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.
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003, 9:54 AM in .NET
WinFX: An All-Managed API by Ian Griffiths
Here. I can't believe a missed the first piece of Ian Griffiths's new column! Ian is a DevelopMentor instructor, co-author on three books with me (two still in development) and a long-time friend. Check out his opinion on WinFX and what it means for developers and please point me at the RSS feed so I don't miss the next one!
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2003, 9:41 AM in .NET
WinForms Prog. in VB.NET: Design-Time Integration
Here. FTP has posted the Design-Time Integration chapter from Windows Forms Programming in Visual Basic .NET. Enjoy.
Tuesday, Dec 9, 2003, 11:50 PM in .NET
Photo Organization App Build Entirely with .NET
Here. Of course, consumers won't care that the Electronic Showbox photo organization, editing and sharing software was built from the ground up using the .NET Framework (and Genghis), but I understand from the CTO that he "shudders" to think what it would have been link to develop in native code. Plus, he gives free copies to his favorite bloggers. Enjoy.
Tuesday, Dec 9, 2003, 9:49 PM in .NET
Longhorn-Specific PDC Presentations, Slides & Code
If you're overwhelmed by the huge number of PDC talks, I've split out the Longhorn-specific talks, including streaming video presentations, slides and demo source code as available.
Tuesday, Dec 9, 2003, 9:41 PM in .NET
Graphic Designer + Coder + Longhorn = Goodness
Adam Kinney seems to be that rare combination of graphic designer and coder that I want to be to survive in the brave new world of Longhorn. I'm following his blog avidly.
Tuesday, Dec 9, 2003, 8:36 PM in Tools
Learn the new VC++ from the master
I used to brag that, unlike most C++ programmers, I learned C++ directly from the CFRONT 2.0 release notes and not from Stanley Lippman (his C++ Primer is a key part of C++ canon law). That boast came to a screeching halt when I had Stan in one of my COM courses and he revealed that he'd written the CFRONT 2.0 release notes.
And as if teaching the world C++ wasn't enough, now that he works at Microsoft on the new Visual C++ and it's new support for the .NET Framework in "Whidbey," he's started a blog to teach the world now only how VC++'s new tracking handle syntax (aka "hat") but more importantly to point out *why* the VC++ went in this new direction.
And I can't imagine someone I'd rather learn it from.
Wednesday, Dec 3, 2003, 11:50 AM in .NET
Avalon's Dependency Properties
Drew Marsh describes the internals of the XAML dotted attribute syntax that I described a few days ago as well as contrasting it with the existing .NET IExtenderProperty model.
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2003, 9:25 PM in .NET
Avalon Dissected: A 3-Part Series by Drew Marsh
Here.
Drew's documenting what he discovers as he digs into Avalon.
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2003, 9:02 PM
It's Official -- Office is an Operating System
When you can write nearly perfect versions of PacMan and Space Invaders in your favorite productivity application, you know it's crossed the boundary. Of course, treating cells like pixels and implementing the game by changing the background colors probably wasn't what the Excel developers had in mind, but frankly, that's not much different than what the guys writing the original games had to deal with. Wow.
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2003, 4:17 PM
FreeTextBox Rocks!
Because of history and laziness, my blog entries come from an HTML form on my site and they've always been in plain text. Well, today I got tired of that, so I asked Kent Sharkey (the MSDN King of ASP.NET) what I should get. He recommended the FreeTextBox ASP.NET control and this thing rocks! The Word/FrontPage keystrokes work the way I want them to. The Styles and Fonts and Colors are all provided for in an Office 2003-like toolbar. There's a spell-checker (that installs on the fly, no less!), raw HTML editing, a table editor and a function that cleans up Word-produced HTML better than FrontPage! Plus it only took me about 30 minutes to get the thing going from a standing start and that included moving a form to use post-back so that I could enable runat=server. The only things I haven't figured out how to make it do are disable some of the toolbar items, allow tab to take me out of the editor to other controls on my form and set the target on a link, but still, not bad for 30 minutes. : )
Highly Recommended.
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2003, 3:47 PM in .NET
More Love for XAML Syntax: Dotted Element Names
Don Box simplified my XAML code using resources and styles. He also illustrates another XAML-ism that I'm coming to love: dotted element names. When you see something a dotted element name in XAML:
<GridPanel>
<GridPanel.Resources>...</GridPanel.Resources>
...
</GridPanel>
what you're looking at is a more convenient way of specifying an XML attribute using XML element syntax. For example, while you can specify a menu item like s
<MenuItem Header="New" />
However, if you're doing anything fancy, like specifying an access key, you can do this using the dotted element name syntax:
<MenuItem>
<MenuItem.Header>
<FlowPanel>
<AccessKey Key="N" />
<SimpleText>ew</SimpleText>
</FlowPanel>
</MenuItem.Header>
</MenuItem>
In the first case, we're just specifying a string, so declaring the Header attribute inline makes sense. In the second case, we're composing the Header for the MenuItem as a FlowPanel, combining an AccessKey and a SimpleText element. Underneath the covers, XAML attributes translate into properties, so for those properties more complicated than strings, the dotted element name syntax allows properties to be specified as sub-elements.
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2003, 3:31 PM
test
<this>is a test </this>
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2003, 10:19 AM in .NET
Indigo and Star Trek
Here. I've always been a big fan of wacky analogies to illustrate points and Steve's got a good one.
Monday, Dec 1, 2003, 10:02 AM in .NET
New Longhorn Site for Academics
Here. "There are many sites on the web related to Longhorn already, but none that are geared towards academia. In fact, the most common sites like LonghornBlogs.com are made up largely of Microsoft employees. We think that an independent site where users can share their knowledge but also opinion will go a long way towards making Longhorn a better product for everyone!" LonghornBlogs.com is for anyone, but a site for academics interested in Longhorn is a good thing, too. Welcome!
Sunday, Nov 30, 2003, 3:00 PM in .NET
Another Great Set of WinForms Controls
Here. Duncan [1] points out Tim Dawson's set of WinForms controls, all of which are either free or cheap for commercial apps. Not only are the controls well-designed and flexible, they're also documented with a set of tutorials and provide an extensive design-time experience. I don't know how someone can make a living giving this stuff away, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy Tim's generosity. [1] http://weblogs.asp.net/duncanma/posts/40415.aspx