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Monthly Archives: January 2009

  • My Favorite MIX09 10k Challenge Entries

    A few other folks (like Tim Sneath and Shine Draw) have put up their lists of favorite MIX09 10k entries, so I thought I’d do the same. There’s some amazing work there, and all in 10k of source code (not 10k compiled, 10k of source). Of course, if you like byte-budgeted contests, you should check out some of the assembly demos folks do in 8, 16 and 64k. Awesome stuff.So here are my ...

    Published Thursday, January 29, 2009 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • CapArea.NET Silverlight SIG Meeting Postponed

    Tonight’s inaugural meeting of the CapArea.NET Silverlight SIG has been postponed to Feb 25, 2009 due to icy weather.

    Published Wednesday, January 28, 2009 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Importing and Exporting Custom Toolboxes in Visual Studio 2008

    For complex quickly-paced demos, I like to drag code and markup from the toolbox directly into the code editor. I’ve seen folks use external tools, notepad, pre-populated files with commented-out code etc. However, I find this works best as I can also use it to prompt me for the next steps. For the folks that saw my MDC or DevDinner Silverlight Business Applications Futures talks, this is how I...

    Published Tuesday, January 27, 2009 | Tagged: , , , , | Leave comment

  • Expression Newsletter - Silverlight Toolkit Charting Article

    The Expression Newsletter is out. In the current issue, you’ll find my article about styling charts in the Silverlight Toolkit. I learned a lot while writing that article, and I hope you learn a lot from reading it. As promised, here’s the follow-up article on using overlays. I’m looking forward to seeing some cool data visualization in Silverlight 2!

    Published Tuesday, January 20, 2009 | Tagged: , , , | 3 comments

  • INETA Speaker

    I'm proud to announce that I have been recently selected as an INETA North America Speakers Bureau member. INETA has fewer than 100 speakers that cover the North America region, and I'm honored and humbled to be included in a group that includes some really impressive speakers and well-known names. If you run a user group and are looking for someone to speak on Silverlight or cover t...

    Published Monday, January 19, 2009 | Tagged: , | Comments closed

  • Dazzling Silverlight Toolkit Pie Charts with Overlays

    I'm not sure why I concentrate on Pie Charts. Maybe circles are just more attractive to me than bars or points :) For the January 2009 Expression Newsletter (which will be out in a week or two), I put together a rather deep article on styling pie charts in the Silverlight Toolkit. At the end, I mentioned to check here for info on overlays. One effect you can achieve with an overlay,...

    Published Friday, January 9, 2009 | Tagged: , , | 31 comments

  • Creating a Silverlight Control that Stays Square

    I had a dumb design problem today. I wanted an ellipse to be inside a grid, but centered vertically and horizontally, and with a 1:1 aspect ratio. I want a circle, centered in a cell. I could get it sized correctly, but the minute I set VerticalAlignment, it would disappear unless I set it to UniformToFill rather than Uniform. Checking it out, the size was undefined. No other panels/containers ...

    Published Friday, January 9, 2009 | Tagged: , | 3 comments

  • I Hope this Goes Away Some Day

    I completely get why this happens, but installing just an IM client (I opted out of all the other apps the installer listed *) shouldn’t require me to shut down 3/4 of the programs running on my machine. I hope future versions of Windows come up with a better solution to this annoyance. It was different when installing apps was a single-tasking activity and installers threw up full-screen ugl...

    Published Friday, January 9, 2009 | Tagged: , , | 1 comment

  • Silverlight Controls Source Now Available

    You knew you could get the source for the Silverlight Toolkit on CodePlex, but now you can get the source and unit tests for the core Silverlight 2  controls from MS Downloads. Silverlight 2 Controls Source Available Here. This download contains the source code and unit tests for the managed Silverlight 2 controls included in System.Windows.dll, System.Windows.Controls.dll, and System...

    Published Thursday, January 8, 2009 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Subscribe to the Expression Newsletter

    A great but sometimes overlooked resource for Silverlight and WPF developers is the Expression Newsletter. It covers the Expression suite as a whole, but always has good content for Blend, Design and folks writing applications for WPF and Silverlight using VS2008. I like the focus; while it certainly includes Expression tools, it is more about how to get something done - when appropriate author...

    Published Wednesday, January 7, 2009 | Tagged: , , , , | 2 comments

  • DEVELOPER DINNER: Building Business-Focused Applications Using Silverlight 2 and Beyond

    If you’re interested in some of the great things Microsoft is working on to make Silverlight business applications easier to build in the post-Silverlight-2 timeframe, join Marc Schweigert and me for a great forward-looking Developer Dinner in Reston on Thursday January 15, 2009. Details and registration link here. Note that the dev dinner is not at the Microsoft Reston facility. Thursday,...

    Published Wednesday, January 7, 2009 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • Capital Area .NET Silverlight SIG Inaugural Meeting

    Join me, Frank LaVigne and others for the first meeting of the Cap Area .NET Silverlight Special Interest Group on January 28, 2008 in Vienna, VA Event details on Community Megaphone Frank took on most of the duties in getting the SIG set up after Marc Fredericson expressed an interest at a dev dinner, so kudos and thanks to him for starting a much-needed group in the DC area. The group is f...

    Published Tuesday, January 6, 2009 | Tagged: , , | Leave comment

  • MVP

    I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been awarded the 2009 Microsoft MVP in Client Application Development (primarily for Silverlight). I was awarded for the first time in 2008, and went through a few different leads before being assigned to Suzanna Moran. Of all the leads I had, she’s definitely been the most proactive about getting information out to her folks and advocating for us within MS. Sh...

    Published Thursday, January 1, 2009 | Tagged: , | 5 comments