Adobe Flex Development News, Adobe AIR, Flash, Silverlight and Other Web and Graphic Technologies.

Adobe Flex Development News, Adobe AIR, Flash, Silverlight and Other Web and Graphic Technologies. » Graphics in Web Development

Messages from Graphics in Web Development category

Sort by: Name | Date | Random

Common Navigation UI and Authorization-driven Sitemaps

Navigation-driven Silverlight applications tend to share some common pieces of UI. Traditionally, this has required sprinkling HyperlinkButtons throughout the application
Publication date: 2010-05-11 more

Silverlight HVP

The Silverlight HyperVideo project ran full steam from January through the day before Mix, and then went on hiatus while we all recovered, and while I pondered three critical questions: What features and changes are needed to bring the HVP up to the point...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-10 more

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 5/10/2010

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #23. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Surface, Windows 7, XNA, Windows Forms , Silverlight , Windows Phone and Visual Studio...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-10 more

Creating a Simple Report Writer in Silverlight 4

Over the weekend, I was working on the Printing chapter of my Silverlight 4 Book . As part of that chapter, I decided to build a simple report writer. While there's a lot of other useful stuff in the chapter (buy my book! <g>) I felt the report...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-10 more

Protected: Not Yet Published

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-08 more

Breaking Apart the Margin Property in Xaml for better Binding

WARNING: This post doesn't have a solution. It's more like one of those old "In Search Of" episodes where you'd see a lot of talking, an interview with a 90 year old guy you can't understand, and some fuzzy photographs, but no closure. When looking at...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-08 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #16

If you have ever tried to work with the property IgnoreImageCache you might have noticed it does not work as Read the Rest......( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-08 more

MDI uses Silverlight to add a

If you’ve been to the doctor recently and dealt with filling out forms, you likely know the frustration and hassle of mounds of paperwork. As the backend processor of that paperwork, MDI knows that pain all too well. In search of a better way to...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-08 more

Project Turing: Multiple Tables & RIA Services

Turing Project Page: [Novice: 10 | Advanced: 7 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? In the previous listing in the Project Turing series, I examined extracting data from...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-07 more

Changing the watermark text in a DatePicker control

Someone recently asked about how to change the watermark text in a DatePicker control. Here
Publication date: 2010-05-07 more

Do You Want be on Silverlight TV?

Silverlight is surging and Silverlight TV is also doing well on Channel 9 and gaining momentum thanks to all of you who watch our episodes! I
Publication date: 2010-05-07 more

Silverlight security overview paper has been officially published

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/1/A/A1A80A28-907C-4C6A-8036-782E3792A408/Silverlight Security Overview.docx (The content hasn't changed since RC but the formatting & presentation has undergone a facelift courtesy John Allwright) A little...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-07 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #15

From within Visual Studio you can specify which browser you want launched when running your Silverlight application. Your default system Read the Rest......( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-07 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #14

In this tip I will be showing you how to load a Silverlight control from a DLL that is on Read the Rest......( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-06 more

Silverlight TV 24: eBay

John grabs a few minutes with Dave Wolf of Cynergy to talk about the eBay Simple Lister application, one of the first publicly available Silverlight 4 out of browser applications. Dave discusses the process of how designing and developing the Silverlight...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-06 more

KoodibooK Book Publishing

Earlier in the year I dropped in to see some former colleagues of mine who are working on a new product/service called KoodibooK at their software company in Bath (UK). KoodibooK is a product that allows you to build up a set of photographs into a book...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-06 more

The case of null httpcontext.current.session

Because of un-addressable client in SL, we introduced Polling Duplex channel to support callback in WCF Silverlight. It started as a channel in Silverlight2. We added service model support in Silverlight3 and MultipeMode, aka chunking in Silverlight4...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-06 more

Silverlight XAP Signing Certificate promotion from Thawte

And the offers keep coming in! Another one of our key partners for testing XAP signing for trusted applications was Thawte. Their group helped provide us with valid certificates to verify their process and signing worked as expected (and verified) for...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-06 more

Power tool brings back index to offline help!

If you've used the new offline help viewer, you may have noticed the index is missing. I personally used the index in the old help viewer quite a bit, to quickly locate a specific class or topic. If you install the power tool , which is currently in beta...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

The joys of being an early adopter... [Upgraded my Windows Phone 7 Charting example to go with the April Developer Tools Refresh]

Last week saw the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP - April Refresh , a free set of tools and an emulator that lets everyone get started writing Windows Phone 7 applications. Not only is the application platform for Windows Phone 7 based...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

Digitally Signing a XAP Silverlight

I
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #13

As you might have heard by now Microsoft has revamped it
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

Connected Show Podcast #29 With

Back at Philly Code Camp, Peter Laudati interviewed me on WPF 4, Silverlight , and Windows Phone 7 all for the Connected Show Podcast. Pete is one of our awesome Developer Evangelists here on the east coast. Listen to Connected Show #29, Get Lit with...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

Silverlight and WCF RIA Services (2

Following on from the previous post , I thought I
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

Smoothly Scrolling a ListBox

Learn how to scroll items inside your listbox smoothly by changing the ItemsPanel used....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

My Displays, including my New 30" Dell 3007WFP-HC

Primary PC Over the next month or three, I'll be building a new ultimate developer PC , with some pretty hefty specs. One thing I managed to do before that, however, was snag a great used Dell 30" display on eBay. I was pretty nervous about buying used...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

The one that got away [Simple workarounds for a visual problem when toggling a ContextMenu MenuItem's IsEnabled property directly]

A few days ago, Martin Naughton and Tiago Halm de Carvalho e Branco independently contacted me to report a problem they were having with the new ContextMenu control in the April '10 release of the Silverlight Toolkit . In both cases, they were toggling...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-05 more

Design-time Resources in Expression Blend 4 RC

When building Silverlight and WPF applications that are composited (e.g. using MEF) or written to support UI customization, resources are loaded dynamically at run-time. This is a great solution on the development side, but can be a challenge when working...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Silverlight TV 23: MVP Q&A with WWW (Wildermuth, Wahlin and Ward)

John interviews a panel of 3 well known Silverlight leaders including Shawn Wildermuth, Dan Wahlin, and Ward Bell at the Silverlight 4 launch event. The guest panel answers questions sent in from Twitter about the features in Silverlight 4, thoughts on...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #12

Once you have an image loaded how do you go back and get the original file name for the source file? This can be accomplished through the Uri property of the images Source. However, you must first typecast the images Source to be a BitmapImage. The Uri...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Silverlight and WCF RIA Services (1 - Overview)

A big part of the Silverlight 4 release is the new WCF RIA Services framework. Its worth pointing out that WCF RIA Services doesn
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #11

The purpose of this tip is to outline all the steps needed to deploy a Silverlight application that leverages a WCF web service to a server. There are a number of issues you could run into if you forget a step. The errors you receive are often ambiguous...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Silverlight Unit Test Framework: New version in the April 2010 Silverlight Toolkit

The latest release of the Silverlight Toolkit contains the new Silverlight Unit Test Framework, with a new modern user interface, out-of-browser support, and performance improvements....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Introduction to Sample Data

Learn how to use sample data to easily visualize and design data centric applications in Expression Blend....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Screen Scraping

I had decided to create a list of what videos were already available on the Learning Pages of Silverlight.net. When I clicked on the page for the entire list, however, I was quite daunted by the sheer number. I opened...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Palmer

MindSmack is honored to launch the new Palmer’s website. E.T. Browne Drug Company is one of the longest standing proprietors of skin and hair care products in the United States. The company has been family owned since the middle of the nineteenth century and has been under the current ownership since 1971. E.T. Browne [...]
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

New Silverlight 4 Themes available–get the raw bits

A while back I posted a sneak peek preview of 3 new themes that we were working on for Silverlight 4 applications. Our team wanted to do more than just the overall base theme and provide the themes for the core, SDK and some Silverlight Toolkit controls...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Ways to give feedback on Silverlight

There are a few ways to give feedback on Silverlight . I wanted to share my thoughts on them as some are obvious and some aren
Publication date: 2010-05-04 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #10

In Tip of the Day #9 I showed you how you can obtain your clients IP addresses through either server side script or a simple web service call. In this tip I will show you how to take that IP address to determine the geographical location of the user that...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-03 more

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 5/3/2010

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #22. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Surface, Windows 7, XNA, Windows Forms , Silverlight , Windows Phone and Visual Studio...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-03 more

Creating your first website

Learn to set up your Dreamweaver site and project files.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

MindSmack Ranked #1 Web Design Agency In The USA 14 Months In A Row!

It is a true honor to continuously be rated #1 in the USA by such a well respected company. We look forward to another 14 months at #1 and also be the #1 iPhone app and #1 iPad app design and development company over time, especially with our FastMall app and technology being used all over [...]
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

The Next Six Months

Enough is going on that I thought I
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Quick Tip: Enable Telnet under Windows 7

Telnet can be a nice easy way to debug DNS and see the raw result of a web request. There are lots of other tools that do this, but I keep returning to Telnet; maybe because at one point in my career, Telnet was the internet. Enabling Telnet Open the...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Crappy Image Resizing in WPF? Try RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode

A WPF enthusiast on twitter is building an application. They noticed that the images they were using looked like crap in the toolbar. We checked, and it wasn't an issue of SnapToDevicePixels or UseLayoutRounding. Nope, this was something else. So I asked...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Silverlight Designer Support in VS 2010

Visual Studio 2010 is a huge release in terms of designer support for Silverlight and WPF. You can now drag Silverlight controls from the Toolbox to the design surface. You can resize and position controls on the design surface, set their properties and...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone in 90 seconds

A refreshed Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP has been released this week which provides compatibility with Visual Studio 2010. Matching the new tools, we
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Workaround for StackOverflowException when using SlSvcUtil.exe

Some developers reported to us they were experiencing StackOverflowException when using SlSvcUtil.exe that shipped with the SL4 SDK. Upon investigation, we discovered that this happens on machines with a system language set to something else then English...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Setting up a local testing server in Dreamweaver CS5

Learn why it's important to use a local server for testing and how to set one up in Dreamweaver.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Combining animation and ActionScript using Flash Professional CS5 and Flash Builder 4

Get an overview of the Flash Builder and Flash Professional integration features by creating a simple character animation controlled by an ActionScript class.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Exploring the Spring tool in Flash Professional CS5

Learn how to apply spring to various IK armature examples to quickly create animations that would be difficult and time-consuming to create manually.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

What's new in the Dreamweaver CS5 CSS layouts

Jumpstart your Dreamweaver development using the new built-in CSS layouts.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Introducing Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5

Get an overview of the key features in Flash Catalyst CS5.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Creating your first Flash Professional CS5 document

Never used Flash before? Follow these simple steps to create a FLA file, add a simple animation, and publish your work in Flash Professional CS5.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Which server-side technology should I choose?

Compare ASP.NET, JSP, ColdFusion, PHP, Python, and Rails in this survey of server-side technologies.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Using the Adobe Widget Browser

Learn an easy way to find widgets, customize them visually, and then insert them in your web page via Dreamweaver.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Setting up an ASP development environment for Dreamweaver

Learn how to set up an ASP application server on Windows, define a Dreamweaver site, and connect to a database.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Setting up a PHP development environment for Dreamweaver

Create a development environment for building PHP web applications with Adobe Dreamweaver and a MySQL database server.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Mobile workflows using Fireworks CS5 and Device Central CS5

Learn how to preview your mobile website or application and create your own custom device profiles.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Setting up a ColdFusion development environment for Dreamweaver

Learn how to set up an Adobe ColdFusion application server on Windows or Mac OS X, define a Dreamweaver site, and connect to a database.
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Building NoteSync: A Better Way to Keep and Retrieve Notes

Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #9

This tip shows you how to obtain your client
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

Ultimate PC 2010

I need a new PC. My current PC is based around an Intel E8400 45nm dual core chip. I had really good luck overclocking that guy, but performance is still lacking. The drives are dog slow, and the 4gb of memory (it's still running 32 bit so I see only...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

AudioOrchard: Awesome Silverlight app, Interview with Eric Herbrandson

I'm not a musician, but I've always loved tinkering with synthesizers, sequencers and drum machines. I worked at a music store in high school, so I got to play with all the new toys. Since then, I've bought myself a new synth-related toy every once in...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-05-01 more

VS2010, Silverlight, Blend, Phone 7 Upgrade

I
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

Slides & Videos from Recent Events

I thought I
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

TechDays UK

The sessions from the Windows Phone 7 day at UK TechDays are available online. The day had 3 components to it; Charlie Kindel giving a Technical Overview of Windows Phone 7 Me giving an Overview of Developing for the Windows Phone 7 CTP with Silverlight...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

Code snippets for beginning ActionScript 3 programmers and designers

Learn how to add ActionScript easily to your Flash projects using the Code Snippets panel in Flash Professional CS5.
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

Consuming REST/POX and REST/JSON services in Silverlight 4

A new feature in Silverlight 4 is the ability to consume REST/POX (XML) services in a strongly-typed way, using the same programming model as the desktop framework. That includes WebGet/WebInvoke attributes, UriTemplates and body styles. By default, only...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools April 2010 Refresh

As most of you know at MIX10 , we released the first version of the Windows Phone 7 developer tools (which are free) targeting Silverlight and XNA development to the world. This was a community technology preview (CTP) release and targeted Visual Studio...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

Silverlight TV 22: Tim Heuer on Extending the SMF

In this episode of Silverlight TV , Tim Heuer demonstrates how to use the Silverlight Media Framework (SMF) to create a nice media experience akin to what has been demonstrated through the 2010 Winter Olympics and Sunday Night Football players. He also...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

Blend for Windows Phone: Update Available

We have just published refreshed bits of the Blend Add-In for Windows Phone and the Blend SDK for WIndows Phone. You can now use these bits with the Blend 4 RC build, and of course you need the latest version of the phone development tools too. Download...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-30 more

Saved by Windows 7 UAC and Microsoft Security Essentials

Today, I visited one of those ad-laden but otherwise legitimate sites with lots of top 10 lists. In this case, it was a list of photos which looked too cool to be real. I got there from a link chain starting at a Lego article on Epic Win which had a link...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-29 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #8

When mouse clicking or typing a key in your Silverlight application how do you know if any combination of the <Alt>, <Shift>, <Ctrl>, <Windows> and/or <Apple> keys are down as well? To accomplish this you simply...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-29 more

MindSmack Madness Given The 2010 Dope Award. DopeSmack!

Dope is a collection of the worlds best flash websites, carefully awarded for your inspiration. http://www.dopeawards.com/?winner=1870
Publication date: 2010-04-29 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #7

What is Localization? Localization is the process of adapting an application for a particular country, region or group by adding locale-specific components and by translating the strings used in the UI. Doing so will expand the reach of your application...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-29 more

The Lounge Advertising Network

If you haven
Publication date: 2010-04-29 more

WTF Step by Step guide to installing Silverlight Tools

With Silverlight 4 shipping and Expression Blend 4 RC made available, now was a great time to update the Flash to Silverlight section on the Project Rosetta site. My main goal was to update the Getting Started series to take advantage of new version 4...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-29 more

Microsoft Surface: Announcing Online Design and Development Training

I love the Surface. I want one in my home office. Alas, that isn't going to happen any time soon, but thanks to things like the Surface SDK for Touch for Windows 7, I can play with the cool surface controls all I want. What, you don't know how to develop...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-28 more

Finding the "real" templates and generic.xaml in Silverlight core or library assemblies, by using .NET Reflector

.NET Reflector is a great tool. I would wager that most of our loyal readers (all 6 of them ;-) ) already know all about .NET Reflector. But just in case, here is how to get it: http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/ In addition to spying on the...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-28 more

UK and Ireland Slides and Links

I promised to post the slides I used during my SLHVP and Robust (MVVM/TDD) Silverlight Applications presentations. As noted at the time, they don
Publication date: 2010-04-28 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #6

Toast Notifications are a new feature that is supported in Out-of-Browser Silverlight applications. Toast windows are essentially temporary notification windows that appears in the bottom right of your screen. They are useful for providing users...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-28 more

Exercise 4.0: Applying transitions to view states

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Exercise 4.5: Creating and using item renderers and item editors

Use multiple methods to apply item editors and item renderers to a DataGrid control.
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Data paging with Flex and PHP using Flash Builder 4

Build a Flex application that incrementally retrieves data pages from a database table using a PHP class on the server.
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Using the ChangePropertyAction

Learn how to easily change properties at runtime (and look cool) without writing code....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

3 Silverlight Free Demos

We recently added a new demo and updated 2 of our more popular Silverlight demos to use Silverlight 4 RTW (from the beta and RC bits). The Silverlight.net samples web site has all of the samples, but here are direct links to each of the demos with a brief...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Diary of a trip to the UK and Ireland

This is the penultimate entry in my on-going diary, a 90 second recording, in which I take a moment to thank everyone and capture for a good laugh, my absurd tendency to unconsciously modify the way I speak, wherever I go....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Diary of a trip to the UK & Ireland

The ferry to Belfast was uneventful, and Belfast itself is a beautiful, scarred city, caught between decades of violence and flickering hope for the future. The
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #5

By default, when debugging, Silverlight will launch your application in the browser. However, if you application is configured to run in Out of Browser (OOB) mode and is installed on the box you can configure debugging to occur directly in the OOB application...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Microsoft releases Silverlight-powered Windows Intune beta

Microsoft recently released a beta of Windows Intune , a Silverlight powered Web console for midsize businesses to manage their PCs. Windows Intune simplifies how businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7 in order to...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-27 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #4

By default Silverlight applications are restricted to run inside your browser. However, you can configure your application to allow for out of browser (OOB) use. OOB Advantages include: 1. Users can run your application when they are offline...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-26 more

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 4/26/2010

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #21. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Surface, Windows 7, XNA, Windows Forms , Silverlight and Windows Phone. If you have something...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-26 more

A

At the beginning of the year, as part of a series of posts about the INavigationContentLoader extensibility point in Silverlight 4, I described a way to use a content loader to do authorization before allowing a user to navigate to a page. With...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-26 more

Updated Blue and Dark Visual Studio 2010 Themes

I updated my previous dark theme for Visual Studio 2010 and added a new one with a blue background, similar to the background (but a bit lighter) to that of Visual Studio 2010
Publication date: 2010-04-25 more

Speaking in Chicago about Expression Blend for Developers

In conjunction with my trip to Chicago for the Expression Blend Workshop .toolbox event, I have the honor of presenting at the Chicago Silverlight User Group meeting. On May 6th at 6:30pm, we will meet at the Illinois Technology Association and discuss...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Silverlight 4 enables Authorization header modification

A little bit of hidden gem in the Silverlight 4 release is the ability to modify the Authorization header in network calls. For most, the sheer ability to leverage network credentials in the networking stack will be enough. But there are times when you...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #3

With Silverlight 4 comes full support for mouse right clicks. To demonstrate this, I will be creating an application that pops up a context menu when you right click on your Silverlight application. The new two events your UI elements can monitor for...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Essential Silverlight and WPF Skills: The UI Thread, Dispatchers, Background Workers and Async Network Programming

I'm starting a occasional series of postings on top things every Silverlight and WPF developer should know. Originally, I was going to make this a top-10 style list, but I'll keep that for my presentations, and instead expand on it here, with one topic...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Migrating from Clearspring Launchpad to Distribution service

Start tracking views using Adobe Distribution Services from within the Clearspring wrapper.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 4.6: Navigating using MX navigator container

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 4.7: Creating and navigating application state

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 4.9: Animating components with effects

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 4.1: Passing data to item renderers for display

Render data in a DataGroup container.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 4.8: Creating a scalable user interface

Learn to create a scalable user interface.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Skinning a Spark List component

Learn to skin a Spark List component.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.11: Deploying to the desktop

Use Flash Builder to create and produce a desktop application.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.4: Using advanced CSS selectors

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.7: Creating a vertical title bar on a Panel container

Learn how to use a skin to make the Panel container vertical.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.10: Creating a production build

Use Flash Builder to create a production build of a Flash application.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Flex data binding pitfalls: common misuses and mistakes

Learn how to ensure you are using data binding effectively and only when necessary.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.6: Creating custom skin properties

Practice creating a custom skin property and reuse it to style Flex component.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.1: Using text controls

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.9: Skinning the SkinnableDataGroup container

Change the DataGroup container to a SkinnableDataContainer so that you can apply a skin to both the container and the individual item renderers.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.8: Animating button components

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.5: Creating and applying skins

Practice creating a custom skin property and reuse it to style Flex components.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.3: Defining selector styles

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Exercise 5.2: Using text layout features

Practice creating a project and adding controls.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Developer spotlight: David Lenaerts

Meet David Lenaerts, an interaction developer picked for his use of Adobe technologies such as Flash, Flex and AIR.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Introducing Flash Professional CS5

Learn about the new features available in the latest release of Flash, including new text engine, support for XML-based FLA files, video improvements, streamlined development environment, mobile development, and more.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Introducing Adobe Fireworks CS5

Take an in-depth tour of the latest version and learn the important aspects of this release: stability, performance, and polish.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Introducing Dreamweaver CS5

Get an overview of key new features such as CSS Inspect mode, CMS support, the new Site Setup dialog box, and more.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Moving projects from Flex Builder 3 to Flash Builder 4

Move to Flash Builder 4 and benefit from the vast majority of the new features added in this release whilst continuing to work with your Flex 3 projects.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Creating data management applications by manually creating Java server-side classes

Develop a LiveCycle data management application that manages data located in a relational database.
Publication date: 2010-04-24 more

Flickr/Bing/Google High End Image Viewer

I have been working on a prototype for an Image Viewer that allows you to perform image based searches against search engines such as Bing, Google as well as Flickr. I hope to gradually add others including SmugMug, DeviantArt and more. You will need...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Silverlight TV 21: Silverlight 4 - A Customer's Perspective

Live from the official launch event for Silverlight 4, John talks with a panel of guests who build applications using Silverlight. Franck Jeannin of Ormetis, Ward Bell of IdeaBlade, and Dave Wolf of Cynergy Systems discuss both what they showed in the...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

WCF RIA Services - Hands On Lab

At the keynote for the Silverlight 4 Launch alongside Scott Guthrie I demonstrated (minute 28 to minute 38) how to build a Silverlight 4 application using WCF RIA Services and the new Visual Studio 2010 tooling. The application I built is an online book...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

eBay Simple Lister Beta Now Available

That
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Silverlight 4 Training Kit

We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 Training Kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4. You can browse the training kit online or alternatively download an entire offline version of the training kit ...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Welcome to my Silverlight blog

Greetings and welcome to my new Silverlight blog! This blog was formerly at http://blogs.silverlight.net/blogs/msnow. For more information on myself, please refer to the About Page. Over the course of time I will be uploading blogs that cover a wide range...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #1

A common place to put styles in Silverlight applications is the App.xaml file. Any style declared in App.xaml is automatically picked up by any of your custom controls in your application. However, if you create a Silverlight Class Library you will notice...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Nobody likes a show-off [Today's DataVisualizationDemos release includes new demos showing off stacked series behavior]

My DataVisualizationDemos application is a collection of nearly all the Data Visualization samples I've posted to my blog. And just like the Data Visualization assembly ( get Silverlight/WPF Data Visualization Development Release 4 here! ), the demo application...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

New Channel 9 Video: Josh Blake on NaturalShow Multi-touch in WPF

With Windows 7, WPF 4, Silverlight 4, and the road paved by our multi-touch handheld devices, Multi-touch is really hitting mainstream. While at MIX10, I spoke with Josh Blake about NaturalShow, his multi-touch not-PowerPoint presentation approach, written...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #2

Using Visual Studio you can attach to an instance of your browser that has a Silverlight application running from the server (IIS). This is very useful especially since unexpected problems can occur once you deploy and run your application on the server;...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Silverlight: Unable to start Debugging. The Silverlight managed debugging package isn

Due to a design change in the Silverlight 4 installer you may see the following dialog when you attempt to debug: This is due to the fact that the installer causes any older developer runtime to be upgraded when a newer client runtime installer is executed...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-23 more

Rant: HDTV Has Ruined the LCD Display Market: Or, I want my pixels and DPI now!

Ok, that's it. I've had it. I want my pixels , damn-it! For a while, screen resolution has been going up on our desktop displays. The trend was good, as I've always wanted the largest monitor with the highest DPI that I could afford. I mean, I used to...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-22 more

Upgrade to Expression Studio v4 for free

Remember during the Day 1 Keynote at MIX10 when Scott Guthrie said (around 14 minutes and 14 seconds into the video): ..we
Publication date: 2010-04-22 more

Awkward: The Other Microsoft Interview Story

Now that my friend Frank La Vigne (@ tableteer on twitter ) is leaving AIS, I can tell the "Awkward Interview Story" I've had to keep secret. This story takes place just a day after my wife and I returned from the hospital from the delivery of our second...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-22 more

New Silverlight Blog

After a long hiatus from Silverlight (due to my team being moved off Silverlight
Publication date: 2010-04-22 more

Avatar Mosaic -Experimenting with the Artefact Animator

After finding out about the Artefact Animator, written by Jesse Graupmann, I knew I wanted to try it out. The Artefact Animator library is based on the same concept as Tweener for Flash, which provides an easy way to do procedural animations in...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-22 more

Get a Silverlight XAP signing certificate for cheap thanks to GoDaddy

One of the new features in Silverlight 4 is the ability to sign your XAP applications so that your out-of-browser trusted applications look more friendly (trusted) to your users, they come from a verified publisher, and they can take advantage of the...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-22 more

New Channel 9 Video: Emil Stoychev on the CompletIT Silverlight Showcase Site

Creating your whole website using Silverlight isn't usually the approach you'll take--unless you happen to be a company specializing in Silverlight development. At MIX10, I caught up with Emil Stoychev, founder of SilverlightShow. His company, CompletIT...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-21 more

Tip of the Day #111

With Silverlight you can run your Out-of-Browser applications in elevated trust mode. This will allow you to relax the normal sandboxed barrier Silverlight restricts applications to. While you still will not have full control of the local machine, the...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-21 more

Get Silverlight 4

You can now get everything you need to develop with Silverlight 4 from the WebPI! You can download and install the Silverlight tools, the Silverlight Toolkit and the RIA Services Toolkit all from the Web Platform
Publication date: 2010-04-21 more

Phone-y charts [Silverlight/WPF Data Visualization Development Release 4 and Windows Phone 7 Charting sample!]

The April '10 release of the Silverlight Toolkit brought stacked series support to the Data Visualization assembly on the Silverlight 4 platform! You can read an overview here and get a detailed description here . Almost simultaneously, the WPF team released...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-21 more

.toolbox events in May

.toolbox is going on the road! The .toolbox site is hosting 4 events in May. These interactive workshops are focused on improving your skills with Expression Blend and Silverlight. Topics covered include: the Blend workspace prototyping with SketchFlow...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-21 more

Free Training - Building Silverlight Business Applications

We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 training kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4. You can also download the entire offline version of the kite here . You can use the 8 modules, 25 videos, and several...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-21 more

Watch

Scott Guthrie was kind enough to join the Channel 9 Live crew for an discussion of everything Silverlight immediately following his Silverlight 4 launch keynote. You can check out the recorded video right on Channel 9 . Scott does a great job fielding...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-20 more

My Visual Studio 2010 Dark Theme

Everyone has their preferences for their development IDE. Colors, fonts, tools, keyboard shortcuts, etc. I
Publication date: 2010-04-20 more

Tip of the Day #110

Developer test case, customer win! [Using ContextMenu to implement SplitButton and MenuButton for Silverlight (or WPF)]

A great way to test a new control is to make use of it in a real-world scenario. So one of the things I did just before we published the April '10 release of the Silverlight Toolkit ( click here for my full write-up ) was to take the ContextMenu code...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-20 more

Recapping Sunday Night Football powered by Silverlight

This NFL season, NBC thrilled football fans by broadcasting Sunday Night Football on 2 screens – television and online. NBCSports teamed up with Microsoft Silverlight to develop a live video experience in stunning HD. The Sunday Night Football Extra...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-20 more

Silverlight and Xml Binding

I
Publication date: 2010-04-19 more

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 4/19/2010

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #20. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Surface, Windows 7, XNA, Windows Forms , Silverlight and Windows Phone. If you have something...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-19 more

Silverlight and WPF Tip: Fitting items in a ListBox

One layout issue many folks run into in WPF and Silverlight is the problem of ListBox content not automatically sizing to the width of the ListBox. Using my WPF Twitter Application video as an example, here's a shot with it with the items not fitting...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-18 more

Answering

This video of Jon Harris deftly explaining the power of Expression Blend and SketchFlow in 90 seconds was already shared by Christian Schormann, but I wanted to post it here too as an easy way to share and view the video. Topics covered include: Navigation...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-17 more

Making printing easier in Silverlight 4

Well, what an exciting week! First Visual Studio 2010 is released, followed by Silverlight 4 yesterday! Consequently, I was inspired to post about something new! I
Publication date: 2010-04-17 more

Silverlight 4 Documentation on MSDN, and Favorites/bookmarks

The MSDN Online documentation for Silverlight 4 is now live: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc838158(VS.95).aspx If you have been looking at the documentation for the last 6 months or so, you may be used to seeing two entries in the MSDN Table...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-17 more

Seesmic and Silverlight Provide an Extensible Social Platform

This week, Seesmic announced a new Seesmic Desktop platform . They finally revealed more details to the public and released developer previews of their shell, SDK and some sample plugins. You can get them on the Seesmic Developer Wiki . The best part...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-17 more

The one with all the goofy heading names [Detailed information about the Silverlight Toolkit's new stacked series support]

Yesterday's publication of the April '10 release of the Silverlight Toolkit includes a bunch of new functionality. If you haven't read my release notes post , now might be a good time to do so... Okay, thanks. :) I intentionally didn't go into much detail...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-17 more

A few cool new features added in Expression Blend 4 RC

In accordance with the release of Silverlight 4 and Visual Studio 2010, Expression Blend 4 RC was released yesterday and is available for download. With the release of Blend 4 Beta, just a month ago this isn
Publication date: 2010-04-17 more

New Channel 9 Video: David Kelley on the Next Gen WPF and Silverlight Retail Experience

At MIX10, I spoke with Wirestone Principal UX Architect David Kelley about a prototype retail experience he's built in WPF and Silverlight. The experience is based around the concept of small updatable product price tags (actually screens) that can both...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Tip: Anonymous Event Handlers in VB.NET

Back in 2009, I blogged about using Lambda expressions for async web service calls in C#, using an anonymous method . A comment on that blog tonight requested information on how to do that in VB.NET. It has been about a million years since I wrote VB...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Some Notes on DRM in Silverlight 4

Silverlight enables a number of online and offline media playback scenarios which can utilize DRM (both WMDRM and PlayReady), from live streaming and progressive download to offline download, rental, and subscription scenarios. In this post I mostly want...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Silverlight 4 Ships Today - With New Toolkit and Improved DataGrid

Silverlight 4 released today, and with it came a new version of the Silverlight Toolkit and several improvements to the DataGrid control. Silverlight 4 See what
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Alive and kickin' [New Silverlight 4 Toolkit released with today's Silverlight 4 RTW!]

The Silverlight team released Silverlight 4 today and it includes a variety of compelling new features and great improvements for all kinds of scenarios. You can learn more about the new platform hotness in the Silverlight 4 Technical Feature Overview...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Silverlight 4 Released

Here's some links to get you going: - Get Started (e.g. get new tools, SDK, runtime, tutorials, other links) - What's New in Silverlight 4 - Breaking Changes (good to read if you're migrating older apps to Silverlight 4) - Offline Silverlight 4 MSDN Documentation...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Backward Compatibility with Silverlight 4 applications

Each release of Silverlight it is the goal to make sure existing Silverlight applications continue to work. Since I think what this means causes some confusion I
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Of Crashing and Sometimes Burning

I don't feel we've narrated the story about error and exception handling in Silverlight very well. We started out in v1.0 with a relatively sucky error reporting and diagnostics story and only did real work in building a robust internal infrastructure...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Silverlight 4 released. Availability of tools announcement

Today
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Silverlight 4 Release: Happy Third Birthday, Silverlight!

I've watched each ctp, beta, and release of Silverlight with delight. I wrote a production application in 1.1a and never looked back. This will be my first Silverlight release as a Microsoft employee, and I'm happy to say it doesn't disappoint. Three...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Silverlight Client for Facebook updated for Silverlight 4 release

Yet again, we
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Silverlight 4 Tools Released

This morning we released Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010! The link to download and installs the tools is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177508 . The tools will install: Silverlight 4 RTM Developer Runtime Silverlight 4 Tools RC...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Can you access a loose XAML file from LoadComponent?

The answer is no. The job of Application.LoadComponent in Silverlight is to
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Four scores!

Silverlight 4 is now live! Here's what's new . End users can get it here: microsoft.com/GetSilverlight App authors can get the runtime and tools here: silverlight.net/GetStarted Developer docs for Silverlight are on MSDN The team is taking a much-deserved...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Dealing with those pesky WCF CommunicationException

We have blogged and written about this before, but it keeps coming back as a major pain point when customers get started with WCF in Silverlight. Out of the box, exceptions are not propagated from the WCF service to the Silverlight client. Instead, you...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

Silverlight 4 Ships Today!

We shipped today! WAAHOO!!! And this time, we
Publication date: 2010-04-16 more

New Channel 9 Video: Mime Cloud, Umbraco, WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7

Content management of images, especially in publication scenarios where multiple crops and sizes of one image must all be available and associated together, is not a simple problem to solve. At Mix10, I caught up with Pete Miller from Conde Nast Digital...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-15 more

Video: SketchFlow in 90 seconds, with Jon Harris

You are pressed for time, but you are dying to know what SketchFlow is? The thought of watching an hour of demo video, like presented here, makes you look frantically at your watch? The solutions is here, exclusively at electricbeach.org: Jon Harris presents...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-15 more

18,230 miles, 8 events, 1 vacation and 25 pictures later

Starting with MIX10, I
Publication date: 2010-04-15 more

Scanning an Image from Silverlight 4 using WIA Automation

Silverlight 4 Out-of-Browser apps now have the ability to be elevated trust applications, if you request it and your users consent. One of the more powerful features of trusted applications is the ability to use IDispatch COM servers on the local machine...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-15 more

Visual Studio 2010 XAML Editor IntelliSense Presenter Extension v2

I have updated the blog post and XAML Editor IntelliSense Presenter to v2. New Features Added hot key toggling for namespace filter (ALT + ,) and narrowing filter (ALT + .) White listed x: when narrowing filter is enabled to ensure that it
Publication date: 2010-04-14 more

New Channel 9 Video: Cory Plotts on Snoop for WPF

Folks in the WPF world have long relied on Snoop to figure out what the heck is going on in their applications. Originally written by Pete Blois from the MS Expression team, Snoop provides information about all the elements, and even a slick 3D blown...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-13 more

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 Released

The final release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 is now available. Download and Install Today MSDN subscribers, as well as WebsiteSpark / BizSpark / DreamSpark members, can now download the final releases of Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010 through the...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-13 more

Visual Studio 2010 Parody

Last week my acting career got off the ground (and likely burned and crashed just as quickly). You can check out my Visual Studio meets
Publication date: 2010-04-13 more

Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Ajax Endpoint

Continuing in our series , I wanted to touch on how a RIA Services can be exposed your service in JSON . This is very handy for Ajax clients. The great thing is that enabling the JSON endpoint is that it requires NO changes whatsoever...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-13 more

My First 6 months Working for The Man

It's hard to believe, but today marks six months of working for Microsoft. It was a long process - one that lasted almost two years from the first contact to the start date, but it was worth it. I started on Monday October 12, 2009. On that first day...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-13 more

WPF 4 Release: A guide to the new features

April 12 is my 6 month anniversary at Microsoft, and also happens to be the date we've launched .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Congratulations to the product teams who made this release happen! .NET 4 has had a ton of improvements, and Visual Studio 2010...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-12 more

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 4/12/2010

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #19. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Surface, Windows 7, XNA, Windows Forms , Silverlight and Windows Phone. If you have something...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-12 more

WPF: Binding to Anonymous Types from LINQ

When doing some writing on Binding for WPF 4, it occurred to me that many folks don't realize that in WPF, we've long been able to bind to anonymous types returned from LINQ statements, as long as we have property names. Here's a quick example that does...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-12 more

Event Bubbling and Tunneling

Learn about the two ways routed events propagate an event through the visual tree....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-12 more

Tracing PollingDuplex in Silverlight 4

Did you know it is now easier to debug the server side PollingDuplex in Silverlight 4? With the addition of tracing, you can now get a peek at what is happening internally within your service. Traces from PollingDuplex will include information about what...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-10 more

Policy file for NetTcp

As part of Silverlight 4, developers can now use the NetTcp framing protocol for their web services. This is an addition that we expect a lot of you will find useful. However, many of you will probably hit the dreaded CommunicationException that lurks...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-10 more

Watch the Live Broadcast of the Silverlight 4 Launch Event

Want to be at DevConnections for the Silverlight 4 Launch but can;t make it? No worries, you can watch as Scott Guthrie launches Silverlight 4. Following the keynote you can watch Scott in special one hour edition of "Ask the Gu" along...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-10 more

Demos not to miss next week at NAB: 3D video in Silverlight! 1080p H.264 running on a Netbook!

Yesterday we announced our news for NAB next week in Las Vegas. Today we wanted to point out some other cool experiences to check out in Las Vegas. First we are showing the industry’s most exciting demo of live 3D HD streaming using IIS Smooth Streaming...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-10 more

Using XNA libraries in your Silverlight Windows Phone 7 applications

I recently got an inquiry to my Microsoft Translator sample on if this would work with the Silverlight in the Windows Phone 7 SDK. I hadn
Publication date: 2010-04-10 more

Is this thing on?

An unusually quiet time on the blogging front for me
Publication date: 2010-04-09 more

Microsoft Silverlight Recap at NAB 2010

Today we announced many exciting new developments for the media industry with Silverlight and IIS Media Services , just in time for the National Association of Broadcasters Conference (NAB) happening next week in Las Vegas. We announced plans to work...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-09 more

Silverlight TV 20: Community Driven Development with WCF RIA Services

In this episode, John talks with Jeff Handley about how the community's feedback really helped shape some features in WCF RIA Services. Jeff is very active in the community and has a wealth of knowledge about WCF RIA Services. Relevant links: John's Blog...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-09 more

New Channel 9 Video: Dave Campbell on Silverlight Cream

I've known Dave for a while. He's a great contributor to the community of Silverlight developers. His site and daily link post, Silverlight Cream, has become the go-to source to find good Silverlight content and good bloggers. While at MIX10, I caught...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-09 more

Join me for some exciting sessions at Devlink 2010

I'm excited to announce that I'll be presenting four sessions at Devlink 2010 in August 2010. The sessions are listed below. Hope to see you there! Best of Both Worlds: Sharing code and UI between Silverlight and WPF Pete Brown Applications Swang-AUD...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-09 more

Poll: What Are Your Favorite Silverlight TV Episodes?

It
Publication date: 2010-04-09 more

Silverlight Tip of the Day #109

Layout Rounding

WPF and Silverlight both operate on a subpixel grid. That is, you can align elements on partial pixel boundaries, like this: <Rectangle Margin="10.5 10.5 10 10" Stroke="Black" StrokeThickness="1" Height="100" Width="300" /> Unfortunately, for single...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-08 more

Customizing the Caret and Selection Styles in WPF 4

WPF 4 allows you to customize the caret (the blinking line in a textbox that shows your current cursor position), as well as the selection brushes. This is great to allow you to be able to fully incorporate a custom color scheme. Carets The Custom Caret...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-08 more

Encoding/Decoding URIs and HTML in the .NET 4 Client Profile

In the .NET 3.5 timeframe and earlier, many client developers referenced System.Web.dll in order to be able to use System.Web.HttpUtility and its helpful encode/decode and parse methods. While those functions were really useful, the full framework is...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-08 more

Watch the Silverlight 4 Launch event and LIVE QA with ScottGu and others

Next week on 13-April at 8:00 AM PST Scott Guthrie will deliver a keynote address for the DevConnections conference being held in Las Vegas, NV. Scott will provide updates on the progress made in Silverlight 4 and will provide the details of availability...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-07 more

Creating Awesome Applications when you're Clueless

On a fairly regular basis, I get email or blog comments where someone will ask me how to create something they have zero experience doing. Invariably, it's a project that is enormously complex. Poking a little fun (good naturedly, I'll add) the requests...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-07 more

IPad

This morning one of my colleagues stepped in my office and handed me an elegant curved device from metal and glass. You of course guessed it, it was an iPad, for my curious eyes and hands to play with. First thing I did was to fire up the Notes application...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-06 more

Dynamically updating proxy address for staging/production

I
Publication date: 2010-04-06 more

New Channel 9 Video: Richard Costall on Silverlight Manic Miner for Windows Phone 7

One of the more interesting uses for Silverlight is casual gaming. When you add Windows Phone 7 Series into the mix, it becomes even more exciting. At MIX10, I met up with Microsoft MVP and all around cool guy, Richard Costall . He showed me how, with...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-06 more

Managing service references and endpoint configurations for Silverlight applications

You
Publication date: 2010-04-05 more

MIX 2010 talk: what

I just realized I never got around to posting this. Here is a link to our presentation at MIX 2010 . Cheers, -Yavor Georgiev Program Manager, WCF...( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-05 more

Some known WCF issues in Silverlight 4

When shipping a product, there are always a handful of painful issues that we unfortunately cannot fix due to schedule pressure. One thing we can do is blog about these issues early and provide workarounds, so customers don
Publication date: 2010-04-05 more

Blend 4: About Path Layout, Part IV

Sorry for the long delay. Here
Publication date: 2010-04-05 more

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 4/5/2010

Changing States using GoToStateAction

Learn how to use GoToStateAction to easily change visual states without writing any code....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-05 more

Free ASP.NET, Ajax, and IIS Web Camps

My colleague James Senior ( @jsenior ) has organized some new Microsoft's Web Camps . These are free, two-day events that allow you to learn and build on the Microsoft Web Platform. At camp, you will hear from Microsoft experts on the latest components...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-03 more

"I would prefer even to fail with honor than to win by cheating" [Tip: For a truly read-only custom DependencyProperty in Silverlight, use a read-only CLR property instead]

Tip For a truly read-only custom DependencyProperty in Silverlight, use a read-only CLR property instead Explanation My last tip outlined the best way I knew to approximate a WPF-like read-only DependencyProperty on Silverlight. ( Aside : It's also a...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-03 more

Property change notifications for multithreaded Silverlight applications

Jeff Wilcox introduces a base class for dealing with INotifyPropertyChanged classes that is safe to use from background threads in Silverlight and Windows Phone....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-02 more

Tip: Zoom your browser when taking Silverlight Screenshots for Print

I'm working rapidly towards finishing up Silverlight in Action, Revised Edition . As part of the work for this, I find myself taking screenshots pretty regularly. For a print publication, you want your screenshots to be the highest resolution possible...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-02 more

Silverlight HVP on Silverlight TV

The Silverlight HyperVideo Project has made two guest appearances on Silverlight TV. In the first , I talk with John Papa about the project itself and how it has evolved. Then, during Mix, Tim Heuer and I sat down with John to discuss What...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-02 more

An Annotated Line of Business Application

The Silverlight HyperVideo Player has met with strong support and interest. This mini-tutorial is the first in a series that will walk through the design and delivery of this project. This series will pretend that the design existed before we began coding...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-02 more

Windows Phone 7 Developer Training Kit

Quick callout to my colleague and evangelist Yochay Kiriaty, who posted a great set of learning materials and labs for Windows Phone 7 on Channel 9 . That
Publication date: 2010-04-02 more

Template parts and custom controls (quick tip)

Here
Publication date: 2010-04-02 more

Congratulations to latest 2nd quarter Silverlight MVPs

Congratulations to all the new/returning MVPs from all competencies, but I wanted to call out the newly awarded Silverlight MVPs for this latest round. Please join me in congratulating them: Xuan Qin (China) Mark Monster (The Netherlands) ( @Mark_Monster...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-01 more

5 New Silverlight MVPs Awarded

Today 5 new Silverlight MVPs were inducted into the program! I
Publication date: 2010-04-01 more

Silverlight TV 19: Hidden Gems from MIX10, UFC's Multi-Touch App

John ran into Silverlight MVP Ward Bell of IdeaBlade while at MIX10 (how could anyone miss him!). Ward was kind enough to sit and talk with John to show off the multi-touch application his company wrote for UFC using Silverlight . It uses multi-touch...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-01 more

Windows Phone 7 Demo Apps from MIX10

If you've been searching for the Windows Phone 7 Series demo apps that were shown during the MIX10 keynote. Look no further! The Windows phone team has assembled them all in an article on their blog. Click here to see the great line up of Windows Phone...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-01 more

Designing a Microsoft Silverlight Powered Cannon for Windows Phone 7 Series

By: Peter VanRysdam, Chief Marketing Officer at 352 Media Group, shares his experience developing for Windows Phone 7 Series using the Silverlight platform. Earlier this month, thousands of MIX10 attendees, and countless more who watched online, got a...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-04-01 more

New Channel 9 Video : Bruno Sonnino on DiskPie Pro in WPF

At the 2010 MVP Summit in Redmond, I met up with the always-fun Microsoft MVP Bruno Sonnino. Bruno has developed a ton of great utilities over the years, including many for PC Mag. In this video , Bruno talks about DiskPie Pro 2 , a utility originally...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-31 more

New hard drive means re-install everything

I recently found a good deal on a 7200 RPM 500GB latpop drive and decided to upgrade myself to that. I
Publication date: 2010-03-31 more

What tools are the minimum to get started in Silverlight?

Help me out with a bit of some research here. In your opinion
Publication date: 2010-03-31 more

10 Tips to Keep yourself Sane while Working from Home (or alone)

When I interviewed for the position on Scott Hanselman 's team, one of the questions Scott asked me was if I'd be able to handle working from home, with the isolation that usually entails. Telecommuting (I hate that word) isn't for everyone, so the question...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-31 more

Fast and Easy Navigation in WPF or Silverlight Applications in Visual Studio 2010

In Visual Studio 2010, the Navigate To command is CTRL+, (comma). If you have any text selected in any editor and press CTRL+, that text is automatically added to the Search Terms field and the Navigate To dialog immediately presents...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-30 more

Sometimes you just gotta do the best you can [Tip: Read-only custom DependencyProperties don't exist in Silverlight, but can be closely approximated]

Tip Read-only custom DependencyProperties don't exist in Silverlight, but can be closely approximated Explanation My last tip discussed a special case of creating a Silverlight/WPF DependencyProperty where it's necessary to create a read-only property...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-30 more

Simple ViewModel Locator for MVVM: The Patients Have Left the Asylum

I
Publication date: 2010-03-30 more

Great Blog Post from Singapore: Panoramic Navigation on Windows Phone 7 with No Code!

Here’s a great blog post from Jocelyn of the Microsoft Innovation Centre in Singapore, showing you how to do panoramic navigation for Windows Phone in Expression Blend, including a nice little behavior library for flick gestures. Nice! Oh, almost...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-30 more

Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Exposing WCF (SOAP\WSDL) Services

Continuing in our series , I wanted to touch on how a RIA Services can be exposed as a Soap\WSDL service. This is very useful if you want to enable the exact same business logic\data access logic is available to clients other than Silverlight. For example...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-30 more

**That's why it's called the default value instead of default values [Tip: The default value of a DependencyProperty is shared by all instances of the class that registers it]**

Tip The default value of a DependencyProperty is shared by all instances of the class that registers it Explanation The last two tips explained how to set the default value of a Silverlight/WPF DependencyProperty . But there's something you need to be...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-30 more

Silverlight 4: New parser implementation. New parser features.

Buttons with direct content. Better error messages. Designers and developers will like the new parser implementation in Silverlight 4....( read more )...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-30 more

FXG Import for Expression Blend previewed at MIX10

This is an excerpt from the day 1 keynote at MIX10, of Jon Harris building a Windows Phone application in Expression Blend. Although the demo is slick, the main thing I wanted to point out here is the preview of the FXG Import, which is shown in the first...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

MSDN Radio follow-up answers: Prism for Silverlight, DomainServices and relationships

This morning I was on a weekly (new) radio show from MSDN, hosted by Mike Benkovich . The show, MSDN Radio , features live call-in questions that you can ask. It was a better format than the typical live meeting text-based QA I thought. I think hearing...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

New Channel 9 Video: Robert Kihm on Aptify RAD

While at MIX10, I caught up with my friend Robert Kihm from Aptify. They have a great business application development platform that makes it easy to create apps that target different UIs and platforms without making code changes. In addition to the robust...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Silverlight 4 Beta Bugs

This is a list of Silverlight 4 Beta Bugs that didn't make it into the readme. For a much larger list of bugs and/or issues Silverlight developers might like to know about this release, see Silverlight 4 Beta Release Notes . Bug List: Can't print to an...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Arturo

Great list over here for getting going on Silverlight and Blend . In fact, so good I linked to it twice :-) Great list over here for getting going on Silverlight and Blend . Ah, what the heck; Great list over here for getting going on Silverlight and...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Welcome to WCF RIA Services Beta!

Today at PDC09 , Scott Guthrie Announced the beta of WCF RIA Services . As you may know RIA Services is a set of end-to-end experiences that makes it as easy to build Silverlight based n-tier applications as it is to build traditional 2 tier apps...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Silverlight 4 Beta – A guide to the new features

At the Microsoft Professional Developer (PDC) conference, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Silverlight 4 Beta . WHAT?! That
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Watch Us Live on Channel 9 from PDC09

Immediately following today
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Silverlight 4 Beta Released!

WHOOT! Here's some links to get you synced up: - Get Started (e.g. get new tools, SDK, runtime, tutorials, other links) - What's New in Silverilght 4 - Breaking Changes (good to read if you're migrating older apps to Silverlight 4) - Offline Silverlight...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Silverlight 4 Beta Announced at PDC09: Great Learning Material Too!

Silverlight 4 Beta was announced during the Wednesday keynote of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference PDC 2009 . The Silverlight product team has worked very hard to add several features, as you can see from the list below. There is a ton...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Enabling Validation in Silverlight 4 with IDataErrorInfo

One of the new features of Silverlight 4 Beta is the addition of the IDataErrorInfo interface. In Silverlight 3 we throw exceptions when a property value is invalid. The IDataErrorInfo interface has been around in .NET but is new to Silverlight 4 beta...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Silverlight 4 Beta is Now Available

Today, at the PDC in Los Angeles, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Silverlight 4 beta, just four months after bringing Silverlight 3 to market. With the help of several customers we showcased the new features that will enable developers to...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more

Silverlight 4: Beta Announced at PDC

Today during his PDC keynote ScottGu announced the beta of Silverlight 4. That includes previews of; Silverlight 4 Runtime Silverlight 4 SDK Silverlight 4 Developer tools for Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 WCF RIA Services ( RIA Services just got its own home...(read more)
Publication date: 2010-03-29 more