Today is the 2nd December 2010, when ScottGu gave a Keynote on the future of Silverlight. There he spoke about the next version of Silverlight, yes, Silverlight 5 Beta. He gave a brief overview of the new & improved features which are coming in Silverlight 5.

 

 

Read the full post to know more about the features of Silverlight 5. Silverlight 5 Beta is not yet launched. This is just the preview of the features which are going to come in this new version.

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.

 

In my previous chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 3)”, I described you how to create a DataGrid of records to insert/update/delete records.

 

In this chapter, I will guide you to create a List and Details screen using LightSwitch. This will show you how to integrate two or more tables into a single screen. Also, we will discuss on some custom validation. These all steps are without writing any code. We will use just the tool to improve our existing application. Read to Learn more about it.

In my earlier post “How to Reposition a Silverlight Child Window?”, I demonstrated you how to reposition a Silverlight Child Window into the screen. I tried the same with the WPF Modal Window too. But was not able to make it.

 

Later Thomas Claudiush gave me a cool sample where he did it very easily. In this post, I am going to share that code for you so that, if in near future you need the same behavior, you don’t have to research for it again.

Today I delivered the 1 hour session on “Building Visual Studio LightSwitch Application” in Microsoft Virtual Techdays from 1:45PM – 2:45PM (Indian Standard Time). It was my first public session and due to this, I was little nervous when I started my presentation. But when I jumped into the demo, I got some confidence on that.

 

Here, I am going to share the whole presentation for those who wasn’t able to join. Thanks to all my attendees for joining the session.

 

Don’t forget to give your feedback (online/offline) about the session. It will give me more confidence on my next session and from your feedback I will be able to improve my presentation skill.

Sometime we need to reset the position of the Silverlight Child Window at the center of the screen. This generally require when you have a static instance of the ChildWindow and you want to use the same instance to show various messages in the screen. When you loads the ChildWindow for the first time, by default it loads at the screen center. But think when your user reposition that ChildWindow to a different location in the screen, closes and reopens it, what will happen?

 

What will you see is, the ChildWindow opens at the same location where the user closes it last time. So, how can we reset it to the center of the screen? This small tip will help you to achieve the functionality. Read it to know more details. Code is available for use.

Microsoft Virtual Techdays is again back. It’s a three days event, starting from 22nd November to 24th November 2010. This time I am going to speak in this Virtual Techdays on 23rd November. Join me at 1:45 PM (IST) to learn about “Building Visual Studio LightSwitch Application”.

 

 

Read the complete post to know more about this event and registration process.

One of my reader “Girish” recently contacted me with a problem statement. His problem is, he wants to show a TextBox on selection of “Others” from a ComboBox and I informed him to use a ValueConverter and also told him, I will do a blog post on it, so that he can understand each step from that.

 

This post I am dedicating to him. May be, some other people who are new to Silverlight can get benefit from it. Read the full post to learn the process to do it.

In some case, we need to customize the Scrolling functionality in Silverlight depending upon the requirement. The default look of ScrollViewer doesn’t give proper UI effect. In such case, you need to create the whole scroll behavior by modifying XAML and writing a bunch of C# code.

In this article, I will demonstrate you how to create the above scrolling functionality simply without writing any lines of C# code. You have to use only Expression Blend to create the richness of the Scrolling. Read more to learn about it.

Last time I did a Giveaway of Telerik JustCode Developer license of $299 and this time as a Silverlight Geek, I thought to giveaway a developer license of Telerik RadControls for Silverlight which costs around $799 to one of my readers & followers.


    If you want to Win it, read the complete post for details. Share this information to all your friends by tweet, mail or blog. Hope to see one of you as the Winner. All the best…

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.

 

In my previous chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part – 2)”, I described you how to create a search record window & export the records to Excel Sheet using Visual Studio LightSwitch for Silverlight. I also demonstrated about sorting and navigating records without writing a single line of code.

 

In this chapter, I will guide you step-by-step to create a DataGrid of records. Here you will know, how to insert/modify/delete records. These all steps are without writing any code. We will use just the tool to improve our existing application. Read more to Learn about it.

I have seen people writing Code Behind a lot while they are working in the MVVM framework. A huge lines of code in their xaml.cs file actually creates problem to the designers to change anything present in the XAML. Why is this so? Because, lots of people don’t know how to use Triggers to call the MVVM methods to complete their business need.

 

Michael Washington has a nice article on DataTrigger to reduce the Code behind file. It definitely reduces the problem of MVVM that world faces generally. Also, we need to do some additional things to reduce the code behind.

 

In this article, I will show you how to fire Triggers to call some methods present in your ViewModel, instead of writing in the code behind file. Read more to learn about it.

After the recent PDC 2010 event, we saw lots of tweets on Twitter about the same question “Is Silverlight Dead? Is HTML5 is going to take over the Silverlight? Is Microsoft changing their vision?” etc. etc. The answer is “No”. No need to worry about it. Silverlight is still there and will be there for Rich application development & smooth media streaming for long.

 

Read the whole post to know more about it.

At Microsoft PDC 2010, the first day event was started by Steve Ballmer with a Keynote. His keynote was started with IE9, HTML5, Windows Phone 7 and Azure.

 

In this post, I will highlights some of them for you.

Today I received my first MVP Award Kit and Certificate along with the MVP ID Card and MVP Pin. View them here:

 

 

Again, thanks to all of my readers, followers and supporters.

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.

 

In my previous Chapter “Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part–1)” I described about LightSwitch and did demonstration from creating a new LightSwitch project to create a simple form to insert new Student record.

 

In this article, I will show you how to create a search record window & export the records to Excel Sheet using Visual Studio LightSwitch for Silverlight. No need to write a single piece of code, no need to write a single XAML code. Read through the complete article to learn more about it.

This is definitely a great start of the day, when I received a mail from DotNetFunda.com saying one of my Article “Interactive ToolTip using Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tool” has been selected as “Article of the Day” at Microsoft Official ASP.Net site: http://www.asp.net/community

 

In all of my earlier articles on Silverlight Out-of-Browser (OOB) applications, I demonstrated you creating the OOB application using Visual Studio. There are plenty of steps you have to follow there. Today I found another way to change the settings for it.

 

 

In this post, I am going to discuss about both the processes and at the end tell me which one is best & simple.

Are you looking for a Silverlight Child Window, which can’t move from it’s actual position? Then this article will help you to understand & create a non-movable child window in Silverlight.

 

Child Window is available inside the System.Windows.Controls.dll assembly. By default, it is movable. You can drag the Title Bar of the Window and position it anywhere in the screen. But, you may face some situation when you need to fix the position of the Window by restricting the user to drag it. So, how will you do this?

 

In this article, I will show you the simplest mechanism to make your child window not movable.

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.