Saturday, October 31, 2009

WPF’s CollectionViewSource

WPF’s CollectionViewSource


WPF’s CollectionViewSource

Posted: 31 Oct 2009 12:37 PM PDT

CollectionViewSource has existed for a long time in WPF and was recently introduced in Silverlight 3. My next post will cover CollectionViewSource in the context of Silverlight. But before covering that topic, I've decided to provide some background...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for October 31, 2009 -- #721

Posted: 31 Oct 2009 10:04 AM PDT

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 ...( read more )...(read more)

Optimizing Your Code (Visual C++ 2010 Beta)

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 05:00 PM PDT

Optimization is the process of fine-tuning executable code for best performance and smallest code size. This topic introduces several mechanisms to optimize code that Visual C++ provides.

My Twitter Lists

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 02:11 PM PDT

Twitter has just enabled a new feature named "Lists" which permits to organize in categories the people you are following and make their tweets available to others. In this way it's very simple to navigate the various subjects, follow the lists created...( read more )...(read more)

Friday, October 30, 2009

We Need Your Feedback on the Documentation

We Need Your Feedback on the Documentation


We Need Your Feedback on the Documentation

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 09:49 AM PDT

  The doc teams are looking for your feedback on the .NET Framework and Visual Studio docs.  Help us improve the developer documentation by taking the Visual Studio and .NET Framework Content Survey .  This survey will give us a better understanding of the type of applications you are developing as well as how you use Help and how we can improve it. The survey takes only 10 minutes, and we really appreciate your feedback! Feel free to forward the survey link. Read More......(read more)

JavaScript class browser: once again with jQuery

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 10:43 AM PDT

I've already posted twice about that little class browser application. The first iteration was mostly declarative and can be found here: http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2009/09/14/building-a-class-browser-with-microsoft-ajax-4-0-preview-5.aspx The second one was entirely imperative and can be found here: http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2009/10/15/entirely-unobtrusive-and-imperative-templates-with-microsoft-ajax-4-preview-6.aspx This new version builds on top of the code for the imperative version and adds the jQuery dependency in an attempt to make the code leaner and simpler. I invite you to refer to the imperative code (included in the archive for this post ) and compare it with the jQuery version, which shows a couple of ways...(read more)

Let me know your questions for Scott Guthrie and the ASP.NET Team @devconnections

Posted: 30 Oct 2009 10:26 AM PDT

I'm going to be at DevConnections this year to deliver a session on Microsoft Ajax with Jim Wang and also chair a panel with Scott Guthrie and members of the ASP.NET Team.  First of all here are details on the invitation: Join us for a technical question and answer session with Scott Guthrie and members of the ASP.NET team on November 10th 2009 from 6:15 PM - 8:15PM at the ASP.NET Connections conference in Las Vegas. This is your chance to meet face to face with the people working on ASP.NET, give feedback and receive guidance. Attendance is limited so be there early and ask for details at the registration desk . We will have pizza and beverages. I'll be taking questions from the audience but if you can't make it to Las Vegas and want to...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for October 29, 2009 -- #720

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 10:04 PM PDT

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...( read more )...(read more)

Converting a Web Site Project to a Web Application Project

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 04:49 PM PDT

Differences between Web Site Projects (WSP) and Web Application Projects (WAP) are highlighted in blogs such as this one . Based on that, if you feel a WAP would be better for your particular needs than a WSP, but have already created a WSP, you may be asking yourself, "Can I convert my WSP into a WAP, without starting from scratch?". This posting explains how to convert an existing Web Site Project to a Web Application Project in Visual Studio 2010. The most striking differences to a Web Site Project are that WAPs have a project file to include and exclude files, and compile to a single assembly. The guidelines below include several of the basic steps detailed in the Walkthrough: Converting a Web Site Project to a Web Application Project in...(read more)

Using C# Dynamic to simplify ADO.NET Data Access

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 04:05 PM PDT

Recently, I started playing around with C# dynamic, and blogged how it could be used to call static class members late bound .  Today, I was talking to Phil Haack , who I think had talked to ScottGu , and he mentioned that it would be cool to use dynamic to simplify data access when you work directly with SQL query.  So I thought I'd play around with that, and it didn't take much code to make it work nicely. So the scenario is that you're not using any fancy O/R mapper like LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework, but you're directly using ADO.NET to execute raw SQL commands.  It's not something that I would personally do, but there are a lot of folks who prefer this over the higher level data access layers. So let's look at an example...(read more)

New! Download the SDL Developer Starter Kit

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 06:25 PM PDT

Educate yourself and your organization on how to build more secure applications. The SDL Developer Starter Kit offers content, labs, and training to help you establish a standardized approach to rolling out the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) in your organization.

Explore the Most Comprehensive Windows 7 Developer Training Online on Channel 9

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 06:25 PM PDT

These videos, hands-on labs, and real-world samples are the quickest way to ramp up on the new developer features in Windows 7. Our new online offerings allow you to learn at your own pace and download only those modules that interest you. Go ahead and jumpstart your Windows 7 developer skills now!

A proposito di Web Track

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 05:36 PM PDT

In queste ore sto ultimando le demo per la presentazione del prossimo meeting di XeDotNet, il 6 Novembre 2009. In quell'occasione terrò una sessione, di circa 1 ora e 20 minuti dal titolo ambizioso: Silverlight do it better: Silverlight 3.0, Ria Services...( read more )...(read more)

Are You Classic or Lightweight? The MSDN Redesign

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 01:06 PM PDT

MSDN recently rolled out new presentation choices for its Library content, which includes the MSDN online section for Silverlight: If you haven't been there recently here's your obligatory handy link: Silverlight 3 on MSDN The added presentation choices...( read more )...(read more)

Give Us Your Feedback on Visual Studio Documentation

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 05:15 PM PDT

Help us help you by taking 10 minutes to fill out our Visual Studio Content Survey on how to improve the Visual Studio documentation.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

OWL and Billboard Launch Landmark Concert Series using Microsoft Silverlight

OWL and Billboard Launch Landmark Concert Series using Microsoft Silverlight


OWL and Billboard Launch Landmark Concert Series using Microsoft Silverlight

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 11:04 AM PDT

Our World Live (OWL), a music marketing and broadcasting company, is partnering with Billboard.com to bring music fans a new internet concert series . Billboardlive.com utilizes OWL's state-of-the-art technology, powered by Microsoft Silverlight to provide...( read more )...(read more)

eBook 51 Tips, Tricks and Recipes with jQuery and ASP.NET Controls

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 05:45 AM PDT

I found this cool eBook and wanted to share it with you all since jQuery is. more and more, become a common part of the ASP.NET Development experience. The book includes… · 51 Tips, Tricks and Recipes with jQuery and ASP.NET Controls eBook (PDF) · Entire Source Code of the eBook · Cross Browser Scripts - tested on IE 7, IE 8, Firefox 3, Chrome 2, Safari 4 · Common code that runs on ASP.NET Pages, Master Pages, and in most cases, HTML pages too. You can read the table of contents [ HERE ] YOU can buy the ebook [ HERE ] Read More......(read more)

WOHOO!!!, Debug Diag 64bit is finally released

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 03:49 AM PDT

For all of you who have been asking me if there is a 64bit version of Debug Diag (used to debug 64 bit processes), I am happy to say that yes, Debug Diag 1.1 64bit is now released. You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?FamilyID=28bd5941-c458-46f1-b24d-f60151d875a3&displaylang=en#filelist And an updated whitepaper talking about how to use it is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=4A2FBD0D-0635-440C-A08B-ED81BDBB5960&displaylang=en Neither this version (nor the 32bit one) officially support debugging/analyzing on Vista/2008/Win7 because of some known compatibility issues (being looked at for future versions), however for a lot of tasks it works quite well on those...(read more)

Add Reference Dialog Improvements (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

Posted: 29 Oct 2009 12:12 AM PDT

[In addition to blogging, I am now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name)] This is the twelfth in a series of blog posts I'm doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  Today's post covers a small, but nice, change coming with VS 2010 – an "Add Reference" dialog that loads fast. Add Reference Dialog in VS 2008 The slow performance of the "Add Reference" dialog in previous releases of Visual Studio has been a common complaint that many a developer (including yours truly) has ranted about. Previous releases of VS opened the "Add Reference" dialog on the ".NET" tab by default – and when that tab was loaded VS would synchronously scan the global assembly cache...(read more)

Lightweight Linq Parser

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 12:28 PM PDT

Jason Allor , dev manager for my team, recently posted about a cool lightweight LINQ parser .  The idea was to make it much easier to create a LINQ provider over any arbitrary data source (a web service, custom business objects, etc).  This makes it much easier to get all the sorting, paging, filtering benefits of RIA Services for any arbitrary data store.     Check it out, and be sure to subscribe to Jason's blog as I expect he will have more goodies coming in the future! LinqLite Read More......(read more)

Behind the Scenes at Microsoft

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 09:43 PM PDT

I'm a little over a week into my new role as the Silverlight Evangelist at Microsoft and so far it has been a blast! I've had a lot of joking questions about how much the implants hurt when they put them in, so I thought I might share with you all a quick...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for October 28, 2009 -- #719

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 09:14 PM PDT

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...( read more )...(read more)

Updated Code: Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Sample Data Project Templates

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 04:36 PM PDT

I have updated the project templates Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Sample Data Project Templates.  The Silverlight template needed an update to the .proj file. Please download the templates from the above post. Sorry for the problem. Close Have a great...( read more )...(read more)

Eclipse Tools For Silverlight Now Available

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 04:11 PM PDT

The Eclipse Tools for Silverlight (Eclipse4SL) plug-in is an open source, cross-platform plug-in for the Eclipse development environment that enables Eclipse developers to build Silverlight Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Microsoft has collaborated...( read more )...(read more)

My new home page, revised [Updated collection of great Silverlight/WPF Data Visualization resources!]

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 10:15 AM PDT

In the time since sharing my last collection of Silverlight/WPF Charting links , there have been some great new articles I'd like to highlight. And in case you haven't heard, we published the October 09 release of the Silverlight Toolkit last week, so...( read more )...(read more)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Balder gets declarative

Balder gets declarative


Balder gets declarative

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 12:56 PM PDT

We're getting closer to the BETA mark for Balder, and we're starting to get most of the features we want in for version 1 ready. The latest feature is the ability to declaratively through Xaml get Balder up and running. Current release is versioned...( read more )...(read more)

Updated Code: XAML Power Toys for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Cider Designer

Posted: 28 Oct 2009 09:27 AM PDT

I was working on a post for T4 Preprocessed Text Templates (I'll post it tonight) and found a bug in the XAML Power Toys for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 Cider Designer grid parsing code.  Chances are you won't hit it, but I did so I've corrected the...( read more )...(read more)

d:DesignInstance, d:DesignData in Visual Studio 2010 Beta2

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:02 PM PDT

The WPF and Silverlight Designer for Visual Studio 2010 shares several new design time (d:) properties and design time MarkupExtensions with Expression Blend 3 that provide necessary information for the WPF and Silverlight Designer to deliver a great...( read more )...(read more)

ASP.NET 4 Web Server Here Shell Extension

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:52 PM PDT

Have you ever needed to quickly spawn a web server against a local folder to preview a web application? If not, what would you say you do here ? This is actually quite common for me since I receive a lot of zip files containing web applications which reproduce a bug. After I unzip the repro, I need a way to quickly point a web server at the folder and run the web site. A while back I wrote about a useful registry hack to do just this. It adds a right click menu to start a web server (Cassini) pointing to any folder. This was based on a shell extension by Robert McLaws . Well that was soooo 2008. It's almost 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is out which means it's time to update this shell extension to run an ASP.NET 4 web server. Obviously...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for October 27, 2009 - 2 -- #718

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:22 PM PDT

In this Issue: Mark Tucker , Pete Brown , The Silverlight Blog , Katrien De Graeve , Gavin Wignall , Rob Bagby , Nigel Sampson , Gergely Orosz , and The Microsoft Expression Blog . Shoutouts: Check out Walt Ritscher 's Shazzam 1.1 – Topic List jfo has...( read more )...(read more)

New Silverlight Tooling Support in Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 05:57 PM PDT

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 will bring full support for developing applications in Silverlight 3.  There's a few things that have changed since VS2010 Beta 1, and we hope you enjoy the new beta release! Silverlight 2 is no longer supported – long live Silverlight 3 Now that Silverlight 3 has released (including a GDR; the latest version is currently 3.0.40818), VS2010 has moved the minimum supported version to Silverlight 3.  The new installation experience will include the latest Silverlight 3 developer runtime and Silverlight 3 GDR 2 SDK. If you already have the Silverlight 3 RTW version of the SDK installed, this component may fail during VS installation , but not to worry – it won't affect anything outside Silverlight.  If this...(read more)

10 Expression Blend 3 Tutorials for Silverlight available for download

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 03:15 PM PDT

The 10 tutorials from the Eyes of Blend series on Project Rosetta site are now available for download in both Word and PDF format. The .zip files also contain source code for the starter projects and resource files if appropriate. One thing that's...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Tour Montreal in November

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 01:51 PM PDT

The Silverlight Tour is coming back to Montreal next week. When: November 02-04 Where: Montreal, Qc Registration (Fr): http://www.runatserver.com/SilverlightTraining.aspx If you are looking for 3 days of intensive Silverlight training in French this is...( read more )...(read more)

BulletedList in Silverlight

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 01:32 PM PDT

Today I wanted to add a bulleted list of text items in a xaml page, as there is no BulletedList control in Silverlight, you have to do it yourself. But I don't need a databound list, just something simple in a TextBlock, so here is what I ended with,...( read more )...(read more)

Index for Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 08:46 AM PDT

  Thanks to all of you who asked…  I had to take a sick day today, so this was nice mindless work to get done.   Hope you enjoy it! Part 1: Navigation Basics Part 2: Rich Data Query Part 3: Authentication Part 4: SEO, Export to Excel...( read more )...(read more)

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 1

MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 1


MVVM Light Toolkit V3 Alpha 1

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 01:05 PM PDT

This is a super early release of the next version of the MVVM Light Toolkit . Please enjoy with care, be aware that this version is not fully tested and not feature complete by a long shot. The binaries are available for download , as well as the source...( read more )...(read more)

Samedi.NET special Silverlight event in Montreal

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 01:02 PM PDT

The Montreal .NET Community organized a full-day Silverlight workshop last Saturday. The topic of the day was: " Build a business application with Silverlight 3 ". We were 5 speakers presenting many sessions (all code, no slide) to show different tools...( read more )...(read more)

Index for Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 08:46 AM PDT

  Thanks to all of you who asked…  I had to take a sick day today, so this was nice mindless work to get done.   Hope you enjoy it! Part 1: Navigation Basics Part 2: Rich Data Query Part 3: Authentication Part 4: SEO, Export to Excel and Out of Browser Part 5: Astoria, Add Service Reference and WinForms Part 6: Data Transfer Objects (DTOs) Part 7: ADO.NET Data Services Based Data Store Part 8: WCF Based Data Source Part 9: POCO and Authentication Provider Part 10: LinqToSql Part 11: The Client-Only World Part 12: DataSet Part 13: The New Class Library Project Part 14: Visual Basic (VB) and WPF Support Part 15: ASP.NET MVC Part 16: Exposing a WCF Service Part 17: Evolving an Application Part 18: Custom Linq Provider Part 19...(read more)

Inserting a Silverlight Navigation and Slideshow into Your Web Page

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:35 AM PDT

Expression Web makes it faster and easier to create standards-based Web sites with rich Silverlight content. With Expression Web 3, you can easily add Silverlight content, in this case from Expression Blend, to your Web sites. In this example, we'll be...( read more )...(read more)

Microsoft #shape conference

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 10:26 AM PDT

The Shape conference is a new web technologies oriented conference organized by Microsoft Switzerland. It is held in Zurich Oerlikon, and has two tracks, one design-oriented and one development-oriented. Best of Swiss Silverlight award The Best of Swiss...( read more )...(read more)

New Options for Visual Studio 2010 Beta2 WPF and Silverlight Projects

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:26 AM PDT

To get to this Options dialog, use the Tools menu, selected Options, select Text Editors, select XAML, select Miscellaneous. MarkupExtension IntelliSense and Editing The most requested feature for the WPF & Silverlight XAML Editor was MarkupExtension...( read more )...(read more)

Channel 9 Video: Stephan T. Lavavej - Everything you ever wanted to know about nullptr

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 09:11 AM PDT

Stephan T. Lavavej is back in front of the Channel 9 cameras once again for a discussion on our recently implemented C++0x feature "nullptr". In a previous channel 9 appearance, Stephan spoke about the C++0x language and library features we were implementing for VS2010  and the various interdependencies between various features (for example, how rvalue references – a language feature – enable move semantics and perfect forwarding in our Standard Template Library implementation – a library feature.) In this video Stephan describes how rvalue references exposed a few loopholes in the C++ type system around the NULL macro (or more specifically around the value of the NULL macro, the integer constant 0, and how this value is treated "differently" by the compiler to other integer constants.) The issue had already been identified by the C++ Language Committee and a solution had been added to the C++0x language specification (the aforementioned "nullptr"). And to add even more good news, customers can see and use this feature (and all our other C++0x Features) in the Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 which was released this week.  We hope you enjoy Stephan's latest theatrical release.

 

Thanks

Damien

Silverlight Cream for October 27, 2009 -- #717

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 08:25 AM PDT

In this Issue: Alex Knight , Michael Washington , Gavin Wignall , Tim Heuer , Shawn Wildermuth , Karl Shifflett ( 2 ), Mark Miller , The Silverlight Blog , René Schulte Shoutouts: In addition to the XAML Power Toys release noted below, Karl Shifflett...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Synchronicity

Posted: 27 Oct 2009 07:32 AM PDT

At Mix '07 I watched Scott Guthrie's keynote introduction of Silverlight , and it was a watershed moment in my career. Within 48 hours I had pivoted my consulting business to focus entirely on this new and game-changing technology; a few months later...( read more )...(read more)

WPF 4 (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 11:11 PM PDT

[In addition to blogging, I am now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. You can follow me on Twitter at: twitter.com/scottgu (@scottgu is my twitter name)] This is the eleventh in a series of blog posts I'm doing on the upcoming VS 2010 and .NET 4 release.  Today's post covers WPF 4. WPF 4 Improvements WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) is one of the core components of the .NET Framework, and enables developers to build rich, differentiated Windows client applications.  WPF 4 includes major productivity, performance and capability improvements – in particular in the areas of Controls, XAML, Text, Graphics, Windows 7 integration (multitouch, taskbar integration, etc), Core Fundamentals, and Deployment.  This is...(read more)

Hypervideo, Closed Captions & Accessibility

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 02:46 PM PDT

The Closed Captioning For Silverlight Media page at T2Sami.com says in its commentary: A number of very sophisticated Silverlight Video players are under development: some open source, some proprietary…. The commitment to captioning in Silverlight is...( read more )...(read more)

Accessible Media Player

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 02:57 PM PDT

Playing video in Silverlight is great, but what about viewers who have a hearing impairment? Not important? The World Health Organization (WHO) would beg to differ. According to their 2005 estimates, "278 million people worldwide have moderate to profound...( read more )...(read more)

Monday, October 26, 2009

Second Week of European Conference Tour

Second Week of European Conference Tour


Second Week of European Conference Tour

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 06:43 AM PDT

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting again at the SDN Conference. I had a great time at the conference. I ended up presenting (or co-presenting) six talks at the conference. The Silverlight talks were some of my favorites: Using Silverlight Validation...( read more )...(read more)

XAML Overview

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 11:55 AM PDT

New to XAML in WPF or need a refresher? This topic discusses how you can use XAML to write WPF applications.

Caliburn v1 RTW for WPF, Silverlight 2.0 and 3.0!

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 10:06 AM PDT

Hooray!!! I finally released Caliburn v1 to RTW and got the official site launched ! This has been a long time coming and I could not have done it without the generous help and support of the .NET community, family and friends. Many individuals contributed...( read more )...(read more)

Take a Look at the Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET Framework

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 10:28 AM PDT

The Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET Framework provides a source code library that can be used to access some new Windows 7 features (and some existing features of older versions of the Windows operating system) from managed code. These Windows features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework.

Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers

Posted: 26 Oct 2009 10:28 AM PDT

The Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers includes presentations, hands-on labs, and demos designed to help you learn how to build applications that are compatible with and shine on Windows 7.

Silverlight Audio Player for WordPress

Posted: 25 Oct 2009 06:06 PM PDT

As a follow-up to my Silverlight For WordPress plugin, I have just deployed Mark Heath's Silverlight Audio Player as a WordPress plugin. Thanks to Mark for changing his license to Ms-PL so that I could make this happen. If you are a WordPress user and...( read more )...(read more)

Fun with CollectionViews

Posted: 25 Oct 2009 10:06 AM PDT

URL : http://wildermuth.com/downloads/CollectionViewF... I've recently been looking at the PagedCollectionView class. For those who are not familiar with this class, it allows you to automatically show sections of a collection in a paged way (especially...( read more )...(read more)