Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day

Monday, December 07, 2009

“Samples for Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4” gets some VB love…

Parallel Programming with .NET - Updated Beta 2 samples for parallel programming

“We've refreshed our Beta 2 samples for parallel programming with the .NET Framework 4. Thanks to the gracious assistance of the fabulous Lisa Feigenbaum and others on the Visual Basic team, in this refresh the majority of the samples are now available not only in C# but also in Visual Basic [GD:Emphasis added]. The samples are available for download at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ParExtSamples.” [GD: Post leached in full]

MSDN Code Gallery - Samples for Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4

“The .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 has been released and is available for download at http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/dd582936.aspx. .NET 4 includes significant advancements for developers writing parallel and concurrent applications, including Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), the Task Parallel Library (TPL), new thread-safe collections, and a variety of new coordination and synchronization data structures. This Code Gallery project includes example applications and library functionality that demonstrate, utilize, and augment this support (it is not production quality).

…”

Samples for Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4 - Parallel Programming with .NET 4 Beta 2 Samples

“ParallelProgrammingSamples_Beta2.zip
source code, 3967K, uploaded Sun –…”

Here’s a snap of the extracted zip;

All projects seem to include have C# samples, most now with VB and one with C++/F#

Free (reg-ware) PowerShell v1 eBook (593 pages) – “SAPIEN’s Windows Powershell V1.0: TFM”

Rod Trent at myITforum.com - Free Windows PowerShell ebook

“With the recent release of Windows PowerShell v.2 and the immanent publication of our well regarded Windows PowerShell v.2 TFM book by Don Jones and Jeff Hicks, SAPIEN is releasing our Windows PowerShell v.1 TFM eBook as a FREE download to the public. Even though this eBook is for version 1 of PowerShell, the book still contains loads of valuable information about PowerShell’s core workings and cmdlets. …”

Primal Tools - Community Tools

Shot of the cover:

I think it’s been forever since I’ve posted an eBook (like days and days! ;) and I just couldn’t pass up 593 pages of PS’ness…

Sunday, December 06, 2009

A Feed You Should Read #14 – WynAspe, Silverlight Cream

The speed that Microsoft’s Silverlight is evolving is rather breathtaking. Silverlight 1 was released just two years ago! (September 4, 2007). Silverlight 3 was released earlier this year and a couple weeks ago we saw a fairly well baked Silverlight 4 (I think the SL4 release date is still TBD, but I’d put money on Mix10’ish).

Keeping up with that pace of change could almost be a full time job in and of itself. Luckily there’s help just a click away…

WynApse - Mining the Web for Silverlight so YOU don't have to

Background:

Silverlight is a juggernaut with a rollout speed that just seems to be increasing. The features and capabilities continue to grow, its install base is expanding and it’s starting to be used a very wide variety of ways by some serious names.

If you’re a web dev, or more importantly a Windows client based dev, Silverlight is getting to that point where it may now time to start seriously looking it. Silverlight 4 is going to blur the line between full client and web app, a trend that I’d bet will continue.

With Silverlight we’re talking taking advantage of the broad scope and deployment ease of the web, UI power of WPF and control and capabilities of a full rich client runtime environment.

Why do I like this feed and think you might also?

I’ve only been following David Campbell’s WynAspe Sliverlight Cream directly for a year or so, but have been reading his posts much longer (via the main Geekswithblogs aggregation feed). Silverlight is not something I currently “do” but is something I am interesting in following. That said, Sl4’s new features may just push me over that the edge and I may just have to start seriously playing with it… :)

Not doing it day in and out I found it hard to keep up with it and its vibrant community.

That was until I starting keying on David’s Sliverlight Cream posts. The blog’s subtitle is perfect and just what I needed, someone to be my eyes in the Silverlight space and provide an intelligent signal to noise filter.

So why do I like this feed and think you might? It provides a daily’ish curated list of Silverlight links, each with a brief description. This is a great way to get in touch with Silverlight without getting overwhelmed.

It’s simple. If you’re interested in, involved in, or even master of Silverlight this is one of those feeds you just need to follow…

Snap of the latest post:

Blog Information:

Name:	WynApse - Mining the Web for Silverlight so YOU don't have to (Silverlight Cream)
URL:	http://geekswithblogs.net/WynApseTechnicalMusings/Default.aspx
Feed:	http://geekswithblogs.net/WynApseTechnicalMusings/Rss.aspx
Post Types:	Silverlight Link Curatation

Thursday, December 03, 2009

How 8.8.8.8 took over the world (of DNS)? Google can now be your DNS resolver

The Google Blog - Introducing Google Public DNS

“When you type www.wikipedia.org into your browser's address bar, you expect nothing less than to be taken to Wikipedia. Chances are you're not giving much thought to the work being done in the background by the Domain Name System, or DNS.

Today, as part of our ongoing effort to make the web faster, we're launching our own public DNS resolver called Google Public DNS, and we invite you to try it out.

…

If you're web-savvy and comfortable with changing your network settings, check out the Google Code Blog for detailed instructions and more information on how to set up Google Public DNS on your computer or router.

As people begin to use Google Public DNS, we plan to share what we learn with the broader web community and other DNS providers, to improve the browsing experience for Internet users globally. The goal of Google Public DNS is to benefit users worldwide while also helping the tens of thousands of DNS resolvers improve their services, ultimately making the web faster for everyone.”

Interesting… Kind of cool way for Google to leverage their DNS infrastructure (which must be fairly extensive), to gather even more stats and continue in their “faster” quest.

I wonder what impact this will have on OpenDNS?

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Throw away those USB Electric plug-in adapters? - “How to Quickly Convert a Wall Outlet Into a USB Charger”

Gizmodo - How to Quickly Convert a Wall Outlet Into a USB Charger

I can't tell you how many times we have come across USB chargers that can be plugged into an outlet, so why not cut out the middleman and simply convert the outlet to USB? Instructables shows you how.

Not only that, the guy behind the hack claims it can be done in 30 minutes on a budget as small as $10. In a nutshell, he just inserted two apple mini usb plugs into the outlets and tucked them back in the wall, …”

Some things make so much sense when you see them… Just remember you’re possibly playing with fire here and you might want to wait until there’s an “official” and tested productized like item.

Still I want something like this…

Solution for reading your VS Solutions - “LINQ to Visual Studio Solution”

CodeProject - LINQ to Visual Studio Solution

Introduction

In attempting to write software for Windows Mobile using Visual Studio C# Express or SharpDevelop, I found that there is some common code that is generated by the designers which does not work on Windows Mobile. Instead of fixing it by hand every time I changed something on the form, I wanted to write a general refactoring tool that I could run from the command line (or the "Tools" menu) and fix the problem code.

I got something very ugly working, using (or misusing) the NRefactory library from SharpDevelop. However, I found that sometimes I needed to use Reflection, and so I needed to know which libraries were referenced in the project. At this point, I had never used LINQ, but I started to see how LINQ to XML could save a lot of code.

Then, as I was working on it, the code to get project properties evolved into the general purpose LINQ to Visual Studio solution that I present here. There is nothing in this code that deals with refactoring. It does read only property queries against Visual Studio projects. Hopefully, at some point, my refactoring code will be at a decent stage and I can post an article on that.

…”

I just thought that was too darn cool to not reference. It’s not that it’s uber hard (a VS Solution is just an XML file), just that it seems to make such good sense to abstract it this way and make it so easily LINQ’able. And I dig how the author took the time to generalize it and share it with all of us. :)

TPL (That is, Task Parallel Library) Article of the Day: “Parent-Child Task Relationships in the .Net Framework 4”

Microsoft Downloads - Articles on Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4 (Parent-Child Task Relationships in the .Net Framework 4)

“A set of articles that provide information on parallel programming with the .NET Framework 4.

File Name: ParentChildTPLTasksRelationship.pdf

Version: 1.0

Date Published: 12/1/2009

Language: English

Download Size: 787 KB

Overview

The .NET Framework 4 includes extended support for writing parallel applications, through enhancements to the CLR itself as well as through new libraries commonly referred to as "Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework." The set of articles available in this download provides detailed information on Parallel Extension, including the Task Parallel Library (TPL), Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), and a set of new coordination primitives and thread-safe data structures. These articles provide insights into performance characteristics, usage patterns, best practices, integration of parallelism with other programming frameworks, and more.

…”

From the PDF;

“This document provides an in-depth explanation on parent-child task relationships offered by the Task Parallel Library as in the .NET Framework 4. This includes the behavioral changes implied by being a parent or child task in terms of task completion, task waiting, as well as task cancellation. In addition, it also points out a few common oversights and provides general guidelines on when to take advantage of this feature.

…

…”

One of the more foundational changes coming in .Net 4 is its support for new multithreaded programming models. PLINQ, PFX, Tasks, etc are going to help us deliver applications that take advantage of all those cores in our systems, without our brains exploding…

That and every time I see “TPL” I chuckle…

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Windows 7 for Dev’s – One getting started page to rule them all?

IUpdateable from Eric Nelson - Windows 7 resources for developers – in one place

“My group has been pulling together a page of resources to help developers start to target Windows 7 features.

…”

MSDN (UK) – Windows 7

Being a Managed Dev, I liked the focus on Win7 in a Managed world (i.e. Code Pack).

I do wish the page, or any “resource” page, had a RSS feed so I could easily keep up with future additions (I have to assume new resources will be added over time…)

Monday, November 30, 2009

Plug into MEF in 10 minutes or less

Jeremy Likness' Blog - MEF: Build a Plugin in Under 10 Minutes

“In preparing for an upcoming talk I'll be giving on the Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), I wanted to demonstrate how fast and easy it is to use in a sample, reference application. This application creates a dynamic plugin. I first link a plugin and show it active, then I create a second plugin and show how it is dynamically added to the program during runtime. It all takes under 10 minutes and would be faster if I didn't want to pace the demo to show the steps involved.

…” [GD: Click through for the video link]

MEF rocks and having it baked into .Net 4 is only icing on the cake. Sure it’s the new kid on the block, but if you’ve ever tried to use the System.Addin model of extending you’re app’s, you’ll thank heaven for MEF.

Look, if you’re thinking of writing your own plugin/addin/thing, stop. Stop now, don’t go past Go, go directly to MEF…

Here’s some MEF posts that caught my eye in the last month’ish (and I’ve been meaning to blog about but…);

A Feed You Should Read – The Blogcast Repository

This week, since I seem to be in some kind of video mode, I thought I’d continue down that road a bit more and share another screencast focused site, but with a minor twist. Instead of development, this week’s feed is IT focused.

The Blogcast Repository - Learning Microsoft Technologies Together

Background:

IT and Dev. Cats and Dogs? No, I say, NO.

Chocolate and Peanut nut butter, I say!

Dev is nothing without a strong IT infrastructure and an IT infrastructure isn’t worth much without apps to run on it. As much as we love to battle each other, it’s symbiotic relationship (“You and the Naboo form a symbiotic circle. What effects one of you will affect the other, you must understand this!” – Obi-Wan Kenobi…) (Sorry, but you knew I had to do that. Now it’s up to you, IT and Dev, to decide who’s the Naboo and who’s the Gungan… ;)

Why do I like this feed and think you might also?

The more we know about “the other side” the better we can exist with them, not only exist but prosper. Best of all, help our clients and customers to prosper!

The casts are short, dimecast like ;), are very easy to find and browse and can even be subscribed to on your media device of choice.

Snap of the latest post:

Blog Information:

Name:	The Blogcast Repository – Learning Microsoft Technologies Together
URL:	http://blogcastrepository.com
Feed:	http://blogcastrepository.com/media/MainFeed.aspx
Post Types:	Microsoft Tech IT/Sysadmin focused videos/screencasts

Saturday, November 28, 2009

From Go to Deploy, hosting your website and data on Azure “How To”

Brandon Werner - How To Host Your Site and Content On Azure Quickly and Easily

“This entry seeks to provide you with a quick and easy way to get up to speed on Azure quickly by deploying your own personal website as an MVC application in to the cloud. Consider it a “Hello World”. I will do the following:

Demonstrate how to write and deploy a simple Azure hosted website

Demonstrate how to to create your own image and content server using Azure Storage and expose your content publically through URLs

Demonstrate how to use new tools like Azure Storage Explorer to access your cloud storage

Introduction

Now that Azure has been released (well, in January 2010) a lot of people are busy coding a lot of awesome applications. I’m proud of you. I’m not one of them. I just have a personal website that I’ve hosted through a collection of GoDaddy, Amazon S3 (for images and PowerPoint slides, etc.) and some custom JavaScript.

So over the Thanksgiving week I decided to move all my stuff over to Azure for fun. This includes hosting my website, moving my RoR code over to a ASP.net MVC code (don’t freak, ASP.net MVC is pretty much set up like RoR and PHP as far as directories and deployment, so it’s easy), and moving all my images and other media over to Azure Storage so that I can just reference images and CCS using URLs without needing to redeploy my website (much like I did with Amazon’s S3).

SIDEBAR: If ASP doesn’t interest you, we now have PHP, Java, Eclipse, Tomcat and MySQL on Azure. Check it out here.

…

…”

I thought this was an awesome guide for getting started with Azure. Start to finish, this “how to” seems to pretty much cover it all…

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The MVVM Framework Tour – This time, Silverlight styling!

JAPF - Discover and compare existing MVVM frameworks !

“A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post where I compared the existing MVVM frameworks. This post became a bit famous in the WPF/Silverlight blog world and I received a lot of feedback to update the list, fix information, etc. I also got a request from Erik suggesting me to put all the datas in a matrix.

Today I’m proud to announce the MVVM frameworks Silverlight application (click the image to open the Silverlight3 page).

…”

Nice! What a cool way to to both spending a little quality time building a simple, but cool, Sliverlight app and also represent a bunch of data intelligently…

Related Past Post XRef:
A MVVM framework “…three hour tour…”

PowerShell Configurator (PSConfig) – Server configuration power via PowerShell goodness

James O'Neill's blog - Announcing the PowerShell Configurator.

“For a little while I have had a beta version of a project I call PSCONFIG on codeplex. I’ve changed a couple of things but from the people who have given it a try, it seems that it is working pretty well. It’s aimed at servers running either Hyper-V server R2 Or Core installations Windows Server 2008 R2, although it can be useful on just about any version of Windows with PowerShell V2 installed. Here is breakdown of the what is included.

…”

CodePlex - Powershell Configurator for Server Core R2 / HyperV Server r2

“A PowerShell module to provide a scripted , command line, or Menu driven user interface to configure Server 2008 -R2 Core installations or Hyper-Server R2
It is recommended that you remove the "block" attribute from the ZIP file before extracting it.
This module provides PowerShell commands which can grouped together as follows

Managing installed software , drivers and updates
Add-Driver, Get-Driver
Add-HotFix ,
Add-InstalledProduct ,Get-InstalledProduct , Remove-InstalledProduct,
Add-WindowsFeature , Get-WindowsFeature, Select-WindowsFeature, Remove-WindowsFeature
Add-WindowsUpdate, Get-WindowsUpdateConfig , Set-WindowsUpdateConfig

Managing the windows Firewall
Get-FirewallConfig , Set-FirewallConfig, Get-FirewallProfile , Get-FireWallRule, New-FirewallRule

IP Networking
Get-NetworkAdapter, Select-NetworkAdapter, Get-IpConfig , New-IpConfig , Remove-IpConfig, Set-IpConfig

Licensing
Get-Registration , Register-Computer

Page file
Get-PageFile, Set-AutoPageFile

Shut down event tracker
Get-ShutDownTracker , Set-ShutDownTracker

Windows Remote management
Get-WinRMConfig , Disable-WinRm

Remote Desktop
Get-RemoteDesktopConfig , Set-RemoteDesktop

Other Windows Configuration
Rename-Computer
Set-DateConfig
Set-iSCSIConfig
Set-RegionalConfig
Show-Menu” [GD: Project description leached in full]

There are some cool sysadmin commands here that I don’t think I’ve seen powershelled before.

As a nice finishing touch, there’s a 23 page doc, which covers installation and usage.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

PDC09 List Updated and MP4, WMVHigh RSS feeds now available too

Just a quick note to let you know I’ve refreshed my PDC09 list including the now available MP4 links, PDC09 Session Video List (Okay, so I lied) and also added MP4 and WMVHigh RSS Feeds in my feed post, PDC09 RSS feed file for your podcast catcher of choice (i.e. Grab all the PDC sessions for your Zune, Reader, FeedDemon, etc)

In short:

PDC09 Session Video List (Okay, so I lied) (HTML table of Sessions, WMVHigh, WMV, MP4, PPTX)

PDC09-Complete-RSS.xml (The above list, with item entries for all sessions with WMV videos)

PDC09-Complete-MP4.xml (The above list, with item entries for all sessions with MP4 videos)

PDC09-Complete-WMVHigh.xml (The above list, with item entries for all sessions with WMVHigh videos)

(XML files hosted on my Office Live Small Business site, jaged.net)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

“Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, Second Edition” Final (as in, stick a fork in it it’s done, version) now available

J.D. Meier's Blog - Now Available: Final PDF of the Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, Second Edition

“A final PDF is now available for our patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide, second edition. This is our platform playbook for the Microsoft application platform.

Here are the relevant links:

…

”

Microsoft Downloads - Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition

“Brief Description

The guide is intended to help developers and solution architects design and build effective, high quality applications.

…

File Name: Application Architecture Guide v2.pdf

Version: 2

Date Published: 11/20/2009

Language: English

Download Size: 23 KB - 7.6 MB*

The guide helps you to:

Understand the underlying architecture and design principles and patterns for developing successful solutions on the Microsoft platform and the .NET Framework.

Identify appropriate strategies and design patterns that will help you design your solution's layers, components, and services.

Identify and address the key engineering decision points for your solution.

Identify and address the key quality attributes and crosscutting concerns for your solution.

Create a candidate baseline architecture for your solution.

Choose the right technologies for your solution.

Identify patterns & practices solution assets and further guidance that will help you to implement your solution.

…”

560 pages of light reading for your long holiday weekend… ;)

The Cool Utility of the Day: TouchFreeze (Automatic disable/enable of your touchpad when typing, or not)

Addictive Tips - Auto Disable Mouse Touchpad When Typing

“It is a common annoyances with netbooks and laptops which lack the disable touchpad button. Most blogs out there are covering a single method to disable the touchpad, i.e, go to Control Panel > Mouse Properties and then disable the touchpad from there.

The above method is not suitable for those who need to disable the touchpad frequently for short periods of time. Who in his/her right mind would navigate back and forth just to enable/disable touchpad? This could be quite a hectic process.

TouchFreeze is a brilliant little app that solves this problem. It disables the touchpad temporarily the moment a keystroke is pressed. In layman’s term, it disables the touchpad automatically when you are typing and enables it back when the typing is stopped.

It will sit silently in the system tray without disturbing any of your work. Just start typing and don’t worry about the touchpad any more.

…”

Code.Google.com – touchfreeze

“Annoyed when you are typing a document and accidentally the palm of your hand brushes the touchpad, changing the position of the cursor in your document or accidentally clicking on an option. TouchFreeze is simple utility for Windows NT/2000/XP that solves this problem. It automatically disables touchpad while you are typing text. Like syndaemon on x-windows.

…”

I SO need this! I usually disable touchpads and prefer to use the J/Keyboard mouse, but on my new PDC Acer that’s not an option. And I don’t want to carry around an external mouse (nor do I have a BlueTooth mouse yet, so am on USB dongle hell with my external mouse).

So I’ve been coming to terms with the touchpad.

Yet there was a behavior that was making me crazy. As I would type, my cursor would seem to magically jump elsewhere, which of course I wouldn’t notice until a few words later… As I analyzed my type behavior I came to realize that my thumb was tapping the touchpad as I typed. Ah ha! Off with the thumbs!… errr… um… okay… maybe not. But it does seem some retraining was in order or putting a possibly installing and unsupported touchpad driver. Neither option is one I liked.

Then I saw TouchFreeze. ZOMG, that’s it! Perfect!

I’ve installed it (Win7 Ultimate x64) and it seems to be working exactly as I need it too! (And is a open source C++ app too :)

I am now a happy, touchpad using, camper

Monday, November 23, 2009

Windows 7 Ribbon for WinForms – Yes you can…

CodePlex - Windows Ribbon for WinForms

“Project Description

Windows Ribbon for WinForms is a .NET wrapper for Windows 7 Ribbon control. It will allow WinForms developers to use Microsoft Windows 7 Ribbon control in their WinForms applications.

The project includes the library RibbonLib, which adds support for Windows Ribbon to WinForms application and sample applications that demonstrates the use of the library and the different Ribbon features available.

Check my blog for more details on how to use the windows ribbon at http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/arik/

Note: you must have the Windows 7 SDK installed in order to compile the project.

Following is the list of sample application and their description:

01 - AddingRibbonSupport - Empty WinForms application with basic Ribbon support.

02 - ApplicationMenuButton - WinForms application with Ribbon that contains an application menu with some buttons.

03 - MenuDropDown - WinForms application with DropDownButton and SplitButton inside an application menu.

04 - TabGroupHelp - WinForms application that uses Tabs, Groups and HelpButton.

05 - Spinner - WinForms application that demonstrates the use of a Spinner control in the ribbon.

06 - ComboBox - WinForms application that demonstrates the use of a CombBox control in the ribbon.

07 - RibbonColor - WinForms application that shows how to change the ribbon global colors.

08 - Images - WinForms application that shows how to work set images dynamically in the ribbon.

09 - Galleries - WinForms application thats uses DropDownGallery, SplitButtonGallery and InRibbonGallery.

10 - CheckBox - WinForms application that uses CheckBox and ToggleButton control in the ribbon.

11 - DropDownColorPicker - WinForms application that demonstrates the use of a DropDownColorPicker control in the ribbon.

12 - FontControl - WinForms application that demonstrates the use of a FontControl control in the ribbon.

13 - ApplicationModes - WinForms application that demonstrates the use of ApplicationModes.

” [GD: Project Description Leached in Full]

Arik Poznanski's Blog - Windows Ribbon for WinForms, Part 16 – ApplicationModes

“Windows Ribbon for WinForms library now supports Application Modes.
The result of this post is a yet another sample, “13-ApplicationModes”, found on the project site.

What are application modes?
It is best to explain using examples. Applications some times have different “modes” in which they show different GUI, for example:

Simple mode VS Advanced mode

Regular editor mode VS Print mode

The ribbon framework support changing its GUI according to the current application mode. In order to use the ribbon application modes you need to:

Set the available application modes for each ribbon item. This is done in design time.

Set the current application mode. This is done in run time.

To summarize, application modes is a feature that allows the ribbon to change its GUI according to the current application context.

…”

While you’re there, make sure you check out the other posts in the series;

Yeah, I know, WinForms? Isn’t WinForms dead?

Well, there’s dead and there’s dead. While WinForms gets no loving in .Net 4, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its place or that there aren’t tens of thousands of developers using it every day. And while there are third party vendors who have had Ribbons for while now (I’ve used Infragistics’ Ribbon at work for a few years now) I thought it cool to see the Win7 native Ribbon being wrapped and made available.

Why? Because I may want to develop WinForm apps using the Ribbon that are open source. And that’s hard to do (open sourcing it) if you’re using a commercial component. That and I just like seeing Win7 goodness being made usable in my Managed world… ;)

Think you have to be a Local Admin for PowerShell Remoting to work? Think again…

Windows PowerShell Blog - You Don’t Have to Be An Administrator to Run Remote PowerShell Commands

“I was just read blog entry which complained about having to have administrative access to execute PowerShell commands against a remote server. This is not the case.

We are “secure by default” which means that if you want to do something that exposes a security risk to your machines, you have to make a conscious decision to do so. We are secure by default so that you can feel confident in putting PowerShell on all your machines. Your risks are a function of the decisions you make after you install PowerShell and we’ll educate you about the risks and benefits of those decisions. (Run “Get-Help about_Execution_Policies” to see a great example of that.)

…

If you decide you want to allow others, what you do is run the command:

…

…This brings up the following dialog box which allows you to give others the ability to run commands on that machine:

…”

I love learning something new every day… :)

Sunday, November 22, 2009

From code-behind to MVVM in 90 Minutes - Jason Dolinger on MVVM

Lab 49 - Jason Dolinger on Model-View-ViewModel

“A while back, Jason Dolinger, a consultant here at Lab49, gave us a presentation on design in WPF with the Model-View-ViewModel pattern and the Unity dependency injection framework.

Jason started with an application that one would write in a “traditional” way, with button clicks handled by event-handlers in the code-behind that then updated other parts of the UI. Using WPF data-binding, Commands, and Unity, he transformed it, piece by piece, in a much more manageable, encapsulated, readable, and testable M-V-VM design. It was awesome.

It was so awesome, in fact, that after the presentation Jason recorded the demo for all to see here.

Check it out. It’s the most practically instructive explanation of WPF design I’ve seen.

UPDATE: I thought I should mention that while Jason’s presentation is geared towards WPF, the patterns he describes are very applicable for Silverlight as well. There are a few things to take note of, though: …”

This is an oldie but a still goodie (having been released last year makes it an oldie…sigh… LOL)

(via Tech Tock - From Winforms to WPF MVVM in 90 Minutes and a tweet I got a while ago from @huseyint)

A Feed You Should Read #12 – DimeCasts.Net

Ha, tricked you didn’t I! You thought this week’s feed would be PDC09 related, didn’t you? Well, so did I… LOL. But I have to say I’ve pretty much reached the PDC saturation point. PDC is done, over, finish and frankly I’m a little tired of hearing about it. Time to move on…

My brain is now almost full, with only some smaller corners here and there available. That’s why I thought DimeCasts.net would be great for this week’s Feed.

DimeCasts.Net

Background:

DimeCasts.Net is a site that hosts short, code focused, 10 minute’ish, screencasts.

I’ve been following it since its inception last year, DimeCasts.Net - Everyday coding issues covered in 10 minutes or less, and find the name so fitting that I personally now use it to describe all short video/web/screen/pod casts. :)

In Derik Whittaker (the mind and power behind DimeCasts.net) word’s;

“A few weeks ago while putting together a screencast series on how to use NUnit (and a basic intro to testing) I got the bright idea to launch a new site. I wanted to create a site that allows myself (and others in the future) to create, host and share short (about 10 minutes -- hence the name dimecasts.net) screencast's (I call them episodes) on how to do various different things.

...

So, who is my target audience with these episodes....everyone. My thoughts are to create episodes that tackle everyday coding issues as well as show how to use various tools (NUnit, Mocking tools, IoC, etc). I want the episodes to range from 100 level (Intro to XYZ) all the way to 400 level (mastering XYZ) and I want them to be short and to the point. …”

Why do I like this feed and think you might also?

What I like is how focused the content it. It’s screencast, code focused, for developers by developers. I dig that. “Content good that is content dense” (What Yoda would say if he were a Dev ;)

Also I like that the topics cover areas that are a little outside of the Redmond norm, you know Alt.Net’ish. It provides views into areas that we’re not as likely to see in “Official” MS channels and venues. This is pretty clear by just looking at the Cast Tags above.

So why do I think you might like this?

Dev focused? Check
Content density high? Check
Very reasonable Ad level? Check
Tools and code? Check
Information I can use today? Check
.Net? Check
Cool? Check :)

Snap of the latest post:

Blog Information:

Name:	DimeCasts.Net -- Inform & Educate in ~10 minutes or less
URL:	http://www.dimecasts.net/
Feed:	http://feeds.feedburner.com/Dimecastsnet--InformAndEducateIn10MinutesOrLess
Post Types:	Short Dev/code focused video/screencast sessions