Bindings, the glue that connects the view to the viewmodel part 2 (and apparently a bunch of data validation information)

Welcome back! Or possible Welcome! Sort of depends on if you saw my previous post… Anyhow, you have probably figured out that it is time to go on with even more binding information. In the previous we looked at the basic binding syntax and functionality. So, what’s left? Well, a bunch of small, medium and large details…

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Playing Smooth Streaming (.ism) videos in Silverlight…

I’m currently working on this Silverlight project, that will be a growing video archive that you might see go online in the close future. Unfortunately I can’t say more at the moment. But that is not what this post is about. The post is about playing Smooth Streaming videos in Silverlight.

I’m not that familiar with media streaming and video formats and so on, but when we started talking about playing video, I insisted on it being streaming. Http progressive download is just not that attractive and great… It will use up unnecessary bandwidth as well as cause certain “issues” at the client. Such as limiting the users ability to “scrub” though the video…

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Creating a command manager in Silverlight 2

After having worked a bit with the Mode View ViewModel pattern in Silverlight, I've sort fallen into a trance chanting "MVVM, MVVM, MVVM". It gives the developer such a good platform to work with. The MVVM pattern is a modified version of the MVC and MVP patterns. By now, you are probablyabout to closer your browser due to the pattern rant I'm on. Well, don't. This isn't about MVVM really, only a little. The MVVM pattern was "created" by John Gossman at Microsoft, specifically to target WPF. This also means that it works great in Silverlight. But Silverlight is smaller, and missing some features... The CommandManager is one of them. This post shows a way to handle this shortcoming.

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Creating custom controls in Silverlight - part 2

In part one, a button like control was created. It worked like a button, or at least a little. It was a square with a descriptive text and a brand new Click event. Unfortunately that doesn't really make it feel like a button. There is more to a button, especially in Silverlight and WPF. First off, a button normally gives some visual feedback to the user, confirming that it is pressed or that the button is hovering over it. That visual feedback is something that you find in most button implementation, whether it is in Windows Forms, HTML or WPF. The thing that is special with buttons in WPF and Silverlight is that the content of the button - in this case the descriptive text - can be anything. And I mean ANYTHING. It could be a Grid with several controls inside. Not that I would recommend doing some of the things that you CAN do, but it is possible. So in this part of the tutorial, the button will get visual feedback and support for complex content.

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Creating custom controls in Silverlight - part 1

After having written mhy previous entry about how to style and template controls, I guess it is a good time to have a look at how to create controls that are template- and styleable. (Can you write "template- and styleable"? Looks weird...well...I am swedish so I'm allowed to write less than perfect english) Unfortunately, due to my lack of imagination, I don't have a really cool control to build and show you. So instead I'm going to create a very limited control that will work more or less as a simple button.

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Storing application wide styles in external files, aka "The ExternalStyleManager"

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.

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Silverlight 2 templating and styling

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.

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Back from Oredev

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...

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Dynamic display causes JavaScript bridge to fail in Silverlight 2 - Update

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]

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Deep Zoom Composer & Silverlight 2

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.

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