Category Archives: Essentials

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

Adding an Application Bar

Windows Phone From Scratch #46 In a recent posting I wrote about creating Conway’s Life for the phone.  The application is a tinkerer’s playhouse and I find myself going back to it to add features and tweaks. This morning I … Continue reading

Posted in Blend, Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, Patterns & Skills | Tagged | 2 Comments

Yet Another Podcast #29 Jon Galloway on MVC 3

Talking with Jon Galloway about ASP.NET MVC 3 and his Music Store tutorial. Jon is a Senior Community Program Manager for Microsoft and co-host of Herding Code. Jon’s Blog Herding Code MVC 3 Music Store Tutorial   Listen| Return to … Continue reading

Posted in Community, Data, Essentials, MVC, Patterns & Skills | Tagged | Comments Off on Yet Another Podcast #29 Jon Galloway on MVC 3

Deferred Execution in LINQ

A LINQ Tutorial As part of my on-going exploration of technologies related to programming Silverlight and Windows Phone, I’ve been exploring LINQ in some detail. Today, I’d like to take a look at how LINQ queries are executed; specifically focusing … Continue reading

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

Testing Network Availability

Windows Phone From Scratch #42   We would like to live in a world in which any time you turn  your phone on the network is there, full strength.  We’d also like to live in a world of peace and … Continue reading

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

Silverlight Unit Test For Phone

Windows Phone From Scratch #41   There has been some confusion about how to make the Silverlight Unit Tests work on Windows Phone.  The latest release of the Silverlight Unit Tests comes with the Silverlight Toolkit, and it targeted at … Continue reading

Posted in Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, SL Unit Tests | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Yet Another Podcast #26–Walt Ritscher

Walt is a .NET programmer and UX enthusiast.  His current UI obsession includes Silverlight, Windows  Phone 7  and WPF APIs. His blog can be found at blog.wpfwonderland.com. Walt is also a MVP and the author of the free Shazzam Shader … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Essentials, Patterns & Skills, Podcast, Tools and Utilities, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 1 Comment

Asynchronous Callbacks with Rx

Reactive Programming, Posting # 8 One of the tried and true patterns in .NET programming is to call an Asynchronous service (e.g., BeginGetResponse) and to then provide a callback to a second method for when the call completes.  This can … Continue reading

Posted in Data, Essentials, Reactive | Tagged | 11 Comments

Silverlight Sans Xaml?

Are we far enough along in the development of WYSIWYG tools, specifically both the design surface in Visual Studio, and even more so, Expression Blend, that the right way to teach Silverlight and Windows Phone programming is without Xaml? I … Continue reading

Posted in Community, Essentials, Opinion, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 36 Comments

Creating An Application Bar–Don’t Panic

Windows Phone From Scratch #31   The application bar sits at the bottom of your Windows Phone application and provides a set of hopefully not-too-cryptic icons,  along with an ellipses (…) that pops open the menu and the text associated … Continue reading

Posted in Blend, Essentials, Mini-Tutorial, WindowsPhone | Tagged | 1 Comment

Windows Phone Design Guidelines

A fellow team-member has put together this terrific Cheat Sheet on WP7 Design Guidelines.  Highly recommended.

Posted in Essentials, Patterns & Skills, Styles and Templates, Tools and Utilities, WindowsPhone | 1 Comment

Yet Another Podcast–Bill Wagner

Effective C# and much more with Bill Wagner Bill is a Microsoft Regional Director and the author of both Effective C# and More Effective C#. Links discussed include: Chris Marinos’ MSDN article Rich Minerich’s Blog Dianne Marsh on the history … Continue reading

Posted in Essentials, Languages, Patterns & Skills, Tools and Utilities | Tagged | 2 Comments