Site: http://michaelcrump.net/blog Link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MichaelCrump
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 1/30/2012 8:00:00 AM
I have a new article published on SilverlightShow today called, “Using the Live SDK in Windows 8 XAML/C# Metro Applications”. Article Introduction The Microsoft’s Live SDK (or commonly referred to as Live Connect), provides a set of controls and APIs that enables applications to integrate single sign-on (SSO) functionality using Windows Live ID. You can also use it to access data in SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Windows Live Messenger. The library supports multiple platforms, including Windows Phone ...
[ read more ]
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 1/15/2012 8:00:00 AM
4 Formats: PDF, Word, EPUB, MOBI. (each format can be downloaded separately) Number of pages: 60 Release date: January 2012. Sponsored by Telerik Download Link The e-Book: I’m late announcing it, but 10 Laps Around Silverlight 5 is available to download for FREE. This is a book that I worked on for approximately 10 weeks with the goal of teaching other developers all of the new features in Silverlight 5 in one short e-Book. If you want to learn about Silverlight 5 ...
App Information: Product Page (including Screenshots): http://michaelcrump.net/fsb/ Direct Download Link: http://mcrump.me/zZwjPP Product Description: Tired of using the default browser that ships with Windows Phone 7? Would you like to browse the web using the full Windows Phone 7 Screen and for FREE? Well, that is exactly what this app offers. Not only can you surf the web using the full screen, but you can save and pin favorites, search the web, share th ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 12/26/2011 8:00:00 AM
Introduction I was asked the other day how to detect if a user has touched a certain part of the screen. I created some sample code for them but decided that it might make a fun Easter egg as well. It does this by comparing the X and Y axis of the users current touch point to the location that the “M” exists. Basically, this application will detect if your user is touching the letter M as shown below. The User Interface Very simple, just add in the following XAML to the MainPa ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 12/21/2011 8:00:00 AM
Introduction Today, we are going to take a look at the Windows Simulator which ships with Visual Studio 11 and is used to debug Metro Style apps for Windows 8. I think it is important to learn about the features available in the simulator where we can better understand the way our Metro applications behave. It is also beneficial for those of us without access to a touch-screen monitor. Before we start, you can check out all of my Windows 8 Articles here. We have three ways to debug a ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 12/18/2011 9:47:00 PM
Official Product Page Official Showcase Video Introduction Back in July 2011, I decided to switch to a gaming mouse called the Razer DeathAdder. I switched for a number of reasons but mainly because I wanted a mouse that felt natural and didn’t hurt my hand after long periods of use. I’ve used it up until this point – December 16th, 2011. Enter the Microsoft Touch Mouse - I recently became interested in the gesture support provided by this mouse and tweeted it asking developers the ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 12/14/2011 3:59:00 AM
Introduction I’ve been asked several times how I added the Tweet Button below to all of my FunnelWeb post. Here is a quick blog post detailing how I did it. Let’s do it. 1) Head over to Twiter.com and select the button that you want. 2) You will notice that it generates the following JS/HTML for you. Please note the line numbers listed above. 3) Copy #1 into your HTML Head section on your FunnelWeb Blog site. 4) Copy #2 into your \Views\Wiki\Page.cshtml into the appendHTML v ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 12/12/2011 4:04:00 AM
Silverlight 5 – The Final Version is here! Introduction On December the 9th, 2011, Microsoft released the final version of Silverlight 5. This release included many new features that I was looking forward to including: P/Invoke, XAML Binding Debugging and Implicit Data Templates. with this release came the Go-Live license. This meant that you can now publish Silverlight 5 application to production servers and get support! I am proud to see this release as I feel that I’ve been a par ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 11/25/2011 6:33:05 PM
My Lenovo ThinkPad's built-in screen maxes at 1366x768x32. I wanted to use that same resolution with Windows 8 Developer Preview inside of VirtualBox. So, what did I do? Downloaded the latest build of VirtualBox v4.1.6 (because it supports Windows 8 x64) Installed Windows 8 Developer Preview in VirtualBox as I did earlier this year. Installed Guest Additions. Ran the CustomVideoMode described in this blog post. …and quickly found out that I didn’t have the option to use 136 ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 11/18/2011 8:16:00 PM
I was recently running into a situation where every time I opened Visual Studio 2010 SP1, the following message would appear for about 60 seconds or so: "Loading toolbox content from package Microsoft.VisualStudio.IDE.Toolbox.ControlInstaller.ToolboxInstallerPackage '{2C98B35-07DA-45F1-96A3-BE55D91C8D7A}'" After finally get fed up with the issue, I started researching it and decided that I’d share the steps that I took to resolve it below: I first made a complete ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 11/14/2011 10:36:43 PM
On November 12th 2011, I gave a presentation at Chippewa Valley Code Camp titled, “Kinecting the Dots with the Kinect SDK”. As promised, here is the Slides / Code / Resources to my talk. (click image to download slides) The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich experiences by using Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect sensor technology on ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 11/14/2011 8:18:00 PM
On November 12th 2011, I gave a presentation at Chippewa Valley Code Camp titled, “Kinecting the Dots with the Kinect SDK”. As promised, here is the Slides / Code / Resources to my talk. (click image to download slides) The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich experiences by using Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect senso ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 10/31/2011 7:39:23 PM
Introduction I’m sure by now you have heard that the Kinect SDK has been released by Microsoft. I recently had a chance to Guest Blog for the Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog on “Getting the Most out of the Kinect SDK”. Now before we get started learning about it, let’s look at what it is: *Kinect for Xbox 360, or simply Kinect (originally known by the code name Project Natal),[8] is a motion sensing input device by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console. Based around a webcam-style ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 10/31/2011 7:24:00 PM
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 10/27/2011 7:27:00 PM
Introduction In case you missed it, I have a 10-part series on Silverlight 5 on SilverlightShow.net. In this extensive guide to Silverlight 5, I give a step-by-step introduction to Silverlight 5, and dives into the features most important to a Silverlight developer. You can check out the first 3 parts now and I will be adding a new one each week. The Roadmap for this Series I’ve included the Roadmap for the series below as you may want to visit other sections as you learn Sil ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 10/27/2011 5:43:51 PM
Introduction In case you missed it, I have a 10-part series on Silverlight 5 on SilverlightShow.net. In this extensive guide to Silverlight 5, I give a step-by-step introduction to Silverlight 5, and dives into the features most important to a Silverlight developer. You can check out the first 3 parts now and I will be adding a new one each week. The Roadmap for this Series I’ve included the Roadmap for the series below as you may want to visit other sections as you learn Silverli ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 10/12/2011 11:38:48 AM
Introduction We are all familiar with the Application Bars in Windows Phone 7… It can be achieved with a few lines of code as shown below: <phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar> <shell:ApplicationBar> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/icons/download.png" IsEnabled="True" /> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/icons/settings.png" IsEnabled="True" /> <shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems> <shell:Applicat ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 10/12/2011 1:26:41 AM
Hello Everyone, I thought I’d take a minute to update everyone on my upcoming talks and events that I will be attending. I have talks ranging from Kinect, Silverlight, HTML5 to OData! Wow, that’s a wide range of technology and I’m very passionate about everyone of them. Let’s get started. DevReach - October 17th through the 18th in Sofia, Bulgaria. I will not be speaking at this event only attending. I am very excited because this will be my first time visiting Bulgaria. I am lookin ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 10/11/2011 8:34:00 PM
Hello Everyone, I thought I’d take a minute to update everyone on my upcoming talks and events that I will be attending. I have talks ranging from Kinect, Silverlight, HTML5 to OData! Wow, that’s a wide range of technology and I’m very passionate about everyone of them. Let’s get started. DevReach - October 17th through the 18th in Sofia, Bulgaria. I will not be speaking at this event only attending. I am very excited because this will be my first time visiting Bulgaria. I am lo ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 9/29/2011 10:18:00 PM
Introduction Just the other day I blogged about “Enabling Frame Rate Counter for XAML Applications in Windows 8”. At the very end of that post, I reminded everyone that that method does not work for HTML / JS Metro Applications. But, we are in luck as Mathias Jourdain provided sample code for accomplishing this in HTML / JS in his Build talk. The only problem was that he didn’t describe how to hook this into a new application to actually use. That is going to be the focus of today’s blo ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/29/2011 11:04:14 AM
Introduction Just the other day I blogged about “Enabling Frame Rate Counter for XAML Applications in Windows 8”. At the very end of that post, I reminded everyone that that method does not work for HTML / JS Metro Applications. But, we are in luck as Mathias Jourdain provided sample code for accomplishing this in HTML / JS in his Build talk. The only problem was that he didn’t describe how to hook this into a new application to actually use. That is going to be the focus of today’s blog pos ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/23/2011 5:20:22 PM
I have been watching the influencer interviews with Richard Campbell as well as the Build Sessions recently published on Channel 9. Like most of you, I am trying to learn as much as I can about this new platform in the shortest amount of time. That is why I’m going to share my list of Killer Build Interviews and XAML Sessions. Note: Click on the image thumbnail to watch the video. First up, Interviews. Working at Telerik means that you get big influencers and great hosts at events lik ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 9/21/2011 10:24:00 PM
Introduction One of the things that we all look at before we ship software is the performance of our apps. Last November, I posted a quick and easy way to do it in Silverlight. Today, I am going to walk you through doing it in Windows 8 for your Metro XAML applications. After the Build event was over, I was interested in learning how to do this for my Windows 8 Metro Apps. I started watching videos from the Build RSS Feed and noticed this one from Tim Heuer that did just that. Let’s ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/21/2011 12:08:11 PM
Introduction One of the things that we all look at before we ship software is the performance of our apps. Last November, I posted a quick and easy way to do it in Silverlight. Today, I am going to walk you through doing it in Windows 8 for your Metro XAML applications. After the Build event was over, I was interested in learning how to do this for my Windows 8 Metro Apps. I started watching videos from the Build RSS Feed and noticed this one from Tim Heuer that did just that. Let’s get ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 9/20/2011 10:27:00 PM
Introduction I’m sure by now you have heard that the Silverlight 5 Release Candidate has been released. I recently had a chance to Guest Blog for the Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog on “Getting Started with the Silverlight 5 Release Candidate”. Now before we get started learning about it, let’s look at a few new features: What is new in the Silverlight 5? Multiple Window Support - Trusted app can create additional Windows. Ancestor RelativeSource Binding – Enables a DataTempla ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/20/2011 8:00:26 PM
Introduction I’m sure by now you have heard that the Silverlight 5 Release Candidate has been released. I recently had a chance to Guest Blog for the Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog on “Getting Started with the Silverlight 5 Release Candidate”. Now before we get started learning about it, let’s look at a few new features: What is new in the Silverlight 5? Multiple Window Support - Trusted app can create additional Windows. Ancestor RelativeSource Binding – Enables a DataTemplate to ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/15/2011 7:48:44 PM
Introduction The conference sessions are starting to appear on the Channel 9 RSS feeds right now. If you are like me then you probably want to download all of them and watch them later. Here is the method that I use to grab all the videos and thought that it would help others. Note: You can use either Juice or PowerShell (which is located at the bottom of this post). Let’s do this with Juice Navigate over to http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/ and select the option to Subs ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 9/15/2011 1:54:00 AM
I am like everyone else when it comes to Preview OS Software. I don’t want it on installed on my primary machine and I don’t want to lug around another laptop to try stuff. I am not a fan of booting of VHD (which I will explain in a second). Scott Hanselman made a great post on how to do this if you are interested however. The main issue that I see with this approach is that the bootloader on my MAIN MACHINE is replaced with the Windows 8 Preview one. Yikes! I don’t want any preview soft ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/14/2011 7:24:07 PM
I am like everyone else when it comes to Preview OS Software. I don’t want it on installed on my primary machine and I don’t want to lug around another laptop to try stuff. I am not a fan of booting of VHD (which I will explain in a second). Scott Hanselman made a great post on how to do this if you are interested however. The main issue that I see with this approach is that the bootloader on my MAIN MACHINE is replaced with the Windows 8 Preview one. Yikes! I don’t want any preview software ...
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 9/10/2011 1:52:00 AM
Introduction You might have noticed that the Silverlight 5 (Release Candidate) is out. One of the new features included in the RC is the ability to call P/Invoke. In this short demo, we will write a Silverlight 5 application that uses the feature. Tools needed: Visual Studio 2010 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1 is required to develop a Silverlight 5 RC Application. After you have installed VS2010 SP1 or Visual Web Developer Express 2010 SP1, then you will need to downlo ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/9/2011 11:44:14 AM
by Michael Crump via Michael Crump on 9/2/2011 1:51:00 AM
Today the release candidate of Microsoft’s Silverlight 5 was released to the public. If you want to know “What’s new in Silverlight 5” then check out this page on Silverlight.net and continue reading the article below. Getting Started First, we are going to need to download the required tools to install the Silverlight 5 RC. Before getting started, please note that you can install the Silverlight 5 RC on top of the final release of Silverlight 4. If you have the Silverlight 5 Beta insta ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 9/1/2011 9:47:14 PM
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 8/30/2011 11:03:59 AM
Introduction Have you ever wondered how to update the Application Tile in your Windows Phone 7 Mango application? Me too. But before we dig in, let’s look at the properties of a Tile. Microsoft defines each one as listed below: Title. A string indicating the title of the application. The Title must fit on a single line of text and should not be wider than the actual Tile. Approximately 15 characters will fit in the title before being truncated. BackgroundImage. An im ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 8/25/2011 11:47:51 AM
Introduction: One of the concerns that I keep hearing from customers is, “We can’t deploy Silverlight because it won’t run on a tablet.” I usually reply to that question stating, “What do you mean it can’t run on a tablet?” They usually looked puzzled and say, “You mean Silverlight *CAN* run on a tablet?” Yes, there are many devices that Silverlight can run on. Today we are going to take a look at the Motion CL900 Tablet. FYI: I have no affiliation with Motion Computing. Why this tabl ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 8/21/2011 12:38:55 PM
On August 19th 2011 I gave a presentation at devLINK titled, “Producing and Consuming OData in an Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Application”. As promised, here is the Slides / Code / Resources to my talk. Slides – The query slide in this deck was taken from a slide in Mike Taulty’s talk. This is the first time that I used Prezi in a talk and it worked out wonderful! I want to apologize in advance for embedding a flash player in my blog. It is all that Prezi supports at this time. =( ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 8/4/2011 12:00:33 PM
Introduction One of the things that I recently had someone show me was using the “Copy Xaml” feature in Expression Design to create HTML5 SVG Path Data. I later found out that this was demoed at MIX11 in a session called HTML5 for Silverlight Developers. So with that said, I don’t take credit for discovering this, just documenting it for others to use. If you want to see the final product then click here. Go ahead and right click on the page and you will see it’s just path data (no image – j ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 8/4/2011 12:57:32 AM
We are celebrating our 11th Silverlight Giveaway this month! Anyways, we will give away several great Silverlight products and have multiple winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: Telerik Silverlight Controls – Create stunning Silverlight solutions faster than ever before! Telerik Windows Phone 7 Controls – Create awesome WP7 Applications using these controls! Silverlight Spy – pro ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 7/28/2011 11:50:56 AM
Introduction I’m proud to announce my first eBook and update to my article series on OData for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 is complete. I have worked very hard on this series and am pleased with the work. I may be a little biased, but I believe this is the best step-by-step guide ever created for OData and Silverlight/WP7 Mango. In the series, I walk you through every step with detailed screenshot and code snippets. From creating the OData data service to consuming it in an Silverli ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 7/25/2011 11:47:48 AM
Continuing my “From Soup to Nuts” series or sometimes referred to as “The Busy Developers Guide” series, I will take a look at the Surface 2.0 SDK recently released by Microsoft. Before you read ahead, here are the other articles in this series: The Busy Developers Guide to the Kinect SDK Beta. The Busy Developers Guide to Mango. What is it? With the Microsoft® Surface® 2.0 SDK, you can easily create applications to take advantage of the next generation Surface computing device or any ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 7/11/2011 11:16:50 AM
Introduction One of the features that I’m surprised to see hardly no one talk about is “Communication Between Local Silverlight-Based Applications”. This is not new to Silverlight as it has been around since Silverlight 3. In other words, this will allow you to have two Silverlight applications running on the same PC talk to one another without using Web Services, etc. I originally was looking into this for a pet project that I was going to use with Kinect, but found this very valuable and ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 7/10/2011 6:08:19 PM
We are celebrating our 10th Silverlight Giveaway this month! Anyways, we will give away several great Silverlight products and have multiple winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: Mindscape LightSpeed 4– Blazingly fast .NET domain modeling & persistence Mindscape Silverlight Elements - Create stunning Silverlight solutions faster than ever before! Silverlight Spy – provides a lic ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 7/6/2011 10:28:10 AM
I found out last night that I have been awarded with the Microsoft MVP Award for my contribution to the Silverlight community. It is a honor, a privilege and one of the biggest moments in my professional life. I cannot tell you how excited that I am to be acknowledged by Microsoft for doing something that I love. According to Microsoft, this award is given by Microsoft to outstanding members of Microsoft's technical communities based on contributions made during the previous 12 months to o ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 7/4/2011 2:10:57 PM
Introduction The official Kinect SDK has been out for a while now and I haven’t seen many people actually doing “how-to” post to get others started developing for it. I decided that I would help kick-start the movement by creating a series called, “Kinecting the Dots”. This is going to be a series of blog posts covering questions or concerns that I’ve seen in the community. I am planning on answering questions so if you have one that you want answered then please contact me by using the for ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 6/21/2011 11:40:16 AM
I’ve been playing with the Kinect SDK Beta for the past few days and have noticed a few projects on CodePlex worth checking out. I decided to blog about them to help spread awareness. If you want to learn more about Kinect SDK then you check out my”Busy Developer’s Guide to the Kinect SDK Beta”. Let’s get started: KinectContrib is a set of VS2010 Templates that will help you get started building a Kinect project very quickly. Once you have it installed you will have the option to select ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 6/20/2011 6:28:49 PM
Introduction In the second part of my “Game-changing Features” series, I investigated how to create multiple windows in a trusted Silverlight 5 application. Now, it is time to explore another set of features: SoundEffect Class for Low-Latency, Supporting Double- and Triple-Mouse Clicks and Linked Text Containers. If you followed my previous tutorial, then you should be ready to get started. The full source code for all three of the projects will be available as a separate download with this ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 6/17/2011 11:34:50 AM
The Kinect is awesome. From day one, I’ve said this thing has got potential. After playing with several open-source Kinect projects, I am please to announce that Microsoft has released the official SDK beta on 6/16/2011. I’ve created this quick start guide to get you up to speed in no time flat. Let’s begin: What is it? The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a starter kit for applications developers that includes APIs, sample code, and drivers. This SDK enables the academic research and enth ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 6/8/2011 11:31:43 AM
I wanted to get familiar with SharePoint 2010 because I have noticed how the market is starting to demand it. Also, most of the SharePoint 2010 guides on the net are outdated. They show everything from registry hacks/editing xml files to installing hot fixes/service packs. My guide uses the latest bits as of 6/7/11 to create a SharePoint 2010 server inside of an Virtual Machine. This will be more than enough to begin creating Silverlight Web Parts inside of SharePoint 2010. NOTE: I did not wan ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 6/5/2011 11:29:37 PM
As promised, here is a link to all of the applications from my session at CodeStock 2011: Entity Framework Profiler Studio Styles Reflector Telerik JustDecompile Beta dotfuscator CodePaste.NET Silverlight Spy WP7 Desktop Marketplace LINQPad Snippet Manager Browser Shots Snagit 10 7-Zip File Manager Code Converter CPU-Z Notepad2 SSDlife Free Regular Expression Library DLL-files.com Microsoft Web Platform Installer Visu ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 6/5/2011 9:40:01 PM
(A picture that I took on 6/3/2011 waiting for the keynote by Charles Petzold to begin at the Bijou Theater in Knoxville, TN) Day One (Thursday Night) I headed out on Thursday morning with my friend Daniel Heisler for CodeStock. We were driving from Birmingham, Alabama so it was going to take us about 4.5 hours to get in. After stopping a few times, we finally arrived at the Knoxville Hilton. After checking into our rooms, we met Rafe Kemmis and Spede Bryan in the lobby and headed over to Ba ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 5/13/2011 7:12:13 PM
Introduction In the first part of the “Game-changing Features in the Silverlight 5 Beta,” I investigated how to debug XAML in Silverlight 5. Now, it is time to explore another feature called Multiple Window Support, where I will review its abilities within a Silverlight 5 application. If you followed my previous tutorial, then you should be ready to get started. The full source code for the project is available as a separate download with this article. The full article is hosted on SSWUG an ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 5/11/2011 6:04:41 PM
Michael’s “Mega Collection of Silverlight 5 Beta” Demos I’ve decided that today I would release a set of Demos for the Silverlight 5 Beta to help the community get up to speed quickly with the new features. In order to make the Silverlight 5 developer-base grow I will be creating demos of every feature as it is available. Here is my first set of contributions to make this happen. To download all the demos in one file then click here. For separate downloads then click below. Please note: ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 5/6/2011 9:49:06 PM
Introduction Now that the MIX 11 conference is over and we have heard the news of the Silverlight 5 Beta being released, it’s time to explore some of the new features. If you followed my previous tutorial, then you should be ready to get started. In this piece, I am going to provide information about one of the most important and game-changing features in the Silverlight 5 Beta. - XAML Debugging. In my opinion, this is one of the most important features in the Silverlight 5 beta. In a futur ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 5/6/2011 12:37:03 PM
I had a blog reader ask me this question: I see the INotifyPropertyChanged in demos all of the time, most of the time it is in a huge MVVM project and I cannot wrap my head around why it is important and why should I use it. Can you create a simple demo that shows off the feature? I looked around on the net but couldn’t find something simple. I decided to write a quick demo and hopefully it helps clear things up. If you want to go ahead and grab the source code then it is provided here. (Ple ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 5/4/2011 8:24:53 PM
I just finished delivering 4 sessions for www.sswug.org at the end of April 2011. Above is a screenshot that was taken inside of the studio. Now, I am going to do a webinar on Silverlight 5 then head to Knoxville, TN and finally Chattanooga, TN. Keep reading for details on the events: SilverlightShow.net Webinar on “Getting started with the Silverlight 5 Beta.” Wed, May 11th, 10 am PST (check your local time) Register for this webinar This webinar is designed for people who want to q ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/27/2011 3:56:59 PM
Intro I’m sure by now you have heard that the Silverlight 5 Beta has been released. I recently had a chance to Guest Blog for SSWUG on “Getting Started with the Silverlight 5 Beta” Now before we get started learning about it, let’s look at a few new features: What is new in the Silverlight 5 Beta? Multiple Window Support - Trusted app can create additional Windows. Ancestor RelativeSource Binding – Enables a DataTemplate to bind to a property on the control that contains it. Implic ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/25/2011 2:06:43 PM
The list provided below is my “Best-Of” FREE Frameworks, Tools and Controls for Windows Phone 7. I have used everything listed below in an my WP7 applications. Most of them are in the marketplace at this point and some are still in development. Let’s get started. If you are developing WP7 Applications, this is one that you have probably heard of already. It is Microsoft’s official set of controls that comes complete with full source code of course. Project Description: Welcome to the Si ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/19/2011 3:45:00 PM
I’ve recently had the requirement to allow my user to choose between two items in my Windows Phone 7 application. The first way that I thought of tackling this was using the standard MessageBox.Show that is included with the System.Windows class and seeing if the enum provided a way to allow custom text. Unfortunately, it did not. As you can see from the image above, it only includes an OK and an OKCancel. If we run this application, then we get the following: Kinda boring and doesn’t allow an ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/13/2011 8:33:36 PM
After the excellent Azure news from MIX 11 yesterday, I thought now would be the best time to release a brand new article about how you can get started with Azure and Windows Phone 7. Intro I’m sure by now you have heard of Windows Azure. Now before we get started learning about it, let’s take a look at the definition: The Windows Azure Platform[2] is a Microsoft cloud platform used to build, host and scale web applications through Microsoft datacenters. Windows Azure Platform is thus class ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/13/2011 7:53:04 PM
Since my blog is mainly about Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone 7, I decided that I’d make a recap of today’s MIX 11 Event for those of you who missed it. I only included things that I thought were big enough to mention to not waste any time. Of course, you can check out the keynote yourself by visiting the MIX Site. MIX11 Day 2 – Windows Phone 7 – “Mango” update coming shortly. Microsoft showed a fan-made video that if enough people like it Microsoft will make it a Television commercial ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/11/2011 3:36:04 PM
I released my second Windows Phone 7 application on March 23rd, 2011. It was called FullScreen Browser. It was a web browser that I had originally created for myself as I mentioned on the WP7 Dev Podcast. I decided to submit it to the marketplace and see if other people found it useful. The app was not polished at all and to be honest it should have had “Beta” on it. The biggest complaint was no backwards and forwards buttons on the browser. Other things that people complained about was that th ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/5/2011 2:20:39 PM
Full Disclaimer: Since I am on the GeeksWithBlog.NET Influencer list, I was issued a free 1-year subscription to DiscountASP.NET TFS2010 remote hosting. With that said, the thoughts/opinions located below are my own. I’ve always like Team Foundation Server. The main thing that I’ve hated about it was installing/maintaining it. I’d rather spend that time learning more about things such as Silverlight/WPF/WP7. I really didn’t know what to expect as we use another source control at work and I’ve n ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/5/2011 1:45:05 PM
This article is Part 3 of the series “Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 application.” You can read any of the parts you may have missed by clicking on the links below. Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 application. (Part 1) – Creating our first OData Data Source and querying data through the web browser and LinqPad. Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 application. (Part 2 ) – Consuming OData ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 4/1/2011 2:15:19 PM
GIVEAWAY OVER! CHECK BELOW TO SEE WHO WON! This month, we will give away 7 great Silverlight products and have 10 different winners (Telerik is giving away 3 license). This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: Actipro Silverlight Studio 2011.1 – Brand new and offers unique controls that you should check out. IdeaBlade DevForce Universal – It’s time to replace WCF RIA Services with something much ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/28/2011 2:36:03 PM
This article is Part 2 of the series “Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 application.” Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 application. (Part 1) – Creating our first OData Data Source and querying data through the web browser and LinqPad. Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 application. (Part 2 ) – Consuming OData in a Silverlight Application. Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight a ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/24/2011 1:55:31 PM
I have started a new series on SilverlightShow.net called Producing and Consuming OData in a Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 application. I decided that I wanted to create a very simple and easy to understand article that not only guides you step-by-step but includes a video and full source code. I personally believe this is the best way to teach someone something and I hope you enjoy the series. I also want to thank SilverlightShow for giving me this opportunity to help other developers get up ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/22/2011 11:51:58 AM
I have always been interested in learning which features of my application users are using as well as if they are using it. I have done this with other applications by using my own “home-grown” version of web services, etc. Since I have been working a lot with Windows Phone 7 lately, I decided to learn how to do this and share with the community. Before you get started you will be pleased to know that you won’t have to spend any money *at least until 2012* to do this with your existing phone ap ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/16/2011 11:46:03 AM
One thing that I’ve noticed in several apps in the Windows Phone 7 marketplace is the ad chopping off on the right hand side. I decided that my next Windows Phone 7 app will be ad supported so why not sign up for the Advertising SDK and investigate this issue. *Note: If you want to see this in an actual app then download the free app called “Road Rage”. So here is an example of what I am talking about: You will notice that the right hand side of the AD is chopped off using the default ad b ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/11/2011 2:42:08 PM
Introduction Now that the dust has settled and everyone has downloaded and installed Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1, its time to talk about a new feature included that will help Silverlight Developers profile their applications. Let’s take a look at what the official documentation says about it: Performance Wizard for Silverlight – taken from VS2010 SP1 KB. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 enables you to tune the Silverlight application performance by profiling the code. A traditional code profil ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/8/2011 12:56:46 PM
I recently heard that Mindscape HQ had released the Windows Phone 7 Controls and had to take a look at them. 100 FREE LICENSE GIVEAWAY! Before we get to the screenshots, you will be pleased to learn that my usergroup called “Allaboutxaml” has partnered with Mindscape HQ and are giving away 100 license. You can check out the site here to get your free controls. But please hurry as after the 100 are gone then I will not have any more to give away! A few links to read first: The of ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 3/1/2011 12:27:49 PM
Oh my, have we grown! Maybe I should change the name to Multiple Silverlight Giveaways. So far, my Silverlight giveaways have been such a success that I’m going to be able to give away more than one Silverlight product every month. Last month, we gave away 3 great products. 1) ComponentOne Silverlight Controls 2) ComponentOne XAP Optimizer (with obfuscation) and 3) Silverlight Spy. This month, we will give away 4 great Silverlight products and have 4 different winners. This way the Silverlight ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 2/22/2011 1:07:45 PM
One of the biggest problems that I’ve seen with people creating WP7 applications is how do you bind the application bar to a Relay Command. If your using MVVM then this is particular important. Let’s examine the code that one might add to start with. <phone:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar> <shell:ApplicationBar IsVisible="True" IsMenuEnabled="True"> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton x:Name="appbar_button1" IconUri="/icons/appbar.questionmark.rest.png" Text="About" ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 2/14/2011 12:32:23 PM
I’m a big believer in having a hobby project as you can probably tell from the first sentence in my “personal webpage using Silverlight” article. One of my current hobby projects is to re-do my current WP7 application in the marketplace. I knew up front that I needed a “Loading” animation and a better “About” box. After starting to develop my own, I noticed a great set of WP7 controls by Coding4Fun and decided to use them in my new application. Before I go any further they are FREE and Open-So ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 2/10/2011 1:21:29 PM
This short list is what I consider to be the “cream-of-the-crop” in developer conferences. This is also a list of the conferences that I plan on attending in 2011. If you feel your conference is just as good, then shoot me an email at [michael[at]michaelcrump[dot]net, and if possible I will check it out. In-Person Event Las Vegas on April 18th-22nd, 2011 Redmond on October 17th-21st, 2011 Orlando on December 5th-9th, 2011 Visual Studio Live – I attended this event in November o ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 2/7/2011 4:16:49 PM
I’m pleased to announce that a new XAML-Based User Group has started in Birmingham, Alabama. The group is being hosted by Michael Crump and Jonathan Marbutt. The reason is very simple: we feel that Birmingham needs a fresh start. We are both very passionate about .NET and are hoping to share our experiences with the community. We have created a site (http://allaboutxaml.net) and our first meetup is now scheduled. We are here to discuss all things that have to do with xaml. This includes Silverli ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 2/3/2011 12:28:21 PM
I recently acquired a Samsung Focus Windows Phone 7 device from AT&T and wanted to share what I thought of it as an end-user. Before I get started, here are several of my write-ups for the Windows Phone 7. You may want to check out the second article titled: Hands-on WP7 Review of Prototype Hardware. From start to finish with the final version of Visual Studio Tools for Windows Phone 7 Hands-on : Windows Phone 7 Review on Prototype Hardware. Deploying your Windows Phone 7 Applicat ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 2/1/2011 12:24:57 PM
ComponentOne has several great products that target Silverlight Developers. One of them is their Silverlight Controls and the other is the XAP Optimizer. I decided that I would check out the controls and Xap Optimizer and feature them on my blog. After talking with ComponentOne, they agreed to take part in my Monthly Silverlight giveaway. The details are listed below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/27/2011 11:33:35 AM
I’ve always believed that as a developer you should always have a hobby project going on. I think a hobby project needs to contain at least one of following things: Something that you have never done before. Something that you are interested in. Something that you can work on in your spare time without affecting your *paying* job. I decided my hobby project would be an entire web application written in Silverlight that could be used as a self-promotion/marketing tool. This goal o ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/21/2011 1:22:12 PM
The answer is surprisingly no. It is time to end the myth that when hosting a Silverlight application, it has to end in .XAP. Let’s look at a sample Silverlight project first. When you create a new Silverlight Project and inspect the ClientBin folder, you will see that the filename ends in .XAP. What do you think would happen if we renamed this file to .zip and updated our hosting page to look like the following? <div id="silverlightControlHost"> <object data="data:applicat ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/20/2011 1:45:46 PM
I will be presenting several sessions on Silverlight 4 at the SSWUG V-Conference on April 20th through April 22nd. The sessions include: 15 Things I learned about Silverlight. Description: This session is great for an audience that has never worked with Silverlight. It describes my real-world experience developing for Silverlight 4. It should help the audience avoid some of the beginner mistakes with working with Silverlight. Tools and Utilities for the .NET Developer (based off ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/17/2011 12:34:42 PM
Silverlight is a great product right off the shelf. I use it, love it and spend a lot of time helping the community understand it. This however, doesn’t mean that I don’t think that it can get better. If I were invited to a Microsoft Focus Group about Silverlight here is 10 things I would say: We need more navigation templates. I’ve found (4) templates that Microsoft has released (Cosmo, Windows 7, Accent and JetPack). This number needs to be around 16. In order to get more ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/12/2011 1:21:22 PM
UPDATE: 1/28/11: First Floor Software has agreed to give away a copy of Silverlight Spy *EVERY* month. You can check out Silverlight Spy right now site at http://firstfloorsoftware.com/silverlightspy/download-silverlight-spy/. I've been working with different companies to give away a set of Silverlight controls to my blog readers for the past few months. I’ve decided to setup this page and a friendly URL for everyone to keep track of my monthly giveaway. The URL to bookmark is: http://giveaw ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/11/2011 4:56:03 PM
I had a reader email me the following question: “How do you create Speech Bubbles in Silverlight/WPF without adding any extra .dlls? Right off the bat, I know at least two ways to create the speech bubbles that look just like the ones in comic books. Using the Callout Shapes included with Blend 4. Using the free 3rd party control named FreeBubbles (I used this before Blend 4). Unfortunately, we cannot use either of these as they will both add extra .dll’s to the project. ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/6/2011 3:49:26 PM
If you work with Silverlight daily then you have run into this problem. Your XAP file has been cached in your browser and you have to empty your browser cache to resolve it. If your using Google Chrome then you typically do the following: Go to Options –> Clear Browsing History –> Empty the Cache and finally click Clear Browsing data. As you can see, this is a lot of unnecessary steps. It is even worse when you have a customer that says, “I can’t see the new features you just impleme ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/4/2011 2:55:21 PM
I hate re-writing code. I also hate it when I find a great code snippet on the web and forget to bookmark it or it gets lost in my endless sea of bookmarks. So what do you do to get around this? This is the question that I was asking myself at the end of 2010. How can I get my Silverlight code organized? My requirements for a snippet manager were: Needs to be FREE. An easy way to view XAML/C# code behind together in one “view”. I wanted the ability to store the code snippets in clo ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 1/3/2011 5:07:42 PM
Silverlight/Expression 4 Books! I recently stumbled upon a post asking, “What is the best book on Silverlight 4?” In the age of the internet, it can be hard for anyone searching for a good book to actually find it. I have read a few Silverlight 4/Expression books in 2010 and decided to post the “best of” collection. Instead of reading multiple books, you can cut your list down to whatever category that you fit in. With Silverlight 5 coming soon, now is the time to get up to speed with what Si ...
by mbcrump via Michael Crump on 12/24/2010 1:59:03 PM
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 I wanted to create a series of blog post that gets right to the point and is aimed specifically at Silverlight Developers. The most important things I want this series to answer is : What is it? Why do I care? How do I do it? I hope that you enjoy this series. Let’s get started: Tip/Trick #16) What is it? Find out version information about Silverlight and which WebKit it is using by going to http://issilverlightinstalled.com/scriptverify/. Why do ...
The content of the postings is owned by the respective author. Silverlight Feeds is not responsible for the contents of the postings. This site is automatically generated and cannot be reviewed for abusive content. If you find abusive content on Silverlight Feeds, please contact us. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
