Category Archives: Tools and Utilities
Absolutely Incredibly Essential Utility of the Month
A couple months ago I wrote a column about two “Indispensible” utilities, one of which was Launchy. I had to issue something of a retraction: Update June 23, While this program is incredibly useful, I’ve noticed [what] looks like a … Continue reading
Posted in Essentials, News, Tools and Utilities
8 Comments
10 Programming Books You Absolutely Want Within Easy Reach
To make this list, a book must be on my “close” shelf, and must Be useful today Be incredibly well written
Posted in Blend, Data, Essentials, Languages, News, Opinion
116 Comments
Async Data Validation
This is the sixth posting in a series on Templates and DataValidation. [ First In Series Previous In Series ] In this posting I’ll extend the data validation mechanism we’ve been examining to support asynchronous data validation (allowing for … Continue reading
Posted in Data, Mini-Tutorial, Styles and Templates, Tools and Utilities
8 Comments
12 Absolutely and Insanely Essential Utilities For Programmers
In every era in recent times there has been one profession that for a short while you could enter without formal training. Autodidacts in the 19th century could read the law without recourse to formal education (see Abe Lincoln). In … Continue reading
Events and Delegates Under The Hood – Q&A
In the comments from this morning’s post, Andrew raised two questions important enough that I wanted to answer them in a post, rather than in comments…. [In the original version of the posting] you had some code showing that you … Continue reading
Events and Delegates Under The Hood – Reposted
Many programmers come to Silverlight with little prior experience with C#, and thus conceptualize events as a response to an action that is “hooked up” using somewhat arbitrary syntax. All of that is fine, until it isn’t, and so this … Continue reading
Posted in Languages, Mini-Tutorial, Patterns & Skills, Tools and Utilities
Tagged C#, Mini-Tutorial
8 Comments
Teaching An Old Control New Tricks With Templates
This is the fourth in a short series on Templates and DataValidation. [ First In Series Previous In Series ] You will remember that in the previous post in this small series, we created a new button template with a … Continue reading
Templates, Visual State and Fun With Controls
This is the third (if you count Sunday’s update!) in my short series on Templates and Data Validation. [ First In Series. Previous In Series ] Today we’re going to create a templated Button that changes the appearance and visual … Continue reading
Styles (followup)
Yesterday’s post did not include source, and left fleshing out the styles as an exercise… this quick follow-up will provide a link to the full code and a quick walkthrough of the styles I ended up creating.
Posted in Blend, Mini-Tutorial, Tools and Utilities, z Silverlight Archives
Tagged Blend, VSM
1 Comment
Visual State Manager A-Z
This is the first of a multipart series on the Visual State Manager which will cover Styles Resources Templates Custom Controls Customizing data validation
Posted in Blend, Mini-Tutorial, Tools and Utilities, z Silverlight Archives
Tagged Blend, VSM
3 Comments
PivotViewer Released!
Run, do not walk to Pete Brown’s blog and read about the new PivotViewer control. This is a very cool control just released by LiveLabs and that is fully supported in the new PivotViewer learning section on Silverlight.net. The home … Continue reading
Why Developers Should, Must, Do Care About The New Expression Blend
Okay, tough love: if you are serious about Silverlight development, the days of using one Integrated Development Environment for all you work are…. over. The benefits of adding Expression Blend to your toolkit, and getting serious about learning how to … Continue reading