Willem Meints

Tips for effective usage of resource dictionaries in Silverlight and WPF

While working on the recipe browser application I experienced for the first time, what will be the horror of every developer. I had one huge Styles.xaml file that I generated by letting Expression Blend put all the designed control templates and styles...

Published 21-07-2010 20:35 by willemm

Filed under: Silverlight, Performance

ADO.NET Entity framework advanced scenarios: Working with stored procedures that return multiple resultsets

Today I got an interesting question about stored procedures that return multiple resultsets in combination with ADO.NET entity framework. During the CTP phase this was broken at some point and the previous version of the entity framework didn’t...

Published 16-07-2010 19:41 by willemm

Filed under: C#, ADO.NET, .NET Framework 4, Entity framework

UI design in Silverlight using MVVM.

There’s a lot of fuzz around MVVM and its appliance in Silverlight and WPF. Almost everyone who has done something with Silverlight has tried it and is using the pattern to some degree. Some people are puristic about the use of MVVM, while others...

Published 14-07-2010 7:55 by willemm

Filed under: Silverlight, User interface design

Code analysis warning CA1026: Or what to do with optional parameters in C#

Today I decided to give optional parameters in C# a try. I’ve created a unit-test helper method that allows me to create a new build definition in Team Foundation Server. The method itself accepts three parameters, two of them are optional. So I created...

Published 05-07-2010 13:36 by willemm

Filed under: .NET, C#, FxCop, C# 4.0, .NET Framework 4, Code analysis

Fun with Silverlight: Multi-touch hub navigation

Not all applications need to be boring, at least that’s my motto. I like to create applications from time to time that are a bit different in the way that they interact with the user. One of these wacky applications is an application that uses a hub navigation...

Published 22-06-2010 20:41 by willemm

Filed under: Silverlight, Silverlight toolkit, Silverlight 4, User interface design, Multi-touch

Creating multi-solution RIA applications using WCF RIA services

At Info Support we work with a multi-solution philosophy . The reason for doing so lies in the fact that Visual Studio isn’t the brightest one on the block when it comes to working with solutions. When you create a solution with 20 projects or more...

Published 01-06-2010 21:52 by willemm

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, WCF, RIA services, netmag

Getting your outlook archiving up to speed

Today I had trainingday planned to get an upgrade for my time-management skills (Yes, IT-guys get upgrades). One of the things we discussed in the training was how to archive your mail. I have a pretty sizable mailbox of about 1.5Gb, so it might be a...

Published 18-05-2010 18:54 by willemm

Filed under: Misc., Outlook, Office, Macro

Elastic load-balancing using application request routing

A while I ago I started setting up the deployment of a new application that me and a few others at Info Support are creating for a client. We needed to be flexible with this deployment in the sense that it should be possible to scale up the webfarm from...

Published 06-05-2010 22:09 by willemm

Filed under: IIS 7.0, ASP.NET 4, IIS 7.5, Application Request Routing, IIS

Prototyping with Expression Blend 4

Many developers might have had an experience like this: You want to create an application, but don’t want to spend time writing a rather expansive design for it. You also don’t want it to end up being unusable, because you didn’t spend time thinking about...

Published 03-05-2010 21:40 by willemm

Filed under: Silverlight, WPF, Expression Blend, Silverlight 4, Prototyping, User interface design, WPF 4

The new Cider Silverlight and WPF designer: Even more fun for the frontend developer

On Monday Microsoft released Visual Studio 2010, the newest edition of their integrated development for .NET, Native Windows Development and Silverlight. One of the things that has improved greatly is the Cider designer. This designer is the core component...

Published 14-04-2010 20:52 by willemm

Filed under: Silverlight, WPF, silverlight 3, .NET Framework 4, Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4

It’s the little things in life

In the past few days I have been working on validating the logging mechanics of an application we’re building at Info Support. One of the things I have to do is to assign event IDs to all the known error, warning and informational events in the application...

Published 30-03-2010 17:18 by willemm

Filed under: .NET, C#

Blending your Composite WPF applications

It is one of the problems that most Silverlight developers using Composite WPF have come across when working together with a designer on their team. The screens can be implemented using blend, but databinding is somewhat painful. The only reason for this...

Published 24-03-2010 21:32 by willemm

Filed under: CompositeWPF, Expression Blend 4, Silverlight 4, dotnetmag

Fun with Silverlight: Building a photo mosaic

Most of the things I talk about on this weblog are serious posts on serious problems and solutions. However that is not the only thing I like to do with Software. From time to time I come across whaky ideas that aren’t necessarily useful. The photo...

Published 22-03-2010 8:00 by willemm

Filed under: Silverlight, C#, Expression Blend

Using ASP.NET application services from Silverlight

Silverlight is a platform the behaves pretty much like any windows application. This makes sense when you think about where the application is actually running. It is deployed from a website, but doesn’t actually run on the web server. Because Silverlight...

Published 08-03-2010 20:32 by willemm

Filed under: .NET, ASP.NET, Silverlight, C#, WCF, Async programming, .NET Framework 4, ASP.NET 4

Creating Expression Blend 3 Silverlight triggers and actions

In my previous post I introduced the behaviors model of Expression Blend. In this post I will show you a different technique for adding interactivity through the Expression Blend Designer by creating custom triggers and actions. The difference between...

Published 02-03-2010 18:21 by willemm

Filed under: Silverlight, Expression Blend, Triggers, Actions

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