April 2008 Entries

More US centric discrimination: Amazon.com MP3 download

This kind of things pisses me up so much. What's your problem Amazon? My money is not good enough for you? I call it discrimination. Oh yeah, also something else. Could you tell me that *before* you make me install your downloader? Kthxbai...
Print | posted on Posted On Tuesday, April 29, 2008 7:01 PM | Feedback (6)

Silverlight: User Controls with events

This article is for Silverlight 2 beta 1 Update: Corrado Cavalli translated the example in VB.NET. Thanks Corrado!! Apparently, one reader had issues declaring events for the User Control example that I posted earlier this week. He is programming in VB and unfortunately I don't have a lot of experience with VB.NET, so I first created a working example with C#, and my good friend and fellow MVP Corrado Cavalli translated the example in VB.NET (see below). The big difference between WPF and Silverlight...
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, April 26, 2008 9:59 PM | Feedback (8)

Silverlight: Running standalone full trust applications

Introduction I guess that it's time to write about it, after making a few people curious at the MVP summit in Seattle. This article is to be taken as a proof of concept, and (I hope) as a way to "motivate" Microsoft to integrate this ability into Silverlight. As soon as I started playing with Silverlight, I saw the great potential that this technology has. As a RIA technology, it provides extended functionality over the web. As a WPF subset, it allows me to leverage the knowledge I already acquired...
Print | posted on Posted On Thursday, April 24, 2008 2:09 PM | Feedback (13)

I am now a Microsoft Certified Professional

What a crazy week that is. I am currently in Seattle for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional summit, which ended yesterday. I took an additional day in Seattle to meet a few friends and Siemens colleagues, and this morning got an email notifying me that I passed the MCTS exam about WPF that I took back then in December. Because the exam was in beta stage when I took it, Microsoft needed a veeeeeeeery long time to evaluate the replies and check if I met the requirement. Apparently, they also...
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, April 19, 2008 3:29 AM | Feedback (3)

Silverlight: Packing user controls in separate assemblies

This article is for Silverlight 2 beta 1 There is a common misconception that User Controls in Silverlight must be placed in the assembly from which they are referenced. However, this is not true, you can have user controls in an assembly and use them from another assembly. This is not a direct process, however, so let's see how to proceed: Preparing the control Create a new Silverlight 2 application in Visual Studio. In this example, we'll name this application "UserControlsPacking". For this first...
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, April 16, 2008 2:49 PM | Feedback (1)

#mvp08: Day 1 and 2 are over, more to come

Today was day 2 of the Global MVP Summit. We spent it in Redmond, on the Microsoft Campus. For my part I spent the whole day in the RIA (pronounced "reee-ya") track, focussed on Silverlight (mostly) and WPF (a little). I won't say much about it for two reasons: Either the code we saw was very similar to the one shown in Vegas one month ago, or I don't have the right to talk about it because of NDA Generally speaking, it's safe to say that really great things are going to be built on top of Silverlight....
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:06 AM | Feedback (0)

#mvp08: Arrival at Global MVP Summit

Day 0 Oh man what a trip. First I left home at 6:30AM, which on a Sunday (and my birthday) is pretty more a crime against humanity. Additionally, I was woken up a few times during the night: Twice by my elder daughter who came to check if my bags were still there, because she was afraid to miss me to wish me happy birthday in the morning (she opened her door at 2:30AM and 4:30AM, both times waking me up of course :) Then after taking the train to the airport, I learned that my flight to Frankfurt...
Print | posted on Posted On Monday, April 14, 2008 3:01 PM | Feedback (0)

#mvp08: On my way to Seattle for the MVP Summit

It's my second year as Microsoft MVP but I didn't attend the global MVP summit last year, so I am really excited to attend this year. I am currently on my way to Seattle (via Frankfurt), and will spend next week there getting loads and loads of information about the newest trends and technologies from Microsoft. Like any conference, the summit is also (and before all) a way to network, meet new friends that I know from their blogs or Twitter or any other e-medium, and meet again with friends from...
Print | posted on Posted On Sunday, April 13, 2008 8:35 AM | Feedback (0)

De WPF Integratio (About WPF Integration)

Introduction I've been posting a lot about Silverlight lately, but hey, here is a WPF post, and about WPF integration, no less. Note: To fully understand this article, you should have a basic understanding of WPF, styles and templates, triggers, etc... In my current project at work, I act as WPF Integrator. I am that dude who sits between the designers and the developers, and tries to avoid that they fight too much. Or something. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, you know how it is with kids....
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, April 11, 2008 10:38 PM | Feedback (10)

Silverlight unit testing and JavaScript

I am currently writing a Silverlight class library which I want to use in a project, and decided to try Test Driven Development for this class. This is a really nice way to work, and the Silverlight development team made this very easy by providing a unit test framework easy to integrate into Visual Studio 2008. (Note: You cannot simply use the built-in unit test framework, because a non-Silverlight application cannot reference a Silverlight class library). To find information about where to download...
Print | posted on Posted On Saturday, April 05, 2008 5:49 PM | Feedback (1)

Silverlight Bug: Transforms and OpacityMask

Introduction In WPF, one of the best know effects is the "reflection" effect, where a scene reflects itself dynamically. It's a very cool feature, because it's really easy to realize, and it allows to reflect images, but also videos or other User Interface scenes. The key to this is to use a VisualBrush. Silverlight is not exactly as powerful as WPF, and doesn't have VisualBrush, but it has ImageBrush and VideoBrush, both of them allowing cool media reflection effects (these brushes can also be used...
Print | posted on Posted On Friday, April 04, 2008 4:00 PM | Feedback (2)

Community Credit 6th prize

I am humbled and also wondering. Humbled because I learned that I got the 6th prize in March Community Credit. Wondering, because I was at MIX in March, and blogged a lot (by my standards) and I am only 6th :) I will never get first prize I guess! Thanks David Silverlight!! Can't wait to receive my Digital Dog...
Print | posted on Posted On Wednesday, April 02, 2008 11:43 PM | Feedback (0)

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