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by via JohnPapa.net on 12/22/2011 2:38:36 PM
Knockout 2.0.0 was released last night to the web! You might have been tinkering with the 1.3.0 RC recently, but it has been renamed to 2.0.0. Steve lists a few reasons why he went this route and I fully support the decision to jump to a new major version number. If you look inside to see what he added and changed for KO v2.0.0 you will see a pretty dramatic and powerful set of improvements. I have to thank Steve for creating and keeping up with the community requests for KO. He has been especia ...
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by via JohnPapa.net on 12/10/2011 1:58:26 PM
Silverlight 5 was released to the web yesterday, finalizing the feature list that many of us have been tinkering with in 2011. I’m excited that a product I had a very small part in shaping is now out. The team members are amazing and did a fantastic job amidst unusual circumstances over the past year, and I applaud them all. Fantastic job Silverlight crew! The question many have already asked me is if they should install this release. If you are a Silverlight dev, then absolutely you should inst ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 12/1/2011 10:46:12 PM
This month’s Papa’s Perspective shows you how to use some of the fundamental aspects of the HTML5 canvas to draw. I go over some 101 level functions such as arc, beginPath, lineCap, lineJoin, lineTo, lineWidth, moveTo, stroke, strokeStyle and more. The source code you can download shows you how you can draw letters using these functions, and includes some scaling calculations to make it all a bit easier. A bit of holiday fun Enjoy! ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 11/23/2011 7:47:27 PM
VSLive, Pluralsight WebCast and the inaugural Tampa Windows Developer User Group. That’s all that’s left for me this year for presentations. Actually, it’s a pretty full plate given that the year is almost up and the holidays are upon us. Here is my remaining 2011 schedule: Tampa Bay WinDev: Intro to Metro UI (Nov 30 at 6pm ET) This is the first meeting of the new Windows user group hosted at the Microsoft offices in Tampa. This will be a run through of the Metro app dev landscape. You can regi ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 11/23/2011 5:26:49 PM
I love data, data binding and development patterns. So it should be no surprise that my next course to be released with Pluralsight is on KnockoutJS. I recently released an Introduction to Building Windows 8 Metro Applications course with my good friend Dan Wahlin for Pluralsight. Thanks to all of you who have been watching it! I’ve been asked what else is on my list for Pluralsight videos, so I thought I might share my current plans. I’ve got several other ideas for courses that I’ve been work ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 11/8/2011 2:12:13 AM
I’ve been writing again after what amounted to a 2+ year break. In the past 3 months I’ve written 10+ articles, many of which are published for Visual Studio Magazine in my new 1 page editorial column Papa’s Perspective. I’m enjoying the column so far as I get to write about a variety of technologies and burning hot topics, all from my view in the cheap seats. The deal is that I write 1 article for the print magazine of Visual Studio Magazine each month and I write 2 for ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 11/6/2011 9:01:14 AM
This week on Silverlight TV episode #74, Deepesh Mohnani of the WCF RIA Services team discusses all of the new features introduced since the initial RIA Services release. These include expanded localization support, improved MVVM support, Windows Azure table storage, datetimeoffset, operation tag, jQuery client, and more. Deepesh dives deep into how to use custom code generation, complex types, and shared entities. He also hints at possible EF Code First support in the near future. Relevant lin ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 11/6/2011 9:01:13 AM
Want to optimize how a list of images loads and scrolls in your Windows Phone application? Jobi Joy, UX Architect with IdentityMine and key contributor to the IRC chat app in the MIX11 Day 2 keynote, returns to Silverlight TV to discuss with John how he handles image scenarios such as this, as well as how he ekes out extra performance. Jobi has a blog post that explains how such optimization works by using virtualization, caching via Isolated Storage, and working with both preview and full size ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 11/4/2011 12:55:12 PM
I am happy to announce that my first course with Pluralsight is now available. I partnered on this course with my friend Dan Wahlin, who is a top notch instructor/presenter. Together we decided to create a course that helps developers get familiar with what Windows 8 Metro Style apps have to offer, from both a XAML and HTML perspective. So even if you have zero experience with Metro apps, this course is a good primer. And to show they have a sense of humor, the folks at Pluralsight used ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 10/17/2011 3:59:52 PM
Interested in presenting at DevConnections? Here is your chance! We are extending an invitation to you to submit abstracts for consideration to speak at the Spring 2012 Microsoft ClientDev Connections conference (part of DevConnections) in Las Vegas, March 26-29, 2012. This is a new track, where Dan Wahlin and I are the co-chairs, at DevConnections focusing on client-side development technologies such as HTML5/CSS3, JavaScript technologies, Silverlight, and Windows 8 Metro-styl ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 9/2/2011 3:10:02 PM
The Silverlight 5 Release Candidate (RC) is now available for developers to download. This is a developer release, so there is no go-live license (you’ll want to wait for final release before deploying production apps). As we previously announced, the RTM is targeted to be out later this year. I’ve blogged about the features before but here are the newest features added since Silverlight 5 beta: P/Invoke for calling native methods 64-bit support for the plugin Vector printing Capabili ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 8/25/2011 8:16:15 PM
In this episode, Corrina continues the Design Tips miniseries by sharing her insights on how to use wireframes to improve the design and development process for Windows Phone applications. She walks through why wireframeing is an important part of the process of creating a WP7 application. Corrina talks about the advantages of using wireframing and walks step by step through creating wireframes. Special Note: From the crew of Silverlight TV and Channel 9, we want to extend a special thank you ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 8/22/2011 8:38:03 PM
I do a lot of demos in Expression Blend and generally whiz right through creating some visuals like the one below. Yeah, not overly impressive (my drawing skills that is), but nonetheless the tips I use to create these type of visuals don’t seem to be picked up by a lot of folks yet. I decided to put a few blog posts together in the online version of VS Magazine in my new column Papa’s Perspective where I share some of these Blend tips. You can check out the first Blend tip here.Full source code ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 8/18/2011 4:03:53 PM
This week on Silverlight TV, Sundara Kumar and Mark Harper work on the new custom markup extensions (CME) feature in Silverlight 5. They explain how CME's allow you to extend XAML so that you can run any custom code. These guys (along with some other members of the team) literally wrote the feature. Mark was also instrumental in writing the CME that I used in many Silverlight 5 demos to hook events up to a method in a ViewModel. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Custom M ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 8/16/2011 6:11:57 AM
I loved writing my Data Points column in MSDN Magazine … sometimes I find it hard to believe I wrote for them for over 11 years! Since I love writing, and specifically I love writing columns, I recently started writing a column for Visual Studio Magazine called Papa’s Perspective. I’ll be writing a short column each month about cutting edge technologies and I invite you to please check them out. This column will give me a great outlet to share my perspective on the latest tech ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 8/15/2011 5:35:48 AM
Dave Crawford and Tom Eddings visit from the UK to contribute to the Design Tips miniseries. Dave and Tom have tremendous amounts of experience helping to create great UX for Windows Phone 7 applications in the marketplace. Topics they cover include tips on: how, when, and where to use (and not use) a Panorama control avoiding specific types of buttons and associations best practices for the Web Browser control, RichText, and the IE Web Browser itself how to make your brand shine thro ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 8/4/2011 4:25:42 PM
Jesse Liberty explains how Reactive Extensions work with Silverlight and Windows Phone. In order to simplify the code, Jesse suggests using Reactive Extensions whenever you are deep into using asynchronous programming. He covers exactly what Reactive Extensions are, why you'd want to use them (or not), how they relate to LINQ, and what you should know before using them. And of course, Jesse offers some tips and tricks. Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jesse's blog and o ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 7/21/2011 4:14:39 PM
Ever bang your head against a wall trying to figure out what's wrong with your data binding XAML? If so, then you will love the new data binding debugging features in Silverlight 5. In this episode of Silverlight TV, Jason Shaver joins John to discuss the data binding debugging features in Silverlight 5. They walk through how it works, the information that is exposed to you, and how to set various conditional breakpoints as well. Setting breakpoints on binding expressions Creating conditional ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 7/19/2011 1:20:00 AM
In Silverlight TV #78, Corrina continues the Design Tips miniseries by sharing her insights on how to create tiles and splash screens for Windows Phone applications. She walks through the process of creating an icon in Expression Design and how to make tiles look good and quickly mesh with Metro. Corrina then shows how to create a splash screen and gives some good tips on how to make the splash screen provide a better user experience. Finally, she walks through some tips to help with working wit ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 6/23/2011 5:10:09 PM
This week Aaron Oneal, program manager of the Silverlight 3D efforts, joins John to discuss the 3D APIs in Silverlight 5 beta. Aaron was instrumental in working on the 3D features and helped to create the 3D Solar Wind and 3D HouseBuilder demos. Aaron reviews the features and explores how they all work by demoing the Solar Wind sample application. This is a great walk through of a nice app that you can apply to your own 3D efforts. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Aaro ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 6/14/2011 6:14:00 AM
Last week in Germany at DevConnections, I presented a session on 10 cool features in Silverlight 5. This presentation was a combination of demos that both I and Pete Brown had put together over the past few weeks. You can download the slide deck and the sample code right here. The 10 topics I chose to demonstrate are: I also presented a talk on MVVM, which uses the same BookShelf app demo I used at the Silverlight Firestarter. You can download the deck and demo for that from this link. Note: I ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 6/2/2011 10:32:15 PM
Susan shares her insights on how to do quick and dirty UX testing to help your application be more successful. Susan (who works with great people on the UX team, including Corrina Black, Tsitsi Gora, and Arturo Toledo) has a lot of experience working on usability and spends a lot of time working with designers and application users to help determine what makes a good user experience for products like Visual Studio, Silverlight, and Windows Phone apps. In this episode, Susan discusses the followi ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 5/19/2011 4:02:54 PM
Laurent Bugnion of IdentityMine appears on the show to discuss his latest additions to the MVVM Light toolkit for both Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone. Laurent covers several new features, including IoC (Inversion of Control) containers, new ways to implement INotifyPropertyChanged using lambdas and/or reflection, and changes to the Messenger class. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Laurent's blog and on Twitter (@lbugnion) Get MVVM Light Laurent's v ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 5/7/2011 6:24:09 AM
I love the performance gains I get by using bootable VHDs. I’ve always enjoyed using VHDs but I generally had a host OS first, then installed a bunch of VHDs that I made bootable. Recently I’ve changed all of this on my laptop after a coworker took the time to show me a way with more flexibility (thanks Paul Stubbs!). The idea is simple: take a clean drive with no host OS and add or remove bootable VHDs as needed. These steps describe steps that enable a few scenarios for me that allow me to: ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 5/5/2011 6:41:18 PM
This week on Silverlight TV, Laurent Bugion of IdentityMine, Luigi Rosso of Archetype, and Ward Bell of IdeaBlade join John Papa at MIX11 to answer questions about Silverlight 5 from the live viewers of Channel 9 Live. The questions span a wide range of topics but these guys cover it all, from Luigi and his deep 3D knowledge to Laurent and his MVVM roots and Ward with his solid business and customer experience. Definitely an episode to watch! Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/28/2011 8:16:47 PM
On April 1st 5 brand new Silverlight MVPs were inducted into the program! I’d like to make a special callout to these folk for their community contributions. Please join me in congratulating our newest Silverlight MVPs: Eugene Zharkov from the Ukraine (@2j2e) Hengran Yang from China Morten Nielsen from the United States (@SharpGIS) Andrej Tozon from Slovenia (@andrejt) Zoltán Árvai from Hungary (@zoltanarvai) I’ll be adding these new MVPs to my Silverlight MVP twitter list so you can foll ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/28/2011 7:59:49 PM
Ever wonder how to use sockets or what they're good for? In this video, Peter Smith of the Silverlight networking team joins John to discuss these topics and demonstrate how sockets work by using them to play an "I Spy"-like game that Peter created. The game results and scores are updated instantly on two client PCs, and after Peter and John play, Peter jumps into the code and shows how the socket service works on both the client and the server. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@j ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 11:39:47 PM
I presented this application during the MIX11 Day 2 keynote to demonstrate the new 3D features in Silverlight 5 along with a few other new Silverlight 5 features including RelativeSource Ancestor, Data Binding Debugging, Implicit DataTemplates, and Binding in Style Setters. Download it now You can download the source for the 3D Housebuilder on the MSDN Code Sample Gallery Application workflow Select a type of house to start from a base model Add details like doors and windows and customize t ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 9:50:20 PM
Jobi Joy, UX Architect with IdentityMine, joins John to discuss some of the lessons his company learned while contributing to the very popular and successful IMDB and Twitter Windows Phone applications. Jobi covers a wide array of topics, including the design and the UX of the IMDB application as well as what "perceived performance" means, and he dives into the framework he put together for panorama controls. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jobi on Twitter (@jobijoy) ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 3:43:01 PM
Mike Taulty and I hosted a 3.5 hour Silverlight bootcamp at MIX11 this year (Mike will be posting all of the slides and demos on his site soon, including mine. I’ll link to it when it is up. For the record, I held him up .) The topic for the last hour of the bootcamp was MVVM and “Hooking Up”. I demonstrated some quick tips on MVVM concepts and then walked through a scenario where Mike played the designer (who was actually my friend and colleague Arturo Toledo) and I played th ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 6:49:05 AM
So what happens when you mix free food and drinks, 50+ awesome open source projects, and a genuinely interested techy audience? You get Open Source Fest! Check out the photos our photographer took at Open Source Fest here on Flickr. Last week we hosted the Open Source Fest event at MIX11. You can check out the pre-event post on Open Source Fest I did to see all 52 of the projects who signed up to present their projects. Nearly 500 people attended Open Source Fest, many of whom stuck around for ...
Paul Stubbs, of Sharepoint Sideshow, joins John to discuss some new features the Sharepoint team have released for Visual Studio to make Silverlight development easier. Paul walks through the new Visual Studio extension that allows you to package and deploy your Silverlight for Sharepoint Web Parts. (You can grab the new VSIX file from the list of links below.) Paul also shows how easy it is to create a Silverlight experience that consumes and manages data from a Sharepoint source. Then he uses ...
Now that I am back from MIX11, I’ll be blogging about my experiences and what struck me most. For starters, I wanted to share special “thank you’s” to everyone who was involved in UX Lightning. This was one of the most fun events I have ever been involved with pulling together! First, thank you to the hundreds of attendees who packed the rooms with over 420 people for each of the 3 UX Lightning sessions at MIX11. Wow, what an amazing turnout for 12 brilliant present ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 6:49:04 AM
This week on Silverlight TV … Recently, UX legend Bill Buxton was in town and stopped by to share what he's been up to. In this video, he discusses how integrated devices with things that "just work together," UX, and touch might all be in our lives to a much larger degree in the near future. This is a short conversation with Bill where he touches on his thoughts about the next version of Surface, UX, and the new UX Lightning series at MIX11, which he compares to "speed dating." Bill also ...
Struggling with using bit.ly or logging on Windows Phone 7? Then you might want to learn about Phoney, a new open source project by Shawn Wildermuth that will be at Open Source Fest at MIX11 on April 11th. Shawn walks through the features that Phoney contains, including his Bitly helper, system resource helper, fading message helper, phone logging, and more. Shawn and John inspect the API and show how easy it is to use, as well as the results you get from coding with these features. These are gr ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 6:49:03 AM
Mike Taulty and I are on the road again at MIX11 next month for a reprisal of our Silverlight bootcamp. Last year we had a full house and discussed Silverlight 3 … hard to believe that was a year ago!This year we’ll be talking about Silverlight 4 and 5. We’ve decided to shake things up a bit this year and talk about topics that we feel that are crucial to building solid apps with Silverlight. Me being the data guy at heart, of course this involves solid practices for data access, binding, valida ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 6:49:02 AM
Do You Dig Design? Then you’ll want to check out the UX Lightning series at MIX11. We’ve lined up 12 expert speakers to present on various design and UX topics in a new session series we are dubbing UX Lightning. This series was inspired by a desire to stimulate creative thinking about UX in a compelling format. The result? Less fluff, less syntax, and much more creative and inspiring content! How Does This Work? The concept is that each hour long session has a theme where a speaker presents th ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 6:49:01 AM
In this episode, Nick Kramer of the Silverlight team joins John on Silverlight TV to discuss the application model, 64bit support, and security features with Silverlight. Nick dives into some of his favorite features, such as multiple windows, and discusses what each of his team's areas focuses on. He also shares how his team helped created some whitepapers that share tips on how to create secure applications. If you are going to be at MIX11 this year, be sure to say hi to Nick—he'll be the ...
In the 2 weeks since we announced Open Source Fest at MIX11, we have had over 30 open source project leaders register to present their projects! You can also hear more about it on Channel 9’s countdown to MIX11. What? Open Source Fest When? Monday, April 11th, 6pm to 9pm Who? Open to all MIX11 attendees Why? Because we love community! Can I Still Register my Open Source project? Follow this link for instructions to register a project What about Entertainment? Oh yeah! ...
Do 3D and graphics get you going? The folks at Archetype created an amazing 3D application that we first showed in the keynote at the Silverlight Firestarter in December, 2010. In this episode, Danny Riddell, CEO of Archetype, joins John to discuss their recent work with Silverlight 5, 3D, and graphics. Watch as Danny dives into how they built the 3D medical application and takes John through a detailed tour of the application. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa ...
by via JohnPapa.net on 4/27/2011 6:49:00 AM
On behalf of the MIX team, I am excited to announce Open Source Fest at MIX11! Open Source Fest is an event for open source project leaders to come and show off their great open http://live.visitmix.com/source projects … with some prizes too!. The evening event, held on Monday April 11th, will be open to all MIX11 attendees and those in attendance can vote on their favorite open source projects. The winners will get a prize and some recognition at MIX11, but the key is the chance to showcase t ...
Steve Lasker of the Silverlight team joins John on Silverlight TV to discuss data and business features with Silverlight. Steve dives into some of his favorite features and shows off a great demo. National Instruments was gracious enough to permit Steve to show their Lab View product on the show. Steve shows how Lab View uses a ton of features and creates a very rich experience so the application can do things such as monitor fluid tank levels or monitor a building's stability. This is a great e ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/17/2011 2:11:00 AM
Now that I am back from MIX11, I’ll be blogging about my experiences and what struck me most. For starters, I wanted to share special “thank you’s” to everyone who was involved in UX Lightning. This was one of the most fun events I have ever been involved with pulling together! First, thank you to the hundreds of attendees who packed the rooms with over 420 people for each of the 3 UX Lightning sessions at MIX11. Wow, what an amazing turnout for 12 brilliant presenters! I also want to th ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/1/2011 5:05:00 AM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/24/2011 7:01:00 PM
This week on Silverlight TV … Recently, UX legend Bill Buxton was in town and stopped by to share what he's been up to. In this video, he discusses how integrated devices with things that "just work together," UX, and touch might all be in our lives to a much larger degree in the near future. This is a short conversation with Bill where he touches on his thoughts about the next version of Surface, UX, and the new UX Lightning series at MIX11, which he compares to "speed dating.&qu ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/17/2011 4:24:00 PM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/17/2011 6:00:00 AM
Each week for the next 4 weeks I will be giving away 1 free ticket to the 3rd annual Silverlight MIXer party held in the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas during MIX11. This Silverlight MIXer is an invite only party that I host each year where Silverlight and Windows Phone influencers gather to talk, eat, drink, and have fun. We have also been known to give away some very cool prizes! This year’s party is 6-9 on April 13th at MIX11. Only a valid pass will get you in! Due to limited budget and fire co ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/17/2011 4:56:00 AM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/15/2011 5:03:00 AM
Tonight I rediscovered how much I love the Visual Studio Productivity Tools. Why? Because I rebuilt a PC last week and I had yet to install them. Sure, I installed VS, SP 1 and Resharper … all of which are essential to me as a developer. But I had not realized how much I was using the Productivity Power Tools. So I thought I might share a few of my favorite features. Before I begin …. Tools Options One thing I don’t like is the Highlight Current Line is always on. I like my own col ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/10/2011 9:02:00 PM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/10/2011 5:00:00 PM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/8/2011 6:03:00 AM
In the 2 weeks since we announced Open Source Fest at MIX11, we have had over 30 open source project leaders register to present their projects! You can also hear more about it on Channel 9’s countdown to MIX11. What? Open Source Fest When? Monday, April 11th, 6pm to 9pm Who? Open to all MIX11 attendees Why? Because we love community! Can I Still Register my Open Source project? Follow this link for instructions to register a project What about Entertainment? Oh yeah! W ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/3/2011 5:00:00 PM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/25/2011 6:29:00 PM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/22/2011 3:11:00 AM
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/17/2011 5:39:00 PM
In this episode of Silverlight TV #62, the Silverlight 5 Triad joins John to discuss their Silverlight 5 roles, some ways they receive feedback from customers, how they interact with each other, and to talk about some of their favorite features in the next release. Sam George (Development Manager), Larry Olson (Program Manager), and Vijay Devatha (Test Lead) share how the triad works together and how the structure of the team empowers everyone from top to bottom. This is a really insightfu ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/13/2011 11:07:00 PM
Tables, wheels, bridges, downward dog, upward dog, and warrior poses … huh? You can tell I’ve never done yoga before, but thankfully Colleen had so she was able to explain some of it to me as we went. It was 90 minutes long and the first 45 had me sweating like crazy. Massively intense doing positions my body was crying out “are you kidding?”. But it really felt good. The second 45 minutes was also intense but in a less muscle exerting way and more of a flexibility thing … except a few spots whe ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/13/2011 5:44:00 AM
I feel pretty awesome. Some of this great feeling has to be from the better eating too. I cut out junk food and cut down my crap snacks to one a day or zero per day. So far the worst thing I eat is a yogurt or a cereal. So not bad. I’m eating a lot of proteins now, which is a shift from my usual eating habits of lots of sugar and carbs. I love my carbs … pasta, steamed white rice, bread … oh I love those. The first month has you cut back on carbs big time and ramp up on proteins. Of course, ove ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/12/2011 7:34:00 PM
Thinking about writing a touch intensive Windows Phone 7 application? In this episode, David Kelley of Wirestone shares his experience creating rich experiences with Silverlight. David has been involved with many high profile applications and he shows off both the Jordan Deep Zoom mosaic and his Simon for Windows Phone 7 application that's in the marketplace (for free). This is a great discussion with a Silverlight user experience expert. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_ ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/11/2011 7:53:00 PM
Day 2 is in the books and it was pretty intense. It was about an hour of Plyometrics, which is a lot of squatting, jumping, moving your feet around, hopping, and doing flips. OK, well no flips, but it felt like it for some of the exercises. Day 1 was all weights and Day 2 is a lot of agility, flexibility, and cardio. It’s a good thing I am in pretty good shape cardio wise, because I could easily see myself falling down during this one each week. I won’t pretend it was easy for me, because ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/11/2011 3:52:00 AM
I’ve been running, playing soccer, and keeping in pretty good shape but I want to see some better results. I’ve plateaued in my workouts. So after a lot of research and asking friends who tried it, I decided to try the P90X program. I’m going to blog this mostly for myself as a record of how I am doing and to motivate myself. Prior to Day 1 they ask you to take a fitness test. I did OK, but I gotta tell you that doing those squats against the wall made my legs (quads mostly) feel like jello aft ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/3/2011 5:00:00 PM
Did you ever want to write a game with Silverlight for Windows Phone 7? This week on Silverlight TV, Ryan Plemons, Sr Developer with Terralever, shares his journey in optimizing the Silverlight based Zero Gravity game to work on Windows Phone 7. Ryan shares how he built the application using Isolated Storage, how he applied tombstoning, and many other topics on how he and his colleagues created the app. Ryan also shares some tips on how he improved performance for the application as he shows the ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 2/3/2011 5:33:00 AM
Be heard! The 1st annual Niney Awards will debut at MIX ’11, sponsored by Channel 9! Silverlight is well represented in 5 categories, so please cast your vote to show your support! It only takes a minute. The categories where Silverlight appears are <drum roll/> Favorite Channel 9 Show: Silverlight TV Um … best show ever. Honest! Favorite Channel 9 Series: Silverlight Firestarter 2010 The Gu …. in 3D … with a tatoo … announcing Silverlight 5! Favorite Ch ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/31/2011 6:13:00 AM
Just like last year, the MIX11 event team has published an open call for sessions. The great part about this open call is that its all voted on by you! There are so many great sessions to choose form and on a variety of topics which makes it easy to find many you want to vote on. Key points here: - You only get a say if you vote! So go vote! - Voting ends on Feb 4th, so go vote! - You get 10 votes, so go vote! What did I choose? Well, I like to vote for some sessions about topics t ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/27/2011 5:00:00 PM
Ever wonder what goes into making Silverlight? This week on Silverlight TV, we go behind the scenes with some folks who are responsible for testing and getting the Silverlight bits out to the public. Andy Rivas, Program Manager on Silverlight, shares what he does and how the bits get "baked" and into your hands. He also discusses the various ways you can provide feedback (bugs, requests, questions, etc). Other topics Andy discusses include: What is the testing process like? W ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/21/2011 5:01:00 AM
I love networking. Talking to the community and sharing stories, technology or otherwise, it’s the best part of my career. Tomorrow morning I get to try a new way to meet some new folks, and rehash with some good friends. That’s one reason I enjoy Twitter so much. Tomorrow morning I am doing my first (of what I hope is many) Linked IN .NET User Group events. The format is wide open and you can talk to me about patterns, Silverlight, SQL Server, data access, soccer, football, exercise, MIX, my S ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/20/2011 5:06:00 PM
This morning I will be presenting a MVVM talk similar to my Firestarter MVVM talk for UK Tech Days. This conference is presented over Live Meeting . You can check us out at the links below, including a bunch of other great content. I’ll be watching Twitter too, to see what questions pop up. Use the hash tag #uktechdays. Please use the links below to access the conference sessions. Keynote sessions (https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/plc_cc2/join?id=LMAG15&role=attend&pw=TB7fx.SFQ) Foll ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/20/2011 5:00:00 PM
New Windows Phone 7 applications are being uploaded to the marketplace all the time. But is your application standing out? This week, John and Corrina Black kick off a new Silverlight TV mini series called "Windows Phone 7 Design Tips with Corrina" to highlight ways you can improve the design of your application. Each week, Corrina will focus on some issues and show both how to work through them and how to improve the application's design. Corrina’s team has done extensive work in help ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/13/2011 6:26:00 PM
Application performance is a hot topic, and for good reason. User Experience is hugely important, but if your app is slow then everything degrades, including UX. In this episode, John talks to the Silverlight team's Mike Cook who shares several techniques that help tune Silverlight applications. With performance, it's all about knowing what tools to use and how to use them. Mike covers these topics and focuses on: CPU Profiling in Visual Studio 2010 Memory Analysis o VMMap - 30,000 f ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/12/2011 6:49:00 PM
The Silverlight team is hiring (all positions are for folks to be in Redmond). Here is one job posting that recently opened as Sr Program Manager (job posting says PM II, but I am told it is really a Sr PM position). And here are some more … Software Development Engineer II Software Development Engineer II Software Development Engineer, Senior I don’t have any further information about these job postings than what is posted. If you have interest, please apply and see where it takes ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/10/2011 8:27:00 PM
Joe Healy just posted a a link to some great 1 day free Silverlight events on the east coast of the US. If you are anywhere near these cities, you should register for one of these sessions. I’ve seen some of this content and its very good. Locations and Dates New York, NY 2011-01-18 Microsoft NYC [ map ] Register here Iselin, NJ 2011-01-19 Microsoft Iselin [ map ] ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/6/2011 6:53:00 PM
In 2010 we aired 55 shows of Silverlight TV which had 2.5 million views! Thank you all for watching the show. We’ve got some exciting new episode lined up in the run up to Mix 2011, starting with this week. For the first episode of Silverlight TV in 2011 John sits down with Saurabh Pant of the WCF RIA Services team and discusses the story of Silverlight, RIA Services and Azure. Saurabh walks through the scenarios in which Azure and RIA Service make sense together and also demonstrates how ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 1/5/2011 9:23:00 PM
This quarter we added several new people to the Silverlight MVP program from all over the world. I’ve also added all of these new MVPs to my Silverlight MVP Twitter list, which now has over 450 followers following the Silverlight MVPs. Be sure to check it out and subscribe! Please join me in congratulating the many new and renewed Silverlight MVPs for Jan 1 2011! I linked to their Twitter profiles, but I know I missed a few. I’ll update them as they come in. In alphabetical order (first name), ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 12/20/2010 7:48:00 PM
MIX is my favorite conference/event … I love PDC and many other events, but there is something about MIX that I just love. Maybe it’s community feel about it because every time I go to MIX I feel like I am catching up with good friends (because I am). MIX09 was my first MIX in person (I really wanted to be at the previous ones) and I was fortunate enough to present at MIX09 on debugging Silverlight apps. Last year (my first MIX working for Microsoft) I hosted the Silverlight bootcamp and prese ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 12/16/2010 10:42:00 PM
This week on Silverlight TV, John welcomes Dave Campbell. Dave, a Silverlight MVP and creator of Silverlight Cream, recently published his 1000th Silverlight Cream post, calling out the best and most interesting Silverlight content on the web. Dave was in town for the Silverlight Firestarter where we surprised him with a poster signed by a lot of folks on the Silverlight team. Dave and John discuss how Silverlight Cream got started and has evolved as Dave calls out several great people from the ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 12/13/2010 7:49:00 AM
We (and me) owe a huge thank you to everyone who watched the Firestarter online and in person. So THANK YOU! We had a photographer floating around the live event and he was able to capture several shots of folks who attended. I uploaded a bunch of the Firestarter photos to Flickr tonight and shared them, so please have a look through and add comments if you like. There are more, but these were a good sampling from the event. If you missed the event, or in case you want to watch some of it agai ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 12/9/2010 8:00:00 PM
This week on Silverlight TV, John introduces a brand-new Silverlight Training Series first announced at the Silverlight Firestarter. Created by John Papa and Silverlight MVPs Corey Schuman and Dan Wahlin, this eleven lab series includes hands-on labs and video walk-throughs by Corey and Dan, as well as: Lab source code in both VB and C# Step by step lab documents Offline kit containing all 11 labs, lab documents, source code, and links to videos Videos with Dan, Corey, and John wa ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 12/5/2010 8:01:00 AM
Here is a quick jump-list of all 8 videos from the Silverlight Firestarter. This includes the keynote and the 7 sessions that are targeted at helping you build business applications with Silverlight. I included links to: Each video, with multiple online and offline downloadable video file formats Each speaker’s twitter ID (for those on Twitter) if you want to follow them UPDATE: Download the slides and code here By popular request, we are collecting the updated slides and code sam ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 12/5/2010 6:09:00 AM
Silverlight 5, announced at the Silverlight Firestarter this past Thursday, introduces many new features including several that focus on premium media experiences and business application development. You can watch Scott Guthrie’s keynote here if you missed it, or if you want to see it again. In addition to this quick list of features we disclosed for Silverlight 5, I’m working on some posts to elaborate on the Silverlight 5 demos that you saw in the keynote, some behind the scenes loo ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/18/2010 4:35:00 PM
Only two weeks remain until the Silverlight Firestarter. This week on SIlverlight TV, John and Scott Guthrie discuss the upcoming Silverlight Firestarter and what the folks watching it online and in person should expect to see and hear. The event kicks off with a keynote presented by Scott and the session agenda takes the audience on journey, showing how to develop business applications in Silverlight. NOTE: In addition to the live schedule for the Firestarter, there will also be 20+ videos ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/13/2010 4:39:00 PM
John sits down with Kyle McClellan of the WCF RIA Services team and responds to top questions from the RIA Services forums in this episode of Silverlight TV. Kyle runs through various scenarios and provides great guidance on how to identify and solve these issues. Here are some of the topics he covers: How do I investigate exceptions thrown from my DomainContext? How do I add a ComboBox to a DataGrid or DataForm? How do I change the default metadata on an Entity when using the LinqTo ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/13/2010 4:20:00 PM
Here is a quick tip to help you search and find all Windows Phone 7 apps using Bing search. Just click on this URL http://www.bing.com/visualsearch?g=wp7&qpvt=Windows+Phone+7+Apps# and the apps for your local market will appear. You can also view by category, by newest, top rated, or most downloaded (as shown below) Thanks to Paul Thurrott and thinkmobile for the tip! ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/5/2010 4:07:00 PM
This week on Silverlight TV #51, John sits down with Saurabh Pant of the WCF RIA Services team and responds to some of the most common issues customers encounter when deploying WCF RIA Services. Saurabh runs through various scenarios and provides great guidance on how to identify and solve these issues. Here are some of the topics he covers: Deploying to IIS The important role of the web.config file Debugging various deployment scenarios Browsing to the svc file to check va ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 11/1/2010 7:43:00 PM
PDC 10 was last week and we have a ton of great sessions you can check out over on the PDC site. And be sure to check out and vote for my session Kung Fu Silverlight: Tips and Architectural Patterns and Practices. Along with the flurry of sessions I am sure many of you have read or heard about some of the comments made about the future of Silverlight. First, please take the time to go read the updated statement from Bob Muglia that was released today, then come back OK, are you back yet? Goo ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/28/2010 6:14:00 PM
Today you can watch my PDC 2010 session titled “Kung Fu Silverlight: Tips and Architectural Patterns and Practices”. Here is the summary of the session: Learn about the rewards of using RIA Services together with development patterns, such as the Service Providers, Single Responsibility pattern, Commanding, user Interactions, Messaging, ChildWindows, Design Time Data, Testing, and developing using the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, to build Silverlight and Windows Phone applications. H ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/22/2010 4:01:00 AM
John sits down with Scott Guthrie, Corporate VP at Microsoft, to discuss the state of Silverlight. Scott discusses the impact of Silverlight in applications including Windows Phone 7, the history of releases, and what his favorite features are with Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. Scott talks about how Windows Phone and Silverlight together focus on optimizations such as using the GPU and using the off thread capabilities and he gives some advice for building applications with Silverlight and Wi ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/21/2010 11:31:00 PM
I think it is great that so many developers are putting the effort into creating apps for Windows Phone 7 (especially with Silverlight!). So today I sent a call out on Twitter to tell me about Windows Phone 7 apps people had written and put in the marketplace. Here are my quick thoughts on the first 5 I received after playing with them for a short bit. Keep in mind I spent about 5 minutes on each app, so by no means is this a comprehensive review of the apps. I’ll try some more in a future ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/18/2010 1:09:00 AM
Janete Perez rejoins Silverlight TV to complete her 2 part series on Sketchflow (you can watch Janete in Part 1 of her Sketchflow series here). up. This time Janete walks through the creation of a prototype that includes a workflow, navigation through the screens, interactive behaviors, and much more to create a social media application to share and communicate with her friends. She covers several topics including these: Creating a Sketchflow project for Windows Phone 7 Using beh ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/14/2010 1:27:00 AM
Light up your Silverlight skills with the all-new Global Silverlight Firestarter! December 2, 2010 from 8am to 5pm PT After you enjoy PDC10, continue the experience with the Silverlight Firestarter! Light up your Silverlight skills with the all-new Global Silverlight Firestarter! What is the Silverlight Firestarter? An Event: A one day, global, live streamed and on demand event keynoted by Scott Guthrie Training: New self-paced labs and walk through videos Interactive: Got q ...
Light up your Silverlight skills with the all-new Global Silverlight Firestarter! December 2, 2010 from 8am to 5pm After you enjoy PDC10, continue the experience with the Silverlight Firestarter! Light up your Silverlight skills with the all-new Global Silverlight Firestarter! What is the Silverlight Firestarter? An Event: A one day, global, live streamed and on demand event keynoted by Scott Guthrie Training: New self-paced labs and walk through videos Interactive: Got quest ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/8/2010 6:21:00 AM
Creating prototypes that convey what the application should present, how it should respond to user events, and the general flow of an application is made a whole lot easier with Sketchflow. Janete Perez joins John for a 2 part series on using Sketchflow to create rich interactive prototypes using Sketchflow. Janete shows how to create the project and add pages, buttons, and all of the elements you are familiar with already and create a work flow. The result is a more engaging prototype She co ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/3/2010 11:26:00 PM
This weekend I posted 5 simple ways to reduce your code using Resharper (tips 1-5). I decided to follow that up with another set of 5 quick and easy tips, so ere they go. Hopefully these tips will show you some things I do to turn on (and off) some refactoring suggestions. Tip 6) Remove Parameter, and Update Usages I had a method in an interface where at one point I was using 3 parameters. Somewhere along the way I stopped using one of the parameters, and Resharper was kind enough to poi ...
This weekend I posted 5 simple ways to reduce your code using Resharper (tips 1-5). I decided to follow that up with another set of 5 quick and easy tips, so here they go. Hopefully these tips will show you some things I do to turn on (and off) some refactoring suggestions. Tip 6) Remove Parameter, and Update Usages I had a method in an interface where at one point I was using 3 parameters. Somewhere along the way I stopped using one of the parameters, and Resharper was kind enough to po ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/3/2010 12:04:00 AM
I’ve talked a lot about Resharper features such as the Find Usages, live templates, and the instant code analysis. But I have not talked about some of the features that are not as prominent but I find especially helpful. So here are a few very simple tips for how to clean your code up using Resharper. Tip 1) Removing redundant “this” qualifier Sometimes I add the this statement when I am writing code. It is a habit I got into a long while ago and have had a hard time breaking. I prefer to no ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/2/2010 1:26:00 AM
Today is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s one of the 4 days when we welcome the newly awarded (and some re-awarded) Silverlight MVPs. This quarter we added 8 new people to the Silverlight MVP program from all over the world. I’ve also added all of these new MVPs to my Silverlight MVP Twitter list, which now has over 400 followers following the Silverlight MVPs. Be sure to check it out and subscribe! Kunal Chowdhury (@kunal2383) from India Xiaochao Fan from China ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/1/2010 11:39:00 PM
This week on Silverlight TV: Performance is always a critical topic in development, especially when it comes to a mobile device. Jeff Wilcox shares several performance tips and dives deep into how he made the ProgressBar perform even better. Jeff retemplated the ProgressBar control via a style and made it very simple to apply to all instance in a project. Jeff and John also discuss the roles of the compositor thread and the UI thread on Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight. Jeff covers several t ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 10/1/2010 6:12:00 AM
When you work with Silverlight classic or for Windows Phone everyday like I do, you get used writing code that helps you get back on the UI thread when needed. I was chatting with Jeff Wilcox about threading and I tossed this code at him, as Jeff also has a SmartDispatcher class. Mine is a much smaller feature set than Jeff’s, but it does the job I need. Anyway, the discussion with Jeff made me realize I had not shared this code. Sometimes your code runs on a background thread, for exampl ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/23/2010 4:30:00 PM
WCF is an integral part of the communication stack for Silverlight applications, but sometimes things go wrong, very wrong. How do you fix those issues. In this episode of Silverlight TV, Yavor Georgiev from the WCF and Silverlight team shows you how to identify the problems with your WCF services and how to fix them. He covers several topics including these: Setting up your service Debugging issues with "add service reference" Handling Faults: How to get exceptions p ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/16/2010 4:10:00 PM
Want to build a Bing web and image search using Silverlight for Windows Phone 7? Kirupa Chinnathambi of the Expression team shows you just how to do that in this week's episode. Kirupa covers a lot of topics as he builds the app, including how to: wire up the app add the image templates use the Pivot control apply the built in resources to pick up the selected theme in the phone use sample data template a ListBox's ItemsPanel use the WrapPanel from the toolkit han ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/16/2010 4:00:00 PM
Today the final Windows Phone Developer Tools have been released! You can read all the details over at the Window Phone Developer Blog post. Other Relevant Links for the Windows Phone Developer Tools: Download Center Landing Page Release Notes But wait, there’s more! Today the Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit was released too! You can go download it now from here. The toolkit includes additional controls beyond the core Windows Phone controls that you can download and referenc ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/14/2010 6:14:00 PM
Last week I presented a 200 level session on Silverlight Out of Browser features over Live Meeting to the Orlando .NET user group (ONETUG). The session covered all of the fundamentals of out of browser, went into several examples, and showed a few tips and tricks. I packaged up the some of the more popular demos and the slide deck and you can download them all right here. The music player demo is a port from the presentation Joe Stegman did at the last PDC and the Puzzle is a port from the one S ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/9/2010 6:46:00 PM
JetPack is out! JetPack is out! A lot of you asked about this theme after Tsitsi showed it off on Silverlight TV 2 weeks ago. You can see a preview of the various styles in JetPack here. What do you get? Jet Pack, of course! Resource dictionaries with the assets Integration with Visual Studio templates (for the navigation and ria services project templates) VSIX installer If you like JetPack or the other themes you can download all the themes here. ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/6/2010 6:40:00 PM
A few days ago I shared how I keep up with Silverlight and I promised I would share my “top blogs” so I categorized a few types of blogs that I read. OK, so I can’t count very well … there are more than a top in here. But hey, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to :) I subscribe to a lot more than this, but these are the the ones that tend to most frequently land in my “must read” list each day. Every day I look through what appears in my feed and I quickly scan through and remove some and ma ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/2/2010 9:52:00 PM
There are some great people with Silverlight and many of them are sharing a ton with the community through blogs, twitter, forums, videos, articles, books, training, and speaking engagements. Different folk tend like different mediums, so it is great that we have so many options to share information on Silverlight. Years ago I used to read books to find my information. Then as the web grew, I started reading a ton of articles. That grew into blog reading for me, and in the past few years watchin ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/2/2010 4:00:00 PM
John Stockton demonstrates on Silverlight TV how to create animations for Silverlight using Storyboards in Expression Blend. He explores the roles that the storyboards, visual states, behaviors, keyframes, transforms, and easings play in animations. This is a great demonstration of how to add a realistic and natural feel to animations. Relevant links: John's blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 9/1/2010 5:59:00 PM
Today we released a new update to for Silverlight 4 (4.0.50826.0) and a new SDK to go along with it. Tim Heuer posted a summary here and you can check out the full details at KB2164913. I summarized the key elements below. Here are the relevant highlights: SDK feature to enable Add New Row capabilities in DataGrid control Improving startup performance of Silverlight applications Adding mouse wheel support for out-of-browser applications on the Mac platform Various media-re ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/27/2010 1:47:00 AM
Tsitsi Gora, UX Designer at Microsoft, appears on Silverlight TV to announce the new Silverlight themes that her team has been working on. Tsitsi demonstrates the new themes available for download and explains the scenarios they had in mind when they created the themes. The new themes include: Jet Pack Cosmopolitan Windows 7 AccentColor She also takes a deep look at the cosmopolitan theme and shows how you can customize it, if need be. Tsitsi wraps up by demonstrating some tip ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/19/2010 4:14:00 PM
On this episode of Silverlight TV, Dinesh Kulkarni shares his top tips for creating streamlined and performant WCF RIA Services applications. He walks through some key decision points while creating domain services (server side) for a Silverlight and RIA Services application. Among the tips Dinesh discusses are some of the benefits of creating the minimal number of entities, operations, and amount of data required for your application. He also discusses how to connect RIA Services to: Entity ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/13/2010 6:47:00 PM
Being that I’ve just set the Silverlight TV schedule for August and parts of September 2010 I wanted to share it with everyone. We have some great guests who have some awesome content in the lineup over the next month. Check this out! 8/12/2010 – You are already a WP7 Developer - Jesse Liberty (just aired yesterday) 8/19/2010 – Top Tips for WCF RIA Services – Dinesh Kulkarni 8/26/2010 – Announcing New Silverlight Themes – Tsitsi Gora 9/02/2010 – Animations and States– John Stockton ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/12/2010 4:00:00 PM
It has been said that if you know Silverlight then you are already a Windows Phone 7 developer. Jesse Liberty joins John Papa this week on Silverlight TV to explore that statement and demonstrate the side-by-side creation of both a Silverlight application and a Windows Phone application. Watch as Jesse cracks open Visual Studio 2010 and creates two similar applications: one for Silverlight and one for Windows Phone 7. He does this all from scratch so you get to see every step along the way. ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 8/5/2010 4:16:00 PM
In the second of two navigation videos we filmed for Silverlight TV, Karl Shifflett joins John Papa to demonstrate how he made some simple extensions to the navigation API in Silverlight in order to solve very common business problems. Karl demonstrates how to navigate away from a screen and leave markers indicating that the screen is still active even though it is hidden. He also demonstrates how to manage state while navigating between different pages. This episode is jam packed with a to ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/29/2010 5:14:00 PM
In the first of 2 navigation videos we filmed for Silverlight TV, David Poll joins John Papa to demonstrate how the Silverlight navigation API can be used to solve common navigational structures. David explains how navigation works with Silverlight, how it integrates with the Silverlight templates, and demonstrates how you can expand on its features using custom content loaders. Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) David's blog and on Twitter (@depoll) ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/22/2010 6:51:00 PM
In this episode of Silverlight TV, Brian Noyes discusses strategies for building Silverlight business applications. Brian is an advisor working with the Patterns and Practices team on the current and future versions of Prism. John and Brian discuss what Prism is, when to use it, when not to use it, and how to pick and choose which parts of Prism may be of most value to your application. Prism is made up of various parts including modularity, regions, the shell, commanding, events/messaging. Bri ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/15/2010 2:00:00 PM
In this episode of Silverlight TV, Adam Kinney discusses how you can completely customize how a control looks and behaves. Adam explains how all Silverlight controls are lookless and that they can be customized using various templates depending on what you want to achieve. Instead of starting with a simple control like a TextBox, he demonstrates the power of templating using a ListBox and its various templates, including the ItemsPanel, ListBoxItem, Data Template, and more (we joke about the mul ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/4/2010 3:47:00 PM
This past Tuesday I had dinner with several of the Tampa area Silverlight crew at Champps and then headed over to the Microsoft offices and presented at the Tampa Silverlight User Group (Tampa SLUG). It was a nice evening where I got to see many familiar faces and show off several demos on Silverlight. I am always amazed at how many awesome developers there are in the Tampa Bay area … and many of them are very active in the community. As promised, I wrapped up the demos and the slide deck and ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 7/1/2010 8:24:00 PM
Pete Brown discusses the printing API in Silverlight 4 and demonstrates his recent printing exploits. Pete shows John how, using the API, he created a printing library that serves as a report writer. The source code is available on codeplex (link is below). Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Pete's Blog and on Twitter (@pete_brown) Silverlight Reporting on Codeplex Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/24/2010 5:01:00 PM
Tomasz Janczuk of the Silverlight Web Services team joins John to demonstrate how to implement duplex communication with WCF in Silverlight. Tomasz demonstrates a how to implement a chat application using WCF, the basics of the polling duplex protocol, when the Net.tcp protocol is ideal, and some performance and scalability considerations. Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Tomasz's Blog Silverlight Web Services' team blog Follow us on Twitter @Silverligh ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/17/2010 4:19:00 PM
In this mini episode Jesse Liberty explains Transmedia Storytelling and why he believes that Silverlight may be the ideal platform for creating Transmedia applications on the web, Windows Phone 7 and eventually set-top boxes. Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Jesse's blog and on Twitter (@jesseliberty) Jesse’s mini-tutorial on Silverlight and Transmedia Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV or on the web at http://silverlight.tv/ ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/10/2010 4:06:00 PM
In this episode, Kenny Young of the Expression Blend team demonstrates how to make some compelling interactions using Expression Blend 4 for Silverlight 4. He demonstrates some great examples using the FluidMoveBehavior, FluidLayout, LayoutStates, Transition Effects, and sample data. Kenny then dives in and creates several of these interactions from scratch, showing exactly how easy it is to use Blend 4 to create rich Silverlight experiences. Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@joh ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/7/2010 4:41:00 PM
Today, Expression Studio 4 (which includes Expression Blend, SketchFlow, Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Encoder) launched at the Internet Week conference in New York City! There are a ton of new features in these products, some of which we have shown off already in some episodes of Silverlight TV a http://silverlight.tv. You can visit www.microsoft.com/expression to find out more about Expression and you can download a trial. Owners of v3 Expression Studio or Expression Web can ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/4/2010 7:17:00 PM
I can’t wait til next week when Expression Studio 4 (Expression Blend, SketchFlow, Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Encoder) will launch at the Internet Week conference in New York City on June 7th! I wish I could go, I grew up in NY and still call it home, but there will be a lot of great people there including “Blenders”: Adam Kinney Arturo Toledo Bill Buxton Christian Schormann Pete Blois We’ve shown some of the new features off on Si ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/3/2010 5:00:00 PM
Mark Rideout, Program Manager on the Silverlight product team, joins John to dive deep into many of the RichTextBox control's features. Mark has worked on the text aspects of Silverlight since the first version. Here are just a few of the areas that Mark covers: Overview of RichTextBox vs. TextBlock and TextBox for rich content Wire-up logic for applying formatting Inline UI elements Using text position to point for simple and complex operations Basic "posit ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 6/1/2010 5:16:00 PM
Thanks to all of you, last week we flew past 1,000,000 views of Silverlight TV! We’re not stopping here, we have a ton in store for the second half of the year. But first, a quick thank you to all of you for tuning in and for all of our great guests who have brought their A-game to the show and helped make Silverlight TV the * most popular Silverlight show on the internet ;-) * disclaimer: I have totally not researched that ;-) Now back to this week’s episode … which Adam looks very excit ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/31/2010 5:05:00 AM
We have had a good response to the free 8 module Silverlight Training Kit we released on Channel 9 back at MIX and that Scott Guthrie announced. We have since updated at the Silverlight 4 Launch with some new content and fixes. We’ve also found 2 issues since then that you might run across. I’ve corrected these in the source and will update them on the Channel 9 site in our next round (which I hope to include VB version of the courseware, too!) In the meantime, here are the fixes to the 2 prob ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/27/2010 5:01:00 PM
In this episode, Arturo Toledo demonstrates all of the new content he and his colleagues have created to teach you to design and develop with Expression Blend and Silverlight. He shows off some really cool samples, all of which you can download and do yourself through hands on-labs. Arturo walks through the .toolbox site and shows the numerous learning materials, videos, demos, and hands-on labs. If you have been looking for a comprehensive set of self-paced learning materials focused on designi ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/17/2010 5:09:00 PM
Thanks to all of you Silverlight TV has really taken off. We’re working hard to keep bringing in top, fresh and new content from great presenters. I think you’ll like what we have in store for the upcoming schedule! One new features for the show is Ask the Experts. During each show I will ask the guest one of your questions! We’ll be alerting everyone via Twitter about our speaker lineup in advance so you can send your questions to us. Just send your questions to us on Twitter at @SilverlightTV ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/17/2010 5:00:00 PM
Today both the WCF RIA Services v1.0 and the Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 are officially released! You can download the the tools right here. You can find full details about this release on the download site. NOTE: To celebrate these releases, Silverlight TV is rolling out 2 shows today instead of our regular schedule. We have recorded 2 new shows of Silverlight TV to ring in these new releases. The first show is Silverlight TV #27 (see details below) where we have Mark Wilson-Thom ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/13/2010 5:26:00 PM
In this video, John meets with Deepesh Mohnani from the WCF RIA Services team. Deepesh demonstrates how to expose various endpoints from WCF RIA Services. This is a great explanation and walk through of how to open RIA Services domain services to clients, including: Silverlight clients (of course) Creating an OData endpoint and showing how Excel can use it Creating a SOAP endpoint to a domain service and using it from a Windows Phone 7 application Creating a JSON endpoint and hav ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/11/2010 5:45:00 PM
In this video, Adam Kinney explains what the PathListBox is and why it is so compelling. Then, he demonstrates several ways of using it in creative examples. The PathListBox is one of the newest features available in Expression Blend and Silverlight 4. It redefines how users look at lists of data as it breaks the mold of a list "box" and opens the possibilities to use any shape or path. Don't miss this episode and be sure to download Adam's sample code. Relevant links: John's Blog ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/11/2010 7:36:00 AM
“How do you bind a ComboBox to a collection of objects, and then bind a property from the selected object’s to some other scalar property?” I received this question today from a friend of mine (a variation of this question). I decided to walk through the scenario here in case anyone else runs into it. This is one of those things that can be confusing … it is simple, but it is is much easier shown the explained. This post lays out the scenario using some new features to Silverlight 4 and you can ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/6/2010 7:41:00 PM
Silverlight is surging and Silverlight TV is also doing well on Channel 9 and gaining momentum thanks to all of you who watch our episodes! I’ve been asked a few times how community members can appear on the show. First, we love community members appearing on the show. Some of our best episodes have come from the community efforts. So here are 2 general guidelines for submitting your appearance on Silverlight TV: You are going to be on the Redmond campus in the future You have something ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/6/2010 5:01:00 PM
John grabs a few minutes with Dave Wolf of Cynergy to talk about the eBay Simple Lister application, one of the first publicly available Silverlight 4 out of browser applications. Dave discusses the process of how designing and developing the Silverlight 4 application was simplified using SketchFlow, Blend, and Visual Studio tools. The application is pretty slick, and you can check it out now ! Relevant links: John's Blog and on Twitter (@john_papa) Cynergy Get the eBay Simple Liste ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/5/2010 5:21:00 PM
I’ve been referring a lot of people lately to the steps to sign a XAP. So I decided to post an excerpt I wrote about signing Silverlight XAP files in the Silverlight 4 Whitepaper on Channel 9 here to help spread the word. The signing process is important if you are creating an elevated trust out of browser application because it helps: Reassure your users that the application is authentic Allow updates to elevated trust applications Elevated trust out-of-browser applications enable de ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 5/4/2010 5:01:00 PM
John interviews a panel of 3 well known Silverlight leaders including Shawn Wildermuth, Dan Wahlin, and Ward Bell at the Silverlight 4 launch event. The guest panel answers questions sent in from Twitter about the features in Silverlight 4, thoughts on MVVM, and the panel members' experiences developing Silverlight. This is a great chance to hear from some of the leading Silverlight minds. These guys are all experts at building business applications with Silverlight. Relevant links: John's ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/26/2010 7:46:00 PM
We recently added a new demo and updated 2 of our more popular Silverlight demos to use Silverlight 4 RTW (from the beta and RC bits). The Silverlight.net samples web site has all of the samples, but here are direct links to each of the demos with a brief description of them and the features they showcase. These demos are great and parts of them are from contributions from several people at Microsoft including Karen Corby, Adam Kinney, Mark Rideout, Jesse Bishop and from me. I hope you like th ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/23/2010 9:49:00 AM
At the keynote for the Silverlight 4 Launch alongside Scott Guthrie I demonstrated (minute 28 to minute 38) how to build a Silverlight 4 application using WCF RIA Services and the new Visual Studio 2010 tooling. The application I built is an online book store to rival the big boys … OK, well, maybe not the big boys but you get the idea. As promised I am elaborating on the presentation and breaking down the steps to create the application here. I included the starter solution and the complete ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/22/2010 3:00:00 PM
Live from the official launch event for Silverlight 4, John talks with a panel of guests who build applications using Silverlight. Franck Jeannin of Ormetis, Ward Bell of IdeaBlade, and Dave Wolf of Cynergy Systems discuss both what they showed in the keynote at DevConnections and their experiences with Silverlight. This is a great discussion of their perspectives on Silverlight and the competitive landscape with Flash and HTML 5 for their respective companies. All 3 of these guests presented d ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/20/2010 11:06:00 PM
You can now get everything you need to develop with Silverlight 4 from the WebPI! You can download and install the Silverlight tools, the Silverlight Toolkit and the RIA Services Toolkit all from the Web Platform’s Developer Tools section. But don; take my word for it, go try out the WebPI for yourself! ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/20/2010 10:10:00 PM
We recently released a new free Silverlight 4 training kit that walks you through building business applications with Silverlight 4. You can also download the entire offline version of the kit here. You can use the 8 modules, 25 videos, and several hands on labs online or offline from links on the Channel 9 site. I’ve included a breakdown and links to all of the content here in this post. The key to this training material is not the features it covers (though it covers a variety of topics ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/10/2010 5:11:00 AM
Want to be at DevConnections for the Silverlight 4 Launch but can;t make it? No worries, you can watch as Scott Guthrie launches Silverlight 4. Following the keynote you can watch Scott in special one hour edition of "Ask the Gu" along with other Silverlight folk like me to answer your questions on Channel 9 Live. To watch the keynotes and Channel 9 Live coverage head to http://live.ch9.ms on April 12th and 13th. Silverlight required, of course :) To be a part of the conve ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/8/2010 8:10:00 PM
It’s been 3 months since Silverlight TV first aired in mid January. We’ve aired a variety of topics (from design centric to hardcore developer code to awesome demos) and a variety of guests (who can forget Ward Bell is his white fur jacket?). So far, our audience has watched our episodes for well over 600,000 views! Thank you! As we revisit the lineup and start scheduling the next series of shows, I’d like to do a quick poll on what your favorite 3 episodes have been. So please click on this ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/8/2010 5:33:00 PM
In this episode, John talks with Jeff Handley about how the community's feedback really helped shape some features in WCF RIA Services. Jeff is very active in the community and has a wealth of knowledge about WCF RIA Services. Relevant links: John's Blog and John on Twitter Jeff's Blog and Jeff on Twitter WCF RIA Services ContosoSales sample application shown in the episode Silverlight 4 RC Features (or download here) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV Silverlight Train ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 4/1/2010 3:00:00 PM
John ran into Silverlight MVP Ward Bell of IdeaBlade while at MIX10 (how could anyone miss him!). Ward was kind enough to sit and talk with John to show off the multi-touch application his company wrote for UFC using Silverlight. It uses multi-touch, Caliburn, MVVM, and, of course, Silverlight! Relevant links: John's Blog Ward's Blog Silverlight 4 RC Features (or download here) Follow us on Twitter @SilverlightTV Learn more about Silverlight with the new Silverlight Training ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/30/2010 9:10:00 AM
I’ve been toying with some ideas for MVVM lately. Along the way I have been dragging some friends like Glenn Block and Ward Bell along for the ride. Now, normally its not so bad, but when I get an idea in my head to challenge everything I can be “interesting” to work with :). These guys are great and I highly encourage you all to get your own personal Glenn and Ward bobble head dolls for your home. But back to MVVM … I’ve been exploring the world of View first again. The idea is simple: the Vie ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/25/2010 4:00:00 PM
Just prior to MIX10, Nikhil Kothari appears on the show to demonstrate some of the key advantages around validation when using WCF RIA Services. He demonstrates how to use a Domain Service to expose your domain model and how to create a custom service method to further filter your data server side. Nikhil also shows how the Domain Services generates validation rules using the database attributes such as required fields or maximum string lengths. Other topics Nikhil covers: Domain service gen ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/24/2010 8:55:00 PM
I had a great time at MIX 10 last week meeting so many people and being part of so much of the activities. One of the side effects is that it was next to impossible to catch all of the great content while at MIX, so I’ve been catching up by watching many of the videos online. Here is a list with all of the Windows Phone 7 and Silverlight sessions where you can grab the videos and/or slides. Title WMV ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/17/2010 9:57:00 PM
At MIX10 this week it was announced that you can develop Windows Phone 7 apps using Silverlight! In this episode, Mike Harsh comes back to Silverlight TV to show John how easy it is to develop a real world application for Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7) using Silverlight. Within minutes, Mike has developed and started running a functional WP7 twitter application that makes cross domain calls. He demonstrates how to design the interface using the designer and tools in Visual Studio 2010 Express fo ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/16/2010 6:04:00 PM
While at MIX10, John catches up with Jesse Liberty and Tim Heuer to discuss their favorite features in Silverlight 4 on this episode of Silverlight TV. Along with calling out and discussing why they're each impressed with their favorite features, Jesse, Tim, and John also discuss the impact of the announcements made at MIX regarding development for WP7 and Silverlight at the Day 1 keynote. You can also check out the 60+ page whitepaper that covers the full feature list of all the new ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/15/2010 10:12:00 PM
John and Adam discuss Silverlight 4 RC, following up the MIX10 keynote announcement of Silverlight 4 RC by discussing what is new and what materials have been released on the Channel 9 learning center website. They cover their picks for some of the most impactful features in Silverlight 4 RC and review the concept behind the new two-day Building Business Applications course (check out the course via this link). You can also check out the 60+ page whitepaper that covers the full feature ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/15/2010 10:10:00 PM
Silverlight TV is here at MIX10 where Windows Phone 7 (WP7) and Silverlight just became the best match since peanut butter and chocolate! Mike Harsh, Program Manager for the Silverlight team working on WP7, joins John Papa to demonstrate the WP7 device and the tooling used to create applications for it. Mike covers the phone, how to write a Silverlight app for it, how to run that app in the emulator, and how to deploy it to the phone. The simplicity of this demo is how easy it truly is to take ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/11/2010 6:28:00 PM
The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9! In this episode, Silverlight MVP Laurent Bugnion of IdentityMine appears on the show to discuss using MVVM with Silverlight. Laurent and John discuss their experiences with MVVM and how Laurent's experiences inspired him to create his MVVM Light Toolkit. If you have been meaning to get into MVVM or you feel a bit overwhelmed by it all, definitely watch this episode and check out the MVVM Light Toolkit. Laurent has a great ses ...
by John Papa via JohnPapa.net on 3/10/2010 9:42:00 AM
On Monday the 15th from 5pm – 6:30pm at MIX10 there will be a “Ask the Experts” event where an incredible pool of knowledgeable experts on topics including Silverlight, WCF RIA Services, and Blend will be available to answer your questions. You can also win some great prizes including a Zune HD! I’ll be there along with Adam Kinney, Brad Abrams, Joe Stegman, and many others. More details are below, but please stop by and see us! “Ask the Experts” returns to MIX on Monday, March 15. 5:00 – 6: ...
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! ...
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 yo ...
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 ...
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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