The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

Silverlight Cream for February 08, 2010 -- #794

Community Blogs — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:06:23 GMT

In this Issue: Fons Sonnemans , Mark Monster , Karl Shifflett , Einar Ingebrigtsen ( 2 ), Jeremy Likness , Emil Stoychev , Andrew Veresov , Sergey Barskiy ( 2 ), and Tim Heuer . Shoutout: Karl Shifflett announced Karl Now Using Vimeo for Videos ... check...( read more )...(read more)

MeXperience – Step 3 – Architecture, implementing pipes and filters

Community Blogs — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:22:44 GMT

In step 2 I explained about the Architecture of MeXperience I had in mind. This article explains the implementation of the pipes and filters pattern to filter the list of experience objects. I will start to tell that my implementation is based on an article...( read more )...(read more)

SketchFlow: Exploring Ideas

Microsoft Weblogs — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:36:07 GMT

SketchFlow, the prototyping environment in Expression Blend, lets you build deep, dynamic prototypes with a lot of “real” interactivity. Sometimes, these deep prototyping abilities make it easy to forget about another side of SketchFlow – the side that...( read more )...(read more)

Balder 0.8.8.6 is out

Community Blogs — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:23:00 GMT

Finally after a couple of months of hard work and polishing the code, API and performance, version 0.8.8.6 of Balder is out. A SampleBrowser can be found here for viewing most of the features of Balder. The features that has changed or is new is as follows...( read more )...(read more)

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 2/8/2010

Community Blogs — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:00:00 GMT

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #10. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Surface, Windows 7, XNA, Windows Forms , and some Silverlight . If you have something interesting...( read more )...(read more)

BBQ Shack – Ocean v2 for Visual Studio 2008

Microsoft Weblogs — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:16:35 GMT

What the Heck is BBQ Shack? In September of 2009 I went on a cruise to Alaska with a simple goal of writing a WPF application that shared business objects and Ocean framework code with a Silverlight 3 project within the solution. The WPF and Silverlight...( read more )...(read more)

Behind the Curtain

jesseliberty — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:46:00 GMT

Our team (officially Community Program Managers, with the secret identity of STO Ninjas) has quietly expanded over the past few months, including the additions of two amazing and terrific new voices: Pete Brown and Jon Galloway.

Their names are linked to their blogs, which I highly recommend subscribing to.

Syntax Highlighting (Finally) Done Right

This posting, however, is occasioned by Jon writing a post on how to make Syntax Highlighter work with Community Server… no small trick, but Syntax Highlighter now supports hosting (!). Jon provides all the links you need (including a link to our fearless leader’s extensive post on the topic) , and great instructions,

The key benefit is that the code has syntax highlighting but still support clean copy and paste; something I’ve wanted (and readers have demanded) for a long time.

Here’s an example:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;


namespace SilverlightHVP.ViewModel
{
   public class ItemsViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
   {
      private State state;
      public List<Item> Items
      {
         get { return state.CurrentItems; }
         
      }


      public Item CurrentItem
      {
         get { return state.CurrentItem; }
         set 
         {
            if ( value != null )
            {
               state.CurrentItem = value;
               NotifyPropertyChanged( "CurrentItem" );
            }
         }
      }

      public ItemsViewModel( State state )
      {
         this.state = state;
         this.state.CurrentSetChanged += 
            new State.CurrentSetChangedHandler(state_CurrentSetChanged);
         UpdateItems();
      }

      void state_CurrentSetChanged( object sender, EventArgs e )
      {
         UpdateItems();
      }

      private void UpdateItems()
      {
         NotifyPropertyChanged( "Items" );
      }


      public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
      private void NotifyPropertyChanged(string propName)
      {
         if (PropertyChanged != null )
         {
            PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propName));
         }
      }
   }
}

If you are looking at this on line, you should see a very nicely formatted layout with syntax highlighting (see image). In a stream, however, it is straight html. Even more valuable, notice the four symbols (circled in red); when you click on the code these appear and offer “show source” (the image has an inlay of the source as it is shown when clicking this). The other three are copy to clipboard, print and help. Very very nice.

Thanks Jon!

(Click on image for full size)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Behind the Curtain

Microsoft Weblogs — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:46:00 GMT

Our team (officially Community Program Managers, but from time to time our conceit is to call ourselves STO Ninjas) has quietly expanded over the past few months, including the additions of two amazing and terrific new voices: Pete Brown and Jon Galloway...( read more )...(read more)

Motorola Droid - First Impressions

Community Blogs — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:31:29 GMT

URL : http://www.motorola.com/consumers/US-EN/Motorol... I've given up on my old Windows Mobile phone and been looking around for a replacement. Now let me be clear, I can't have an iPhone because AT&T is clearly evil. So I decided to take the plunge...( read more )...(read more)

Short And Simple: How To Sort An ObservableCollection(Of T) In Silverlight 3

Community Blogs — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:15:00 GMT

The ObservableCollection(Of T) doesn’t provide a simple sorting mechanism. One can use the OrderBy method but trying this I ended up in a mess of code. As I started I had a simple class for my Data objects called Debitor: Imports System.ComponentModel...( read more )...(read more)

Help Me Figure Out What to Write

Community Blogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:29:04 GMT

URL : http://www.survsoft.com/esurv.php?s=27432&k=128... I am going to be writing a book on Silverlight Architecture. I'd like to get my readers/followers to help me figure out what is most important to write about. Please take the following survey if...( read more )...(read more)

Creating Customized UserControls (Deriving from ContentControl) in WPF 4

Community Blogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:26:33 GMT

Another twitter question. As usual, I’m targeting WPF 4 here, but just about everything here works with Silverlight 4 as well. (read from bottom up) Let’s say you want to create a standardized “gadget” for your application, from which anyone can derive...( read more )...(read more)

Kaxaml Update + Downloads + A Request

Community Blogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:36:00 GMT

Kaxaml Update I had a great conversation with Rob Relyea (Mr. XAML) yesterday about the future of Kaxaml and he shared a lot of very useful pointers about how to use some upcoming .NET 4.0 features to make Kaxaml super awesome. Looks like he’s already...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight Cream for February 05, 2010 -- #793

Community Blogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:51:38 GMT

In this Issue: Joel Neubeck , James Bacon , Jeremy Likness , John Stockton , Fredrik Normén , Subodh Pushpak , Alexander Golesh , PhaniRajuYN , Victor Gaudioso , and Syed Mehroz Alam . Shoutouts: Michael Sync posted the material for his My WPF MVVM Session...( read more )...(read more)

Test Driven Silverlight Body Snatchers

Microsoft Weblogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:31:00 GMT

This posting is part of the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform documentation and a Silverlight Mini-tutorial . The information in this posting, however, should be of interest to anyone writing meaningful Line of Business applications with Silverlight...( read more )...(read more)

Test Driven Silverlight Body Snatchers

jesseliberty — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:31:00 GMT

This posting is part of the Silverlight HyperVideo Platform documentation and a Silverlight Mini-tutorial. The information in this posting, however, should be of interest to anyone writing meaningful Line of Business applications with Silverlight.

[This is the first of two parts on Test Driven Development. Part 2 will walk through creating Unit Tests in “real time”]

The premise of the classic 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers is that there are “pod people” among us, who are converting “normal” people into pod people one by one.

“Once you are a pod person, you think everyone should be one”

Once you begin seeing the benefits of TDD you tend to evangelize; its working great for you and you want everyone to become one. This can be helpful, annoying or alarming depending on who you’re talking to. My daughters, for example, are quite sick of hearing about it.

"They're here already! You're next! You're next!"

It seems reasonable to many developers to create unit tests for their code; but the presumed high cost of doing so implies for waiting for a project that is not in “crunch mode.” Most developers will be waiting a long, long, long time.

Experience indicates that TDD actually saves time – you spend less time debugging and more time coding. Unfortunately, that sounds like “a good theory” and we all know that In theory, theory and practice are the same,
But in practice, they never are.

The bigger problem is Isaac Newton. Most of us suffer from Newton’s first law (significant inertia) and when confronted with an evangelist, we are governed by his third law (the more you push, the more I push back.)

“Give Up! You Can’t Get Away From Us! We’re Not Going To Hurt You!”

That said, for the past few years I’ve had the nagging sense that I was missing something important. Especially given that some of the folks I respect most in the industry were strong proponents; not least my mentors in all things good: RMSquaredF: Robert (Uncle Bob) Martin and Martin Fowler who laid the ground work and established best practices in their seminal works Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (Fowler) and Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Martin). In the latter book, Robert Martin summarizes his approach which I paraphrase here:

Don’t write production code until you’ve written a failing unit test

Write just enough of a test to fail.

Write just enough code to pass the test

What you are aiming for is about a 30 second cycle of write-test, write-code, Run-test.

Uncle Bob’s premise is that you tremendously reduce your risk and thus your fear because your production code never gets ahead of what you know; and you know it because you’ve tested for it.

“I Don’t Want Any Part Of It.”
“But You’re Forgetting Something….. You Have No Choice.”

A second premise of folks who evangelize TDD is that you really have no choice; it is a case of “pay me now, or pay me later.” Either you create the unit tests or you spend that much time and a good deal more on debugging.

The Silverlight HyperVideo Platform project offered the ideal opportunity to take on TDD, and the only way to do so was by Fiat. Thus, I made the executive decision to require unit tests for all code checked into the project (not hard to enforce so far, as at the moment all the code in the project is mine).

“The words, the gesture, the tone of voice, everything else is the same, but not the feeling.”

The rules for writing good tests are very similar to writing good code, but with a couple extra requirements. Stealing again from Robert Martin, here is a paraphrase of the good-test rules developed at his company, Object Mentor:

Test must be quick. The slower a test runs the less likely you are to run it.
Tests must be independent of one another; any side effects or dependencies must be avoided
Tests must be repeatable: running the same test against the same code base must give the same results
Tests must return unambiguous results
Tests must be isolated from the production code

Configuration – ViewModel Objects

I published a plan for configuration that made use of Xaml files. I realized yesterday, in one of those forehead slapping moments, that a design that relies on placing configuration files on the client of course will not work due to access limitations. No harm done: the Xaml files were just a mechanism for creating the configuration business objects; and there are natural server-side analogs.

We’ll use the Xaml file approach for enabling the user to maintain the state of the program when suspended or shut down (using local storage), post V1.

The working design now looks like this (using a relational database for persisting the configuration information, and WCF-RIA Services for moving the objects to the client. (A forthcoming blog entry will walk through that aspect of the implementation in detail)

(Click on image for full size)

Links Vs Units

Links are a unique identification of a Unit, and Units are not represented by a class. A Unit is a set of Items (and the selected item), each item’s set of topics (and the selected topic) and each item’s set of links (and which links are currently displayed). Notice that units are identified by a URL. In V1 the selected item and selected topic are the first in the set, and this design is used only for configuration.

After v1, we’ll move from read-only to read-write, allowing the user to persist the current unit and to recreate the state of the application at a later time.

From Tables To Objects

The diagram above was created to show how the RDB would work, but it is a bit misleading. What we really want is not tables but rather objects. There is a very small jump (in this case) from the tables to the business objects as shown here:

(Click on image for full size)

There are a number of advantages to creating these objects, the most significant of which is that I can go ahead and implement the configuration without regard to how these objects were created, providing two implicit benefits:

I don’t have to get all the WCF Ria Services code working before I can make configuration work and…
The design now allows me to substitute virtually any persistence mechanism (database, Xaml configuration files, etc.) to back these business objects.

Further, these objects are part of the ViewModel, and facilitate binding the View to the ViewModel (as discussed in my mini-tutorial on MVVM).

Implementation

We’re now (finally) ready to implement this, and as an experiment in open, honest and direct explanation I’m going to do this in real time, documenting my experience of creating the Unit Tests and the classes and their methods as I do it.

One of the contributors to the slhvp project, Abby Fichtner (aka Hacker Chick) said to me just last night,

The great advantage of testing first is that it forces you to think about what the ideal API would be to each of your classes.

Exactically.

The Configuration Objects

The first implementation issue is this: I already have the following objects in the project:

It isn’t clear if the existing Item, Link and Topic (location) classes can be used for configuration, and I have a nagging feeling that I want something more. But here is where Agile development comes to the rescue: Design for what you need right now.

Next up, A Real Time Walkthrough of Test-Driven Development….

I will be speaking at MS Days Bulgaria

Community Blogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:16:38 GMT

At the end of March there will be a big conference called “MS Days” in Sofia, Bulgaria. And you know what? :) I will be there hosting two sessions for UX fans! One of them is about Multitouch development both on desktop with WPF and on web with Silverlight...( read more )...(read more)

MIX 2010 Zune HD app

Community Blogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:57:55 GMT

We're starting to get pretty excited over here about MIX and SXSW . We will have a presence at both, but I have to admit I'm kind of partial to mix. So in celebration of MIX 2010 and the great music that is the heart of SXSW I built a zune hd music "mix...( read more )...(read more)

Installing and Setting Up and Encoding for IIS 7 Smooth Streaming and Silverlight

Microsoft Weblogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:17:25 GMT

I heard someone saying they were having trouble setting up Smooth Streaming for IIS, so I wanted to try it myself. If you just want to see Smooth Streaming work, visit http://www.smoothhd.com/ for some sample demos. They'll adapt to your bandwidth and...( read more )...(read more)

Installing and Setting Up and Encoding for IIS 7 Smooth Streaming and Silverlight

Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Silverlight — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:17:25 GMT

Developing the world’s first interactive Silverlight banner: Metia’s perspective

Microsoft Weblogs — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:34:12 GMT

January 2010 saw the launch the new Mass Effect 2 game, and EA Games in the UK wanted to mirror the game innovation with their digital marketing. Developing the world’s first interactive Silverlight banner to be ad-served on the MSN platform was an ideal...( read more )...(read more)

Upcoming Deal on my Silverlight 4 Book for Blog Subscribers

Community Blogs — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:37:00 GMT

If you subscribe to my blog (you’re here, and it’s easy, just do it .. dooo itttt ;) click the RSS link above) there’s a Manning deal on my book coming next week. It’ll only be around for one day (Manning sets the terms, not me...( read more )...(read more)

Getting Started with WPF 4: Button Controls Part 1 – The Button is a Content Control

Community Blogs — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:56:56 GMT

I have an ongoing twitter search for topics of interest to me and my position at Microsoft, so anything with words like “windows forms”, wpf , windowsclient.net etc. all show up in my search. Thought that, I often find folks who are struggling with how...( read more )...(read more)

Customer Preloader - Silverlight TV 006

Microsoft Weblogs — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:33:00 GMT

The latest episode of Silverlight TV is now available on Channel 9 ! In episode 6 John Stockton (Silverlight MVP) discusses how a custom preloader can spice up your application . He shows how to implement a basic custom preloader (aka splash Screen) and...( read more )...(read more)

Silverlight DataGrid quick styling tip: keep selected row focus state

Method ~ of ~ failed by Tim Heuer — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:27:29 GMT

A developer asked me this question and while a simple answer, I thought it would be a good quick tip to share for those who may be in similar situations. The scenario is the classic master-details scenario where perhaps you have a grid of data and when Read More......(read more)

The Official Microsoft Silverlight Site

Silverlight Cream for February 08, 2010 -- #794

MeXperience – Step 3 – Architecture, implementing pipes and filters

SketchFlow: Exploring Ideas

Balder 0.8.8.6 is out

Windows Client Developer Roundup for 2/8/2010

BBQ Shack – Ocean v2 for Visual Studio 2008

Behind the Curtain

Syntax Highlighting (Finally) Done Right

Behind the Curtain

Motorola Droid - First Impressions

Short And Simple: How To Sort An ObservableCollection(Of T) In Silverlight 3

Help Me Figure Out What to Write

Creating Customized UserControls (Deriving from ContentControl) in WPF 4

Kaxaml Update + Downloads + A Request

Silverlight Cream for February 05, 2010 -- #793

Test Driven Silverlight Body Snatchers

Test Driven Silverlight Body Snatchers

“Once you are a pod person, you think everyone should be one”

"They're here already! You're next! You're next!"

“Give Up! You Can’t Get Away From Us! We’re Not Going To Hurt You!”

“I Don’t Want Any Part Of It.” “But You’re Forgetting Something….. You Have No Choice.”

“The words, the gesture, the tone of voice, everything else is the same, but not the feeling.”

Configuration – ViewModel Objects

(Click on image for full size)

Links Vs Units

From Tables To Objects

(Click on image for full size)

Implementation

The Configuration Objects

Next up, A Real Time Walkthrough of Test-Driven Development….

I will be speaking at MS Days Bulgaria

MIX 2010 Zune HD app

Installing and Setting Up and Encoding for IIS 7 Smooth Streaming and Silverlight

Installing and Setting Up and Encoding for IIS 7 Smooth Streaming and Silverlight

Developing the world’s first interactive Silverlight banner: Metia’s perspective

Upcoming Deal on my Silverlight 4 Book for Blog Subscribers

Getting Started with WPF 4: Button Controls Part 1 – The Button is a Content Control

Customer Preloader - Silverlight TV 006

Silverlight DataGrid quick styling tip: keep selected row focus state

“I Don’t Want Any Part Of It.”
“But You’re Forgetting Something….. You Have No Choice.”