Saleh Blog

Ever wanted to create a beautiful Flash website? Wix is a great place to start. It provides a set of flash layouts that you can customize and build your website to the final touch. It’s simple, easy and fast! Best of all, you do not need to have any knowledge in Flash.

I’ve been trying to install Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 but I keep getting a message saying that I don’t have SP1 installed even though I do have it installed, and it won’t allow me to install it. I tried to uninstall everything and reinstalled Visual Studio 2008 and updated it to Service Pack 1 but the same error keeps showing up whenever I executing the Silverlight 3 Tools installation. Here’s the error message I keep receiving:

Installation Requirements:

Build 9.0.30729.XX of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 or Visual Web Developer 2008 SP1 must be installed before installation can continue.  See <A HREF=”http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=122094″>http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=122094</A> for download information.

I’ve done much research to resolve this problem but I couldn’t find any helpful information. However, I’ve been able to find some hints here and there and I’ve came up with the solution after playing around with it for awhile. But first I should clarify few things before I continue with the solution:

• I’m using an early version of Windows 7 Professional since it was released 3 weeks ago by the time I’m writing this post.
• I have Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Professional Edition and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installed.
• The VS2008 build is: 9.0.21022.8 RTM which is the latest update I can get from Windows Update and it cannot detect any more updates for the VS2008.
• I have Expression Studio 3 already installed.

Okay, so now to overcome the installation error of Silverlight 3 Tools follow up these few steps:

1. Download Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio 2008 from here. The download file name should be: Silverlight3_Tools.exe by default.
2. Download WinRar from here. Winrar will be used to extract Silverlight3_Tools.exe since it is an archived file. The reason I mentioned Winrar here is because I’m not sure if there is any other application that supports extracting EXE files. Feel free to use any other app that could do the job.
3. After installing Winrar or any equivalent application, right click on Silverlight3_Tools.exe and extract the archive file.
4. Finally, go to the location where you have extracted the file and execute the file VS_SilverlightTools_Setup.exe to install the Silverlight 3 Tools.

Remember the Adobe Flex Builder 3 online video tutorials that could be completed in 5 days? Now Adobe have added another set of tutorials for the new Flash Builder 4 Beta 2 that could also be completed within a week. It is also free and publicly available.

You could also download Flash Builder 4 beta 2 directly from Adobe and for free.

It has been sometime now we have been waiting for this announcement. Tickets for the web based conference, Singularity 2008, is now available for sale for $99 USD.

Aral Balkan has been working hard to make this project happen and it is finally happening. This conference is a web-based, means you can attend the conference from your PC without the need to travel.

More information about Gumbo is now made available on the Gumbo page. Gumbo is the codename of the next version of Flex.

For all fancy web developers in the globe, Adobe has announced Dreamweaver CS4 beta which is now available for public testing. If you are a Dreamweaver fan or you are a programmer geek race then you might want to grab this software.

Sitepoint and 99designs are offering a free complete book, The Photoshop Anthology: 101 Web Design Tips, Tricks & Techniques. This book is aimed for web developers looking forward to add Photoshop in their technique basket. It is available for a limited time. Hurry and grab it now! 
As for me, I have a week off between summer and fall semester. I’m going to get my hands dirty with books and programming! This book should be a good start. Long live fall break…

Ajaxian has posted a book for Adobe AIR developers called “Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers”. The book is under Creative Commons license so it is free. The book has been out for sometime but this one is updated for AIR 1.0. You can get it here.

Google, Yahoo, and MySpace announced today the formation of OpenSocial Foundation. It is a move to help web developers build better social applications using OpenSocial API.

In my opinion, I think this is a big step towards Web 3.0 as some predicts that the World Wide Web will be seen as a single database in the web 3.0 era.

While doing my daily shifts in the World Wide Web and buzzering out of world class music with my surrounding sound system dancing all around my desk, I cracked out of my seat – again while still in music mood – with great news from Google jumping of my screen. That thing that came out my screen, that tiny little piece of text, that title is “Google Releases Language Translation API”.

The language API supports many languages such as Arabic, Chinese, France, Russian, and Korean and of course English. As clearly as their announcement is, it support 12 languages and cover 29 translation pairs and it is extremely easy to use for programmers.

For more information on how to use the API, you can check out the official documentation here. Be advised, it is made for Javascripters.