Parsimony

Daily Links 28/11/2009 Silverlight 4 Special

2009-11-28T23:42:00.002+02:00

Silverlight 4 Debuts with Killer Demos at PDC09

Silverlight 4 Beta : A guide to the new features

RIA Services: Jumpstarting RIA Development

Silverlight and Expression Love
Rundown of Silverlight 4 Beta Features and 6 Hands on Labs

Data Binding Changes in Silverlight 4

Enabling Validation in Silverlight 4 with IDataErrorInfo

Silverlight 4 Fluid UI

Walkthrough: The power of the November 2009 Silverlight Toolkit testing tools

Silverlight 4 NotificationWindow and Queuing multiple notifications

Silverlight Validation Workaround

Silverlight 4 dials in skype

A look at the Printing API in Silverlight 4

Silverlight 4's Improved Element Data Binding

Silverlight 4's New Clipboard Support

Bonus:
Silverlight Style: GlassBorderStyle

Daily Links 18/11/2009

2009-11-18T21:22:00.003+02:00

Prototype of OpenStreetMap Silverlight Control using DeepEarth and Bing Maps SDK

How to Get Your Silverlight Pages Indexed By Search Engines

XAML: Gradients

How to create a Module based Silverlight application (Part 1)

Silverlight’s CollectionViewSource

Accessing the ASP.NET Authentication, Profile and Role Service in Silverlight

Silverlight CAPTCHA examples

Grouping data in a Silverlight DataGrid

Silverlight 3's new Application Extension Services

Model First in Entity Framework 4

Entity Framework 4.0: How to use POCOs

Using Transactions with SqlBulkCopy

Creating Custom Configuration Section C#

The High Cost of Losing a Developer

Daily Links 2/11/2009

2009-11-02T21:37:00.002+02:00

Twirling smoke effect in Expression Design

Silverlight out-of-browser and initParams

Caliburn v1 RTW for WPF, Silverlight 2.0 and 3.0!

Simple Kick Start Example using MEF (Preview 8)

Resharper 5.0 Overview

Silverlight Toolkit October 2009 Release

Pivotal Tracker - Lightweight Agile Project Management

SkyDrive Explorer adds 25gb of free cloud storage to Windows Explorer

How to write a book - the short honest truth

GetType From Referenced Assembly In Silverlight

2009-10-26T22:24:00.003+02:00

I recently implemented a ValueConverter for our comboboxes in silverlight, whereby the translations for an enum would be shown as a list in the combobox, and when an item is selected, the value bound to the model would be whatever was described on the enumeration as the model value that gets persisted to the database (it’s a legacy database, so I couldn’t save the enumerated value on the model). Anyways, more on how that was done is for another blog post.

The converter gets an enumeration type as a converter parameter, so I needed to construct the type of enum at runtime (so I could get access the the enumerations that were defined, and the ModelValue attributes on each enumeration definition), since the converter should be able to handle any enumeration type that has been defined according to a specific convention. Trouble is, the enumerations were defined in a seperate silverlight assembly that was referenced from the client assembly, so I couldn’t just simply:

   1: Type type = Type.GetType("ClassLibrary1.Class1, ClassLibrary1");

… only if you specify the culture and the version in the above string parameter, will the type get returned, and since those change frequently, it wasn’t a practical solution.

So here’s helper method I wrote to get a type referenced in another assembly:

   1: public static Type GetAssemblyType(string assemblyName, string className)

   2: {

   3:     StreamResourceInfo info = Application.GetResourceStream(new Uri(assemblyName, UriKind.Relative));

   4:     Assembly assembly = new AssemblyPart().Load(info.Stream);

   5:     Type type = assembly.GetType(className);

6:

   7:     return type;

   8: }

Usage:

… if you know the fully qualified class name and which assembly it’s in:

   1: Type type = GetAssemblyType("SilverlightClassLibrary1.dll", "SilverlightClassLibrary1.Class1");

… or if you only know the fully qualified class name, and don’t know which assembly it’s in:

   1: public static Type GetAssemblyType(string className)

   2: {

   3:     Type type = null;

   4:     foreach (AssemblyPart part in Deployment.Current.Parts)

   5:     {

   6:         type = GetAssemblyType(part.Source, className);

   7:         if (type != null)

   8:             break;

   9:     }

  10:     return type;

  11: }

usage:

   1: Type type = GetAssemblyType("SilverlightClassLibrary1.Class1");

Notice that in each case that the class name that is specified is fully qualified with it’s namespace.

Happy Coding :)

Daily Links 20/10/2009

2009-10-20T20:55:00.002+02:00

Silverlight 3: Calling a WCF service without a proxy using Binary XML

Silverlight 3's New Client Networking Stack

Clean shutdown in Silverlight and WPF applications
...with some MVVM Light Toolkit usage

Silverlight Toolkit adds DragDrop targets!

Silverlight Streaming to be discontinued
What a pity (it seems the Azure replacement service has costs associated with it) Guess I'm going to have to find another way (or remove) my silverlight advertisement on my blog page now :|

Event aggregator

"Agile is treating the symptoms, not the disease"
Highlighting a need to revert to the simplicity of development we had a decade ago.

LightSpeed 3.0 Beta Release

Microsoft SharedView finally RTM
"Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what's on your screen"
It's free.

Terminals
codeplex project: "secure, multi tab terminal services/remote desktop client"
alternative application - RDTabs

Visual Studio 2010 dates and details

Re-imagining the Desktop with 10/GUI

Daily Links 10/07/2009

2009-10-07T20:13:00.002+02:00

My Favorite Silverlight Extensions APIs - Part 1

Silverlike
Blog on free silverlight controls and tutorials

Having a PollingDuplex service and any other WCF service in the same website causes Silverlight calls to be slow

What's New in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 4.0 Part III - Service-Discovery Feature

Development and Build Environments

Ruining your Test Automation Strategy.
Some thoughts on test automation

Licensing a commercial product

Comparing Windows 7 features

Daily Links 29/09/2009

2009-09-29T08:13:00.002+02:00

Helpful extension methods for Show / Hide animations in Silverlight

Silverlight Ad Publishing Resources

Creating the Glow Effect in Code

Dynamic TextBlock for Silverlight (TextTrimming property behaviour from WPF)

Silverlight 3 DataGrid : Beyond Databinding
Some handy code bits for silverlight datagrid

Data Performance and Fault Strategies in Silverlight 3

What's New In Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 4.0 Part- I

Auto-Start ASP.NET Applications (VS 2010 and .NET 4.0 Series)

NCloak
NCloak is a tool to help protect your intellectual property inside your code.

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit - May Preview

Had some issues with VS hanging after build the solution - this solved it

Programming for Absolute Beginners

Microsoft supporting web startups and independent web developers by providing free software's for 3years
see also BizSpark for startups & DreamSpark for students

Daily Links 11/09/2009

2009-09-11T08:44:00.002+02:00

A Plethora of Silverlight Behaviors/Triggers

Get up to speed on SketchFlow FAST

Silverlight and Web Analytics - the Next Generation

Silverlight and localizing string data

Improving the performance of web services in SL3 Beta

Accessing Security and Authentication in Silverlight using .NET RIA Services

5 Minute Overview of MVVM in Silverlight

Export to pdf firefox extension

Bug Shooting
"free screenshot utility that was developed for software tester" "Screenshots can also be sent to Skype or a default E-Mail application"

Scott Hanselman's 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows

Cleaning System volume information for Windows Vista
You can also use windows disk cleanup utility, which will at least save your last restore point.

Telerik Offers Free Developer Team Management Tools
Invaluable if you're using TFS for your work item management. (Supports scrum template)

Daily Links 26/8/2009

2009-08-26T23:04:00.002+02:00

Refactor Safe Implementation Of INotifyPropertyChanged

My latest whitepaper on WCF 4.0

MediaPlayer control included in Silverlight 3

Performance of HTTP polling duplex server-side channel in Microsoft Silverlight 3

Fault support in Silverlight 3

Automatically update the widths of ListView columns - updated!

Silverlight resources
some great sample code to be found here

How to install cool, custom fonts (like PDC09) into Windows and use it in your Silverlight application

A guide to Silverlight 3 new features

iGoogle needs login everytime Firefox restarts? Delete cookies* files in your profile directory

Daily Links 04/08/2009

2009-08-04T08:37:00.004+02:00

Get Countries Name in .Net

Hack for printing silverlight content

INotifyPropertyChanged: How to remove the Property Name String Code Smell
... or if you cannot settle for the performance hit, use testing to ensure that the correct string is sent with OnPropertyChanged event

Silverlight and WPF Dashboards and gauges

Showing the designer preview in VS2008 with SL3

Creating a Silverlight WCF Binary Encoding Client in Code

Using a Border for a Glow Effect in Silverlight 3

Simplifying the Process of Calling a WCF Service from Silverlight (or any .NET Application)

Handy WCF Techniques

SQL SERVER - 2008 - Copy Database With Data.

Entity Framework 4.0: How to use POCOs

Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Preview 6: V1 Feature Complete Silverlight Support and Much More!

Daily Links 13/07/2009

2009-07-13T20:31:00.002+02:00

Silverlight 3 RTW Released

Silverlight RIA Services July Preview
now with go-live licence

Silverlight Toolkit July Release

Pushing Data From the Server to Silverlight 3 using a Duplex Wcf Service

20 Most Interesting Silverlight Tutorials

Silverlight 3 Polling Duplex Chat and Realtime Stock Updates

Creating a ComboBox Style AutoCompleteBox Control in Silverlight

EntitySpaces, Silverlight, and WCF a Fantastic Combination

Everything search
Search files and folders on your NTFS files instantly. It's not an indexing service, so it won't hog your resource like Google Desktop / Windows Search. From the forum: "When I read about it in PCWorld, I thought it might be worth a look. When I saw that it did wildcards (and was portable!), I figured it was definitely worth a try. When I read that it did REGULAR EXPRESSIONS I was certain I wanted it. And when it indexed all my huge volumes in a couple seconds, I nearly had a stroke"

Event Extensions: Methods for firing events and managing event listeners

2009-06-25T21:57:00.005+02:00

In most modern C# applications, generous usage of events have become the norm. Gone are the days where we were afraid to use them because of the "black magic" code that they seemed to execute.

Today, perhaps the opposite is true, and they are used too lightly, with disregard for the memory leeches they are (those small, black slimly kind that you're never aware of what damage they're doing until it's too late).

Here's some code to make usage of the leeches a little easier :).

The typical firing of an event from C# code looks something like this:

        1: if (MyEvent1 != null)   2: {   3:     MyEvent1(this, EventArgs.Empty);   4: } 

There are 2 essential problems with this code:

It's too many lines of code for something so mundane.
What happens if there are more than 1 listeners listening to the event, and one of them throws an exception? Normal .NET behaviour dictates that the other listeners never get to hear about the event, but what if it's important that all listeners know about the event before application execution is halted?

Solution to problem #1: wrap the logic in an extension method

    1: MyEvent1.Raise(this, EventArgs.Empty); 

there - isn't that better? Here's sample of the implementation:

   1: public static void Raise(this EventHandler handler, object sender, EventArgs e)   2: {   3:     if (handler != null)   4:     {   5:         handler(sender, e);   6:     }   7: } 

Solution to problem #2: expand on the extension method (now that all the logic is conveniently in one place)

      1: MyEvent1.Raise(this, EventArgs.Empty, true);  

...where the boolean parameter tells the extension method to make sure that all the event listeners get to hear about the event before throwing an exception. The exception that is then thrown, is an EventListenerException, which is just basically a wrapper for all exceptions that occurred on the event listener's event handling code.

sample implementation: (called from the event extension method)

   1: private static void ManageEventListeners(IEnumerable<Delegate> delegates, object sender, EventArgs e)   2:       {   3:           EventListenerException eventListenerException = null;   4:           foreach (Delegate listner in delegates)   5:           {   6:               //the listner could throw an unhandled exception in the handler method   7:               //make sure that the other listners still handle event if this is the case   8:               try   9:               {  10:                   listner.DynamicInvoke(new[] {sender, e});  11:               }  12:               catch (TargetInvocationException ex)  13:               {  14:                   //add a new event listner  15:                   EventListener eventListener = new EventListener  16:                                                   {  17:                                                       Listener = listner,  18:                                                       ListenerException = ex.InnerException  19:                                                   };  20:                     21:                   //NOTE: The exception which occurs is "TargetInvokationException", but the   22:                   //actual exception which occurs in the listner is contained in the innerException  23:    24:                   //add listner to eventListnerException  25:                   if (eventListenerException == null)  26:                   {  27:                       eventListenerException = new EventListenerException();  28:                   }  29:                   eventListenerException.EventListenerCol.Add(eventListener);  30:               }  31:           }  32:    33:           //if an exception was thrown by one of the listner's event handlers  34:           if (eventListenerException != null)  35:           {  36:               throw eventListenerException;  37:               //then re-throw the exception that thrown in the handler   38:           }  39:       }  

Here's some sample code with unit tests included in case you need to play with the code (NUnit 2.4.7 & VS 2008)

PS: It's Silverlight compatible (of course :) )

Daily Links 25/06/2009

2009-06-25T20:59:00.003+02:00

Silverlight: Product Maintenance Application ( Part 1 - Authentication, Roles and Logging In )

Silverlight - Resizing Childwindow

Synchronous Web Service Calls with Silverlight 2: Dispelling the async-only myth

Distribute Mobile Applications On Windows Marketplace

Visual Studio's Database Publishing Wizard and the new 1-Click Web Deployment

Visual Studio 2010: Web application packaging and publishing

Microsoft ADO.NET Entity Framework Feature Community Technology Preview 1

Feature CTP Walkthrough: Self Tracking Entities for Entity Framework

Feature CTP Walkthrough: Code Only for Entity Framework

Daily Links 14/06/2009

2009-06-14T23:40:00.002+02:00

Improving the performance of web services in SL3 Beta
Uses new SL3 Binary encoding

Implementing UserName Password & WS-Security with Silverlight

55 Best Ways To Track Your Website Daily Traffic

Sending Email From a Gmail Account with C# .NET and Web Services

Convert IP Address To Location and Address to Geo Location Using C# VB.Net

UppercuT build framework (for SVN SC) - tutorials

UppercuT TeamCity Integration Series

Best Practices for Handling Change in Your WCF Applications

Free Vector Graphics Program
Can save output directly to xaml format

Vectorize Bitmaps to XAML using Potrace and Inkscape

10+ Stunning Websites for Download Free Icon Sets

Royalty Free Icons

Daily Links - 03/06/2009

2009-06-03T08:37:00.002+02:00

Silverlight 3 to launch July 10

Silverlight Stopwatch class in C#

UppercuT - The Insanely Easy to Use Automated Build Framework

Implementing the [ThreadSafe] Singleton Pattern in C#

T4 Editor plus UML-Style modeling tools for Visual Studio 2008/2010

Indian MVP Inspired by Silverlight 3!
some handy tutorial links

using SharpZipLib compression in conjunction with isoloated storage

.NET RIA Services: Get your metadata from anywhere!

WCF Binary Encoding with SL3

A simpler, conventions based DependencyProperty structure for silverlight using CustomControlBase

Daily Links 25/05/2009

2009-05-25T23:37:00.003+02:00

Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 - Downloads

Silverlight and Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1
Some Silverlight 3 bits don't play nice with VS 2010, so you have to pick one :|

Silverlight 3 with Ria Authentication service

CLOG: Client logging solution for silverlight

silverlight super textbox

Silverlight Toolkit Chart tweaking made easy

Silverlight Splash Screen links:
Silverlight Loader:
splash screens in managed code - getting started
How to: Define a Simple Silverlight Splash Screen
an example

Silverlight loading animation

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 Cheat Sheet

POCO in the Entity Framework: Part 1 - The Experience

Model First in Entity Framework 4

Daily Links 19/05/2009

2009-05-19T22:54:00.000+02:00

.NET RIA Services May 2009 Preview

Building Modular Silverlight Applications

Using Silverlight 2 With ADO.NET Data Services

Some very encouraging links from the Entity Framework team...
Sneak Preview: Persistence Ignorance and POCO in Entity Framework 4.0
Sneak Preview: Model First in the Entity Framework 4.0
Sneak Preview: Deferred Loading in Entity Framework 4.0
Sneak Preview: N-Tier development with Entity Framework 4.0
Sneak Preview: Entity Framework 4.0 Testability Improvements

How To: Use Membership in ASP.NET 2.0

Create Membership tables in another database than the standard aspnetdb.mdf

How to Configure Your ASP.NET 2.0 Account's Membership Database

Daily Links 12/05/2009

2009-05-12T20:43:00.002+02:00

Locate Me and Virtual Earth Sample for Silverlight

Move Over ASP.NET WebForms and MVC!
:)

Creating Rich Data Forms in Silverlight 3 - Customization

Radial Layout in Silverlight

Gotchas for Web Services in Silverlight
Covers some issue with https comms and clientaccess policy files.

Expression Blend 3: More on Actions, Triggers, Behaviors

Prevention : The first line of defense, with Attach Property Pixie dust!

Sending email using silverlight

Silverlight whitepapers
quite a few handy whitepapers on silverlight

Silverlight Toolkit: Animated Transition Control

Supporting ScreenReaders in Silverlight

Animating ListBox items - the VisualStateManager

NUnit 2.5 RTM

Best practices for scalable, high performance systems

Database Calculated Columns
when they should and should not be used.

Daily Links - 30/04/2009

2009-04-30T08:39:00.002+02:00

Silverlight 3 - Simple "Flip Control" built on PlaneProjection

Silverlight 3 - Simple Control for Online/Offline

Silverlight Count Down Control - Your days are counted

Silverlight out-of-browser apps: Local Data Store
Comprehensive article on storing data to the client file system

Creating Rich Data Forms in Silverlight 3 - Introduction

Construct domain models faster than ever before!
ORM I am seriously considering for my home project. A little birdy told me there is some sweet silverlight support coming in their next release which is due shortly.
The big win for me is the Domain Driven Design which they follow in the article highlighted above, added to this Mindscape's "convention over configuration" development approach, and excellent price entry point (which is esp important for developers like me working at home on a tight budget)

Getting your Func along with your Action on

All Your Repositories Are Belong To Us
Discussion on Repository vs Command Query Seperation (CQS) Patterns

RefCard for Scrum
Handy summary of the scrum process

Agile Adoption - decreasing time to market

StatSVN
"generates various tables and charts describing the project development"

Shelving Subversion
Would be nice if this mechanism was more actively supported by the SVN toolsets. I want my "Shelve" and "Preserve Pending Changes" button and checkbox in Ankh!

Getting up and Running Quickly with ScrewTurn Wiki & SQL Server

Daily Links - 22/04/2009

2009-04-22T15:47:00.002+02:00

MouseWheel Behavior for Silverlight

Silverlight installation experience guidance posted

Creating application with .NET RIA Services Part 5 - Sorting and Filtering data

Silverlight Unit Test Runner for Resharper - January 2009 Update

Saving data-objects to Isolated Storage in Silverlight

It took me under 5 minutes to realize the power of behaviors!

Silverlight 3 - Experimenting with WCF’s Binary XML Encoder

Animation easing and the "bounce" effect

Silverlight drag-and-drop helper classes

Flicker Effect - Opacity Masks in Blend

NBuilder
"rapidly create test data, automatically assigning values to properties and public fields that are of type of the built in .NET data types"

Setting up Subversion 1.6 Server

Configuring Visual Studio to Debug .NET Framework Source Code

Daily Links 09/04/2009

2009-04-09T22:45:00.002+02:00

Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control CTP - Building a "Hello World!" Sample From Scratch

Looking at Virtual Earth Silverlight Control

Database Versioning and Documentation Tool for Microsoft SQL Server

Cool Silverlight Tutorial Blogs

Silverlight Advertising Creation Kit is now available

5 Most Common Asked Questions When Using .Net RIA Services

Silverlight 3 - Experiencing ‘Out Of Browser’ Silverlight Application and Connecting it to a WebService

Keep your application responsive with BackgroundTaskManager on WPF and Silverlight

Creating and Editing Gradients in Expression Blend 3 Preview

Silverlight 3's New Style Enhancements

Out-of-Browser Support - Silverlight 3

.NET Localization Tool for Visual Studio

Managing Silverlight 3 navigation behavior

Setting Default Browser from within VS
I keep forgetting how to do this :|

The Big List of Agile Practices

patterns & practices: WCF Security Guidance Project

Startups welcome here - get a jumpstart with software you need

SQL Server 2008 SP1 and Report Builder Update

Build Your Own Multitouch Surface Computer

Daily Links 01/04/2009

2009-04-01T21:15:00.004+02:00

Silverlight Contrib new release

Virtual Earth Silverlight: Using MouseClick Event To Add "Pushpins"

Discovering Silverlight 3: Poor Man’s Visualbrush Behavior

Silverlight WordPress plugin

Silverlight 3 - Where is Silverlight Mobile?

Silverlight 3 Quick Tip : Lambda Expressions for Async Web Service Calls
General tip for in-line event handling, applied in the silverlight domain.

.Net RIA Service: Hello World

Creating applications with .NET RIA Service Part 1: Introdiction
Part 2 - Creating the project
Part 3 - Adding DomainService class
Part 4 - Adding a DomainDataSource

Data Validation in Silverlight 3

Running Silverlight 2 and 3 on the same machine (made easy)

TextGlow Silverlight Open XML Viewer Source Code available

Html Host control in Silverlight

iPhone like Touch Interface with Silverlight Grid

Using Blur to make Dialogs Pop in Silverlight 3

Silverlight Tip : Nest Another Grid Inside LayoutRoot for Flexibility

Microsoft Translator Service

Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Edition

Pitfalls for software architects

Daily Links 24/03/2009

2009-03-24T23:28:00.002+02:00

.NET RIA Services: From Vision to Architecture
A deep drilldown into the thinking behind .NET RIA Services, the concepts and architecture behind the bits...

Silverlight Activity Control

Getting Started with Virtual Earth Silverlight Map Control SDK CTP

Virtual Earth Silverlight: Adding Media (Images, Video, etc.) to the Map

Virtual Earth Silverlight: Using Tile Layers to Overlay Custom Map Imagery

Virtual Earth Silverlight: Overlay OpenStreetMap, OpenAerialMap and Yahoo Map Imagery using Custom Tile Layers!

Building Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 Beta applications on the same machine

Silverlight 3 Release Date (RTW) Surprise
Best guess as to when SL3 is being released

Silverlight 3: Array Helper

Live Framework Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio April 2009 CTP

WPF Toolkit - March 2009 Release

Introducing Docu - Simple doc gen for .Net
For those who find SandCastle too complex

RESX Translation Tool
First pass translation of resx files using google's translation tools

Daily Links 19/03/2009

2009-03-19T21:49:00.003+02:00

Silverlight 3 out to play
Silverlight 3 links
DataForm Control
Out of Browse Experience
Overview: .NET RIA Services
I think this is where Silverlight starts to differentiate itself from the competition - RIA LOB application development.
WPF has just become the ugly cousin :)

Silverlight 3 for business applications - video

Moq 3.0 RTM!!!
Now with Silverlight support

Modal Window in Silverlight

Silverlight ReaderWriterLock Implementation

Visibility pattern in Silverlight

Mirroring Subversion from Windows

Free WPF DataGrids
XCeed WPF DataGrid
Seems to be the most popular free datagrid offering. Requires registration and download of express edition requiring a licence key.
Microsoft WPF Toolkit includes a datagrid.
The toolkit currently has over 12000 downloads, so by codeproject standards, it's quite popular too.
Seems the xceed version has grouping capability, which the microsoft version does not.

Reflection: Dodge Common Performance Pitfalls to Craft Speedy Applications

The Computer Performance Shell Game

Daily Links 08/03/2009

2009-03-08T22:01:00.002+02:00

Silverlight Unit Testing, RhinoMocks, Unity and Resharper.

SilverUnit - True unit testing for silverlight

Silverlight Spy
"provides detailed inspection of any Silverlight application."

How to "template" the Silverlight Calendar to behave like the Vista system calendar [Jason Cooke]

Silverlight UserControl Inheritance

Right-Clicking in Silverlight 2 -- A Refinement

Silverlight Drag Drop Manager
"allows you to easily implement drag and drop behaviour in your Silverlight projects by providing a DragSource & DropTarget control, which act as a content container and can contain any SL user control."

Silverlight: Windows 7 look-alike task bar buttons sample

Silverlight WCF Service Reference Usage Simplified
Deployment independent service references without having to change the config file.

two very promising WPF application frameworks on codeplex

Silverlight - Dispatcher, Cross-Thread Property Setting & Lambda Expressions

Creating a WPF / Silverlight Control With a Semi Transparent Background

Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight - Modularity

New AnkhSvn released
OpenSource Visual Studio SVN plugin that has improved greatly over the past year or two. Highly recommended.

Speed up your app by compressing WCF service responses

10 Papers Every Software Architect Should Read (At Least Twice)