Knowledgecast

The WPF Starter Kit

2009-11-02T16:23:00Z

Disclaimer: It has come to my attention that there is some confusion in the community regarding the "official status" of the WPF Starter Kit. I wanted to make it clear that this toolkit has come out of my and my team's efforts on a recent project and is by no means the endorsed (by Microsoft) or only way of implementing the features outlines below. The p&p team's Composite WPF and Silverlight guidance ( http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/ ) and the WPF codeplex site ( http://wpf.codeplex.com )...(read more)

Windows Mobile 6.5 Emulator Available

2009-06-05T23:04:16Z

The developer kit for Windows Mobile 6.5 (including documentation) is now up here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=20686a1d-97a8-4f80-bc6a-ae010e085a6e . You might remember me talking about this at the Tech Ed session last month. Also included are some samples on the new Gesture APIs. WM 6.5 also supports a new programming model called Widgets (lightweight script applications that run inside an instance of IE6). And yes, WM6.5 does come with Internet Explorer...(read more)

MOSS: Using the List Web Service to Rename a File

2009-05-20T11:12:22Z

Right, so I ran into an interesting problem recently. I needed to rename a bunch of files in a document library we have on our team’s MOSS site. Problem is, this is a lot of documents. So I figured I’d use MOSS’s web services to do it. Now in MOSS, a document library is just a specialized list of items (the items just happen to be files). So the web service that I need to use is the MOSS Lists web service ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/lists.aspx ). Turns out, doing this with the MOSS...(read more)

Building Great Looking Mobile Applications

2009-05-15T07:43:21Z

Today at Tech Ed I’ll be trying out something interesting. Instead of speaking on a particular technology area, I’ll be talking about building great looking applications for Windows Mobile. I won’t bother doing a full blown post about this because most of what I will talk about is covered by Alex here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd630622.aspx . In case you were an attendee (I am writing this just before the session) and want access to the Powerpoint deck and demos I’ve got it all packaged...(read more)

Cannon PI

2009-05-08T08:23:04Z

Heh. This could be a lot of fun. I’m looking out for the first episode. 50 points to whoever can tell me who the Some Guy playing Higgins is :)...(read more)

Tech-Ed Ahoy!

2009-05-04T23:54:35Z

Phew! The demos are done, the Powerpoint deck’s been finalized and I am suffering from a severe lack of sleep. I hope they have lots of coffee at the convention center :) Tech Ed is an yearly Microsoft event meant for developers, IT Pros and business leaders. This year’s Tech Ed is happening right here, in Hyderabad. For more details: http://www.msteched.in . I am speaking on the Mobility track and will be talking about building good looking UIs for Windows phones. A lot of people get the impression...(read more)

My First Facebook Application

2009-03-04T18:58:00Z

I did a quick Facebook application to show off at a session I did today. In the process, I ended up writing what might be the beginnings of a Silverlight API for Facebook. The application's here . It shows you the status messages of your friends in the order they were last updated. Clicking on a friend's box brings up their photos on Facebook. It's quite a neat little app that took a little under 300 lines of code (XAML + C#) aside from the code that went into the API itself. I'll post more about...(read more)

A Home for the Collapsible Panel

2009-02-09T18:09:41Z

Phew! It's been a long time since my last post. I have no excuse. I've been a lazy bum and I know it. Well, getting married will do that to ya :) I have been using the Collapsible Panel control as a tool to demonstrate various Silverlight concepts over the past few months. I started out by building my first content control , then moved on to using VisualTransitions to improve it and finally migrated it to Silverlight 2 RTM when it came out. For me, its been a great way to learn about Silverlight's...(read more)

Collapsible Panel Makes it to Silverlight 2 RTM

2008-11-28T15:05:06Z

This was something that had been bothering me for a while. Silverlight 2 came out almost two months ago now and I still haven't had the time to go back and update CollapsiblePanel, my sample content control. To read more about CollapsiblePanel, go here and here . Today I finally updated the code. It took me all of 6 minutes. Here's the changes I made: 1. Moved the generic.xaml from the root of the Knowledgecast.Controls project to a subfolder called Themes. I think this change was introduced for...(read more)

Consuming Feeds with the .NET Syndication API

2008-11-18T21:59:00Z

One of the nicest (and very under-advertised) features to make it into .NET framework 3.5 was the new Syndication API ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.servicemodel.syndication.aspx ). The Syndication API provides .NET applications a great way to consume and publish RSS and Atom feeds. If you've been paying attention to Azure lately you will have realised that Atom forms a major part of Azure and Live services in the cloud. Syndication feeds (Atom/RSS) are fast emerging as the de facto...(read more)

Silverlight 2: So Close I Can Taste It

2008-09-26T12:48:00Z

No doubt many of you have heard that Silverlight 2 RC0 just debuted. There's loads of bug fixes here since Silverlight 2 Beta 2 and some breaking changes as well. Unlike the breaking changes document from Beta 1 to Beta 2 (which was 80 odd pages) this one's only about 20 pages. To be honest, I don't think it's going to be very much work going from SL2B2 to SL2RC0. Go here for the breaking changes document and here for the release. The tools are meant for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 so make sure you upgrade...(read more)

Phew! It's Been a Busy Month

2008-09-14T19:22:29Z

It's been a busy time here in Arunjeetland. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I was working on two projects simultaneously. As I was doing that I had an interesting realization. It's easier to do multiple projects if they're on the same technology. The context switch takes a lot out of you. Unfortunately for me, one of the projects was a Biztalk implementation (with loads of code refactoring) and the other an ASP.NET application. Not easy juggling :) I have also been busy prepping for an upcoming Silverlight...(read more)

Encrypting Configuration Settings in .NET 2.0

2008-07-29T20:58:00Z

This article describes a utility called ProtectConfig that can be used to Encrypt/Decrypt .NET 2.0 configuration files using the ProtectSection ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.sectioninformation.protectsection.aspx ) API. The source code of the utility is available here: Here's what the ProtectConfig utility looks like: If you have ever worked on a large project that involved accessing a database server or other network resources, you will have realised at some stage...(read more)

Using VisualTransition with a Silverlight Content Control

2008-07-22T09:53:00Z

Note: The zip archive below has been updated after Silverlight 2 released to the web. For more details on the changes I made, see this post. This post is part of series that demonstrates how to write a Silverlight 2 content control. The first post in the series is here . This post mostly improved on the code and concepts covered in the previous post. The latest code for the content control we’re building can be found here: Those of you who tried out the CollapsiblePanel control might have noticed...(read more)

Assigning a Name to a Silverlight Element

2008-07-18T13:25:00Z

I answered this in a comment earlier today but I figured this was something that deserved a post of its own. There seems to be some confusion around how to set the name (x:Name in XAML) of a Silverlight object in code. Here's how it's done: object.SetValue(FrameworkElement.NameProperty, "objectName"); This has the same affect as setting x:Name in XAML. The name property is a dependancy property implemented by the FrameworkElement abstract base class. This class is inherited by most Silverlight elements...(read more)