Silverlight Tips of the Day - Blog by Mike Snow

Uninstall Silverlight SDK RTM before installing VS 2010 Beta 2

mike.snow — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:25:20 GMT

If you have the Silverlight 3 SDK RTM version (not the GDR) installed on your box you will need to first uninstall it before running Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 setup. This is irrespective of the SDK language version or platform. The SDK GDR does not install...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #108 – How to Create an Out of Browser Application.

mike.snow — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:09:02 GMT

Out of browser support allows Silverlight applications to run as a stand alone application out of the browser. This is especially useful if you have an application that you want to run when you are offline and unable to connect via the browser. Configuring...(read more)

Game Programming with Silverlight.

mike.snow — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:50:00 GMT

Tomorrow, June 30th, is the release date for my book titled “ Game Programming with Silverlight ”. Writing this book was a great experience as it was the first book I have ever written. It was extremely time consuming mostly because it was a learning...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #107 – Animation Easing Demo

mike.snow — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:23:00 GMT

Animation Easing allows for you to apply built in animation functions to your Silverlight controls. The result is a variety of animation effects that make your controls move in a more realistic way. For example, you can add springiness to your controls...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #106 – Setting Default Browser from within VS

mike.snow — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 21:21:00 GMT

From within VS you can specify which Internet browser you want launched when running your Silverlight application. Your default system browser is not affected by this setting. To make this change right click on your startup web page and choose Browse...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #105 – How to Enable GPU Acceleration

mike.snow — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:44:00 GMT

With the release of Silverlight 3 Beta 1 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) acceleration (or hardware acceleration) is now available. The GPU is a processor attached to your graphics card that is generally used for calculating floating point operations. In...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #104 – Cool Silverlight Tutorial Blogs

mike.snow — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:04:00 GMT

Of the course of the last year I have been collecting links to some really good Silverlight tutorial blogs that I thought I would share with you. These are active blogs, frequently updated, that are specifically oriented to teaching Silverlight development...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #103 – Use Integers for Layout Calculations

mike.snow — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:53:00 GMT

When calculating the positions of objects such as Images make certain to use integer values not floating point values. For example, take a look at this code that centers a map around a given position: private void CenterMap( double windowWidth, double...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #102 - Bypassing the Image Cache

mike.snow — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:36:00 GMT

By default Silverlight will not download an image more than once if is contained within the image cache. That is, as long as the URI remains the same it will reference the image from the cache. So what if the image changed on the server even though it...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #101 – Silverlight 3 Beta 1 Feature Summary

mike.snow — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:19:00 GMT

Unless you have had your head under a rock you probably have heard Silverlight 3 Beta 1 has been released! If you haven’t already, please install it from http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx This release comes packed with some of...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #100 – ComponentArt Controls

mike.snow — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:23:00 GMT

I recently had the opportunity to try out the controls from ComponentArt.com . I was very impressed with their ease of use, professional design and overall quality. Also, their staff are very prompt to responding to questions which made my developer experience...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #99 – Silverlight 3 Game Programming Book

mike.snow — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:20:00 GMT

I would like to announce that I am currently working on a book titled “ Silverlight Game Programming ” due to be released around June this year! You can find it on Amazon by clicking here . It’s taking most of my blogging time up so I apologize for the...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #98 – Creating Sprites from 3D Models - EnvyGames

mike.snow — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:59:00 GMT

I recently stumbled across a cool tool by EnvyGames that allows you to generate sprites from 3D Models and their animation files. This tool, called SpriteWorks , is ideal for creating high quality sprite animations and one that I’ll be adding to my arsenal...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #97 – How to get an Image’s Source File Name

mike.snow — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:30:00 GMT

Once you have an image loaded how do you go back and get the original file name for the source file? This can be accomplished through the Uri property of the images Source . However, you must first typecast the images Source to be a BitmapImage . The...(read more)

Silverlight Tip of the Day #96 – The meaning of AG_E_PARSER_BAD_PROPERTY_VALUE

mike.snow — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:00:39 GMT

If you ever run into this error when running your application you might be a bit perplexed by its encrypted meaning. Looking at the exceptions details you will see something like which really doesn’t help you very much: System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException...(read more)