Page Brooks

[PDANUG] Event Reminder - Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 - Tonight

Page Brooks — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 19:21:57 GMT

Open Spaces

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Open Spaces

Topic: Open Spaces - Bring your questions and ideas!

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.
Open Spaces is the chance for you to discuss topics with your peers. Any developer topic is fair game and welcome! This is your chance to gain valuable insight from your peers, so come equipped with your ideas! This meeting is a general open conversation and there will be no presenters. See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Open Spaces

MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow

Page Brooks — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:34:03 GMT

The MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow is coming to North Carolina and South Carolina in December! These free events are a great way to keep up with new Microsoft technologies, so be sure to register for an even near you!

North Charleston, SC - Register
12/2/2008 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM ET

Wilmington, NC - Register
12/3/2008 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM ET

Raleigh, NC - Register
12/4/2008 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM ET

Charlotte, NC - Register
12/5/2008 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM ET

Event Description
The MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow is a 3/4 day, free developer event with a southern flair where you will learn about some of the latest developments in Microsoft technologies. For this edition we will cover a broad range of the latest Microsoft Technologies:

Take a tour of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and the services that make it easy to give your applications the most compelling experiences and features. Explore the journey a developer takes, from writing a service to launching that service in the cloud. Learn about the cloud services that enable developers to easily create or extend their applications and services.

Microsoft Silverlight provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next-generation experiences for consumers and business, and demonstrate building a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft .NET.

ASP.NET is evolving a very rapid pace, come explore all the latest features of ASP.Net such as Dynamic Data, MVC, and even take a sneak peak at the upcoming features in ASP.NET 4.0! We’ll look at some new features such as taking control of your Control IDs, using the DynamicImage control, and ViewState management options. We’ll spend plenty of time talking about MVC and creating applications based on this framework, so if you’re wondering how to leverage MVC in your web applications, this talk is for you!

We will also feature local speakers from each of our stops delivering short talks at the beginning of the Roadshow. These Homegrown Nuggets will sure be tasty!

Finding a Storyboard in the VisualStateManager

Page Brooks — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:46:16 GMT

A few weeks ago in the Silverlight forums, a user asked how they could attach to the OnCompleted event of a Visual StateManager animation. At first, this sounds trivial, but the VisualStateManager does not directly expose a way to obtain a Storyboard. However, the VisualStateManager does return a list of the VisualStateGroups through the GetVisualStateGroups method. We can take advantage of this method to obtain a reference to the desired storyboard.

The FindStoryboard method defined in this helper class iterates over each of the VisualStateGroups until it finds a match, it then iterates over each Visual State in the group until it finds a match. The Storyboard for the matching visual state is then returned.

public class VisualStateManagerUtils
{
    public static Storyboard FindStoryboard(FrameworkElement parent, string groupName, string stateName)
    {
        var vsgs = VisualStateManager.GetVisualStateGroups(parent);
        foreach(VisualStateGroup vsg in vsgs)
        {
            if (vsg.Name != groupName) 
                continue;
            foreach (VisualState vs in vsg.States)
            {
                if (vs.Name == stateName)
                    return vs.Storyboard;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }
}

Now, it’s a simple matter of calling our helper method and doing something useful with the Storyboard reference. For example, you could attach an event handler to the Completed event on the Storyboard.

    public partial class Page : UserControl
    {
        public Page()
        {
            ...
            Storyboard sbHidden = VisualStateManagerUtils.FindStoryboard(LayoutRoot, "CommonStates", "Hidden");
            sbHidden.Completed += new EventHandler(sbHidden_Completed);
        }

        void sbHidden_Completed(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // Do something cool here.         } ... ...

Update: Bart Czernicki had an excellent suggestion of making this method an extension method. The resulting syntax is much more concise and easier to use. With a few small changes, we can convert the helper method into an extension method.

public static class VisualStateManagerUtils
{
    public static Storyboard FindStoryboard(this FrameworkElement parent, string groupName, string stateName)
    {
        var vsgs = VisualStateManager.GetVisualStateGroups(parent);
        foreach (VisualStateGroup vsg in vsgs)
        {
            if (vsg.Name != groupName)
                continue;
            foreach (VisualState vs in vsg.States)
            {
                if (vs.Name == stateName)
                    return vs.Storyboard;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }
}

Now, it is much simpler to call the method

Storyboard sb = LayoutRoot.FindStoryboard("CommonStates", "Hidden");

Silverlight Toolkit Released on CodePlex!

Page Brooks — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:11:05 GMT

As previously announced by Shawn Burke on his blog, the Silverlight Toolkit has just been released! Much like the AJAX Control Toolkit for ASP.NET, the Silverlight Control Toolkit Team will be introducing new controls and features which may eventually make it into the Silverlight platform. I like to think of it as an incubator for new controls in Silverlight. This is really cool because it gives the community the chance to use the controls much earlier and provide valuable feedback to help influence the product direction. Another added benefit to this is that the source code is hosted on CodePlex so you can look at the code (along with the Unit Tests) and get a better understanding of what is going on! It doesn't appear that the team will be accepting community contributions, but hey, that's what Silverlight Contrib is for!

Here is a list of the features for the first drop of the Silverlight Toolkit:

Preview Quality Band

AutoCompleteBox
NumericUpDown
ViewBox
Expander
ImplicitStyleManager
Charting

Stable Quality Band

TreeView
DockPanel
WrapPanel
Label
HeaderedContentControl
HeaderedItemsControl

Themes

Expression Dark
Expression Light
Rainier Purple
Rainier Orange
Shiny Blue
Shiny Red

Enjoy!

Silverlight Contrib 2008.0.0 – Alpha 2 Released!

Page Brooks — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:56:14 GMT

It’s been a while, but Silverlight Contrib 2008.0.0 – Alpha 2 has finally been released! I have to admit that I changed the original goals for this release, but that’s the type of thing that happens when you get tons of unexpected support from the community. I’d like to personally thank Koen Zwikstra, Rob Houweling, and Shawn Wildermuth for helping with this release.

Be sure to check out the new site at SilverlightContrib.org. While most of the project will be hosted on CodePlex, this site will serve as the main landing page for the project and a host for demonstrating Silverlight Contrib features as well.

As always, we are still looking for help. If you are serious about contributing to the project, please get in touch. We need help in many different areas, so don’t hesitate to suggest something that you think we might need!

Silverlight 2 will be released on October 14th, 2008

Page Brooks — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:00:20 GMT

In a press conference today, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Silverlight 2 on October 14th, 2008! Congratulations to the Silverlight team on this exciting release, this is going to be a great product!

Sharing Code Between .NET and Silverlight Platforms

Page Brooks — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:53:46 GMT

Quite often, I hear people asking if they can use .NET assemblies compiled for the full .NET runtime in Silverlight. Unfortunately, this just isn’t possible, the Silverlight runtime is a subset of the full .NET runtime and for code to run correctly under the Silverlight runtime, there are various dependencies that must be linked and verified at compile time. But (there is always a but), there is one technique that you can use that effectively allows you to write your code once and have it work in both Silverlight and regular .NET applications. This isn’t a new technique, but I’m often surprised when people tell me they haven’t ever seen it. Let’s get a few basics out of the way first. If you already understand the concepts of Linked Items and Solution Folders in Visual Studio, you can safely skip to the section entitled Sharing Code Between Platforms.

Linked Items
Linked Items are a little-known feature in Visual Studio. Basically, Linked Items allow you to share a single file between multiple projects. The best analogy for Linked Items is when you create a shortcut to a file in Windows. You can have any number of shortcuts to a particular file, but ultimately, they all open the same file. Creating a Linked Item is simple:

Step 1: Right-click on your project in the Solution Explorer and click Add –> Existing Item …

Step 2: Select the file you wish to share and select ‘Add As Link’ on the Add button.

The linked file will look like a shortcut item in your project.

Solution Folders
To make your shared code more visible and your solution structure more understandable, you can add a solution folder and place the actual file here. Solution Folders are really just organizational mechanisms in Visual Studio. You can place just about anything you like in these folders, including projects. I often use Solution Folders to group similar projects together. To create a solution folder perform the following steps:

Step 1: Select the solution in your Solution Explorer and click the ‘Add New Solution Folder’ icon.

Step 2: Give the folder a good name. In this example, I am calling the Solution Folder: Shared Code.

Step 3: Now, add the actual file to the solution folder. Keep in mind that these solution folders are virtual, they do not necessarily correspond to actual folders on the file system (although it makes things easier if they do).

Sharing Code Between Platforms
In the scenario below, we have a solution with a regular .NET Class Library and a Silverlight Class library. We are sharing the Utilities.cs file between the two projects using Linked Items and we have included the actual Utilities.cs file in a solution folder called ‘Shared Code’. When we build the solution, each project will use the Utilities.cs file and the logic contained within will become a part of each assembly. This is an excellent application of the DRY principle.

Conditionally Compiling Code
Inevitably, you will have code that simply does not port correctly between full-blown .NET and Silverlight. In cases like these, you need to make the compiler conditionally compile parts of your code. You can do this very easily with something called Conditional Compilation Symbols.

If you right click on your Silverlight project in the Solution Explorer, click Properties, and then click the Build Tab you will see the following:

Notice, for the Silverlight project, conditional compilation symbol called SILVERLIGHT is defined. With this symbol, you can use conditional compilation directives to have the compiler ignore certain parts of your code. In the code sample below, CustomSilverlightMethod will only be compiled when the SILVERLIGHT conditional is defined.

    public class Utilities
    {
        public static void SharedMethod()
        {
            // Method body here.         
        }          

#if SILVERLIGHT

        public static void CustomSilverlightMethod()
        {
            // Method body here.         
        }          
#endif     

    }

This technique is useful when you have code that must run on different platforms. Having the code in one place reduces the maintenance burden and reduces the chance for duplicated code. I hope you will find this information helpful. Enjoy!

PDANUG: Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 – Chris Love

Page Brooks — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:15:29 GMT

Chris Love will be presenting at PDANUG on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008. See you there!

Topic: Leveraging httpHandlers and httpModules in ASP.NET

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.
Custom httpHandlers are a key concept eventually every ASP.NET developer needs to understand and start to leverage. Nothing is actually served from ASP.NET without a custom handler being responsible for it, even static content.

Chris Love
Chris Love has over 14 years of experience in software design, development and architecture. He has been the principal developer for over 250 small and medium ASP and ASP.NET web sites over the past 7 years.
Chris has been active in a leadership role in the Raleigh, NC, area user group TRINUG for over 5 years. He frequently presents and organizes Code Camps around the country. He has recently completed his first book, ASP.NET 2.0: Your Visual Blueprint for Developing Web Applications.

Blog: http://professionalaspnet.com

Richmond, VA Code Camp 2008.2 this Saturday

Page Brooks — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:45:59 GMT

Richmond, VA Code Camp 2008.2 will be held this Saturday (October 4th, 2008). For those of you that haven’t registered yet, what are you waiting for? Kevin Hazzard has done a great job organizing the event and there is an excellent speaker roster.

Be sure to look for me at the event, I’ve got the only Silverlight presentation slot ;)

Register Here

Speaker List

Silverlight 2 RC0 is Available!

Page Brooks — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:33:57 GMT

Silverlight 2 RC0 has just been released and, as usual, Scott Guthrie has punctuated the release with another informative blog post.

Summarizing Scott's post, here are a few of the things to expect from RC0:

Bug Fixes
ComboBox
PasswordBox
ProgressBar
MessageBox.Show()
New Control Skins (Much Nicer!)
General Improvements various Subsystems

Of course, you can also download a more comprehensive list of breaking changes.

It's also worth noting that this release is staggered in such a way that only the developer runtime has been released. This was done purposely to allow developers time to update their applications before end users begin downloading. This should allow developers to quickly switch to the RTM release when it arrives. Looks like the final release will be here soon! Enjoy!