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Developing for a multitude of clients, Part 4

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 06:13:23 GMT

Welcome to the fourth part of this article series on strategies for designing your application for a multitude of different clients. In the first part, we've looked into the business case & some general concerns, and in the second part, we made a choice for a service layer: WCF RIA Services. In the third part, we've seen how we can use MEF for on demand loading & code reuse across different clients. However, I left out a few things in that article: loading the Views on demand (as it requires extensions to the Silverlight Navigation framework to navigate to Views in an assembly that's loaded on demand), and loading multiple assemblies on demand (as we need an async component loader for that, to ensure we can load these assemblies at the same time instead of one by one). This article will deal with these two concerns.

Getting latest Tweets in Windows Phone apps using Twitter REST API and

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:01:45 GMT

Getting latest Tweets in Windows Phone 7 apps using Twitter REST API and JSON.NET

Working with Prism 4 Part 3: Composite Command and Pub/Sub Events

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:19:50 GMT

In this article, you will see how to define multiple modules that can communicate with each other through a combination of CompositeCommands and Prism events. CompositeCommands let you have handlers registered or unregistered in a loosely coupled fashion, and allows you to have multiple handlers (child commands) that will be used by the CompositeCommand. Prism events are for situations that are not necessarily an action->reaction kind of set up where enablement and disablement is needed. You simply define the event type with its strongly typed payload and then subscribe or publish by obtaining the event reference through the EventAggregator. Both of these mechanisms give you a really powerful combination for having loosely coupled communications between composite parts of your application.

Windows Phone Application Icons and Tiles

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:39:24 GMT

Windows Phone 7 Application Icons and Tiles

Be careful when submitting for Windows Phone Marketplace an app with b

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:26:56 GMT

WP7: Be careful when submitting for Windows Phone Marketplace an app with background music

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 9 of 10)

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:37:34 GMT

This is the ninth part of SilverlightShow and Michael Crump's series "10 Laps around Silverlight 5". In this article, Michael is discussing several new features/controls such as Double and Triple click support, PivotViewer and ComboBox Type-Ahead.

A Silverlight menu for Sharepoint - Part 2

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 02:08:34 GMT

In the first part of the article I introduced the matter, i.e. adding a Silverlight menu in Sharepoint. The first solution presented, defined as "the client approach", has a major defect: it cannot be used for anonymous-enabled sites. In this second part we will see another way (that I called the "server approach") in order to build a Silverlight menu for Sharepoint that can be used also by anonymous users. To make this new approach clearer I will introduce another few general concepts regarding the Sharepoint platform.

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 8 of 10)

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 02:08:34 GMT

In this article, I am going to discuss productivity and performance enhancements in Silverlight 5 including: XAML Binding Debugging, Parser Performance Improvements and Multi-core JIT for improved start-up time.

Microsoft moved my cheese again

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:36:32 GMT

The post describes the frustrations experienced by an architect while using the Microsoft development platform. With the new Metro based development platform, and the fall of Silverlight, there are a few more reasons why a developer in the Microsoft community has to worry.

Silverlight Best Practices (Part 1 of 4)

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 13:13:24 GMT

This is part one of the 4 articles on Silverlight Best Practices while building business applications. The other 3 articles are already published on the website

Silverlight's Broken Promise

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:24:33 GMT

This blogger talks about the future problems Silverlight developers might run into. Especially those who invested in the cross-platform functionality that Silverlight promised. Will Windows 8, Metro Style Apps, and IE 10 be the end of Silverlight?

MVVM Basics and Commands

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:19:34 GMT

The post explains the command pattern used in Silverlight MVVM applications. It also explains how Prism provides the framework to implement the MVVM and Command pattern in a Silverlight application.

MultiBinding in Silverlight 5

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:12:34 GMT

This article presents a MultiBinding implementation for Silverlight 5 thanks to the support for custom markup extensions. Code included.

Reverse Filtering in AutoCompleteBox in Windows Phone

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:19:08 GMT

The AutoCompleteBox in Silverlight ToolKit for Windows Phone lets you perform the custom logic to display the list of Suggestions matching the typed characters . For example , you could use the write your logic to show the suggested words in reverse order .

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 6 of 10)

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:55:32 GMT

In Part 6 of this SilverlightShow series, Michael Crump discusses several new operating system integration features in Silverlight 5 including: P/Invoke, Multiple Windows and Unrestricted File System Access in Full Trust.

The bell tolls for Flash, and Silverlight isn't far behind

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:25:41 GMT

Flash and Silverlight developers: now is the time to reinvest your skills in another platform. The Great Browser Plugin War of the 21st century has come to a close, and the plugins have lost. Long live HTML5.

Working with Prism 4 Part 1: Getting Started

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:13:34 GMT

In this first post of the 'Working with Prism 4' series, Brian Noyes gives you a quick introduction to the concepts and capabilities of Prism and walks you through creating your first Prism application, explaining what are some of the moving parts and pieces that make a Prism application different from a normal Silverlight app. In the next 3 or 4 articles, Brian will drill down into commanding, MVVM support, loosely coupled events, and navigation.

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 5 of 10)

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:13:33 GMT

In this article, Michael Crump is discussing the new text improvements in Silverlight 5 including: Text Tracking and Leading, Linked and Multi-column Text, OpenType Support, Pixel Snapped Text and TextOptions.

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 4 of 10) Sound/Media

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:52:11 GMT

Let's Begin with Low-Latency Sound using XNA SoundEffect A new addition to Silverlight 5 is the ability to play low-latency sounds using the XNA SoundEffect class. This is very useful for kiosk or even games that need to play a certain sound over and over. In Silverlight 5, this is much easier than before (where people used various MediaElement hacks). You can now simply borrow the SoundEffect / SoundEffectInstance class from XNA.

Silverlight: Navigation Framework tip: using the XAML escape sequence

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:26:34 GMT

With all the Windows 8/Metro/WinRT hype on the internet today, I decided it was time for a quick tip concerning the XAML escape sequence and the good old navigation framework present in Silverlight 4 and Silverlight 5. I only learned about the XAML escape sequence until recently and I can image that there quite a number of people out there that are still unfamiliar with it. The nice thing is that you can also use the XAML escape sequence in WPF, Windows Phone and WinRT, if you like to do so.

Authorization in Silverlight, Part 3: Securing your service calls

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:35:35 GMT

Learn some various ways for securing your service calls in the third part of Kevin Dockx's authorization series. In this post, Kevin starts by looking at WCF RIA Services security, and continues on to regular WCF services, specifically tailored to those cases in which you require a mix of technologies/frameworks, for example: a WCF RIA Services authentication service combined with regular WCF service calls. This series also has an offline version - "Authorization in Silverlight: Ebook": http://www.silverlightshow.net/ebooks/sl_authorization.aspx

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 3)

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:17:34 GMT

This is part 3 of a 10 part series on Silverlight 5. This post covers Silverlight XNA programming for 3D applications.

Authorization in Silverlight, part 2: manipulating the UI

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:45:01 GMT

In this part, we're going to look at another type of authorization: authorizing access to certain UI elements IN a View (instead of the complete View), depending on the role of the logged in user, and deciding what to do when the user hasn't got the correct role (eg: do you want to disable the element, or do you want to hide it completely?). We're going to write a component to achieve this as easily as possible, so it can be reused in different applications.

10 Laps around Silverlight 5 (Part 2 of 10)

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:43:26 GMT

In this SilverlightShow article, Michael Crump is going to show you how to use Ancestor Relative Source Binding and Implicit Data Templates using Silverlight 5.

Looking at LightSwitch - Part 8: More extensibility with the toolkit

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 15:39:28 GMT

The team at SilverlightShow published the final part of Gill Cleeren's "Developing real-world applications with LightSwitch" series. What are your comments on this series? Was it clear enough... and are there important topics you think were left uncovered?