dev-Silverlight

Let’s explore Silverlight 5!

2011-12-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

This is a recording from an MSDN Live Meeting broadcast from the Microsoft Belgium office on December 6, 2011.

Source: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Lets-explore-Silverlight-5

Silverlight 5 released

2011-12-10T08:28:00.000-08:00

Silverlight 5 was released to the web. If you are a Silverlight developer, then absolutely you should install this! Silverlight 5 can be downloaded here.

Introduction Visual Basic programming language from LearnVisualStudio.NET

2011-11-24T03:46:00.000-08:00

Bob Tabor from LearnVisualStudio.NET introduces the series of lessons about the Visual Basic programming language, sets expectations and tips on how to get the most out of this series, instructs you on where you can download the software you'll need to get started and offers some encouragement as you begin your journey.

Have a look at Visual Studio 11 Express

2011-09-16T03:53:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview is a collection of tools that you can use to create, code, debug, localize, package, and deploy a Metro style app. In short, Visual Studio can help you do just about anything you need to do to develop a Metro style app.

know more: First look at Visual Studio 11 Express

Implement Silverlight Event Handler in XAML

2011-05-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

In Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, create a new project of Silverlight Application using Visual C#, host the Silverlight application in a new Web site.

TYPE in the code in MainPage.xaml

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
       <StackPanel Background="Silver" Width="300" Height="200">
           <TextBlock Name="MyText" Text="Hello Silverlight!" />
           <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="Click Me!" Click=""/>
       </StackPanel>
   </Grid>

When you TYPE Click="", hint of <New Event Handler> will appear, click on it. The code will become:

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
       <StackPanel Background="Silver" Width="300" Height="200">
           <TextBlock Name="MyText" Text="Hello Silverlight!" />
           <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="Click Me!" Click="Button_Click"/>
       </StackPanel>
   </Grid>

And, a new event handler Button_Click() will be created in MainPage.xaml.cs.

Modify Button_Click() function in MainPage.xaml.cs

        private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
       {
           MyText.Text = "Clicked! Thx:)";
       }

Now save and run it!

Immediate available, Windows Phone Developer Tools for Mango

2011-05-24T13:36:00.000-07:00

Microsoft today announces the immediate availability of our Windows Phone Developer Tools for Mango. Go get these tools now, and you can immediately start building cool apps and games that take advantage of all of the new functionality of next Windows Phone, Mango!

In Windows Phone Mango, include new features of background processing, massive Live Tile functionality updates, direct camera access, sockets, a new profiler and emulator, deep linking into apps, local database support, and a new web browser control based on IE9 that supports HTML5.

Concurrent with this release of the tools, updated with official documentation in the What’s New in Windows Phone Developer Tools topic in the MSDN Library, new code samples, and new hands-on labs specific to Windows Phone Mango.

Also have updated the Game Development page to highlight some of the new resources available for phone game developers using Windows Phone Mango. New game developer resources include an updated version of Game State Management, guides explaining what’s new in the platform (including the Silverlight/XNA Framework integrated application model and Visual Basic support), and more samples and articles.

After you’ve installed the tools for Mango, check out these resources and get started right away!

Source: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/news/WPDT_7.1_Beta

Download: Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 Beta

Visual Studio Toolbox: Productivity Power Tools

2011-05-22T09:25:00.001-07:00

New Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Tools for VC++ Developers

2011-05-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

One area that people simply don’t talk often enough about is Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools for Visual C++ development teams. ALM tools are critical for planning, development, testing, and maintenance of native code bases of every size. Visual Studio Ultimate offers many “out of the box” features for efficiently and easily managing a C++ code base. At Tech Ed North America, Terry Leeper and Rong Lu will be showing off these useful features and giving C++ developers a sneak peak at what's coming...

Nested ListBox within Button

2011-05-19T06:28:00.001-07:00

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <StackPanel Background="Silver" Width="300" Height="200">
            <Button Width="100">
                <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Margin="5" Text="Nested Button" />
                    <ListBox FontSize="10" Margin="5">
                        <ListBoxItem>
                            <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Monday" />
                        </ListBoxItem>
                        <ListBoxItem>
                            <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Tuesday" />
                        </ListBoxItem>
                        <ListBoxItem>
                            <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Wednesday" />
                        </ListBoxItem>
                        <ListBoxItem>
                            <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Thursday" />
                        </ListBoxItem>
                        <ListBoxItem>
                            <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Friday" />
                        </ListBoxItem>
                        <ListBoxItem>
                            <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Saturday" />
                        </ListBoxItem>
                        <ListBoxItem>
                            <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Sunday" />
                        </ListBoxItem>
                    </ListBox>
                </StackPanel>
            </Button>
        </StackPanel>  
    </Grid>

Version 1.8 of the .NET library for Google Data APIs announced

2011-05-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

Google just released version 1.8 of the .NET Library for Google Data APIs which adds brand new service classes and samples for the following three APIs:

The library also extends the Email Settings API service to implement new functionality to retrieve the existing settings, support new filter actions and manage email delegation.

In order to improve security and stability, SSL is now turned on by default for all APIs that support it and, since the previous major release (1.7.0.1), more than 30 issues have been Fixed.

For all details, please check the Release Notes:

http://google-gdata.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/clients/cs/RELEASE_NOTES.HTML

ListBox

2011-05-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <StackPanel Background="Silver" Width="300" Height="200">
            <ListBox FontSize="10" Margin="5">
                <ListBoxItem>
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Monday" />
                </ListBoxItem>
                <ListBoxItem>
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Tuesday" />
                </ListBoxItem>
                <ListBoxItem>
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Wednesday" />
                </ListBoxItem>
                <ListBoxItem>
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Thursday" />
                </ListBoxItem>
                <ListBoxItem>
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Friday" />
                </ListBoxItem>
                <ListBoxItem>
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Saturday" />
                </ListBoxItem>
                <ListBoxItem>
                    <TextBlock VerticalAlignment="Center" Text="Sunday" />
                </ListBoxItem>
            </ListBox>

        </StackPanel>  
    </Grid>

Silverlight Button Event

2011-05-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Create a new project of Silverlight Application of Visual C#.

Modify MainPage.xaml, with two button and a TextBlock inside a StackPanel.

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
        <StackPanel Background="Silver" Width="300" Height="200">
            <Button Name="button1" Width="100" Height="30" Content="Button 1" Click="button1_Click" />
            <Button Name="button2" Width="100" Height="30" Content="Button 2" Canvas.Top="40" Click="button2_Click" />
            <TextBlock Name="text1" FontSize="20" />
        </StackPanel>
    </Grid>

Modify MainPage.xaml.cs to add two event listen functions, button1_Click() and button2_Click().

        private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            text1.Text = "Button 1 Pressed!";
        }

        private void button2_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            text1.Text = "Button 2 Pressed!";
        }

Download Microsoft Web Platform Installer for FREE

2011-05-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer 3.0 (Web PI) is a FREE tool that makes getting the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform, including Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer easy. The Web PI also makes it easy to install and run the most popular free web applications for blogging, content management and more with the built-in Windows Web Application Gallery.

Now with Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, ASP.NET 4, and ASP.NET MVC3 for FREE!

Hello DockPanel

2011-05-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

DockPanel defines an area where you can arrange child elements either horizontally or vertically, relative to each other.

To use DockPanel, you have to Install Silverlight Toolkit. Once installed, you can notice more controls will be added in Toolbox of Visual Web Developer 2010 Express.

Create a New Project:
- Create a New Project of Silverlight Application using Visual C#, with name HelloDockPanel.

Add toolkit namespace of DockPanel to page:
- With MainPage.xaml opened, double click DockPanel on Toolbox to add toolkit namespace of DockPanel.

Modify the code to add buttons arranged inside the DockPanel

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
      <toolkit:DockPanel Height="100" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,10,0,0" Name="dockPanel1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="200">
          <Button Content="Left" toolkit:DockPanel.Dock="Left" />
          <Button Content="Top" toolkit:DockPanel.Dock="Top" />
          <Button Content="Right" toolkit:DockPanel.Dock="Right" />
          <Button Content="Bottom" toolkit:DockPanel.Dock="Bottom" />
          <Button Content="Button" />
      </toolkit:DockPanel>
  </Grid>

Press F5 start debugging to see the result.

Hello WrapPanel

2011-05-10T05:05:00.001-07:00

WrapPanel positions child elements in sequential position from left to right, breaking content to the next line at the edge of the containing box. Subsequent ordering happens sequentially from top to bottom or from right to left, depending on the value of the Orientation property.

To use WrapPanel, you have to Install Silverlight Toolkit. Once installed, you can notice more controls will be added in Toolbox of Visual Web Developer 2010 Express.

Create a New Project:
- Create a New Project of Silverlight Application using Visual C#, with name HelloWrapPanel.

Add toolkit namespace of WrapPanel to page:
- With MainPage.xaml opened, double click WrapPanel on Toolbox to add toolkit namespace of WrapPanel.

- Then, you can notice that element of <toolkit:WrapPanel.../> have been added to your page.

Add components inside WrapPanel
- Modify the code to add components of Button as much as you want.

    <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
     <toolkit:WrapPanel Height="100" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="10,10,0,0" Name="wrapPanel1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="200">
         <Button Content="Botton" Margin="5" />
         <Button Content="Botton" Margin="5" />
         <Button Content="Botton" Margin="5" />
         <Button Content="Botton" Margin="5" />
     </toolkit:WrapPanel>
 </Grid>

- Now you can change the size of the WrapPanel in the designer pane to see how WrapPanel place the components.

Silverlight Toolkit

2011-05-08T08:05:00.001-07:00

Silverlight Toolkit is a open source project, where the Silverlight Team at Microsoft shares new components and functionality for designers, developers, and the community to provide an efficient way to help shape product development. Toolkit releases includes full open source code, samples, documentation, and design-time support for controls focusing on both Silverlight 4 as well as the Windows Phone.

After installed Silverlight 4 Toolkit, more controls in Toolbox of Visual Web Developer 2010 Express will be added.

Silverlight 4 samples can be viewed here.

Spanning Grid with ColumnSpan and RowSpan

2011-05-07T09:48:00.000-07:00

example:

        <Grid x:Name="LayoutChild" Height="200" Width="400">
            <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                <RowDefinition Height="50" />
                <RowDefinition Height="*" />
                <RowDefinition Height="50" />
            </Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                <ColumnDefinition Width="100" />
                <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
                <ColumnDefinition Width="100" />
            </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
            <Button Content="Row 0 Col 0 (ColumnSpan 3)"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="0"
                    Grid.Column="0"
                    Grid.ColumnSpan="3" />
            <Button Content="Row 1 Col 0 (ColumnSpan 2)"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="1"
                    Grid.Column="0"
                    Grid.ColumnSpan="2" />
            <Button Content="Row 1 Col 2 (RowSpan 2)"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="1"
                    Grid.Column="2"
                    Grid.RowSpan="2"/>
            <Button Content="Row 2 Col 0"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="2"
                    Grid.Column="0"/>
            <Button Content="Row 2 Col 1"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="2"
                    Grid.Column="1"/>
        </Grid>

Grid

2011-05-07T09:18:00.001-07:00

Grid defines a flexible grid area that consists of columns and rows.

example:

        <Grid x:Name="LayoutChild" Height="200" Width="400">
            <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                <RowDefinition Height="50" />
                <RowDefinition Height="*" />
                <RowDefinition Height="50" />
            </Grid.RowDefinitions>
            <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                <ColumnDefinition Width="100" />
                <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
                <ColumnDefinition Width="100" />
            </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
            <Button Content="Row 0 Col 0"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="0"
                    Grid.Column="0"/>
            <Button Content="Row 0 Col 1"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="0"
                    Grid.Column="1"/>
            <Button Content="Row 0 Col 2"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="0"
                    Grid.Column="2"/>
            <Button Content="Row 1 Col 0"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="1"
                    Grid.Column="0"/>
            <Button Content="Row 1 Col 1"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="1"
                    Grid.Column="1"/>
            <Button Content="Row 1 Col 2"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="1"
                    Grid.Column="2"/>
            <Button Content="Row 2 Col 0"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="2"
                    Grid.Column="0"/>
            <Button Content="Row 2 Col 1"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="2"
                    Grid.Column="1"/>
            <Button Content="Row 2 Col 2"
                    Margin="5"
                    Grid.Row="2"
                    Grid.Column="2"/>
        </Grid>

Nested StackPanel

2011-05-05T12:32:00.001-07:00

        <StackPanel Background="Silver" Width="600" Height="200">
            <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="I'm a Button" />
            <TextBlock Text="Hello Silverlight!" FontSize="20" />
            <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center">
                <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="Button 1" Margin="5"></Button>
                <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="Button 2" Margin="5"></Button>
                <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="Button 3" Margin="5"></Button>
                <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="Button 4" Margin="5"></Button>
            </StackPanel>
        </StackPanel>

StackPanel

2011-05-05T12:13:00.001-07:00

StackPanel arranges child elements into a single line that can be oriented horizontally or vertically.

example:

        <StackPanel Background="Silver" Width="300" Height="200">
           <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="I'm a Button" />
           <TextBlock Text="Hello Silverlight!" FontSize="20" />
           <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="I'm another Button" Canvas.Left="10" Canvas.Top="40" />
       </StackPanel>

Canvas

2011-05-05T03:38:00.001-07:00

Canvas defines an area within which you can explicitly position child objects by using coordinates that are relative to the area.

example:

        <Canvas Background="Silver" Width="300" Height="200">
           <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="I'm a Button" />
           <TextBlock Text="Hello Silverlight!" FontSize="20" />
           <Button Width="100" Height="30" Content="I'm another Button" Canvas.Left="10" Canvas.Top="40" />
       </Canvas>

Hello Silverlight

2011-05-02T12:50:00.000-07:00

The tool used here is Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, it can be download for FREE in here.

- Start Visual Web Developer 2010 Express

- Click "New Project..." in the Start page. If you can't see the Start page, click View on the menu, and select Start Page.

- Name the New Project and select location
Select Silverlight under Visual C# in the Templates pane on the left.
Select Silverlight Application on the middle pane.
Enter HelloSilverlight in the Name field.
Click OK.

- Enter Project Name and select host in a new web site
Accept the default setting of HelloSilverlight.Web as project name.
Make sure the box of "Host the Silverlight application in a new Web site" is checked.
Click OK.

- The files will be generated automatically for you.

- Add some XAML code
In the XAML pane, add the code between <Grid...> and </Grid>.

 <TextBlock Text="Hello Silverlight!" FontSize="20" />

- Start debugging
Now you can click the green arrow icon on the menu bar, or press F5 to start debugging.

- Now see the result:

-Finished

MonoDevelop IDE: develop Silverlight applications on Windows, Linux and MacOS.

2011-05-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

MonoDevelop is an IDE primarily designed for C# and other .NET languages. MonoDevelop enables developers to quickly write desktop and ASP.NET Web applications on Linux, Windows and Mac OSX. MonoDevelop makes it easy for developers to port .NET applications created with Visual Studio to Linux and to maintain a single code base for all platforms.

~ http://monodevelop.com/

Moonlight: Silverlight on Linux

2011-05-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Moonlight is an open source implementation of Microsoft Silverlight for Unix systems. With Moonlight you can access videos, applications and content created for Silverlight on Linux.

Moonlight was built by Novell in collaboration with Microsoft which provided Novell with test suites, specifications, open source code and Media Codecs to create an entirely open sourced Silverlight-compatible implementation for Unix systems.

With Moonlight you can:

View Silverlight content on Linux
Watch videos delivered with Smoothstreaming
Run Silverlight Out-of-Browser applications on Linux

~ http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

Visual studio 2010 sp1 error: silverlight_sdk.msi unavailable

2011-05-02T02:32:00.001-07:00

When I tried to install Visual studio 2010 sp1, get the error: silverlight_sdk.msi unavailable!

Solution:

- Download Microsoft Silverlight 4 Tools for Visual Studio 2010.

- Right click on the downloaded file(Silverlight4_Tools.exe), and extract it.

- silverlight_sdk.msi can be located in the extracted files.