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Monthly Archives: November 2008

  • 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.

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • Wishy Washy

    From OWA spell-check dialog:

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...