Category Archives: Tools and Utilities

i2W: An iPhone Developer’s First Windows Phone 7 Application

Go to first Tutorial In this tutorial we will build a meaningful, and nontrivial Windows phone 7 application. This will give us the opportunity to explore layout controls, interactive controls, Visual Studio and a good bit more. [Updated 8/30/2010]

Posted in iPhoneToWP7, Mini-Tutorial, Tools and Utilities, WindowsPhone | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Yeti: A Review

A brief review of the Yeti… Comments welcome.

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The Great Silverlight Competency Test – Part 1

This begins The Great Silverlight Competency Test – an entirely arbitrary set of a dozen challenges, each of which I believe a competent Silverlight Programmer ought to be able to complete within no more than 1 hour.  Each of the … Continue reading

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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

Posted in Community, Opinion, Tools and Utilities | Tagged , | 207 Comments

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

Posted in Languages, Mini-Tutorial, Tools and Utilities | Tagged , | 7 Comments

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 , | 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

Posted in Blend, Mini-Tutorial, Styles and Templates | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

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

Posted in Blend, Mini-Tutorial, Styles and Templates | Tagged , | 2 Comments

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 , | 1 Comment