When the final version of Silverlight 2 is released, will you be ready?  You should be aware of some key points:

1. The "go-live" license agreement addendum for using beta 2, indicates you will upgrade to the released version of Silverlight 2 within 7 days of it releasing.

2. Although it is quite possible that most of your code will not have to be changed at all, the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 version of the object tag that instantiates Silverlight for your site is version specific to Silverlight 2 Beta 2.  Therefore, if someone does not have Silverlight installed and they come to your site after Silverlight 2 releases, they will NOT just run correctly with the released Silverlight 2.  They will be directed to install Silverlight 2 Beta 2.  After Silverlight 2 releases, users will be discouraged from installing the old Beta 2, and eventually will not be able to install it.

3. After Silverlight 2 releases, if users already have the released Silverlight 2 on their machines and they come to a site that uses the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 mime type on the object tag, they will be asked to install Silverlight 2 Beta 2.  This will entail them uninstalling the released Silverlight 2 runtime and installing the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 runtime.  While this will make an out of date SL2 Beta 2 site run, it will not allow the users to run sites configured for the released Silverlight 2 - they will instead be prompted to upgrade to the released Silverlight 2, and will again be in conflict with the site built for Silverlight 2 Beta 2.

4. If you are like me and take the easy route to building your Silverlight applications by using the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio, Expression Blend, or other such tools, the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 releases of these tools create Web pages with object tags that instantiate the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 runtime.  Therefore if you have a Silverlight 2 Beta 2 project, and you try to update it for the release of Silverlight 2 by just changing your VB, C# and XAML code, be aware that the object tag in the HTML also needs to be updated.  There will be released versions of the Silverlight Tools for VStudio and Expression Blend that will be available at the same time as Silverlight 2 is available, so you can use these tools to rebuild your sites with the right object tag mime type, but you have to go through that process of installing the new tools and rebuilding.  Or you can edit the HTML by hand, but make sure you know what you are doing.

For details on how the object tag works with the MIME type and Javascript, and all the other details, see Peter's blog entries at Structure of the Silverlight Object Tag  and Instantiating Silverlight: HTML vs. Script.

The best solution for your end-users will be to upgrade your Silverlight 2 Beta 2 site to the released version of Silverlight 2 as quickly as possible after it releases. For the most part, this will be a very easy process and should not take you a lot of time, even for large Silverlight applications.  Just keep in mind that there is a little work that you will need to do when the release does go live.  Unfortunately I cannot provide specifics on the release date at this time.

It is important to note that if you have a site built for the released version of Silverlight 1.0, it will just continue to work and you do not have to take any actions whatsoever.  Silverlight 2 is backward compatible with Silverlight 1.0.  This post is directed at people who have built Web sites for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 (or Beta 1, but they should have upgraded to Beta 2 a long time ago).

   -Matt

I just watched the Men's 4x100m Freestyle finals online: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=0811_hd_swb_hl_l0194.

This thing brought me to tears...right in my office. 

I'll be watching it a number of times.

 Wow!

    -Matt

And boy do I have a solution for you!  Perhaps you are thinking about attending TechEd this year (TechEd US 2008 Developers, June 3-6 in Orlando)...in addition to a bunch of great sessions on the latest information concerning Silverlight (as well as ASP.NET, AJAX, Visual Studio, IIS, and all the other great Web technologies Microsoft has to offer), there will also be a day-long PreConference session on June 2nd designed to get you up to speed on Silverlight.  Then you can walk into the other Silverlight sessions during the week knowing what you are talking about, and will return home as an offical Silverlight geek.  And to top it off, this Silverlight PreConference session is being presented by the best guy in the business: Jeff Prosise.  You cannot go wrong.  The cost for the additional day of TechEd is $350 over the standard registration price of $1,795 (this is the early bird price which saves you $200). 

Here's the link to register for TechEd and Jeff's Silverlight preconference session: https://www.msteched.com/dev/public/regprocess.aspx.

Spaces for Jeff's Silverlight Preconference session are limited and they are going fast so don't wait too long.  BTW: Early bird registration ends April 4th, but I doubt there will still be spots in Jeff's Precon by then.  So register quick.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Bill Gates will be delivering the TechEd keynote.  I don't know all of Bill's schedule, but this has to be about the last big keynote he will be giving as Microsoft's Chairman.  History in the making.

See you at Teched,

   -Matt

So I decided to try and tackle the problem myself.  The first thing I did was throw all the clothes in the washing room sink next to it and shucked all the water out with a big cup.  After I did this I remembered one problem I had previously where a big plastic bag managed to slip underneath the washer and got caught around the big spinning motor until it eventually wouldn't spin.  So I managed to tip it back so I could look underneath it but everything looked fine.

Then I pulled off the soap dispenser top, reached down the middle of the agitator and unscrewed the plastic winged nut that holds the agitator in place.  Then I lifted the agitator out. Nothing seemed unusual.  Nothing wrapped around the agitator gears or anything like that (of course if you are an appliance repair person then you are probably already yelling....IT'S THE PUMP!  IT'S THE PUMP!).

But I'm not an appliance repair person.

So now I figured that it was time to open the cover.  I couldn't figure out how to open the top.  There are clips on the back that I thought you might have to unhook but there was something holding the front together and the clips in back looked suspiciously like a hinge mechanism.  I finally gave up and went to my friend, the Internet...only really looking to find out how to open the top cover.

That is when I found this.

This was exactly the solution to my problem!  And it was so easy to follow.  So just in case the link dies for some reason, here is the fantastic information that saved me $200 along with my own notes inserted in italics.

1. Turn off the water supply at the tap where the hose is connected and siphon out the water in the machine with a hose. I didn't turn off the water supply and I used a cup to scoop out the water instead of a siphon.
2. Take off the lid by putting it in the upright position and pulling it straight up and out.
3. You will now see two screw plugs at the front top of the machine. Remove the plugs to reveal the two screws which you will also need to remove. Once the screws have been removed you can lift the top of the machine up and tilt it toward the back. The back needs to stay attached to the base of the machine. This is the info I was looking for to begin with.  In retrospect this seems really obvious.  My cupboard happened to nicely hold the top close to vertical and out of the way.  I think the repair people that have come out before had a wire or something to hold the top up.  A spouse's hand can also work.  The screws are Phillips.
4. Now inside the machine take off the top soap holder and put your arm down the tube to unscrew the the locking device that holds the assembly together. Now you can pull the assembly out and put it to one side. I had actually already done this before I propped the top up.
5. The silver inner bowl needs to come out. The top cover of the bowl is clipped on by about six plastic clips which can break if you try too hard so be careful when unclasping these. Once unclipped you will be able to lift the plastic cover off but don't undo the attached spring. Just put the cover to the side that the spring is attached to and leave it there for now. There was a lot of gunk and lint over all the clips so it wasn't easy for me to tell how to properly unclasp (and yes this plastic does seem very fragile after having the machine for about 8 years).  Pull the relatively thin cover plastic out past the underlying plastic hook.  All six clips unclasp one by one nicely without the awkwardness of undoing more than one at a time.
6. Lift the silver bowl that usually holds the clothes out of the machine. It might need some force but it should slide straight up and out. Careful, the holes in the metal are sharp on the outside.
7. You can now see (probably under some water) a red plastic cover with one screw holding it on. The pump cover on my machine was translucent white. Remove the screw and take the cover out. You might now be able to see the offending item. It could be rusted by now. What is it? A hair clip or something? Show it to your wife with an all knowing look!  In my case this was a zipper handle...I think from a sleeping bag that we had washed.  I was now done and put the whole thing back together.
8. If the item has deteriorated you might need to take the next plastic cover underneath out. It should pull straight out and has a rubber seal that might fall off. Do not be alarmed! It fits snuggly back around the base of the cover. You will work it out when you go to put it back together.
9. You might want to syphon the rest of the water out. Point to note: it doesn't taste very nice! It is a good idea to give everything a clean with hot water as you go along.
10. Once you have removed all foreign objects you can put the machine back in the reverse order. If this does not resolve your problem, sorry, it's time to open the wallet and call a technician. Good luck!

Thanks James and howtomendit.com.  I definitely ran an empty hot water load since there was water that sat there for almost a week and was quite foul smelling by the time I got to work on this.

But now everything is working like a dream!  I'm on a hardware high!

[Update!  Well, I thought everything was running just fine.  I'm pretty sure at one point water was pumped out of the machine, but then I ran into the same problem.  So I did everything again to open her up and had to do step 8 this time...low and behold I found a rubber band.  This time, it did work like a dream after removing the rubber band]

   -Matt

The answer is, "Yes!"

It is at http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/2/e/f2ecc2ad-c498-4538-8a2c-15eb157c00a7/SL_Map_FinalNET.png.

Enjoy,

   -Matt

Tonight we announced the official name of wpfe....Microsoft Silverlight!  This is the beginning of a bunch of work my team has been doing which begins tonight at NAB 2007 and culminates with a plethora of announcements and technical information that will be available at Mix07.  Both happen to be in Las Vegas.  But one has about 100,000 attendees and the other has about 2000.

Unfortunately Mix07 is sold out, but you can follow the happenings at the event on the Mix07 site and/or on the other Web properties (like MSDN).

And by the way, if you want to see one of the cooler capabilities of WPF/E...I mean Silverlight...check out the new site at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/.  In particular the video quality is tres kewl.  Maybe the video should be called, "We need skateboards...lot's of skateboards." :-)

I suppose one question a lot of people will have is, "Is there a new version out?"  The answer is no.  This is the WPF/E CTP that has been out for awhile.  If you haven't looked at it, you may want to now. 

   -Matt

I had not worked much with Virtual PC before and obviously when you are running two copies of Vista on your machine simultaneously (and VStudio and IIS, etc.) it can slow things down a bit.

So in the process of getting VS05 SP1 and then the update for Vista installed I happened to have a lot of time to admire the green progress bar.  It happened to spur a moment of creativity.  For your pleasure, here is the result:

Ode to the Progress Bar

By Matt Powell

Oh green and pulsing bar

That defines my future, unknown number of minutes

Every increment makes me joyful

Yet your mystery bemoans me.

How many times must you repeat your journey from left to right?

Only you know.

And will your travels be quick

Or will it be slow?

Hope allows me to believe that even when you sit motionless

That with a fury you will quickly reach your end.

And I hope…and hope…

And then there is the cruelty at the end of your journey,

When not even a single pixel remains uncovered by your greenness,

And your “seconds remaining” sits laughingly at zero.

“It says zero!” I wail as the wanton desktop languishes for 30...40...60 seconds and more.

Madame desktop unnervingly holds onto the last gleaming remnants of her progress bar

For she is sad to let him go, with his handsome, fluorescent green gradient

But ultimately she can hold him back no more

And his job is finally complete

And I must now start my work.

   -Matt

On a similar note, Brad Abrams is in New York at AJAXWorld and will be delivering the keynote tomorrow morning to many of the folks in the AJAX community.

Finally, if you want to learn more about what sort of issues the AJAX community needs to be working on to work well together, you might check out the article we just published on MSDN from Scott Mitchell and Atif Aziz on JSON.

And don't forget, you can learn more about Microsoft's AJAX efforts in Las Vegas at Mix07.  See you there.

   -Matt

Pete deserves all the credit in the world for getting this up for everyone.

Thanks Pete.

   -Matt

We have a TON to talk about at MIX this year with the recent releases of ASP.NET AJAX, WPF/E, the Expression Suite and, oh yeah, things like Vista and IE7.  Upcoming is the "Orcas" release of Visual Studio and Longhorn Server (with IIS7).  For those of us focused on the Web world, this is a HUGE time for us at Microsoft and MIX is probably our key event.

And being an old developer, I have worked most of my career with underlying communication technologies, so it is really fun to be involved with the bells and whistles of the User Experience side of the world.  We have some really creative designers inside and outside of Microsoft who will be presenting and will be available to talk with.  And for us devs whose idea of UI is a text box and button, you will also see how Expression and VStudio allow you to work together with the designers and do all the amazing things that WPF and WPF/E allow you to do.

And there is a TON of other cool topics of discussion as well.  So whenever I get the daylight savings blahs, all I have to do is think about Mix and I perk right up. :-)

If you haven't registered yet, hurry up and register since the early-bird discount ends this Thursday (March 15).

   -Matt