KludgeHack

WPF Code Snippets
23 December 2007 in Programming | Comments (0)

Dr. WPF (great WPF blog by John Galt) has a great collection of C# WPF code snippets that I’m sure if you’re a WPF developer, you’ll find useful.

You can find more info on his post.

Creating Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets
22 December 2007 in Fun & Microsoft & Programming | Comments (3)

It was only about two months ago that I heard about the Microsoft Gadget Competition. Apparently they been doing this contests around the globe for a lot of countries, and they finally decided do it here in Portugal.

I was able to find some free time and started developing some gadgets for this competition. I ended up having two gadgets made in English, and two in Portuguese.

To make this gadgets I needed to go out of my way and stick my hands in the all so famous world of Javascript/AJAX. The Vista sidebar, just like Google and Apple, uses HTML to render gadgets.

The main downside is the lack of communication with Windows. Although they were developed in this way so that developers could make Web Gadgets and Sidebar Gadgets almost the same way (and offers a great level of security), they don’t allow the creation of more control over the system than a normal website.

The only upside I noticed in using HTML for gadgets, is the use of the same render engine for all gadgets: IE7+. For this environment, the special effects (Filters and Transitions) that IE bring, makes gadgets shine.

My first gadget was a FeedBurner gadget using their Awareness API to keep on the sidebar a feed readers count updated with the service. This was made so I and others can keep updated on this number without needing to visit the website.

After this, I created the very famous Jaw Breaker (Bubble Breaker?) that anyone using Windows Mobile already knows. I somehow find it an addictive game, and decided build one for the sidebar. This has been, by far the most downloaded (20000+) and well rated gadget of the four.

Not completely happy with my gadgets, I also build two more Portuguese gadgets that makes use of some Sapo services (main ISP in Portugal). One called Sapo Tráfego ADSL brings to the sidebar the current state (bandwidth) of the ADSL line, and one called Sapo Fotos that brings photos from their Photos service (very similar to Flickr).

So, feel free to test and use if you like, my gadgets. You can find them in the following links:

• FeedBurner Readers
• Jaw Breaker
• Sapo Fotos (Portuguese)
• Sapo Tráfego ADSL (Portuguese)

The contest begun last week at this website, and if you are Portuguese, go there and deliver some votes around and you will probably win one prize (six Office 2007).

Spell Checking in WPF
19 December 2007 in Programming | Comments (0)

Did you know WPF comes with spell checking integrated in common controls?

I just discover this feature through Alan Le’s blog.

All you need to enjoy this feature is set its property to true in the XAML file, like this:

<TextBox SpellCheck.IsEnabled=”True” />

You can also change the spell-checker languages by setting the property Language with a supported culture string (i.e: en-US).

Currently, only supports English, Spanish, German and French.

You can also change the context-menu behavior and add your own choices by handling the ContextMenuOpening event.

WPF Contest
13 December 2007 in Microsoft & Programming | Comments (0)

I was so happy to see that Lab49 and Microsoft were having a WPF contest about data visualization… until I realized the contest were only available for residents of Canada, Mexico, the United States, and Puerto Rico.

The contest criteria is very simple, you only need to develop a creative and smart way of interacting and visualize data (the prizes are so good…).

If you happen to live in one of this allowed country’s… heres your chance. At least, I’m not going to be your competition

Mole, the new WPF visualization tool
12 December 2007 in Programming | Comments (3)

Remember Snoop? Well, there a new tool in town, and promises to do even more. The name of this new Visual Studio Visualizer is Mole II, and was created by Josh Smith, Andrew Smith and Karl Shifflett.

From the blog:

Mole is a high performance, full featured, multifunction visualizer that allows in-depth inspection of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) visual and logical trees. For each element in the visual or logical tree the developer can view all properties, visual image, run-time XAML or IEnumerable collection data.

Mole allows developers to drill back into the managed heap and view properties and data structures of the above objects and all their child sub-objects. 

You can download the binaries for VS2005 or VS2008, or even the complete sources at their Blog or at the CodeProject Article.

From my short tests, I was happy to see the lightning fast performance they so humbly promised.