Dante's blog

Well, as everyone seems to do with their first posts, I figure I should say a bit about myself. I'm one of the SDETs on the Expression Interactive Designer project. The areas I focus on most are Databinding and Media, but we all tend to dabble in many...

I'm sure everyone else runs into these issues all the time, but every time I have to do this, I end up pulling up MSDN and looking all of this up. It's not too efficient, so I'm going to drop a few points here for reference. First: Binding a basic...

I was playing around with Blend today, and decided that I wanted to write a function to allow my user to drag the shapes around on my artboard. Granted, this could use a bit of polish, since there are some tweaks that would make it a bit better, but the...

I've been asked how to create a Value Converter that you can configure the behavior of. In my Total Training series I showed you how to create a Value Converter that would return a color, Red if the value was below a hard coded value, Yellow if it's between...

Databinding uses Value Converters to bind a value in one component's "Language" to another. For instance, there's a converter that converts a boolean to a "Visibility" in WPF. So, True is mapped to Visible, False is mapped to Hidden, etc... By using it...

I had a coworker as me how to update an Image control in code. Specifically, he wanted to create a quick file browser that had a Next and Previous button to scroll through a preset list of Images. Creating the list and iterating through directories...

Well, I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted… although I’m going to be paying a LOT more attention to this moving forward. I’m hoping though that my first post back will be worth it. We’ve been talking a lot to designers about what they want, and...

This is particularly overdue, but now that I've been featured on the Expression community site, I really need to get back to posting again :). Last month ago, I got the opportunity to present at the Cre8 summit in Orlando. I gave two presentations...

I am very passionate about Blend, there's no question there. But, I'm also a gamer... both board games and computer (PC/Console) games.I was having a conversation with a good friend yesterday, and the more I think about it, the more I just can't accept...

Well, the link isn't QUITE active yet, but if you go to http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd565875.aspx you will see the Overview information for Blend 3, and there's a link to download the Blend 3 RC. Now, at *THIS* particular moment, it doesn't...

Well, we had another Application Bash for Expression Interactive Designer this week, and my application did something I hadn't messed with before. I wanted to work with ink in Expression, and specifically, I wanted to be able to mark up a picture, and...

Ok, this isn't anything too new for most folks, but the "Trailer" for the Total Training series on Expression Blend is on the net. Check it out at http://youtube.com/watch?v=nqgjv0lODYU . Yeah, that's me. And yes, I'm quite proud of it. :)

Ok, as Blend continues its march, my mind starts moving to things I might do with it. And, naturally, one of the thoughts I've been having, is to write a game in it. There are plenty of technical aspects I need to work out... but here's what I'm thinking...

Ok, this was really bugging me... I needed to figure out how to create a Window application, and parse in the command line arguments. I know how to do it with a Console application, but not a Window app. So, how do you do it? Well, it's a little tricky...

Ok, this is something I think is kinda cool... one of my side hobbies is calligraphy. I've been doing it since I was in early high school, and there's something graceful in the old style of writing. Well, as far as I knew, an InkCanvas only allows either...

Ok, see this is what happens when I have some time to 'play' with Blend. My previous post showed how to modify the stylus tip to get something akin to a calligraphy pen. But, the pen that I got most recently got is called a scroll point. The tip itself...

It may not be a huge revelation for other folks, but with some of the testing I've been doing, I really started getting frustrated with some stuff. Specifically, I've got a fairly complex animation, and I want it to repeat forever. However, setting...

I just worked through figuring this out today, and since it was sufficiently irritating, I thought I'd post it here. Plus, I don't want all my 'loyal readers' to think I've disappeared :). Anyway, in the application I'm working on, I have a ListBox...

The honorable Major Nelson just posted that someone created a Vista Gadget that will display the GamerTag information for your friends on XBox Live. Well, for those who don't know, if I'm not mistaken, Vista Gadgets are generally written in Silverlight...

A teammate came to talk to me, because he's working with a semi-transparent window, with no Border, and he wants to be able to resize it. Allowing a user to move, minimize, maximize and close it are easy, but how to resize? Well, this is actually pretty...

Here's the problem. Launch Blend, and create a window that has AllowsTransparency set to true (which sets the WindowStyle to None). Looks good, yes? Now, add a button, and in the Click handler, set the WindowState property to Minimized. Run the application...

Well, it's official, I'm going to be presenting at the MIX convention! I'm really excited for this, although it's going to be busy for a little while. We need to do dry runs and such. The tentative title is "Unlocking the Creative Genome", but that...

Well, I just had it pointed out to me, that my blog is now listed on http://expression.microsoft.com . I'm actually pretty excited to see myself up there. It does, however, make me realize that I should spend a little time sprucing up the look of my blog...

Ok, most C# developers can probably do this in their sleep, but I needed to hook up a timer that would do something every N milliseconds. And every time, I have to decide if I need a System.Threads.Timer or a System.Timers.Timer and so on. So... This...

Ok, this is neat. This is the first time I've worked with layout panels and actually creating one of my own. Here's the code: class OverlapStackPanel : StackPanel { protected override Size ArrangeOverride( Size arrangeSize) { UIElementCollection...