Joe's Blog

New Blog

2010-01-15T07:05:00Z

New blog url: http://xamlcoder.com/blog After many months of ignoring my blog, I finally decided to try and get it fixed. After the last Community Server upgrade something in the software was broken, and I was unable to use Windows Live Writer to blog. The upgrade was such a headache I loathed even the thought of spending more time trying to figure out the issue. This week I finally decided to break down and figure it out. However it appears to be too little too late. Being unable to find the required...(read more)

Building a Databound WPF Menu Using a HierarchicalDataTemplate

2008-11-26T01:49:00Z

I had a colleague ask me how he could solve a databinding problem while building a WPF Menu. The immediate answer wasn’t apparent to me, though it’s actually quite simple. A while back Karl Shifflett wrote up an excellent example of doing something similar. I take his example one step further by showing how you can easily bind properties to the MenuItem instead of assigning one-time values. Download Source: WPFDataBoundMenu.zip We’re going to use a simple Business Object which represents...(read more)

UI Design Patterns Presentation Code + Slide Deck

2008-11-14T07:24:00Z

Thank you to everyone who came to my presentation on UI Design patterns! It was great to see so many people interested in patterns for building user interfaces. One user group member recorded the presentation on his laptop's webcam; I should have that available for download this weekend. The video is so-so, but the audio isn't too bad. Thanks Walt! Links Download Code & Slides - http://xamlcoder.com/joe/downloads/UIDesignPatterns2008.zip Martin Fowler MVC Martin Fowler MVP ASP.NET MVP...(read more)

Utah .NET User Group Presentation - UI Design Patterns

2008-11-10T21:39:00Z

Join me this week at the Utah .NET User Group where I’ll be giving a presentation on UI Design Patterns. UI Design Patterns In this session we’ll explore three UI design patterns: Model View Controller (MVC), Model View Presenter (MVP), and Model View ViewModel (MVVM). We’ll prove that you can reuse the same logic to drive a WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF, or Silverlight "View". We’ll also see how using these patterns allow the bulk of your UI to be testable using testing frameworks...(read more)

Building composite Applications Using PRISM Presentation

2008-11-03T23:57:00Z

Thank you to everyone who attended my presentation on PRISM at the Utah Code Camp this past weekend. Here’s a link to my sample code and slide deck. http://xamlcoder.com/joe/downloads/PRISM-UTCodeCamp2008.zip Note that you’ll need VS2008 SP1 with the Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 installed to run the Silverlight demo....(read more)

Composite Silverlight 2.0 Application Library Updated to RTW

2008-10-21T20:46:00Z

I’ve updated my demo of the Composite Silverlight Library I built to work with Silverlight RTW. The P&P group has plans to ship the next version of the PRISM library (PRISM 2.0) that supports Silverlight, so I’ve started to use their bits instead of the ones that I built with this sample. Bellow is a screenshot of the conversion. As you can see, the default styles in Silverlight 2.0 have been changed, and the rendering is much better. Download: CompositeSilverlightRTW...(read more)

Building a Silverlight ComboBox Using Attached Behaviors

2008-08-20T09:46:40Z

I recently needed to use a ComboBox in an application I was writing. Because there is no built-in ComboBox in Silverlight I decided to explore building one using attached behaviors . If you’re not familiar with this design pattern, check out Nikhil’s posts . My ComboBox behavior is loosely based on his AutoComplete behavior. I also make use of Julian’s ButtonCommands class, which he describes in this post . I started with a simple behavior interface: /// <summary> /...(read more)

Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Released

2008-08-11T18:19:00Z

Today Microsoft made Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) available for download . I was able to participate in a case study done on SP1 with Microsoft , Misys , and Veracity Solutions specifically using ADO.NET Data Services and the Entity Framework. You can read the full case study here , though here’s a small snippet: “For more than a decade, Misys Healthcare Systems and Veracity Solutions have partnered to develop innovative applications that meet the needs of healthcare providers while improving...(read more)

Composite Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2 Application Library

2008-08-06T04:25:00Z

Lately I’ve been working with Composite WPF and Silverlight applications at Veracity Solutions . I spent a few hours over the weekend converting the Composite WPF Application Library to Silverlight. Tonight I finished porting one of the QuickStarts to Silverlight. Of course, just today the P&P team posted a AGCompositeApplicationLibrary spike. Just my luck! Regardless, here’s the UIComposition QuickStart running in Silverlight using my ported libraries: Some things to note: The TabItem style...(read more)

Building Custom Template-able WPF Controls

2007-12-14T04:08:40Z

Building custom controls in WPF can provide you with lots of flexibility. It allows you to entirely separate the behavior of the control from the look of the control. This is the premise behind most of what WPF offers. In this post I will show you how you can build a simple control similar to the search control in Outlook 2007. Add a new WPF Application project. Then add a WPF User Control Library. Delete the generated UserControl1.xaml that was given to you. Add a new WPF...(read more)

WPF Interoperability with Windows Forms and Office 2007

2007-09-03T22:15:00Z

Keith encountered some interesting behavior while trying to build a Custom Task Pane hosting a WPF control in VSTO to use in Excel. (See my post on " Using WPF With VSTO & Office 2007 "). "I click the search textbox and it appears to have focus... but, when I start typing, text goes into the active cell and not the textbox..." Throwing together a simple control I experienced the same behavior: Notice that the second TextBox contains the cursor, however the Task Pane "Test...(read more)

Screencast: Building Interoperable Services using WSIT and WCF 3.0

2007-08-27T14:46:27Z

In this screencast I demonstrate how to build a secure, interoperable service using WSIT (Web Services Interoperability Technologies) and WCF 3.0 (Windows Communication Foundation). This screencast uses certificates to secure a business to business scenario. Click the image below to watch the screencast online. You can double-click the player for full-screen mode. The player is using Silverlight 1.0 . Download directly: http://xamlcoder.com/demos/net30/wsitcertificates/screencast.wmv This is the...(read more)

Binding to a DataSet in XAML

2007-08-23T07:11:59Z

At first glance binding a control (such as a ListBox) to a DataSet in XAML may not be apparent. However all you need to remember is that the column names in a DataSet work very similar to the property names on plain CLR objects. The trick is where you assign the DataSet to the listbox. You can't use the ItemsSource property on a ListBox directly, because it expects an object of IEnumerable. What you want is the DataContext. This tells the control "Hey, I'm going to be working with this...(read more)

Using WPF With VSTO & Office 2007

2007-07-18T03:31:36Z

Hosting Windows Forms controls in Office 2007 Custom Task Pane's is pretty simple, as shown in this MSDN article . I created a simple addin to display a list of image files in a given folder so that the user can double-click on the file name (in a ListBox) and insert the picture into the document. With little effort it was simple to instead implement a WPF UserControl to spruce up the addin. You can download the code here . You can host WPF Elements using the ElementHost control found in the...(read more)

Querying Excel Files Using ADO.NET

2007-07-02T02:30:09Z

Recently I needed to query an excel file and import that data into a database. I could not immediately recall how to accomplish this, so with a bit of searching I found the connection settings that I needed. Bellow is a code snippet that can be used to load all of the data in a workbook into a GridView on an ASP.NET page. Note the use of the " Extended Properties='Excel 8.0;' " in the connection template as well as Sheet1$ in the SQL command to specify the name of the workbook in...(read more)