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