November 2009 Entries
The debugging experience in Silverlight project using Visual Studio is quite good. However, there are two things that is doesn’t help much with: when data bindings don’t work, and when your XAML doesn’t look like you think it should. Here’s a post about debugging data bindings. The visual part is a little more involved. Yes, yes Expression Blend has a nice visual designer, but it’s fairly common for Blend to show a piece of XAML in one way and for it to actually render in the browser differently (sometime significantly differently). Today I found First Floor Software’s Silverlight Spy. This...
I spent well over an hour on Friday with this one and gave up. I spent almost another hour today working on this. I almost gave up, but when I’m in learn-mode like I am with Silverlight, these types of issues can really teach you a lot if you see them through. I had a ComboBox with bindings on it’s ItemSource and SelectedItem like so: <ComboBox Name="ComboBoxControl" Style="{StaticResource ComboBoxStyle}"
SelectedItem="{Binding Path=SelectedOption, Mode=TwoWay}"
...
I’ve been neck deep in Silverlight development for the last couple of weeks. I’m finally starting to feel somewhat competent. Most of my struggles have been with XAML in general, so I think the steep learning curve applies to both Silverlight and WPF. One of the things I’ve been using struggling with the most is troubleshooting data bindings. The data binding system in Silverlight and WPF is pretty awesome, but it’s definitely not intuitive nor discoverable. When you force yourself to learn it, most of those issues melt away, but… buuuuut, debugging binding remains extremely difficult. Today I discovered...
I’ve become very smitten with Skype lately. I’ve had an account for years, but never really used it… until now. It just makes so much sense in so many scenarios. For $30 a year I have unlimited calling throughout the US and Canada. For an additional $30 bucks a year I have a Skype-assigned phone number. With that number I’m able to entirely hide the fact I’m using Skype to the outside world. Google Voice is another service I’m quite fond of. It basically acts as a dispatching service for all your phone numbers. With a single Google...