February 2008 Entries
4-1/2 4-1/2 Days to MIX '08 Are you aware there are 4-1/2 Hours of Free Silverlight Training at Lynda.com done by Microsoft's own Mike Harsh? Sure it's 1.0, but there's a LOT of Silverlight goodness in that 4-1/2 hours! This is all stuff you can download and play with this weekend while you're gnashing your teeth looking at the SL2 and Blend goodness Scott Guthrie has given us and wishing you could actually run some of that! My only advice would be Patience, patience :) ... do some SL 1.0 and have...
Scott Guthrie follows up his 8 SL2 Tutorials with a 9th demoing a new version of Blend, Adam Kinney gives us a forensic look at Scott's tutorial, and Denislav Savkov provides a nice image slider control for SL1.1 From SilverlightCream.com: First Look at Using Expression Blend with Silverlight 2 Unless you've been unconscious all morning, you've seen Scott Guthrie's post already :) For the one or two of you that haven't ... add this onto the list of 8 he's already done... and if this code doesn't...
Koen Zwikstra on gleaning from Scott Guthrie's posts, Pete Brown on Isolated Storage, Code.Elisy.net provides a XAML rendering tool with examples, LearnWPFBlog discusses DataGrids in SL/WPF, Jeff Prosise on SL Best Practices, Jose Fajardo on lessons to learn from Flash, Michael Cameron ported an ActionScript Tweener library to C# for SL. From SilverlightCream.com: More Silverlight 2 Info Koen has been keeping track of the comments Scott Guthrie has made back to his commenters, and from that has gleaned...
6 6 Days to MIX '08 There are at this time 6 Vector Shape Elements in Silverlight (1.0 and 1.1): Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Polygon, Path, and Polyline. I don't have the book, but I found a great write-up on this from Chapter 5 of Working with Silverlight 1.1 from O'Reilly. This is a very cool page that shows the XAML and a screenshot for each of the shapes. I'll have a 'Cream post out in a bit. Twitter was being grumpy again yesterday afternoon and I couldn't get things posted. Twitter SLNews | Join...
7 7 Days to MIX '08 7 Things You May Not Know About MIX08 Maybe it's me, but I thought there was a flurry of SL over the weekend, but it's slowing down now. I expect it to be a little slower as we go while people are getting ready for head to 'Vegas. I'll be happily surprised to blog all the SL I find though! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL Web Articles | My Articles | My Tutorials | My Tooltips | SilverlightCream...
8 8 Days to MIX '08 8 Silverlight 2 Tutorials on Scott Guthrie's Blog I've been pouring over these in detail, and am on number 3. Trying to get my head around the things available. I hope to have all 8 done by MIX .. hey, 8 days, 8 tutorials... coincidence??? I think not!!! :) Take a look at SilverlightCream and search using the new SL2 tag ... it's getting busy... at this rate, I'll need help just keeping up after MIX ... or else when would I get to play, huh? Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream...
Delay blogged some SL2 controls info, Shawn Burke's SL2 article, Imran Shaik on SL, Flash and the DOM, Pete Brown's upcoming SL2 schedule, chrishayuk's articles on the Cross Domain Policy and Isolated Storate all SL2, of course. SL2 isn't here yet, and I've got 6 posts for you just today... better get a seat belt for after we get the beta! From SilverlightCream.com: A better web is coming [Silverlight 2 is on the way!] With everyone else posting, Delay posted some cool Information about SL2 and this...
9 9 Days to MIX '08 9 Basic Controls in Silverlight 2 according to research by Koen Zwikstra's research How many controls of different types I guess we won't know until Silverlight 2 goes Beta, but I'm guessing that's going to happen at MIX like 1.0/1.1 last year... of course that is just IMHO! Meanwhile, there are lots of 'sneak peeks' and other helpful posts to either get us ready for MIX and SL2 or to tease us.. I haven't figured that out yet :) Watch for some Silverlight Cream later to point...
Thomas Meinike sent me the first German SL link, and very cool... a xaml collection, and Jesse Liberty is giving us hints about how to get ready for Silverlight 2. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight/XAML - Learning by Coding Some of the page is in German and from Thomas Meinike, but I found it easy to traverse. There's a bunch of objects on the left, and on the right is either the xaml or the canvas with the object on it... nicely done, and there is also at least one game on there... worthy of...
10 10 Days to MIX '08 10 Sessions to try to cram 26 desired sessions into... oh the pain of it all :) Half a gazillion things to do to be ready. SilverlightCream now has a Silverlight "2" checkbox for submittals and searches. Plus I've started putting submittal dates into the database, so eventually I'll put up a grid of all entries. With over 500 entries now, the search is more important, but I know people want to see the list :) Have to make sure I'm following the MIX'08 Twitter feed, and decide...
One submittal today: Koen Zwikstra Took a shot at the hierarchy of controls in Silverlight 2 From SilverlightCream.com: About Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Controls Koen, of FirstFloor software took a shot at the hierarchy of Silvelright 2 controls based on Scott Gu's blog and Shawn Burke's, both of which he has a reference to. Good job, Koen, and thanks! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL Web Articles | My Articles | My Tutorials | My Tooltips | SilverlightCream...
I got email telling me I could lay out my MIX schedule so I'd know where I was going before I got there... that'd be new... I hardly evern know exactly where I'm going :) So I went into the scheduler and starting picking all the sessions that sounded good. When I was done, I count 10 session slots and I only have 2 that only have one session listed. Some have as many as 4! For example.... I have to choose between, in one instance: Ten Code snippets to Empower your Inner Artist Take Your Content Moblie...
Adam Kinney gives us a very nice breakdown on the new and wonderful things in the tutorials Scott Guthrie provided this morning for Silverlight 2 Beta (whenevertheheckthatis). From SilverlightCream.com: My notes from the First Look at Silverlight 2 No, not *MY* notes, Adam Kinney's notes... from his look at the tutorials provided by Scott Guthrie this morning, and his take and observations on many of the new or interesting aspectes of "Silverlight 2"... can't you just feel the pressure growing ???...
Scott Guthrie gives us all a look at what everyone has been so busy working on...try to keep the drool off your keyboard at least until we can get our hands on a beta of Silverlight 2!! From SilverlightCream.com: First Look at Silverlight 2 Scott Guthrie gives up tons of info about Silverlight "2" ... and details 8 Tutorials on building with it... if that doesn't create buzz, I don't know what will... good job Team!! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL Web Articles...
Two references, reuxables, via Andrew Duthie, and the British Library book viewer via Andrew Duthie. From SilverlightCream.com: WPF and Silverlight 2 Themes - Reuxables Reuxables, by way of Pete Brown with some lead-in information for a very cool collection of themes/skins for SL/WPF. I've also entered Reuxables by itself in SilverlightCream View antique books with Silverlight (or WPF) Another reference, this one by Andrew Duthie, to a great Silverlight and WPF application by the British Library...
When I posted a small article on January 21st, it was intended to expose a problem with Silverlight and IE6. On the following day I posted a followup saying the problem was all mine, but I had never gone back and touched up the article on WynApse.com. Because a few people had read the article on my site and didn't see a follow-up they were confused. I was as well until I realized I had only blogged the solution, not posted an update to the article. I've now taken care of that and the site link above...
Scott Guthrie March 11, 2008 Scottsdale, AZ I'm almost as excited about this 'geek' day as I am going to MIX... well ok that may be an exaggeration, but it WILL be a very cool event. An all day long Silverlight Immersion, details here: http://azgroups.com/ScottGu... . I've blogged it twice before and will probably do so once more before it hits. If you register because you read it on my blog, please use my name in the "How did you hear about the event" box ... Scott Cate is trying to do some metrics...
Brad Abrams has a multi-part Silverlight on an ASP.NET page article, and Laurent Bugnion advises us on how to avoid a problem with empty strings in SL 1.1 From SilverlightCream.com: Islands of Richness with Silverlight on an ASP.NET page In a very nice multi-part article, Brad Abrams walks us through setting up a Media player with Captions and Chapter Markings, Custom Skin, Custom Data via AJAX, localized captions, and interstitial Ads... whew! Silverlight 2.0: Passing empty strings from JavaScript...
I pretty much took a Mental Health Day today with my last University of Phoenix class finishing last night. This is the first Tuesday since Jan 8 that I haven't had students, although I still have final week feedback and grades to do. I spent a little time on my site last night getting the Marquee code I had posted a while back working on my MasterPage. I would have stuck the dismount on it except I forgot a newbie issue: if you're going to have x:Name in the xaml you're trying to createFromXaml,...
Chris Cavanagh gave up the source for his WPF Skinning application, Mike Ormond shares his OnFullScreenChange event pain, and the Expression Team Blog has a great Expression Design button tutorial. From SilverlightCream.com: WPF Skinning your Websites - Source code now available! Chris Cavanagh came back quickly with a post with the source and some documentation for his last post... including some enhancements! Silverlight OnFullScreenChange and AddEventListener() Mike Ormond had some difficulty...
Scott Guthrie in Scottsdale March 11, 2008 This isn't a "ReMIX", but coming just after MIX '08, check out the line-up: Scott Guthrie on Silverlight 2.0 and MVC -- 2 sessions of Scott! Eugene Osovet on Consuming Web Services with Silverlight Ben Waggoner on Encoding Video for Silverlight Remy Pairault on Serving Applications with Silverlight Streaming Even if you have to take a vacation day (like me), you owe it to your professional advancement to be there! Take advantage of this great Community event...
Chris Cavanagh provides a WPF tool to provide assistance in skinning your website. From SilverlightCream.com: WPF Skinning your Websites Chris Cavanagh came back with another submittal, this one WPF, but it is a very cool tool, and related to SL by XAML, so I always post cool WPF stuff too, and besides, Chris says the source is on it's way, so check back! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL Web Articles | My Articles | My Tutorials | My Tooltips | SilverlightCream...
It's Friday afternoon, I'm tired of looking at Oracle scripts and thought I'd relate a funny story from Dave V3.0. If I consider going to school, and all the normal things up to the point that some exception happened as V1.0, I'll skip what I consider V2.0, but V3.0 is definitely the 3 years I spent in the U.S. Army 1970-1973. Maybe it's the fact that I'm listening to some rhythm & blues from the 60's back when I was playing lead guitar for a living in a rhythm & blues band (during Dave V2.0),...
A new entry from Jeff Paries on calling multiple functions for one event. From SilverlightCream.com: Calling multiple functions for one event Jeff Paries takes off on a subject from the forums and discusses how to handle this situation... with code of course :) Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL Web Articles | My Articles | My Tutorials | My Tooltips | SilverlightCream...
Jesse Liberty takes a few shots at answering some SL2.0 questions, at least with things he's At Liberty™ to talk about -- I liked that, Jesse!, and Michael Scherotter sent me a link to a while bunch of stuff: Zune Video Podcast series on Journaling, his page turn code that is slightly different from the others, and a Typeface he is making available for Silverlight. From SilverlightCream.com, where we now have 501 entries in the database! Tip of the Day: How To Answer: Will This Work In Silverlight...
Jeff Paries is back today with Glowing edges with Animated Clipping Paths, Tim Sneath announced Video Show 1.0, Jesse Liberty talks about 2.0, and the Expression Team announces some free virtual labs. From SilverlightCream.com: Glowing edges with animated clipping paths LOL... I did see the comment, Jeff ... and no matter what you say, I think this is a very cool example! Maybe it's the number of times I've done similar things with Paint Shop Pro, but doing it the way you have here is seriously cool...
No really... this is good :) I have a Samsung A900, and am not a 'talk' person, so my minutes are way low every month. I didn't even do text until Adam Kinney asked me to hook SilverlightCream up with Twitter But I DO email. The facility I am in does not allow much in the way of email or outside connections (see innumerable past posts). So I use Sprint Mobile eMail to connect to my 3 main addresses. Anything of importance, I can forward to my work OWA which IS allowed in my client's facility, and...
When you get backed-up, it's not pretty... this isn't everything: Denislav Savkov's BarChart Control in 1.1, Imram Shaik's video on animation with clipping paths, Michael Sherotter's demo and Webinar announcement about using a videobrush to make a video magnifying glass, Jeff Paries' SL EKG demo, Adam Kinney discusses Live@Edu, Michael Palermo has a video on SL & Twitter, and John Mandia discusses SL & SEO. From SilverlightCream.com: Bar Chart control in Silverlight 1.1 Denislav Savkov submitted...
Some early cream to keep you busy while I get caught up after being offline for a few days: Michael Sync on SL 1.1 and ADO.NET From SilverlightCream.com: CRUD operations in Siverlight using ADO.NET Data Service If you can get past the list of prerequisites, this is a great in-depth article. Michael provides all the code, and good instructions! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL Web Articles | My Articles | My Tutorials | My Tooltips | SilverlightCream...
If you're going to MIX in 3-1/2 weeks!, you probably got an email yesterday about the Tuesday night Treasure Hunt. I don't know anything about it, but it appears to me that it is a team thing building a site or Silverlght app using the stuff we find in the Treasure Hunt. At any rate, it's about teams, and since I'm going up solo, if you want to team up, send me an email. Or if you just want to meet up at MIX send me an email :) Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL...
ProgressBar codebehind from Chris Cavanagh, Jesse Liberty's aniated graphs webcast, and Jeff Paries shows some shortcut tips to getting around in your SL code. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 1.0 Codebehind (ProgressBar) Chris Cavanagh sent me this Progress Bar code yesterday and I didn't get around to blogging it and then my host went dark for a while :( ... all the code is here... looks like goodness :) Webcast Follow-up - CreateFromXAML Very nice animated graph webcast in detail from Jesse...
Adam Kinney demonstrates building a very cool bar chart in 1.0, and Jesse Liberty shows setting properties on controls also in 1.0. From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 1.0 Bar Chart Tutorial Adam takes off on something I keep bringing up to a friend of mine as an example that might be fun to do... dang, I should have done it ... all with source :) Tips of the Day: Setting properties in custom controls in 1.0 Jesse answers a common forum question with this tip... cool stuff for getting the basics...
If you're in Phoenix, please join us for our very interactive Phoenix Silverlight User's Group meeting. Since this is only our 3rd meeting, if you come you can help define the group, plus find out who the rest of the Silverlight freaks afficianados are in Phoenix Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SLNews | Join me @ SilverlightCream | SL Web Articles | My Articles | My Tutorials | My Tooltips | SilverlightCream...
Jesse Liberty shows how to create XAML in JS on a mouse event, and Shawn Wildermuth explains how to get intellisense on XAML in VS2008. From SilverlightCream.com: How to create XAML objects in Javascript Jesse did a very nice write-up on createFromXaml'ing (!) yesterday afternoon that answers a question I see lots on the forum and that is building something live in response to a mouse event... all with source, and great information! Getting Silverlight XAML Intellisense in VS2008 And for the folks...
When I put up SilverlightCream.com, or to be more specific, when I was *thinking* about putting up SilverlightCream.com, I thought for a while about putting it up as a Community Server site. I went back and forth about it, and annoyed some friends with discussion and questions. In the end, as you know, I did not do that. My reason for not putting up a forum and having logins and all that was for a few reasons, not the least of which is that Silverlight.net/forums is sitting exactly in that space,...
Early cream from Imran Shaik on creating xaml from clipart, and Pete Brown helps us all unravel WPF, Winforms, SL, and Ajax (oh my) From SilverlightCream.com: Converting Clip Art to Silverlight XAML I don't have all the toys Imran uses in this article, but it certainly looks great and I have LOTS of artwork, so all I need is... :) Thanks Imran! Silverlight, WPF, Windows Forms, Ajax - Which One is for Me? Let Pete help you understand the differences and similarities and try to keep everything straight...
Late Cream: Moayad Mardini brings another Silverlight article to his fellow Arabic-speakers, and Jesse Liberty discusses what's in the code behind. From SilverlightCream.com: For ASP.NET programmers who want to program Silverlight applications Moayad Mardini follows up his 3-part series with another for ASP.NET programmers (In Arabic) Did You Know That... The Code Behind is Just... Code? Jesse Liberty disscusses what's behind the curtain and talks about the code-behind that normally gets left behind...
Edited to change the date to February... geez... how many timezones off would *that* be?? Imran Shaik moved his blog to GWB, Jeff Paries has an artile on Custom Cursors, and Jesse Liberty showcases Kelly White's SLTOD Sidebar Gadget From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 2.0 Quintessential Rambling Imran, who heavily supports the forums as 'Cass' has moved from BlogSpot to GWB, and that's a good thing, since I can't get to BlogSpot from the office! Custom Cursors In addition to 'Re-Paving' his blog...
Early cream from Moayad Mardini: a 3-part introductrion in Arabic From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight learning series in Arabic Moayad contacted me the other day about including foreign-language entries in SilverlightCream. There's already 2 from Daniel Lin in Chinese. Not sure why I didn't think of it sooner, but I added a tag for Arabic, and will do so for Chinese in a bit. Take a look at it, on the 3rd series, the code is all there and you don't have to speak Arabic to understand that :) Stay...
Early cream from Julie Lerman Shows us how to convert InkPresenter images to png, Shawn Wildermuth with an iGoogle Gadget in SL, and Jesse Liberty comes to our aid with a partial explanation of the 4001 error you might be seeing. From SilverlightCream.com: Converting Silverlight InkPresenter images to a PNG file Julie Lerman, who I just blogged about last week I think... with a post from last summer, jumped in with another Ink example, this one converting to PNG ... all with code... very cool! iGoogle...