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Monthly Archives: June 2008

  • Using Pub/Sub and the Observer Pattern in Silverlight 2 (Part 2 of 2) Navigation

    In the previous two parts of this article (I had planned only 2 parts total, but this ended up a three-part article), I explained how to use Pub/Sub and the EventBus for chaining service calls in Silverlight 2 applications. You can access those articles here: Part 1: Async Service Call Chaining Part 2: More on Service Call Chaining In this part, I'll cover how I use this same pattern...

    Published Monday, June 30, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 1 comment

  • Silverlight DevNuggets Episode 2 is Now Up

    Andrew Duthie just published my second DevNuggets episode. In this installment, titled Styling 101, I cover the basics of styling Silverlight controls. The videos are intended to be quick, short installments following a theme starting from the very basics and getting gradually more advanced. You can view the video here. I hope you find it useful. For the curious, I use the following tools whe...

    Published Monday, June 30, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • Silverlight Control Builder Contest ‘08

    The Silverlight Control Builder Contest ‘08 has started! Build a compelling Silverlight 2 control and win some cool stuff! This is a great contest to see what you developers in the community can kick out in Silverlight 2. Even if you can’t enter the contest, head on over to the contest FAQ and download a badge you can use to help promote the contest and Silverlight 2 control develo...

    Published Sunday, June 29, 2008 | Tagged: , | 3 comments

  • Technorati test post, please ignore

    Please ignore

    Published Saturday, June 28, 2008 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Marc Schweigert on WPF and Virtual Earth

    For the WPF/VE fans in the house, Marc Schweigert has a post and demo showing how to use the new web browser control in .NET 3.5 SP1 to host Virtual Earth. Web meets desktop.Marc's post is here.

    Published Friday, June 27, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • Using Pub/Sub and the Observer Pattern in Silverlight 2 (Part 1.5 of 2) More on Service Call Chaining

    In my previous post, I discussed how to chain service calls. One question I received on that was how to do the opposite: take an action after all the calls (or by extension, some logical groups of calls) have completed.This is one of the challenges with working with async service calls. Rather than have a single function that makes a bunch of inline service calls one after the other, you need t...

    Published Friday, June 27, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 comments

  • Using Pub/Sub and the Observer Pattern in Silverlight 2 (Part 1 of 2) - Async Service Call Chaining

    The Publish and Subscribe pattern (which uses the Observer Pattern in .NET - more info here) is one of those patterns we use all the time while thinking nothing of it. In .NET, we get the concrete implementation via events and delegates.By abstracting it out just a little and applying concepts from other bus patterns, we gain a ton of flexibility and can use it for more specialized messaging th...

    Published Thursday, June 26, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , , | 5 comments

  • Software Development Meme - Pete's Response

    Fellow Silverlight enthusiast (and great author) Chad Campbell called me out on this, so now it's my turn :) How old were you when you first started programming? That was either 6th grade or 7th grade, so I was around 12. I often question the people who tell you they were hacking systems at the age of 6, but who knows? :) How did you get started in programming? The first time I ever wrote ...

    Published Thursday, June 26, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | Leave comment

  • How to Retrieve and Process an RSS Feed in Silverlight 2

    For the Facebook Silverlight 2 Beta 2 application I'm writing, I need to be able to process a number of RSS feeds. In Silverlight 2 Beta 2, processing RSS is, well, really simple :) Here's a class and associated event and exception classes I wrote to handle downloading the feed, and loading it into the RSS objects: #region Support Classes (exception, eventargs) public class FeedException :...

    Published Friday, June 20, 2008 | Tagged: , | 7 comments

  • Silverlight 2 and Yahoo Pipes

    Sometimes I hear about something for the first time and figure I must live under a rock. I make a point of keeping up on a number of new things, but it's hard to keep track of all the cool services and technologies available to you these days. Tim Heuer just today turned me on to Yahoo Pipes when I asked about proxying some services to provide feed content to a Silverlight FaceBook app I'm dev...

    Published Thursday, June 19, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , , | 1 comment

  • Nerdware: My Home Network, Rack Servers, CNC Machine

    I like to mess around with computers. Every primary computer I've owned since my first 486 has been built by me (my previous computers, a 286 and a Commodore 128 were purchased). I also run a moderately complex network at my house which I realize I have never fully described anywhere. So, thought I'd tell you about it here. Why My first server was a linux box I had in our last apartment. It w...

    Published Monday, June 16, 2008 | Tagged: , , , , , , | 3 comments

  • Space Shuttle is Huge!

    The three of us (me, Melissa and Ben) all went to the National Air and Space Museum - Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA (not the one in DC) this weekend. This is where the Smithsonian keeps all the really big things like the Concorde, the Enola Gay, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise. It turned out to be less exciting for Ben than we thought (he's really into airplanes and spaceships, but only ...

    Published Monday, June 16, 2008 | Tagged: | 1 comment

  • Visual Studio 2008 and Silverlight 2 Beta 2 - Supported Versions

    In response to a question at last Friday's Silverlight TechFest event, I said that I believed Beta 2 was supported even on Visual Studio Express. I was incorrect. XNA supports Visual Studio Express (and I had been reading about XNA the night before), but Silverlight requires at least Visual Studio Standard. Standard is pretty reasonably priced at well under $300, but it isn't free. For now, i...

    Published Monday, June 16, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 19 comments

  • Silverlight DevNuggets Expisode 1 Up and Ready for Viewing

    Silverlight DevNuggets #1 is up on Andrew Duthie's blog. Starting out simple, I put together a short screencast covering the concept of a content control in Silverlight 2. The idea behind DevNuggets is to present very short videos on digestible topics. I expect to put a couple others out this summer to round out the series and cover some other interesting Silverlight 2 UI topics.

    Published Thursday, June 12, 2008 | Tagged: , | Leave comment

  • Silverlight TechFest on Friday - WCF, Astoria and More!

    At the Silverlight TechFest on Friday, I'll cover the following topics in my afternoon session on Connecting Silverlight: Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Networking Overview WCF Sockets and/or WCF Duplex Communications ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria) and how I used it and the ADO.NET Entity Framework I'll also cover background info like binding, dependency properties, some LINQ and so on. ...

    Published Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 2 comments

  • Problems Uploading Videos to Windows Live Silverlight Streaming when Beta 2 Installed?

    If you have Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Installed and enabled, you will not be able to upload videos to Silverlight streaming. That's because the upload component is written in Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and has not yet been upgraded to Beta 2. The problem manifests itself as a disabled Browse button on the "Upload Videos" page. I was trying to upload some videos for the Silverlight TechFest this...

    Published Wednesday, June 11, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 1 comment

  • RIA Job Openings on the Rise

    If you know Silverlight or WPF, the job market for those skills is really on the rise. Same for Adobe Flex. Found via Twitter (thanks to whomever tweeted it!) "adobe flex", silverlight, javafx, openlaszlo, wpf Job Trends "adobe flex" jobs - silverlight jobs - javafx jobs - openlaszlo jobs - wpf jobs RIA and RIA-spawned technologi...

    Published Monday, June 9, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 5 comments

  • Tech-Ed Bloggers Daily Highlight

    Cool! I made it on the Tech-Ed Bloggers Daily Highlight for today. Thanks to Kathy and the folks at Tech Ed Online for recommending me and and for mashing up all the info on my sites to create a great bio.

    Published Sunday, June 8, 2008 | Tagged: | Leave comment

  • Expression Encoder SDK Now Available

    This one almost slipped past me. Lots of folks have asked about ways to automate encoding videos for Silverlight applications both on the client and on the server. Ben Waggoner just announced that Expression Encoder 2 includes a .NET object model for automation. The code in the SDK example looks really simple and straight-forward: static void Main(string[] args) { MediaItem mediaItem ...

    Published Friday, June 6, 2008 | Tagged: , , , | 11 comments

  • Truth in Advertising

    Was looking for hand tools from places other than my usual suppliers (like the always excellent LeeValley) just to look around. Did a search and this sponsored ad came up: When you get there, this is what is on the front page, above the fold: You either need a really well-fed hamster to power the motor on that power carver, or they aren't quite living up to their ad. (it's also amusing...

    Published Wednesday, June 4, 2008 | Tagged: | 2 comments

  • Frank LaVigne on Silverlight/WPF Design for Developers

    Fello AISer and Silverlight/WPF guru Frank LaVigne will be doing a great webcast tomorrow (Wednesday) at noon eastern time. He's going to help demystify basic Silverlight/WPF UI design, and the Expression tools, for developers. This will be much more than just a tools walkthrough - you'll get some practical advice on designing applications. If you're a developer looking to use Silverlight or W...

    Published Tuesday, June 3, 2008 | Tagged: , , | 2 comments

  • Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Goodies

    Announced at Tech Ed today: Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is coming this week, right on time according to the information from the MIX08 sessions (Beta 1 plus 1q = this week). There are tons of new things in Silverlight 2 Beta 2, but here are a few of the ones I find interesting. Cross-domain changes to Sockets. Sockets now support a server opt-in model similar to that used by WCF. I'll post more a...

    Published Tuesday, June 3, 2008 | Tagged: , | 18 comments