Last week, I pointed out a screenshot in Expression Blend from Scott Guthrie’s post about Silverligth 2.0, showing a lot of new controls. Roger Jennings asked – so where’s this datagrid I keep hearing about? I thought perhaps it was in the additional tools that were not visible in the screenshot, since there was a scrollbar.

I installed Silverlight 2.0 and the March Preview of Expression Blend 2.5 (oh dear, another “.5” version) and opened up to see what else was there. Here’s the default view.

Here are all of the controls in the asset library.

No DataGrid.

BUt then I created a new Silverlight app in VS2008. I can’t get over the Blend designer actually being right there inside of the VS IDE! And there is the DataGrid. But alas, no InkPresenter.

I spent some time (even digging around the dlls in Reflector) trying to find the SL version of the InkPresenter but finally decided to just give in.

[update: hmmm, I gave up trying to get the app working and started a new one from scratch, so “good to go” was only relative!]

The MSBuild files for Silverlight 1.1 were tucked inside of the MSBuild’s Visual Studio folder. Now they are in their own folder.

If you try to open up a project created with Silverlight 1.1 in VS2008, you will get a message that the C:\program files\msbuild\microsoft\visualSutiod\v9.0\Silverlight\Microsoft.Silverlight.Csharp.targets (or VisualBasic.targets) file can’t be found and you won’t be allowed to open the project.

Click OK to let the solution load.

In the Solution Explorer you should seethe project listed but unavailable. Right click on it and choose the Edit option. The project’s MSBuild file will open.

Scroll down until you find the Import Project= element that points to the targets file.

All you should have to do is replace

“VisualStudio9.0\Silverlight\”

with

“Silverlight\v2.0\”

Then you can reload the project after saving.

[continuing…]

Next steps are to get the right APIs referenced. Add references should show you relevant Silvelright 2.0 APIs. You’ll see that the old ones are no longer valid (the warning icon). YOu can delete them. In there place you need to ref:

• System [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
• System.Core [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
• System.Windows [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
• System.Windows.Browser [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]
• System.WIndows.Controls [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Libraries\Client]System.Windows.Controls.Extended [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v2.0\Libraries\Client]
• System.XML [in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Silverlight\2.0.30226.2]

I’m down to one error and when I figure it out I’ll append again.

At the last minute, I had to forego heading out to Las Vegas for MIX but thanks to streaming, I was able to watch the 3 hour keynote given/hosted by Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie. I say “hosted” becasue there were many many amazing demos of work different companies have been doing.

There will be so many people blogging about the keynote that I don’t want to reiterate everything. A few highlights were seeing some major innovation in IE8 (along with Dean’s cool t-shirt – the ie logo and the e in “eight” result in a clever image) and  Silverlight 2 goodness – especially Vertigo’s silverlight app for Hard Rock Cafe (go Scott (even if he doesn’t post a lot on his blog!)). Thanks to Guy Burstein who posted all of the critical links in a few blog posts this morning, there’s also one to the technology that Vertigo used called Deep Zoom.

Okay, Scott Guthrie juggling for a Cirque du Soleil audition was pretty cute, too.

The real goods are:

• IE8 Beta
• Silverlight 2 Beta and dev tools and SDK
• Expression Studio Beta (don’t forget Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview)
• A passing mention that the next preview of MVC is available.

Because he did such a good job at it, I’m going to take advantage of Guy’s posts with lots and lots of links.

I missed the discussion of the one DATA related thing because of a phone call! “SQL Server Data Services: Microsoft announced a preview of SQL Server Data Services, a building block service designed for developers and businesses that need scalable, easily programmable and cost-effective data storage with robust database query capabilities. ” Sheesh. Roger Jennings has blogged about this particular piece.