Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new tool for building data-driven Silverlight Application using Visual Studio IDE. It automatically generates the User Interface for a DataSource without writing any code. You can write a small amount of code also to meet your requirement.

Recently, I got some time to explore Visual Studio LightSwitch. I created a small DB application with proper data inserting UI within a small amount of time (without any XAML or C# code).

Here in this article, I will guide you to understand it with the help of a small application. There will be a series of articles on this topic regularly. Read the complete article to learn about creating a Silverlight data driven application with the help of Visual Studio LightSwitch.

Few days ago, I started a Giveaway of Telerik JustCode License (only for one Developer) which prices around $249. Very few responses I received and from that too, it was very difficult for me to select the Winner.

 

Telerik JustCode is an agile development add-in for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010 that enhances .NET development productivity by providing blazing fast solution-wide, on-the-fly code analysis and error checking, smart code navigation and refactoring features.

 

In this thread, I am going to declare the Winner. Read to know more about it.

Few days ago, in one my earlier post, I listed “Some Best Practices for C# Application Development” from my past few years experience, which got a huge hit by my readers. I got several feedbacks on that too. Many of my readers gave valued suggestions too.

 

In this article, I will discuss most of those points. I will keep this article regularly updated with new best coding practices. Hope, I will get more feedbacks and/or suggestions here too.

One of the new features introduced in Silverlight 4 is the silent installation of Silverlight Out-of-Browser application. This means, without user intervention, you can directly install them to their machines. You don’t have to open the browser window to install the OOB app. This is perfect for CD-ROM distribution. You can even automate the process from the CD/DVD media; if the user already has permission to auto run external media.

Here in this article, I will first create a simple OOB Silverlight application and then show you the steps to install it as OOB application silently from a CDROM device which will install the Silverlight runtime too, if it detects the absent of the same in user’s PC.

Silverlight Firestarter is a one day Global event, live streamed by Scott Guthrie and others. It will be held in Redmond on 2nd December 2010 from 8am to 5pm PST. Scott will start the Keynote at 9am PST.

 

 

The whole session will be conducted by Scott Guthrie, Jesse Liberty, John Papa, Tim Heuer, Mike Cook, Jossef Goldberg, Jaime Rodriguez and other. Join the session In-Person or online and learn more about the future of Silverlight.

In this small Tips & Tricks, I will guide you changing the Style of Caret of a Silverlight TextBox control. It is very simple and you can easily do it using Visual Studio or Expression Blend. Here is a screenshot of the same:

In general, styling the caret is not require. But in some cases, you may need to change it to give your UI the look & feel of your entire application.

Today Morning (1st October, 2010) when I noticed the mail with the Subject line: “Congratulations on receiving the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award”, I was really surprised. This is the biggest Award in my Life. I am really feeling very proud once I got the MVP Award from Microsoft.

Did you ever want to run an application from your local resource inside your HTML page? If so, you will face some issues. It will never run any application from local resource directly. It may ask you to download the file before running it. This is due to browser security issue as the code runs inside the browser sandbox.

 

So, what to do for this? In this post, I will describe you the steps resolve to do this. Read the complete post in order to learn the same.

Recently, I wanted to detect the Silverlight version for one of my on going R&D. I wanted to detect the version from batch file and depending upon that I wanted to execute one file. Searching over internet I came to know that, HTML Application has some additional power for execution of any local file as it runs under fully trusted mode. I did more research on HTA files and successfully completed my basic analysis.

 

Here I will demonstrate you the process of detecting the Silverlight installation status using JavaScript from the .hta file. Read it and at the end, if you have any suggestion to improve the steps, please let me know.

Few days ago, in one my earlier post, I discussed about “Some Best Practices for Silverlight Application Development (XAML)” which got a huge hit by my readers. I got several feedbacks on that too. Someone from the community also suggested me to write some best coding practices on C#. This stroke my mind and hence decided to write some best practices about C# coding here from my past few years of experience.

 

For past few years, I learned a lot and tried to share best of them to the others who are new in the software development field. This post I contribute to those fellow members. Hope, I will get more feedbacks and/or suggestions here too.

In various forums (mainly in Silverlight.Net Forum) I have seen people asking a question: “How to implement Session Management in Silverlight?” The simple answer is: “Session Management is not available in Silverlight”. Why? If it is not there, how can we implement it?

Ok, If you are new to Silverlight, you need to know about this. Hence, I will describe you in this post about Silverlight Session Management. The targeted audience for this post is mainly the beginners of Silverlight. Read it and if you have any queries, let me know.

If you are a developer and want to get the “Telerik JustCode Developer License”, here is the chance for you. I am going to give you one license code absolutely Free which costs around $249. The registration process will end on 15th October 2010. Based on the registration, I will announce the Winner name on 20th October 2010.

So, why are you waiting for? Read the full post for the steps of Registration for this offer.

In my previous post “Introduction to Shapes in Silverlight 4” I introduced you with various types of Shapes available in Silverlight 4 and informed you that, I will post an article describing each one of them and here it is.

 

In this article, I am going to describe you about each shapes and the process to add them in our application (whenever you need). This article is for the Beginners, who don’t know much about the shape controls. If you have any suggestions/concerns please use the feedback section to let me know.

Oh! What a pleasant moment when you get some mail to your Inbox mentioning “Congratulations!! You are our monthly Winner for the month…”. Yes, today morning when I first opened my mailbox, I saw a mail from the WebMaster of www.dotnetspark.com saying that, I have been awarded as the Winner of the month of “August 2010” for contributing to the Silverlight community. What a surprise again!!!

 

Here is first couple of lines of the mail:

Dear Kunal,

Congratulations!! You are our monthly Winner for the month of August, 2010!!!

www.DotNetSpark.com proudly announces you as the monthly winner Award (August, 2010)  for your sincere and tremendous contributions towards all sections at www.dotnetspark.com.

Lastly, I will thank to all of my readers. Without their help and encouragement it was not possible. Also, thanks to dotnetspark team for selecting me as the Winner.

In earlier versions of Silverlight, there are very few shape controls like Rectangle, Ellipse available. But think on creating other shapes like Triangle, Polygon, Ring etc. If you need one of them in the earlier Silverlight version, how will you implement them? In my next article, I will describe about all these to you.

 

I think many of you know about these. But those who are not familiar with this, I am contributing it for them.

First of all, a Big Thanks to all my readers who continuously supported me during last six months by voting my articles in CodeProject. I also appreciate you for your regular feedbacks and suggestions to improve. I tried my level best to answer your queries in each article’s page.

 

Here, I am consolidating all the articles that I posted in my Blog and CodeProject for your further reference.

NDepend is a Visual Studio tool to manage .Net Code and achieve high quality product. Using NDepend, you can improve your code quality. You can find the unreachable code very easily using this tool. Not only this, it visualizes your code using Graphs & Treemaps. Hence, you can improve the quality of your Software by measuring the Code Metrices.

 

 

I just got a chance to explore NDepend Professional tool and found it little bit useful (as of now) for day to day coding life. Thought to share the same experience with you all. Though this is my first day exploring NDepend and hence don’t have so much proficiency or knowledge, but somewhat I felt it useful. Once I explore more, I will be able to tell more about it. In this post, I will describe about it and how to install as an Add-In to your Visual Studio IDE. Read it and share your feedbacks.

MVVM, which is an abbreviated form of (M)odel-(V)iew-(V)iew(M)odel is not new to you all. But there are someone who don’t know about it. If you are a Core ASP.Net developer you may know about MVC & MVP, may also know about MVVM which mainly used in WPF/Silverlight. For them, it is tough to remember about its concept.

 

In general in any of my discussions or presentations, I used to describe MVVM in a way which is very easier to understand and easy to recall. Hence thought, why shouldn’t I share this to you? That’s why writing this post. Read it. I hope that, you will enjoy it much while reading it fully.

In this Tips & Tricks, I will show you the steps by which you can get the Screen Resolution of Client’s PC in Silverlight Application. It is quite simple. You have to just call the HTML DOM object to receive the handle of the screen and from that you can easily get the Screen Resolution.

In my last two articles on MEF i.e. “First Guide to MEF & Silverlight (Part - I)” and “First Guide to MEF & Silverlight (Part - II)” I described about the framework with the help of a Console Application and a Silverlight Application. Hope that gave you basic idea on it and what this MEF does.

 

In this article I will try to give you more knowledge on MEF & it’s benefit. This time, I will again use a Console Application which will give more visibility to the underlying scenarios. Hope, like the previous articles this will also help you to understand the framework better to use it in your future need.