Posts from 2008



Year End Reading for 2008

A small set of links reviewing 2008, and looking forward to 2009, from tech to news to photos, annotated with some personal comments...

Fluent Animations in Silverlight

A fluent (jQuery-esque) API for creating Silverlight animations easily in code, built on top of Silverlight.FX, along with some early thoughts on possible integration of animations and view models.

MVC Controllers and Forms Authentication

A couple of ActionResult implementations to abstract out FormsAuthentication specifics from Login/Logout controller actions... thoughts?

In-Place Editing for Silverlight using Styles and Templates

A quick walkthrough for implementing in-place editing ux for TextBox controls in Silverlight, using just styles, templates, and visual state manager in a completely declarative manner.

RESTful Live Search Service

Live Search finally gets a REST head and JSON-based API ... and testing the C# 4.0 dynamic RestClient against it (and Google Search) to see if it holds up to these services...

Silverlight.FX Effects in Depth

An in-depth walkthrough of using the effect behaviors and animations in Silverlight.FX - from basic declarative use of out-of-the-box features, to writing your own effect-enabled Silverlight controls to writing your own custom effects.

More Fun with C# 4.0 - Dynamic REST Service Calls

This followup post on the C# 4.0 dynamic feature demonstrates taking dynamic JSON further to dynamic or proxyless REST service calls turning dynamic method calls into HTTP requests...

C# 4.0, Dynamic Programming and JSON

C# 4.0 will introduce dynamic programming and late-bound code in the midst of otherwise statically compiled code... in an extensible way. Heres one scenario enhanced with dynamic capabilities - working with JSON data.

Script# Programming in the Large

Some large-scale Ajax apps and frameworks - the Live Framework and Office 14, both announced at PDC - built using Script#...

Sync and Sharing for Applications - Live Framework

Another PDC announcement - the Live Framework enables sync and sharing across devices and users and brings that new capability to your own applications...

Cloud Computing, Windows Azure and .NET

New opportunities and possibilities with Cloud Computing and Windows Azure - complete with a familiar .NET development platform...

Weekend Humor: Features and Complexity

A Dilbert comic strip for some weekend humor - Scott Adams on features and complexity...

Silverlight Controls with Effects and Transitions

A big update for Silverlight.FX - now in sync with Silverlight 2 and with a bunch of new features. This post discusses one feature area: controls that intrinsically support effects and transitions.

FxCop for Ajax Code

Script#-based Ajax development enables you to repurpose existing .NET tools - this posts shows how you can use FxCop to perform static code analysis for script code...

Effects and Transitions for Silverlight

Another installment of Silverlight.FX additions to enable creating declarative views - this time, pre-packaged, declarative effects and transitions...

Ajax Server Controls Book

A quick note about the recently released Advanced ASP.NET Ajax Server Controls book...

Themes for Silverlight Applications

A theming system for Silverlight 2 apps... this post steps you through creating a set of theme assets, adding customizability of themes (colors and fonts in the sample), and using them in an application, including selecting a theme dynamically... complete with source code.

Search for Rich Internet Applications

Thoughts on search for RIAs, along with pointers to my latest slides as well as MIX session on ensuring indexability (esp. for Silverlight and Ajax apps)...

ViewModel Pattern extended with the Dynamic Language Runtime

More fun with the ViewModel or M-V-VM pattern - using the Dynamic Language Runtime in Silverlight to create a better glue between the View and its ViewModel.

ViewModel Pattern in Silverlight using Behaviors

This post describes the ViewModel aka M-V-VM pattern, and presents a prototype Silverlight 2 framework for implementing this pattern using Action Behaviors (which provide the equivalent of commands)

Microsoft Source Analysis aka StyleCop

A bit about code style guidelines, my own preferences and a pointer to StyleCop.

Engineering Excellence Award for Script#

Microsoft Engineering Excellence Award presented to Script#!

AutoComplete for Silverlight TextBoxes

An implementation of AutoComplete functionality that you can add to your TextBoxes in XAML... ala Google Suggest and the ASP.NET AutoComplete control extender (built on top of the behavior framework).

Silverlight Behaviors

A framework for creating reusable and attachable behaviors in Silverlight, and a sample behavior that demonstrates using and building them... along with all the code.

Live Mesh

Live Mesh announced...

Script# 0.5 Update and Associated CodePlex Project

Some words about the latest release of script#, now on CodePlex, and with support for localization, doc-comments and more.

Ajax Templates

This post describes a prototype for an Ajax templating solution, combined with an Ajax-friendly server-side solution that hints at what is coming down the road in ASP.NET Ajax.

Ajax vs. Silverlight and .NET

My thoughts on questions along the lines of Ajax vs. Silverlight, and independent of the debate, how .NET spans the gamut of application development platforms...

Facebook Client Library built on Script#

Facebook's latest offering to application developers - a client-side script API, built on Script#!

HTML 5, the Dialog Tag, and Microformats

A followup post on my HTML 5 thoughts: specifically how some of the new concepts can be implemented today using microformats.

HTML 5 Thoughts

Just some thoughts, and perhaps some ranting around the HTML 5 spec...

Facebook.NET Update

A quick update on the release of Facebook.NET 0.3 with support for new and changing Facebook APIs...