WynApse

Thursday, March 26, 2009 #

Silverlight Cream for March 26, 2009 -- #553

In this Issue: Pete Brown(2), Lee, Jeff Prosise, Andrea Boschin, Terence Tsang, Mike Taulty(2), Chris Hay(2), Chris Koenig, Laurence Moroney, Julien Frelat, Andy Beaulieu(2, 3), Joel Neubeck, Gavin Wignall, Jan Jelinek, and Ruurd Boeke.

Shoutouts:

Congratulations go out to Andy Beaulieu who reports Physics Helper gets 1st Place at MIX09 Show Off!

Dan Wahlin spoke at DevConnections in Orlando and reported DevConnections Orlando Talks on Silverlight and LINQ/Entity Framework

Brad Abrams gives a link to ScottGu’s Mix09 Silverlight for Business Applications Demo

From SilverlightCream.com:

Silverlight 3 – UI Element to Element Binding: Pete Brown very quickly demonstrates UI to UI binding ... for those of us that needed a visual... thanks Pete :)
Using asp.net Membership and profile providers with RIA Services: Lee as usual is out there tracking around in the hard stuff and has pounded ASP.NET Membership and profile info into the RIA services.
Using Blur to make Dialogs Pop in Silverlight 3: Pete Brown came up with an outstanding idea of using the blur to make a dialog stand out away from everything... I love the effect you got, Pete!
Silverlight 3's New Pixel Shaders: Jeff Prosise gives a quick explanation of PixelShading then goes into a dropshadow followed by a tres cool shimmery water effect...
Silverlight 3.0: Tile Effect with a Pixel Shader: Andrea Boschin took on the challenge of producing a tile effect with PixelShading. Along the way he gives a great explanation of PixelShading if you haven't read one yet.
Flash 10 vs Silverlight 3: Perspective 3D: Terence Tsang takes a shot at Perspective 3D this first time out in SL3B... and it all works great... multiple screens of items spun through a perspective animation.
Local Connection: Mike Taulty demonstrates very nicely the communication between to Silverlight apps using the SL3B local connection mechanism.
GetIsNetworkAvailable doesn't capture working offline: Chris Hay cautions that if your browser is set to "Working Offline", all bets are off on the results of checking for disconnects ... those pesky users!
Detecting Network Status in Silverlight 3: Chris Koenig has a nice little app that demonstrates determining the connected state of the app, and reports a stutter (4 times) of the disconnect message. Guess they wanted to make for sure, sure, sure, sure you know :)
Detecting network status: Mike Taulty has a good example of detecting the network connectivity as well, and didn't report any quadrareporting on disconnect.
How to build a good install UX with Silverlight: Laurence Moroney has a great tutorial up on the install process... now if only everyone would follow this and Tim's from yesterday, all our Mothers-in-Law would be happy ... er, well, happy about their Silverlight Install experience anyway... can't help you out with anything else :)
SL3 Dropshadows are slow: Chris Hay discusses the fact that bitmap manipulation may slow down your app. Basically use it for good :) ... personally, I've seen some good uses and it seemed to work fine, although I can imagine it getting out of hand in a hurry.
Silverlight 3 Demo: Displaying a 3D HD cube: Julien Frelat has this post up in French and I sure hope it's technical :) I've tried twice to view the demo and this old crock (at work) won't haul it around the screen. I forgot to try it out on my laptop last night, but I will tonight. You're on your own on the translation though!
GPU Acceleration and Bitmap Caching: Andy Beaulieu dives into GPU Acceleration and explains why this is so cool for our users. Then he explains Bitmap Caching and what you should and should not cache, followed by demos and source... very nice, Andy!
Developing a Casual Game with Siverlight 2 – Part 4: Joel Neubeck has Part 4 of his game series up and this one gets you into some serious stuff... like shooting at people, people falling, helicopter motion... all cool stuff!
Cup-o-Salt Silverlight game beta 1: Gavin Wignall's latest game is one he is going to submit to the Mashooo game contest... I have to admit it's tougher than it sounds because the salt crystals catch on each other and pile up... um, that would be if I had played it of course :)
Boss Launch Beta: Andy Beaulieu was showing an early version of the Boss Launch at the Summit and it is pretty hilarious... if you got some time to kill, or angst to work off, launch that guy out of the chair :) ... very cool, Andy!
Silverlight Contrib - StarSelector: Jan Jelinek discusses the Star Selector in SilverlightContrib in his latest in a series of Contrib posts. BTW -- SilverlightContrib recently had an update --- you should check it out!
DomainUpDown: Ruurd Boeke has a great tutorial on the DomainUpDown control that is inherited from the UpDownBase and you can pretty much stuff any type in there.
Behaviors in Expression Blend 3: Andy Beaulieu discusses Behaviors in Blend 3, talks about the Physics Behaviors and has links out to some great resources. As Andy says Why Wait?