Microsoft released some really cool charting controls a while back. ScottGu writes about it in one of his blog posts. It is a sweet little collectio of charting controls both for windows and web development. In the web scenario, you add a specific webcontrol to your page, give it some data and it renders it nicely. At least that is the simple explanation. There is a LOT more things you can control and tweak to make it look like you want it. However, this time I'm actualy using the windows parts of the controls. Reason? Well, I need to create some charts in memory to be added to a PDF document. So I don't really want a webcontrol... So, here are some of my thoughts after working with it for a couple of hours.
More...
20. December 2008
ZeroKoll
Silverlight
A couple of the guys at my company have started working on an internal Silverlight application. One of the guys is a former WPF developer, which gives him some serious advantages when starting with Silverlight. It actually gives him some serious advantages compared to my own sorry ass as well. However, it has some downsides as well. Downsides that sometimes end up with him sending me annoyed MSN messages.
He expects a bunch of WPF specific features to be available in Silverlight. I understand the "confusing". SIlverlight development is very close to WPF, except for the fact that Silverlight is in some aspects is tiny compared to WPF.
More...
17. December 2008
ZeroKoll
Silverlight
I have spent a lot of time checking out Silverlight and its features. I have also spent a lot of time talking about it to a lot of people. And a reasonably large amount of the people I have talked to, have asked me about templating and styling and about how it works and the differences. I myself also had a little uphill battle to sort out the terms and get going... So I thought I would write an post about it... Sort of explaining it from my view.
More...
16. December 2008
ZeroKoll
EPiServer
I spent a little time yesterday building a simple little PageProvider. For the record, it was an RSS PageProvider that would read an RSS fead and present the entries as pages... Not very complicated or special, but it needed to be done. It's going to be one of the exercises in the new advanced developer course for EPiServer. So, what was the problem...well...my provider worked, but only when I refreshed the page. The initial request would come up empty, but when I refreshed the page it would show up as it should...
More...
24. November 2008
ZeroKoll
EPiServer
When creating a GUI-plugin you are basically either creating a usercontrol (ascx) or a webform (aspx). The problem with this is that when you deploy your plugin you have to deploy both an assembly and a second file. The location of the second file is of utmost importance since it is defined in the GuiPlugInAttribute's Url property. Is this a problem? Not in most cases, but once in a while it is. Can it be solved? Of course...
More...
I just came back to Stockholm after spending a few days at Oredev in Malmö. Oredev turned out to be a fantastic event. I arrived in Malmö late Tuesday afternoon and checked in to my hotelroom in the center of the city. Later that evening I got in my "costume" aka suit. I very rarely wear a suit and instead stick to baggy jeans and a hoodie... But since the speakers dinner that night was in the Town Hall, I went for a suit. It ended up being a bit overdressed, but hey...I like looking good once in a while...
More...
11. November 2008
ZeroKoll
Silverlight
The problem I wrote about earlier talking about the JavaScript bridge failing when the plug-in is in a div that has it's display set to hidden, is still in Silverlight 2 RTW. But I figured out why. When the plug-in is in a hidden div, the bridge doesn't work, and showing the div from JavaScript and calling the plug-in directly after isn't working either. I tried doing the following, without success:
[code:js]
var hostDiv = document.getElementById("silverlightControlHost");
var plugin = hostDiv.childNodes(0);
hostDiv.className = "hostDivVisible";
plugin.content.ScriptableObjectRef.CallMethod();
[/code]
More...
I know this has a simple fix, but the error message might not be too clear to some people. If you try to use Linq to XML you must first start off by adding a using statement for System.Linq.Xml. This is very easy to do... Just write the initial XDocument, with the right casing, and then press "Ctrl+." and then enter. This will add the using statement and you can keep going. So you start writing your query but it doesn't work.
More...
I just found an interesting thing... I just created my first Deep Zoom application. I know...I'm way behind most people, but I stick to something and learn it well before moving on. That's just the way I am. Well, back to topic. I added my images to the Composer and set them up as I wanted them and then exported my project. I choose to include a Silverlight app with the export. When I tried watching it in my browser, I got a message saying that I needed to get Silverlight.
More...
Once in a while you do get the possiblity to do something that is gonna be seen by the developer community more than others things you do. This week I got to create my first screencast for Microsoft Sweden. It turned into a WAY too long screencast covering basic development in Silverlight 2.0. Beside being shown and talked about on a couple of different blogs on the web, I also had the privilege of getting mentioned in the Swedish MSDN newsletter. So as I said...a pure brag entry telling the world that I got to do something cool. Unfortunately for all the enlish speaking people out there, the newsletter as well as my screencast is in swedish. But for the rest of you here are a couple of places where you can see or read about it:
http://blogs.msdn.com/robf/archive/2008/10/14/introduktion-till-utveckling-med-silverlight-2.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/sverige/msdn/mail/2008/msdnNyhetsbrev_081016.html
http://labs.episerver.com/en/Blogs/Per/Archive/2008/10/Sample-Silverlight-2--Dynamic-Content/
Somebody actually cares...maybe...might be that i know both Robert and Per and that they are just being nice to me...but I don't give a damn...I...Chris Klug was mentioned on the world wide web by other people than my family...