Mike Taulty's Blog

Visual Studio 2010 ALM Events (UK)

In the UK? Interested in Visual Studio 2010 and Application Lifecycle Management? Then go here… for four free events in Reading, London, Birmingham and Edinburgh across September to November.

Published Wed, Sep 8 2010 3:54 PM by mtaulty

Filed under: UKCommunities, VisualStudio, UK ISVs

Silverlight on Windows Live Photos

I really like the subtle use of Silverlight on Windows Live Photos – it’s not one of those over-the-top spinning, projection based UI’s but it makes the experience for uploading photos and for viewing in a SlideShow just a lot nicer. If you’ve not seen it,...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 6:05 PM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, WindowsLive

PivotViewer–The Control

Following up on that previous post , the other side of the PivotViewer story is about the PivotViewer control itself. I find it “interesting” that my simple use of the control here; is using a collection that is available to anyone else to display in a PivotViewer...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 5:36 PM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, Pivot

Blend Bits 6: Paths Are Your Friend (2)

Once you’ve got a Path or two you can have fun with them by combining them in lots of different ways. For instance, if we take these 2 Rectangles that have been converted into Paths; then I can make them into a single Path that can then be manipulated “as one...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 2:42 PM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, Blend, BlendBits

Blend Bits 5: Paths Are Your Friend (1)

There are a number of ways to create Paths in Blend. You can use the Pencil or the Pen Tools to draw them as you can see below; The Pencil gives you the freedom to draw whatever you like ( or, in my case it allows you to just make a big mess ); You’ll notice...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 11:08 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, Blend, BlendBits

September 14th: Silverlight Network Stack Session in Birmingham

Just a quick plug. I’m doing a session on the Silverlight network stack in Birmingham on Tuesday of next week ( 14th ). I won’t be introducing Silverlight as such but will, instead, be zooming in to look at the various communication options that the Silverlight...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 10:18 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, UKCommunities

Blend Bits 4: Get Your Grids Sorted

Let’s say that I want to create a UI using a Grid with 3 rows in it and I want the bottom row to be sized to its content and the other 2 rows to be sized in a 1:2 ratio. Firstly, I’d say that I tend to leave Grids in Grid layout mode in Blend. You can switch...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 9:52 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, Blend, BlendBits

Blend Bits 3: Watch Your Margins

If I’m working on this layout with a simple grid; and I add a Button to that top left (0,0) grid cell by selecting the button control over on my “Tools” window and then drawing a Button within the grid cell or by just double-clicking in the grid cell then I...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 9:27 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, Blend, BlendBits

Blend Bits 2: Learn a Few Keyboard Shortcuts

My second tip on Blend is to learn a few keyboard shortcuts. It’s not that hard. Honest. I don’t mean that you have to sit down and religiously learn them all. There’s quite a lot and they’re well documented in the help ( Blend Help is good by the way ) and...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 9:19 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, Blend, BlendBits

WCF RIA Services Update

An update from the WCF RIA Services guys . I was lucky enough to have a chat with Dinesh a few weeks ago about RIA Services and I heard about some of the things that are going on but have a proper read of the forum post to get the official info from the team...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 9:00 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, WCF, Silverlight, WCF RIA Services

Blend Bits 1: Layout the Environment

My first thought about Blend is that it’s a big beast and demands a serious love in terms of the number of pixels you devote to it. I’ve often had to demo Blend in front of audiences at a resolution of 1024x768 and it really means that you end up focusing on...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 8:47 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: Silverlight, Blend, BlendBits

“Blend Bits”

I’m not a designer but I’ve been using Expression Blend since before it was first released for both Silverlight and WPF applications and it occurred to me that it might be useful to share some miniature tips/tricks around Blend in very short occasional blog...

Published Tue, Sep 7 2010 8:23 AM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, BlendBits

Arcade Fire Demo, HTML5 and “One Markup”

I tried the “Arcade Fire” demo earlier today which you can grab up here; and I had the same experience as the guys at TechCrunch in that I first tried to view the site in IE9 and the site told me that it was “designed with Google Chrome in mind”. I then tried...

Published Mon, Sep 6 2010 11:42 PM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, HTML5

Silverlight Futures…

An interesting post from the Silverlight team; “ The Future of Silverlight ” It’s possible that if you’re interested in Silverlight then you’ll have seen it already but I found it well worth a good 10 minutes of my time to give it a thorough reading. I’ve seen...

Published Mon, Sep 6 2010 2:26 PM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight

PivotViewer – Collections

I’ve been wanting to catch up and explore the (relatively) new Silverlight PivotViewer control for a little while but just hadn’t managed to find the spare cycles. The announcement is about 6 weeks old at this point which shows how far “behind the times” I...

Published Thu, Aug 19 2010 2:49 PM by mtaulty

Filed under: .NET, Silverlight, Pivot

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Visual Studio 2010 ALM Events (UK)

Silverlight on Windows Live Photos

PivotViewer–The Control

Blend Bits 6: Paths Are Your Friend (2)

Blend Bits 5: Paths Are Your Friend (1)

September 14th: Silverlight Network Stack Session in Birmingham

Blend Bits 4: Get Your Grids Sorted

Blend Bits 3: Watch Your Margins

Blend Bits 2: Learn a Few Keyboard Shortcuts

WCF RIA Services Update

Blend Bits 1: Layout the Environment

“Blend Bits”

Arcade Fire Demo, HTML5 and “One Markup”

Silverlight Futures…

PivotViewer – Collections