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by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/6/2010 6:23:00 AM
It has been 7 weeks since Silverlight TV kicked off its first episode with Keith Smith. Since then we have posted a total of 12 shows on a variety of topics. Here are some interesting numbers from the show: 12 The number of episodes we have aired in since the debut. 145 The number of comments our viewers have left on Channel 9 703 How many followers @SilverlightTv has on Twitter 333,000 + The number of views Silverlight TV has had in 7 weeks! Thank you so much for watching! ...
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by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/3/2010 7:06:00 PM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In this episode, Adam Kinney makes his theatrical return to Silverlight TV and claims to have filmed the best Expression Blend 3 video ever! (or at least on Silverlight TV). Adam walks through Blend and Sketchflow from the perspective of the client and through to the designer/developer using a real world scenario. This is a great demonstration of how to effectively use Blend. In this video, Adam demonstrates : sketching wit ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/1/2010 5:30:00 PM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 11! In episode 11 Glenn Block makes a return appearance on Silverlight TV and discusses the one of my favorite features of MEF: partitioning. Glenn explains how partitioning makes it easy to decouple the application and dynamically load XAPs. This is incredibly useful when building large scale applications that experience XAP growth. You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below: Follow @Silv ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/24/2010 4:53:00 AM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 10! In episode 10 Jesse Liberty makes his first appearance on Silverlight TV and discusses the Silverlight Hyper Video Platform (SLHVP). Jesse is a brilliant person and a great guy to have on the show. Despite John’s attempts to make Jesse laugh, Jesse manages to shares just exactly what the SLHVP is, why it was created, and how it works. He has done a fantastic job stimulating the SLHVP with the community. You can see the ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/22/2010 9:53:00 PM
Implementing ICommand in your Silverlight 4 project only requires a few steps. I have had a dozens of questions about this lately so I decided to share a very simple technique to implement commanding in Silverlight 4. Step 1 – Implement ICommand The first step is to implement the ICommand interface with a class that will manage the commanding aspects. There are other options to do this, but here is a simplified yet powerful implementation of ICommand. The DelegatedCommand class implements I ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/18/2010 11:05:00 AM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In episode 9 John thwarts Adam’s futile attempt to take over Silverlight TV. No … actually John and Adam have way too much fun as the Continuum Show meets Silverlight TV as John and Adam review the highlights of the MIX 10K Challenge. They check out the winners in each category of the second annual contest, which has some great prizes. The MIX 10K Challenge Winners have been announced publicly, and are now posted on the M ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/18/2010 7:54:00 AM
In just under a month MIX10 will kick off with a day of workshops. One of these workshops is a Silverlight Bootcamp that both I and Mike Taulty will be presenting at. Mike is a fantastic presenter and has some great content on Silverlight. I can’t wait to share the podium with him! If you have yet to register for MIX or for our workshop, you can sign up here. The workshop is filling fast … perhaps because I’ll be giving away some cool new Silverlight TV t-shirts at the bootcamp. ;-) Mike and I ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/15/2010 3:46:00 PM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In episode 8 John scores a cool interview with one of the developers responsible for the Silverlight client for Facebook application. This application made a big splash at the PDC 09 keynote, and another when it was released on www.silverlight.net at this link here. Rajendra Vishnumurty demonstrates some of the key features of the application and jumps right into the code for several areas. Be sure not to miss this inside look ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/11/2010 4:30:00 AM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In episode 7 Glenn Block, Program Manager working on MEF and self professed "MEF Maniac,” makes his first visit to Silverlight TV. Glenn and John set aside the code for this episode, taking a step back to discuss and explain some of the top scenarios where using MEF adds value. If you are considering using MEF and want to know where and when it makes sense, this is an ideal episode for you to watch. You can see the episo ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/4/2010 9:33:00 PM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In episode 6 John Stockton (Silverlight MVP) discusses how a custom preloader can spice up your application . He shows how to implement a basic custom preloader (aka splash Screen) and then goes further to show how you can add animations and other effects. You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below: Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one! If y ...
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In episode 6 John Stockton (Silverlight MVP) discusses how a custom preloader can spice up your application . He shows how to implement a basic custom preloader (aka splash Screen) and then goes further to show how you can add animations and other effects. You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below: Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one! If yo ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/31/2010 10:08:00 PM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! Episode 5 is all about using Metadata with MEF. Hamilton Verissimo makes a return visit to show us how metadata can make MEF ever more valuable to build Silverlight applications. You can see the episode online by clicking this link or clicking the mage below: Silverlight TV is once again unscripted and shot in 1 take. Don’t miss this one! If you have not watched the previous episodes of Silverlight TV, you can cat ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/25/2010 6:09:00 AM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! This episode kicks off an exploration of MEF with one of the Program Managers working on MEF, Hamilton Verissimo. John interviews Hamilton, of Castle Windsor fame, about his latest work on the MEF team. Hamilton (aka MEF Man) discusses what MEF does and why you want to use MEF with your Silverlight applications. He dives right into the code samples and walks through examples of creating composable objects from scratch. He export ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/20/2010 6:17:00 PM
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 feedback and comments! We’ll be publishing a schedule for shows as they evolve, but generally you will see a new episode every Thursday. We will post bonus shows as they come in, too! But back to episode 3 … this is a great quick demo by Dav ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/17/2010 5:47:00 PM
The first episode of Silverlight TV is in the books. A special thank you to Keith Smith for coming on and doing a fantastic job and to everyone who watched our show! The planning for many future episodes is under way. One of the plans is to have take the questions we receive from Twitter to @SilverlightTV, find the appropriate resource, and read (and where appropriate) demonstrate the answers on the show. So if you have any technical questions please forward them to @SilverlightTV and we will or ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/16/2010 12:59:00 AM
I am proud to announce the premier of Silverlight TV airing on Channel 9! You can watch the first episode right here where Keith Smith (Silverlight Group Program Manager), along with host John Papa (Silverlight Evangelist), discuss Silverlight 4's out-of-browser applications. Keith demonstrates how to set up a Trusted application using the out-of-browser features, interact with the file system, integrate with COM and debug out-of-browser applications! The mission of Silverlight TV is to provide ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/15/2010 4:32:00 PM
The Silverlight Show web site is hosting a contest that can help you get a pass to MIX and/or get some travel expenses paid! Several Silverlight community leaders and our own Expression Evangelist, Adam Kinney, are judging the entries. Get your entries in by Feb 15th, 2010 by registering for the contest here. What Can I Win? I love contests, especially when the prizes rock! The Silverlight Show web site is hosting a great contest where you can use your Silverlight skills and win some great ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/14/2010 5:06:00 PM
My favorite conference of the year is approaching fast! MIX10 is shaping up to be a fantastic conference yet again. If you have attended MIX in prior years you know how the people and conversations found at MIX are top notch, rewarding and just a lot of fun. One of most memorable times at MIX09 is just the time I hung out in the common room where it seems everyone gathers before, during and after sessions. The keynote, sessions and speakers are all top notch and the after parties are not to be m ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/1/2010 12:23:00 AM
This week I decided to experiment with a few webcam features and put together an application that activates a webcam, allows the user to take snapshots, and save the snapshots to PNG files. I like when demos use MVVM out of the box instead of just throwing all of the code in a single code behind, so one of my goals was to make a passing effort to break the code out and use MVVM practices. The first thing I did was grab Tim Heuer’s webcam sample which already handles activating the webcam. Tim d ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 12/17/2009 9:12:00 AM
Scott Guthrie just announced on his blog that many of the demos that he presented during the PDC keynote are now available online. Both the demos and their source code are now online and available for you to download. Be sure to go grab the code and check them out! Learn More: If you are interested in learning more about the features in Silverlight 4 beta, grab the Silverlight 4 Technical Whitepaper here. You can also walk through some hands on labs and other learning materials from both: ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/29/2009 11:54:00 PM
Florida has a fantastic developer community with some great people who are a just a blast to share technology with. That’s why I am thrilled to announce that I am heading to Tampa on Dec 7th where I will be presenting “What’s New in Silverlight 4 Beta” at a special FREE event in Tampa, FL on Monday Dec 7th at 6:15pm. The event will be held in the Hyde Park room in the West Shore Hotel at 1200 North Westshore Blvd, Tampa, Florida 33607. Special thanks to Software Logistics and Kevin Wolf for ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/28/2009 11:09:00 PM
Now that Silverlight 4 beta has been released there are tons of people trying the new bits, starting to develop applications, and blogging some great samples and ideas. You can check out all of the features from the Silverlight 4 beta Technical Whitepaper I wrote in HTML format here or download the whitepaper form this link, for offline reading. Some of the features are fairly obvious crowd favorites such as the printing API, but my favorite feature is in fact a series of features that make up ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/26/2009 11:40:00 PM
The Silverlight MVP community is notorious at sharing information through blogs and Twitter. I created a new Silverlight MVP Twitter list to make it easier to follow all of the Silverlight MVPs and the evangelists. You can follow the entire group using this link: www.twitter.com/john_papa/SilverlightMVP Or you can follow the individual Silverlight MVPs using the links below. As new ones get added i will update the list. I’m tracking down the final few MVPs, so the list will be co ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/22/2009 9:50:00 PM
The common technique many developers use to debug Silverlight Out of Browser applications is to attach the debugger to the SLLauncher.exe process. However, there is a another way to debug installed OoB apps. Attaching to the process does not allow you to catch and debug any startup code however this technique below does allow you to do so. If you are running a Silverlight 4 beta application hosted in a web project, here are the steps to debug when in OoB mode. Set the Web project that hosts ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/18/2009 6:35:00 PM
One of the new features of Silverlight 4 Beta is the addition of the IDataErrorInfo interface. In Silverlight 3 we throw exceptions when a property value is invalid. The IDataErrorInfo interface has been around in .NET but is new to Silverlight 4 beta. It allows you to invalidate property values without throwing exceptions. Implementing this interface is pretty straightforward, though there are several ways to do it. To help you get jumpstarted with this new feature, I included some sample cod ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/18/2009 6:34:00 PM
Silverlight 4 Beta was announced during the Wednesday keynote of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference PDC 2009. The Silverlight product team has worked very hard to add several features, as you can see from the list below. There is a ton of information available where you can find out more about Silverlight 4 Beta including: What’s New in Silverlight 4 Video Great place to start! A short video with me and Adam Kinney reviewing our favorite features ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/16/2009 10:10:00 PM
If you are at PDC this week, please stop by my session. I will be presenting Advanced Topics for Building Large-Scale Applications with Microsoft Silverlight at PDC 09 this Wednesday at 4:30 pm. I will be discussing how to use the MVVM pattern with Silverlight, different variations of MVVM, how to PRISM works with Silverlight, and how to integrate a custom screen presentation framework. All of these topics center around building large scale applications using Silverlight based on real worl ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/4/2009 2:46:00 PM
Are you planning on attending VSLive Orlando this week? If so, please stop by the 3 sessions I will be presenting at VSLive Orlando and say hi. I really enjoy speaking at the conferences and getting the chance to have great conversations with all the people. Often it gives me a greater breadth of understanding of what people are trying to accomplish and the struggles they face. For me the conferences have always been about the conversations and the people. If you are going to be at the conferen ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/4/2009 12:42:00 AM
My latest Data Points column is now online and in print in the October 2009 issue of MSDN Magazine. The column’s title is “Validation with Silverlight 3 and the DataForm” which focuses on the validation features in Silverlight 3. This includes the DataForm, the validation XAML binding attributes, and the DataAnnotations. Code alert: I’ve been made aware that the code for the article linked to in the online version may not be valid at this time. So for now you can download the code form my site ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/17/2009 1:29:00 PM
I recently wrote an article that demonstrates how to use the DataForm and validate data entry in Silverlight using the DataAnnotations. One of the pet peeves I have with the validation is that it throws in exception in the setter of your public property. Putting my disagreements with that aside for a second, it causes a major inconvenience when debugging the application. For example, when running the application that uses the DataAnnotations and one of the conditions is violated, the debugger wi ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/11/2009 12:53:00 AM
Tonight is opening night for the NFL season! This year NBC will showing the Sunday Night Football games in HD via Silverlight. You can catch the games at http://snfextra.nbcsports.com/ It’s just a few minutes into the opening night game and I am watching it side by side with my HD TV to get a comparison. The HD broadcast in Silverlight is quote impressive! But the features built into the Silverlight app are even more impressive. There is a chat window for fans, stats, videos, and game informati ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/9/2009 2:52:00 AM
Erik Mork of the Sparkling Client fame is hosting a gathering for those in Portland who want to see the Silverlight Firestarter in Redmond. Details are below … Are you in Portland and want to get in on the Silverlight 3 FireStarter Simulast? We'll be hosting the event and watching live from the Microsoft Portland Office, so join us! We'll have local Silverlight experts on site, along with lunch and raffle prizes! And the link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?Event ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/9/2009 2:48:00 AM
I just confirmed that I will be presenting Silverlight 3 at the Lakeland, FL .NET User Group next Tuesday evening at 6:30pm. As everyone who knows me knows, I just love talking to people about Silverlight so this is just another excuse for me to do so with some great people:) I’ll be bring some cool demos demonstrating how to build behaviors, using Blend effectively, and a walk through of MVVM and Prism. Of course, i will be giving away a few of my books at the event too .. so if you have not b ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/8/2009 1:06:00 PM
Model-View-ViewModel (better known by its super hero alias of MVVM ) is a great pattern to use with Silverlight and WPF. Here is my 5 minute perspective on MVVM (yep, it took me 5 minutes to spit this out too, so please be kind on any typos :-) ) One of the things that can be frustrating with any pattern is the immediate assumption that many articles have that everyone knows what MVVM means. This post is intended to be a short, quick, and hopefully easy explanation of MVVM. Another interesting ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/8/2009 12:14:00 PM
The Redmond Silverlight Firestarter will be Thursday, September 17th. You can register to attend live if you are in Redmond or you can watch it online. Either way, be sure to register for the event. The event has a preliminary schedule with some of the biggest names in Silverlight. Register to attend in person (Microsoft Campus Redmond, WA). Register to attend online. Here is a very colorful description of the event taken from Adam Kinney’s blog. “Flavorful description: When you wake ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/27/2009 5:16:00 PM
Anyone who knows me well knows that I can’t help but get myself into more activities than I probably have time for. Lately I’ve been working hard to fill a need that I feel exists in the Silverlight community. The goal of this effort it to self enable the community and to connect people with some of the very best code samples and tips out there. I am working with some of the best Silverlight minds out there (both in and outside of Microsoft) to get this site together and add content to it. I am ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/15/2009 5:05:00 PM
A bit late to the party here, but I finally got around to re-reading Jeff Paries Silverlight 2 Animation book. I met Jeff at MIX 09 and talked to him at the Silverlight MIXer party. I also attended his presentation at MIX on animation … the guy is very very good. I had a copy of his book on my desk or review along with about 20 others. I read his book back in April over a weekend. It is very well written with a lot of great examples that take you step by step through animations. In short, ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/15/2009 3:35:00 AM
Last week I posted the code for a swivel behavior I created. It rotates a set of panels 180 degrees. The next step in the rotation process is to add a button that causes the rotation from front to back and then from back to front. This post will talk about how to create a button that does this rotation. Here is the final result … First, I created a copy of my panel demo page from my previous post. I removed my Swivel behavior that I used in the pre ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/8/2009 2:08:00 AM
A while back I created a pair of Storyboards that make a pair of panels swivel to show a front side and a back side. The key ingredients in the storyboards are: Plane Projection using Perspective 3D Easing Visibility (Opacity can be used instead if you prefer) Easing and 3D features are new to Silverlight 3 but really give it a nice effect. The easing makes it start slowly, then appear faster at the 90 degree turn, and then ease out. Storyboard The storyboards are not that invo ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/3/2009 10:22:00 PM
My Data Points column in the August 2009 issue of MSDN Magazine is now online,titled Data Performance and Fault Strategies in Silverlight 3. In this issue I demonstrate how binary encoding works, the effect it has on an application’s performance, and how it behaves by demonstrating it in action with Silverlight 3. I also walk through several techniques that can be used to pass exception information using undeclared and declared faults from Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web services t ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/17/2009 5:54:00 AM
I updated my SilverTwit code for my June 2009 Data Points column in MSDN Magazine to use the release version of Silverlight 3. The revised code can be retrieved in the codeplex site here. There were 3 sets of changes: (1) Twitter started using larger numbers for Ids, so I had to switch to use long instead of int and (2) the API for Out of Browser applications changed from beta to release and (3) the Out of Browser settings (formerly in the AppManifest.xml) changed. Here are the changes since I ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/16/2009 2:11:00 AM
Lately I have been immersed in the world of MVVM/Silverlight and often Prism. But in this world the design elements can’t be pushed aside. I admit it … I am a developer who has fallen in love with Blend! So I was pretty unhappy (Ok, I was very frustrated) when I started using Prism apps and breaking the apps into separate decoupled modules and found that Blend could not see the resources at design time. Basically, I usually have a handful of projects (modules) and they are completely decoupled f ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/13/2009 4:30:00 PM
I build a lot of line of business applications and in the process there are always certain aspects I have to tackle that I like to call the presentation framework collectively. Common aspects of a presentation framework are (not a conclusive list, but a good start) transitions from screen to screen showing progress when busy loading and/or activating screens destroying and/or hiding screens getting data from web services mapping models for the UI specifically validat ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/16/2009 4:33:00 AM
This Wednesday evening at 6:30pm, thanks to the good people of INETA, I will be presenting ADO.NET Data Service and Silverlight at the Space Coast .NET User Group in Melbourne, Florida. I really enjoyed the group last year when I spoke about the Entity Framework. If you are in the area, drop by … I’ll also be giving away some copies of my Silverlight book too. ADO.NET Data Services (codenamed Astoria) exposes entity models through RESTful services. It can dramatically simplify the co ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/16/2009 4:21:00 AM
I’ve been working on fine tuning a Silverlight progress control for an article with Simple-Talk.com. Along the way I wanted to create a background that dims the entire page while the progress control is up and running. Easy stuff … just stick it in a Grid panel with HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment set to Stretch. Works like a charm … except when it doesn’t :) Enter regions in Prism … they are a very cool concept, kind of like a special zone in your app where you can place Views. In th ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/11/2009 5:58:00 PM
If you work with Silverlight a lot like I do, you might be frustrated with the time it takes Visual Studio to try to render the preview of your Silverlight Views. This can be a painful process, especially when the View gets more complicated … because sometimes Visual Studio cannot even display the preview. Also, whenever the XAML page is opened in Visual Studio, it takes a while to "try" to display the View in preview mode. There really is no value in the preview mode (aka Cider) wit ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/9/2009 2:15:00 AM
My Data Points column in the June 2009 issue of MSDN Magazine is now online. In this issue I demonstrate how to build an out of browser application using Silverlight 3 and demonstrate how the API works under different circumstances. I demonstrate the features using a Silverlight Twitter client (a light weight client I might add) that uses offline storage of data when the app is offline, and it also displays the network status. I hope you enjoy it! ...
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