DotNetKicks.com : Stories kicked by dereklakin

Microsoft Releases Free CMS-Blog System

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:46:26 GMT

Read about the new, free CMS/Blog system released by Microsoft called "Oxite". It is built using the new ASP.NET MVC framework and is highly extensible, touting such features as Microformats and source control integration.

WPF: Ribbon in Prism Applications

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 08:38:38 GMT

Microsoft some time ago published its Ribbon(known from Office 2007) control library for Windows Presentation Foundation. This article contains steps necessary to implement ribbon view region in Composite Application Library(aka Prism) .

What Gives? Microsofts Code Generation Tool

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:31:12 GMT

In a world of Microsoft and third party applications, out comes t4. t4 is a code generation tool that can compete with CodeSmith, but its FREE and built right into Visual Studio. It has been years since the first edition with very little publication of the actual application. t4 is a free code generation engine from Microsoft that underpins the Domain Specific Languages and Software Factory toolkits.

CodeRush Xpress Tips

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:43:49 GMT

How to resolve Visual Studio and CodeRush Xpress problems under windows vista and how to access CodeRush Xpress control panel.

WPF Model - View - View-Model Screencast

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:46:09 GMT

A really helpful screencast from Jason Dolinger showing how to use the M-V-VM pattern in a simple WPF application. He starts off with the code that a Windows Forms developer might use and refactors it to M-V-VM. Also includes a demonstration of how it is nicely unit testable utilising Moq and how to use the Unity IoC container. 1 hour 30 mins long.

WPF: The best walkthrough of Model-View-ViewModel I have seen

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:27:15 GMT

Jason Dolinger a consultant for lab49 gives a great walkthrough on Model-View-ViewModel using WPF. He starts out doing things the traditional way and refactors the app to use ViewModels, Commands, and Unity.

WPF Themes Released

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:16:05 GMT

A collection of 8 free themes to be used in WPF!

7 Steps to write your own custom rule using FXCOP

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 08:10:14 GMT

Code review is one of the important activities in any project. Manual code reviews are definitely good and I will say better than automation. But when the project is large manual code reviews have their own limitations. FXCOP is one of the legendary tools which help us automate code reviews. This article will discuss some basics of FXCOP and then concentrate mainly on how we can add custom rules in FXCOP.

WPF Toolkit adds Ribbon Control to .NET 3.5 SP1

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:31:03 GMT

The first release of the new WPF Toolkit was released today. This toolkit includes a new Ribbon control as well as the following: new WPF DataGrid, DatePicker/Calendar, and VisualStateManger. The coolest feature of this Toolkit (IMO) is the new Ribbon control. In .NET 4.0 there will be a ribbon control baked in, but thanks to the WPF Toolkit we have access to utilize the new Ribbon control today in WPF with .NET 3.5 SP1!

CodeRush Xpress for Visual Studio announced

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:46:03 GMT

A free subset of CodeRush and Refactor! Pro is now available.

Sequence diagrams with websequencediagrams.com

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:02:45 GMT

Links to a nice tool for quickly drawing sequence diagrams.

Creating a Outlook Calendar using WPF (Part 1)

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:46:03 GMT

A detailed article on how to create a Outlook Calendar clone using WPF

Three Simple Rhino Mocks Rules

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:46:13 GMT

Jimmy Bogard shows how he uses the new Rhino Mocks syntax, and three short rules for using it.

Migrating Legacy a WPF Application to Prism - Part 2

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:53:39 GMT

After my initial successes in moving to a Prism-style bootstrapper in Part 1 it was time to move onto the next step. But in the case of a legacy application, what's the next step? This article looks at getting the infrastructure in place to start working on the first View.

WPF easy rounded corners for anything

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:29:50 GMT

WPF's Border element allows you to specify a different radius for each corner. Unfortunately it doesn't clip content to fit inside the boundary. While there are other solutions, this one is my favorite so far... :)

Migrating Legacy WPF Applications to Prism - Part 1

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:48:00 GMT

This is the first of several posts on my journey migrating a legacy application to use the Composite Application Guidance for WPF, which (like Brian Noyes) I prefer to call Prism, mainly because it's shorter, but it's also cooler! I've watched the "Brian Noyes on Prism" dnr TV episode intently, read through the guidance documentation, I've done the hands-on lab, all of the quick starts and dissected and analysed the StockTraderRI sample application, so now I figure I'm ready to start cranking some Prism code for our legacy application.

Separate Assemblies != Loose Coupling

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:16:07 GMT

read and learn

Regionerate Beta 2 Released

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:55:01 GMT

I am pleased to announce the release of Regionerate Beta 2. The first public beta was released more than a year ago and since then, thanks to great community participation in the forums and thanks to submitted patches, many bugs were fixed and many new features were introduced. I would like to thank everyone for their great help over the past year, and I hope Regionerate will continue to evolve and grow towards a super-stable and feature-rich v1.0.

Expression Blend 2 SP1 Preview Released

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:53:29 GMT

Today, we have released a preview of Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1 that allows you to create content for the release candidate of Silverlight 2.

Updated WPFPerf Performance Profiling Tools for WPF

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:51:04 GMT

The WPFPerf tool comprises of a suite of performance profiling tools that allow you to analyze the run-time behavior of your WPF application and point to potential performance bottlenecks. We now added some new functionality as well as given the tool a major facelift. Below are highlights for some of the exciting improvements that are included in this update.

Handling Events by Executing Commands in WPF

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:44:49 GMT

Shows how to hook up a Command in a View-Model so that it is executed when an event is raised in a WPF View.

Changing the Caret Colour in WPF

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:43:40 GMT

n WPF, you don't have direct control over the colour of the caret in a TextBox or a RichTextBox. What the framework does is to use the inverse of the colour that you choose for the Background property. I've seen a few examples of styles that explicitly set the Background property to {x:Null} to completely remove the background from the TextBox, which enables you to use the same style when then the TextBox is used on top of different backgrounds that you want to show through.

Google Chrome updated to run Silverlight

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:46:03 GMT

Chrome latest build was released under the Developer chain, an alternative release cycle which let you update to interim builds of Google's Internet Browser, for testing purposes. On this post you will find an early review of the update which truly is an improvement to the beta release, check it out and get yourself switched to the Dev chain.

WpfSimpleChart - A WPF Chart Control library - released

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:49:29 GMT

A simple to use WPF Chart library. With demo application.

Sending Email in a Development Environment without an SMTP Server

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:46:02 GMT

Very handy... I'm forever looking this stuff up :-|