) To explore and showcase the power, advantages, and disadvantages of Microsoft Expression Studio and the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in. We have been bred to be Adobe enthusiasts, but we realize there is more to life than CS3.How does Silverlight interact with Adobe products? How does Expression Studio compare to Adobe products? What can Silverlight do? Where are the boundaries? What rocks? What stinks?

2) To create an interactive application that rocks so hard that Microsoft welcomes us with open arms to their online gallery at www.Silverlight.net.

3) To document every step of our exploration, challenges and failures, successes and innovations via our blog. To craft this blog in such a way that it becomes not only our story, but also a resource for developers and designers alike.

So how can you help us on our voyage? E-mail us ideas. Help us through our problems. Critique us. Make comments and suggestions. Tell us how your experience with Expression Studio and Silverlight has been or how you hope it will be. Send us a project sample and show us what you are doing. Recommend our blog to a co-worker or friend. Or just drop us an e-mail with a ‘Hello.’

Please go check it out (xamlhouse.com) we have a lot of great blog posts, source code, and even comments from microsoft themselves.

• Idea:
  These are all mini-applications done in Silverlight. The first one is examples of tweening and simple button rollovers. The second one is for image manipulation where you can alter the opacity size and rotation of an image. The next four are accordions; a horizontal and vertical example, with color variations and some “filler” content. This is a mock-up of what the final project will be for my New Media Team Project class.
• How:
  XAML, Silverlight, C#, Microsoft Expression Blend, Visual Studio 2008
• Tweening Buttons
• Image Manipulation
• Horizontal Accordion
• Vertical Accordion
• Horizontal Accordion Colorful
• Vertical Accordion Colorful

NOTE: You will need to download Silverlight 2 Beta 1