Category Archives: Essentials

Best Practices For Local Databases

Mango From Scratch I’ve recently written two posts about coding for SQL CE in Mango (the next release of Windows Phone).  Sean McKenna, who knows more about this than anyone walking the planet, dropped me an email to remind me … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Essentials, Linq, Mango, Mini-Tutorial, Patterns & Skills, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 11 Comments

Yet Another Podcast #34–MVC3 & NuGet

Talking with Phil Haack (Program Manager for MVC3 and NuGet) and Jon Galloway – what are MVC and NuGet, what are their strengths and limitations and how do you lean to use them?   Listen  | Return to Yet Another … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Essentials, Full Stack, MVC, Patterns & Skills, Podcast | Tagged | Comments Off on Yet Another Podcast #34–MVC3 & NuGet

Coming In Mango–ICommand

Mango From Scratch As noted in earlier posts, Mango represents a move from Silverlight 3+ to Silverlight 4, and with that comes ICommand on ButtonBase and Hyperlink (and classes that derive from these two).  This is a significant breakthrough, especially … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Essentials, Mango, Mini-Tutorial, Patterns & Skills, WindowsPhone | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Developing for Windows Phone?? Bookmark This Site

My colleagues in Developer Guidance have created 22 topic/scenario-focused web pages on App Hub, the Windows Phone developer website, that provide a comprehensive view of all the resources available for Windows Phone development. The pages are self-contained, single-page search targets, … Continue reading →

Posted in Community, Essentials, Mango, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 1 Comment

Tooling in Mango

The big news at Mix this year was the upcoming release of Mango – the next generation for Windows Phone.  Among the many exciting new features were a few new tooling capabilities that will change the way you write your … Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Mango, WindowsPhone | 1 Comment

Email a stack trace when things blow up in Windows Phone

Windows Phone From Scratch Jon Galloway and I have been working together on The Full Stack project.  This week, we’ve been banging our heads together trying to figure out why our Windows Phone application crashes on testing when submitted to … Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Full Stack, Patterns & Skills, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 8 Comments

Breakpoints on Xaml in Silverlight 5

Silverlight 5 MiniTutorial Silverlight 5 Beta brings the enormously useful ability to set a break point in your Xaml where you have a data binding.  This can greatly simplify debugging and fixing binding issues.

Posted in Data, Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, Silverlight 5 | Tagged | 4 Comments

Implicit Data Templates (Silverlight 5)

A Silverlight 5 Mini-Tutorial A new feature in Silverlight 5 is the Implicit Data Template, which allows you to target a  data template for a specific data type.  Thus, you might create a class hierarchy of Messages, Direct Messages and … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, Silverlight 5 | Tagged | 8 Comments

Silverlight 5–Combo box type ahead

A nice, small feature in the new Silverlight 5 Beta is the ability to type ahead in combo boxes. This makes choosing from long list far simpler. You can see this at work by whipping up a very quick Silverlight … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Essentials, Silverlight 5 | Tagged | 9 Comments

LinqPad, Linq Queries and IEnumerable

This posting is part of an on-going series on LINQ – a critical tool for both Windows Phone and Silverlight Programmers. I recently discovered LinqPad, a free utility developed by Joseph Albahari that supports Linq to Objects, Linq to SQL, … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Essentials, Linq, Mini-Tutorial | Tagged | 3 Comments

Application Bar Buttons Are Null

Windows Phone From Scratch #50 In a recent posting, I demonstrated how easy it is to add buttons to the phone’s Application Bar. I went back to that application to disable the “faster” button when the maximum speed was reached. … Continue reading →

Posted in Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, WindowsPhone | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Windows Phone: Touch

Windows Phone From Scratch #48 A key gesture for Windows Phone users is the tap or touch on the screen.   Many controls have built-in support for the touch (e.g., the button) converting the touch to an existing click event. Other … Continue reading →

Posted in Blend, Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, WindowsPhone | Tagged , , | 3 Comments