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Here we go, Silverlight 2 beta 2 can be downloaded and installed! I had the chance to take part to an "insiders" program at Microsoft, and to play with SL2 b2 for a couple of weeks, and it's a good one. You should switch to b2 as soon as you can! There are obviously incompatibilities between b1 and b2, but much, much less than between the alpha version and b1. We're getting there!! Silverlight 2 beta 2 will be used to build applications related to the Beijing olympics, so it's going to be a real nature test for that version. As for the final release.... it's still very much hush hush, so let's leave it for now :) The best place to start is ScottGu's blog . As usual, Scott describes the new features at length, and has links to all the places where you can download the good stuff. Note that there is also a new version of Blend 2.5 which can be installed next to a "normal" Expression Blend V2. There is supposed to be a new version of Deep Zoom Composer too, but the download seems to be down Read More...
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You got to be kidding me. What if I want Expression in the US locale, I can't buy it just because my IP is not in the US? Honestly? You are *that* stupid? Read More...
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I just posted today's talk at the RIA conference in the World Trade Center, Zurich. Unfortunately it was not recorded, but the slides and the demos' source code is available on my site. The talk went really good, even though the crowd was rather tough :) Trying to "sell" Windows Presentation Foundation, a desktop Windows-only technology, to an audience of web developers, many of them using Java and open source technologies (and even one Adobe employee) sparkled some very interesting discussions. I can't say I convinced everyone (and it was most certainly not my intention), but I think everybody had a really good time. I know for sure that I did! To all those who stayed until the end of my presentation, and even though mine was the last presentation of the day, thank you very much!! To those who couldn't stay, I hope you'll have fun checking the slides and the demos, and contact me if anything is unclear!! Read More...
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I have been in very much stress lately and hardly had time to post, but I don't forget you, dear readers... Anyway, this Thursday, I will be talking in a RIA conference organized by the Internet Briefing group here in Zurich, in the World Trade Center. My talk is titled "Ultra Rich Interactive Applications with WPF" and subtitled "When Silverlight is not enough..." . I think it's going to be an interesting talk (but obviously I am partial) about the major differences between WPF and Silverlight, and the added richness that WPF provides. I am a big fan of Silverlight, but I have to admit that it's nice going back to the amazing power of WPF sometimes, without having to worry about "is that feature even implemented in Silverlight"? The talk takes place between 16:30 and 17:30 in the World Trade Center, Leutschenbachstrasse 95, 8050 Zürich. Hoping to see some of you there, maybe! Read More...
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A WPF ListView is a possible replacement for a datagrid, when it doesn't have to support advanced features like grouping or filtering of rows. If you use a ListView in your WPF application, and set the "View" property of this ListView to be a GridView. A ListView/GridView even supports features like reordering and resizing columns. Unfortunately, it is not possible to define a minimum or maximum width for the columns. Fortunately, it is not really to do this in the code behind. Let's see how. First we need to understand how exactly the resizing of a GridView column works. When a column can be resized, a narrow vertical line appears on the right side of the column. Passing the mouse over this line turns the cursor into a "resize" cursor. To find out what exactly this line is made of, we can use a tool like Snoop , or Mole . These tools display the inner structure of a WPF UI, also known as the Visual Tree. For example, in Mole, we can navigate down to our ListView and display the header Read More...
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This article is for Silverlight 2 beta 1 Apparently, one reader had issues declaring events for the User Control example that I posted earlier this week. He is programming in VB and unfortunately I don't have a lot of experience with VB.NET, so I first created a working example with C#, and if that still doesn't translate well to VB, I'll try to make an example in that language too. I am sure that I can count on my VB.NET expert friends (that's you, Karl) to help if needed. The big difference between WPF and Silverlight regarding events is that Silverlight doesn't support Routed Events (yet?). To be precise, some events are routed (all input events like MouseLeftButtonDown, KeyDown, etc... Instead of declaring RoutedEvents in our User Control, we have to resort to standard .NET events then. From a user point of view, it doesn't make a very big difference in the subscribing, but of course these events will not tunnel nor bubble (for a summary of RoutedEvents, bubbling and tunneling in WPF, Read More...
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Introduction I guess that it's time to write about it, after making a few people curious at the MVP summit in Seattle. This article is to be taken as a proof of concept, and (I hope) as a way to "motivate" Microsoft to integrate this ability into Silverlight. As soon as I started playing with Silverlight, I saw the great potential that this technology has. As a RIA technology, it provides extended functionality over the web. As a WPF subset, it allows me to leverage the knowledge I already acquired in the past, and to reuse it for web applications. This in itself makes Silverlight a technology I *have to* learn. But what if... what if we could use Silverlight to run lightweight .NET applications in standalone mode? A little like Adobe AIR is offering, but with the power of .NET instead of ActionScript. Imagine a small application, running on a small framework, installed in typically 10 seconds. I posted an article on my site explaining the thought process and giving information about standalone Read More...
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What a crazy week that is. I am currently in Seattle for the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional summit, which ended yesterday. I took an additional day in Seattle to meet a few friends and Siemens colleagues, and this morning got an email notifying me that I passed the MCTS exam about WPF that I took back then in December . Because the exam was in beta stage when I took it, Microsoft needed a veeeeeeeery long time to evaluate the replies and check if I met the requirement. Apparently, they also had issues finding volunteers to try the beta exam, so it took even longer than planned. But hey, everything happens when you wait long enough, and as of today I am a Microsoft Certified Professional. Now I want to point again what I wrote in December: I am not quite sure about the value of the MCTS exams. You are not a good developer just because you learn answers by heart. Testing one's knowledge with multiple choice questions is really absurd, especially when it comes to programming. Additionally, Read More...
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This article is for Silverlight 2 beta 1 There is a common misconception that User Controls in Silverlight must be placed in the assembly from which they are referenced. However, this is not true, you can have user controls in an assembly and use them from another assembly. This is not a direct process, however, so let's see how to proceed: Preparing the control Create a new Silverlight 2 application in Visual Studio. In this example, we'll name this application "UserControlsPacking". For this first application, you can choose to generate a test web application, or to use a basic HTML test page. In the same solution, create another Silverlight application. Let's name it "UserControlsPacking.Controls". Choose the "Generate a HTML test page" option, to avoid creating unnecessary test projects. In the moment, Silverlight 2 beta 1 has only 2 project templates available: "Silverlight Application" and "Silverlight Class Library". Ideally, we would need a "Silverlight User Control Library", just Read More...
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I am currently writing a Silverlight class library which I want to use in a project, and decided to try Test Driven Development for this class. This is a really nice way to work, and the Silverlight development team made this very easy by providing a unit test framework easy to integrate into Visual Studio 2008. (Note: You cannot simply use the built-in unit test framework, because a non-Silverlight application cannot reference a Silverlight class library). To find information about where to download and how to install the Silverlight unit test framework, check this post . Communicating with JavaScript The only issue with the Silverlight unit test application is that it uses a default HTML test page to instantiate the Silverlight control. If your class library contains one or more JavaScript code files that it interacts with, the test will fail, because the JavaScript file cannot be found. Thankfully, this is quite easy to change: Start by creating the Silverlight class library that you Read More...
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Introduction In WPF, one of the best know effects is the "reflection" effect, where a scene reflects itself dynamically. It's a very cool feature, because it's really easy to realize, and it allows to reflect images, but also videos or other User Interface scenes. The key to this is to use a VisualBrush. Silverlight is not exactly as powerful as WPF, and doesn't have VisualBrush, but it has ImageBrush and VideoBrush, both of them allowing cool media reflection effects (these brushes can also be used for other things!). The key to making a reflection is placing a picture (or a video), and underneath it, an element (typically a Border). Then, you set the background of this element (Border.Background) to an ImageBrush (or a VideoBrush) pointing to the source that you want to reflect. To make the reflection look more lifelike, however, you want to skew it (because the surface you reflect is forming an angle with the reflecting element); also, you typically use an OpacityMask and make it look Read More...
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Here is an interesting one: < UserControl x:Class ="GalaSoft.SL.ScrollViewerNoCrash.Page" xmlns ="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007" xmlns:x ="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Height ="300" > < Grid x:Name ="LayoutRoot" Background ="Green" > < Grid.RowDefinitions > < RowDefinition Height ="*" /> < RowDefinition /> </ Grid.RowDefinitions > < ScrollViewer Grid . Row ="1" HorizontalScrollBarVisibility ="Auto" VerticalScrollBarVisibility ="Disabled" > < StackPanel Orientation ="Horizontal" Height ="150" > < Border Margin ="10,5,10,5" BorderBrush ="#FFA9A899" BorderThickness ="2,2,2,2" > < Image Source ="pic1.png" Stretch ="Fill" /> </ Border > < Border Margin ="10,5,10,5" BorderBrush ="#FFA9A899" BorderThickness ="2,2,2,2" > < Image Source ="pic2.jpg" Stretch ="Fill" /> </ Border > </ StackPanel > </ ScrollViewer > </ Grid > </ UserControl > The code above crashes Read More...
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The slides and demo source code of my presentation at TechDays last week are available online. You will find: Slides (Powerpoint 2007) Source code (Visual Studio 2008 C#) Download page I hope that these documents will help you in your "quest for WPF". Let me know if you have questions or comments through the blog!! Read More...
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If anyone still needed to see the Power of Skinning for Silverlight controls, well, Corrina just did it (again). In addition to the 3 existing skins " Bubbly ", " Red " and " Flat ", she just published a 4th one " Rough " (click on the links for a live demo, requires Silverlight 2 beta 1). More information about the skins, including a download link for the source code, can be found on Corrina's blog ( Bubbly, Red, Flat ; Rough ) Rough skin Bubbly skin Red skin Flat skin Read More...
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In the "old" alpha edition of Silverlight, you could use the Downloader class to download a zip file containing one or many packed media elements (images, videos). The Downloader provided a progress report (to update a progress bar, for example). After the download was completed, you could use the Image.SetSource or MediaElement.SetSource method to directly unpack one file from the downloaded zip file. In Silverlight 2 beta, the interfaces changed, but you can still do the same operations. Let's see how . Download and Demo A demo can be seen here . The source code is available here. Note: To save space, I removed the media zip file from the source code. It is available as a separate download here . Read More...
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