Windows Client Developer Roundup for 2/15/2010

This is Windows Client Developer roundup #11. The Windows Client Developer Roundup aggregates information of interest to Windows Client Developers, including WPF , Surface, Windows 7, XNA, Windows Forms , and some Silverlight . If you have something interesting you’ve done or have run across, please send me the URL and brief description via the contact link on my blog. This week I’m on campus in Redmond, and at the MVP Global Summit. I’m looking forward to seeing lots of Silverlight and WPF goodness, as well as meeting folks in the community

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Windows Client Developer Roundup for 2/15/2010

Snoop, Now even better, thanks to the Community

Once upon a time, Pete Blois at Microsoft created the awesome WPF utility Snoop. Snoop is an indispensable utility for inspecting and debugging WPF applications. It’s also just cool to play with. Snoop is a small toolbar that sits up in the corner of Windows, waiting for WPF applications to show up. When you select one, you can then “snoop” around to see what’s in there. For example, here’s Snoop working on Seesmic. Notice the hover preview you get for items in the tree

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Snoop, Now even better, thanks to the Community

Announcing: touch.codeplex.com - Multi-touch for Silverlight 3/4 and WPF 3.5sp1

Marc Schweigert in public sector just announced the availability of touch.codeplex.com , a set of multi-touch behaviors for WPF 3.5sp1, Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4. Project Overview The APIs in WPF4 plus the Surface Toolkit for Windows Touch make building common touch scenarios easy. However, implementing many of the same touch scenarios using WPF3.5SP1 or Silverlight 3/4 involves writing a fair bit more code. Furthermore, the touch APIs across WPF4, WPF3.5SP1, and Silverlight are different.

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Announcing: touch.codeplex.com - Multi-touch for Silverlight 3/4 and WPF 3.5sp1

Announcing: The WPF Feature Feedback and Voting Site

I like getting WPF feedback from the community. I talk to customers, look at blogs, scan forums, and have standing searches set up on Twitter . The feedback I get is great, but it's not structured or contained in all one location. We’re now in the early planning stages for WPF v.next. Following some of the great work folks like Tim Heuer have done in making the Silverlight planning process more transparent and open since our last WPF release, the WPF product team has created the WPF public feature request and voting site at uservoice .

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Announcing: The WPF Feature Feedback and Voting Site

VS2010: The "ValidateXaml" task failed unexpectedly

As you’re moving all of your Silverlight solutions into Visual Studio 2010, you might encounter an error on compile like so: System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly ‘file:///C:devSilverlightxxxyyy.dll’ or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80131515) File name: ‘file:///C:devSilverlightxxxyyy.dll’ —> System.NotSupportedException: An attempt was made to load an assembly from a network location which would have caused the assembly to be sandboxed in previous versions of the .NET Framework. This release of the .NET Framework does not enable CAS policy by default, so this load may be dangerous. If this load is not intended to sandbox the assembly, please enable the loadFromRemoteSources switch. See http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155569 for more information. This error is due to referencing one or more assemblies that were downloaded from the web and perhaps extracted from a ZIP file - things such as third party controls.

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VS2010: The "ValidateXaml" task failed unexpectedly

The Book of WPF

Ever wonder what types of applications people are building in WPF ? It can be hard to just stumble across them as they are typically products, or applications behind firewalls. Luckily, we now have the Book of WPF . The Book is a nicely produced PDF with screen shots and information about each of the apps being showcased.

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The Book of WPF

Tell me about your services…

My team has been doing a little thinking recently about the “services” space.

24 Hour 50% off Deal on my Upcoming Manning Book: Silverlight in Action, Revised Edition

On Wednesday February 10, 2010 my book is on sale at Manning for 50% off.That’s print, MEAP, e-book or any combination of the bunch. This is a special thanks for blog subscribers and twitter followers. To get the discount, visit my book page on Manning , choose the eBook or print book. When you’re ready to check out, enter the code: silver50now in the coupon code box. The coupon is good only for Silverlight in Action, Revised Edition. 50% off is pretty sweet.

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24 Hour 50% off Deal on my Upcoming Manning Book: Silverlight in Action, Revised Edition

Tip: New .NET 4 String Function to Check for Empty Strings

How many times have you written code similar to this? string firstName = FirstName.Text.Trim(); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(firstName)) { // do something } or if (someParam == null || string.IsNullOrEmpty(someParam.Trim()) throw new ArgumentException(”Empty string”, “someParam”); // do something A nice little time-saver for those guard functions is now included in .NET 4: the IsNullOrWhiteSpace function: if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(FirstName.Text)) { // do something } IsNullOrWhiteSpace checks for null, empty or whitespace characters. Sure, it’s a little thing, but it’s nice to have it in there, especially considering we get all sorts of nice new little things, and the client framework install is still smaller than it was in .NET 3.5

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Tip: New .NET 4 String Function to Check for Empty Strings

Getting Started with WPF : Hello World in multiple flavors

So you’re brand spanking new to WPF . You have to start somewhere, so how about good old “Hello World”. Tooling First, some tooling. If you are in a situation where you can use Beta or RC products, download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 RC.

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Getting Started with WPF : Hello World in multiple flavors