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Dear Jesse, "I loaded the Silverlight Toolkit from December 1988 on my CPM machine and it broke my Apple IIe in my vacation home in Maine. What should I do?" – Toolkit Lover. |
Dear Toolkit Lover,
We have a dedicated forum for posting questions about the Silverlight Toolkit where you will be able to get very fast answers. The forum is watched by the Toolkit team as well as many community experts.
To get there, please click here or enter http://silverlight.net/forums/35.aspx in your browser. You can also reach the forum through the Toolkit page on Codeplex).
To get the best results, please be sure your message includes:
- Your operating system and service packs that are installed
- How much memory you have installed
- Which version of Visual Studio you are using and which service packs
- Which version of Silverlight you have installed
- Which version of the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio you have installed
- Which version of the Silverlight Toolkit you have installed
- What steps can reproduce the problem
Note that screen captures can be very helpful:
To get to this image, navigate to any Silverlight application and right click. You will see a small box that says "Silverlight Configuration." Left click on that box and a tabbed dialog box will open with this information on the About tab.
To get this information from Vista, Click on Start –> Control Panel –> Welcome Center and then in the upper right hand corner: Show More Details.
To get to this information about the Toolkit dll’s, open a Silverlight application, click on references and navigate to wherever you installed the Toolkit. Hover over the appropriate Silvelight Toolkit DLL (in the illustration above I hovered over the Controls.DLL file) to see the File version adn Date Created.
The Subject Line Is Critical
One great tip on getting help is to make sure the subject of your message summarizes the problem. You’ll get a faster response with Crashes on binding to XML File than with Help! Urgent!.
Small Programs Get Tested, Big Programs Get Ignored
Boil your problem down to the smallest possible program that reproduces the error/bug/issue. I find that when I do so, 50% of the time I solve the problem my self, and in any case I greatly increase the likelihood that someone will bother to load my problem and find out what is wrong.
Comments Can Help or Kill
Also be sure to comment your program wisely: don’t fill the program with self-evident comments
x = 5 // assign 5 to x
they are just clutter.
On the other hand, do explain anything you are doing that is less than self-evident
// get the collection from the // isolated storage reference variable foo.itemSource = bar;
Short Paragraphs
Finally, you want folks to read your message; so make it short, and make each paragraph short. Make it easy and inviting and more folks will read and help.
Best of luck!
-jesse
