Mike Taulty's Blog

Note to self on HTTP namespace reservations

mtaulty — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:10:38 GMT

I used to have lots of hassle around reserving portions of the HTTP namespace so that ( e.g. ) WCF services can listen on them. I remember writing about it here in the past. In more recent times, I avoid all that stuff altogether and just use a simple netsh command and this is a reminder to myself of how to do that because I forget every time so here’s the link for “next time”; Configuring HTTP and HTTPS on MSDN...(read more)

Arturo’s Top 20 Resources for Learning Silverlight/Blend

mtaulty — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:23:42 GMT

Great list over here for getting going on Silverlight and Blend . In fact, so good I linked to it twice :-) Great list over here for getting going on Silverlight and Blend . Ah, what the heck; Great list over here for getting going on Silverlight and Blend . :-)...(read more)

4th November, London, Edge User Group Hosting IE8 Session

mtaulty — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:38:51 GMT

Just a quick promotion - The Edge User Group are hosting Microsoft’s Internet Explorer evangelist, Giorgio Sardo on the 4th November. You can find Giorgio’s blog up here on MSDN. The event will be at the Microsoft offices in Cardinal Place so if you’ve an interest in IE ( and a lot of folks have an interest in IE ) then pop over to the Edge UG site over here to register – not many places so get in quickly!...(read more)

Prism and Silverlight Screencasts on Channel 9

mtaulty — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:39:05 GMT

In talking to UK customers about building business applications with Silverlight I often mention Prism or “ Composite Application Guidance ” that comes from the Patterns and Practices team and I’ve met a few people who either haven’t heard of Prism or have found it a bit hard to get into and so have put it to one side to look at “later”. I thought I’d take a wander around Prism myself and as part of doing that I put together a bunch of screencasts that I’ve just published to Channel 9 which take a look at a few of the Prism topics like; Dependency Injection Unity Modularity Shells, Regions, Views Commands Event Aggregation and I also put together a longer screencast that tries to walk through building a simple Silverlight “email client” using the ideas contained in the other screencasts. I’ve published 10 videos to Channel 9 – the starting point is the big picture below which links to video 1; and then the videos should all be cross-linked or you can jump to them using the hyperlinks below; Part 1: Taking Sketched...(read more)

ScottGu on WPF 4

mtaulty — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:08:03 GMT

Scott put out a great post overnight on new features in WPF V4 – well worth a read. Scott’s Post I think I’d better come up with something original for this blog with my next post as the last 3-4 have just been me pointing to work done by Scott :-)...(read more)

ScottGu Manchester ASP.NET MVC Video

mtaulty — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:10:43 GMT

Similar to the previous Visual Studio 2010 and Silverlight videos of Scott’s sessions at the Manchester “ Guathon ” event the other week, here’s the video of the ASP.NET MVC (and MVC 2) session that Scott did to start the day. Copying what I said about the previous videos; I tried as best I could to maintain the high-def nature of what was shot across the 2 video feeds and the additional audio feed and that caused me a little trouble as I struggled to find somewhere to put the GBs of rendered video once I’d produced it :-) Ultimately, I’ll try and get these to Channel 9 but in the meantime, here’s a quick cut of the session. Note that the partitioning of the session into 2 pieces is pretty brutal in that one video stops and the next one immediately begins. Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - ASP.NET MVC(2) Part 1 Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - ASP.NET MVC(2) Part 2 Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - ASP.NET MVC(2) Part 3 Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - ASP.NET MVC(2) Part 4 Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - ASP...(read more)

ScottGu Manchester Silverlight Video

mtaulty — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:19:49 GMT

Similar to the previous Visual Studio 2010 video of Scott’s session at the Manchester “ Guathon ” event the other week, here’s the video of the Silverlight session that Scott did to close the day ( he’s still using some of my pictures on his slides as far as I can tell ;-) ). Copying what I said about the previous videos; I tried as best I could to maintain the high-def nature of what was shot across the 2 video feeds and the additional audio feed and that caused me a little trouble as I struggled to find somewhere to put the GBs of rendered video once I’d produced it :-) Ultimately, I’ll try and get these to Channel 9 but in the meantime, here’s a quick cut of the session. Note that the partitioning of the session into 2 pieces is pretty brutal in that one video stops and the next one immediately begins. Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - Silverlight Part 1 Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - Silverlight Part 2 Note – Scott also did a session on ASP.NET MVC (2). I’ll get this video session published soon ( once...(read more)

ScottGu Manchester Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Video

mtaulty — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:17:35 GMT

As today looks to be the day that Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework V4.0 beta 2 become available for download; I thought it’d be good to get my skates on and publish the video footage of Scott Guthrie talking about that very topic at the “ Guathon ” event that happened in Manchester the other week. I tried as best I could to maintain the high-def nature of what was shot across the 2 video feeds and the additional audio feed and that caused me a little trouble as I struggled to find somewhere to put the ~5GB of rendered video once I’d produced it :-) Ultimately, I’ll try and get these to Channel 9 but in the meantime, here’s a quick cut of the session to line up with Visual Studio going out today. Note that the partitioning of the session into 4 pieces is pretty brutal in that one video stops and the next one immediately begins. Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - Visual Studio 2010 Part 1 Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - Visual Studio 2010 Part 2 Scott Guthrie - Manchester UK - Visual Studio 2010 Part 3 Scott...(read more)

Rant: Silverlight - You Do Not Want the Blue Ball Loading Animation

mtaulty — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:53:55 GMT

I’m just ranting here but I find that a lot of really beautiful Silverlight applications still start off with this; when there’s no need so I made a quick video up here; Silverlight Splash Screen Rant! from Mike Taulty on Vimeo . which tries to show how easy it is to get away from that standard animation. There’s another video up here; which does a similar thing but has more detail I think....(read more)

Linked In Talk - “Beyond Silverlight with WPF”

mtaulty — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:12:20 GMT

If you came along to the talk that I did for the Linked In .NET User Group today via Live Meeting then thanks very much for doing that and I promised you a number of links which I’m listing here. I showed bunch of different items; “WPF Airlines” Logical Pixels Tiled image brushes Tiled geometry brushes Tiled visual brushes Path based animations 3D Cube with ambient light and spotlights 2D on 3D integration Documents HTML Frame Control Ink and Gestures Code - Ink and Gesture Code - Speech Unified document using various pieces Binding – static binding Binding – ObjectDataProvider to databind enum values Binding – ObjectDataProvider to databind a process list Binding – XmlDataProvider to databind a twitter RSS feed Binding – Multibinding to DateTime.Now Triggers – simple trigger on a rectangle Triggers – simple trigger to control volume on a video Code – Commands in my notepad like example Code – Printing using the “WPF Airlines” application Code - HTML Interop with WebBrowser Code – Windows Forms Interop and all...(read more)

PDC Pre-Conference Session: Silverlight 3

mtaulty — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:19:13 GMT

A quick follow-up on this post about the pre-conference PDC session on “Getting the Most from Silverlight 3” that Ian and Rich from the UK are running. We put together a bit of video with the chaps talking about the session and what they’re planning to work through on the day. Jump over here to take a look....(read more)

Scott Guthrie, Manchester (UK), 29th September PM

mtaulty — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:23:06 GMT

I’m probably already too late in promoting this but we are lucky to have Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President for the .NET Developer Platform coming to do a full afternoon session in Manchester on the 29th September. You can find the details on the site over here where you can also register – I’d encourage you to do that quickly as it’s likely to sell out fast if it hasn’t done so already. Thanks goes to Phil for helping me to sort this out as we were up against a deadline and Phil’s help made sure that the event happened in Manchester rather than London – sorry to any London and South East based folks but Scott did do some sessions there a few months ago (recordings are here ) so you shouldn’t feel too hard done by. He’s also going to be at the Future Of Web Applications conference in London the same week in September so you can catch him there. He’s a busy chap, you wonder how he finds time to make all those puddings ;-)...(read more)

Microsoft UK and “Britain Works”

mtaulty — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:32:28 GMT

Just a quick promotion for a programme that Microsoft has announced in the UK around helping get people the IT skills they need to get back into work – here’s a better description taken from the official website; Given the issue of rising unemployment in the UK, Microsoft is dedicating itself over the next three years to helping get Britain back to work. Through a series of partnerships with nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), community learning centres, and public authorities, we are aiming to help half a million people into jobs in the areas of the economy that will lead the recovery. These will be digital jobs, requiring the use of computer skills, and will be in a range of industries from manufacturing to services and the IT industry itself. Click the image above to visit the site....(read more)

Andrew & James on Windows 7 & Windows 2008 R2

mtaulty — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:17:52 GMT

My colleagues Andrew and James have made some cracking videos around Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. Get started ( and be impressed by Andrew’s drawing skills ) below;...(read more)

MSDN Silverlight “Firestarter” event – online on 17th September

mtaulty — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:59:40 GMT

I just wanted to highlight the “Firestarter” event for Silverlight that’s happening just over a week from today – there’s a great agenda from a long list of folks; Scott Guthrie Tim Heuer Adam Kinney Janete Perez Justin Angel/Shawn Oster Brad Abrams Karl Shifflet which is a bit like a “who’s who” of the Silverlight world so you know you’re going to be in safe hands. If I can manage it then I’m going to log in myself as an attendee and enjoy the sessions myself :-)...(read more)