Hope you gone thru my previous video tutorial “How to Create a Windows 8 Metro Style Application using Visual Studio 2011?”, where I demonstrated about Windows Metro Style Application templates, creation of project and it’s project structure. There we also demonstrated one simple “HelloMetroStyleApplication” sample.

In this video tutorial, we will learn about “Package.appxmanifest” file which resides in the Metro application project directory. We will discuss step-by-step about each property page and XML content of this manifest file.

People often asked me to start a Video Tutorial series on Windows 8 Metro Style Application development using Visual Studio 2011 and here is first part of the series. The series will include the video tutorial as well as some text to give you easy access to the code.

In this first part (10 mint Video Tutorial), we will learn how to get started with the Project and also we will learn the project structure. Later we will have a small demo to show you how to develop your first “Hello Metro Style Application” using Visual Studio 2011 IDE. Continue to the tutorial to learn more.

Here is the post on Weekly News Digest at Silverlight-Zone.com. During the week (27th November 2011 to 3rd December 2011), we have submitted ~65 new article links collected from different blog feeds. The posts were on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch and WinRT Metro.

In this post, find the top 5 posts of the week, also sharing the most popular 5 posts of the month near to the end of the post. On regular basis, sharing the daily news digests links at the end. We had a news on the release of Silverlight 5, which didn’t happen last month. Read more to find out all the popular links.

Here comes our “Monthly Summary” post. During November 2011, I have submitted 12 blog posts here and this is the summary post of those blog threads categorized item wise. Find all the posts that I have published. In case you missed any one of them, this will help you.

As a quick note, stay tuned to our (KolkataGeeks) weekly webcast. All details are available in this page. Follow us and stay tuned on the cutting edge technologies.

Do you want to integrate the network connection settings page (like: Airplane, Bluetooth, Cellular and/or WiFi) in your Windows Phone 7 application? Then this article will help you step-by-step to understand and integrate it.

Connection Settings page are those, where you can configure your connection types and various parameters of the connection. Windows Phone 7 SDK exposes the APIs for you to integrate them in your application. In this tutorial, we will discuss about these with a nice demo. Read further to know about these settings page and integration steps to the application.

Here comes the weekly digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. During last week, we have submitted 83 article links on various technologies like Silverlight, LightSwitch, Windows Phone 7 etc. In this post, find the top links. Also, the link towards daily news digest is also available at the end of the post.

Top 5 posts were from @Debug_Mode, @jmarbutt, @kunal2383, @twmurph and @TimHuckaby. Don’t miss to read out those posts. If you have blog and you are writing article/posts on the said technologies, please share us the link below (as comment) and we will make sure to include them to spread all over the social networking sites.

Kolkata Geeks invites you to join our weekly online session. We are going to present online sessions in weekly basis so that people lives outside of Kolkata can join us and even participate or contribute to the community. We believe that community cannot be grown individually, but by the people in the community. So we, from behalf of KolkataGeeks community, we invite you to join us to our online session and participate to our community.

Session Title: How to Increase Performance of Web Apps using jQuery
Date: Sunday, Nov 27, 2011 from Time: 2 PM (IST) Duration: 1 hour (2PM to 3PM)

My friend, Mr. Abhimanyu Kumar Vatsa (aka. @itorian) published a Free eBook on “Razor View Engine in MVC 3”. I appreciate the effort that he had contributed to publish this eBook and hence sharing this book details and downloadable link in this post, so that, it can reach to maximum people and they will get benefit from it.

Vatsa had demonstrated it in simple fashion (Step-by-Step), that a beginner can understand properly. Continue reading and download the PDF file freely. Also, don’t forget to share this to your friends and colleagues.

When the power of HTML5 on Windows 8 was first showcased, we have seen a lot of rumours on the future of Silverlight. Many online article mentioned that, it is the end of Silverlight. Some said Microsoft is going to stop the development of Silverlight after this Silverlight 5 release and there will be no Silverlight 6 in future. Is it really so?

Let us discuss this topic here. I am not going to write an article this time. We will have a discussion on this topic, your career goal on this platform and what your customers say about it. There are plenty of gifts for you to win. Among them one will be Telerik Ultimate Collection license and the other will be a Pluralsight Annual Plus Subscription from me. So, take part of the discussion, hear from other users voice, discuss and win cool gifts.

Here is our weekly digest post of Silverlight-Zone.com. During 13th November to 19th November, we have submitted 69 new posts in our database. Find the top 5 posts running on the site here. Also, we have links to daily digest pages. If you missed one, you can easily find it here.

If you have blog and you are writing article/posts on the said technologies, please share us the link below (as comment) and we will make sure to include them to spread all over the social networking sites.

On last Saturday, 12th November 2011, I presented 1 hour Technical session on “Windows Phone 7” in Kolkata Developer Conference. The event was organized by Microsoft User Group Kolkata (KolkataGeeks). It is the premier technical event for technology professionals at Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.

In this post, I will recap my Windows Phone 7 session. I will also share the Session Slides (PPT), Demos and related Article links. Some snaps of the event will also be available at the end of the post.

Here comes the weekly news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com for the week 6th November 2011 to 12th November 2011. Once again the “Future of Silverlight” hit the developers. Lots of rumours we have seen during the week on Silverlight. Still waiting to hear about the future from the voice of Microsoft.

Find the top 5 posts made by Mike James, John Callaham, @maryjofoley, @JeremyLikness and @Telerik. Also find out the daily news digest links, if you missed any one during last week.

On 12th November 2011 (Saturday) I will be presenting Technical Session on “Windows Phone 7” at Kolkata Developer Conference (DevCon) 2011 organized by Microsoft User Group Kolkata (KolkataGeeks). It is the premier technical event for technology professionals at Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.

This is also going to be community Launch event for Microsoft Office 365. So be there and enjoy the flavour of cutting edge Microsoft technologies. Read out more to find about the session details.

Behaviors are most demanded feature to include in Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and/or WPF applications to implement proper MVVM pattern to do some UI level actions. These are pluggable on demand and don’t need any other extra code to integrate. Just a simple XAML change and you are done.

In this article, we will learn how to use the inbuilt “PlaySoundAction” behavior to add sound effect on button click. We will demonstrate it using Windows Phone 7 application. Read more to learn. Complete demonstration with images for each steps available.

Weekly News Digest of Silverlight-Zone.com is up once again. We publish this digest every Sunday. As regular, find herewith the “Top 5 Posts of the Week” and “Daily News Digests” links.

During the week, we submitted 71 article links related to Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Metro, LightSwitch, XAML etc. We submitted these links from various authors. If you are also writing blog posts on those topics, please share us your blog link so that, we can contribute them to the site to reach out the already available good content to the vast readers. We welcome every feedbacks and suggestions to improve our site. Thanks to everyone for their support.

During October 2011, I have submitted 19 blog posts, among them 5 articles are there. I also received two awards from communities. In this post, I am going to share all the posts submitted here in my blog as separate category. This will help you to find out the proper post that you are searching in my blog.

As a short note, we (KolkataGeeks team) are proud to announce the Kolkata Developer Conference 2011 event. If you are in Kolkata, come and join the event; learn; discuss and win lots of goodies including Telerik Ultimate Collection license. Registration is going on.

Kolkata Geeks pleased to announce Developer Conference 2011 (DevCon) on Saturday, 12th November 2011. Developer Conference is the premier technical event for technology professionals in Kolkata interested in learning, connecting and exploring latest Microsoft technologies.

I am attending this event. Are you? Don’t forget to attend my Technical Session on Windows Phone 7. Read more to find out more about his event agenda, venue and timing.

Here comes the weekly news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com. This week i.e. 23rd October to 29th October, we have submitted 61 article links in our database and the total link count raised to 3255 till now. Thanks to Michael Crump and Silverlight Gal for their contributions towards Silverlight-Zone community portal.

In this post, I am going to share the popular 5 posts of this week, which were visited mostly by our readers. Also, sharing the Daily News Digest links of the week. If you missed them earlier, you can find them here.

Few days ago, I started with a Tutorial series on Project Management using Telerik TeamPulse tool and discussed on Agile Scrum using that tool. We learnt about the Telerik product which is built on top of Silverlight. We learnt how to create new project and the steps to create your Sprint or Iteration.

Today in this fourth chapter, we will learn how to create new Stories and respective Tasks for that Story. Plenty of screenshots available to understand. Feedbacks are always appreciated.

On 3rd October 2011, I had started a giveaway contest of “SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros” book authored by Pinal Dave, Microsoft Evangelist and Founder of SQLAuthority.com. The contest ended on 21st October 2011.

We received no. of participants in the contest and after reviewing all the entries, I have randomly picked up two Winners, who will receive signed copy of the “SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros” book. Congratulation email will be send out to the winners requesting their shipping address. Find out whether you are the lucky winner of the contest.

Here comes the “Weekly News Digest at Silverlight-Zone.com. During this week (16th October 2011 to 22nd October 2011) we have submitted ~67 news items in Silverlight-Zone. I appreciate the time of our Contributors who spent some of their valuable time to help the Silverlight-Zone community grow.

Read more to find out the top 5 posts of the week which were top visited by our readers. As usual, I am also posting the Daily News Headline links of this week. You may find it useful in case you missed them.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to keep you updated on latest posts on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch, XNA stuffs. We want some more contributors who can voluntarily help us to serve already available good links to the community.

Boryana Miloshevska published this eBook “Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit in Depth” in WindowsPhoneGeek.com. The book includes hands on guide with code to demonstrate all the controls available in the Windows Phone 7.1 Toolkit (August 2011).

Click “Read More” to know about this book and find the links to download the eBook for Free. Hope this book will be a great help to you. Don’t forget to visit the book’s page to say a “Thanks” to the Author of the book.

Here comes the weekly news digest at SilverlightZone.com. During last week (9th October 2011 to 15th October 2011) we submitted 63 news posts on Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, LightSwitch and Visual Studio 11. We have also seen the launch of Windows Phone 7 in India.

As usual, here in this post, I am going to share the top 5 posts of the week followed by the links towards Daily News Digest. If you missed to read some posts, you can find them here. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook to receive regular update on the latest article news posted daily.

I am feeling very glad to announce that, INETA community has been awarded me with their “Annual Community Champion Award” for the Q3 of 2011. It’s a big honor to receive this award from INETA community. I can’t express my excitement to acknowledge this award.

I’m finding that my community work is rewarding me in various ways. It’s definitely a great year for me when I have been awarded by different portals. Over the past 2-3 years, I was connected with so many influential people who helped me to build my career.