Microsoft has created a wave of 'Zoom-In' galleries using Silverlight and Deep Zoom. These has been around for a little while but lately I have seen more and more popping up all over the place. Anyway here is a glance at Pretty in Ink.

The interface loading:

Selecting filters:

Zooming in on a star:

Overall its a nice way to view images and its also good to push Silverlight to users that might not already have the plugin installed but its just another DeepZoom gallery - I would prefer them to recreate Wonderwall in Silverlight. Fingers crossed its on their list. Other 'Zoom-In' galleries are:

• Rings and Bling
• Red Carpet
• Hair & Makeup Shockers

I posted about Silverlight 2 and Xap optimization and with the announcement of Silverlight 3 hitting the web in just over a month I thought I would show you a useful post on Jeff Prosise's blog on Silverlight 3 assembly caching. You can find his post here and I highly recommend you read it as it will reduce the Xap download time and improve the user experience dramatically. Best of all it is really easy 

Packed with new controls, features and functionality Silverlight 3 is starting to really give developers and designers a headache - Flash or Silverlight. For certain solutions Silverlight has taken over 

• DockPanel
• DataGrid
• WrapPanel
• Label
• ViewBox
• AutoCompleteBox
• TreeView
• Expander
• HeaderedItemsControl
• HeaderedContentControl

Screenclick is Ireland's largest online movie rental company and have included a Silverlight Call To Action (CTA) banner within their homepage. Now this is good as hopefully Screenclick will see Silverlight's advantages with media and might peruse the route of creating a Silverlight player but that is all if's and buts! The Silverlight CTA on screenclick's homepage isn't the best example I have seen and feels like it needs some designers magic to just give it that slickness. Take a look below and check it out yourself:

A while ago I posted about Bill Reiss over at Blue Rose Games who was planning on creating a Silverlight gaming website where developers who submitted games that were approved got a slice of any profits made from the advertising. I dropped Bill a tweet the other day, and I am delighted to see that the site SilverArcade.com has launched!

At present there are 12 games listed to play which I am sure will go over the next few weeks, and I must say the games that are available are of a higher quality than most examples you find elsewhere. The site interface is very clean and the adverts don't intrude into the gaming space which often happens on other gaming websites. I like that Bill is also is creating a gaming community where people can register/login and rate games and each user has a profile. Bill has already received some praise from the guys at Microsoft including Tim Heuer.

If you have a game that you would like to submit then check out the details here: http://www.silverarcade.com/Home/Help 

Gavin over at Silverlightbuzz.com has been working on a Silverlight game for the last few weeks and he finally put up a version to play on his blog. I have been watching him create bits of it during the day and have helped him out with the odd bit of code and I must say the game is looking good. It needs some expansion and some more TLC but I'm sure he will address that in the coming weeks.

Why not have a play and leave some feedback on your thoughts.

One of the first things I noticed once I installed Silverlight 3 is that you have a new project type in Visual Studio 2008 for 'Silverlight Navigation Application' which has been added to make it easier for people to start building RIA's in Silverlight. Now having a quick google on the project type I have found a few sites that have started creating and distributing Xaml templates that allow you to 'skin' or 'theme' a basic site very easily. Think a theme for BlogEngine or Wordpress. Now this got me thinking maybe I should look to create a section that Xaml themes can be added. Any thoughts?

The Visual Studio Template has this theme within:

I found Laumania.net's post on Dr Dobb's Challenge 2 and just had to post. Dr. Dobb's and Microsoft Silverlight have teamed up to create a game competition called Dr. Dobb's Challenge Deuce.

Users can win cash and prizes for submitting new in-game levels or creating a new game by modding the code. This is actually one very interesting part, both coders and non-coders can participate.

For more information visit http://dobbschallenge2.com/

Server Quest II is a competition run by Microsoft inviting people to submit games that have been developed in Silverlight. They are offering $5000 to the winner so that surely will give someone some spending money during the credit crunch :-)

Below is the trailer for Server Quest II

<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=4273f306-a750-4ba5-9427-b586e46fe672" target="_new" title="Server Quest Trailer">Video: Server Quest Trailer</a>

If you submit a game feel free to drop me a mail and I'll look to create a post on my favourite games ;-)

At Metia we have been working on creating a interactive magazine for the launch of SEAT's new car - the Exeo. The magazine has been built in Microsoft Silverlight and has been developed into a platform system. The platform (called Pagelife.com) was launched on April 1st and is part of several solutions Metia operate.

You can browse the SEAT Exeo magazine here, or you can read the case study here. Why not let us know what you think and if there are any features you feel the platform should have :)