You've reached the internet home of Chris Sells, who has a long history as a contributing member of the Windows developer community. He enjoys long walks on the beach and various computer technologies.
Saturday, Feb 5, 2005, 2:10 PM in Fun
Chris Sells Is Merely an Alter-Ego
Here. 
Saturday, Feb 5, 2005, 10:24 AM in Fun
Chris Sells Is Merely an Alter-Ego
To avoid intimidating people, I generally don't wear the tight shirts in public, but Dax Pandhi captures my hidden muscles perfectly! : )
Dax Pandhi
Personal Email
Saturday, February 05, 2005 10:24 AM
Friday, Feb 4, 2005, 1:04 PM in .NET
DeepWinFX: Avalon Menus
Deepak gives a very simple intro to building menus in Avalon, effectively answering the common questions I normally get about this very subject.
Friday, Feb 4, 2005, 12:56 PM in .NET
Want to be able to step into the Windows Forms source? I do!
Shawn Burke from the Windows Forms team is trying to make the Windows Forms source available for stepping into during a debugging session. Wahoo! He's pretty sure he can give it to us w/o the comments. That's a step up from viewing it via Reflector, imo. Leaving in comments requires all kinds of reviewing work that he may not be able to get to. What do you think? Let Shawn know.
Thursday, Feb 3, 2005, 9:19 AM in .NET
Keeping the Windows Forms Designer from Eating You
Shawn Burke, Dev. Manager on the Windows Forms team, thinks that MS has finally figured out the problem with controls disappearing from the Designer and points to a fix, mentions an SP for VS03 and promises these fixes applied to VS05.
Shawn, on behalf of the Windows Forms developer community, I'd like to just say: Wahoo!
Thursday, Feb 3, 2005, 8:38 AM
Feb 15h, Founder's Last Portland Nerd Dinner
Here.
Come and see Jim Blizzard off right. As the founder of the Portland Nerd Dinner, he will be sorely missed. If you want to contribute to the planning of our founder's last dinner, drop Rich a line. We've got some fun stuff planned, but could always use more. : )
Thursday, Feb 3, 2005, 7:47 AM in .NET
London Avalon Enthusiasts Dinner
Kevin Moore, a PM on the Avalon team, is in London for one night (Feb. 28) and wants to gather the Avalon enthused together for dinner. Microsoftie's have expense accounts for this kind of thing, so if you can stand to listen to Avalon talk over shepherd's pie, you should let him know!
Monday, Jan 31, 2005, 6:22 PM in .NET
Aurora XAML Editor Updated for Avalon Nov. CTP
Mobiform has updated their Aurora XAML editor for using on the November 2004 CTP of Avalon.
Sunday, Jan 30, 2005, 10:48 PM in .NET
XAML Experience Highly Desired in Concord, MA
Here. Holy cow; there are already jobs for XAML folk...
Sunday, Jan 30, 2005, 8:18 AM in Tools
Awaiting and Dreading Subtext
If you follow the link to the subtext demo that Preston Bannister mentions, you'll see my idea of hell, i.e. manipulating code primarily with a mouse. Have you ever seen those guys -- you know who I mean -- those guys that want to copy a chunk of code and reach for the mouse, almost select the text, almost select the text again, finally select the text they want, go to the Edit menu, choose Copy, click on the place near where they want the code to be, click again, finally click in the right place, go to the Edit menu and choose Paste and by that time, you've died of old age? It's all I can do not to tackle these people so I can use the combinations of Ctrl, Shift, Alt and the arrows to select the text and move the cursor to the spot where it belongs, using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, never touching the mouse, like BillG intended.
So, watching the subtext demo, which was nearly all copy and paste using the mouse made me want to tackle the guy doing the demo, especially since I couldn't run it at a higher speed (my very favorite WMP feature).
On the other hand, I loved the idea of the code always being executed with live, example data to show me instant code coverage and I loved the idea of the code always being executable. If I could get a structured editor that let me copy and link using the keyboard (and it used some language I could actually ship, at least in some transformation mode), I'd use it in a heartbeat.
Thursday, Jan 27, 2005, 10:51 AM in Fun
SolFX: Much Improved Performance
I'm updated SolFX to use DrawingBrushes instead of Canvases and to use a much simpler card back, so performance is much improved. In fact, it's so much improved that I'm starting to think about other things that it needs...
Thursday, Jan 27, 2005, 9:02 AM in Fun
Schools Ban Camera Phones Amid 'Happy Slapping' Craze
I can't really improve on this: "Head teachers have banned children from using video phones to stop them slapping other pupils in the face and recording the attacks on their mobiles."
Tuesday, Jan 25, 2005, 2:25 PM in .NET
Avalon Property Triggers
Joe Marini, the king of code-less Avalon, has done it again, this time adding interactivity to his samples using Avalon property triggers, all w/o a line of code.
Tuesday, Jan 25, 2005, 2:23 PM in .NET
Ari Bixhorn on Indigo
Ari Bixhorn, Lead Product Manager on the Indigo team, talks about his hopes and dreams for Indigo.
Tuesday, Jan 25, 2005, 2:15 PM in .NET
I Can't Promise To Answer All Of Your Prayers, But I Promise To Always Listen
I didn't know that I'd been nominated, but apparently I was canonized yesterday as the Patron Saint of Smart Client Applications. I promise to be a firm but fair Deity. : )