Jeremy Likness' Blog

Custom Export Providers with Custom Metadata for Region Management

2010-03-12T20:48:05Z

Over the past few weeks I've been exploring the concept of region management using the Managed Extensibility Framework, and for a good reason. I'm working on a project that has several different regions and controls that must be managed effectively and across the boundaries of dynamic XAP files in Silverlight 3. Sound like a mouthful? In previous posts I demonstrated some methods for handling region management using MEF. This post is an advanced post and I'm assuming you have the fundamentals of...(read more)

MVVM with MEF in Silverlight Video Tutorial Part 2: Plugins and Metadata

2010-03-09T19:21:03Z

In the first part of this series, I demonstrated a very simple project that used MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) along with the Managed Extensibility Framework to produce a simple screen that toggled between a square and a circle. In this next video, I am re-designing the original project. This video starts with the original solution, but then I rework the code, using metadata, to turn the shapes into plugins. I duplicate the original effort with the new design (using a combobox instead of a checkbox...(read more)

MVVM with MEF in Silverlight: Video Tutorial

2010-03-07T12:02:00Z

This is a video tutorial to introduce beginners to how to use both MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) and MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) with Silverlight (should work for versions 3 and 4). Of course, some "veterans" may want to watch as well in case you've missed some of the fundamentals, or have a clever way to do something that you can share in the comments for future visitors to the page. In this edition, I build a simple application that allows the user to check a preference on the screen (whether...(read more)

Silverlight Line of Business Applications

2010-03-04T12:46:00Z

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of presenting a talk entitled, "Silverlight Line of Business Applications" at the Atlanta Silverlight Meetup Group . This talk focused on several aspects of building line of business applications, ranging from the principles that belong in the foundation or architecture, to specific frameworks and methodologies. You can view the video below, or link directly by clicking here. I did take some time to encode chapters, so if you click the chapter icon in the player,...(read more)

Animations and View Models: IAnimationDelegate

2010-03-03T07:33:02Z

We often trip over ourselves trying to minimize code behind and abstract behaviors in the UI from the models, etc. This is important for clean separation, but sometimes behaviors may add too much abstraction. The real fact is many applications require some sort of transition or animation based on events, and while we can try to put as many of those as possible into the VisualStateManager , there may be instances such as dynamically created animations or special triggers that end up involving the...(read more)

MEF instead of PRISM for Silverlight 3 Part 2 of 2: Region Management

2010-03-01T07:24:01Z

In my last post , I showed you how to dynamically load modules on demand using the latest MEF release in Silverlight 3. This post, I will take you through managing regions with MEF. This will enable us to have a 100% MEF-based solution in Silverlight 3 if the only pieces of PRISM we were using were the dynamic module loading and region management. Download the Source Code for this Post Quick note: technically, the Composite Application Guidance (PRISM) is more of a guidance than an actual library....(read more)

MEF instead of PRISM for Silverlight 3 Part 1 of 2: Dynamic Module Loading

2010-02-26T10:27:05Z

Recently I've been having lots of conversations about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) , the Composite Application Library (CAL or PRISM) , and how they relate. One point of confusion that many people has comes when they try to force the two solutions to work together. In a recent conversation, I mentioned that PRISM has some great features, but that if you are only using it for dynamic module loading and view management, MEF should do fine. Then I promised to post a blog with a reference...(read more)

Vancouver Olympics - How'd We Do That?

2010-02-25T06:35:02Z

The Silverlight team recently posted a blog entry entitled " Vancouver Olympics - How'd we do That? " in which they detailed the massive effort across multiple partners to pull together the on-line solution for streaming HD videos, both live and on demand. This was an exciting post for Wintellect and me because it detailed the effort we contributed to making the project a success. What's more important to me for the Silverlight community, however, is that you don't overlook the key detail they posted...(read more)

Top 10 Silverlight Myths and the Facts to Bust Them

2010-02-23T07:20:00Z

Silverlight is a client side plug-in based technology that has been in production since late 2007. I've been a web developer for well over a decade now, and recently have focused almost exclusively on Silverlight since version 3.0 was released. It astounds me how many people still resist Silverlight because they either don't understand what it is or haven't taken the time to research the capabilities it provides. Silverlight is a strong, mature technology that is being used on production sites to...(read more)

A Fluent RSS Reader for Silverlight Part 2: NDepends on What you Need

2010-02-18T18:59:01Z

NDepend is a product that analyzes large code bases and provides information about dependencies, complexity of code, best practices, and more. While designed to help manage large code bases, it also works well as a "reality check" as you are developing new projects. The latest release supports Silverlight and I'll be using it to clean up my RSS reader a little bit. The first thing I did was download and install the product. There is an option to integrate with Visual Studio. I chose this option,...(read more)

Windows Phone 7 Series (Formerly called Windows Mobile 7)

2010-02-15T07:42:02Z

There has been a lot of buzz around Microsoft's latest mobile phone operating system. I hope to be involved with this product as much as possible and will blog the detals that I can as they are made available. While the buzz has referred to this as "Windows Mobile 7" the platform has been officially renamed to "Windows Phone" and the next release is named, "7 Series." Highlights of the announcement include a completely revamped user interface with Zune and XBox Live integration. To get an overview...(read more)

A Fluent RSS Reader for Silverlight Part 1: Proof of Concept

2010-02-07T12:53:04Z

One of the most common examples to help learn a language or framework is an RSS Reader. This is an ideal mini-project because it includes networking, parsing XML, and binding to data elements such as lists. I wanted to provide an example that shows some more interesting solutions that are possible using C# in Silverlight. This is the first part in a series. By the end of this post, we'll have a working reader. What I'll then do is add some more detailed error handling, provide unit tests, tackle...(read more)

Using Moq with Silverlight for Advanced Unit Tests

2010-02-02T15:10:00Z

Moq is a library that assists with running unit tests by providing easily mocked objects that implement interfaces and abstract classes. You can learn more about Moq on their website . There is a distribution for Silverlight, and in this post I'll focus on some ways to use Moq for some more involved testing scenarios. Download the source code for the example project I started with the Simple Dialog Service in Silverlight and extended the example a bit. In the post, I promised that abstracting the...(read more)

Programmatically Accessing the Live Smooth Streaming API

2010-01-29T18:35:04Z

Live Smooth Streaming is a Microsoft technology that allows you to take a live, encoded, incoming video stream and rebroadcast it using Smooth Streaming technology. This technology multicasts the video stream in segments of varying bandwidths. This can then be played with a Silverlight-based client like the built-in MediaElement or more advanced player like the Silverlight Media Framework . The incoming streams could be from your web cam or third party sources, or even from a file encoded on disk...(read more)

Introduction to Debugging Silverlight Applications with WinDbg

2010-01-24T14:04:00Z

I've had a few users ask me about finding memory leaks and understanding what happens with references in Silverlight. One very powerful tool to use when debugging Silverlight applications is the Windows Debugging Tools. You can download the 32-bit (x86) version side-by-side with the 64-bit (x64) version . Both WPF and Silverlight ship with an extension DLL you can load called SOS. This extension contains many powerful commands . In the video, Silverlight Debugging with WinDbg (30 minutes long), I...(read more)