I recently researched displaying HTML from within a Silverlight 2 application. We have a huge amount of content that is currently rendered as HTML and Silverlight XAML is well suited for displaying UI elements and animations but does not have the kind...

Microsoft have announced the XNA Game Studio Express beta. Based on Visual C# Express 2005, this tool will enable creation of Windows and Xbox 360 games using the XNA Framework. This is an exciting development for all hobbyist game developers! I'm...

When Internet Explorer requests an XML page from a web server, it will apply an XSL stylesheet. This can be an XSL stylesheet that is provided in the XML file, e.g.: <?xml-styleheet href="filename.xsl" type="text/xsl" ?> If no stylesheet is...

The source code and tutorials for the Rocket Commander game are available in this MSDN Coding4Fun section!

System.IO.Directory.GetFiles(string,string) enables you to provide a search pattern as the second argument. I have a list of file extensions that I need to search for and discovered two issues with this method. 1. The second argument only accepts...

You can read more about the changes to the MSDN Visual Studio 2005 beta documentation site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/aboutmsdn/changes/msdn2/ . The Visual Studio 2005 beta documentation is available at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library . Don...

Eric Gunnerson recently posted some reasons why C# is an improvement over C++ and some updates . This post is a good read - be sure to consider the comments. Some of my thoughts... Sure, with C#, I do spend less time considering memory usage (i.e. preventing...

Marshall Belew, lead developer of the first commercial managed DirectX game - Tin Soldiers: Alexander the Great, is interviewed by the Zman .

The N/Direct web site is run by Mattias Sjögren , a Microsoft MVP. In his own words: "N/Direct is a site for developers seeking information or answers about interoperability between .NET managed code and native unmanaged code." The web site has an impressive...

More cool stuff for DirectX developers in the October 2004 DirectX SDK, available from here . Also includes tool updates (PIX, Maya Exporter) and bug fixes. New C++ Samples AntiAlias - different multisampling techniques Instancing - four instancing rendering...

I was recently informed of this useful site . You can enter the URL of your web site and see what it looks like in the following web browsers on a Mac or PC: Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 (PC) Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 (PC) Microsoft Internet...

I recently rebuilt a C++ project to use the DLL version of the CRT and discovered that the _crtBreakAlloc variable was not visible to the Visual C++ debugger. If you don't already know, this variable is maintained by the debug CRT heap allocation code...

Just discovered a great tip for Visual C# 2003. If you implement an interface (or event/delegate) on your class and don't want to type all the methods, just type the interface name in your class derivation list and Intellisense will display a tooltip...

If you take a walk over to http://www.pinvoke.net , you can find an active WiKi community that is documenting the PInvoke statements used to call Win32 and other unmanaged APIs from managed code. While you're there, why not add signatures and other information...

After spending many hours removing spyware from my home family PC, I'm so pleased that the industry is taking this malicious software seriously. IMO, the deceptive behaviour used by these companies is tantamount to fraud and is damaging our industry....

In the UK there is a tradition of newspaper and radio folk running fake stories on April 1st (April Fool's Day). This Guardian newspaper article summarises some of the ones that were run today. A quick scan of the major US newspapers didn't show any...

Attending a great “Designing .NET Class Libraries” class run by Brad Abrams today. I was surprised to see a coding pattern that I would commonly use in C++ and be told that was NOT the best way to do this in C#. int len = array.Length...

Found this link on one of our internal design guidelines sites and just had to share it, since it's hilarious - sometimes the best way to see how to do something well is to see how not to do it ;O) http://mindprod.com/unmain.html

I've just returned from a vacation in the UK and was surprised by the number of people using text messaging. It seemed that many people had a cell phone in their hands - either talking or typing. I was wondering why text messaging isn't as prevalent here...