I was looking through the forums on MSDN today and found someone asking how to implement a Tab Strip Control in Windows 8 Store applications. They used the Store as an example, wanting functionality that behaves like the OverView, Details, Reviews section. Currently there are no tab controls in Windows 8 and I haven’t seen... Continue Reading →
The other day I was researching the different file access scenarios available for Windows 8. I needed the research for my chapter on accessing data in my Windows 8 Book (more on that later). The restrictive sandbox that Windows 8 applications operate in can prove challenging. To access data outside the sandbox and Windows libraries... Continue Reading →
Recently I have been using the Developer Preview of Windows 8. Back in September Microsoft announced how developers can build the next generation Windows applications. So Microsoft is trying to revamp its tablet industry while moving their operating system forward. They are developing an operating system that is attempting unify their operating system across platforms... Continue Reading →
If you have programed against any of Microsoft’s Xaml based user interface frameworks then you might have heard about the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern. One of the benefits of this pattern is the separation of the view from the view model. All of the logic lives in the view model which is then bound to the... Continue Reading →
A while ago I wrote a post called “Silverlight Child Window With MEF and MVVM Light” where I laid out an approach on how to implement a child window in Silverlight while following MVVM. Some of the challenges of using MVVM center around keeping UI specifics out of the view model. Keeping UI out of... Continue Reading →
I was recently asked by a coworker, “How do I get the Windows Identity of a user calling my WCF service from Silverlight?” My answer to him was “To the Cloud!” No seriously, I put together a little demo application. I figured I would write a short blog post so that others can partake in... Continue Reading →
I recently read a blog titled “Architecting in the pit of doom: The evils of the repository abstraction layer”. In it Ayende makes some pretty compelling points as to why you should not use repositories. In his example he is stating that NHibernate’s ISession and Entity Framework’s Context objects are repositories. He also states that... Continue Reading →
I am working on a project that wants to implement a logging utilizing the Microsoft Enterprise Library 5.0. The project has a need to create different types of logs (Auditing, Exception, …). This log information is going to be stored in different tables in a SQL Server database. Each table will have its own schema,... Continue Reading →
I seem to get this question a lot “I want to get started in Silverlight…Where do I begin?” A while back I put together an email to a friend with some resources that I have found helpful. The last couple of weeks I seem to have to go back to that email and forward it... Continue Reading →
I can write my application in classic ASP and satisfy all my requirements but do I really want to. There has been a lot of hype around Silverlight vs. HTML5. I started into the conversations with “The Future of Silverlight” from the Silverlight Team Blog and continued on to “Is Silverlight becoming a niche technology?”. ... Continue Reading →
Dave's Two Cents 