Archive for June, 2008
Silverlight Skinning
Corrina Barber joins us to talk about the different ways to change appearance in Silverlight.
Skinning Words-
Corrina tells us about the different words used in Skinning. What are they? What do they mean? How are they being used on an everyday basis?
Different Ways–
Corrina talks about the different levels of changing controls. Do you want a movie to play inside of a button? Do you want to change the font of a text control? Do you want to completely change the appearance of a control?
Handoff-
The way that we copy skins between projects isn’t immediately obvious. Corrina tells us how it’s done.
Corrina’s blog
Useful links for the show:
Corrina’s blog – http://blogs.msdn.com/corrinab/
Music for the show:
Lido In The Morning by General Fuzz from the album Messy’s Place
Sidetrack by Lisa DeBenedictis from the album Fruitless
Podcast: Download
June 30th, 2008
Ted Neward
Ted Neward rejoins us to talk about web V.next. What do we want it to look like? What rules should we follow when implementing it? What about this competition between Adobe, Sun and Microsoft, is it going to be a good thing?
Ted’s Blog
Music for the show:
Lido In The Morning by General Fuzz from the album Messy’s Place
Sidetrack by Lisa DeBenedictis from the album Fruitless
Podcast: Download
June 18th, 2008
Silverlight 2 Beta 2
It’s out. You can download and play with the bits, and you can even build commercial applications on the web. However, there are some things you should know.
The Big Changes
Shawn tells us the major changes. What does it mean for developers? What new stuff do we get, and what old stuff has changed?
Gotchas
Shawn guides us through the potential problems with upgrading to Silverlight 2 Beta 2. Listen as he explains his experience and shares tips.
Direction
Learn what’s publicly known about Silverlight’s status. Where are we and where are we heading?
Click here for Shawn’s incredibly popular Silverlight courses:
Useful links for the show:
Shawn’s blog – http://adoguy.com/
Shawn’s post on changes in Beta 2 http://adoguy.com/2008/06/06/What_s_Changed_in_Silverlight_2_Beta_2.aspx
Shawn’s post on upgrading to Beta 2 – http://adoguy.com/2008/06/06/Upgrading_your_Silverlight_2_Projects_to_Beta_2.aspx
Getting started with the new bits: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/
Music for the show:
Lido In The Morning by General Fuzz from the album Messy’s Place
I Believe In You by YACHT from the album Instrumentals 2007
Sidetrack by Lisa DeBenedictis from the album Fruitless
Podcast: Download
June 12th, 2008
Upgrading Silverlight
I’ve hit some snags while upgrading my applications. Shawn Wildermuth has also. See his notes here.
Symptom: You use Silverlight.js to custom detect if Silverlight is installed and it reports that Silverlight is not installed when, in fact, it is.
Solution: Update to the Silverlight.js in the SDK-> Tools directory (Thanks, Shawn).
Symptom: You see a build error like: “The name ‘InitializeComponent’ does not exist in the current context” . This happens with other methods/XAML generated members.
Solution: The xaml generated .cs file is not being created. This happens because the build action is set on the XAML file to “SilverlightPage” instead of “Page”. Apparently, this is the new build action name. I got this because I brought some non-upgraded user controls into an already upgraded project. Normally, the Visual Studio upgrade wizard will take care of this.
Symptom: You get the message “Unable to start debugging. The Silverlight managed debugging package isn’t installed.” when trying to debug.
Solution: Run “silverlight_chainer.exe /extract” to get at the files inside. Then run “Silverlight.2.0_Developer.exe” I did this right over the top of the other Silverlight installs, and it seemed to work. See here for how to completely uninstall and re-install components.
Symptom: Silverlight debugging works in the Silverlight project, but it doesn’t in the ASP.Net project. Also, new versions of the Silverlight application aren’t getting copied over to the ASP.Net project.
Solution: The issue is that the Silverlight linkage mechanism has changed in Beta2. On the surface the project upgrade updates the linkage, but in my case, the .xap file was not being copied over. Worse, an existing .xap file was being used, and this was masking the problem. Go to properties for the ASP.Net project, select the “Silverlight Applications” tab, remove the existing linkage and add it again (make sure that Silverlight debugging is enabled and that a new test page isn’t created).
June 9th, 2008
Ted Neward interview
Silverlight seems like an amazing and novel thing: we have rich programming constructs that execute on the client. But this has been tried before. Welcome to the late 90s. On this show, Ted Neward explains what went wrong and why.
Useful links for the show:
Ted’s blog – http://blogs.tedneward.com/
Additional information – http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/05/03/top-5-reasons-why-java-applets-failed/
Music for the show:
Lido In The Morning by General Fuzz from the album Messy’s Place
I Believe In You by YACHT from the album Instrumentals 2007
Sidetrack by Lisa DeBenedictis from the album Fruitless
Podcast: Download
June 5th, 2008
