My friends, sincerely, I will never stop wishing that your journey through this world will be touched by kindness, inspired by wisdom, graced with understanding, and kept safe from all harm.

 

Wishing you not just happiness but pure joy, not just wealth but Heaven's treasures, not just silence but God's peace. May this new year bring you all the blessings every day in your life. Wish you and your family a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Published by on under Greetings | Video

“Betty Wallpapers” is a small Windows Phone 7 application developed by my friend Jebarson Jebamony (aka. Jeba), Microsoft India. Using this application, you can search and download wallpapers and images from the web. It allows to search images with any key. It also has a settings panel, where you can configure various options related to your search parameter.

 

The installer of this application is less than 1MB in size and supports Windows Phone 7.5 or higher. You can install the Trial version (which has few settings OFF by default) and if you like it, purchase it from the Marketplace to support the development.

Published by on under DZone | Windows Phone Apps

Today I received this “Security Alert” from Microsoft via email and thought to share this with you. If you are using ASP.Net in your server, read this post to know about it to keep your server in good health from this DoS Attack. Sharing the email as it is in this post.

 

Microsoft is aware of detailed information that has been published describing a new method to exploit hash tables. Attacks targeting this type of vulnerability are generically known as hash collision attacks. Attacks such as these are not specific to Microsoft technologies and affect other web service software providers. This vulnerability affects all versions of Microsoft .NET Framework and could allow for an unauthenticated denial of service attack on servers that serve ASP.NET pages.

Published by on under .Net | News

In our last video tutorial “What is the Lifecycle of Windows 8 Metro Style Application?”, we learnt how the Windows 8 metro style application life cycle works using a small video demonstration of states.
 
In this video tutorial we will see a practical example of it using the already available metro applications. Continue to watch the video tutorial series.

 

Published by on under Metro | Tutorial

“Fun with Silverlight 4” authored by Rajesh Lal illustrates more than 100 features in Silverlight using a simple problem/solution approach. It takes one feature at a time and guides you in progressive journey where you begin by using the basic components, then by creating graphics and animations.

 

I am feeling Proud to be the Technical Reviewer of the book and will recommend everyone to purchase this book to keep it as reference. In this post, find my review note, link to purchase it from Amazon store and the Table of Contents. Hope, this book will help you in your day to day work.

Published by on under Book | News

Here comes the Weekly Digest (18th December to 24th December) of Silverlight-Zone.com. During this week we have submitted 65 article links at Silverlight-Zone on various topics like Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Metro Style Applications.

 

In this post, I am going to share the top 5 posts of the week. Top viewed posts were from actuary21c, Evan Hutnick, Glen Gordon, @mbcrump and @kunal2383. Read more to find out the top 5 links. Finally Merry X-MAS to all of you.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightZone

It’s Christmas time and I just wanted to say “Thank You” to you for your support and feedback through out the year. It’s been a pleasure to stay tuned with such awesome friends in my life. Though I know many of you virtually over the cyberspace, but we had a great bonding over the past year.

 

I wish you and your family an wonderful Holidays during the Christmas and a Happy New Year 2012. May god give you all the pleasure in coming year. A small video greetings has been included in this post. I hope, you will like it.

Published by on under Greetings | Video

One month ago, I started a discussion thread “What is the Future of Silverlight?” and received a good amount of feedback on the future of the same. Some provided positive feedback and some had negative feedback.

 

As declared earlier, I am going to announce the Winners name from the discussion thread here, as I wanted to giveaway some licenses to my blog readers on the eve of X-MAS. Click more to see if you are one of the lucky winner to Win Telerik or Pluralsight license. All the best!!!

Published by on under GiveawayContest | Pluralsight

Today in this Video tutorial, we will learn about the Lifecycle of Windows 8 Metro style application. We will also learn what are the various states available during the Lifecycle.

 

Let’s start discussion followed by the video tutorial. An easy way of representation has been added in the video. Let me know your feedback. Don’t forget to share this to your friends and ask their feedback too.

Published by on under Metro | Tutorial

Microsoft is launching Windows Phone Camps in Pune and Chennai during December 2011. It is a brand new event for designers and developers to interact with domain experts. Each session will take you deeper in the world of Windows Phone application design and development.

 

Don’t wait, just register for the free event now and avail this opportunity to learn more and more from the experts. Ask your queries and experience the bigger event with them.

Published by on under Events | News

You might know that, Silverlight 5 has been already released by Microsoft. During the previous releases of Silverlight 5, I have published many articles on it. Here in this post, I am clubbing all of them so that, it will help you to find them in a single page as a great resource to start with Silverlight 5.

 

Here is a collection of Silverlight 5 Tutorials that you may want to read while working with the Silverlight 5. Find all the links that I have published in my blog. Do you have any feedback or queries? Don’t hesitate to write at least a single line in the Comments Section.

Published by on under Silverlight | Silverlight5

Hope you gone thru my previous video tutorial “How to Create a Windows 8 Metro Style Application using Visual Studio 2011?”, where I demonstrated about Windows Metro Style Application templates, creation of project and it’s project structure. There we also demonstrated one simple “HelloMetroStyleApplication” sample.

 

In this video tutorial, we will learn about “Package.appxmanifest” file which resides in the Metro application project directory. We will discuss step-by-step about each property page and XML content of this manifest file.

Published by on under Metro | Tutorial

People often asked me to start a Video Tutorial series on Windows 8 Metro Style Application development using Visual Studio 2011 and here is first part of the series. The series will include the video tutorial as well as some text to give you easy access to the code.

 

In this first part (10 mint Video Tutorial), we will learn how to get started with the Project and also we will learn the project structure. Later we will have a small demo to show you how to develop your first “Hello Metro Style Application” using Visual Studio 2011 IDE. Continue to the tutorial to learn more.

Published by on under Metro | Tutorial

Here is the post on Weekly News Digest at Silverlight-Zone.com. During the week (27th November 2011 to 3rd December 2011), we have submitted ~65 new article links collected from different blog feeds. The posts were on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch and WinRT Metro.

 

In this post, find the top 5 posts of the week, also sharing the most popular 5 posts of the month near to the end of the post. On regular basis, sharing the daily news digests links at the end. We had a news on the release of Silverlight 5, which didn’t happen last month. Read more to find out all the popular links.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightZone

Here comes our “Monthly Summary” post. During November 2011, I have submitted 12 blog posts here and this is the summary post of those blog threads categorized item wise. Find all the posts that I have published. In case you missed any one of them, this will help you.

 

As a quick note, stay tuned to our (KolkataGeeks) weekly webcast. All details are available in this page. Follow us and stay tuned on the cutting edge technologies.

Published by on under Archives | DZone

Do you want to integrate the network connection settings page (like: Airplane, Bluetooth, Cellular and/or WiFi) in your Windows Phone 7 application? Then this article will help you step-by-step to understand and integrate it.

 

Connection Settings page are those, where you can configure your connection types and various parameters of the connection. Windows Phone 7 SDK exposes the APIs for you to integrate them in your application. In this tutorial, we will discuss about these with a nice demo. Read further to know about these settings page and integration steps to the application.

Published by on under Silverlight | Tutorial

Here comes the weekly digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. During last week, we have submitted 83 article links on various technologies like Silverlight, LightSwitch, Windows Phone 7 etc. In this post, find the top links. Also, the link towards daily news digest is also available at the end of the post.

 

Top 5 posts were from @Debug_Mode, @jmarbutt, @kunal2383, @twmurph and @TimHuckaby. Don’t miss to read out those posts. If you have blog and you are writing article/posts on the said technologies, please share us the link below (as comment) and we will make sure to include them to spread all over the social networking sites.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightZone

Kolkata Geeks invites you to join our weekly online session. We are going to present online sessions in weekly basis so that people lives outside of Kolkata can join us and even participate or contribute to the community. We believe that community cannot be grown individually, but by the people in the community. So we, from behalf of KolkataGeeks community, we invite you to join us to our online session and participate to our community.

 

Session Title: How to Increase Performance of Web Apps using jQuery
Date: Sunday, Nov 27, 2011 from Time: 2 PM (IST) Duration: 1 hour (2PM to 3PM)

Published by on under Events | jQuery

My friend, Mr. Abhimanyu Kumar Vatsa (aka. @itorian) published a Free eBook on “Razor View Engine in MVC 3”. I appreciate the effort that he had contributed to publish this eBook and hence sharing this book details and downloadable link in this post, so that, it can reach to maximum people and they will get benefit from it.

 

Vatsa had demonstrated it in simple fashion (Step-by-Step), that a beginner can understand properly. Continue reading and download the PDF file freely. Also, don’t forget to share this to your friends and colleagues.

Published by on under .Net | Book

When the power of HTML5 on Windows 8 was first showcased, we have seen a lot of rumours on the future of Silverlight. Many online article mentioned that, it is the end of Silverlight. Some said Microsoft is going to stop the development of Silverlight after this Silverlight 5 release and there will be no Silverlight 6 in future. Is it really so?

 

Let us discuss this topic here. I am not going to write an article this time. We will have a discussion on this topic, your career goal on this platform and what your customers say about it. There are plenty of gifts for you to win. Among them one will be Telerik Ultimate Collection license and the other will be a Pluralsight Annual Plus Subscription from me. So, take part of the discussion, hear from other users voice, discuss and win cool gifts.

Published by on under GiveawayContest | Pluralsight

Here is our weekly digest post of Silverlight-Zone.com. During 13th November to 19th November, we have submitted 69 new posts in our database. Find the top 5 posts running on the site here. Also, we have links to daily digest pages. If you missed one, you can easily find it here.

 

If you have blog and you are writing article/posts on the said technologies, please share us the link below (as comment) and we will make sure to include them to spread all over the social networking sites.

Published by on under HTML | HTML5

On last Saturday, 12th November 2011, I presented 1 hour Technical session on “Windows Phone 7” in Kolkata Developer Conference. The event was organized by Microsoft User Group Kolkata (KolkataGeeks). It is the premier technical event for technology professionals at Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.

 

In this post, I will recap my Windows Phone 7 session. I will also share the Session Slides (PPT), Demos and related Article links. Some snaps of the event will also be available at the end of the post.

Published by on under DevCon | Events

Here comes the weekly news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com for the week 6th November 2011 to 12th November 2011. Once again the “Future of Silverlight” hit the developers. Lots of rumours we have seen during the week on Silverlight. Still waiting to hear about the future from the voice of Microsoft.

 

Find the top 5 posts made by Mike James, John Callaham, @maryjofoley, @JeremyLikness and @Telerik. Also find out the daily news digest links, if you missed any one during last week.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightZone

On 12th November 2011 (Saturday) I will be presenting Technical Session on “Windows Phone 7” at Kolkata Developer Conference (DevCon) 2011 organized by Microsoft User Group Kolkata (KolkataGeeks). It is the premier technical event for technology professionals at Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.

 

This is also going to be community Launch event for Microsoft Office 365. So be there and enjoy the flavour of cutting edge Microsoft technologies. Read out more to find about the session details.

Published by on under DevCon | Events

Behaviors are most demanded feature to include in Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and/or WPF applications to implement proper MVVM pattern to do some UI level actions. These are pluggable on demand and don’t need any other extra code to integrate. Just a simple XAML change and you are done.

 

In this article, we will learn how to use the inbuilt “PlaySoundAction” behavior to add sound effect on button click. We will demonstrate it using Windows Phone 7 application. Read more to learn. Complete demonstration with images for each steps available.

Published by on under DZone | ExpressionBlend

Weekly News Digest of Silverlight-Zone.com is up once again. We publish this digest every Sunday. As regular, find herewith the “Top 5 Posts of the Week” and “Daily News Digests” links.

 

During the week, we submitted 71 article links related to Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Metro, LightSwitch, XAML etc. We submitted these links from various authors. If you are also writing blog posts on those topics, please share us your blog link so that, we can contribute them to the site to reach out the already available good content to the vast readers. We welcome every feedbacks and suggestions to improve our site. Thanks to everyone for their support.

Published by on under LightSwitch | Silverlight

During October 2011, I have submitted 19 blog posts, among them 5 articles are there. I also received two awards from communities. In this post, I am going to share all the posts submitted here in my blog as separate category. This will help you to find out the proper post that you are searching in my blog.

 

As a short note, we (KolkataGeeks team) are proud to announce the Kolkata Developer Conference 2011 event. If you are in Kolkata, come and join the event; learn; discuss and win lots of goodies including Telerik Ultimate Collection license. Registration is going on.

Published by on under Archives | DevCon

Kolkata Geeks pleased to announce Developer Conference 2011 (DevCon) on Saturday, 12th November 2011. Developer Conference is the premier technical event for technology professionals in Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.

 

I am attending this event. Are you? Don’t forget to attend my Technical Session on Windows Phone 7. Read more to find out more about his event agenda, venue and timing.

Published by on under DevCon | Events

Here comes the weekly news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. This week i.e. 23rd October to 29th October, we have submitted 61 article links in our database and the total link count raised to 3255 till now. Thanks to Michael Crump and Silverlight Gal for their contributions towards Silverlight-Zone community portal.

 

In this post, I am going to share the popular 5 posts of this week, which were visited mostly by our readers. Also, sharing the Daily News Digest links of the week. If you missed them earlier, you can find them here.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightZone

Few days ago, I started with a Tutorial series on Project Management using Telerik TeamPulse tool and discussed on Agile Scrum using that tool. We learnt about the Telerik product which is built on top of Silverlight. We learnt how to create new project and the steps to create your Sprint or Iteration.

 

Today in this fourth chapter, we will learn how to create new Stories and respective Tasks for that Story. Plenty of screenshots available to understand. Feedbacks are always appreciated.

Published by on under CodeProject | TeamPulse

On 3rd October 2011, I had started a giveaway contest of “SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros” book authored by Pinal Dave, Microsoft Evangelist and Founder of SQLAuthority.com. The contest ended on 21st October 2011.

 

We received no. of participants in the contest and after reviewing all the entries, I have randomly picked up two Winners, who will receive signed copy of the “SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros” book. Congratulation email will be send out to the winners requesting their shipping address. Find out whether you are the lucky winner of the contest.

Published by on under Book | SQL

Here comes the “Weekly News Digest at Silverlight-Zone.com. During this week (16th October 2011 to 22nd October 2011) we have submitted ~67 news items in Silverlight-Zone. I appreciate the time of our Contributors who spent some of their valuable time to help the Silverlight-Zone community grow.

 

Read more to find out the top 5 posts of the week which were top visited by our readers. As usual, I am also posting the Daily News Headline links of this week. You may find it useful in case you missed them.

 

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep you updated on latest posts on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch, XNA stuffs. We want some more contributors who can voluntarily help us to serve already available good links to the community.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightZone

Boryana Miloshevska published this eBook “Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit in Depth” in WindowsPhoneGeek.com. The book includes hands on guide with code to demonstrate all the controls available in the Windows Phone 7.1 Toolkit (August 2011).

 

Click “Read More” to know about this book and find the links to download the eBook for Free. Hope this book will be a great help to you. Don’t forget to visit the book’s page to say a “Thanks” to the Author of the book.

 

Published by on under Book | eBook

Here comes the weekly news digest at SilverlightZone.com. During last week (9th October 2011 to 15th October 2011) we submitted 63 news posts on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch and Visual Studio 11. We have also seen the launch of Windows Phone 7 in India.

 

As usual, here in this post, I am going to share the top 5 posts of the week followed by the links towards Daily News Digest. If you missed to read some posts, you can find them here. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to receive regular update on the latest article news posted daily.

Published by on under LightSwitch | MVVM

I am feeling very glad to announce that, INETA community has been awarded me with their “Annual Community Champion Award” for the Q3 of 2011. It’s a big honor to receive this award from INETA community. I can’t express my excitement to acknowledge this award.

 

I’m finding that my community work is rewarding me in various ways. It’s definitely a great year for me when I have been awarded by different portals. Over the past 2-3 years, I was connected with so many influential people who helped me to build my career.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards

Finally received my Microsoft MVP Certificate and Kit yesterday. The kit consists of the MVP ring for 2011, MVP pin and the MVP ID-Card. You might already know that, I have been awarded 2nd time as Microsoft Silverlight MVP. To read about it, you may visit my post “Awarded Microsoft MVP (Silverlight) for the Second Time - October 2011”.

 

In this post, I am sharing some snaps of the MVP 2011 ring and the Certificate.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards

Last day we discussed about “Silverlight Page Navigation Framework” where we understood the basic concept. We learnt how to add pages in the project from the template and the root of the page xaml. We also learnt about the assembly which we need to use to develop a navigation application using Silverlight.

 

Today in this post, we will discuss about Uri Mapping which will help you to implement the navigation application very easily. You will also be able to hide the actual Url of the page. We will discuss about each point in brief with a simple example continuing from previous post.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightTips

Let us start with a three days tutorial series on Silverlight Navigation Framework. Today in this post, we will discuss about Page Navigation Framework in Silverlight. Here we will learn what the Page is, how to kick start with navigation framework and details about this.

 

This post will help to understand the basic knowledge of it. You will find it handy while developing your Silverlight application. Next two days, we will learn how to map a page URL and pass parameter to the page using a small and simple example. Continue reading to learn more about it.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightTips

Today posting the last week’s news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. During last week (2nd October 2011 to 8th October 2011), we have submitted ~76 news links in SilverlightZone on different topics like Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and LightSwitch.

 

It’s our effort to share the already available good content to you. As usual, this post will cover the Popular 5 Posts of last week and link towards daily news digest for your reference. Share us your thoughts and views about Silverlight-Zone.com. We are eager to hear something from you. Your continuous support matters to help the community grow.

Published by on under MVVM | Silverlight

imageSometime we want to show the System Information to the user, whether it is an Application or a simple Game. We need to show those system specific information to the Windows Phone 7 user by using an System page. So, in such case, how will you fetch those information and show them to the user?

 

Well, this post will help you to understand it and let you know about this data in Windows Phone 7 device. Read to learn more about this topic.

Published by on under CodeProject | DZone

The root class of the Windows Phone 7 page includes two attributes called “Orientation” and “SupportedOrientations”. Those are actually enum values and provides you option to set the orientation of your page programmatically.

 

Today in this post we will describe about it in depth. If you are new to Windows Phone 7 programming, you will find this tip handy to understand about the page orientation on Phone page. Read to know more about this.

Published by on under Silverlight | Tips

Silverlight 5 Toolkit is now available in CodePlex site. This is the first version of Silverlight 5 Toolkit targeting Silverlight 5 RC build. This is also a first release of Silverlight Toolkit after April 2010. It took more than one year to release this bits. No Silverlight 4 toolkit available yet.

 

In this post, I am going to share the downloadable location as well as the new components available in this release. Read to know more about them.

Published by on under News | Silverlight

Do you work on SQL Server as a SQL developer or administrator and want to gain some good knowledge on SQL Wait Stats and Parallel Execution from SQL Guru Pinal Dave? Then this post will help you to win a hard copy of his book.

 

Pinal Dave, who is a Microsoft Evangelist published a book “SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros” recently. He accepted my request and going to giveaway 2 copies of his book to my blog followers. Read more to register for the contest and Win the book Free.

Published by on under Book | SQL

Here comes this week’s news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. This week starting 25th September 2011 to 1st October 2011, we have submitted 69 new article links on various topics like Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch, XAML and Metro.

 

Though there are various new topics, but still people are worried about the future of Silverlight and hence we noticed a significant hit on those posts. Don’t be panic, this is a cover story now since last three weeks. Read this post to read out the top 5 links.

Published by on under Silverlight | SilverlightZone

I am feeling very proud to announce that, I have been awarded as Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for the second consecutive year. Feeling good to say that I am still holding the second Silverlight MVP tag from India.

 

1st October is an wonderful day to me. In 2010, I received this award for the first time with a holding of second Silverlight MVP of India and still continuing with that. My sincere thanks to my MVP Lead, all Community friends and my Parents. Without all of their support it was quite difficult to get.

Also a warm Congratulation to all new and renewed MVPs of this quarter.

Published by on under Achievements | Awards

During September 2011, we have seen a no. of product releases by Microsoft including Silverlight 5 RC, Expression Blend 5 Preview, Windows 8 Developer Preview, Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and Windows Phone 7.1 SDK Final. It was a busy month, no doubt. I also did a no. of posts (26) in my blog which has 15 articles.

 

In this post, I am going to share all the posts submitted here in my blog as separate category. This will help you to find out the proper post that you are searching in my blog.

Published by on under Archives | CodeProject

That’s a good question asked by Alan in my last post “Why the Frame Rate Counter is not available in my Windows Phone 7 Emulator?” Ok, to answer to this query, there could be some different issues/solutions for this.

 

Let’s discuss more on this query here. If you are facing the same issue, this post might help you. There could be different possibilities too. If you have different solution, please use the comment link to submit your approach here.

Published by on under Mango | Silverlight

Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.1 SDK tools yesterday, 28th September 2011. It’s in RTW release, that means, it is released to web. Cliff Simpkins announced the release of the Windows Phone SDK 7.1 in Windows Team Blog.

 

In this post, find the link to download the RTW version of Windows Phone 7.1 SDK (Mango) which includes both the web and standalone offline installer for all separate languages.

Published by on under Mango | News

Frame Rate Counter in Windows Phone 7

While working with Windows Phone 7 emulator, you might noticed that, in debug mode it shows some numeric values at the right side of the screen. So, what are those values and why that numeric bar is available in debug mode?

 

The bar represents numeric values for Frame Rates to debug Memory usage by your WP7 application. In this post, we will briefly discuss on this topic. Read further to learn more about this Frame Rate Counter.

Published by on under Silverlight | Tips