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Post: Approved at: Jul-24-2008 Tall Skinny Data Columns Multiple narrow tall columns wrapping data: http://michaelsync.net/2008/07/23/tall-skinny-data-columns-using-improved-wrappanel-for-silverlightmatt-perdeck GameFest 2008 – Silverlight Game Programming http://silverlight.net/blogs/msnow/archive/2008/07/23/gamefest-2008-silverlight-game-programming.aspx Desktop Silverlight Apps Need for desktop power! http://silverlightuk.blogspot.com/2008/07/desktop-silverlight-applications-part.html http://silverlightuk.blogspot.com/2008/07/silverlight-desktop-applications-part-2.html Open Source Virtual Earth Wrapper http://michaelsync.net/2008/07/23/views-opensource-virtual-earth-wrapper-for-silverlight

I had the pleasure of presenting a Webcast on Templates and Animation today, and as promised, here is the answer to an open question, and the set of links that were mentioned. The videos that may be of help as background information are here Here is the  Tutorial introduction to Styles and Templates. available in HTML or pdf Here is the list of upcoming Webcasts , complete with full descriptions and an opportunity to register. Link to Karen Corby’s excellent 4 part series on the Parts & State Model (great preparation for the August 27 Webcast ) Why couldn’t we animate the Border? You will remember that I was unable to animate the border thickness in my impromptu demonstration of in-state animation. Had I looked at the documentation, I would quickly have found that the border thickness is read-only! Fortunately we were able to animate the opacity which actually gave a more satisfying effect. Source Code The complete source code for today’s web cast is available here.

Post: Approved at: Jul-23-2008 InitalizeError #2103 - Invalid or malformed application? Have you run into this error? Check this out: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/alex_golesh/archive/2008/07/22/quick-silverlight-tip-quot-initializeerror-2103-invalid-or-malformed-application-quot-what-is-it-and-how-to-deal-with-it.aspx Silverlight Listbox Basics The basics on how to create and use the ListBox control in Silverlight 2.0: http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/mahesh/SilverlightListBox07212008115956AM/SilverlightListBox.aspx Convention Coverage a Click Away http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_9953394 Secure your client side code? http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/07/prweb1131194.htm

URL : http://www.atlantadotnet.org Next Monday night (July 28th, 2008), i'll be giving the short Q&A session at the Atlanta .NET Users Group. The topic? NHibernate's LINQ and ADO.NET Data Services support. If you're interested in using NHibernate but don't want to give up your LINQ skills, stop by for a listen! © 2008 Shawn Wildermuth. All Rights Reserved. Add Comment | digg this

URL : http://www.silverlight-tour.com In case you read my blog and didn't know that we were coming to Boston, what are you waiting for? We will be in Boston for the Silverlight Tour on August 11-13th, 2008. If you're interested in signing up, we are not full yet! © 2008 Shawn Wildermuth. All Rights Reserved. Add Comment | digg this

Post: Approved at: Jul-22-2008 Yosemite Exteme Panoramic Imaging Project 45 Gigpixel Panorams in Silverlight... http://www.xrez.com/yose_proj/Yose_result.html Flash video to Silverlight 2 Two projects at CodePlex to help with FLV files: http://riait.co.uk/2008/07/21/delivering-flash-video-to-silverlight-2-projects-on-codeplex/

We listened, we heard, we acted. The new Learn page is designed to make it easier to get started, and easier to find what you are looking for. It is also pretty snazzy.  I’ve shrunk it to point out a few features that I think will go a long way towards making life easier for folks trying to find the information they need. (This image has been cropped and reduced to fit and to focus on the areas of interest) I personally think the folks who did this did a great job, and I’m very pleased and proud to be associated with it. That said, after a couple days of living with it, we’d be happy to have your feedback, suggestions, ideas and etc., as always! In the meantime, I’ll enjoy what I think is a pretty significant improvement. Hope you find it not only more attractive, but (much more important) more useful.

Now that my ADO.NET Data Services support has been merged into the trunk of NHibernate.LINQ, I do have some caveats about using NHibernate.LINQ with ADO.NET Data Services . ADO.NET Data Services is a beta 1 product so there are some bugs and issues that you will either need to avoid or work around. The biggest issue is around entity identity. ADO.NET Data Services must know how identity is established for objects in order to support the Data Service. It does this in a two step process: First it looks for attributes that describe the 'primary key'. Failing that, it looks for properties on the entity called ID, or ending with "ID". The second approach is where I expect most of NHibernate projects to fall into since you really don't want to pollute your objects with technology specific information (the attributes). This approach works well except that there is a bug in the Beta 1 version of ADO.NET Data Services . If the properties are specified in a base class and the keys are specified ending in "ID" (instead of just being called "ID"), then the search for the identifiers fails and Data Services fails to want to serve these objects. For example: public class AbstractCategory { public virtual int CategoryID { get; set; } public virtual string CategoryName { get; set; } public virtual string Description { get; set; } public virtual byte[] Picture { get; set; } public virtual IList Products { get; set; } } public class Category : AbstractCategory { } } If this is your scenario, I might suggest waiting for later build of ADO.NET Data Services to be released as this is definitely a bug not expected behavior and I have gotten word from Microsoft that it is fixed in the RTM (which isn't available yet). The next issue is that for collections, ADO.NET Data Services must understand the types that belong in a collection. In this case our above example will not work either in that having the Products in a Category as a simple IList can't tell ADO.NET Data Services what types of objects to deal with. If we change this to an IList<Products> , it works fine. If we have to change our entities to work with ADO.NET Data Services, this is what our new Category might look like instead: public class Category { public virtual int CategoryID { get; set; } public virtual string CategoryName { get; set; } public virtual string Description { get; set; } public virtual byte[] Picture { get; set; } public virtual IList<Product>...

There has been a number of requests for videos, tutorials and Webcasts that dive deeper. A few weeks ago I scheduled a Webcast for this Wednesday to cover  the Visual State Manager which presents a good opportunity to do so. During this Webcast I will endeavor to provide a context for skinning in general and the VSM in particular, and to provide a general introduction to the overall Parts and States Model. By the end of the hour you should have a solid understanding of what it takes to re-skin any existing control.  This will be followed by Part II, one month from now, in which we’ll focus on creating Custom Skinnable controls and at that time we’ll dive very deeply into the Parts and States model. If there are issues you are running into with the VSM, with transitions or with skinning controls, please let me know in the next couple days and I’ll try to address them in my presentation.  I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks!

Post: Approved at: Jul-21-2008 Visifire Open Source charts http://www.visifire.com/ Silverlight Drag, Drop, Import , and Export http://michaelsync.net/2008/07/19/silverlight-drag-drop-import-and-export-by-michael-washington How to learn Silverlight in 10 steps http://math-geek-rock-chick.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-learn-silverlight-in-10-steps.html

Post: Approved at: Jul-20-2008 Silverlight Training The Silverlight Tour Workshop is a three-day course on Silverlight 2. It divides the content into three distinct areas: Design, Development and the Server-Side. Students should be able to develop Silverlight 2 applications once attending the workshop. The Workshop is structured with a mix of didactic lessons, demonstrations and hands-on labs. Each student will leave the workshop having created several small Silverlight 2 applications. This variety of learning techniques will ensure that all students become proficient in the technology quickly and in an exciting way. www.runatserver.com/SilverlightTraining.aspx

URL : http://www.silverlightdata.com/simple/nhibernat... After a couple of weeks on and off the project, I finally finished the first stab at adding ADO.NET Data Services support to NHibernate.LINQ . To accomplish this I've added three features: Support for IUpdateable to support full NHibernate CRUD. Support for a new Expand extension method to do eager loading via the LINQ interface. (The Expand method is similar to Entity Framework 's Include method.) Finally, using the Expand extension method, I implemented the IExpandProvider interface to allow for expansions via the REST API. These changes have been posted to the NHContrib project (where the NHibernate.LINQ lives) to allow the committers to validate and add it to new versions of the project. I am sure that it will need some refactoring and tweaking but the basics are done. In addition, I'll be finishing up my discussion of implementing the IUpdateable interface pretty soon to help those of you adding this support to your projects. I'll also be blogging about how I added the IExpandProvider to help those of you trying to add that to your projects (or even to LINQ to SQL ). To prove out this new support, I've launched a new version of my Simple ADO.NET Data Services project with a NHibernate flavor. Go visit http://www.silverlightdata.com to see it working. In addition, I updated that sample to include paging support to make it a little more performant. Let me know what you think. © 2008 Shawn Wildermuth. All Rights Reserved. Add Comment | digg this

Post: Approved at: Jul-19-2008 Protecting Secrets in your Silverlight App Is it possible to help lock down your Silverlight applications? http://pagebrooks.com/archive/2008/07/19/protecting-secrets-in-your-silverlight-applications.aspx

Post: Approved at: Jul-19-2008 My Silverlight and WPF Dream Mike Taulty's has a good post about what he would like to see with Silverlight. I agree! Dragging a Silverlight app to your desktop would be cool. Since it already is a subset of WPF, making things like this work should not be that hard. http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2008/07/18/10602.aspx 10 Silverlight 2 gotchas resolved Have you run into a few of these? 1. Canvas rules 2. One way to make Color resources 3. Limited Fonts 4. No BitmapEffects 5. No Paging facility 6. Limited Resource facilities 7. Significant Transparency 8. StaticResources only 9. XML Data Binding in code only 10. Lack of important controls: DropdownList and PasswordBox http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/10-Silverlight-2-gotchas-resolved.aspx Is Microsoft Becoming "Cool"? http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mesh_deep_zoom_netflix_on_xbox_is_microsoft_becoming_cool.php

You’re probably very familiar with Content in WPF and Silverlight. For example, two Buttons can use the same Template but can look different by virtue of having different Content in them. And the Content property is of type object so it can be Text, or...( read more )