Silverlight Tutorials

Thanks Michael Schwarz.

Mix 07 Silverlight Sessions

• Building Silverlight Applications Using .NET (Part 1 of 2)
• Building Silverlight Applications Using .NET (Part 2 of 2)
• Building Rich Web Experiences Using Silverlight and JavaScript for Developers
• Building Rich Web Experience with Silverlight and Microsoft Expression Studio for Designers
• Deep Dive on Silverlight Media Integration
• Creating and Delivering Rich Media and Video on the Web with Silverlight, Microsoft Expression Studio, and Windows Server Codename "Longhorn"
• Developing ASP.NET AJAX Controls with Silverlight
• Building Rich, Interactive E-commerce Applications Using ASP.NET and Silverlight
• A View from the Front: Real World Experiences of WPF and Silverlight
• Extending the Browser Programming Model with Silverlight
• Just Glue It! Ruby and the DLR in Silverlight

Silverlight 1.0 Tutorials

• Overlaying HTML and Silverlight Content
• Basic Keyboard Input with Silverlight
• Building Video Overlays with Silverlight
• Real-Time Data Update with Silverlight and Web Services
• Using AJAX to Dynamically Update Silverlight Content
• Animating and Clipping Video with Silverlight
• Using Silverlight Brushes for Color, Gradient and Video
• 2D Geometries in Silverlight
• Using Silverlight for Full Screen Experiences
• Creating a Video Scrubbing Control with Silverlight
• Silverlight Event Handling with JavaScript
• Using Input Method Editors for Text Entry in Silverlight
• Adding Ink Support to a Silverlight-based Application
• Delivering Parameterized Silverlight Content with ASP.NET
• Delivering Parameterized Silverlight Content with PHP
• Delivering Parameterized Silverlight Content with Java

Silverlight 1.1 Tutorials

• Getting Started with Silverlight 1.1
• Top Banana
• Dynamic Languages with Silverlight
• Silverlight in Their Own Words

Expression Blend with Silverlight 1.0

• Getting Started with Expression Blend New!
• Creating Vector Art for Silverlight with Expression Blend
• Animating Vector Art for Silverlight with Expression Blend Part I
• Animating Vector Art for Silverlight with Expression Blend Part II
• Animating Raster Art for Silverlight with Expression Blend
• Using Expression Blend to Control Silverlight Media Playback

Silverlight QuickStarts

• Silverlight 1.0 Beta QuickStarts
• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha QuickStarts

MSDN Library

• Silverlight Technical Articles
• Getting Started with Silverlight
• MSDN Silverlight Dev Center
• Silverlight 1.0 Beta SDK
• Silverlight 1.1 Alpha SDK
• Silverlight Reference
• A Lap Around Silverlight (Level 300) New!

Tutorials from other Web sites

• Silverlight Tutorial - Create Glass Button in MS Expression Blend
• Lesson 9: Gradient Fills in MS Expression Blend
• Lesson 8: Motion paths in MS Expression Blend
• Lesson 7: Using Microsoft Expression for Silverlight
• Lesson 6: Silverlight Media
• Lesson 5: Silverlight Text
• Lesson 4: Using Images in Silverlight
• Lesson 3b: Silverlight Shapes
• Lesson 3a: Silverlight Canvas
• Lesson 2: The XAML File
• Lesson 1: Beginning Silverlight - Creating a Project
• The Code Project: Silverlights Out - An Introduction into Silverlight by Example
• Get Started Building A Deeper Experience Across The Web
• Channel9 Videos tagged with Silverlight
• How to create Silverlight Applications with Notepad
• Silverlight with Visual Studio .NET 2005
• JavaScript and .NET Arrays in Silverlight
• Silverlight and JSON
• Call Scribtable Methods from JavaScript with Silverlight
• IsolatedStorage and managed JavaScript
• Running managed JavaScript in Silverlight

Roy Oserove has given good tips for becoming a successful team lead. Believe my these tips really work, I have experienced that.

More over you can share anything missing to make the post even better.

Check the article here.

 FlashControl is an ASP.NET 2.0 server control that allow you to add Flash movies (swf files) in your aspx pages. It removes the "Click to activate and use this control" message.

This control has some great features:

• Remove "Click to activate and use this control" message
• ASP.NET AJAX enabled! (works inside an AJAX UpdatePanel)
• Auto detect browsers and render proper client code
• Enable full screen Flash movies
• Support all Flash properties (Width, Height, Src, FlashVars, PluginsPage, Loop, Menu, Scale, BgColor, SwLiveConnect, Quality, Play, Base, Align, SAlign, WMode, etc...)
• FlashVars GUI editor
• XHTML compliance mode
• Support ASP.NET 2.0 Theme and skins
• Full Visual Studio designer support (Smart tag, Custom Designer, Custom Editors)

FlashControl is available at www.flash-control.net

To Read More goto : Flash Control for ASP.NET 2.0 and AJAX

Microsoft's Betrand Le Roy just put together a great post on how to document JavaScript code in VS.NET Orcas.  By adding documentation comments, users of your script will get nice intellisense as they type and use JavaScript classes, methods, etc.  Nice stuff that we've all wanted for a long, long time.

http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2007/04/23/the-format-for-javascript-doc-comments.aspx

Wally McClure just released a video that shows what the new intellisense support looks like as well.

Read More here: JavaScript Intellisense and Documentation in VS.NET Orcas

I have always thought MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server) is an excellent platform and it is definitely gonna-be future platform of almost all kind of Application development and deployment. One of the example of this is Ben Robb's & Mei Ling's post.

In his blog-post Ben Robb has mentioned about Mei Ling blog-post on Commerce Server vs MOSS(showing how MOSS and Commerce Server can complement each other in provisioning an eCommerce site), also he has shown how the functionalities of CS overlap MOSS functionalities and what should be the next course of action for future versions of CS.

Thanks Ben Robb and Mei Ling.. for the Excellent work.

Another Example of this is yet another article of Ben Robb (Moving from design to reality - building HedKandi.com in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007) hosted at ECM Team Blog. The introduction is below, the main body is here.

In the past, most SharePoint developers would have run a mile when faced with an initial design brief like this:

 While it had been difficult in the past to brand a SharePoint-based website with the kind of flexibility that marketing departments demand for their publicly facing websites, SharePoint developers can stop running right about now. This limitation simply disappears in the 2007 version of SharePoint with the support for ASP.NET 2.0 Master Pages technology.

 So, how did we go about creating a site with SharePoint that looks nothing like a typical SharePoint site? Surprisingly, it didn’t involve lots of C# code or editing files we really weren’t supposed to be. We actually made use of a lot of out of the box controls, and in the main used XHTML, CSS and XSLT to achieve the output that our client required.

To read the full article - go to the ECM Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ecm/archive/2006/09/30/777819.aspx

	The brush strokes of creativity have overpowered the Web. Innovation thrives in this domain of opportunity. It’s not about bits or bytes; it’s about experiences and expressions. Creative impulse now powers the Web; inventiveness wins hearts, emotions rule…It is The Next Web Now. Businesses find new horizons, find new ways to establish connections, and not just another dot in the address. The Web has changed to deliver meaningful experiences. The revolution is upon us. You can choose to ignore it, or thrive in this new realm of opportunity. IndiMIX ’06 – It is testimony to the promise of effective Web experiences; it is the point of inflexion; it is the demonstration of the genesis of creativity and innovation; it is The Next Web Now. Business professionals, Designers, Developers - Join Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO in Mumbai on November 9, 2006 at IndiMIX ’06 for this seminal web conclave.
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Make sure you are there! No matter how Physically or Virtually..

Jeff Toews has written an excellent article on Management and Delegation of ASP.NET. To view the article Click here.

In this article he has presented some configuration tips on proper Configuration of ASP.NET.

There is a good wealth of Common formulas available which can be used in Excel. To access the link Click here.

In this article, I have assumed that the reader is aware of the basic functionality of Subversion. This article has been written to make the usage of Subversion more efficient and more effective, as not much information is available on this subject in contrast to Subversion.

Although most of the things are already mentioned in the Subversion Documentation, but going through such vast information in one go becomes something uncommon. So it is good to have small articles targetting a specific feature which can expose the functionality and will get the attention. Without even any extra effort it gets feeded in mind, making understanding of the subject better.

I installed Subversion and started using it, but I started getting problems in maintenance when the code base spreaded and required maintenance of multiple versions.

To find the solution I studied the documentation available, to use Subversion(SVN) more effectively. One of the important things I read was about "What should be the ideal Repository Structure":

So lets understand the options available:

• Versioning

In this article I have followed Major.Minor.Build.Revision versioning practice which is very standard, details of it are as under:

In this version number is physically represented as a four-part string with the following format:

        <major>.<minor>.<build>.<revision>

For example, version 1.5.60204.0 indicates 1 as the major version, 5 as the minor version, 60204 as the build         number, and 0 as the revision number.

• Major: Major releases introduce major new technologies and changes that render previous production releases obsolete.
• Minor: Minor releases depict feature level enhancements. Addition of features between releases result in incremented minor release.
• Build: This is auto-generated number, assigned for each build on a day basis. It has YMMDD format, So Feb 04^th 2006 shall be 60204.
  Note: Build number for revisions (read bug-fixes to production releases) shall remain same as originally released in production.
• Revision: This is reset to zero, for each new major/minor version released. For all later bug-fixes, patches to releases that reach production, this number shall sequentially increment.

• Trunk

Trunk is the main branch of development.

• Branch

Isolating changes onto a separate line of development is called Branching. Branches are used to try out new feature without disturbing the main line of development. And as the new feature becomes stable the development branch is merged back into the main branch (trunk).

• Tag

Tagging is to mark particular revisions (e.g. release version), so that you can recreate a certain build or environment at any time. Tags are used to create a static snapshot of the project at a particular stage. Tagging of the project is mostly done along with the successful build and generally it is done by the automated build process.

Important Note: Subversion itself makes no distinction between tags and branches, but they are there for different purpose. Tags are not normally used for development, Branches must be used for that purpose. So working on a tag revision is not a good idea. So you must remember this as there is nothing to stop you doing this by mistake. However there are few SVN-Client Applications (like TortoiseSVN) which will warn you if you try to commit to a path in the repository which contains /tags/. But I am not sure about other SVN-Clients.

Figure 1: Example of a Subversion Repository Structure (expanded).

Branching or Tagging done by Subversion are just internal links (cheap copies) pointing to a specific tree/revision and thus can be created very quickly and also take up almost no extra space in the repository. If you modify a working copy created from a branch and commit , then all changes go to the new branch and not to the trunk. Only the modifications are stored and the rest remains a cheap copy.

Many times it may happen that you need to make further changes to a release which has been already tagged. The correct way to handle this is to create a new branch from the tag first and commit the branch. Make Changes on this branch and tag the branch for every build with increment in the Revision number.

So finally "What should be the ideal Repository Structure"

Following folder/directories must be created, all at the repository root level:

• /trunk                    
• /branches                    
• /tags                    

How to make the Repository Structure:

1. Do SVN Checkout to a new folder.
2. Create the folder /trunk inside the root repository folder.
3. Create the folder /branches inside the root repository folder.
4. Create the folder /tags inside the root repository folder.
5. Copy the project files (which are to be Source Controlled) in the /trunk folder.
6. Add the files and folder to SVN and do SVN Commit.
7. Create a Branch with Major and Minor mentioned in the branch name for e.g. "v1_0_X" **
8. Now you can delete the new folder from your machine (not from SVN) as it is now saved in SVN.
9. Checkout the the new created branch. Now you can start working on this.

If you need to make further changes to a release which has been already tagged, following steps must be followed:

1. Checkout the tagged revision to a new folder.
2. Create a new Branch from the checkedout project.
3. Switch the working copy to new Branch (or in simple words Delete the just created new folder and checkout the new branch to a new folder.)

For e.g.  Suppose you need to make further changes to a release tagged "v1_0_60924_0". Steps will be as under:

• Checkout the tag "v1_0_60924_0" to a new folder say "C:\HelloWorld_temp".
• Create a new branch "v1_0_60924_X" *** by giving the command from within the above folder.
• Switch the working copy:
  • Deleting the "C:\HelloWorld_temp" folder.
  • Checkout the branch "v1_0_60924_0" to a folder "C:\Projects\HelloWorld".

** Branch name v1_0_X dissected: "v" represents the word "Version", "1" is Major, "0" is Minor and "X" is to indicate that along with the changes (or during the Build process) Tags will be created with dynamic Build and Revision numbers, for e.g. "v1_0_60923_0" here 60923 is the Build Number which represents the date of build (6 is the year 2006, 09 is the Month and 23 is the Date), after Build Number there comes the Revision Number which will get incremented with every next build during the day.

*** In case of already tagged release Branch name used is "v1_0_60924_X" because for further builds on this Branch only revision number will get incremented. Mostly this happens when a Build is released or finalized to be released, then for bug-fixes and patches to be release the Build number is freezed and only Revision number changes.

Although MS SQL Server Express Edition is a very advanced database and is also free, there is no big reason to move to MySQL 5 now, but still if you have to access databases which are on MySQL 5 you find difficulty in using it with the ObjectDataSources approach.

Michael Washington has written an excellent article on how MySQL 5 can be used with ObjectDataSources in ASP.NET 2.0.

To access the article click here.

Time passes so fast, I didn't even realized it is now 1 year since I started blogging, it seems as if I just started few weeks back.. 

My experience with blogging has been very good and I would like to recommend everyone to do blogging. It not only helps you to recall things but also helps in many other ways like:

• You & your experience become public (I think this will help in evolvement of the community at a much faster pace).
• You have to go one more level in depth of what you are doing to blog about it.
• It creates a urge of finding/inventing new things and show to the world.
• and many more good reasons..

Blogging is done for multiple reasons, some do it to log their experience, some do it for announcing their work/achievements/problems, some of the bloggers like to become announcers (I would like to call them Blog Jockeys) of What new has arrived in.., some do it for the help of the community.. and many many more reasons.

For me blogging is to log my experience with complete focus on technology and may be this is the reason I have not posted too many posts.

In last 18 months, I got a very good opportunity to explore new tools and technology (Thanks to my Project Manager Mr. Sharad Kumar). Working on ASP.NET 2.0 right from it's CTP releases, Generics, C# 2.0, VB.Net 2005, MS SQL Server 2005, MS SQL Reporting Services, IISReport Pack, FxCop, CruiseControl.Net, NAnt, MSBuild, NDoc, AJAX, ATLAS, Sharepoint v2.0, Sharepoint v3.0 and many many more..

Links of some of my good posts in last 1 Year:

-- Microsoft must take my services to make MSBuild more complete.. rather more featurefull.. ;)                                           Appreciated by Niel Enns (Lead Program Manager, MSBuild Team, Microsoft) for a smart solution & detailed description..

-- Sleep Task implementation for MSBuild

-- How To: Install the Subversion HTTP Module/Server/Client on Windows

-- How to Setup Reporting Services

What I will be interested in blogging next:

-- IIS Report Pack Optimization

-- How to do effective Project Management (so many tools are there at your service)

-- Sharepoint 3.0 and MOSS 2007

-- Workflows

-- And many many more things..

Happy Blogging.. ;) 

Knowledge increases by sharing.. Trust me..         If you have not started blogging yet, Start it ASAP..

Lately when I was searching something on Google I came accross something very surprising, i.e. I was getting different results from the same search engine in different browsers, I have both Firefox (FF) and Internet Explorer (IE) and I generally keep an instance of both open..

For example if I search for my name on FF and IE, I get results in different order and even the total number of results also differ..

As it can be seen in the below picture that in FF my weblog is coming at the top :) but in IE it is coming at the third rank :( 

I don't really know why this is happening and whether it is intentionally done by Google or it is a bug, but since the search engine is the same ideally it should show similar results irrespective of browsers..

It would be great, if anybody can give me the valid reason behind this.. ;)

Windows Live Writer was released last Friday. I am writting this post using the tool.

It is a desktop application that provides a really nice editing environment for writing blog posts (spell checker, layout manager, offline editing support, etc). It can be used not only with Live Spaces but also with many other server blogs.

Eric Cherng has put together a really nice Windows Live Writer walkthrough that shows off how to install and use it to write your first blog post.  You can checkout his post on how to-do this here.

Cool tools.. Great Stuff..

Microsoft is really becoming Lively..

Quote

Updated 101 Samples using Visual Studio 2005 Now Available

To make the reports scalable enough to handle data of high traffic websites, many changes were required in the report pack which are mentioned as under:
1. Redesigning of Database
     a. Added new tables to store the summary,
     b. Added new Stored Procedures to insert and retrieve data from new tables,
     c. Removed bugs from few already existing Stored Procedures.
2. Redesigning of Report Definition Language (RDL) files,
3. Added new Report for Response Status,
4. Created a Windows Service to execute LogParser command as a schedule task, to parse IIS Logs.

 

 

By doing this MSSQL Server Report Pack for IIS got much faster with multifold increase in Report Processing speed:
1. Less Network Traffic, as only the precise summary data gets transfered over the wires (between  Database Server and Reporting Server),
2. Less Load on Database Server, as data gets processed one time that too during off-peak hours,
3. No Grouping and Summarizing of Data on the Reports' end, this make displaying of Report a breeze,
4. No need to store high volumes of data parsed from IIS Logs in database table, this further increases the database query processing speed,