You had me at "Hello World!"

Do you remember long time ago when you (or someone else) used to play with small and cute snails, dirt, and sticky, slimy things? The blobs are here again! Remember your most precious childhood memories (where applicable) with this short blobbyfying...

Before we Start The final project is a sample that sends a string to WCF web service from Silverlight and gets a response back. Sample source code: http://blogs.msdn.com/nikola/attachment/8168735.ashx ( Edit: see comments on how to change the source...

In This Tutorial: · Template project and simple 3-step instructions to kick start WPF pixel shaders · Introduction to Pixel Shaders in WPF · Source Code for 3 pixel shaders · Links to 2 pixel shader sources on the web Using Shaders in WPF...

Last week I created a document that incorporates my experiences developing the Shock Silverlight online game so far. The document discusses the basics of online games in Silverlight and has a lot of practical examples (code) and a working project that...

This is the second post of the "Reallistic Human Movements with Silverlight" series. I'll spend a little time talking about the .bvh file format structure. I’m still working on the code and that’s why I’ll make this post short in order to get back to...

Edit: this post is now replaced by the more in-depth view here: http://blogs.msdn.com/nikola/archive/2009/08/19/exposed-5-methods-to-create-game-loop-which-is-the-best.aspx Nice! I just ported my Shock game to Silverlight 3. Getting the graphics...

I decided to give a third spin of Joe Stegman's dynamic image generation code. This time, it's many times faster (about 10x) than the original implementation and the png is generated in-place (no recoding necessary). I used some hacky optimizations...

Check out the new starfield and compare it with the old one. Edit: thanks to fashai for pointing out an issue, I updated the code again - now the stars no longer form straight lines if the Silverlight control was invisible for some time. Also updated...

Edit: fixed broken links What is the best method to create a game loop? I created a small experiment comparing 5 different animation methods. The results, along with code samples and test screenshots are summarized in this document: 5 Game...

Hoho! yes! How to make reallistic human movements in Silverlight? Check out this stickman animation demo here: http://www.nokola.com/mocap.html Download source code for the above sample in the attachments to this post below. You're looking at...

This sample demonstrates the following: 1. Simulating any image effect with Silverlight 2. Using the mouse wheel in a Silverlight application Download sample source code: http://www.nokola.com/sources/SaturationLight.zip The main XAML...

Edit2: After posting this, I made a significant improvement on the star field... will post it tonight. In the new version there's more sense of depth not just "dots" like the one below. The star speed and brightness now is calculated better (based on...

Here...a quick bite from the new game coming out... Silverlight 3, full screen, Got an idea for a name?

Submission deadline is April 30, 2009 Check it out: http://www.serverquestcontest.com/ Too bad I can't participate (I'm not eligible because I'm Microsoft employee) Whoever reads this, please do your best! Thank you! :) I'll still be...

In this tutorial: Creating a cool (and easy) Vista-like "ray of light" effect in Silverlight Creating images for splash screens The demo below shows a "core" that emits rays of light as a hypothetical download progresses. Download source...

If you try accessing UI from a timer event, you'll Exception: Invalid cross-thread access . This happens because the timer code is running on different thread and trying to access controls on the main thread. Here's how to fix it: Edit: thanks to jackbond...

You would be glad to know that some of the improvements in May CTP include: - Support for x:Static - Traversing properties, for e xample: TargetProperty = " (Control.Background).(LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops)[1].(Offset) " - Improved...

I've tried these, and there are some interesting parts that can take some time figuring out by digging in docs. This post will probably solve the 404.3 error (svc not registered as MIME type) So here's the whole solution for getting a WCF service...

Ever needed a sample code to programmatically extract data from Excel 2007 table? Given an excel table like this (in book1.xlsx): Name ID Color Ball 1 White Phone 2 Green ...

In this tutorial: - creating and rendering water ripples - optimized image generation - JPEG decoding component for Silverlight Source code for this sample Algorithm The algorithm is based on Hugo Elias’ 2D water tutorial . On...

I'm very proud to announce version 2 or my online Silverlight game "Shock": Play it here: http://www.nokola.com/shock Edit: I appreciate if you leave your comments and suggestions in the comment field for the game. Also, if you like it, please...

My latest creation last night... space view of a planet on a starry background The image is 1920x1440 Hope you like it :) Feel free to use it as your desktop background, if you like :)

Last night, inspired by the cool taskbar in Windows 7, I decided to see how easy it will be to make a similar control in Silverlight. Here's the screenshot of the first stab on the Win7 taskbar in Silverlight: Click here: http://www.nokola.com...

I had some free time today and did this: I'd like to note that LukeH made the core raytracing engine in C#. He built it using linq and the code looks very elegant . I did the "Silverlight" part of it. There are some things to think about with ray...

Here is a simple function that will convert RTF data on the clipboard to XAML: /// <summary> /// Returns the text contents of the clipboard as XAML /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static string GetFormattedXamlFromClipboard...