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Monthly Archives: June 2007

  • Updates to Silverlight 1.1 Balloons

    I made a few quick updates to the Silverlight 1.1a Balloons example this weekend, and put the new version at a separate URL for comparison purposes.I tested to see if object creation was the performance problem. It wasn't. I tested by reusing existing objects.I removed the PNG animation (clouds) to reduce some of the CPU usageI added the requested "pop" functionality. I didn't...

  • POKE 53280,0

    I was doing more work in Silverlight today (the application launches next week!) and it got me to thinking about the ease of animation.The first computer I really fell in love with was the Commodore 64 at my Jr High School. Back in sixth grade (1983 for those keeping count), the school had several Commodore VIC 20s, several Commodore 64s and several DEC VT Robins. I recall seeing a Pl...

  • Non-Generic Collections to be Removed From Silverlight 1.1

    Luckily the interfaces are still left in. They were marked obsolete, but I had some binding scenarious with my home-made drop-down list box (for the current project) that just didn't work without IList, as I didn't know <T>Here's the list of what is being removed. Note that a couple generic collection types are going away too.Thanks to Frank for pointing this one out...

  • More on Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Animation Performance

    I was concerned about the performance of Silverlight animation as uncovered in my balloons example. I did a couple more tests on my own PC.Running as is with balloons and clouds: iexplore.exe uses about 65-75% CPU on my P4 PC (99% on my wife's AMD laptop)Removing the balloons and balloon creation loop, leaving only the fixed xaml-based cloud animation: about 55% CPU usageRemoving all animat...

  • SharePoint 2003 Image Viewer Webpart written in Silverlight

    Simon put together an ImageViewer web part in Silverlight. While this is for SP 2003, the concepts, if not the code, can be ported to SP 2007.More information at Simon Tocker's site.

  • Silverlight 1.1 Balloons

    I had to try out some code-based animation and dynamic controls tonight without messing up my much larger solution.As it happens, my son absolutely loves balloons (beyond loves: he's obsessed - "balloon" was his first word outside of mama dada; I don't know if all 1 1/2 year olds are into them as much as him), especially this one site - pogo poppit - that has balloon...

  • Moonlight: Silverlight on Mono

    Thanks to Tom McKearney for pointing this one out to meMoonlight: Silverlight implemented on Mono in 21 daysThe cross-platform story for Silverlight just got a bit more compelling!

  • Have a Wishlist for Expression Design?

    I really like Expression design. Having used it for a bit (including the ugly old pre-WPF interface), and most recently for Silverlight work, I've found some areas that could use improvement.Do you also have a wishlist for Expression design? If so, post it over on Rob Relyea's blog. Here's mine (also posted there):When you use "copy xaml" have it copy hidden layers, but se...

  • World Tag RFID Tags on a Building?

    I was taking my son to go see the ducks in a pond in the Waugh Chapel Shopping Center in Odenton, MD a week back. When walking back, I passed by a store that has a daycare in the back. On the outside wall, at two points near eye-level (one near the corner, one near the center of the wall), were two World Tag RFID tags, each about the size of a quarter.Does anyone know what these would be u...

  • Fix to Inherit from Silverlight Sample Controls

    (I posted this in the Silverlight Programming with .NET forum)FYI. I ran into this problem tonight, and thought I'd post the solution here.I am using sample controls in the SDK. In my solution, I have kept the 1.1 SDK example in its own project, as it is shipped, and I reference it from my main project.In the Silverlight SDK Controls examples, there is a class named ControlBase. In my main ...

  • Debugging XAML Errors with Silverlight

    When programming in silverlight 1.1 in Orcas, you'll often find an exception being tossed by the InitializeFromXaml method of controls. In our case, since all the logical pages except for the root are implement as controls, this happens quite a bit.Unfortuantely, the debugging information isn't very helpful. If you bungled something in the XAML, you'll get an AG_E_PARSER_xxxx e...

  • Make Silverlight Control Transparent

    It's not immediately obvious how to make the background of your Silverlight control (1.1 in this case) transparent. The way to do it is to modify the "createSilverlight" function in page.extension.js (like Default.aspx.js) to set the background to a transparent color and the isWindowless property to true. You'll then be able to see through your Silverlight control to the page ...

  • What Happened to Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke?

     I hate it when I get addicted to something and then everyone stops carrying it. I can't find this stuff anywhere anymore. Instead all I see is the usual suspects and coke with vitamins. Who the heck drinks Coke for the vitamins? When I drink Coke I want something that tastes good, gives me some caffeine, and rots my brain a bit (or teeth if you drink the regular stuff), certainly not ...

  • Get Blend and Orcas to Play Nice

    We're working on a Silverlight project, and have run into problems with Blend and Orcas stepping all over the project file. To help solve this problem, the Microsoft Expression Team has released this utility. It's a quick configuration to get Blend to work with either the VS 2005 projects or Orcas projects.On a related note, you can get the Silverlight project templates for Orcas here. ...

  • Server Rack Photos and Technical Information

    In a previous post, I mentioned that I had won an APC Netshelter server rack on eBay. I just put in a dedicated 20amp circuit to power the computers on this rack. So far, 20amps seems to be more than enough. If not, it's easy to run another as the rack is in the same room as the main panel.Here are two photos (click for larger versions) of the rack loaded with the current equipment:&nb...