Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Black Falcon Software's Database Data-Access-Layers

Black Falcon Software's Database Data-Access-Layers

Black Falcon Software's Database Data-Access-Layers

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 01:22 PM PST

This project is actually a combination of several individual projects, all of which, provide individual, easy to use, data access layers for a number of popular databases.

Silverlight and Drupal

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 12:27 PM PST

  Last night, Jan 19th, I attended the Atlanta Drupal User Group (ADUG), http://www.drupalatlanta.com/,  with Glen Gordon.  The talk, presented by Steve Jaffe of IBM, was about "Integrating Flash with your Drupal Project".  Steve did a great job of how Drupal can be used as the backend for Flash.  Never having used Drupal, the same [...]...(read more)

The Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's life in Silverlight

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 11:36 AM PST

The Royal Society just published a manuscript of William Stukeley which relates the life of Sir Isaac Newton with, of course, the famous apple which leads to the general gravitational low. This manuscript, as well as many others, are available for consultation...( read more )...(read more)

Multi-Touch 101 - Silverlight TV Episode 3

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 10:17 AM PST

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9 ! Since this is our opening week we have published 3 new episodes. We've had a lot of great feedback and appreciate that so many of you are subscribing to the show, watching us, and providing...( read more )...(read more)

IIS Tools - truck load of them at www.iis.net

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 07:12 AM PST

Today, I had to deliver a talk on Security features in .NET and IIS and I was going through the www.iis.net website. In the past I had been there for Smooth streaming and other stuff but I stumbled upon the tools, a truck load of them that are very handy utilities while managing a webserver. URL Scan Site Shell Server Defender and much more related to security at http://www.iis.net/downloads/Security and with respect to performance http://www.iis.net/downloads/Performance Ok, and my titbit for this post is that, if you want to use the URL Scan utility on your server running IIS 7, IIS 7.5, you need to enable IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility before configuring the tool. Here is a write up on the same site to do that at http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx...(read more)

Avoiding issues when typing text in Bindings

Posted: 20 Jan 2010 03:27 AM PST

The Binding class has a few properties that can be set to a text, including spaces. The properties StringFormat, TargetNullValue and FallbackValue are such properties. These properties exist in WPF and newly also in Silverlight 4. For example, you can...( read more )...(read more)

How many PCs in the world have the .NET Framework installed?

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 10:29 PM PST

I did a second .NET Framework features informal poll recently , and as with all .NET related polls the question comes up: How many PCs have the .NET Framework on it? If you're a company that is considering creating a client application using .NET (not Silverlight, but the .NET Framework) you'd probably like to know if your end-user needs to install something extra to use your app. So I started asking questions. We've said things here and there about the pervasiveness of the .NET Framework but I wanted to get the final word (at the time of this writing) and put it somewhere easy to fine. After some digging, here's what I've got: Well over 90% of the PCs in the world have some version of the .NET Framework installed. Over 65...(read more)

Silverlight 4 FileSystemWatcher ... no strings attached

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 08:57 PM PST

In my last post I showed how to implement a bridge service using the new net.tcp binding in order to implement something not native to Silverlight 4, namely a FileSystemWatcher. While this works, as does Justin Angels com+ implementation ( http://justinangel...( read more )...(read more)

Speaking at MIX10!

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 10:25 AM PST

URL : http://live.visitmix.com I am happy to announce that one of my entries in the MIX 10's Open Call for content was selected by the community to be delivered at the event. The entry that was choosen is: " RIA Services and MVVM: It Can Happen! " In...( read more )...(read more)

Dialog Editor Improvements in Visual Studio 2010

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 11:41 AM PST

Hello, my name is Daofa Li, and I am on the Visual C++ QA team. In this post I will be sharing with you the improvements in Dialog Editor for Visual Studio 2010.

In Visual Studio 2010, we have improved Dialog Editor in the following features:

·         Add mockup image support to help layout controls in dialogs

·         Add support to use the new MFC controls in design time

·         Enhance the ActiveX control security in Dialog Editor

Using mockup image in Dialog Editor

A mockup image is an image that specifies the exact layout of a dialog – including the information of the exact size and position of controls in the dialog. A mockup image usually comes from the artist/designer. The developer has to make the dialog look identical with the image.  This could be a tedious process that might take many hours of fine tuning and checking until the results are satisfactory.

The good news is now the developer can use this mockup image to guide designing the dialog. In Visual Studio 2010, Dialog Editor has a semitransparent layer that shows the image in the background and that provides the exact guide on how to layout the controls. To make the dialog look identical with the mockup image, the only thing the developer has to do is to drag and drop controls to the position indicated in the image.

In the following scenario, I got the mockup image from my designer, and I will use this mockup image to guide me in designing the dialog.

I create the new dialog resource in Dialog Editor. At the bottom of the Dialog Editor window, there is a mockup bar that controls how the mockup image shows up. The Mockup bar can be toggled on or off in the "Guide Settings" dialog by checking or clearing the "Mockup bar" checkbox.

To use the mockup image, I first check the "Mockup Image" checkbox in the Mockup bar. This action will enable the rest of the controls in the Mockup bar. Then I click the browsing button (…) at the right end of the bar to open the "File Open" dialog and select the mockup image file I am going to use for designing the dialog. The image file name is displayed in the Mockup bar and the mockup image immediately shows up as a semitransparent image overlaying the client area of the dialog form. I can drag the "Transparency" slider to adjust the transparency level of the mockup image so that it has a comfortable visual effect. By default the mockup image anchors to the upper-left corner of the client area of the dialog form. I can adjust its anchor position by changing the X and/or Y coordination offset values in the Mockup bar.

Once I complete my design, I can clear the "Mockup Image" checkbox not to show the image. Note that clearing this checkbox doesn't remove the mockup image. Once you check it again, the mockup image shows up with its previous settings – transparency level and position.

The mockup image information is persisted in the .rc file. In the GUIDELINES section, each dialog resource that has associated mockup image will have a MOCKUP entry that specifies the mockup image information:

    IDD_DIALOG1, DIALOG

    BEGIN

        MOCKUP, 1, 81, 0, 0, ".\res\mockup.jpg"

        LEFTMARGIN, 7

        RIGHTMARGIN, 267

        TOPMARGIN, 7

        BOTTOMMARGIN, 170

    END

 

The information starts with "MOCKUP" indicating a mockup image guide is using in this dialog, followed by the status of the "Mockup Image" checkbox, the transparency level, the offsets of the image position and the mockup image file.

The mockup image effects only at design time, it will not be saved as part of the dialog resource thus has no effect at runtime.

Using new MFC Controls in dialogs

Starting Visual Studio 2008 SP1, new MFC controls were introduced, however these new controls could only be used in source code and visual effect could not be seen at design time. In Visual Studio 2010, the most commonly used "new" MFC controls were integrated into the Toolbox and can be drag and drop to Dialog Editor at design time. Below is a screenshot that shows the "new" MFC controls in the Toolbox. The "new" MFC controls start with "MFC" in their names.

I know this may sound obvious to many but I would like to mention that these MFC controls require MFC support. They may not show up correctly in the dialog at runtime if they are used in non-MFC applications.

Handling ActiveX controls in dialogs

In Visual Studio 2010, you may have slightly different experience in using ActiveX controls in Dialog Editor than previous versions. When you open a dialog resource that contains ActiveX control(s), you'll get the following message box before the dialog resource is opened in Dialog Editor:

 

If you are not sure of the resource of the ActiveX controls you are using, you could choose "No" and the dialog resource will not be opened in Dialog Editor. If you trust the ActiveX controls, you can choose "Yes" and the dialog resource will be opened for you. This is a one-time "Yes" answer per session. Next time, before you unload the resource file, when you open a dialog resource containing ActiveX controls you will not get this message box if you already answered "yes".

Another different experience you may have is you may get the following message box before the dialog runs in test mode, when you test a dialog containing ActiveX controls by pressing CTRL-T or clicking the "Test Dialog" toolbar button:

If you don't trust the ActiveX controls or you want to save your work before running the dialog in test mode, choose "No" to stop entering the test mode. If you want to proceed testing the dialog, click "Yes" and Dialog Editor will try to run the dialog in test mode – if everything runs well, you will not get this message box next time when you run the dialog in test mode again.

I recommend you to save your work before running a dialog containing ActiveX controls in test mode because you might lose your work if any of the ActiveX controls does something wrong and crashes the Visual Studio.

There are several reasons why we need these security enhancements in handling ActiveX controls in Dialog Editor:

·         ActiveX controls usually come from third party. Dialog Editor doesn't have the knowledge about whether they are safe or not, and cannot make the decision for the developer whether it is safe to use these controls.

·         When Dialog Editor opens a dialog resource containing ActiveX controls, these controls are initialized using the data persisted in the .rc file. The data could be unsafe and the ActiveX controls could be harmful to the system.

·         When the dialog runs in test mode, the contained ActiveX controls are running in the system as well. If any of the controls is unsafe, it could be harmful to the system.  If anything unexpected happens within the ActiveX controls, it might crash the Visual Studio and you could lose your data because Dialog Editor cannot control the ActiveX control's running behavior.

 

Database Data-Access-Layers

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 01:22 PM PST

This project is actually a combination of several individual projects, all of which, provide individual, easy to use, data access layers for a number of popular databases.

Learn About Cloud Computing at a Free Local MSDN Event

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 10:21 AM PST

MSDN events are free, interactive sessions that deliver hands-on technical content on data storage, SQL Azure, and deploying apps on Windows Azure with lots of time to ask questions. Chat with your peers and get the skills that can help you get ahead. Find one near you and register now at msdnevents.com.

BenkoTips Live and On Demand Webcast: What's New in Visual Studio 2010

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 10:21 AM PST

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 takes great strides toward making your development environment faster, easier, and more intuitive. From project types to the start page to the toolboxes, we'll explore how you can use the new integrated development environment (IDE) to build great software.

Hidden Gems: Why .NET Developers Need to Take a 2nd Look at Project Rosetta

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 08:29 AM PST

Many of you have heard of Project Rosetta by now, but for those who have not here is an excerpt from the site : The goal of the project is to help designers and UI developers learn new technologies by relating concepts and skills in a visual way from...( read more )...(read more)

Perspectives on Flash and Silverlight from Mike Downey on SilverlightTV

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 08:03 AM PST

Congratulations to John Papa for recently launching a new show on Channel 9 called SilverlightTV. The show covers the Silverlight platform from a variety of angles including architectural issues, real design and development issues problems solved, community...( read more )...(read more)

Extract styles in Expression Blend

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 07:34 AM PST

You may have found yourself in a situation when you want to convert an implicit style in XAML into a resource. Until today, I did it with creating the new style, and adding the setters manually. But I thought "There must be some way in Expression Blend...( read more )...(read more)

Talking in Las Vegas: MIX2010 and MVVM

Posted: 19 Jan 2010 04:28 AM PST

This morning, very early (or very late depending how you see it), I learned that one of the sessions I submitted to the MIX 2010 open call for speakers had been picked by the public. Out of 169 sessions, only 12 were picked, so you imagine my feelings...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for January 18, 2010 -- #782

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 11:01 PM PST

In this Issue: Rene Schulte , Jim Wightman , Michael Wolf , Karl Shifflett , Braulio Diez , Walt Ritscher , Mike Taulty , and Deborah Kurata . Shoutouts: Karl Erickson posted at the Silverlight SDK that Source viewer added to the Silverlight SDK sample...( read more )...(read more)

Caliburn v1.1 Release Candidate Available!

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 07:10 PM PST

Since our v1 release of Caliburn in October, we've had a healthy amount of bug fixes and feature improvements. The community has really gotten involved and contributed in a big way. The result of this contribution is the forthcoming v1.1. As of...( read more )...(read more)

Source viewer added to the Silverlight SDK sample browser

Posted: 18 Jan 2010 02:23 PM PST

The Silverlight SDK sample browser lets you explore all the live samples used by the official Silverlight documentation . In the past, the source code for the samples could only be found in the documentation. Now, however, you can view the source directly...( read more )...(read more)
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