latest posts

• Debugger Canvas 1.1 is Released There’s a lot of UI research going on focused around better debugging. Debugger Canvas is some that you can use today and the version 1.1 was just released . The speed increased in 1.1 are great and make Debugger Canvas much more usable. I’m in love with... John Robbins' Blog 01-31-2012, 3:48 PM Filed under: Debugging

• MVVM on MVC: HTML is not XAML I have to admit that I may have rolled my eyes a bit when I first learned about the KnockoutJS library. It sounded too much like forcing a square peg into a round hole. Isn’t Model-View-Controller (MVC) already it’s own pattern ? Does it make sense to... Jeremy Likness' Blog 01-25-2012, 4:44 AM Filed under: html, html5, javascript, knockoutjs, mvc, mvvm

• We Are Hiring! Business is good and we need YOU! Wintellect is currently seeking senior level technical development resources for both contract and permanent employment for our current client projects. If you want the challenge of keeping up with co-workers like Jeffrey... Jeffrey Richter's Blog 01-24-2012, 8:59 AM

• Wintellect is Hiring!! Business is good and we need YOU! Wintellect is currently seeking senior level technical development resources for both contract and permanent employment for our current client projects. If you want the challenge of keeping up with co-workers like Jeffrey... John Robbins' Blog 01-24-2012, 1:33 AM Filed under: Wintellect

• Video: Getting Started with Jounce MVVM and MEF for Silverlight 5 I created a quick video to help you get started with using Jounce. The video starts with a blank slate, steps through installation of Jounce and the creation of a sample view model for a simple contact record that includes validation. You can access the... Jeremy Likness' Blog 01-22-2012, 6:52 AM Filed under: Jounce, MEF, mvvm, silverlight

• Jounce 2.0 MVVM with MEF for Silverlight 5 Released I'm pleased to announce the official release of Jounce 2.0 for Silverlight 5. There are quite a number of new features available that I'll review in this post. Most significantly, of course, the code base has been updated specifically to target Silverlight... Jeremy Likness' Blog 01-21-2012, 10:47 AM Filed under: Jounce, MEF, mvvm, silverlight 5

• Paraffin 3.6–Now Keeping Custom Added Namespaces Paraffin 3.6 can be downloaded here: http://www.wintellect.com/CS/files/folders/18310/download.aspx Dan Gough had an excellent feature request to have Paraffin copy over any manually added namespaces to the .WXS file like the following. Previously, Paraffin... John Robbins' Blog 01-19-2012, 6:44 PM Filed under: Paraffin, Windows Installer, Wix

• Visual Studio 2010 Extensions Recommendations The other day I was asked which extensions for Visual Studio I use so in an effort to save keystrokes , I thought I’d list them here so I can refer people to this list. There’s no way this is a comprehensive list and I do add and remove extensions all... John Robbins' Blog 01-16-2012, 1:31 PM Filed under: Recommended

• Setting the Power Plan with PowerShell Edit: Make sure to read the comments from Shay Levy and Richard on clarifying my mistaken assumptions about how things work in PowerShell. Thanks to Richard & Shay for the clarifications! As I’m a command line kind of guy, I look for every opportunity... John Robbins' Blog 01-15-2012, 2:54 AM Filed under: PowerShell

• CRUD it’s now CQRS … or is it? In 1983 author James Martin published a book called Managing the Data-Base Environment . It’s interesting the term database is hyphenated in the title; it hadn’t quite settled down as a mainstream term yet. I have not read this book myself, but my understanding... Jeremy Likness' Blog 01-07-2012, 10:34 AM

• Want Source Server to Work with Managed Minidumps in Visual Studio? Here’s How! So you have an awesome minidump your IT guys grabbed with ProcDump . You’ve followed all the rules and have a Symbol Server and Source Server all set up. You open that dump with Visual Studio and BOOM, none of your indexed sources show up. You pull your... John Robbins' Blog 01-06-2012, 1:29 PM Filed under: Debugging

• Things I Am Enjoying (December, 2011) In the development world, there’s a lot of things that bump, distract, and annoy you through the day. Those get a lot of attention in blogs to help others work around those issues and to document the pain. What does not get a lot of attention are those... John Robbins' Blog 12-29-2011, 2:51 PM Filed under: Recommended, Reviews

• Windows 8 Slate Review About a week ago, I purchased a Samsung Series 7 Slate PC to learn more about the Windows 8 operating system and to test applications I will be developing primarily with C# and Xaml. The laptop ships with Windows 7 installed, but I quickly wiped the existing... Jeremy Likness' Blog 12-28-2011, 6:36 AM

• NuGet Nugget: File-System Based Package Stores A recent network “hiccup” posed a bit of a challenge to a demo that was built around showing how the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone (WATWP) NuGet packages make it easy to add Windows Azure cloud features to a Windows Phone 7 application. So how... John Garland's Blog 12-16-2011, 9:53 PM Filed under: NuGet

• DevBoston (Waltham) Presentation Content Many thanks to the attendees of my presentation tonight covering Developing Cloud Enabled Windows Phone Applications with Windows Azure. I apologize once again for the technical network-related gremlins that decided to attack us tonight…hopefully the... John Garland's Blog 12-14-2011, 9:44 PM Filed under: Azure, Silverlight, Windows Phone

• Silverlight 5 Released: Myth vs. Fact It is very exciting to see the release of Silverlight 5 today, despite all of the rumors flying around the Web. Read the original release announcement from the Silverlight Team here . This is proof positive the team made a commitment to release a new... Jeremy Likness' Blog 12-09-2011, 7:12 AM Filed under: silverlight 5

• My .NET Nuggets Keynote Talk From Houston Tech Fest October 15th, 2011 http://usergroup.tv/videos/net-nuggets---houston-tech-fest-keynote... Jeffrey Richter's Blog 12-04-2011, 6:41 PM

• Handling Extremely Large Data Sets in Silverlight While writing Chapter 14 of my book, Designing Silverlight Business Applications: Best Practices for Using Silverlight Effectively in the Enterprise (Microsoft .NET Development Series) I focused on an area that is quite common with line of business applications:... Jeremy Likness' Blog 11-20-2011, 4:00 AM Filed under: entity framework, large data sets, odata, silverlight, wcf ria

• Boston .Net Code Camp Presentation Content I would like to thank the organizers and attendees of the recent 16th (wow!) Boston Code Camp where I did a talk on Developing Cloud-Enabled Windows Phone Applications with Windows Azure – and special thanks to everyone who stuck it out once the snow... John Garland's Blog 11-05-2011, 11:41 PM

• Is That a WeakReference In Your Gen 2 or Are You Just Glad to See Me? Sometimes it’s easy to see why your .NET server application is using so much memory, but other times it makes no sense at all. I was at Microsoft earlier this week and someone who’d taken my debugging class stopped me and asked an excellent question.... John Robbins' Blog 10-29-2011, 1:39 AM Filed under: Debugging, WinDBG

• Using Jounce Navigation to Create OOB Child Windows in Silverlight 5 One of the reasons I prefer to manage navigation as an event, rather than a strongly typed interface or handler, is because it allows for so much flexibility and extensibility in the navigation pipeline. In my Jounce framework , for example, the basic... Jeremy Likness' Blog 10-21-2011, 8:22 AM Filed under: child window, Jounce, navigation, OOB, out of browser, silverlight 5, silverlight navigation

• Working with PivotViewer and the CxmlCollectionSource Microsoft’s PivotViewer control is an amazing tool for visualizing data and creating a unique UI for your application.  The one issue everyone seems to have with it, however, is its lack of styling capability.  In fact, working with PivotViewer... Sergio Loscialo's Blog 10-17-2011, 6:39 PM

• Boston Phone Camp Presentation Materials I had a great time talking about the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone at the Windows Phone Camp event in Cambridge, MA earlier today.  I have posted the slide deck here for those who are interested in getting at the web links it contains.... John Garland's Blog 10-13-2011, 9:49 PM Filed under: Azure, Events, Silverlight, Windows Phone

• Quick Tip: Design-Time Views for Regions If you've worked with the Region Management pattern before, one source of frustration can be the lack of a design-time view. While you can compose individual views to be designer-friendly, the aggregate views that mark regions often end up devoid of anything... Jeremy Likness' Blog 10-11-2011, 3:07 PM

• Using Visual States to Set Focus on a Control A common problem encountered in Silverlight applications is how to set the focus properly when transitioning between controls. For example, in the reference application I'm writing for the book Designing Silverlight Business Applications there is the... Jeremy Likness' Blog 10-07-2011, 8:58 AM Filed under: focus, Jounce, visual state manager