Silverlight

Silverlight Cream for November 09, 2009 -- #727

Dave Campbell — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:22:34 GMT

In this Issue: Damian Schenkelman, Jit Ghosh, Jeff Prosise, Jesse Liberty, Victor Gaudioso, and René Schulte

Shoutouts:

If you can get to Twitter during the day (lucky you), check out Jesse Liberty's Subscribe to 62 Silverlight Twitter’ers.... there's a stellar list of devs on there!

Adding to the burgeoning list of sites to check every day, Brad Abrams announced http://silverlight.net/riaservices/ is Live!

Timmy Kokke has gathered together links to all the current Silverlight and Expression Tools starter kits: StarterKits for Silverlight and the Expression Tools

From SilverlightCream.com:

Prism 2 (Composite Application Guidance for WPF & Silverlight) migrated to Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2: Damian Schenkelman is continuing investigating Prism, and this time out he's investigating Prism and VS2010 ... check out how that worked for him.
Windows Media Metadata in Managed Code (and by extension - Silverlight): Jit Ghosh explains how to get Windows Media metadata into Silverlight. All his code is available except the piece to extract SMPTE Timecode ranges, and he says he will have that up this week.
Silverlight 3's New {RelativeSource} Markup Extension: Are you familiar with Silverlight 3's RelativeSource markup extensions? No? ... well, let Jeff Prosise explain them to you in this post.
Designer v Xaml v Code: Jesse Liberty has Part 2 of his new series up and is discussing (gasp) XAML ... well ok, just a little :) ... he's placing controls in grids and lots of code and explanation... keep reading folks, this is good stuff!
New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to use the Silverlight Toolkit’s WrapPanel to Create a Three Column ListBox: Victor Gaudioso has a few cool things up since I last checked the BlogSpot blogs... this first one is on using the Toolkit's WrapPanel to create a ListBox with 3 columns... good video tutorial, and code!
Drawing Shapes - Silverlight WriteableBitmap Extensions III: René Schulte is back at it again with the WriteableBitmap and this time he's drawing ellipses... this is very cool stuff, René!

Stay in the 'Light!

Silverlight Cream for November 07, 2009 -- #726

Dave Campbell — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:40:10 GMT

In this Issue: XamlNinja, Zoltan Arvai, Alan Mendelevich, Dimitris - Ilias Gkanatsios, Chris Klug, Pete Brown, Fons Sonnemans, Tim Heuer, Jeff Prosise, and Mark Miller

Shoutouts:

Corey Miller posted a User Experience Review post that's a good read.

Jeff Wilcox announced The Silverlight Toolkit - now in the Microsoft Web Platform Installer

Andrew Duthie blogged about the Freescale Sensor Badge - Fun Gadget! ... get yours!

Laurent Bugnion announced another early release of his MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 2: EventToCommand behavior, and has a bunch of information about it on the post.

Found via Mike Taulty, Here is Arturo Toledo's Top 20 Resources to Get Started with Silverlight and Blend

This would have been a good announcement on the day, but I've been jammed up: The XXI Olympic Winter Games on NBCOlympics.com: Brought to you in Full HD With Silverlight and Smooth Streaming

From SilverlightCream.com:

MVVM, design time data, and Blendability: Rich is pushing his new XamlNinja brand, so that's how I'm posting this. I *really* like the look of the site!.. this first post out there is on MVVM, Silverlight and WPF and using design-time data. Did I say I like the way the site looks :)
Building N-Tier business applications with .NET RIA Services – Part I: Zoltan Arvai has an article up at SilverlightShow on N-Tier bussiness apps in Silverlight with .NET RIA Services ... ok, say that 5 times real fast! ... this is part 1, so climb on and follow him as he continues... this first lives up to the quality I see from the folks at SilverlightShow.
Writing WPF/Silverlight compatible code. Part 2: Dependency Properties: Alan Mendelevich has another part of his WPF/Silverlight series up and is discussing dependency properties this time... and a lot about what Silverlight doesn't have.
Building a twitter client with Silverlight, Microsoft Hellas DevDays09: Silverlight 3: Dimitris - Ilias Gkanatsios gave a presentation at DevDays09 in Greece and produced a Twitter client... check out his presentation and code on the post.
Styling a ListBox aka Autopsy of a ListBox: Chris Klug lifts the hood on the ListBox and shows you how to make it your own... style that is :)
Creating Custom Easing Functions in WPF 4 (and Silverlight): Pete Brown's been spending a lot of time blogging WPF (all tagged here) and Windows 7 (all tagged here), but this time out he included some Silverlight and is showing how to create your own easing function... and this is not in Blend :)
Silverlight Flip Clock: Fons Sonnemans didn't have much to say about the 'Flip Clock' he built, but he's provided us the code, and I really like the way it looks, thanks Fons!
Grouping data in a Silverlight DataGrid: Tim Heuer demonstrates grouping Data in a DataGrid even without the declarative model of adding GroupDescriptors in Silverlight 3... and it works very nicely! ... code included of course!
Implementing CoverFlow in Silverlight 3: Jeff Prosise leverages a CoverFlow control by Darick on Codeplex into a cool demo with gestures... all with source.
MVVM with Prism 101 – Part 6: Commands: Mark Miller is up to Episode 6 on his MVVM and Prism excurstion, talking about Commands, threads, IAsynchResults... long post with lots of code goodness.

Stay in the 'Light!

Silverlight Cream for November 04, 2009 -- #725

Dave Campbell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:33:57 GMT

In this Issue: Michael Palermo, Rishi, Microsoft Expression Blog, Jeremy Likness, David Burela, and Ward Bell.

Shoutout:

Adam Kinney has a Photosynth linked that you won't believe: A Photosynth of Neil Gaiman’s Library

From SilverlightCream.com:

Silverlight and Internet Download Manager: Michael Palermo has a solution to the use of the Internet Download Manager dorking up your Silverlight app.
I Command MVVM: On March 9, 2009, Rishi Posted I Command Silverlight, now he's posted I Command MVVM. With nRoute, of course! Check out his code examples for how he handles commands.
Create content on the artboard: The Microsoft Expression Blog has a post up about what all you can do with the SketchFlow artboard, with a bunch of external links.
Silverlight Communication: Three Ways to Connect: Having trouble communicating? I mean your Silverlight, not you! ... Jeremy Likness has a great article up on three majore forms: WCF, REST, and the DOM... all with code and demos
Databinding shapes with the Bing Maps control for Silverlight: Take the Bing Maps, add in some dependency property code from Microsoft, and a pinch of custom datatemplates and David Burela has you binding to Bing Maps! Tutorial, code, demo... what more do you want ??
Easing into Prism: Ward Bell of DevForce has a great post up in response to someone asking about learning Prism. Lots of good references and links, and a great read... even if you know Prism, check it out!

Stay in the 'Light!

LiveLabs Thumbtack back from the dead

Dave Campbell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:26:38 GMT

I don't know by what magic this happened, but not only is Thumbtack back online, but everything appears to be intact.

As my young dev friend Brian would say: WOOT!

Since I didn't get any warm and fuzzies from anyone I tried to contact about this, I have no idea about the what/why/how long... as for me and mine, I'm scraping all this into OneNote if it's still alive when I can get it and OneNote both up at the same time -- i.e. not from Work :(

I'll use it but I won't be an idiot and not have a backup

Thank you Mrs. Thumbtack wherever you are! -- and my apologies to Jimmy Durante.

Silverlight Cream for November 03, 2009 - 2 -- #724

Dave Campbell — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:31:04 GMT

In this Issue: Damian Schenkelman, Jonathan van de Veen, Stephen Forte, Laurent Duveau(2), Alan Mendelevich, and nmarun.

From SilverlightCream.com:

Why Silverlight 3 Navigation cannot be fully leveraged when loading modules remotely with Prism 2: Damian Schenkelman goes into the future [November 5 :) ] to discuss why there are issues with Silverlight Navigation in Prism. He references articles that contain workarounds as well.
Connecting to the SqlMembership model through Silverlight and WCF: Jonathan van de Veen has a tutorial up on SilverlightShow discussing connecting to the SQLMembership model with WCF and Silverlight. Really good detail and lots of code.
LINQ shortcut when using Silverlight and ADO .NET Data Services: Stephen Forte gives the code for his AsyncLINQManager, and demonstrates using it. Don't skip the link at the bottom for his session demos, too!
Update Out Of Browser (OOB) Silverlight apps: If you're deploying an OOB app, Laurent Duveau shows you how to code it so that it will pick up updates when you make them.
Debug Out Of Browser (OOB) Silverlight Apps: Laurent Duveau demonstrates the technique necessary to debug OOB applications.
Writing WPF/Silverlight compatible code. Part 1: The Big Picture: Alan Mendelevich takes a good shot at sharing code between Silverlight and WPF and has a great write-up on what all he found.
Programming Silverlight with MVVM pattern using Prism: nmarun is taking a shot at MVVM and Silverlight and Prism... just the highlights though... is that possible? :)

Stay in the 'Light!

Silverlight Cream for November 03, 2009 -- #723

Dave Campbell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:33:28 GMT

In this Issue: Mark Miller, SmartyP(2), Goncalo Chaves(2), and David Anson.

Shoutouts:

Walt Ritscher announced October 2009 version of Composite WPF(Prism) released and has some highlights from the release

Damian Schenkelman posted a similar announcement: Prism 2.1 (Composite Application Guidance for WPF & Silverlight 3) just released (updated version for Silverlight 3)

From SilverlightCream.com:

MVVM with Prism 101 – Part 5b: ServiceLocator vs Dependency Injection: Mark Miller continues with his MVVM and Prism series with episode 5b where he's discussing IOC and ServiceLocator vs Dependency Injection
Tracking Events in Silverlight with Google Analytics: SmartyP demonstrates tracking Google Analytics with Silverlight using the Silverlight Analytics package on CodePlex.
Thinking Outside the Box - Using Programatic Animations in Silverlight: SmartyP also has a cool post up on adding animation to moving items between ListBoxes... I think it looks pretty cool :)
Silverlight: Creating Silverlight animations with code: Goncalo Chaves posts about creating an animation dynamically in code. I wouldn't want to do something really large this way, but it works, and he's got a good external reference too.
Silverlight: Colors in Hexadecimal values: Have you chafed at having a hex color value and didn't know how to stuff that into a brush? Goncalo Chaves has a quick solution for that for you...
As the platform evolves, so do the workarounds [Better SetterValueBindingHelper makes Silverlight Setters better-er!]: Here's a pro-active one... David Anson who gave us SetterValueBindingHelper is making changes because of future Silverlight changes that would break what he had given us before!

Stay in the 'Light!

Silverlight Cream for November 02, 2009 -- #722

Dave Campbell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:46:56 GMT

In this Issue: Bob Thomson/Storm Ideas, Danijel Stulic , René Schulte, Jesse Liberty, Windows Client.NET, Sergey Barskity, Jeff Prosise, Vikram Pendse, Frank La Vigne, and Tim Greenfield.

Shoutout:

Damian Schenkelman posted that Prism 2.1 (Composite Application Guidance for WPF & Silverlight 3) just released (updated version for Silverlight 3)

When you think User Group you think of a bunch of geeks sitting around, but holy crap... check out this stellar crew: Launch of the Dutch Silverlight and Expression Insiders User Group ... wow... there's a good 6 months worth of world-class speakers sitting at that table! ... good luck guys.

From SilverlightCream.com:

Scottish Government data visualised with Storm Ideas’ Interactive Silverlight Mapping Application: The guys at Storm Ideas have a great Visualization up that they did for the Scottish Government. There's a ton of data involved in this, so take some time checking it out... very cool, Bob!
Silverlight slides & demo application from MsForge CodeCamp: Danijel Stulic did a .NET RIA Services presentation at MSForge CodeCamp and is sharing all his materials and code.
Silverlight slides & demo application from MsForge CodeCamp: Danijel Stulic did a .NET RIA Services presentation at MSForge CodeCamp and is sharing all his materials and code.
Drawing Lines - Silverlight WriteableBitmap Extensions II: René Schulte continues on his quest of the WriteableBitmap and wow... check out the drawing lines between to points, and lots of them, and FAST!
Silverlight From Zero: Interesting that there are two intro Silverlight posts out in the last two days, but Jesse Liberty is embarking on a 'from zero' series. This one sets the stage, where to get it, etc... watch for the rest, these should be great!
Create First Silverlight Application: There's a great beginner's tutorial on Windows Client.NET. This assumes you're running VS2010, but from there it's step-by-step.
Silverlight 3 – CollectionViewSource and Navigation: Sergey Barskity is blogging on two fronts with his latest: CollectionViewSource and Navigation Framework.
Reflection Shader for Silverlight 3: Jeff Prosise is still playing with Pixel Shaders and in particularl HLSL, and has created a Pixel Shader that creates a Reflection... too cool!
Expression Blend 3 SketchFlow : New era in Prototyping – Part 3: Vikram Pendse has part 3 of his Sketchflow tutorials up. I'm not sure there can be too many of these... good stuff, and great external links, check it out!
Prism & Silverlight: Part 1 - Taking Sketched Code Towards Unity: Frank La Vigne linked out to a Channel 9 video on Silverlight, Prism, and Unity.
Host your Silverlight apps on Amazon S3: With Silverlight Streaming going away and server space costing us money, Tim Greenfield shows how to host your .xap files on Amazon S3 ... starting from getting an account all the way out.

Stay in the 'Light!

Silverlight Cream for October 31, 2009 -- #721

Dave Campbell — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:04:40 GMT

In this Issue: Rob Bagby, Paul Sheriff, Mike Taulty, Sergey Barskiy, and Gavin Wignall.

Shoutout:

Here's a quick one from the Expression blog: Export to Microsoft Word

From SilverlightCream.com:

Patterns-Based Silverlight Development – Part IV – Service Layer: Rob Bagby has Part 4 of his excellent Patterns-Based Silverlight Development series up. He's addig the WCF service this time.
Create a Login Screen in Silverlight 3: Paul Sheriff had a post up of a login screen in WPF that I archived in my Tag Cloud, but then he turned around and did the same login for Silverlight... very nice!
Mike Taulty Video Series on PRISM for Silverlight 3: Mike Taulty has a 9-screencast series up on Prism and Silverlight ... and a 10th that is a full-up app that pulls it all together... source too! Don't skip these.
Silverlight 3.0 Behaviors – Part 2: Sergey Barskiy is back to his series on Behaviors with this post and is discussing the various events that can trigger an action in a behavior.
Legally using non-standard fonts in Silverlight and Blend: In Gavin Wignall's final episode of his "Learn Blend in a Month" series he's showing how to use non-standard fonts legally.

Stay in the 'Light!

Silverlight Cream for October 29, 2009 -- #720

Dave Campbell — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:04:11 GMT

In this Issue: Mark Miller, Sergey Barskiy, Gavin Wignall, Josh Holmes, Bryant Likes, and Jeff Prosise.

Shoutouts:

András Velvárt sent me this yesterday and I was blown away by all the Silverlight goodness: Response

Karl Shifflett did a re-release of his latest XAML Power Toys: Updated Code: XAML Power Toys for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Cider Designer

Karl Shifflett also updated the templates for VS2010: Updated Code: Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Sample Data Project Templates

David Anson has a page up that he's going to keep up: My new home page, revised [Updated collection of great Silverlight/WPF Data Visualization resources!]

Dimitris - Ilias Gkanatsios also has a link page up: The Silverlight one page of resources links (October 2009)

Laurent Bugnion announced the 'super early release' of MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 1

From SilverlightCream.com:

MVVM with Prism 101 – Part 5: View-Model: Mark Miller continues his Prism with MVVM series by discussion the View Model. He also gives a good background on how we got to this point with MVVM.
Unable to debug Silverlight applications: Sergey Barskiy shares a couple reasons for being unable to debug your Silverlight taken from his experience having problems doing so.
Making an object re-usable as a User Control in Blend: This is Gavin Wignall' 21st in his "Learn Blend in a Month" series and he's discussing User Controls.
Updating the Simple Silverlight Countdown Blog badge: Josh Holmes completely revamped his Silverlight countdown widget to make it simpler to customize for a new event.
Idle Timeouts in RIA Services Authentication: Bryant Likes uses Brad Abram's .NET RIA Services sample program to explain a user timeout that was asked about in the forums.
More Fun with Silverlight 3's WriteableBitmap: Jeff Prosise is updating his Silverlight 2 examples to Silverlight 3, and this one is using WriteableBitmap to have a magnifying glass moving over an image.

Silverlight Cream for October 28, 2009 -- #719

Dave Campbell — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:14:04 GMT

In this Issue: Visual Web Developer Team Blog, Laurent Duveau, Gavin Wignall, Victor Gaudioso, and Karl Shifflett.

Shoutouts:

Karl Shifflett has a post up on New Options for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 WPF and Silverlight Projects

My DE Rob Bagby reported some news on his blog: The Bagbys Are Moving to London... congratulations, my friend!

Charles Sterling announced this just in time for tomorrow, Thursday October 29th: A Tour of Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight: focusing on getting started and using it

Check this out: Adam Kinney reports on 10 Expression Blend 3 Tutorials for Silverlight available for download

From SilverlightCream.com:

New Silverlight Tooling Support in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2: Visual Web Developer Team Blog has a post up about VS2010 Beta 2 and Silverlight 3 including the visual designer, OOB features, improved intellisense, and cautions with Blend
BulletedList in Silverlight: Laurent Duveau demonstrates how to do a bulleted list in Silverlight.
Using Data Binding to share data in Blend: In Gavin Wignall's 20th episode in his "Learn Blend in a Month" series, he's discussing DataBinding.
New Video Tutorial: How to Create a Custom Silverlight Slider: Victor Gaudioso had a request to build a custom slider and thought a video of the same to share with all of us would be good. I for one am glad he did!
d:DesignInstance, d:DesignData in Visual Studio 2010 Beta2: Karl Shifflett has a post up discussing the design-time (d:) properties and Markup extensions in VS2010 for Silverlight and WPF

Stay in the 'Light!