To all my followers: “Wish you and your family a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2011". May God make you more knowledgeable in the coming year and give you more prosperity than ever.”

 

The year 2010 is over. We did lots of things in 2010 and let us do more on 2011 and deliver our best to our work.

 

Thanks for all your support and vote to my articles. This gave me more energy to deliver more contents to you. Keep supporting me always in the coming year and I will try to deliver as much as I can. Stay in touch with me in the year 2011. Don’t forget to read the whole post to know more about my work in 2010.

Published by on under News |

Microsoft Virtual Techdays is the India’s Premier online Technical Event. This was the 10th edition of the series, started on 22nd November 2010 and continued for 3 days. On 23rd November 2010, I delivered my session on “Building Visual Studio LightSwitch Application” and the session video is online now.

 

If you missed to attend the session, you can view it online or download it from the given link.

 

Published by on under .Net | Events

It was a nice time to present myself to the audience to deliver my presentation on Visual Studio LightSwitch for Silverlight application development in Pune Developer Conference (DevCon) event organized by Pune User Group. Today my session was from 2:45pm. Though the count of attendees was low than the expected count but they really enjoyed to know about LightSwitch.

 

Thanks to all who attended my session. Those who were unable to attend it for any reason, can view the PPT online. You can also download it for your future reference.

Published by on under .Net | Events

DevCon is a technical event to communicate, collaborate and connect with like-minded technology enthusiasts. The event comprises technology presentations, scenario showcases on the latest and most upcoming Microsoft Technologies.

 

Speakers focus on providing technical solutions for line of business applications allowing professionals to get insight into their structured learning experiences.

 

It is going to happen on 18th and 19th December 2010 in Pune, Maharashtra, India. I am going to speak on 19th December. Read the full post to know more about the session agenda and schedule. Don’t forget to register for the event.

Published by on under .Net | Events

imageDo you have a huge collection of data inside your DataGrid and want to integrate Pagination to show records page by page and don’t know how to do? Then this article will help you to understand the same.

 

After reading this article, you will be able to integrate pagination to your DataGrid to do the paging automatically by using a simple trick. Read the complete article to know about it. Feedback/Suggestions are always appreciated.

Published by on under DataGrid | Silverlight

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In my last article, we discussed about “Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView” where we grouped our data records by column name using the PagedCollectionView.

 

In this article, we will see how this PagedCollectionView will help us to filter out the records based on the search keyword. Not much code but the trick done with the same class will do everything for us in some easy way. We will learn about this here in this article. Not only this, we will also see the filtering on top of the grouped records too. Read the complete article to see it in action.

Published by on under DataGrid | Silverlight

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Do you work with Silverlight DataGrid and want to group your records inside the DataGrid in a proper manner? If so, this article is for you. Here we will learn about data grouping inside a DataGrid.

 

In this article, we will learn how to group data inside a Grid. We will discuss all these steps-by-step and with proper images, so that, you can understand it very easily.

 

The full source code has been attached. You can freely download it and that will be more helpful for you to understand. Read the complete article to learn it.

Published by on under DataGrid | Silverlight

Today is the 2nd December 2010, when ScottGu gave a Keynote on the future of Silverlight. There he spoke about the next version of Silverlight, yes, Silverlight 5 Beta. He gave a brief overview of the new & improved features which are coming in Silverlight 5.

 

 

Read the full post to know more about the features of Silverlight 5. Silverlight 5 Beta is not yet launched. This is just the preview of the features which are going to come in this new version.

Published by on under CodeProject | News

image110Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven Silverlight Application using Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code. You can write a small amount of code also to meet your requirement.

 

In my previous chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 3)”, I described you how to create a DataGrid of records to insert/update/delete records.

 

In this chapter, I will guide you to create a List and Details screen using LightSwitch. This will show you how to integrate two or more tables into a single screen. Also, we will discuss on some custom validation. These all steps are without writing any code. We will use just the tool to improve our existing application. Read to Learn more about it.

Published by on under LightSwitch | LightSwitchTutorial

In my earlier post “How to Reposition a Silverlight Child Window?”, I demonstrated you how to reposition a Silverlight Child Window into the screen. I tried the same with the WPF Modal Window too. But was not able to make it.

 

Later Thomas Claudiush gave me a cool sample where he did it very easily. In this post, I am going to share that code for you so that, if in near future you need the same behavior, you don’t have to research for it again.

Published by on under Tips | WPF

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Today I delivered the 1 hour session on “Building Visual Studio LightSwitch Application” in Microsoft Virtual Techdays from 1:45PM – 2:45PM (Indian Standard Time). It was my first public session and due to this, I was little nervous when I started my presentation. But when I jumped into the demo, I got some confidence on that.

 

Here, I am going to share the whole presentation for those who wasn’t able to join. Thanks to all my attendees for joining the session.

 

Don’t forget to give your feedback (online/offline) about the session. It will give me more confidence on my next session and from your feedback I will be able to improve my presentation skill.

Published by on under .Net | Events

Sometime we need to reset the position of the Silverlight Child Window at the center of the screen. This generally require when you have a static instance of the ChildWindow and you want to use the same instance to show various messages in the screen. When you loads the ChildWindow for the first time, by default it loads at the screen center. But think when your user reposition that ChildWindow to a different location in the screen, closes and reopens it, what will happen?

 

What will you see is, the ChildWindow opens at the same location where the user closes it last time. So, how can we reset it to the center of the screen? This small tip will help you to achieve the functionality. Read it to know more details. Code is available for use.

Published by on under CodeProject | Silverlight

Microsoft Virtual Techdays is again back. It’s a three days event, starting from 22nd November to 24th November 2010. This time I am going to speak in this Virtual Techdays on 23rd November. Join me at 1:45 PM (IST) to learn about “Building Visual Studio LightSwitch Application”.

 

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Read the complete post to know more about this event and registration process.

Published by on under .Net | Events

One of my reader “Girish” recently contacted me with a problem statement. His problem is, he wants to show a TextBox on selection of “Others” from a ComboBox and I informed him to use a ValueConverter and also told him, I will do a blog post on it, so that he can understand each step from that.

 

This post I am dedicating to him. May be, some other people who are new to Silverlight can get benefit from it. Read the full post to learn the process to do it.

Published by on under MVVM | Silverlight

In some case, we need to customize the Scrolling functionality in Silverlight depending upon the requirement. The default look of ScrollViewer doesn’t give proper UI effect. In such case, you need to create the whole scroll behavior by modifying XAML and writing a bunch of C# code.

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In this article, I will demonstrate you how to create the above scrolling functionality simply without writing any lines of C# code. You have to use only Expression Blend to create the richness of the Scrolling. Read more to learn about it.

Published by on under CodeProject | ExpressionBlend
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Last time I did a Giveaway of Telerik JustCode Developer license of $299 and this time as a Silverlight Geek, I thought to giveaway a developer license of Telerik RadControls for Silverlight which costs around $799 to one of my readers & followers.

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Gift with a bow    If you want to Win it, read the complete post for details. Share this information to all your friends by tweet, mail or blog. Hope to see one of you as the Winner. All the best… Thumbs up

Published by on under ExpressionBlend | Silverlight

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Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven Silverlight Application using Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code. You can write a small amount of code also to meet your requirement.

 

In my previous chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 2)”, I described you how to create a search record window & export the records to Excel Sheet using Visual Studio LightSwitch for Silverlight. I also demonstrated about sorting and navigating records without writing a single line of code.

 

In this chapter, I will guide you step-by-step to create a DataGrid of records. Here you will know, how to insert/modify/delete records. These all steps are without writing any code. We will use just the tool to improve our existing application. Read more to Learn about it.

Published by on under LightSwitch | LightSwitchTutorial

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I have seen people writing Code Behind a lot while they are working in the MVVM framework. A huge lines of code in their xaml.cs file actually creates problem to the designers to change anything present in the XAML. Why is this so? Because, lots of people don’t know how to use Triggers to call the MVVM methods to complete their business need.

 

Michael Washington has a nice article on DataTrigger to reduce the Code behind file. It definitely reduces the problem of MVVM that world faces generally. Also, we need to do some additional things to reduce the code behind.

 

In this article, I will show you how to fire Triggers to call some methods present in your ViewModel, instead of writing in the code behind file. Read more to learn about it.

Published by on under MVVM | Silverlight

After the recent PDC 2010 event, we saw lots of tweets on Twitter about the same question “Is Silverlight Dead? Is HTML5 is going to take over the Silverlight? Is Microsoft changing their vision?” etc. etc. The answer is “No”. No need to worry about it. Silverlight is still there and will be there for Rich application development & smooth media streaming for long.

 

Read the whole post to know more about it.

Published by on under News | PDC2010

imageVisual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven Silverlight Application using Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code. You can write a small amount of code also to meet your requirement.

 

In my previous Chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part–1)” I described about LightSwitch and did demonstration from creating a new LightSwitch project to create a simple form to insert new Student record.

 

In this article, I will show you how to create a search record window & export the records to Excel Sheet using Visual Studio LightSwitch for Silverlight. No need to write a single piece of code, no need to write a single XAML code. Read through the complete article to learn more about it.

Published by on under LightSwitch | LightSwitchTutorial

In all of my earlier articles on Silverlight Out-of-Browser (OOB) applications, I demonstrated you creating the OOB application using Visual Studio. There are plenty of steps you have to follow there. Today I found another way to change the settings for it.

 

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In this post, I am going to discuss about both the processes and at the end tell me which one is best & simple.

Published by on under ExpressionBlend | Silverlight

Are you looking for a Silverlight Child Window, which can’t move from it’s actual position? Then this article will help you to understand & create a non-movable child window in Silverlight.

 

Child Window is available inside the System.Windows.Controls.dll assembly. By default, it is movable. You can drag the Title Bar of the Window and position it anywhere in the screen. But, you may face some situation when you need to fix the position of the Window by restricting the user to drag it. So, how will you do this?

 

In this article, I will show you the simplest mechanism to make your child window not movable.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightTips
imageVisual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven Silverlight Application using Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code. You can write a small amount of code also to meet your requirement.

Recently, I got some time to explore Visual Studio LightSwitch. I created a small DB application with proper data inserting UI within a small amount of time (without any XAML or C# code).

Here in this article, I will guide you to understand it with the help of a small application. There will be a series of articles on this topic regularly. Read the complete article to learn about creating a Silverlight data driven application with the help of Visual Studio LightSwitch.
Published by on under LightSwitch | LightSwitchTutorial

Few days ago, I started a Giveaway of Telerik JustCode License (only for one Developer) which prices around $249. Very few responses I received and from that too, it was very difficult for me to select the Winner.

 

Telerik JustCode is an agile development add-in for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010 that enhances .NET development productivity by providing blazing fast solution-wide, on-the-fly code analysis and error checking, smart code navigation and refactoring features.

 

In this thread, I am going to declare the Winner. Read to know more about it.

Published by on under News | Telerik

Few days ago, in one my earlier post, I listed “Some Best Practices for C# Application Development” from my past few years experience, which got a huge hit by my readers. I got several feedbacks on that too. Many of my readers gave valued suggestions too.

 

In this article, I will discuss most of those points. I will keep this article regularly updated with new best coding practices. Hope, I will get more feedbacks and/or suggestions here too.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0
One of the new features introduced in Silverlight 4 is the silent installation of Silverlight Out-of-Browser application. This means, without user intervention, you can directly install them to their machines. You don’t have to open the browser window to install the OOB app. This is perfect for CD-ROM distribution. You can even automate the process from the CD/DVD media; if the user already has permission to auto run external media.

Here in this article, I will first create a simple OOB Silverlight application and then show you the steps to install it as OOB application silently from a CDROM device which will install the Silverlight runtime too, if it detects the absent of the same in user’s PC.
Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

Silverlight Firestarter is a one day Global event, live streamed by Scott Guthrie and others. It will be held in Redmond on 2nd December 2010 from 8am to 5pm PST. Scott will start the Keynote at 9am PST.

 

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The whole session will be conducted by Scott Guthrie, Jesse Liberty, John Papa, Tim Heuer, Mike Cook, Jossef Goldberg, Jaime Rodriguez and other. Join the session In-Person or online and learn more about the future of Silverlight.

Published by on under Events | News

In this small Tips & Tricks, I will guide you changing the Style of Caret of a Silverlight TextBox control. It is very simple and you can easily do it using Visual Studio or Expression Blend. Here is a screenshot of the same:

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In general, styling the caret is not require. But in some cases, you may need to change it to give your UI the look & feel of your entire application.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

Did you ever want to run an application from your local resource inside your HTML page? If so, you will face some issues. It will never run any application from local resource directly. It may ask you to download the file before running it. This is due to browser security issue as the code runs inside the browser sandbox.

 

So, what to do for this? In this post, I will describe you the steps resolve to do this. Read the complete post in order to learn the same.

Published by on under Tips | Web

Recently, I wanted to detect the Silverlight version for one of my on going R&D. I wanted to detect the version from batch file and depending upon that I wanted to execute one file. Searching over internet I came to know that, HTML Application has some additional power for execution of any local file as it runs under fully trusted mode. I did more research on HTA files and successfully completed my basic analysis.

 

Here I will demonstrate you the process of detecting the Silverlight installation status using JavaScript from the .hta file. Read it and at the end, if you have any suggestion to improve the steps, please let me know.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

imageFew days ago, in one my earlier post, I discussed about “Some Best Practices for Silverlight Application Development (XAML)” which got a huge hit by my readers. I got several feedbacks on that too. Someone from the community also suggested me to write some best coding practices on C#. This stroke my mind and hence decided to write some best practices about C# coding here from my past few years of experience.

 

For past few years, I learned a lot and tried to share best of them to the others who are new in the software development field. This post I contribute to those fellow members. Hope, I will get more feedbacks and/or suggestions here too.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0
In various forums (mainly in Silverlight.Net Forum) I have seen people asking a question: “How to implement Session Management in Silverlight?” The simple answer is: “Session Management is not available in Silverlight”. Why? If it is not there, how can we implement it?

Ok, If you are new to Silverlight, you need to know about this. Hence, I will describe you in this post about Silverlight Session Management. The targeted audience for this post is mainly the beginners of Silverlight. Read it and if you have any queries, let me know.
Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

imageIf you are a developer and want to get the “Telerik JustCode Developer License”, here is the chance for you. I am going to give you one license code absolutely Free which costs around $249. The registration process will end on 15th October 2010. Based on the registration, I will announce the Winner name on 20th October 2010.

So, why are you waiting for? Read the full post for the steps of Registration for this offer.
Published by on under .Net | News

In my previous post “Introduction to Shapes in Silverlight 4” I introduced you with various types of Shapes available in Silverlight 4 and informed you that, I will post an article describing each one of them and here it is.

 

In this article, I am going to describe you about each shapes and the process to add them in our application (whenever you need). This article is for the Beginners, who don’t know much about the shape controls. If you have any suggestions/concerns please use the feedback section to let me know.

Published by on under .Net | ExpressionBlend

Oh! What a pleasant moment when you get some mail to your Inbox mentioning “Congratulations!! You are our monthly Winner for the month…”. Yes, today morning when I first opened my mailbox, I saw a mail from the WebMaster of www.dotnetspark.com saying that, I have been awarded as the Winner of the month of “August 2010” for contributing to the Silverlight community. What a surprise again!!!

 

Here is first couple of lines of the mail:

Dear Kunal,

Congratulations!! You are our monthly Winner for the month of August, 2010!!!

www.DotNetSpark.com proudly announces you as the monthly winner Award (August, 2010)  for your sincere and tremendous contributions towards all sections at www.dotnetspark.com.

Lastly, I will thank to all of my readers. Without their help and encouragement it was not possible. Also, thanks to dotnetspark team for selecting me as the Winner.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards

In earlier versions of Silverlight, there are very few shape controls like Rectangle, Ellipse available. But think on creating other shapes like Triangle, Polygon, Ring etc. If you need one of them in the earlier Silverlight version, how will you implement them? In my next article, I will describe about all these to you.image

 

I think many of you know about these. But those who are not familiar with this, I am contributing it for them.

Published by on under .Net | ExpressionBlend

imageFirst of all, a Big Thanks to all my readers who continuously supported me during last six months by voting my articles in CodeProject. I also appreciate you for your regular feedbacks and suggestions to improve. I tried my level best to answer your queries in each article’s page.

 

Here, I am consolidating all the articles that I posted in my Blog and CodeProject for your further reference.

Published by on under Archives | CodeProject

NDepend is a Visual Studio tool to manage .Net Code and achieve high quality product. Using NDepend, you can improve your code quality. You can find the unreachable code very easily using this tool. Not only this, it visualizes your code using Graphs & Treemaps. Hence, you can improve the quality of your Software by measuring the Code Metrices.

 

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I just got a chance to explore NDepend Professional tool and found it little bit useful (as of now) for day to day coding life. Thought to share the same experience with you all. Though this is my first day exploring NDepend and hence don’t have so much proficiency or knowledge, but somewhat I felt it useful. Once I explore more, I will be able to tell more about it. In this post, I will describe about it and how to install as an Add-In to your Visual Studio IDE. Read it and share your feedbacks.

Published by on under NDepend | VisualStudio

MVVM, which is an abbreviated form of (M)odel-(V)iew-(V)iew(M)odel is not new to you all. But there are someone who don’t know about it. If you are a Core ASP.Net developer you may know about MVC & MVP, may also know about MVVM which mainly used in WPF/Silverlight. For them, it is tough to remember about its concept.

 

In general in any of my discussions or presentations, I used to describe MVVM in a way which is very easier to understand and easy to recall. Hence thought, why shouldn’t I share this to you? That’s why writing this post. Read it. I hope that, you will enjoy it much while reading it fully.

Published by on under .Net | MVVM

In my last two articles on MEF i.e. “First Guide to MEF & Silverlight (Part - I)” and “First Guide to MEF & Silverlight (Part - II)” I described about the framework with the help of a Console Application and a Silverlight Application. Hope that gave you basic idea on it and what this MEF does.

 

In this article I will try to give you more knowledge on MEF & it’s benefit. This time, I will again use a Console Application which will give more visibility to the underlying scenarios. Hope, like the previous articles this will also help you to understand the framework better to use it in your future need.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0

In my previous article “First Guide to MEF & Silverlight (Part–I)” I discussed about MEF with a small simple console application. Hope that was useful to you to understand the basic knowledge of MEF. In this article, I will guide you to create a simple Silverlight application using the MEF. If you are new to MEF, I strongly recommend you to read my previous article to gain knowledge on the basic things of MEF like Importing, Exporting, Catalog, Container etc.

 

Read the complete article and at the end if you have any queries, please let me know. I will try to answer them as soon as possible. Always Appreciate your valuable feedbacks.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven application in Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code.

 

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Microsoft released their first Beta of Visual Studio LightSwitch for the MSDN Subscribers. If you are a MSDN Subscriber, download it from the MSDN Subscriber Downloads Page. The expected date for the public release will be on Monday, 23rd August. Visit the Visual Studio Light Switch Blog for more information on it.

Published by on under LightSwitch | News

MEF is a framework to extend your application and was introduced in .Net Framework 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0. Recently I got a chance to look around the MEF with Silverlight. I found it useful in various scenarios and thus thought to do something with MEF in Silverlight.

 

In this article I will first discuss little about the MEF framework to give you some basic knowledge on it and then will show you how to create a small HelloMEFWorld console application step-by-step. In the next article I will use it in a Silverlight application & showcase you the feature and functionality. Read through the whole article and use this extender in your application if you need. Don’t forget to share your feedbacks and suggestions as this helps me improve my articles in greater details and present more to you.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0

Several times we need to sort a collection based on some property name e.g. we have an Employee collection of type Person. Person consists of EmpId, Name, Age etc. Now as an user, I need to sort the collection in ascending or descending order either by EmpId, Name or Age. So, how can I do this?

 

In this post, I will describe you a simple technique by which you will be easily able to sort the collection without writing the implementation for each logic. Read the complete article and at the end if you have any suggestions, please don’t forget to share. Feedbacks are always highly appreciated.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0

In this Tips&Tricks, I will describe about changing the location of the output of your Silverlight application i.e. the .XAP file from it’s original “ClientBin” location to a different place. Developers sometimes need to put the XAP file in a specific directory based on their requirement. This trick will help them relocating the XAP file.

 

Read the full post & if you have any queries or suggestions, please let me know. Appreciate your feedbacks.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

In my earlier three chapters of Silverlight Tutorial, I described about “Introduction to Silverlight”, “Introduction to Silverlight Application Development” and “Introduction to Panels”. I got lots of responses & wishes from my readers for the next chapter. I know, there was a big gap between these chapters and I am really apologizing to you. Thank you for your passion. Hope, this time also I will get more responses from you. Read the complete tutorial and provide your valuable feedbacks. You suggestions/comments are highly appreciated.

 

In this Chapter, I will describe you about some of the most common controls used in Silverlight. After the end of this section, you will be able to understand about those basic controls and their uses. Here I will guide you to understand some of the properties of each control and how to set them from both XAML & Code behind C# file.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

I was working with WPF/Silverlight since March 2008 and learnt lots of things. I wrote lots of Articles on Silverlight and published in my Blog. Today I decided to share you some of the best practices you should follow while doing development in WPF/Silverlight. Hope, this will help you guys while writing XAML codes. Read and try to strict with the guidelines whenever you are modifying your XAML.

 

Feedbacks are always appreciated. Hence, don’t forget to leave your comments at the end. If you have any more points, please share it here. I will review them and add those here.

 

Update [08-Aug-2010]: On popular demand, I updated this post with some explanation on “Why?”.

Published by on under .Net | CodeProject

In my previous article “Beginners Guide to Silverlight 4 PathListBox Control (Part-I)” I described about creating your very first PathListBox control in your Silverlight application followed by creating a Circular path to position the items in the circular edge. From that article, I think you are now familiar with it.

 

In this post, I will demonstrate you guys how to animate the items in a specific direction. This not only guide you for animation in PathListBox but also will help you understanding the StoryBoard creation (if you are very new to Silverlight). Read the whole article and at the end don’t forget to leave your comments.

Published by on under .Net | CodeProject

Have you ever heard of PathListBox introduced in Silverlight 4 as Expression Blend 4 namespace? Yes, it is a new control added in the “http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/controls” namespace. You can use this to position your data, text, images or other controls in the way of a single or multiple path controls. You can use your jig-jag path to set your contents or you can use circular or rectangular path to organize your content.

 

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In this article, I will guide you to understand the functionality of this control. Also, I will guide you step-by-step to create your first PathListBox control demo application. Here we will create the above two samples where the collection of texts will position them in proper location on the edge of the circular path.

 

Readout the complete post to learn about it and at the end, if you have any queries or comments, please let me know. I will try to answer your queries as soon as possible.

Published by on under .Net | CodeProject

In my earlier post on “Interactive ToolTip using Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tool”, I discussed about “Interactive ToolTip” feature which comes with the Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tool. In this post, I will share information about the all new “Add Reference” dialog which is fully searchable for assembly reference.

 

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If you didn’t install the Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tool till now, you can download it from Visual Studio Gallery. You can also directly download it directly from here. Read the complete post to know more about the new “Add Reference” dialog.

Published by on under .Net | CodeProject

Neither the Silverlight is new nor the init params. But, I found various people in different forums asking for the logic on the implementation part for passing value to Silverlight application from ASP.Net application. In this post, I will describe about it.

 

Here I will discuss on the InitParams and tell you how to use it to pass value from your .aspx page to your Silverlight application. Read the complete post and if you have any queries, don’t hesitate to ask me.

Published by on under .Net | CodeProject

Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tool is a set of extensions for Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above versions which actually improves productivity of developers. In this Tips & Trick, I will show you one nice extension behavior named “Interactive Tooltip”, which will make your development life easier.

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If you didn’t install it till now, you can download it from Visual Studio Gallery. You can also download it directly from here. Read the complete post to know about it more.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0

File:Indian Rupee symbol.svgIn July 2010, Indian Cabinet selected a new Symbol for the Indian Rupee which looks like as the snapshot shown at the left side. In this post, I will describe you how to integrate the same symbol in Silverlight application.


As the Unicode is not present for that till now, hence we need to use some font to write the letter using that. Fordian Technologies has the font and you can download it from their official Blog. The latest version of the font is available here: Rupee Font Version 2.0.


Let us have a quick tutorial on it to create a Silverlight application with the new Rupee Symbol of India in it.

Published by on under .Net | CodeProject

Before starting with the next part of the discussion, let me ask you some questions. Are you a Silverlight developer? If “Yes”, how many times you create a Silverlight Out-of-Browser application? For that, how many times you create an UI and write code to instruct the user to install the application as OOB application. I think the answer will be “Many Times”.

 

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To solve this, we will create a Custom UI Wrapper (like the above snapshot) which will have all the codes necessary to guide the user. Once this is done, we don’t have to write the same installation code again and again over the applications. Read through the description and don’t forget to leave your comments and suggestions.

Published by on under .Net | ExpressionBlend

imageMicrosoft has released Silverlight for the Symbian OS, which will allow your Silverlight applications to run in some selected Nokia handsets. Earlier, Silverlight was only available for web on desktop for Windows, Mac operating system. Later Moonlight came out, which is the linux version of Silverlight. Then Microsoft released Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 and this is the time for Symbian platform targeting mobile devices such as Nokia N97, N97 Mini XpressMusic etc.

 

Published by on under ExpressionBlend | News
You all know that, Silverlight 4 has the feature to talk with COM APIs. In my earlier posts I already mentioned various Interoperability functionalities of Silverlight. You can see some articles in my Blog. In this article, I will show you how Silverlight can read your local files, folders and drives. At the end of this Article you will be able to open any file/folder/drive and read their attributes.

Here I will demonstrate by creating a small application like Windows Explorer and reading all your drives and their contents in the screen like below screenshot:

image

You will be able to open the drive and browse through it’s contents (subfolders and files). Interesting? So, read it out and learn Silverlight 4 a bit more. Don’t forget to leave your comments at the end.
Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0

imageHave you ever heard of Text to Speech engine? “Yes” I think. Yes, it is not a new thing in the Computer World. It was available since Windows 98 (as much as I can recall) but it is completely new in Silverlight. You can now use the Silverlight application to give an API call to the SAPI Engine which will convert the text to voice. Sounds Good? This is achievable using the COM APIs only.

 

Here I will describe you how to use COM API to give a TTS call to the SAPI Engine. After reading this topic here, you will be able to write your own code to develop your own application having the Text to Speech functionality in Silverlight 4.

Published by on under .Net | Interoperability
Have you ever tried Trimming your Text in Silverlight 2 or Silverlight 3? If yes, just recall the lines of code you wrote for trimming your text content and showing an Ellipsis (i.e. “…” three dots) at the end of the text. If you didn’t try it earlier, then just imagine what you have to do and how you will do. Also imagine the no. of lines you have to write. Confused smile

In this post, I will show you how I can implement this feature the easy way. Stop!!! I will not write here a huge code nor I will use any library to do that. Microsoft has added this functionality in Silverlight 4. You just have to set the Enum value to the TextBlock property. Surprised smile Wao!!!

So, how to do that? Let us try it.
Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

Microsoft Community Techdays is back again, starting from July 2010 – August 2010 in 9 cities across India. Attend it and get trained on latest Microsoft Technologies. You can join these sessions In-Person and also can watch them online streamed from various cities. Registration is open for both In-Person and Online Event (Developers and IT Professionals)

 

image

 

Go and Register for it now at: http://www.communitytechdays.com/

Published by on under News |
Recently I was interested to work with the Physics Helper for Silverlight. I saw couple of demos on net which uses the Physics library for Silverlight to create good animations with Friction logic. Yeah, friction. You can drop a ball on a surface which will bounce over that surface. I found it very interesting and thought to create a Simple Demo for it.

Here I will demonstrate you creating a Sample Application using Expression Blend. You don’t have to write a Single line of Code using Visual Studio. Surprised smile Is it? Yes, lets start doing that.
Published by on under .Net | ExpressionBlend
Microsoft released Windows 7 last year which has lots of functionalities including a nice UI. Among those features one of the most user friendly feature is Pin/Unpin application to Taskbar. You can develop WPF or Windows Forms applications in which you can implement this feature. But do you know that this is also possible in Silverlight? Yes, Silverlight 4 has the power to talk with any other application using the COM API. You can read one of my earlier article [Silverlight 4: Interoperability with Excel using the COM Object].

Silverlight 4: Interoperability with Windows 7 Taskbar using COM

 

In this Article I will show you how we can talk with the Windows 7 Taskbar. Read the complete Article and provide your feedbacks or suggestions.

Published by on under .Net | Interoperability
image Microsoft launched their Expression Studio 4 today (7 June 2010), as expected. It includes Sketch Flow, Expression Encoder, Expression Web and Expression Design. This release comes with the Upgrade version. If you already have the licensed copy of Expression Studio 3, it will auto update to Expression 4 and you need no new license.

You can download it from Microsoft Expression Studio site.

Please note that, if you are developing in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 and want to use Expression Blend, don’t install this version of Expression Studio. Continue working with the Expression Blend 4 Beta and the Windows Phone 7 CTP Tools for developers. Once the Windows Phone SDK releases, there will be service pack for Expression Studio.
Published by on under ExpressionBlend | ExpressionStudio
Sometimes we write the following code while working with EventHandler and that may create some problems. I will discuss this later on. Let us see the code:


                private void RaiseOperationComplete(EventArgs e)
                {
                    if(OperationComplete != null)
                    {
                        OperationComplete(this, e);
                    }
                }



In the above case, suppose two thread subscribed to the same OperationComplete handler and one unsubscribed the event. In such scenario the OperationComplete event will become null and for the next thread due to the event is null it will not execute. This happens mainly in multithreaded applications but you can't guarantee for single threaded application too.

So what to do? How can we make sure that our application will not come into such situation and work properly?

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight

Silverlight 4 has the capability of accessing the COM object using the COM API. You can access any program installed in your PC using those APIs in Silverlight. You can open Notepad, Word, Excel or Outlook from Silverlight application.

 

Here I will demonstrate you the step-by-step tutorial on opening an Microsoft Excel book followed by data sharing between the Silverlight application and the Excel Sheet. Here we will use a DataGrid which will load some customer information. Then we will pass the data to the Excel Sheet and then we will modify the data in the external application (i.e. inside the Excel sheet). You will see that, the modified data will reflect automatically to the Silverlight Application.

Published by on under .Net | C# 4.0
In this article, I am going to discuss with you regarding the Drag and Drop functionality inside a Silverlight ListBox control. This article will also cover the Drag and Drop operation between two ListBox control. We will use here the Silvelright 4 Toolkit to implement the feature.


Drag & Drop functionality is not present in Silverlight ListBox by default. Hence, there was a big problem implementing the feature. We had to write a huge code for this feature. But using Silvelright Toolkit you can do it very easily. You can download the Silverlight 4 Toolkit from the CodePlex Silverlight Toolkit site.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight
Silverlight BusyIndicator is not a new thing in Silverlight. It was first added in Silverlight 3 Toolkit in November 2009 release (if I am not wrong). In this post I will describe about this for those who wants to know about it.

So, What is this Busy Indicator? Busy indicator is a tool which you can add in your Silverlight application to show a loading indication to your user while saving some sort of operation in database. Generally it is useful when you calling your WCF Service to store something in server or retrieving some data from server.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight
You all know that Visual Studio 2010 is now available in its RTM version. There are lots of features available in Visual Studio 2010. In this tip, I will talk about the incremental search functionality available inside it, which is very useful in day to day life of coding.

So, what is the incremental search? Incremental search is a mechanism in Visual Studio 2010 by which you can search and focus on the searched keyword without any UI blocking from the user end. You don’t have to open the find dialog while searching for a specific keyword in your editor window. Interested to know how it works?

Published by on under .Net | Tips
In my last chapter i.e. "Silverlight Tutorials Chapter 2: Introduction to Silverlight Application Development" we discussed on how to create a new Silverlight project, the structure of the project solution and later in this chapter we discussed on UserControls and various ways of development. After reading that chapter you are now comfortable to create Silverlight application and UserControls for your application.

Today I am publishing the 3rd Chapter i.e. "Introduction To Panels". In this Chapter I will describe about different Panels available in Silverlight. After reading this chapter you will be familiar with various types of Silverlight Panels. As this tutorial is mainly targeted for Silverlight 4, hence you will find some panels unavailable in the earlier versions of Silverlight.


Published by on under .Net | Silverlight
Silverlight 4 now came up with the support of Command Binding. Using Command binding you can easily develop your Silverlight MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) applications where your view will not know about data. In this article, I will describe you the Command binding feature in Silverlight 4 Step-by-Step.

In this example, I will create a Customer View which will load the customer information from the code behind once we click the button “Load Customers”. The button will have a command associated with it to load the records instead of loading on click event. This ensures that the view will have less code & no relation with the data.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight
Hope, you read my first chapter of the Silverlight Tutorial “Silverlight Tutorials Chapter 1: Introduction to Silverlight”. In that post, we learned about the very basic informations on Silverlight, it’s System Requirements, pre-requisite to create a Silverlight application, XAP file, XAML file and hosting a Silverlight application.

In this chapter we will first discuss on how to create a new Silverlight project and the structure of it. Later in this chapter we will discuss on UserControls and various ways of development. After reading this chapter you will be able to create a HelloSilverlight application and UserControls for your application.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight
Couple of days ago, I started working on writing Silverlight Tutorial for Beginners on request of Mr. Sheo Narayan (Web Master) from DotNetFunda.com. I was busy for last few days to publish it online. I was really excited for it. Today, I am announcing my first Chapter of the Silverlight Tutorial for the public view. It will be a continuous process to complete the full tutorial. Please keep an eye for the next publication.

Please don't forget to provide your comments or suggestions.

In this chapter of the tutorial, you will learn about the very basic information on Silverlight i.e. what is Silverlight, what is the System Requirements for installing Silverlight and the pre-requisite to create a Silverlight application. After reading this chapter you will come to know about XAML, XAP file, Application XAML and how to host a Silverlight application.
Published by on under .Net | Silverlight
Silverlight 4 now has support for installing out-of-browser application silently. If you are new to Silverlight Out-of-Browser application development, you can read the complete guide in “How can you implement the Silverlight 3 Out Of Browser feature?” Also have a look into the following article to get the basic understanding of Silverlight 4 Out Of Browser feature “Silverlight 4: How can I create customized OOB Window?

Hope, you read my previous articles on the Out of Browser application development and have confident building application. In those articles you have seen that I wrote code for installing the OOB application from browser window. Now imagine some scenarios where you want to install the Silverlight application (XAP) using your Installer silently without the user interaction. How can you do that? Silverlight 4 now came up with that feature for you. In this article I will describe it and after reading it you will be able to install your Silverlight OOB Application (XAP) silently in your local drive and can run it from the desktop or startmenu without opening the browser.

Published by on under .Net | Silverlight
Silverlight 4 is going to be launch today, the 13-April at 8:00 AM PST by Scott Guthrie. Come and join the Launch of Silverlight 4.

There he will provide updates on the progress made in Silverlight 4 and will provide the details of availability of the developer tools, runtime and other news. After the live event Channel 9 will be hosting interviews with Scott and other key members of the Silverlight and Expression teams. Don't miss the opportunity to see it online.
Published by on under News | Silverlight
It was a great start today in the morning when I checked my mailbox and found one mail from the webmaster of DotNetSpark.com congratulating me as the “Member of the month – March 2010” for my work contributed to the community. Here is the first couple of lines from the mail:
Dear Kunal,
Congratulations!! You are our monthly Winners for the month of March, 2010!!!
www.DotNetSpark.com proudly announces you as the monthly winner(March, 2010) for your sincere and tremendous contributions at
www.dotnetspark.com.
This is the consecutive second day of the month when I received such Award. Giving my thanks herewith to the DotNetSpark team for the honour given to me. Thank you.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards
It was the Sunday morning, when I received the mail from the webmaster of DotNetFunda.com mentioning the subject line “Winner of the month – March 2010”. I was really surprised that I have been selected as the Winner for contributing Articles to the DotNetFunda.com site. I am really very pleased that, my articles are helping people to learn more about .Net, Silverlight and WPF.

I am very thankful to all who encouraged me to write articles. Also, I will give a lots of thanks to the team who selected me as the Winner. Thank you DotNetFunda.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards

As you all know that, the Out-Of-Browser (OOB) functionality in Silverlight is not a new feature. It is available since Silverlight 3. Microsoft added the trusted application behaviour in Silverlight 4 Beta. In addition to this, they introduced one more additional functionality called “Chromeless OOB WIndow” i.e. “Customized OOB Window” in Silverlight 4 RC (Release Candidate). In this article, I will guide you to create a simple customized OOB Window Application in Silverlight 4 RC. After the end of this tutorial, you will be able to create a Customized OOB Window in Silverlight 4 which will look similar to this.

 

Read the Complete Article @ DotNetFunda.com

Published by on under Silverlight | Web
image

Today morning I came across one news that, one of my another article on “Tips & Tricks: Customizing Visual Studio 2010 Start Page” came as “Articles of the Day” in Microsoft’s official WPF site: WindowsClient.net. I am really thankful to the entire team who gave my articles such honour.

 

Read the Original Article @ DotNetSpark.com.

Published by on under Achievements | News