Second INETA Component Code Challenge 2012

 .NET, Application, ASP.NET, C#, General, MVC3, MVC4, Silverlight  No Responses »
Sep 122012
 

For the second time this year I have the great opportunity to be one of the judges for the INETA Component Code Challenge.  Here are the details:

Have you ever thought “I have a good idea for an application, however what can I get for it?” and/or “I would love to go to DevConnections, but I am not sure how to pay for it?”. Well, you are in luck. With the INETA Component Code Challenge for 2012, all you need to do is create an application using 2 approved controls from 2 approved vendors, create a video talking about your application, and submit it to our judging panel. Our judging panel, consisting of Bill Reiss, Nikita Polyakov, Matt Hidinger, and Greg Leonardo, will be looking for innovation and creativity in the use of approved controls. To read official rules click here.

So grab your computer and Visual Studio and GET YOUR CODE ON!

Disclaimer: INETA covers one conference ticket, hotel, and travel to the conference as is outlined in INETA’s travel policy. Please visit the site for additional rules.

Silverlight 4 Printing

 .NET, Application, Architecture, ASP.NET, Enterprise, General, Silverlight  1 Response »
Jan 182011
 

Printing in Silverlight has been made pretty simple, how it comes with some caveats because it opnly supports rasterized image printing.  Not 100% a problem but in LOB applications will run into issue with printing thinks like PDF, because all formatting is lost in reflect to the final printed document.

Here is a quick code method on printing in Silverlight 4:

[sourcecode langauge="csharp"]
PrintDocument documentToPrint= new PrintDocument();
documentToPrint.DocumentName = "Sample Document";
documentToPrint.StartPrint += new EventHandler(documentToPrint_StartPrint);
documentToPrint.PrintPage += new EventHandler(documentToPrint_PrintPage);
documentToPrint.Print();
[/sourcecode]

Databinding in Silverlight

 .NET, Application, Architecture, C#, General, Silverlight  No Responses »
Jun 202010
 

Databinding in Silverlight is based on any object that is inherites from the DependencyObject class.  Now, with new versions of Silverlight may new features (keywords) had been added.  Let’s look at a couple of new ones.

StringFormat:
Allows the ability to do string formatting directly in the databinding, example:

<TextBox Text=”{Binding paymentDate, StringFormat=’MM/dd/yy’}“/>

TargetNullValue:
Allows you to define what to show if value is null.

<TextBlock Text=”{Binding Path=pageContent, TargetNullValue=’No Page Content is Currently Available’}” />

FallBackValue:
Is used to define a value when the value can not be loaded through the data binding.

<TextBlock Text=”{Binding Path=pageContent, FallbackValue=’There was an Error Retreiving the Data, Please try Again Later.’}”  />

As you can see by the above examples, there are a few helpful keywords with databindings – that deal with formatting, nulls, and when things don’t go right.

TechED 2010 BOF Session

 .NET, Application, Architecture, Enterprise, General, Silverlight  No Responses »
Jun 142010
 

Shawn Wildermith and I had the pleasure of hosting a Birds-of-a-feather discussion on “Silverlight, how will it change frontend development?”. We had roughly 40-50 people present and it was a great experience. Was good to talk through real work issues, so thanks to iNETA and Microsoft for allowing us to host such a great session.

TechED 2010

 .NET, Architecture, OO Concepts, Silverlight  No Responses »
Jun 022010
 

I can’t believe TechED 2010 is almost here. This year I get the opportunity to represent the Microsoft community as a web expert, so if you are at TechED this year swing by the web platform expert area and visit with me. I am also doing a BOF this year with Shawn Wildermith and I am listed as a speaker on the TechED site. Also, if you aren’t doing anything on 6/8 from 1:45-2:30 swing by room 335 and catch our discussion on “Silverlight, where will it take frontend development?”

One Way to Solve Collection Validation in Silverlight 3

 .NET, Application, Architecture, Enterprise, General, Silverlight  No Responses »
Nov 302009
 

In one of my current projects I used Datagrid’s with RowDetail forms for editing the ItemSource collection.  This created  a unique issue with exception throwing from the entities so the form will provide immediate response to the user.  This became very difficult to accomplish with the fact that the entities were provided by WCF (the Domain Service – we are not using RIA).   Now the issue is that the WCF ONLY provides the implementation of the entity and not the entity itself, so in short terms no exception is thrown to the UI; however we would receive the general service fault exception from the service.

To overcome this I used the shared entity model and included them in both the Silverlight frontend and WCF backend.  Now this is great solution; however if the user does not enter the form field well no instant feedback.

So for this opportunity, I created a .Validate method on the object and had it produce an error collection as well as return a true/false.

This option now allowed me to validate the object in ItemSource collection, so now the application can bulk save and evaluate the collection of data rather than one field at a time.

I will post an example of this process in the near future as well as how to do it.