Blogs|May 11, 2010

MVVM Coding by Convention (Convention over Configuration)

Convention-based programming is an interesting model. In essence, it attempts to reduce the potential for error by handling most scenarios based on conventions or standards, and allowing the developers to focus on the exceptions. Probably one of the most thorough public resources I’ve seen for the convention-based model is Rob Eisenberg’s Build your Own MVVM…
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Blogs|May 11, 2010

Add OneNote 2010 Linked Notes Capabilities to your Application

If you’ve ever talked to me or read this blog, you know I’m a passionate OneNote user. If it weren’t for OneNote, I would be a random mess. One of the new features in OneNote 2010 is Linked Notes, which let you link the notes you are taking in OneNote to the program you’re working…
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wintellect-blogs|May 11, 2010

Understanding Input Scope in Silverlight for Windows Phone

If you write applications for Silverlight for Windows Phone, one of the features you quickly become familiar with is the Software Input Panel, or SIP. The SIP is the virtual keyboard that appears when a text-input control such as a TextBox gets the input focus. You don’t have to do anything to make the SIP…
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Blogs|May 11, 2010

Paraffin 3.12: A Bug Fix and Three New Features

After a bit of rest and relaxation, Paraffin, my tool to make managing your Windows Installer XML (WiX) fragments easier makes a surprise appearance back on my blog. If you’re not familiar with Paraffin search this blog for numerous entries. Grab the latest version here. The relevant changes are as follows. I moved everything over…
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missing-export|May 10, 2010

Updated FAQ for SQL Azure

Microsoft published an updated FAQ (May 3, 2010) for SQL Azure, available here The FAQ is very thorough and is a “must read” for any organization planning a relational database migration or new cloud application “This paper provides an architectural overview of SQL Azure Database, and describes how you can use SQL Azure to augment…
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wintellect-blogs|May 10, 2010

Understanding Page Orientation in Silverlight for Windows Phone

At MIX this year, Silverlight developers were handed a real treat: their first look at Silverlight for Windows Phone. Silverlight is the primary platform that developers will use to write applications for the new Windows phone, which will debut later this year. I can’t remember being this excited about a platform since…well, since Silverlight 1.0.…
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Blogs|May 9, 2010

Different Ways to Start Processes under a Debugger

The other day I got a question about how to start a process under the debugger and there are quite a few different ways to do that. I thought I’d discuss them all because the information about how to do each of these is scattered around various spots in the Visual Studio documentation. As the…
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Blogs|May 4, 2010

Improving Windows Azure Storage Throughput Using the Content Delivery Network

Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) caches your Windows Azure Data Storage blobs at strategically placed locations around the world (18 at the time of this blog post). The purpose of the CDN is to provide maximum bandwidth for delivery of content to our applications and users. Building massively scalable applications requires squeezing every ounce…
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Blogs|May 2, 2010

Silverlight Out of Browser (OOB) Versions, Images, and Isolated Storage

This is a quick and simple post to address three very common questions I receive about Silverlight Out-of-Browser (OOB) applications. In case you haven’t heard, applications made with Silverlight version 3 and later can be installed locally to your machine (whether it is a Windows machine or a Mac) and run “out of the browser”…
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Blogs|May 1, 2010

MEF: DLL Versions and Multiple Exports for a Class

During my talk about the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) at Devscovery this past week, I had two very good questions asked by the audience and promised I’d get an answer. The first one was about exporting in MEF. I was under the impression that a MEF part could have one export, but I was mistaken.…
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wintellect-blogs|Apr 28, 2010

Want to Know How to Debug Better for Free?

Recently, I did a session on Advanced .NET Debugging at the Atlanta Microsoft office and it was recorded for posterity. You can catch the three part video up on Channel 9, here, here and here. Unfortunately, the sound isn’t the best in the world, but it’s still understandable. Fortunately, all the people in the audience…
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Blogs|Apr 26, 2010

MVVM with Transaction and View Locator Example

I had a lot of requests after both of my posts about transaction with the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and Yet Another View Locator Pattern to provide a sample project. You asked, I listened, and here it is. I’ll walk through how I built the example. Most of the code is taken verbatim from my two…
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