jbienz

Creating Lookless Controls for WPF and Silverlight

Jared Bienz — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:50:00 GMT

This screencast is a continuation of a previous screencast entitled “Skins for WPF and Silverlight”. In this session we go beyond skinning built-in controls and learn what’s required to create our own skinnable (or ‘lookless’) controls.

This screencast assumes existing knowledge about styles and templates, so if you aren’t up to speed on those topics please consider watching the skinning screencast first.

The sample demonstrated in this screencast can be downloaded here.

Skins for WPF and Silverlight

Jared Bienz — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:42:00 GMT

In this screencast we'll cover the topics needed to create custom skins for WPF and Silverlight. Topics include Resources, Templates, Styles and Dictionaries, and we'll see how each builds upon the other to provide a very rich and flexible skinning system on these platforms.

The sample project demonstrated in this screencast can be downloaded here.

Part 2 is also available, “Creating Lookless Controls for WPF and Silverlight”.

Live Framework and Always-Available Social Applications

Jared Bienz — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:35:00 GMT

The Live Framework is a set of libraries and services for building connected applications that can reach millions of users. Live Mesh is a set of services for synchronizing user and application data between multiple devices and multiple people.

This screencast provides an introduction to these frameworks and demonstrates how they can be used to develop Always-Available social applications.

Download Sample Files

Triggers vs. Visual State Manager

Jared Bienz — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:38:00 GMT

The Visual State Manager is on a very short list of features that exist on Silverlight today but do not exist on Desktop WPF. This short screencast introduces the Visual State Manager and illustrates the value it adds to the Silverlight platform. It shows how the Visual State Manager can be used in control templates as well as full application screens.

John Gossman from the WPF team blogged that the Visual State Manager will be added to WPF in the future. He has not indicated when an officially supported WPF version will be available but he did supply a working sample that is compatible with its Silverlight 2 Beta 2 counterpart.

Virtual Earth Mapping in Silverlight with VIEWS

Jared Bienz — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:25:00 GMT

VIEWS (the Virtual Earth Wrapper for Silverlight) provides a fully managed wrapper around Virtual Earth for Silverlight applications. VIEWS has its roots in Microsoft Research but now lives as an open source project on CodePlex. Join us for a quick lap around VIEWS and learn how you can add mapping to your applications without getting deep into JavaScript.

Download: Sample Files

Silverlight Image Search with LINQ to XML

Jared Bienz — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:22:00 GMT

This screencast demonstrates using Silverlight 2 and LINQ to XML to create an Image Search application. We even learn a little Expression Blend and .Net 3.5 in the process.

The source code is available and this simple has been updated to work with Silverlight 2 Beta 2 and .Net 3.5 SP1. Download Here:

Silverlight Image Search Sample

Service Enabling Workflows

Jared Bienz — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 21:53:00 GMT

Part three in my short series on Workflow Foundation covers service enabling workflows. Service enabling a workflow doesn’t necessarily mean WCF, though WCF is certainly an option. In this screencast we look at leveraging services to enable activities that can run in various host environments.

This is a continuation from part 2, so you may want to view that screencast first if you haven’t seen it.

Part 1: Part 2: Files: Service Enabled Sample Files [Updated]

Activity Defaults and Validation

Jared Bienz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:49:14 GMT

This is part two in my short series on writing custom activities for the Workflow Foundation. In this screencast I cover data defaults and validation for your custom activities.

This is a continuation from part 1, so you may want to jump over and view that now if you haven’t seen it already.

Part 1: Service Enabling Workflows

Files: MSDN Events | US ISV Team Blog

From Code Activity to Custom Activity

Jared Bienz — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:57:43 GMT

With the Activity Defaults and Validation

Jared Bienz
ISV Architect Evangelist
Microsoft Corporation
Sites of Interest: MSDN Events | US ISV Team Blog