Site: http://jesseliberty.com/ Link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/JesseLiberty-SilverlightGeek
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 4/2/2010 3:23:00 AM
The Silverlight HyperVideo Player has met with strong support and interest. This mini-tutorial is the first in a series that will walk through the design and delivery of this project. This series will pretend that the design existed before we began coding, and will not take you through its evolution over the months between December 2009 and March 2010. In short, this series is a “drop-line” exercise highlighting how the program works with a focus on teasing out general principles of cr ...
[ read more ]
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 4/2/2010 3:22:16 AM
The Silverlight HyperVideo Project has made two guest appearances on Silverlight TV. In the first, I talk with John Papa about the project itself and how it has evolved. Then, during Mix, Tim Heuer and I sat down with John to discuss What’s New In Silverlight 4, and I managed to sneak in a few comments about the HVP as well. Silverlight TV has numerous great interviews, and is quickly becoming a valued asset throughout the Silverlight community. Tens of thousands ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 3/29/2010 4:33:00 PM
In my previous post I discussed creating the database and tables for the Silverlight HVP configuration data. All that was great, and worked just dandy until it was time to get the data from the database server to the application running on the client. “But,” I thought, “How hard can it be?” I’ve done a few mini-tutorials… should be straight-forward… And it was… sorta. Getting Going The steps are pretty straight forward: Create an entity data model that corresponds to the t ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 3/11/2010 5:33:20 PM
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 3/5/2010 4:11:35 PM
[Updated and expanded on March 5] For this week’s release of the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform we are committed to having configuration information retrieved from a database. To accomplish this we need (want?) Smooth-streaming videos that we can use to illustrate the relationship among Items, Topics and Links and A Database in which to store the configuration information Step 1 was accomplished by Creating the videos Creating image files Uploading the videos and ima ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 3/5/2010 3:11:37 AM
For this week’s release of the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform we are committed to having configuration information retrieved from a database. To accomplish this we need (want?) Smooth-streaming videos that we can use to illustrate the relationship among Items, Topics and Links and A Database in which to store the configuration information Step 1 was accomplished by Creating the videos Creating image files Uploading the videos and images to MSN where the videos were ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/26/2010 5:14:42 PM
This mini-tutorial is part of the SLHVP documentation One of the goals of the Silverlight HyperVideo Project is to demonstrate best practices. So when is it okay to throw in a quick hack to get things working? Case in point: as I approached the release this week for the latest alpha, I noted that the player was not updating when the user clicked on a topic, though the links were appearing as if the player had been advanced. To make the issue clear, in this image ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/10/2010 3:42:06 AM
At the end of Test Driven Body Snatchers I promised to follow up with a walkthrough of real-world Test Driven Development. What gets into me? Well, a promise is a promise. Walking Through Test Driven Development The set up is this: We’ve designed the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform using the MVVM pattern. We’re going to take a trip in the way-back machine, and design the ItemsViewModel class (the VM in MVVM) using Tes ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/5/2010 4:31:00 PM
This posting is part of the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform documentation and a Silverlight Mini-tutorial. The information in this posting, however, should be of interest to anyone writing meaningful Line of Business applications with Silverlight. [This is the first of two parts on Test Driven Development. Part 2 will walk through creating Unit Tests in “real time”] The premise of the classic 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is that there are “pod people” amon ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/29/2010 2:15:46 AM
Okay, first, understand that I’m in the position of running through the streets yelling at folks “c’mere! ya’ gotta see this!” and what I’m pointing to is the incredible new invention of… a laptop computer. Something that is undeniably amazing and cool, but everyone else on my block has already got one. Second, and much worse, I’m about to show you how I used a “pattern” that you either have already embraced, or that you’ve been avoiding like the pl ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/28/2010 2:15:00 AM
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/23/2010 6:26:00 PM
Two architectural demands for the Silverlight HVP, which are common to many larger applications, came together this week and crystallized into a design that looks to solve a couple other, unanticipated requirements. Specifically, we knew that (1) we wanted to have configuration files and that (2) we wanted each module to be created independently of all the other modules. After some discussion, thrashing, input from some great folks at CodeMash, and further review, the design th ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/11/2010 3:40:00 PM
[ Jan 23 - Note that the design specified here has been significantly updated ] In the spirit of a glass-house (you get to see everything as it happens), open source project, here is a draft of how I see handling configuration for the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform -- this will be modified in the next iteration to take more advantage of the services provided by MEF. Design Goals It doesn’t matter what order the modules are loaded by MEF. Maximum encapsulation, minimal coupl ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/7/2010 4:41:00 PM
Brief Video Illustration I’ve created a very quick video that shows the proof of concept version of the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform and describes a bit about the project. We are working on creating a page where the latest version will always be available for you to try out. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.< br / > ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/6/2010 5:13:00 AM
I’m incredibly proud to say that we were able to release the Silverlight HVP proof of concept alpha release on time, at 12:05 am Wednesday January 6, 2010 (GMT-5). As noted in our release schedule this is the first of a series of releases scheduled for every second Wednesday. While this first release exceeds what we promised for the Proof of Concept, it is still very much a hard-coded representation of what we plan to release in the coming weeks. Our first major release will be in ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/4/2010 9:02:00 PM
This post is part of the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform documentation [Updated 1/5 10:50 GMT-5] Everything Flows, Nothing Stands Still – Plato Nothing Endures, But Change - Diogenes The past few days have seen quite a flurry of design activity, and I’m quite sure some folks who have been following closely have been confused. This note will clarify, and also discuss design decisions made to move the project forward, and why these decisions were made. I have created a new discus ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/3/2010 7:05:17 PM
This mini-tutorial is part of the Silverlight HyperVideo Project documentation. Taking Risks One of the great pleasures, and total terrors of documenting this open-source application is that occasionally I have to offer up some half-baked ideas that risk displaying how little I know about a particular topic, but which are necessary to generate discussion. Caveat: this is such an entry. I could have put this into the project documentation but I saw an opportunity to widen ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/3/2010 7:05:00 PM
This mini-tutorial is part of the Silverlight HyperVideo Project documentation. Taking Risks One of the great pleasures, and total terrors of documenting this open-source application is that occasionally I have to offer up some half-baked ideas that risk displaying how little I know about a particular topic, but which are necessary to generate discussion. Caveat: this is such an entry. I could have put this into the project documentation but I saw an opportunity to widen the audience on ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/30/2009 2:30:00 AM
Design Update This was posted on Dec. 29 and updated on Dec. 30. The significant changes are to the Configuration and Marker Events sections This blog post extends the previous post in which I discussed the IMarkerEventHandler interface and how it might be implemented. Readers and Frames The design calls for one or more Pages each of which may have any number of UI modules. The default case is to have a TableOfContents module, a LinksDisplay module and a Reader module. A ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/28/2009 5:03:35 PM
This blog post is part of the documentation for the Silverlight HyperVideo Player Open Source Project Design Change: Create an Interface: IMarkerEventHandler Optionally derive a base class MarkerEventHandler that implements the interface Instantiate MarkerEventHandler classes that are decoupled from the HyperVideo player This change is designed to decouple the response to markers in a video from the other responsibilities of the Silverlight HyperVideo player. ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/24/2009 4:44:00 AM
A Silverlight HVP Update I’m extremely pleased to report that a start-up e-learning company (currently code-named WL) has committed approximately 100 hours / week of development time by four of their world-class Silverlight developers, from now through February. All of the work they do will be fully integrated into the Silverlight HVP and released under the Ms-PL. We are currently working on the feature list for Version 1, but the very good news is that virtually all of the features th ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/19/2009 6:35:00 PM
This article is part of the Mini-Tutorial Series This article is part of the Silverlight HVP Documentation The State of the Silverlight HVP Project LeanKit Kanban has licensed us under their Open Source provisions, and has gone the extra mile to give virtually unlimited licenses. An e-learning start up is negotiating to contribute approximately 20+ hours per week for up to 3 months of free programmer time under the Ms-PL open source license as they are interested in us ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/17/2009 6:30:51 PM
In a radical and terrifying experiment, I’m going to document what happens when I try to extend the Silverlight Media Framework (SMF) for the Silverlight HyperVideo Player as I do it. This article is part of the Mini-Tutorial Series This article is part of the Silverlight HVP Documentation My plan is to follow along with this video (part of the SMF documentation) and adapt it to extending the SMF player already embedded in the HVP source code so as to add a pseudo-links ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/15/2009 4:32:00 PM
[ Update: Latest information on contributing now in the Silverlight HVP CodePlex documentation.] Help Wanted: Project Management The project would benefit tremendously by having someone in addition to me managing and coordinating the contributors, the trunk and branches of the source code and the evolving specifications for the core-project and any extensions. ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/9/2009 1:47:00 AM
This article is part of the Mini-Tutorial Series This article is part of the Silverlight HVP Documentation Executive Summary This article continues the design and exploration phase of the Silverlight HVP project by beginning to examine the role the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) will play in solving a number of challenges in the project. Goal: Creation of an Extensible, Modular, Reliable, Robust application The Silverlight HVP poses the challenge of accommodating the different f ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/20/2009 4:06:20 PM
This is the first of many mini-tutorials on Silverlight 4 features. An enhancement has been made that allows you to add animation when items are added ,or removed from, the list box. Silverlight 4 adds a new StateGroup to the ListBoxItem class: A Simple Demo To demonstrate this, I’ve created a wicked simple demo: the user types into the text box, clicks the add button and the text “floats” up into the list. I begin with a simple Silverlight 4 program in Visual Studio 20 ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/15/2009 5:43:00 AM
The Silverlight HyperVideo Player: A Community Project The Silverlight HVP Elevator Pitch: The Silverlight HyperVideo Player (HVP) will do for Silverlight How Do I Videos what Hypertext did for the Internet: it will provide simple, fast, and easy to use links to additional, supplementary or related information. As an example, the user might be watching a video on data binding and the term “Dependency Property” is mentioned and at the same time a link appears. If the user clicks on ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/12/2009 8:42:00 PM
When I joined Microsoft and started talking about Silverlight, many in the Mac community expressed skepticism about Microsoft’s long-term commitment to the Mac platform. In its most rabid form, the concern was that we were supporting the Mac only preemptively and would drop our support for the Mac as soon as enough Mac developers embraced it (!) So, 2.5 years later, with the worst not having happened, I have renewed my personal pledge to make sure, to the best of my ability, that Silverlight no ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/6/2009 7:28:00 PM
This is the second in my new series on Getting Started With Silverlight (please see the first article for information on the series and where to get the software you need). [updated11/8] Don’t Start with Xaml… Until recently, just about every introduction to Silverlight started out by talking about Xaml; the markup language of Silverlight, WPF and Workflow. I believe it is time to stop. A quick note on Xaml – we all agree how to pronounce it: zam-el to rhyme with camel, but not on how to ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/2/2009 2:44:00 PM
This is the first of a series of blog posts directed at folks who are new to Silverlight and/or want to brush up on the fundamentals. It will consist of mini-tutorials on topics I think need more coverage, and links to existing mini-tutorials, tutorials and videos. We begin… at the beginning. What is Silverlight, Why Do I care? This is the traditional place to start, but in all probability if you are here, you know the answer. In brief: Silverlight is Microsoft’s Rich Internet Applicati ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/27/2009 2:32:00 PM
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 I ended 15 years as an independent to join Microsoft as Silverlight Geek, a job that has been immensely rewarding. On a personal (and seemingly unrelated) note; while my older daughter was in high school she became fluent in Ameri ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/26/2009 9:46:00 PM
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 not so well supported. If it is included at all, it is frequently an afterthought. In my initial series on HyperVideo I started with the media player emitted by Encoder, and stripped out the Closed Captioning button. That was u ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/1/2009 12:20:00 AM
I have been thinking a lot about how differently each of us (inside and out of Microsoft) approaches creating How-Do-I videos. Let’s start by agreeing that no one instructor will please everyone, and the best way to create truly excellent videos is to step away from ego and try to zero in on what it is that this community values in instructional videos. Create A List, Check It Twice What follows are the characteristics that I look for and pay attention to, both when I'm creating videos and ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 9/25/2009 10:42:00 PM
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 11 | Advanced: 8 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? Part 3 of 3 This is the last of a three part sub-series on using Entity Frameworks and RIA Data Services to move data from our Sql Server database to our Silverlight Application’s DataGrid. In Part 2, we explored returning an object graph by using the Entity Frameworks and by decorating the metadata for the RIA Services with the properties we wante ...
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 11 | Advanced: 8 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? Part 3 of 3 This is the last of a three part sub-series on using Entity Frameworks and RIA Data Services to move data from our Sql Server database to our Silverlight Application’s DataGrid. In Part 2, we explored returning an object graph by using the Entity Frameworks and by decorating the metadata for the RIA Services with the properties we wanted to retrieve f ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 9/25/2009 1:15:00 PM
Very proud to announce the launch of #stwip - silverlight twitter tips. Find them by following my Tweets or by the meme ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 9/24/2009 8:48:00 PM
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 9 | Advanced: 6 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? From Database to DataGrid The next step in Project Turing is to create a first iteration of the Silverlight application that will retrieve data from our database. Using our technology of choice: the Data Entity Framework coupled with .Net RIA Services. .Net RIA Services will allow us to create business logic on the server and to access tha ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 9/10/2009 10:08:17 PM
My fascination with Silverlight Is not strongly determined by the video aspects, though they can be the most immediately compelling. That said, it is certainly an indicator of the impacted Silverlight is having, that Silverlight was chosen for the online Olympics experience, the online presidential inauguration, and now for the entire season of Sunday night football. It was announced today that The NFL and NBC will be delivering the entire Sunday Night Football season utilizing S ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 9/6/2009 10:25:00 PM
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 9 | Advanced: 6 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? Downloading the code All of the code for the example shown here along with a backup of the complete database can be downloaded here --> From Database to DataGrid The next step in Project Turing is to create a first iteration of the Silverlight application that will retrieve data from our database. Using our technology of choice: th ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 8/27/2009 6:33:58 PM
I wanted to add an animated pie chart to my previous post. The samples from the Toolkit are terrific, but sometimes it is difficult to find the easiest, most cookbook like process; so for those of you who might want to do the same, here is an annotated walk-through of creating this animated pie chart: I began by opening Visual Studio and creating a new Silverlight Application, and saying no to the offer to create a Web application. The UI, created in Page.xaml consists of the header an ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 8/27/2009 2:22:18 PM
This month I had the opportunity to be on Sparkling Client three times to talk about Silverlight 3 features Easing – August 13 Element to Element Binding – August 20 Validation – August 26 ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 8/16/2009 2:48:00 PM
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 8 | Advanced: 5 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? In a previous post I discussed the advantage of separating the Data Access Layer (retrieving data from your data store) from the Data Transport Layer (moving data from the server to your client. We then took a small but important detour into an introduction to Linq. This posting will expand upon Li ...
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 8 | Advanced: 5 ] FAQ | Table of Contents | Definitions What is this and where do I start? In a previous post I discussed the advantage of separating the Data Access Layer (retrieving data from your data store) from the Data Transport Layer (moving data from the server to your client. We then took a small but important detour into an introduction to Linq. This posting will expand ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 8/13/2009 11:17:00 PM
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 7] FAQ Table of Contents What is this and where do I start? Special Note: This posting introduces a new element in the series: definitions for terms that may not be familiar. Clicking on the link will bring you to the definition page where I will provide a very short explanation of the term and refer you to other postings, videos or books. In the first sentence under The Blog Class, below, I ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 8/13/2009 12:39:00 AM
Turing Project Page: [Novice: 6, Advanced: 4] FAQ Table of Contents What is this and where do I start? In the previous entry, we created the design for the database. Over the next few postings, we’ll be working with that Data in five distinct ways: Gather data from the bloggers about themselves, their blog and each entry Store that data in a database Extract that data as needed from the database Transmit the data to a Silverlight applicati ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 8/11/2009 11:02:00 PM
(click on the image to see other Mini-tutorials) [Novice: Page 5, Advanced: Page 3] FAQ Table of Contents This project will explore, among other things, getting data into and out of a SQL Database. In fact, we’ll explore a number of ways of doing so. To get started, however, we need to create a database that is sufficient for the project and sufficiently illustrative of working with relational databases, without being overly complex. Fortunately ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 8/4/2009 8:26:00 PM
(click on the image to see other Mini-tutorials) Turing Page [Novice: 4] FAQ Table of Contents In Novice Page 3 we were about to create a form. Here is the form we’ll create: Layout Is Easiest In Expression Blend To create this form, I’ll begin by opening Expression Blend 3 and creating a new Silverlight Application, If you’ve not reconfigured Blend it will open with numerous panels, some tabbed, some open as shown here: ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/30/2009 2:20:33 PM
. Our Goal Is Not To Create Great Programs; It Is To Create Great Programmers This posting will quickly review the AgOpenSource project, whose Table of Contents is available at www.AgOpenSource.com or from a link on the sidebar of my blog. Overview Note: this overview is an excerpt from the home page of AgOpenSource AgOpenSource is, at its heart, an experiment in moving from from stand alone demonstrations of specific Silverlight skills to exploring the breadth of Silverligh ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/29/2009 2:58:00 AM
A lot of email comes my way beginning with the sentiment: “I’m not sure who to ask, and you’re the Silverlight Geek, so….” Which is great. I often refer them elsewhere, but it gives me a sense of what is on people’s minds, and also how well we’re doing making it obvious where the answers are. The site redeisgn helps a lot (you’ve seen our new site, right?) but with this much information available, and this rapidly changing a product, it can be very difficult to find exactly what you ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/27/2009 4:50:52 PM
As Silverlight moves from providing controls and UX bits to providing a framework for creating entire applications, it becomes more important to have a framework for multi-“page” applications. Silverlight 3 introduces the Silverlight Navigation Application This template in Visual Studio creates a series of files that serve as a very flexible and customizable framework for multi-page applications. The unmodified user experience, out of the box, is shown in this live demo, followed by a ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/25/2009 5:32:00 PM
Silverlight 3 provides the ability to manage your various resources in dedicated files and folders, and then merge them together as needed. This allows for far easier scaling of applications and easier reuse of resources. It is easiest to see this at work by creating a small example. I’ll open a new application and name it MergedResources1 and I’ll create this one in VB. To keep life simple, I’m going to use some of the resources I used in the based-on-styles discussion. I’ll create a simple ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/23/2009 4:57:25 PM
NB: This post is not about Silverlight; it is a short digression to share one of the cooler new products I’ve seen. Xobni Outlook add-on is so amazingly useful and fast and solid, you may really want to take a look at it. The product name is xobni (inbox spelled backwards) and it is an Outlook add-on. It does a lot of stuff, but the biggest is wicked-fast retrieval of anything Outlook knows about – that is your contacts, your email, etc. More important, it combines that information ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/22/2009 6:03:00 PM
n Silverlight 3 the standard ListBox now has a SelectionMode property which is filled from an enumerated constant whose possible values are • Single • Multiple • Extended When setting the SelectionMode Intellisense will display the potential values Creating and using a multi-select list box requires only setting the property and retrieving the values. In th ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/22/2009 2:41:00 PM
In Silverlight 3 you can now use one User Interface element as the binding object for another. This can greatly simplify your code. For example, if you wish to display the value of a slider in a text box, there is no need to create a data object to mediate their connection; you can bind the text box directly to the slider: 1: <Slider x:Name="sUnBound" 2: LargeChange="10" 3: Maximum="100" 4: SmallChange="1" 5: Value="50" 6: VerticalAlignment="Bottom" />
... [ read more ]
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/22/2009 4:54:34 AM
What It Is With element binding, it is now possible to bind the value of one object in your UI directly to a second object, without recourse to binding to a data object or handling events. How You Do It The canonical example (for me) is binding a TextBlock to the value of a slider. As the slider moves, the TextBlock is updated with the changing value. Two Approaches Until Silverlight 3, the easiest way to get this to work was to bind both the Slider and the TextBlcok to a data object. Wh ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/20/2009 7:41:32 PM
Animated movement often seems much more natural and realistic if the moving object accelerates up to speed or decelerates before stopping. The technique of adding that change in velocity is called Easing. You can imagine that the acceleration to speed, and the deceleration would create a curve when plotted as distance against time, and in fact in prior versions of Expression Blend that curve was often hand drawn as shown in the following two images, Image 1 – Starting to set Easing ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/18/2009 6:05:00 PM
Data Validation is fully implemented in Silverlight 3, utilizing the object the input control is bound to as the decider of what is valid, and the Visual State Machine to provide feedback to the user. The process is best understood as a sequence of steps, 1. Add an input control to your page. 2. Bind the input control to a data object using two way binding. Set both ValidatesOnException and NotifyOnValid ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/18/2009 5:21:00 PM
In Silverlight 3 it is now possible to build a new style based on an existing style, thus reducing duplication of code and creating easier to manage resources (see also Merged Resource Dictionaries). Thus you could create a style for your buttons that looks like this: 1: <Style x:Key="StandardButton" 2: TargetType="Button"> 3: <Setter Property="Width" 4: Value="100" /> 5: <Setter Property="Height"
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/18/2009 4:50:00 PM
3d Perspective Transform In addition to the transforms that were available in Silverlight 2 (translate, skew, etc.) you can now apply perspective transforms to any Silverlight Element to create 3D images and animation. We have a two part video on how to do this on Silverlight/Learn While 3d may at first seem like more sizzle than substance, in truth it can buy you precious real estate on your front page, above the fold by allowing you to put supplemental but important information on ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 7/10/2009 5:07:12 PM
All our blogs are alive with information about the release of Silverlight 3 and I couldn’t have a happier birthday present. For the past couple weeks I’ve been working on a new, experimental contribution to the effort and I’m thrilled to release it, the ever evolving and growing What’s New In Silverlight 3 Wiki ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 6/5/2009 4:21:18 AM
In a previous post I mentioned that Silverlight 3 has enhanced support for data entry validation. In this first of two mini-tutorials on the topic, I will take you through the process of implementing validation in some detail. The key to understanding Silverlight validation is the division of logic from UI. In this case, the logic is delegated to the business object that the input control is bound to, and the UI is owned by the the input control (and the associated controls f ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 5/29/2009 8:57:00 PM
I had the pleasure of presenting What’s New In Silverlight 3 both at TechEd this year and then again to the Redmond .NET Developer’s Association, I think the best way to make this material available is to post my slides here along with the source code, and then to point to videos and blog entries that cover this material (either existing or as I create it in coming weeks). Please note that this presentation was given using Silverlight 3 Beta. If you are reading this and we are still in Beta, ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 5/25/2009 1:17:00 AM
Tim Heuer did a brilliant job in his recent blog post sorting through and summing up some of the confusion that has arisen out of the current unusual circumstances of Silverlight, Blend and Visual Studio all having two versions available at the same time: a release version and a pre-release version. Rather than replicating his work, let me point you to his post and also provide a slightly different perspective of life on the bleeding edge… Silverlight, Blend, Visual Studi ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 5/20/2009 5:59:00 AM
As you no doubt know we released Beta 1 of Visual Studio 2010 today (the usual caution applies: I would advise only installing this on a machine you are prepared to repave!). [Update - the Landing Page for all things related to VS 2010 Beta1 is here. ] I installed it and Silverlight 3 on my laptop running Windows 7 (yowza!) and then fired it up and created an incredibly simple app as follows: In the new project dialog shown cropped here, I chose to build to the latest version ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 4/24/2009 10:23:00 PM
For those who have been wondering “Where’s Jesse??” the answer is that I’ve been head’s down preparing for my presentation at Tech Ed (you are going to Tech Ed aren’t you?!) Microsoft has three major conferences. The following is my personal description: -- PDC – What is coming in the next few years. The BIG conference. -- Tech Ed – What is the current state of the art. – Dive deep with geeks -- Mix – Let’s get developers and designers together and create magic. I have not abandoned a ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 3/28/2009 3:52:44 PM
You can learn a great deal about the new TimePicker class with a fairly simple example program that I will lay out and zip through here (a full video on the topic is coming very soon). To begin, you’ll want to download the latest Silverlight Toolkit, which you can easily do by clicking on Get Started in the left margin of my blog (or on the image to the left) and from our Get Started page, click on number 4, Download Silverlight Toolkit. That will bring you to the Codeplex home of the Too ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 3/20/2009 4:50:49 AM
Easily lost among all the exciting announcements here at Mix is some great news about the Silverlight Toolkit. First, the March 2009 release for both Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 is now available here This release includes six new controls: 2 TimePicker Controls TimeUpDown DomainUpDown LayoutTransformer Accordion TransitioningContentControl. The first two are covered in this video, the DomainUpDown in this second video, and the remaining three wil ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 3/18/2009 7:35:00 PM
As of this morning I have uploaded five videos (with C# and VB source code) for Silverlight 3. To have this ready at the moment of release I opted for most to build with pre-beta code. This note will review what to do if you run into trouble making the code work (and if it is a problem I’ll quickly rebuild with the release Beta code). Element to Element Binding Using 3-d Part 1 Using 3-d Part 2 Timer Input Control These were all built with just-pre-Beta source an ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/26/2009 6:19:31 AM
I was pretty happy with the threading navigation I had introduced… Just to double check, I asked my buddy David Platt, author of the absolutely essential Why Software Sucks, to take a look. He was quite gentle in ripping my guts out. He pointed out that the juxtaposition of the word More with a left pointing arrow is so jarring it just forces you to stop and think (Don't Make Me Think!"). He also noted that putting one link at the top of the article, and the other at the botto ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/22/2009 12:53:00 AM
I recently posted about the Silverlight Layout System (and now have posted videos on the subject here and here). But this can get quite confusing and a reader posted this question: You mention PreArrange() and it is called but you are not clear on which of the functions should be used in it. I am also not clear on where "item" and "center" are defined. This gives me an opportunity to do a better job explaining how the location of each object as it moves aro ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/16/2009 12:22:00 PM
In my previous blog entry I described the fundamentals of the Silverlight Layout System (SLS). Today, I'd like to build a simplified version of the custom Carousel control that I create in greater detail in a forthcoming video, and examine the role of the SLS in laying out and animating the objects in the Carousel. We'll start by creating a new Silverlight solution, and immediately adding a Silverlight library (Add New Project –>Silverlight Class Library) named SimpleCarou ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/15/2009 9:10:38 PM
I have finished a video, to be posted soon, on how to build a Carousel control. Along the way, I had the opportunity to explore the Silverlight Layout System (SLS) and will describe this fascinating corner of Silverlight 2 in this and future blog entries. The first thing to know about the SLS is that most of the time you can ignore it! It is possible to become quite proficient in Silverlight programming without even knowing explicitly that the system exists, much less having to override any o ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/12/2009 12:48:04 AM
Dear Jesse, "I loaded the Silverlight Toolkit from December 1988 on my CPM machine and it broke my Apple IIe in my vacation home in Maine. What should I do?" – Toolkit Lover. Dear Toolkit Lover, We have a dedicated forum for posting questions about the Silverlight Toolkit where you will be able to get very fast answers. The forum is watched by the Toolkit team as well as many community experts. To get there, please click here or enter ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/10/2009 3:21:00 PM
More: Extension Methods Part 1 In my previous entry on this topic I demonstrated how you can use Extension methods to add what appear to be new methods to existing classes. In this entry I will demonstrate how Extension methods enhance Linq by adding “method queries” using lambda expressions. To see how this works, let’s set up a simple query, with a display that will show the two ways we might execute that query using Linq. We’ll start by creating a new Silverlight application and wit ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/7/2009 6:04:00 PM
A number of articles I've read recently have mentioned "Extension methods" in passing, yet it is difficult to find out what this is, if you don't already know. A few searches, however, did turn up three good sources: MSDN provides this reference page, then I found a classic "Gu" blog post from March of '07, and finally, the incredible Pete Brown tackles Extension methods as well. This mini-tutorial will attempt to fill in the details and focus on two key uses of Extensi ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/6/2009 3:00:38 AM
I'm very pleased to announce the posting of my latest Silverlight 2 Tutorial: ADO.NET Data Entities and WCF Feeding A Silverlight Datagrid, available in both C# and VB in HTML and pdf. This is the first (but not the last) in an occasional series on how Silverlight can be combined with other aspects of .NET 3.5 to create complete applications. This tutorial touches on WCF, Data Entities, LINQ and SqlServer. Complete code is available for download on the html pages as well ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/4/2009 5:29:00 AM
More: Expander Control Part I I recently examined the Expander control and in that entry I promised to return and show how templating can add value to the user experience of this Silverlight Toolkit control. You will remember that when we left the expander, it was able to display its contents with a bit of color, but opening it was a bit abrupt: --- Start of streaming example --- --- End of streaming example ---We will modify the example by templating the control so that the contents fade ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 2/2/2009 4:33:00 PM
I recently described the HeaderControl from the Silverlight Toolkit. Derived from the HeaderControl (and thus, to be thought of as a specialized version of the HeaderControl) is the Expander. In its simplest form, the Expander has two properties that do all the work: the Header property and the Content property. Put text into each, and hey! presto! you have a working expander. <UserControl xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls; assembl ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/30/2009 5:37:53 PM
The Tree View control is ideal for displaying hierarchical data. While there is a great deal you can do with this control, in its simplest form it is fairly straightforward to work with, once you grok the essential recursiveness it demands (well, requests strongly). We'll look at two examples: the TreeView raw, and then using DataBinding with a tiny bit of customization. Here's what we're building: --- Top of Streaming Application --- --- End of Streaming Application --- Eve ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/26/2009 9:07:00 PM
MORE Blog entry on HeaderContentControl I'm happy to say that my latest video on the Silverlight Toolkit, covering the HeaderContentControl and the HeaderItemsControl is now available for download. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license. ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/26/2009 8:50:00 PM
More: Start of thread on hyper-video (Note: This link jumps to the start of the thread rather than the most recent entry) I'm pleased to say that the third and final part of my series on Hyper-video is now available (just click on the image or click here). In this last video I demonstrate how to respond to embedded markers by displaying a button and, if you click on the button by pausing the playing video and starting up a related video. For more on Hypervideo, be sure to follow the ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/26/2009 3:23:00 AM
I had a blast speaking at the MSDN Developer’s Conference (MDC) in both NY (January 20) and Boston (January 22). Each was a total blast and as promised, here are the links from that presentation. Complete Power Point Slides Source Code [fixed!] Video: From Sql Server –> Entity Model –> WCF –> Silverlight (February 2009) Tutorial: From Data Entities to DataGrids (January 2009) Quick Introduction to Linq Resources for Getting Started with S ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/18/2009 3:17:19 AM
This quick introduction to the HeaderContentControl of the Silverlight Toolkit will lay the ground work for future entries on the Expander control. To see the HeaderContentControl with as little fuss as possible, create a new Silverlight application and add a reference to the Microsoft.Windows.Controls.dll from the toolkit. Page.xaml Begin by adding a reference to the Microsoft.Windows.Controls.dll to your application and then declare an XML Name Space at the top of Page.xaml, xmlns:con ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/18/2009 1:51:08 AM
I'm very pleased to say that the first two of the four-part series of videos on HyperVideo are now available (clicking on the images will bring you to the videos) You can also find a blog thread on Hypervideo beginning here. If you find it interesting, just follow the arrows at the end of each article. Thanks. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license. ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/13/2009 2:46:00 PM
The last time I looked at Drag and Drop was with Silverlight version 1 and now seemed like a good time to see how one might accomplish this seemingly straight forward task with managed code. The experience was interesting. Once I had it working, it was hard to explain why it had been difficult, though it did seem that the documentation took you right up to what you needed to know and then stopped short. I'm not certain that is true, but I know I struggled longer than I expected to. In ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/10/2009 8:15:00 PM
I’m pleased to announce that my videos on the Silverlight Toolkit PieChart and Columns chart are now available. What is very nice is that once you understand how one of these charts works, working with the other becomes almost self-evident. ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/6/2009 2:53:00 AM
More Previous Blog Entry – Hyper-video: Getting Started In a previous posting, I began a fast and furious mini-tutorial on building a hyper-video player. In this segment, I'll demonstrate how to: Use Encoder to add markers to a video Use Encoder to create a player Modify the player Encoder creates using templates Have the player respond to each marker as it is encountered To begin, you'll need a bit of video. I downloaded the 4th segment of the video on Building a Skinnable Cust ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 1/3/2009 2:31:00 AM
More: Previous article on the Wrap Panel The Silverlight Toolkit includes a couple new panels, one of which is the incredibly handy WrapPanel. [ Updated Jan. 4 to include working example ] In its most straight forward use, the WrapPanel allows you to add UIElements which it positions sequentially (typically left to right) until there is insufficient space, at which time it creates a new row beneath the most recent; that is, it wraps. Creating a simple test program reveals a few inter ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/30/2008 8:18:13 PM
More: Previous article, Hypervideo- Continuing the Dialog For those of you who want to get started with hypervideo and don't want to wait for the videos or the full tutorial, here is the first of a series of fast mini-tutorials. The first step is to pick a video you'd like to use as your "source." The source will be the video you'll link from. If you don't have it already, you'll need to download Encoder by going to the Expression Web Site and clicking ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/30/2008 5:12:46 PM
More: Hypervideo Ben wrote that he hopes I will dive deep into decoupling the type or name of the markers from the data-driven information, and I want to respond that this is an important part of decoupling the link from the response to that link, though I'm not sure it is totally required. The case for unnamed Markers The argument in favor starts with the observation that there is a natural tendency to think of the source video and the target (linked-to) video ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/28/2008 6:17:32 AM
This posting will reintroduce the concept of Hyper-video, the subject of a series of forthcoming videos. The concept of HyperVideo is most easily explained by a series of examples. You are watching the news and the anchor person says "Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, today announced…" you click on the question mark on the screen and are presented with a menu: Zimbabwe History (Web link) Zimbabwe Government and Politics (Article) President Mugab ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/26/2008 5:49:59 PM
I was working on a chapter about the Application Model for our forthcoming book and reviewed the examples on passing parameters into Silverlight applications. I thought, "Hey! That would make a great video!" And it does, but Tim already made one, which I highly recommend. Since it never hurts to review, I'm going to write this up quickly, fully acknowledging that this is 90% his work; so only read on if you haven't happened to catch his presentation of this material yet and t ...
by via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/22/2008 10:34:08 PM
When we started creating How Do I videos, the idea was to have stand alone videos that do not depend on one another. That is still the ideal, though from time to time we do have two or three part videos because the material is just too complex to cover in the 15-20 minutes we like to set as the maximum for a video. I've been noodling on the idea of Application Sets, the rather odd concept of having your stand-alone video and building on it too. An Application Set ...
by via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/18/2008 1:00:00 PM
In this follow up to yesterday's blog post about the Bubbles Chart available from the December Release of the Silverlight Toolkit, I'd like to explore the unique advantages the bubbles chart provides for finding outliers in many real world situations. The scenario I'm contriving is this: I'd like to examine two vital sets of (fictional) information at once How many blog blog posts and videos have we created on each of 8 important topics On average, how interested are our members in each of t ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/18/2008 4:37:00 AM
This is the first of a mutli-part entry on the Bubble Chart from the Silverlight Toolkit. I became interested in this chart when I was working on my soon-to-be-released videos on the PieChart and the Column Charts, which share a common idiom and form. <!-- pseudo chart layout --><charting:Chart x:Name="<name>" BorderBrush="<color>" Margin="<#>" Grid.Row="<#>" Grid.ColumnSpan="<#>" ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/16/2008 7:51:00 PM
I'm pleased to announce that my Sparkling Client interview on Animation is now posted. In honor of that interview, I've created a button with in-state animation that will take you to the podcast, presented here through Silverlight Streaming, and analyzed, briefly, below… There are two aspects to the button above. Create the Templated Button First, creating the button was a quick job of templating a normal button, as explained in these two videos (currently available) and parts 3 and 4, to ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/13/2008 5:55:11 PM
To meet the needs of various readers, some of whom would like this blog to be totally focused on Silverlight features, and some who value a broader perspective, I'm making a few changes. [1] All entries will have one the tags listed in the table below, starting immediately. This should help readers filter and find what they are looking for. [2] I've broken out all discussion of Mac programming to a separate page accessible at any time from the sidebar. There will ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/13/2008 4:34:00 AM
I'm very pleased to say that my first two Silverlight Toolkit videos are now available. The first is a gentle introduction to the Silverlight Toolkit, how to get it, what it's for, how to set it up, and so forth. It is only a little over 8 minutes (had I thought of it, I'd have added 17 seconds in homage to one of my favorite directors) and there is no code – it is just a road map to get you started. The second video begins the series proper with the AutoCompleteBox control. The vid ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/5/2008 8:01:46 PM
I have completed the four part video series Creating Skinnable Customer Controls and I'm pleased to say they are rolling out onto the site. Part 2 is now available (click on the image). Parts 3 and 4 should post very soon. Related information: Intro to Custom Controls Part 1 Intro to Custom Controls Part 2 Creating Custom Controls Generic.xaml Dependency Properties Part 1 Dependency Properties Part 2 Dependency Property Precede ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/4/2008 11:54:00 PM
Very pleased to announce that my tutorial on Multi-page applications is now available in both C# and VB and in both HTML and in PDF format. Set Theory It is my hope that this approach to multi-page applications will prove useful, though of course it is not the only way to approach this problem. That said, I will be leveraging this solution in a series of forthcoming videos and blog posts about the Silverlight Toolkit. This brings up the concept of stand alone units (blog ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/3/2008 5:22:00 PM
The Silverlight Toolkit includes a wrap panel that allows you to add elements to it and will automatically wrap those elements either horizontally or vertically as required to fit them within the size of the panel. All you need to play with WrapPanel is a source of numerous controls – and the easiest way to do that is to generate them programmatically. To do this, I'll borrow the code I used to create words in this blog entry on obtaining a lot of words, and put it to use here. To ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 12/1/2008 5:32:00 PM
[Updated 16:00 GMT-5 to include working version and link to code: Expander.zip ] The new Silverlight Toolkit includes a Expander control that, in its simplest form, is incredibly easy to add to your program, [Composite image] To create the simplest expander, add a reference to Microsoft.Windows.Controls to your project, and add the namespace at the top of your xaml filexmlns:controls="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Windows ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/30/2008 3:25:31 PM
Every once in a while you see something so promising you just have to pass it along. The folks at divElements are developing SandDock for Silverlight; a floating windows management toolkit that looks very sweet indeed. I can't say I've really put it through its paces, or pushed its limits, but there is a very professional feel about the work they've done so far, and I suspect this is a product worth keeping an eye on -- especially if you happen to need what they have on offer. ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/25/2008 4:40:08 PM
Happy to return to my monthly interview on the Sparkling Client podcast; this month discussing the fundamentals of data- binding. This podcast is supported by the following links Data binding tutorial Data binding video Data binding margin notes Data conversion Data validation ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/24/2008 11:00:37 PM
Okay, thus begins random excursions into aspects of the Silverlight Toolkit, supplementing a more systematic set of videos…. The first thing you need to know about the Silverlight Toolkit is that there are two greatly under-utilized resources available: The Silverlight Toolkit home on Codeplex (where you can get the source and samples) and the dedicated Silverlight Toolkit Controls forum on Silverlight.net (forum 35). Today I'd like to start looking at some of the graphs. One thing ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/21/2008 6:35:00 PM
I've posted on multi-page Silverlight applications, and in fact have two videos (here and here) that show an approach that works quite well and that I was happy to steal at the time. I recently received email from Lucas Stark (Senior Web Developer at Delta College) who suggested (quite correctly) that the pages should not have to find the PageSwitcher each time they want to navigate to another page, but rather they ought to be able to call a static method. I've tinkered with the code ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/18/2008 11:53:00 PM
I received a wonderful and very kind email from saleh alabbas who asked this canonical question: "imagine you have good knowledge in C#, what plan you would draw for yourself to become an expert in developing web and Silverlight applications?" I'm asked this so often, in so many ways, I thought I'd devote a quick column to trying to answer this unanswerable questions (or rather, this question with so many answers!) One question is how you like to learn. Some folks do best with classes; they l ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/18/2008 11:00:00 AM
Yesterday, I wrote the first of a series of posts on skills related to effective Silverlight programming; specifically an introduction to LINQ. Today, with that material fresh, I'd like to take a giant leap forward and consider a number of advanced techniques that are common with Linq programmers. To do this, I've extended and modified the Presidents class we were using, and created a second related class PresidentDetail. For convenience, I've placed both in the file President.cs, usi ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/17/2008 11:00:00 AM
Recently I wrote that there are a number of readers who are running into difficulty with skills needed for intermediate or advanced Silverlight development that are not strictly part of Silverlight. This is the first of an occasional series that will demonstrate these skills and techniques. The usual caveats apply: nothing substitutes for a good book. Syllogism: Major Premise: Nothing is better than a good book. Minor Premise: This column is better ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/10/2008 12:00:00 PM
It is surprising how often I wish I had a lot of words handy. This week it has been because I've wanted to play with the AutoCompleteBox (you just set the list of words as the ItemSource for the control and voila! In previous posts I demonstrated how I obtained these from a book through Project Gutenberg and how I used a background worker thread to keep the UI up to date. Today I'll show how to use Isolated Storage to stash the words locally to dramatically improve performance, and th ...
by via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/9/2008 5:29:00 PM
For the past six months or so I've been experimenting with and then "preaching" the idea of developing with two tools: Expression Blend for the UI and Visual Studio for the code. This has paid big dividends for me in productivity and it fits in well with the Parts and States Model and with keeping a clear separation of visuals form logic. I'm about to give a pair of presentation at DevConnections (hence my total lack of blogging!) and I thought it would be fun to see if I just perceive ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 11/3/2008 9:14:19 PM
I recently began a discussion of the Silverlight Toolkit and on the way towards explaining the AutoCompleteBox I became distracted by creating a list of words to use as our datasource. I've actually reworked that example, slightly to build the list using a worker thread (to explore threading and to improve the UI) but I have broken through and actually managed to get to the point, which is adding an AutoCompleteBox to the page, and while I was at it, I included (per one of the examples provi ...
by via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/31/2008 5:15:02 AM
In a recent post on theming using the new Themes from the Controls Toolkit I showed that you can add a theme to your Xaml and then add a container as the content of that theme. A powerful alternative is to use the ImplicitStyleManager to apply the theme to a single control or, more commonly, to a container (for example, a grid) and all its controls. To do so, you'll want to provide the Silverlight URI to the .xaml file that defines the theme, which you can copy straight from the source code ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/28/2008 6:33:14 PM
Today at Microsoft PDC, Scott Guthrie demonstrated some of the new controls that have been provided as a part of the Silverlight Toolkit. The Silverlight Toolkit was previously named the Silverlight Control Pack This toolkit provides a set of controls and themes for Silverlight 2. AutoCompleteBox Chart DockPanel Label Expander TreeView UpDown ViewBox WrapPanel ImplicitStyleManager These controls and their source code a ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/22/2008 12:48:33 PM
I'll be writing a set of mini-tutorials on the DataGrid that will, as the King advises, begins at the beginning, goes on till it comes to the end and then stops[1], but before I do, a "Set Of Behaviors That Is Perfectly Understandable But Not At All What The Programmer Expects (SOBTIPUBNAAWTPE)" has surfaced in DataGrid. (I was told this is not a bug – my response was a bit snide). Since this is causing a great deal of frustration and confusion, I wanted to alert you ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/21/2008 10:45:33 PM
Virtually all measurements (width, height, etc.) are measured in Pixels in Silverlight… except when they're not. Pixels When you are creating a shape or setting a margin, or filing in the width or height of a control the implicit unit is pixel. Thus, <Button Content="Button" Width="100" /> <CheckBox Content="CheckBox" Height="20" Width="75"/> <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" > < ...
by jesseliberty via Jesse Liberty - Silverlight Geek on 10/19/2008 5:02:00 PM
Tim and I and many others have been discussing, off and on, the frequent requests for videos/tutorials/demos, etc. that show how to move data into and out of databases and display them in Silverlight. On the one hand, my response is that the very question reveals that we've not done a good enough job explaining the boundaries of Silverlight as a UI tier-framework; that once you're talking about creating (rather than consuming) a web service and once you're writing LINQ you ar ...
The content of the postings is owned by the respective author. Silverlight Feeds is not responsible for the contents of the postings. This site is automatically generated and cannot be reviewed for abusive content. If you find abusive content on Silverlight Feeds, please contact us. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
