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.
Monday, Jan 26, 2004, 8:54 AM
New MSDN Data Access & Storage Developer Center
MSDN launches it's new Data Access & Storage Developer Center for all your data access and storage needs. Check out Christa's goals for the site and don't hesitate to send your comments her way.
Friday, Jan 23, 2004, 7:25 PM in .NET
Paul Thurrott Talks to the Longhorn Aero Team
Here. "Hillel Cooperman and Tjeerd ('cheered') Hoek are two of the key figures in the Windows User Experience team at Microsoft, and they've worked on some the company's more advanced user interface projects over the past several years, including MSN "Mars," Internet Explorer/shell, Windows 'Neptune,' Windows XP, and now Longhorn. While my first (somewhat humorous) run-in with the Windows User Experience folks came during a Windows XP Beta 2 event in Seattle three years ago, the team has been working tireless toward Longhorn since the early days of Windows 95, when it moved Windows to the Explorer shell.
"This interview is the first in a series highlighting the personalities behind the technology. It's often all too easy to depersonalize a company as large as Microsoft, but there are real people behind these products, and they care very deeply that the products they create are as aesthetically beautiful, functional, secure, and reliable as they can be."
I agree, Paul. Thanks.
Thursday, Jan 22, 2004, 8:25 PM in .NET
MSBuild on MSDN TV
Here. Alex Kipman, a Microsoft PM, talks about changing the VS.NET Whidbey build process using it's new build engine: MSBuild. If you're interested in batch building or extending your own build process, MSBuild is worth your attention.
Thursday, Jan 22, 2004, 8:52 AM in .NET
Introducing Microsoft WinFX by Brent Rector
Brent Rector's PDC book on Longhorn/WinFX is now available for purchase. We're posting the chapters on the Longhorn DevCenter, but atoms are nice, too, especially when they come in the shape of a book.
Wednesday, Jan 21, 2004, 8:21 PM in .NET
Setting DataGrid Styles for Custom Types
I was data binding an ArrayList of objects of a custom type, e.g. class Person { public string Name; public DateTime BirthDate; public int Teeth; }, to a DataGrid today and everything working great 'til I wanted to filter one of the columns out (who cares how many Teeth a person has?). I was all set with table styles and grid styles like so:
void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
DataGridTableStyle tableStyle = new DataGridTableStyle();
tableStyle.DataGrid = this.dataGrid1;
tableStyle.MappingName = "Something???";
this.dataGrid1.TableStyles.Add(tableStyle); string[] columns = { "Name", "BirthDate" }; // Skip Teeth
foreach( string column in columns ) {
DataGridTextBoxColumn columnStyle = new DataGridTextBoxColumn();
columnStyle.HeaderText = column;
columnStyle.MappingName = column;
tableStyle.GridColumnStyles.Add(columnStyle);
}// Create ArrayList of Person objects...
this.dataGrid1.DataSource = personList;
}
The problem was the table style's MappingName. When DataBinding to a DataTable, it's just the table name, but what is it when I've got a collection of objects of a custom type? Daniel Herling, a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft and the "man" of the DataGrid, came to my rescue:
If you bind to an ITypedList (say, System.Data.DataTable) then the mapping name should be ITypedList::GetListName(). For a System.Data.DataTable this would be the name of the data table.
If you don’t bind to an IList that is not ITypedList then the mapping name should be list.GetType().Name where list is the list the data grid is bound to.
So, all I had to do was set the table style mapping name to the type of my custom class:
tableStyle.MappingName = typeof(ArrayList).Name;
This wasn't bad at all to bind a DataGrid to exactly the properties of my Person objects that I want w/o having to hack another custom shim type or changing the Person type itself to accommodate the data binding. Thanks, Daniel!
Wednesday, Jan 21, 2004, 12:58 AM in .NET
Creating Drop Shadow Text in Avalon
Here. Nathan Dunlap posts another great example of Avalon effects. This time, he shows adding drop shadows to text in Avalon.
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004, 10:06 PM in .NET
A Gathering of Longhorn Code Samples
Folks have been posting Longhorn code samples on their blogs, which is great. Also, I've been collecting bigger code samples on the Longhorn Developer Center on the Tools & Code Samples section as well as with the PDC talks.
Also, I just noticed a Longhorn sample in the unedited section of CodeProject.com, one of my favorite user contribution sites.
Of course, you can post your sample on GotDotNet.com using the Longhorn category and there are already a coupla GDN Longhorn samples for your edification.
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004, 8:42 AM in .NET
Rory Blyth on the .NET Rocks! Internet Radio Show
Here. I'm a big Rory Blyth fan, so I'm downloading this show as I type this. Enjoy.
Monday, Jan 19, 2004, 10:15 PM in .NET
WinFX in Detail: Inside XAML
Here. Ian Griffiths shows some of the basics of XAML, including complex properties and how code is generated and integrated behind the scenes.
Monday, Jan 19, 2004, 11:52 AM
More NStuff
With the recent release of NCover, a shared source .NET code coverage tool, the Nxxx line of .NET development tools is getting pretty impressive:
- NAnt: XML-based build tool
- NDoc: turn XML comments into pretty HTML pages
- NUnit: code testing framework
- NCover: code coverage
Have I missed any?
Sunday, Jan 18, 2004, 10:13 AM in .NET
Longhorn Articles in Italian
Devleap.com, a site dedicated to Windows development for Italian developers, has added a new Longhorn section. Even though I can't read Italian, I like the idea of Longhorn articles in a language of romance. Read them with your sweetheart over a candle lit dinner. I know that's my plan. : )
Saturday, Jan 17, 2004, 11:59 AM
This Ain't a Technical Blog
Just so folks know, I feel no responsibility whatsoever to keep my postings on sellsbrothers.com to a specific topic. If I want to post my political views, I'll do so. If that bothers you, I suggest you unsubscribe now as complaints about the subject matter for my posts will fall on deaf ears.
Also, there's an undoc'd feature on my site that might interest folks. I have topic-specific RSS feeds that correspond to the categories of topics that I post. For example, the Longhorn DevCenter Editor's Blog is fed from http://sellsbrothers.com/news/rss2.aspx?category=longhorn so that only Longhorn-specific topics show up on that page. If you'd like to form your own topic-specific RSS feed URL, I currently use the following categories:
- Tools
- Longhorn
- Spout
- Conference
- Fun
- Writing
- Money
However, I post a lot of stuff that's uncategorized and the only way to get that stuff is to subscribe to the main RSS feed.
Saturday, Jan 17, 2004, 11:44 AM in .NET
Glowing Image Effects in Avalon
Here. Robert Wlodarczyk posts another sample dedicated to showing off the glowing image effects in Avalon. Sweet.
Saturday, Jan 17, 2004, 11:43 AM
Don's Questions Awaiting Answers
For those asking, I have sent off a selection of our questions to Don. Eating dinner with him last night, he said that the first three answers were "yes," "no" and "100." When he gets all the answers together, I'll post them here. : )
Friday, Jan 16, 2004, 12:59 PM in .NET
Avalon Image Effects Sample
Robert Wlodarczyk, a software engineer on the Avalon testing team, has posted a most excellent sample showing off the wide variety of effects you can apply to images in Avalon. Very cool.