Search Results

Search found 5810 results on 233 pages for 'staff of geeks'.

Page 77/233 | < Previous Page | 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84  | Next Page >

• What is Database Continuous Integration?

  - by SQLDev

  Although not everyone is practicing continuous integration, many have at least heard of the concept. A recent poll on www.simple-talk.com indicates that 40% of respondents are employing the technique. It is widely accepted that the earlier issues are identified in the development process, the lower the cost to the development process. The worst case scenario, of course, is for the bug to be found by the customer following the product release. A number of Agile development best practices have evolved to combat this problem early in the development process, including pair programming, code inspections and unit testing. Continuous integration is one such Agile concept that tackles the problem at the point of committing a change to source control. This can alternatively be run on a regular schedule. This triggers a sequence of events that compiles the code and performs a variety of tests. Often the continuous integration process is regarded as a build validation test, and if issues were to be identified at this stage, the testers would simply not 'waste their time ' and touch the build at all. Such a ‘broken build’ will trigger an alert and the development team’s number one priority should be to resolve the issue. How application code is compiled and tested as part of continuous integration is well understood. However, this isn’t so clear for databases. Indeed, before I cover the mechanics of implementation, we need to decide what we mean by database continuous integration. For me, database continuous integration can be implemented as one or more of the following: 1)      Your application code is being compiled and tested. You therefore need a database to be maintained at the corresponding version. 2)      Just as a valid application should compile, so should the database. It should therefore be possible to build a new database from scratch. 3)     Likewise, it should be possible to generate an upgrade script to take your already deployed databases to the latest version. I will be covering these in further detail in future blogs. In the meantime, more information can be found in the whitepaper linked off www.red-gate.com/ci If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly or post a comment to this blog post.

  Read the article

• Links and code from session on Entity Framework 4, Parallel and C# 4.0 new features

  - by Eric Nelson

  Last week (12th May 2010) I did a session in the city on lot of the new .NET 4.0 Stuff. My demo code and links below. Code Parallel demos http://gist.github.com/364522  C# 4.0 new features http://gist.github.com/403826  EF4 Links Entity Framework 4 Resources http://bit.ly/ef4resources Entity Framework Team Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet Entity Framework Design Blog http://blogs.msdn.com/efdesign/ Parallel Links Parallel Computing Dev Center http://msdn.com/concurrency Code samples http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ParExtSamples Managed blog http://blogs.msdn.com/pfxteam Tools blog http://blogs.msdn.com/visualizeparallel C# 4.0 New features http://bit.ly/baq3aU  New in .NET 4.0 Coevolution http://bit.ly/axglst  New in C# 4.0 http://bit.ly/bG1U2Y

  Read the article

• SharePoint 2010 Data Retrival Techinques

  - by Jayant Sharma

  In SharePoint, we have two options to perform CRUD operation.1. using server side code2. using client side codeusing server side code, we have 1. CAML2. LINQusing client side code, we have 1. Client Object Model    1.1.      Managed Client Object Model     1.2.     Silverlight Client Object Model    1.3.     ECMA Client Object Model2. SharePoint Web Services3. ADO Data Service (based on REST Web Services)4. Using RPC Call (owssvr.dll)Which and when these options are used depend upon requirements. Every options are certain advantages and disadvantages. So, before start development of any new sharepoint project, it is important to understand the limitations of different methods.Server Object Model is used when our application is host on the same server on which sharepoint is installed. while Client Side code is used to access sharepoint from client system. In SharePoint 2010 specially Client Object Model (COM) are introduced to perform the sharepoint operations from client system. Advantage of CAML:    -  It is fast.    -  Can be use it from all kind of technology like Silverlight, or Jquery    -  You can use U2U CAML Query builder to generate CAML Query.Disadvantage Of CAML:    - Error Prone, as we can detect the error only at runtimeAdvantage of LINQ:    -  Object Oriented technique (Object Relation Model)    -  LINQ  to SharePoint provider are working with Strongly Type List Item Objects, So intellisence are present at runtime    -  No need of knowledge of CAML    -  Less Error Prone as it as it uses C# syntex.    -  You can compare two Fields of SharePoint ListDisadvantage Of LINQ:    -  List Attachment is not supported in SPMetal Tool    -  Created By, Created, Modified and Modified By Fields are not created by SPMetal Tool.    -  Custom fields are not created by SPMetal Tools    -  External Lists are not supported    -  Though at backend LINQ genenates CAML Query so it is slower than directly using CAML in Code.  Advantage of Client Object Model    -  Used to access sharepoint from client system    -  No WebServer is required at Client End    - Can use Silverlight and JavaScripts to make better and fast User experienceDisadvantage of Client Object Model    -  You cannot use RunwithEleveatedPrivilege    - Cross Site Collection query are not possible    - Lesser API's are availableADO.Net Data Services:    -  Only List based operations are possible, other type of operations are not possible.SharePoint Web Services and RPC Call:    - Previously it was used in SharePoint 2007 but after the introduction  of Client Object Model,  Microsoft recommends not to use Web Services to fetch data from SharePoint. In SharePoint 2010 it is avaliable only for backward compatibility.Ref: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee539764Jayant Sharma

  Read the article

• Acr.ExtDirect &ndash; Part 1 &ndash; Method Resolvers

  - by Allan Ritchie

  One of the most important things of any open source libraries in my opinion is to be as open as possible while avoiding having your library become invasive to your code/business model design.  I personally could never stand marking my business and/or data access code with attributes everywhere.  XML also isn’t really a fav with too many people these days since it comes with a startup performance hit and requires runtime compiling.  I find that there is a whole ton of communication libraries out there currently requiring this (ie. WCF, RIA, etc).  Even though Acr.ExtDirect comes with its own set of attributes, you can piggy-back the [ServiceContract] & [OperationContract] attributes from WCF if you choose.  It goes beyond that though, there are 2 others “out-of-the-box” implementations – Convention based & XML Configuration.    Convention – I don’t actually recommend using this one since it opens up all of your public instance methods to remote execution calls. XML Configuration – This isn’t so bad but requires you enter all of your methods and there operation types into the Castle XML configuration & as I said earlier, XML isn’t the fav these days.   So what are your options if you don’t like attributes, convention, or XML Configuration?  Well, Acr.ExtDirect has its own extension base to give the API a list of methods and components to make available for remote execution.  1: public interface IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type); 4: string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model); 5: string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model); 6: DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method); 7: }   Now to implement our own method resolver:   1: public class TestResolver : IDirectMethodResolver { 2:   3: #region IDirectMethodResolver Members 4:   5: /// <summary> 6: /// Determine if you are calling a service 7: /// </summary> 8: /// <param name="model"></param> 9: /// <param name="type"></param> 10: /// <returns></returns> 11: public bool IsServiceType(ComponentModel model, Type type) { 12: return (type.Namespace == "MyBLL.Data"); 13: } 14:   15: /// <summary> 16: /// Return the calling name for the client side 17: /// </summary> 18: /// <param name="model"></param> 19: /// <returns></returns> 20: public string GetNamespace(ComponentModel model) { 21: return model.Name; 22: } 23:   24: public string[] GetDirectMethodNames(ComponentModel model) { 25: switch (model.Name) { 26: case "Products" : 27: return new [] { 28: "GetProducts", 29: "LoadProduct", 30: "Save", 31: "Update" 32: }; 33:   34: case "Categories" : 35: return new [] { 36: "GetProducts" 37: }; 38:   39: default : 40: throw new ArgumentException("Invalid type"); 41: } 42: } 43:   44: public DirectMethodType GetMethodType(ComponentModel model, MethodInfo method) { 45: if (method.Name.StartsWith("Save") || method.Name.StartsWith("Update")) 46: return DirectMethodType.FormSubmit; 47: 48: else if (method.Name.StartsWith("Load")) 49: return DirectMethodType.FormLoad; 50:   51: else 52: return DirectMethodType.Direct; 53: } 54:   55: #endregion 56: }   And there you have it, your own custom method resolver.  Pretty easy and pretty open ended!

  Read the article

• Fixing Chrome&rsquo;s AJAX Request Caching Bug

  - by Steve Wilkes

  I recently had to make a set of web pages restore their state when the user arrived on them after clicking the browser’s back button. The pages in question had various content loaded in response to user actions, which meant I had to manually get them back into a valid state after the page loaded. I got hold of the page’s data in a JavaScript ViewModel using a JQuery ajax call, then iterated over the properties, filling in the fields as I went. I built in the ability to describe dependencies between inputs to make sure fields were filled in in the correct order and at the correct time, and that all worked nicely. To make sure the browser didn’t cache the AJAX call results I used the JQuery’s cache: false option, and ASP.NET MVC’s OutputCache attribute for good measure. That all worked perfectly… except in Chrome. Chrome insisted on retrieving the data from its cache. cache: false adds a random query string parameter to make the browser think it’s a unique request – it made no difference. I made the AJAX call a POST – it made no difference. Eventually what I had to do was add a random token to the URL (not the query string) and use MVC routing to deliver the request to the correct action. The project had a single Controller for all AJAX requests, so this route: routes.MapRoute( name: "NonCachedAjaxActions", url: "AjaxCalls/{cacheDisablingToken}/{action}", defaults: new { controller = "AjaxCalls" }, constraints: new { cacheDisablingToken = "[0-9]+" }); …and this amendment to the ajax call: function loadPageData(url) { // Insert a timestamp before the URL's action segment: var indexOfFinalUrlSeparator = url.lastIndexOf("/"); var uniqueUrl = url.substring(0, indexOfFinalUrlSeparator) + new Date().getTime() + "/" + url.substring(indexOfFinalUrlSeparator); // Call the now-unique action URL: $.ajax(uniqueUrl, { cache: false, success: completePageDataLoad }); } …did the trick.

  Read the article

• SCCM2012 R2 – How to integrate MDT with SCCM

  - by Waclaw Chrabaszcz

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Wchrabaszcz/archive/2013/11/12/sccm2012-r2--how-to-integrate-mdt-with-sccm.aspxThere are two maybe not competitive but parallel products: Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and System Center Configuration manager. Few years ago I was wondering why they are separate, I why I cannot share Task Sequences between them. And how it usually happens in live, when I was focused on other technologies, MDT and SCCM became best friends. Let's integrate MDT with SCCM: If first step you need to download MDT http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=25175 Install MDT on your SCCM server boxaccept the EULA Join CEIP if you like  Once you completed the installation I would recommend you to complete MDT configuring before integration with the SCCM. Start the Deployment Workbenchinstall updatesyou will need to download and install WAIKcreate new deployment shareleave default values Create MDT databaseMake sure you will create separate database, DO NOT use existing SCCM DB Now we are ready to integrate MDT with SCCMthe Integration tool should discover your server automaticallyAfter reopening SCCM console in task sequences you should have new cool features: How to use them? That's another story …

  Read the article

• HTML5 Boilerplate template for ASP.NET with Visual Studio 2010

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  This is the 5th post in the series of HTML5 for ASP.NET Developers  Support for HTML5 in Visual Studio 2010 has been quite good with Visual Studio Service Pack 1 However, HTML5 Boilerplate template has been one of the most popular HTML5 templates out in the internet.  Now, there is one for your favorite ASP.NET Webforms as well as ASP.NET MVC 3 Projects (even for ASP.NET MVC 2).  And its available in the most optimal place, i.e. NuGet. Lets see it in action.  Let us fire up Visual Studio 2010 and create a “File – New Project – ASP.NET Web Application” and leave the default name to create the project.  The default project template creates Site.Master, Default.aspx and the Account (membership) files. When you run the project without any changes, it shows up the default Master Page with the Home and About placeholder pages. Also, just to check the rendering on devices, lets try running the same page in Windows Phone 7 Emulator.  You can download the SDK from here Clearly, it looks bad on the emulator and if we were to publish the application as is, its going to be the same experience when users browse this app. Close the browser and then switch to Visual Studio.   Right click on the project and select “Manage NuGet Packages” The NuGet Package Manager dialog opens up.  Search for HTML5 Boilerplate.  The options for MVC & Web Forms show up.  Click on Install corresponding to the “Add HTML5 Boilerplate to Web Forms” options. It installs the template in a few seconds.   Once installed, you will be able to see a lot of additional Script files and also the all important HTML5Boilerplate.Master file.  This would be the replacement for the default Site.Master.  We need to change the Content Pages (Default.aspx & other pages) to point to this Master Page.  Example <%@ <% Master Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Html5Boilerplate.Master.cs" Inherits="WebApplication14.SiteMaster" %> would be the setting in the Default.aspx Page. You can do a Find & Replace for Site.Master to HTML5Boilerplate.Master for the whole solution so that it is changed in all the locations. With this, we have our Webforms application ready with HTML5 capabilities.  Needless to say, we need to wire up HTML5 mark up level code, canvas, etc., further to use the actual HTML5 features, but even without that, the page is now HTML5’ed.   One of the advantages of HTML5 (here HTML5 is collectively referred for CSS3, Javascript enhancements etc.,)  is the ability to render the pages better on mobile and hand held devices. So, now when we run the page from Visual Studio, the following is what we get.  Notice the site.icon automatically added.  The page otherwise looks similar to what it was earlier. Now, when we also check this page on the Windows Phone Emulator, here below is what, we get. As you can see, we definitely get a better experience now.  Of course, this is not the only HTML5 feature that we can use.  We need to wire up additional code for using Canvas, SVG and other HTML5 features.  But, definitely, this is a good starting point. You can also install the HTML5boilerplate Template for your ASP.NET MVC 3 and ASP.NET MVC 2 from the NuGet packages and get them ready for HTML5. Cheers !!!

  Read the article

• Inevitable Corporate Bureaucracy

  - by Ahsan Alam

  Top executives of most smaller organizations want their companies to be different from the larger corporations. They want their organizations smaller in size; but bigger in productivity by eliminating red tapes and corporate bureaucracy. When the company is smaller, people often work like firefighters – taking on new business and technology challenges without thinking about any procedures and guidelines. People also tend to wear many hats to accomplish tasks quickly in order to integrate new businesses. For example, software developers in smaller organizations may take on responsibilities of client interactions, requirements gathering, design and development, code deployment, production support, network infrastructure support, database design and maintenance along with countless other duties. In addition, systems in smaller organizations tend to be loosely guarded. So, people often don't follow many procedures in order to setup environments and implement technical projects. It's not uncommon to change code and deploy without anyone realizing. Similarly, business requirements may also get defined in an informal manner without any type of documentation. As the company grows, everything starts to change significantly impacting people and the overall business process. Suddenly, following procedures become extremely important. Consequently, new roles, guidelines and procedures start to emerge. Everything from business process to technology implementation start to become more and more process oriented. Organizations start to define and document steps, invent procedure to track process and systems level changes, and start restricting access to various systems for security reasons. At the same time, as a growing company start doing businesses with larger clienteles, they are automatically forced to abide by all sorts of industry compliance laws. Moreover, growing companies tend to recruit experienced individuals to fill new roles who usually bring their expertise from larger and more bureaucratic organizations.   Despite the best efforts from the top executives, it seems increased number of procedures and guidelines as well as new recruits automatically contribute to the evolution of corporate bureaucracy. Maybe, corporate bureaucracy is an inevitable side effect of a growing organization.

  Read the article

• Silverlight Cream for December 07, 2010 -- #1004

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: András Velvárt, Kunal Chowdhury(-2-), AvraShow, Gill Cleeren, Ian T. Lackey, Richard Waddell, Joe McBride, Michael Crump, Xpert360, keyboardP, and Pete Vickers(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView" Kunal Chowdhury WP7: "Phone 7 Back Button and the ListPicker control" Ian T. Lackey Shoutouts: Colin Eberhardt has some Silverlight 5 Adoption Predictions you may want to check out. Michael Crump has a post up showing lots of the goodness of Silverlight 5 from the Firestarter... screenshots, code snippets, etc: Silverlight 5 – What’s New? (Including Screenshots & Code Snippets) Kunal Chowdhury has a pretty complete Silverlight 5 feature set from the Firestarter and an embedded copy of Scott Guthrie's kenote running on the page: New Features Announced for Silverlight 5 Beta From SilverlightCream.com: Just how productive is WP7 development compared to iOS, Android and mobile Web? András Velvárt blogged about a contest he took part in to build a WP7 app in 1-1/2 hours without any prior knowledge of it's funtion. He and his team-mate were pitted against other teams on Android, IOS, and mobile Web... guess who got (almost) their entire app running? ... just too cool Andras! ... Grouping Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury has a couple good posts up, this first one is on using the PagedCollectionView to group the records in a DataGrid... code included. Filtering Records in Silverlight DataGrid using PagedCollectionView Kunal Chowdhury then continues with another post on the PagedCollectionView only this time is showing how to do some filtering. DeepZoom Tips and Techniques AvraShow has a post up discussing using DeepZoom to explore, in his case, a Printed Circuit Board, with information about how he proceeded in doing that, and some tips and techniques along the way. The validation story in Silverlight (Part 2) Gill Cleeren has Part 2 of his Silverlight Validation series up at SilverlightShow. This post gets into IDataErrorInfo and INotifyDataErrorInfo. Lots of code and the example is available for download. Phone 7 Back Button and the ListPicker control Ian T. Lackey has a post up about the WP7 backbutton and what can get a failure from the Marketplace in that area, and how that applies to the ListPicker as well. Very Simple Example of ICommand CanExecute Method and CanExecuteChanged Event Richard Waddell has a nice detailed tutorial on ICommand and dealing with CanExecute... lots of Blend love in this post. Providing an Alternating Background Color for an ItemsControl Joe McBride has a post up discussing putting an alternating background color on an ItemsControl... you know, how you do on a grid... interesting idea, and all the code... Pimp my Silverlight Firestarter Michael Crump has a great Firestarter post up ... where and how to get the videos, the labs... a good Firestarter resource for sure. Adventures with PivotViewer Part 7: Slider control Xpert360 has part 7 of the PivotViewer series they're doing up. This time they're demonstrating taking programmatic control of the Zoom slider. Creating Transparent Lockscreen Wallpapers for WP7 I don't know keyboardP's name, but he's got a cool post up about getting an image up for the WP7 lock screen that has transparent regions on it... pretty cool actually. Windows Phone 7 Linq to XML 'strangeness' Pete Vickers has a post up describing a problem he found with Linq to XML on WP7. He even has a demo app that has the problem, and the fix... and it's all downloadable. Windows Phone 7 multi-line radio buttons Pete Vickers has another quick post up on radio buttons with so much text that it needs wrapping ... this is for WP7, but applies to Silverlight in general. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

  Read the article

• Windows Phone 7 DatePicker gotcha

  - by David Turner

  The Silverlight Toolkit for Windows Phone adds some great extra controls for Windows Phone 7, one gotcha that I ran into was that the DatePicker Application Bar icons don’t show up unless you include them in your project. The problem is that your DatePicker ends up looking like this: Tim Heuer mentions this in his blog post about the Silverlight Toolkit for WP7, and as he says, it is documented in the source code: So the problem is that the icons can’t be referenced from the Silverlight Toolkit Assembly, and the solution is that you have to add them to you project in the ‘well known’ / pre-defined location of a top level folder in your project called Toolkit.Content, and you must make sure to mark the icons with a Build Action of  ‘Content’ otherwise it wont work: The result is that your DatePicker will now look like this:

  Read the article

• Android - Switching Activities with a Tab Layout

  - by Bill Osuch

  This post is based on the Tab Layout  tutorial on the Android developers site, with some modifications. I wanted to get rid of the icons (they take up too much screen real estate), and modify the fonts on the tabs. First, create a new Android project, with an Activity called TabWidget. Then, create two additional Activities called TabOne and TabTwo. Throw a simple TextView on each one with a message identifying the tab, like this: public class TabTwo extends Activity {  @Override  public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {   super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);   TextView tv = new TextView(this);   tv.setText("This is tab 2");   setContentView(tv);  } } And don't forget to add them to your AndroidManifest.xml file: <activity android:name=".TabOne"></activity> <activity android:name=".TabTwo"></activity> Now we'll create the tab layout - open the res/layout/main.xml file and insert the following: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <TabHost xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"  android:id="@android:id/tabhost"  android:layout_width="fill_parent"  android:layout_height="fill_parent">  <LinearLayout   android:orientation="vertical"   android:layout_width="fill_parent"   android:layout_height="fill_parent">   <TabWidget    android:id="@android:id/tabs"    android:layout_width="fill_parent"    android:layout_height="wrap_content" />   <FrameLayout    android:id="@android:id/tabcontent"             android:layout_width="fill_parent"    android:layout_height="fill_parent" />  </LinearLayout> </TabHost> Finally, we'll create the code needed to populate the TabHost. Make sure your TabWidget class extends TabActivity rather than Activity, and add code to grab the TabHost and create an Intent to launch a new Activity:    TabHost tabHost = getTabHost();  // The activity TabHost    TabHost.TabSpec spec;  // Reusable TabSpec for each tab    Intent intent;  // Reusable Intent for each tab       // Create an Intent to launch an Activity for the tab (to be reused)    intent = new Intent().setClass(this, TabOne.class); Add the first tab to the layout:    // Initialize a TabSpec for each tab and add it to the TabHost    spec = tabHost.newTabSpec("tabOne");      spec.setContent(intent);     spec.setIndicator("Tab One");     tabHost.addTab(spec); It's pretty tall as-is, so we'll shorten it:   // Squish the tab a little bit horizontally   tabHost.getTabWidget().getChildAt(0).getLayoutParams().height = 40; But the text is a little small, so let's increase the font size:   // Bump the text size up   LinearLayout ll = (LinearLayout) tabHost.getChildAt(0);   android.widget.TabWidget tw = (android.widget.TabWidget) ll.getChildAt(0);   RelativeLayout rllf = (RelativeLayout) tw.getChildAt(0);   TextView lf = (TextView) rllf.getChildAt(1);   lf.setTextSize(20); Do the same for the second tab, and you wind up with this: @Override     public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {         super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);         setContentView(R.layout.main);                 TabHost tabHost = getTabHost();  // The activity TabHost         TabHost.TabSpec spec;  // Reusable TabSpec for each tab         Intent intent;  // Reusable Intent for each tab            // Create an Intent to launch an Activity for the tab (to be reused)         intent = new Intent().setClass(this, TabOne.class);         // Initialize a TabSpec for each tab and add it to the TabHost         spec = tabHost.newTabSpec("tabOne");           spec.setContent(intent);          spec.setIndicator("Tab One");          tabHost.addTab(spec);         // Squish the tab a little bit horizontally         tabHost.getTabWidget().getChildAt(0).getLayoutParams().height = 40;         // Bump the text size up         LinearLayout ll = (LinearLayout) tabHost.getChildAt(0);         android.widget.TabWidget tw = (android.widget.TabWidget) ll.getChildAt(0);         RelativeLayout rllf = (RelativeLayout) tw.getChildAt(0);         TextView lf = (TextView) rllf.getChildAt(1);         lf.setTextSize(20);            // Do the same for the other tabs         intent = new Intent().setClass(this, TabTwo.class);         spec = tabHost.newTabSpec("tabTwo");          spec.setContent(intent);          spec.setIndicator("Tab Two");         tabHost.addTab(spec);         tabHost.getTabWidget().getChildAt(1).getLayoutParams().height = 40;         RelativeLayout rlrf = (RelativeLayout) tw.getChildAt(1);         TextView rf = (TextView) rlrf.getChildAt(1);         rf.setTextSize(20);            tabHost.setCurrentTab(0);     } Save and fire up the emulator, and you should be able to switch back and forth between your tabs!

  Read the article

• Day 4 - Game Sprites In Action

  - by dapostolov

  Yesterday I drew an image on the screen. Most exciting, but ... I spent more time blogging about it then actual coding. So this next little while I'm going to streamline my game and research and simply post key notes. Quick notes on the last session: The most important thing I wanted to point out were the following methods:           spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);           spriteBatch.End(); The spriteBatch object is used to draw Textures and a 2D texture is called a Sprite A texture is generally an image, which is called an Asset in XNA The Draw Method in the Game1.cs is looped (until exit) and utilises the spriteBatch object to draw a Scene To begin drawing a Scene you call the Begin Method. To end a Scene you call the End Method. And to place an image on the Scene you call the Draw method. The most simple implementation of the draw method is:           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); 1) sprite - the 2D texture you loaded to draw 2) position - the 2d vector, a set of x & y coordinates 3) Color.White - the tint to apply to the texture, in this case, white light = nothing, nada, no tint. Game Sprites In Action! Today, I played around with Draw methods to get comfortable with their "quirks". The following is an example of the above draw method, but with more parameters available for us to use. Let's investigate!             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position2, null, Color.White, MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), new Vector2(sprite.Width / 2, sprite.Height / 2), 1.0F, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0F); The parameters (in order): 1) sprite  the texture to display 2) position2 the position on the screen / scene this can also be a rectangle 3) null the portion of the image to display within an image null = display full image this is generally used for animation strips / grids (more on this below) 4) Color.White Texture tinting White = no tint 5) MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) rotation of the object, in this case 45 degrees rotates from the set plotting point. 6) new Vector(0,0) the plotting point in this case the top left corner the image will rotate from the top left of the texture in the code above, the point is set to the middle of the image. 7) 1.0f Image scaling (1x) 8) SpriteEffects.None you can flip the image horizontally or vertically 9) 0.0f The z index of the image. 0 = closer, 1 behind? And playing around with different combinations I was able to come up with the following whacky display:   Checking off Yesterdays Intention List: learn game development terminology (in progress) - We learned sprite, scene, texture, and asset. how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen (completed) - The thing to note was, it's was in radians and I found a cool helper method to convert degrees into radians. Also, the image rotates from it's specified point. how to layer static images on the screen (completed) - I couldn't seem to get the zIndex working, but one things for sure, the order you draw the image in also determines how it is rendered on the screen. understand image scaling (in progress) - I'm not sure I have this fully covered, but for the most part plug a number in the scaling field and the image grows / shrinks accordingly. can we reuse images? (completed) - yes, I loaded one image and plotted the bugger all over the screen. understand how framerate is handled in XNA (in progress) - I hacked together some code to display the framerate each second. A framerate of 60 appears to be the standard. Interesting to note, the GameTime object does provide you with some cool timing capabilities, such as...is the game running slow? Need to investigate this down the road. how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen (in progress) - i got text rendered on the screen, and i understand containing rectangles. However, I didn't display "shapes" & "colors" how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) (todo) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques (in progress) - I was able to create a stripe animation of numbers ranging from 1 - 4, each block was 40 x 40 pixles for a total stripe size of 160 x 40. Using the portion (source Rectangle) parameter, i limited this display to each section at varying intervals. It was interesting to note my first implementation animated at rocket speed. I then tried to create a smoother animation by limiting the redraw capacity, which seemed to work. I guess a little more research will have to be put into this for animating characters / scenes. how to detect colliding images or screen edges (todo) - but the rectangle object can detect collisions I believe. how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching (in progress) - I haven't figured out how to modify a specific color to be another color, but the tinting parameter definately could be used. As for stretching, use the rectangle object as the positioning and the image will stretch to fit! how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel (completed) - as per basic animation techniques what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) (todo) Tomorrows Intention Tomorrow I am going to take a stab at rendering a game menu and from there I'm going to investigate how I can improve upon the code and techniques. Intention List: Render a menu, fancy or not Show the mouse cursor Hook up click event A basic animation of somesort Investigate image / menu techniques D.

  Read the article

• BizTalk Server 2009 R2 = BizTalk Server 2010

  - by Rajesh Charagandla

  Microsoft has renamed BizTalk Server 2009 R2 as BizTalk Server 2010, and is now telling customers that the evolution of the product recommends it as a major version versus a minor update. BizTalk Server 2009 R2 was designed mainly to bring to the table support for the company’s latest technologies, including Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010. Following is list of key capabilities added to the release 1.       Enhanced trading partner management that will enable our customers to manage complex B2B relationships with ease 2.       Increase productivity through enhanced BizTalk Mapper. These enhancements are critical in increasing productivity in both EAI and B2B solutions; and a favorite feature of our customers. 3.       Enable secure data transfer across business partners with FTPS adapter 4.       Updated adapters for SAP 7, Oracle eBusiness Suite 12.1, SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 5.       Improved and simplified management with updated System Center management pack 6.       Simplified management through single dashboard which enables IT Pros to backup and restore BizTalk configuration 7.       Enhanced performance tuning capabilities at Host and Host Instance level 8.       Continued innovation in RFID Space with out of box event filtering and delivery of RFID events

  Read the article

• New Computer

  - by Matt Christian

  Last night I received my computer that was ordered with my tax return money.  Here are the specs of my old computer: - Pentium 4 Processor - 3-4 GB RAM - ~256 GB HDD space (2 drives) - nVidia card (AGP 8x) Sorry I can't be more specific, my memory is gone :p  Here are the new computer specs (mostly): - 2.8ghz Pentium i7 quadcore - 6 GB RAM - 1 TB HDD space (1 drive) - 1 GB Radeon card (PCI-X) I also got a new monitor (22" Asus with HDMI) so will be using my 19" widescreen as a secondary monitor. If I remember I'll hop on here and post the specifics later on...

  Read the article

• BizTalk Pipeline Component Error: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object"

  - by Stuart Brierley

  Yesterday I posted about my BizTalk Archiving Pipeline Component, which can be found on Codeplex if anyone is interested in taking a look. During testing of this component I began to encounter an error whereby the component would throw an "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error when processing as a part of a Custom Pipeline. This was occurring when the component was reading a ReadOnlySeekableStream so that the data can be archived to file, but the actual code throwing the error was somewhere in the depths of the Microsoft.BizTalk.Streaming stack. It turns out that there is a known issue where this exception can be thrown because the garbage collector has disposed of of the stream before execution of the custom pipeline has completed. To get around this you need to add the streams in your code to the pipeline context resource tracker.   So a block of my code goes from:                         originalStrm = bodyPart.GetOriginalDataStream();                         if (!originalStrm.CanSeek)                         {                             ReadOnlySeekableStream seekableStream = new ReadOnlySeekableStream(originalStrm);                             inmsg.BodyPart.Data = seekableStream;                             originalStrm = inmsg.BodyPart.Data;                         }                         fileArchive = new FileStream(FullPath, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write);                         binWriter = new BinaryWriter(fileArchive);                         byte[] buffer = new byte[bufferSize];                         int sizeRead = 0;                         while ((sizeRead = originalStrm.Read(buffer, 0, bufferSize)) != 0)                         {                             binWriter.Write(buffer, 0, sizeRead);                         } to                         originalStrm = bodyPart.GetOriginalDataStream();                         if (!originalStrm.CanSeek)                         {                             ReadOnlySeekableStream seekableStream = new ReadOnlySeekableStream(originalStrm);                             inmsg.BodyPart.Data = seekableStream;                             originalStrm = inmsg.BodyPart.Data;                         }                         pc.ResourceTracker.AddResource(originalStrm);                         fileArchive = new FileStream(FullPath, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write);                         binWriter = new BinaryWriter(fileArchive);                         byte[] buffer = new byte[bufferSize];                         int sizeRead = 0;                         while ((sizeRead = originalStrm.Read(buffer, 0, bufferSize)) != 0)                         {                             binWriter.Write(buffer, 0, sizeRead);                         } So far this seems to have solved the issue, the error is no more, and my archive component is continuing its way through testing.

  Read the article

• Microsoft C# Most Valuable Professional

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Recently I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Visual C#. For those that don’t know it’s an annual award based on nominations from peers and Microsoft. Although there are just over 4,000 MVPs worldwide from all kinds of specializations, there are less than 100 C# MVPs in the US. There is more information at the site: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. With fewer than 5,000 awardees worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. To recognize the contributions they make, MVPs from around the world have the opportunity to meet Microsoft executives, network with peers, and position themselves as technical community leaders. Here is my profile: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/profile/rob.reynolds I want to thank those that nominated me, without nominations this would never have happened. Thanks to Microsoft for liking me and finding my achievements and contributions to the community to be worth something. It’s good to know when you put in a lot of hard work that you get rewarded! I also want to thank many of the people I have worked with over the last 7 years. You guys have been great and I’m definitely standing on the shoulders of giants! Thanks to KDOT for giving me that first shot into professional programming and the experience and all of the training! A special thanks to @drusellers for kick starting me when I went stale in my learning back in 2007 and for always pushing me and bouncing ideas off of me. Without you I don’t think I would have made it this far. Thanks Alt.NET for keeping it fresh and funky! A very special thank you goes out to my wife for supporting me and locking me in the basement to work on all of my initiatives!

  Read the article

• I Choose iNada

  - by Mark Treadwell

  As a laptop and Kindle user, I have been looking at the usual cyclical Apple frenzy in the press with the same kind of amused tolerance I give my three-year-old son.  They never seem to learn, and they keep repeating the same things.  However when I ready articles like this, I am reminded that that is not always the case. I am a happy user of a monster-sized HP HDX laptop, HP touch screen all-in-one system, and multi-screen Dell desktops at home as well as a HP business laptop at work.  I have no iPod, iMac, iTouch or any other relationship with the company who wants to trademark the prefix “i”. I have not missed them. That is not to say that I have no technological gadgets.  I do.  They just do not dominate Every company wants to preserve their customer base, but Apple just does it too rigidly.  The buy-in necessary rubs me wrong.  When the fanboys scream about the next great iApple thing which will kill off another market segment (this time, the iPad will kill off laptops), the amused tolerance returns. From what I have seen, the iPad virtual keyboard is a poor substitute for an actual keyboard.  It was intended to let you get some kind of text into a device that is not really intended for keyboard input, but rather for touch manipulation of a designed interface.  I like the virtual keyboard on my LG Dare cell phone, but you will not catch me writing my next novel with it.  But, you hear, you can connect a real keyboard and get info from another computer.  That is when you realize that the iPad is not a true standalone device like a laptop.  You have to make more hardware purchases to get what you truly want.  It is an expensive accommodation to get you a different form of freedom. So if Apple made a product with me in mind, you can have it.  Everyone gets to make their own choice.  My choice is the iNada.

  Read the article

• Database .NET

  - by Guilherme Cardoso

  Database .NET is an awesome tool that allow us manage several database in simultaneous (SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, etc). What lead me to install this tool was an problem that must be shared by must developers. Tools like SQL Server Management Studio consume to many resources, and if you don't have a decent computer you'll get problems in performance, and that's my case! With Database .NET we can access an SQL Server for example, and make several actions to database (crud operations, manage procedures, etc).Of course that this tool can replace the use of SQL Server Management Studio for example!  But it's really usefull if  you just need to perform small operations because it consumes many fewer resources. This tool don't need to be installed (it can be used as an portable application). One tip: if you are using SQL Server Express for example, don't forget to check the server name in Database .NET connection. In my case i've to change from GUILHERM-196634 to GUILHERM-196634\SQLExpress. Project: http://fishcodelib.com/Database.htm Download: http://fishcodelib.com/files/DatabaseNet3.zip

  Read the article

• IE9, HTML5 and truck load of other stuff happening around the web

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  First of all, I haven’t been updating this blog as regularly as it used to be.  Primarily, due to the fact was I was visiting a lot of cities talking about SharePoint, Web Matrix, IE9 and few other stuff.  IE9 is my new found love and I simply think we have done great work in improving the browser and browsing experiences for our users. This post would talk about IE, general things happening around the web and few misconceptions around IE (I had earlier written about IE8 and common myths When you think about the way web has transformed, its truly amazing.  Rewind back to late 90s and early 2000s, web was a luxury.  There were lot of desktop applications running around and web applications was starting to pick up.  Primarily reason was not a lot of folks were into web development and the areas of web were confined to HTML and JavaScript.  CSS was around here and there but no one took it so seriously.  XML, XSLT was fast picking up and contributed to decent web development techniques. So as a web developer all we had to worry about was, building good looking websites which worked well with IE6 and occasionally with Safari.  Firefox was  not even in the picture then and so was Chrome.  But with the various arms of W3C consortium and other bodies working actively on stuff like CSS, SVG and XHTML, few more areas came into picture when it comes to browsers supporting standards.  IE6 for sure wasn’t up to the speed and the main issue we were tackling then was privacy and piracy.  We did invest a lot of our efforts to curb piracy and one of the steps into it was that, IE7 the next version of IE would install only on genuine windows machines.  What this means, is that, people who were running pirated windows xp knowingly/unknowingly could not install IE7 and the limitations of IE6 really hurt them.  One more thing of importance is that, if you were running pirated windows, lots of chances that you didn’t get the security updates and thereby were vulnerable to run viruses/trojans on your system. Many of them actually block using IE in the first place and make it difficult to browse.  SP2 came as a big boon but again was there only for genuine windows machines. With Firefox coming as a free install and also heavily pushed by Google then, it was natural that people would try an alternative.  By then, we had started working on IE8 supporting the best standards (note HTML5, CSS 2.1 and other specs were then work in progress.  they are still) Later, Google in their infinite wisdom realized that with Firefox they were going nowhere and they released Chrome.  Now, they heavily push Chrome even for Firefox users, which is natural since its their browser. In the meanwhile, these browsers push their updates as mandatory and therefore have a very short lifecycle to add enhancements and support for stuff like CSS etc., Meanwhile, when IE8 came out, it really was the best standards supported browser and a lot of people saw our efforts in improving our browser. HTML5 is the buzz word in the industry and there is a lot of noise being made by many browsers claiming their support for it.  IE8 doesn’t have much support for HTML5.  But, with IE9 Beta, we have great support for many of HTML5 specifications.  Note that, HTML5 is still work under progress and one of the board of members working on the spec has mentioned that these specs might change and relying on them heavily is dangerous.  But, some of the advances such as video tag, etc., are indeed supported in IE9 Beta.  IE9 Beta also has full hardware acceleration support which other browsers don’t have. IE8 had advanced security features such as smartscreen filter, in-private browsing, anti-phishing and a lot of other stuff.  IE9 builds on top of these with the best in town security standards as well as support for HTML5, CSS3, Hardware acceleration, SVG and many other advancements in browser.  Read more at http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/#/highlights/html5  To summarize, IE9 Beta is really innovative and you should try it to believe what it provides.  You can visit http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/  to install as well as read more on this. Cheers !!!

  Read the article

• The king is dead, long live the king&ndash;Cloud Evening 15th Feb in London

  - by Eric Nelson

  Advert alert :-) The UK's only Cloud user group The Cloud is the hot topic. You can’t escape hearing about it everywhere you go. Cloud Evening is the UK’s only cloud-focussed user group. Cloud Evening replaces UKAzureNet, with a new objective to cover all aspects of Cloud Computing, across all platforms, technologies and providers. We want to create a community for developers and architects to come together, learn, share stories and share experiences. Each event we’ll bring you two speakers talking about what’s hot in the world of Cloud. Our first event was a great success and we're now having the second exciting instalment. We're covering running third party applications on Azure and federated identity management. We will, of course, keep you fed and watered with beer and pizza. Spaces are limited so please sign-up now! Agenda 6.00pm – Registration 6.30pm – Windows Azure and running third-party software - using Elevated Privileges, Full IIS or VM Roles  (by @MarkRendle): We all know how simple it is to run your own applications on Azure, but how about existing software? Using the RavenDB document database software as an example, Mark will look at three ways to get 3rd-party software running on Azure, including the use of Start-up Tasks, Full IIS support and VM Roles, with a discussion of the pros and cons of each approach. 7.30pm – Beer and Pizza. 8.00pm – Federated identity – integrating Active Directory with Azure-based apps and Office 365  (by Steve Plank): Steve will cover off how to write great applications which leverage your existing on-premises Active Directory, along with providing seamless access to Office 365. We hope you can join us for what looks set to be a great evening. Register now

  Read the article

• Files for .NET Montreal and VTCC4 conference

  - by Vincent Grondin

  Hi,  here are the files for both the .NET Montreal presentation made Sept the 24th and at the Vermont Code Camp #4 on Sept the 22nd regarding Architecture problems and solutions linked to EF4.0, Async-await keywords and the Task Parallel Library. This zip file includes both power points in french and english and the DemoApplication which is I REMIND YOU VERY DEMO-WARE and doesn't handle task level exception and context switching.  ZipFile Enjoy

  Read the article

• Get to Know a Candidate (18 of 25): Jack Fellure&ndash;Prohibition Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting.  Information sourced for Wikipedia.  NOTE:  I apologize for getting this entry out of order. Fellure (born October 3, 1931) is an American perennial political candidate and retired engineer.  Fellure has formally campaigned for President of the United States in every presidential election since 1988 as a member of the Republican Party. He asserts on his campaign website that his platform based on the 1611 Authorized King James Bible has never changed. As a candidate, he calls for the elimination of the liquor industry, abortion and pornography, and advocates the teaching of the Bible in public schools and criminalization of homosexuality. He has blamed the ills of society on those he has characterized as "atheists, Marxists, liberals, queers, liars, draft dodgers, flag burners, dope addicts, sex perverts and anti-Christians." After another run in 2008, Fellure initially ran for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination. He then decided to seek the nomination of the Prohibition Party at the party's national convention in Cullman, Alabama The Prohibition Party (PRO) is a political party in the United States best known for its historic opposition to the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages. It is the oldest existing third party in the US. The party was an integral part of the temperance movement. While never one of the leading parties in the United States, it was once an important force in the politics of the United States during the late 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. It has declined dramatically since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. The party earned only 643 votes in the 2008 presidential election. The Prohibition Party advocates a variety of socially conservative causes, including "stronger and more vigorous enforcement of laws against the sale of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, against gambling, illegal drugs, pornography, and commercialized vice." Fellure has Ballot Access in: LA Learn more about Jack Fellure and Prohibition Party on Wikipedia.

  Read the article

• C# 4 Named Parameters for Overload Resolution

  - by Steve Michelotti

  C# 4 is getting a new feature called named parameters. Although this is a stand-alone feature, it is often used in conjunction with optional parameters. Last week when I was giving a presentation on C# 4, I got a question on a scenario regarding overload resolution that I had not considered before which yielded interesting results. Before I describe the scenario, a little background first. Named parameters is a well documented feature that works like this: suppose you have a method defined like this: 1: void DoWork(int num, string message = "Hello") 2: { 3: Console.WriteLine("Inside DoWork() - num: {0}, message: {1}", num, message); 4: } This enables you to call the method with any of these: 1: DoWork(21); 2: DoWork(num: 21); 3: DoWork(21, "abc"); 4: DoWork(num: 21, message: "abc"); and the corresponding results will be: Inside DoWork() - num: 21, message: Hello Inside DoWork() - num: 21, message: Hello Inside DoWork() - num: 21, message: abc Inside DoWork() - num: 21, message: abc This is all pretty straight forward and well-documented. What is slightly more interesting is how resolution is handled with method overloads. Suppose we had a second overload for DoWork() that looked like this: 1: void DoWork(object num) 2: { 3: Console.WriteLine("Inside second overload: " + num); 4: } The first rule applied for method overload resolution in this case is that it looks for the most strongly-type match first.  Hence, since the second overload has System.Object as the parameter rather than Int32, this second overload will never be called for any of the 4 method calls above.  But suppose the method overload looked like this: 1: void DoWork(int num) 2: { 3: Console.WriteLine("Inside second overload: " + num); 4: } In this case, both overloads have the first parameter as Int32 so they both fulfill the first rule equally.  In this case the overload with the optional parameters will be ignored if the parameters are not specified. Therefore, the same 4 method calls from above would result in: Inside second overload: 21 Inside second overload: 21 Inside DoWork() - num: 21, message: abc Inside DoWork() - num: 21, message: abc Even all this is pretty well documented. However, we can now consider the very interesting scenario I was presented with. The question was what happens if you change the parameter name in one of the overloads.  For example, what happens if you change the parameter *name* for the second overload like this: 1: void DoWork(int num2) 2: { 3: Console.WriteLine("Inside second overload: " + num2); 4: } In this case, the first 2 method calls will yield *different* results: 1: DoWork(21); 2: DoWork(num: 21); results in: Inside second overload: 21 Inside DoWork() - num: 21, message: Hello We know the first method call will go to the second overload because of normal method overload resolution rules which ignore the optional parameters.  But for the second call, even though all the same rules apply, the compiler will allow you to specify a named parameter which, in effect, overrides the typical rules and directs the call to the first overload. Keep in mind this would only work if the method overloads had different parameter names for the same types (which in itself is weird). But it is a situation I had not considered before and it is one in which you should be aware of the rules that the C# 4 compiler applies.

  Read the article

• Massive Silverlight Giveaway! DevExpress , Syncfusion, Crypto Obfuscator and SL Spy!

  - by mbcrump

  Oh my, have we grown! Maybe I should change the name to Multiple Silverlight Giveaways. So far, my Silverlight giveaways have been such a success that I’m going to be able to give away more than one Silverlight product every month. Last month, we gave away 3 great products. 1) ComponentOne Silverlight Controls 2)  ComponentOne XAP Optimizer (with obfuscation) and 3) Silverlight Spy. This month, we will give away 4 great Silverlight products and have 4 different winners. This way the Silverlight community can grow with more than just one person winning all the prizes. This month we will be giving away: DevExpress Silverlight Controls – Over 50+ Silverlight Controls Syncfusion User Interface Edition - Create stunning line of business silverlight applications with a wide range of components including a high performance grid, docking manager, chart, gauge, scheduler and much more. Crypto Obfuscator – Works for all .NET including Silverlight/Windows Phone 7. Silverlight Spy – provides a license EVERY month for this giveaway. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Win a FREE developer’s license of one of the products listed above! 4 winners will be announced on April 1st, 2011! To be entered into the contest do the following things: Subscribe to my feed. – Use Google Reader, email or whatever is best for you.  Leave a comment below with a valid email account (I WILL NOT share this info with anyone.) Retweet the following : I just entered to win free #Silverlight controls from @mbcrump . Register here: http://mcrump.me/fTSmB8 ! Don’t change the URL because this will allow me to track the users that Tweet this page. Don’t forget to visit each of the vendors sites because they made this possible. MichaelCrump.Net provides Silverlight Giveaways every month. You can also see the latest giveaway by bookmarking http://giveaways.michaelcrump.net . ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DevExpress Silverlight Controls Let’s take a quick look at some of the software that is provided in this giveaway. Before we get started with the Silverlight Controls, here is a couple of links to bookmark for the DevExpress Silverlight Controls: The Live Demos of the Silverlight Controls is located here. Great Video Tutorials of the Silverlight Controls are here. One thing that I liked about the DevExpress is how easy it was to find demos of each control. After you install the controls the following Program Group appears complete with “demos” that include full-source.   So, the first question that you may ask is, “What is included?” Here is the official list below. I wanted to show several of the controls that I think developers will use the most. The Book – Very rich animation between switching pages. Very easy to add your own images and custom text. The Menu – This is another control that just looked great. You can easily add images to the menu items with a few lines of XAML. The Window / Dialog Box – You can use this control to make a very beautiful “Wizard” to help your users navigate between pages. This is useful in setup or installation. Calculator – This would be useful for any type of Banking app. Also a first that I’ve seen from a 3rd party Control company. DatePicker – This controls feels a lot smoother than the one provided by Microsoft. It also provides the ability to “Clear” the selection. Overall the DevExpress Silverlight Controls feature a lot of quality controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. If you win the contest you can simply enter your registration key and continue using the product without reinstalling. Syncfusion User Interface Edition Before we get started with the Syncfusion User Interface Edition, here is a couple of links to bookmark. The Live Demos can be found here. You can download a demo of it now at http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/evalstart. After you install the Syncfusion, you can view the dashboard to run locally installed samples. You may also download the documentation to your local machine if needed. Since the name of the package is “User Interface Edition”, I decided to share several samples that struck me as “awesome”. Dashboard Gauges – I was very impressed with the various gauges they have included. The digital clock also looks very impressive. Diagram – The diagrams are also very easy to build. In the sample project below you can drag/drop the shapes onto the content pane. More complex lines like the Bezier lines are also easy to create using Syncfusion. Scheduling – Another strong component was the Scheduling with built-in support for Themes. Tools – If all of that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a nice pack of essential tools. Syncfusion has a nice variety of Silverlight Controls that you should check out. You can go ahead and download a trial version of it right now by clicking here. Crypto Obfuscator The following feature set is what is important to me in an Obfuscator since I am a Silverlight/WP7 Developer: And thankfully this is what you get in Crypto Obfuscator. You can download a trial version right now if you want to go ahead and play with it. Let’s spend a few moments taking a look at the application. After you have installed Crypto Obfuscator you will see the following screen: After you click on Assemblies you have the option to add your .XAP file in: I went ahead and loaded my .xap file from a Silverlight Application. At this point, you can simply save your project and hit “Obfuscate” and your done. You don’t have to mess with any of the other settings if you don’t want too. Of course, you can change the settings and add obfuscation rules, watermarks and signing if you wish.  After Obfuscation, it looks like this in .NET Reflector: I was trying to browse through methods and it actually crashed Reflector. This confirms the level of protection the obfuscator is providing. If this were a commercial application that my team built, I would have a huge smile on my face right now. Crypto Obfuscator is a great product and I hope you will spend the time learning more about it. Silverlight Spy Silverlight Spy is a runtime inspector tool that will tell you pretty much everything that is going on with the application. Basically, you give it a URL that contains a Silverlight application and you can explore the element tree, events, xaml and so much more. This has already been reviewed on MichaelCrump.net. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave a comment below in order to win one of the four prizes available! Subscribe to my feed

  Read the article

• Mathemagics - 3 consecutive number

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Three Consecutive numbers When I was young and handsome (OK, OK, just young), my father used to challenge us with riddles and tricks involving Logic, Math and general knowledge. Most of the time, at least after reaching the ripe age of 10, I would see thru his tricks in no time. This one is a bit more subtle. I had to think about it for close to an hour and then when I had the ‘AHA!’ effect, I could not understand why it had taken me so long. So here it is. You select a volunteer from the audience (or a shill, but that would be cheating!) and ask him to select three consecutive numbers, all of them 1 or 2 digits. So {1, 2, 3} would be good, albeit trivial set, as would {8, 9, 10} or {97, 98, 99} but not {99, 99, 100} (why?!). Now, using a calculator – and these days almost every phone has a built in calculator – he is to perform these steps: 1.      Select a single digit 2.      Multiply it by 3 and write it down 3.      Add the 3 consecutive numbers 4.      Add the number from step 2 5.      Multiply the sum by 67 6.      Now tell me the last 2 digits of the result and also the number you wrote down in step 2 I will tell you which numbers you selected. How do I do this? I’ll give you the mechanical answer, but because I like you to have the pleasure of an ‘AHA!’ effect, I will not really explain the ‘why’. So let’s you selected 30, 31, and 32 and also that your 3 multiple was 24, so here is what you get 30 + 31 + 32 = 93 93 + 24 = 117 117 x 67 = 7839, last 2 digits are 39, so you say “the last 2 digits are 39, and the other number is 24.” Now, I divide 24 by 3 getting 8. I subtract 8 from 39 and get 31. I then subtract 1 from this getting 30, and say: “You selected 30, 31, and 32.” This is the ‘how’. I leave the ‘why’ to you! That’s all folks! PS do you really want to know why? Post a feedback below. When 11 people or more will have asked for it, I’ll add a link to the full explanation.

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84  | Next Page >