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Monthly Archives:

  • Dealing with the “Project file must include the .NET Framework assembly …” Error

    I was adding a splash screen to my Silverlight project and ran into a sudden compile problem with the ASP.NET web site. The compile error was: Project file must include the .NET Framework assembly 'WindowsBase, PresentationCore, PresentationFramework' in the reference list. I verified that the loose Silverlight xaml file was set to just content, with no build action. However, I kept getting t...

    Published Tuesday, December 23, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 14 comments

  • 2009 Goals

    We’re coming up to the end of the year, and for the first time in a very long time, I decided to set some real personal goals for myself for 2009 (outside of the usual eat better, lose weight, spend less, save more type goals) I’ve always been pretty good about keeping up with technologies and products that interest me. I’ve been an early adopter of things like Silverlight, Expression Blend/De...

    Published Thursday, December 18, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 3 comments

  • Pie Chart Styling in the Silverlight Toolkit - Cross-Slice Gradients

    First, hats off to Mehdi for digging up the root solution to this and to Jafar Husain for bringing it to my attention.The default styles for the charts in Silverlight look pretty good. However, one thing that was driving me nuts is the way the gradients are per-slice in the pie chart. Because of that, you end up with some really odd highlighting effects: It doesn’t look bad, but it’...

    Published Thursday, December 4, 2008 | Tagged: , | 3 comments

  • What’s Wrong with this Dialog?

    There’s a glaring issue with this dialog from the Amazon MP3 Downloader. What is it? For comparison, here’s another dialog in Windows And a third I won’t fault you if you don’t happen to see the problem. In fact, you really need to have the mouse in your hand before your muscle memory points out the issue.

    Published Thursday, November 20, 2008 | Tagged: | 23 comments

  • When Will the Floppy Disk Die as a Save Icon?

    I was snagging some icons to go into a comp of a Silverlight LOB application today when I realized that some of the metaphors used in the software we're refacing (Silverlight front-end to an existing LOB application), just don't hold anymore. While it is instantly recognized by folks who have been with computers for a while, I think the 3 1/2" floppy save icon needs to die. Back wh...

    Published Tuesday, November 18, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 47 comments

  • MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) – Washington DC

    Jan 16, 2009 - Save the date! I’ll be speaking at the Washington DC stop of the MSDN Developer Conference on January 16, 2009. The topic is Building Business-Focused Applications Using Silverlight 2 Building Business-Focused Applications Using Silverlight 2 What if you could develop your solutions with the ease pioneered by Microsoft Office Access, deploy them like an Internet applica...

    Published Monday, November 17, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • Wishy Washy

    From OWA spell-check dialog:

    Published Thursday, November 13, 2008 | Tagged: | 1 comment

  • My Top 20 All-Time Favorite Computer and Console Games

    Just for grins, I thought it would be fun to put together a list of the games I found most enjoyable or memorable. It should be 20, but at the end count, it was only 19. :) I haven't had a chance to play any games in a few years (coincidentally around the time we started renovating the house and then the birth of our first child), so there's no Halo or anything else recent on this lis...

    Published Tuesday, November 11, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 10 comments

  • More (and Better) Detail on Styling Silverlight Charts

    Shortly after the release of the first rev of the Silverlight Toolkit  I made a first attempt at styling the chart controls included in the release. Shawn Burke just turned me on to this excellent article and flowchart from a member of his team, Mehdi Slaoui Andaloussi. Mehdi went through the same process and put together some real guidance on styling up the charts. While styling will a...

    Published Monday, November 10, 2008 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Facebook Developer Toolkit 2.0 and Starter Kit Released

    The Facebook Developer Toolkit has hit an important milestone: 2.0 RTW. I’m upgrading the MSDN East Coast News Silverlight application to this version this weekend, so we’ll see how complete it is this time :) In addition, Steve’s Facebook Developer Toolkit Starter Kit has been upgraded to the 2.0 RTW release. Download the starter kit here. The combination of the two above remove a lot of the...

    Published Saturday, November 8, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 2 comments

  • Styling the Charts in the Silverlight Toolkit

    In a previous post, I introduced the Chart control from the Silverlight Toolkit. In this post, let’s cover how to make the charts look more interesting. First, we’re going to create a simple label/value class to hold the data for the chart. In the previous example, we just used a collection of doubles, but that didn’t provide any labels. namespace PeteBrown.SilverlightToolkitExamples { ...

    Published Friday, October 31, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 11 comments

  • Silverlight Toolkit (Silverlight 2 Control Pack) - Charting

    The Silverlight Toolkit is now available! Here’s a rundown of what’s included:Chart TreeView AutoCompleteBox DockPanel WrapPanel Label Expander HeaderedItemControl HeaderedContentControl NumericUpDown ViewBox ButtonSpinner ImplicitStyleManager (Yay!)Theming All of this goodness is contained in just in three libraries all named Microsoft.Windows.Controls.*Let’s dig into the cha...

    Published Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | Tagged: , | 5 comments

  • The Next Killer Silverlight Application

    I’m watching the PDC keynote via Silverlight, and keeping up with the backchannel on Twitter. Given the comments about azure screens of death, robotic speakers, red shoes, dart-throwing motions, and seasickness, I can’t help but think that this might be the next killer Silverlight application: Ok, who’s going to build it?

    Published Monday, October 27, 2008 | Tagged: , | 1 comment

  • TechDays DC This Week - AJAX, Silverlight, REST, WCF, MVC and More

    For those of you not going to the PDC, be sure to join us at TechDays at the Sheraton National Hotel in  in Arlington, VA next week. This is a pretty big event with lots of great content. Oct. 28th – WebDev Fundamentals – Moving Beyond ASP.NET Topic 1: Introduction to ASP.NET AJAX Topic 2: Introduction to Silverlight 2 Topic 3: Servers and Services for Web Developers Oct. 29th – ...

    Published Monday, October 27, 2008 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • Emoticon for Drivers

    When I was in high school a million years ago, I made a red light-up middle finger out of a box, some red cellophane, two long wires and the bulb from the cabin light in my car. I attached the wires to the overhead light in my seafoam green 1980 Honda Accord and had the finder in the back window. I used the switch to turn it on or off. It seemed cool at the time… ;) Now there’s a much less off...

    Published Wednesday, October 22, 2008 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • MSDN geekSpeak October 22 : Silverlight and Facebook

    Be sure to join me, Glen Gordon and Andrew Duthie on October 22 for our MSDN geekSpeak. We’ll be covering building facebook applications using Silverlight 2. Title:  MSDN Webcast: geekSpeak: Silverlight and Facebook with Pete Brown (Level 200) Presenter:  Pete Brown Webcast Length:  60 minutes Date/Time:  10/22/2008 12:00:00 PM PACIFIC Registration Link If y...

    Published Friday, October 17, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 2 comments

  • How to Build Facebook Applications with Silverlight 2 RTW – Part 2 of 2

    In Part 1, we created a Facebook application using ASP.NET. Now, in Part 2, we’ll cover how to add Silverlight into the mix. I’ll assume you have the Part 1 solution working. If not, go to that blog post and download the project files linked at the end of the post. Install the Silverlight 2 Developer Tools If you haven’t done so already, install the Silverlight 2 Developer tools from Silverli...

    Published Thursday, October 16, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 31 comments

  • How to Build Facebook Applications with Silverlight 2 RTW – Part 1 of 2

    I’m about to embark on some very different Silverlight application development projects (primary around data-driven UI, and one potential one even about kiosk/digital sign work). Before I do that, I wanted to give you all a brain-dump primer from my last project – MSDN East Coast News. MSDN East Coast News is a Silverlight 2 application which runs inside the Facebook chrome, ergo a two-parter ...

    Published Thursday, October 16, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 23 comments

  • Welcome Silverlight 2 RTW!

    This is the second birth I’ve been privileged to witness this month, and if I made any more comparison than that, my wife would surely kill me ;)As of October 14, Silverlight 2 has now hit that most important of milestones: RTW (or RTM if you would rather picture conveyor belts full of CDs and boxes). Expect to see downloads live sometime in the morning.Existing end users will be automati...

    Published Monday, October 13, 2008 | Tagged: , | 5 comments

  • Welcome Abigail

    Here is one that was worth waiting for :) Abigail Noelle Brown, born October 4, 2008 1:14am. 8lbs 12 3/4oz, 22” long. Due date was September 24, so we were waiting a little longer than expected. At 4” taller than Ben when he was born, I sense she’s going to catch up to him quick and give her big brother a run for his money. heh. Mom is doing well, exhausted of course, but fine otherwise. ...

    Published Sunday, October 5, 2008 | Tagged: | 15 comments

  • 3d Rendering with Texture Mapping in Silverlight - Quake

    I’d love to dig into the code and see what he’s doing to get that kind of FPS. The key part of the pipeline to understand would be the creation of the per-frame bitmaps and the subsequent blitting on the screen. I’ve seen dynamic PNG creation, but that seemed like it would be a little too slow for something like this, even at the relatively low resolution demonstrated. Maybe not! Quake in S...

    Published Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Book Review: Manning’s Silverlight 2 in Action – Chad Campbell and John Stockton

    This has been a crazy summer, but since our daughter has decided not to show up on her due date (which was September 24). I finally got some time to sit down and read a pre-release of Manning’s Silverlight 2 in Action. I know the two authors who wrote this, and while John and I have had beer and burgers up in Bellevue, Chad and I have yet to meet up offline. So if I have to pick on someone, it ...

    Published Monday, September 29, 2008 | Tagged: , | 2 comments