Building a Better User Experience - .NET

A Simple Sound Effects Engine for Silverlight 2

Keith Rome — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:59:22 GMT

Audio support is all too often one of the last things a developer thinks of when it comes to building a user interface. Fortunately, Silverlight offers some basic building blocks that make it fairly trivial to add event-driven sounds to our applications. I have taken the built-in functionality one step further, and created a simple run-time audio engine that makes it even easier.

First, I will discuss the requirements that I had in mind when I created this engine. Second, I will discuss the ideal API for a complete solution. Third, I submit the simple effects engine that I developed in order to meet those requirements and API.

Sound Effects Engine Requirements

Must be able to play looping “background music” tracks.
Must be able to play smaller sound effects on demand.
Must support concurrent (and overlapping) sounds effects without interfering with already-playing audio.
Must adequately handle the possibility of download delays when pulling down external audio files.
Should cache audio files between playbacks.
Should allow serving of audio from high-bandwidth CDN such as Silverlight Streaming.

An Ideal Sound Effects API

Should be very approachable. If possible, only a single line of code to play any audio (similar to PlaySound() API).
Should support any formats supported by Silverlight.
Should be efficient.
Should offer download and playback completion callbacks (for chaining and synchronization).
Should support aggressive background pre-caching of audio files.

The SilverlightToolbox Solution

To address the simplicity requirements, this sound effects engine is implemented as a single static C# class that can be easily included into any Silverlight project. It can exist in a referenced class library, or can be linked directly into the main project.

To address looping background music, a single method SetBackgroundLoop() is supplied. This will begin playback of a single audio clip, and will automatically repeat it. Only one track can be played as the background loop – calling this method again will terminate the running track and start the new one. You can also pass String.Empty to stop all background music.

To address typical sound effect clips. two overloads of the PlaySoundEffect() method are supplied. The simpler of the two methods will simply play a clip once it has been downloaded. The extended version allows you to specify a callback for when the clip has been downloaded and started playing, and a second callback that can be used for notification that the clip has ended.

To address the scenario where multiple sound effects might be played at the same time, the engine internally maintains a queue of MediaElements. When a new sound needs to played, it pulls an unused element and puts it into service. Once the sound is finished, the element is returned to the queue. This allows Silverlight itself to handle media mixing, and by caching those MediaElements, it does so without placing undue stress on the environment.

To address the issue of download delays, the startedCallback and completedCallback parameters of PlaySoundEffect() were introduced.

To address caching of audio files, a WebClient is used (which in turn leverages the browser’s cache). Furthermore, the engine will reuse any downloaded file streams (and is smart enough to not re-queue the same file if it already queued for download).

By using a MediaElement for playback, audio tracks are automatically supported from streaming sources and Content Delivery Networks, and can be of any type supported by Silverlight.

To support chaining of audio effects, and to support synchronization of UI with audio, the PlaySoundEffect() method accepts callback events that are fired when the clip has been downloaded, and again when it has completed playback. To further help with UI synchronization, a second utility class is provided (DelayedAction) which provides a simple wrapper for BackgroundWorker that can be used to easily delay execution of a block of code after a specified amount of time.

To support pre-caching of audio files, the PreloadMedia() method can be used.

Typical usage:

In order for the sound effects engine to function properly, it must be provided with a top-level XAML container (MediaElement currently will not perform playback without a parent object). This is done by calling the Initialize() method, typically from your program’s startup code:

SoundEffects.Initialize(this.LayoutRoot);

After this has been done, background music can be played, and we can also queue up some sound effect clips for later:

SoundEffects.SetBackgroundLoop("cautious-path.wma");
SoundEffects.PreloadMedia("pop1.wma");

Then, at various points throughout the application, we can play the sound effect (for example, in response to a control event):

SoundEffects.PlaySoundEffect("pop1.wma");

If at any point we need to delay the sound effect slightly, we can control this be introducing a short delay:

DelayedAction.Execute(2.0, () => SoundEffects.PlaySoundEffect("pop1.wma"));

Complete Source Code for DelayedAction.cs:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Threading;
  
namespace Wintellect.SilverlightToolbox
{
public class DelayedAction
{
class DelayedCallback
{
public TimeSpan
Delay { get; set; }
public Action
Callback { get; set; }
}
  
public static void Execute(double seconds,
Action callback)
{
BackgroundWorker
Delay = new BackgroundWorker();
Delay.DoWork
+= (s, e) =>
{
DelayedCallback
DelayCallback = (DelayedCallback)e.Argument;
Thread.Sleep(DelayCallback.Delay);
e.Result
= DelayCallback.Callback;
};
Delay.RunWorkerCompleted
+= (s, e) =>
{
Action
Callback = e.Result as Action;
Callback();
};
Delay.RunWorkerAsync(new DelayedCallback
{
Delay
= TimeSpan.FromSeconds(seconds),
Callback
= callback
});
}
}
}

Complete Source Code for SoundEffects.cs:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Net;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Media;
  
namespace Wintellect.SilverlightToolbox
{
public static class SoundEffects
{
static Panel
Root;
static MediaElement
BackgroundLoop = new MediaElement();
static WebClient
EffectDownloader = new WebClient();
  
static Queue<MediaElement>
AvailableSoundEffectGenerators = new Queue<MediaElement>();
static Dictionary<string,
Stream> DownloadedEffects = new Dictionary<string,
Stream>();
static Queue<string>
PendingDownloads = new Queue<string>();
static Queue<QueuedEffect>
PendingEffects = new Queue<QueuedEffect>();
static Dictionary<MediaElement,
Action> PendingStartupCallbacks = new Dictionary<MediaElement,
Action>();
static Dictionary<MediaElement,
Action> PendingCompletionCallbacks = new Dictionary<MediaElement,
Action>();
  
enum TargetType
{
BackgroundMusic,
SoundEffect,
}
  
class QueuedEffect
{
public string MediaName
{ get; set; }
public TargetType
Target { get; set; }
public Action
StartedCallback { get; set; }
public Action
CompletedCallback { get; set; }
}
  
public static void Initialize(Panel
root)
{
Root
= root;
InitializeTarget(root,
BackgroundLoop);
EffectDownloader.OpenReadCompleted
+= (s, e) =>
{
DownloadedEffects[(string)e.UserState]
= e.Result;
DownloadEffects();
PlayEffect();
};
}
  
static void DownloadEffects()
{
if (PendingDownloads.Count
== 0)
return;
string MediaName
= PendingDownloads.Dequeue();
EffectDownloader.OpenReadAsync(new Uri(MediaName,
UriKind.Relative), MediaName);
}
  
static void InitializeTarget(Panel
root, MediaElement target)
{
target.Width
= 0;
target.Height
= 0;
target.Visibility
= Visibility.Collapsed;
root.Children.Add(target);
target.AutoPlay
= false;
target.MediaOpened
+= (s, e) =>
{
MediaElement
Target = s as MediaElement;
Target.Volume
= 0.35;
Target.Play();
if (PendingStartupCallbacks.ContainsKey(Target))
{
Target.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(PendingStartupCallbacks[Target]);
PendingStartupCallbacks.Remove(Target);
}
};
target.MediaEnded
+= (s, e) =>
{
MediaElement
Target = s as MediaElement;
Target.Stop();
if (s
== BackgroundLoop)
Target.Play();
else
AvailableSoundEffectGenerators.Enqueue(Target);
  
if (PendingCompletionCallbacks.ContainsKey(Target))
{
Target.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(PendingCompletionCallbacks[Target]);
PendingCompletionCallbacks.Remove(Target);
}
};
}
  
static MediaElement
GetUnusedEffectGenerator()
{
if (AvailableSoundEffectGenerators.Count
> 0)
return AvailableSoundEffectGenerators.Dequeue();
else
{
MediaElement
Result = new MediaElement();
InitializeTarget(Root,
Result);
return Result;
}
}
  
static void PlayEffect()
{
lock (PendingEffects)
{
if (PendingEffects.Count
== 0)
return;
QueuedEffect
Effect = PendingEffects.Dequeue();
if (DownloadedEffects.ContainsKey(Effect.MediaName))
{
MediaElement
TargetElement = null;
switch (Effect.Target)
{
case TargetType.BackgroundMusic:
{
TargetElement = BackgroundLoop; break; }
case TargetType.SoundEffect:
{
TargetElement = GetUnusedEffectGenerator(); break;
}
}
if (Effect.StartedCallback
!= null)
PendingStartupCallbacks.Add(TargetElement,
Effect.StartedCallback);
if (Effect.CompletedCallback
!= null)
PendingCompletionCallbacks.Add(TargetElement,
Effect.CompletedCallback);
TargetElement.SetSource(DownloadedEffects[Effect.MediaName]);
}
else
{
PendingEffects.Enqueue(Effect);
}
}
}
  
static void PlaySound(TargetType
target, string mediaName, Action startedCallback,
Action completedCallback)
{
if (target
== TargetType.BackgroundMusic)
if (BackgroundLoop.CurrentState
!= MediaElementState.Stopped)
BackgroundLoop.Stop();
  
if (mediaName
!= String.Empty)
{
lock (PendingEffects)
{
if (!DownloadedEffects.ContainsKey(mediaName))
{
PendingDownloads.Enqueue(mediaName);
}
PendingEffects.Enqueue(new QueuedEffect
{
MediaName
= mediaName,
Target
= target,
StartedCallback
= startedCallback,
CompletedCallback
= completedCallback
});
}
DownloadEffects();
PlayEffect();
}
}
  
public static void SetBackgroundLoop(string mediaName)
{
PlaySound(TargetType.BackgroundMusic,
mediaName, null, null);
}
  
public static void PlaySoundEffect(string effectName)
{
PlaySound(TargetType.SoundEffect,
effectName, null, null);
}
  
public static void PlaySoundEffect(string effectName,
Action startedCallback, Action completedCallback)
{
PlaySound(TargetType.SoundEffect,
effectName, startedCallback, completedCallback);
}
  
public static void PreloadMedia(string mediaName)
{
if (!DownloadedEffects.ContainsKey(mediaName))
{
PendingDownloads.Enqueue(mediaName);
DownloadEffects();
}
}
}
}

Gem Blaster updated and enhanced for Silverlight 2

Keith Rome — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:37:56 GMT

I finally got around to updating my Gem Blaster game from Silverlight 1.1 alpha to the 2.0 beta bits. Since there were very heavy changes to the control model and other aspects of the managed runtime, I had to rewrite a lot of the original code (this was fully expected by the way). While I was in there, I also took the opportunity to add a number of other new features such as a simple sound FX engine, a self-playing "demo mode", and a bunch of other improvements.

I intend to update CodePlex soon with the new source code, but for now you can try out the game here (embedded below). It is hosted on the Silverlight Streaming service, so feel free to pass the link around (it won't kill *my* servers). If you like, you can also directly embed the game using the following embeddable HTML snippet:

<iframe 
    src="http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/5683/GemBlasterV2/iframe.html" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width:800px;
height:625px"> </iframe>

Now that this project has been updated for Silverlight 2, I can move on to my next game project idea which (I am hoping) should really push the runtime to its limits :)

Atlanta Code Camp 2008

Keith Rome — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:16:11 GMT

We are happy to announce that the 2008 Atlanta Code Camp is coming up soon. We have confirmed the event date of Saturday, March 29th, and it will be held at the Devry University campus in Decatur (this is the same place as last year).

We are actively seeking speaker submissions for the event. You can get the speaker form from our speakers page. We are also looking for volunteers to help on the day of the event. If you are interested in volunteering, please sign up here.

Attendee Registration is not open yet, but check back often because it is likely to fill up quickly once opened.

Speaking at the Atlanta Cutting Edge / Atlanta MS Professionals Tomorrow

Keith Rome — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:06:33 GMT

Monday night, March 3rd (tomorrow), I am lined up to present on the topic of "Surviving the Multi-core Revolution". This presentation focuses on the concepts and skills needed to bring scalability and performance to server-based processing.

Heading to MIX this year

Keith Rome — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:11:59 GMT

This year I will be heading to MIX in Vegas along with thousands of other UX enthusiasts. I have always had a deep interest in all things related to User Experience, and for the past couple years have wished I could attend a MIX event, and finally this year I get to go!

What will I be doing at MIX? Well I will certainly be soaking up any and all information related to Silverlight and WPF. I will also stick my head into some of the designer-oriented sessions. It's a good thing to see how the other half lives. In between sessions I am hoping to meet all kinds of people who are also passionate about UX. And of course this is Vegas, so I am sure I will lose a few dollars in a casino at some point and drink more booze than is healthy.

Joining me will be a number of Wintellectuals including Steve Porter, Sergio Loscialo, Rik Robinson, Sara Faatz, and Todd Fine. I know of a number of other local Atlanta folks will be making the trip as well: Sean Gerety, Doug Turnure, and Shawn Wildermuth to name a few. Are you going too? If so, let me know and we can get together for a cup of coffee or a beer.

Slides and Code from Alabama Code Camp 6

Keith Rome — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 00:20:18 GMT

I have uploaded my slides and associated source code that was demonstrated, for the benefit of those who were not able to attend my session, or for those who have asked for copies of the code and slides.

I understand that these will be made available from the Alabama Code Camp web site, but I am also making them available for download from my server as well: http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/weblog/content/binary/AlabamaCC6-Silverlight-KeithRome.zip

Heading to Alabama Code Camp 6

Keith Rome — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 16:15:08 GMT

I am packing my bags and heading out to Huntsville AL tonight. In the morning I will be kicking off the Silverlight Track at the Alabama Code Camp with a presentation titled "Tapping into the power of Silverlight 1.0". My goal with this presentation is to show that although 2.0 will indeed be a phenomenal release of the Silverlight platform, the currently shipping version is still very powerful and offers a tremendous amount of value.

If you are planning on attending this Code Camp event, please stop by and listen in!

Source Code for Gem Blaster finally published to CodePlex

Keith Rome — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:00:56 GMT

Last fall I showed off a new game that I had built using Silverlight 1.1 at a few User Group meetings across the southeast. I showed the internal "guts" of the puzzle game, and I think people generally thought it was a really cool project. I promised that I would make the code available, but never actually got around to publishing it.

Until tonight.

Gem Blaster is now (finally!) published to CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/gemblaster

Full source code is available there.

Also, if you just want to play the game (after all, it IS a game, and somewhat addictive too), I have a "live demo" posted to the Wintellect server here: http://demo.wintellect.com/gemblaster/default.html

Enjoy!

PolyGraph3D: Making 3D happen with Silverlight 1.0!

Keith Rome — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:33:45 GMT

Yes, you read that right. Silverlight 1.0 - as in unmanaged JavaScript - and 3D.

Last week I was reminded of the FarSeer Physics engine for XNA and Silverlight 2.0. I have a strange fascination for 3D software - stemming back from the years when I was a beta tester and plugin developer for Caligari trueSpace 3D - so I decided to poke around in the source code from CodePlex to see what they were doing. Turns out it was just mostly linear algebra and some simple mechanics - things I remembered working with many years ago before the age of managed runtimes and rich visual APIs. Back then we had to do all the heavy lifting with highly optimized C++ routines and drawing directly to an HWND. But things are different now, and what seemed incredibly hard in years past really didn't seem all that hard anymore.

So I was inspired I guess.

I know I could have started with the FarSeer code, and built upon that using C# and targeting the managed runtime. But oh no - that was too easy! I figured that if it can be done using simple trig and a solid model design, I bet I could make it work in JavaScript. After all, JavaScript's Math intrinsic object supports Sin() and Cos(), extensible objects, and arrays - and at the end of the day, that's all one really needs in order to create a 3D runtime. Sure, it involves a fair amount of matrix operations and dot-products and cross-products, but all those things can be learned by reading up on Wikipedia these days (or mathreference.com).

So with that, I set out to create an unmanaged 3D visualization engine for Silverlight...

I am making the code freely available and have already published out to CodePlex here: http://www.codeplex.com/polygraph3d

My efforts so far are looking pretty good (I think). Over the course of about 8 hours of coding and testing, I have the basics working. I can create a 3-dimensional polyhedron (a mesh if you will), and I can display the object in a Silverlight Canvas. I can apply scaling, rotations, and positioning of the polyhedra, and I can also build complex objects using polyhedron groups, each of which has its own local scaling/rotation/position transforms. It also supports a movable camera and performs rudimentary perspective correction as well as small optimizations for backface-culling. It currently only supports simple brushes for the object faces - I would like to implement a real texture mapping system, but that will require some very creative use of image skewing to pull it off.

I have a test page up that demos a simple 3D cube that you can move around the virtual viewport space...

For sure, it is a very simple demo. Clicking the red, green, and blue axis bars will move the cube around. The "spin" button introduces a gradual rotation around the Y axis... but since my rotation transform code is currently broken, the effect isn't quite what I had in mind. Hopefully I will figure that particular bug out soon.

One major hurdle I encountered was the fact that Silverlight does not let you draw directly on a Canvas, nor does it let you create your own controls. This posed a problem since I wanted to display things that simply could not be expressed using 2D XAML. I "solved" this problem by performing all of the mathematics needed to project the 3D scene into a 2D viewport, and then I use the vertex data from the projected mesh to build a series of 2D Path elements. It was indeed a dirty trick - but hey, sometimes you just have to make do with the capabilities of the platform.

Silverlight Bug: MediaElements will restart if their containment lineage changes

Keith Rome — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:24:02 GMT

I have not yet found a workaround for this problem.

The setup is simple: Create two Canvas elements. In one canvas, place a MediaElement. Point the media element to a valid video source. It doesn't matter if it is set to AutoPlay or not (but if using manual play, then you will need to initiate playback in some manner after loading).

Now once that video playback has begun (it doesn't matter how), if you remove the MediaElement from the original canvas using Children.Remove() and then add it to the other canvas using Children.Add(), then the playback position will reset and will start playing from the beginning.

I would possibly expect this behavior if the MediaElement has the AutoPlay property enabled, but this also happens when AutoPlay is false. Basically, as long as the media is active, it is restarted if you relocate the element to another parent control. I am guessing this is a bug in the MediaElement's OnLoad implementation that is not respecting the AutoPlay setting if the media is currently being played, and is internally calling Stop() and Start().

Silverlight Bug: Using a packaged image source for multiple Image elements

Keith Rome — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:15:55 GMT

I ran into this nasty little bug today... it is not easy to reproduce, but when it happens it is very annoying to debug.

First, this bug only occurs when you are using a ZIP file to package your external resources and using a Silverlight Downloader object to bring the package to the browser, and subsequently using Image.SetSource() to provide the image files to the visual elements.

Second, it's not really a bug in functionality exactly, but more of a nuisance to the viewer. You see, the images get displayed correctly, but Silverlight throws extra error messages.

The problem occurs when you reuse a single image resource from a downloaded zip archive for multiple Image elements. And it only happens when the two images are assigned to the same resource consecutively. Example:

function downloadComplete(sender, eventArgs) { // this one is OK sender.GetHost().FindName(“Image1”).SetSource(sender, “picture.png”); // this one fails sender.GetHost().FindName(“Image2”).SetSource(sender, “picture.png”); }

This is using Silverlight 1.0, but I assume the same issue also happens in 1.1.

The problem appears to be related to referencing the same resource twice consecutively. If you reference another resource from the Downloader between the two calls to SetSource(), then the problem goes away. Also, if you simply don't reuse the same resource like this, then it can be avoided.

UPDATE January 2008: My previous "fix" of referencing another resource in between uses of the same resource does not seem to always work. In addition, some Silverlight installations (not all!) are also raising spurious ImageError 4001 messages. The only complete fix I have found is to implement a custom error handler, and ignore those ImageErrors:

function handleError(sender, errorArgs) { if (errorArgs.errorType == "ImageError" && errorArgs.errorCode == 3002) { // This error is raised sporadically by SetSource return; } if (errorArgs.errorType == "ImageError" && errorArgs.errorCode == 4001) { // This error is raised sporadically by SetSource return; } Silverlight.default_error_handler(sender, errorArgs); }

The Atlanta .NET Doubleheader: Visual Studio 2008 Loadfest and XBox Gaming Night

Keith Rome — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:59:37 GMT

This coming Monday night would normally be our monthly Atlanta MS Pros / Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET / Atlanta VB.NET user group meeting, but this month we have a special treat lined up...

Microsoft (aka Doug Turnure) will be providing a FREE copy of Visual Studio 2008 (Professional Edition) to the first 150 people that arrive. This is a GREAT way to get an upgrade right away without having to convince your boss to buy a license! Well, technically we will be giving out DVDs with the trial version, but as soon as the Retail Packages are ready, each person that gets a Trial copy on Monday will receive a full Retail Boxed copy.

So bring your laptop. Most folks will be loading it up right there, so you might as well join in and get your upgrade on.

And then, after the LoadFestivities, everyone will be welcome to come join in some XBOX fun... we have 9 (yes, NINE) xbox 360 consoles and 9 matching big-screen TV's, so there should be plenty of room for everyone to have a good time. The name of the game is Halo3, so put on your MJOLNIR armor and get ready to frag your buddies! And if John-117 is too intense for you, we will also have Guitar Hero cranking on some of the consoles... so you can come and rock out to some Hit Me With Your Best Shot on Easy.

I hear the Master Chief himself might be there to take on challengers!

Please register in advance, so that we can have an accurate count of attendees. The registration link is here.

Location:

Microsoft Corporation [Alpharetta]
1125 Sanctuary Pkwy.
Suite 300
Atlanta, GA 30004

See you there!

10 interview tips that will help you land a better job

Keith Rome — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:22:18 GMT

My last post was somewhat negative. I acknowledge that. I was annoyed. Let me make amends by posting some useful, positive information for those who find themselves on the other end of the interview table (or phone).

~~Google~~ Live Search your interviewer. Most recruiters will tell you who will be performing your interview. If they don't venture the information, then ask for it - chances are if they know then they will tell you. Take that name and do some research. Get to know what your interviewer is most likely to be questioning you about. If they have written a book on security best practices, then there is a pretty good chance they will ask you questions about security. Do drop subtle hints that you read their weblog - most tech people like to hear that - just be sparing in it. You don't want to come off as a stalker.
Be honest about your skill level. Many interviewers will ask you how you rate yourself, so that they can judge just how delusional you are. Be honest here. If you claim to be a 10 out of 10 in a subject area, then you had better be an absolute expert. A 10 out of 10 is expected to know that subject inside and out, perhaps even teach the interviewer a thing or two. Don't be too humble though. Rating yourself as a 2 out of 10 is highly unlikely to get you into the interview room in the first place.
Don't interrupt. When the interviewer is speaking, never (and I mean NEVER) forcibly interrupt them. I have had many interviews where the candidate would inject words, statements, or questions while I was trying to guide the interview towards the next topic. Doing that does not impress the interviewer with your profound wisdom. What it does is send a clear message that you feel your thoughts are more important than the interviewer's... which is nothing but a fast track to bottom of the resume stack.
Speak clearly. No need to shout, but you should be certain that you speak confidently and with ample volume to be heard clearly. Avoid slang terms - especially cursing! Try to provide concise and accurate answers, with as few "umms" as possible. And for heavens sake, if you don't know the answer to a question, just say it rather than trying to BS your way through it.
Be prepared to ask questions about the employer's business and work environment. Even if you already know the answers (you did research the company's website beforehand, didn't you?). This shows an interest in the company and team.
Be prepared to answer strange, sometimes seemingly irrelevant questions during the interview. Good interviewers are not looking for right or wrong answers to every question - they are looking for clues about how you work your way through problems and how you are able to handle stressful situations. This is especially true in the Consulting industry, where your reaction to a crisis is often more visible and more important than the act of correcting the underlying problem itself.
Follow-up. If you already did a technical screening and are now in for the "big face to face" interview, chances are good that you missed at least one of the questions during the screening. You should note those questions during the initial interview, and research them before going to the main interview - especially if the interviewer is the same person. Let them know that you felt compelled to research the topic on your own time, and that you now have an answer for that missed question if they would like to hear it. Chances are they won't want to hear the answer, but they will take notice that you followed up and did your homework in between the interviews.
Be calm. It is normal to be nervous. Some folks even have obvious nervous twitches that come out in full color during something as stressful as an interview (sweating, fast talking, jittering). Take a few steps to defeat those demons beforehand - exercise rigorously the morning before your interview, this will clear your mind and stabilize your metabolism, which helps control sweating problems. Learn some deep breathing exercises if you need help calming down beforehand. Never, under any circumstances, drink a "Double Vente Latte Machiatto" or other "energy drink" less than an hour before the interview. All that caffeine will lead to a panicky interviewee that talks WAY too fast and incoherently, and that is trying to hold their bladder for an hour. Nothing good can come of that.
Sleep well the night before. Don't study your "interview cheat sheet" late into the night. Go to bed early, and go to bed with a clear mind. You will not sleep well if you spend the night ruminating over those questions and answers. In fact, I understand that taking an over-the-counter aid (if you are healthy enough) can help. Seasickness medications such as Bonine can clear nausea from "stomach butterflies" that might precede a stressful interview, and also have the nice side effect of being a sleeping aid (causes drowsiness). As always, check with your doctor before taking something like that.
Smile. The interviewer is not only looking to see if you know the technical answers to their questions, they are also evaluating whether they would want to work with you on a team or not, and if you know how to enjoy working with others. When interviewing, the measuring stick I often use is to ask myself "Would I be comfortable having a beer after work with this person?". You might be surprised how often the answer to that is "no" (especially in the ultra-bizarre circus of tech workers).

And here is a "bonus" tip submitted by David Daughtrey...

11. Dont eat at the Wing Factory on the night before an interview. Or any hot wing establishment for that matter.

How to Botch an Interview and Ensure that you will Never get an offer

Keith Rome — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:56:52 GMT

I have been in this industry for quite a while... about 15 years. I have spent the majority of that time in upper-tier roles, or at least as "upper tier" as it can be without losing touch with the technology itself. I am one of those "hands-on" folks that would never ask a person on my team to build something that I wasn't 100% positive that I could (and would) do myself. As a result, my technical skills have always been kept sharp.

And because of those very solid technical skills, I have almost always been deeply involved in the recruitment and interview process at whatever companies I have worked for. I typically perform several interviews per month, sometimes more, sometimes less, generally depending on hiring urgency or other market conditions. But this morning I have had without a doubt the WORST interview I have ever had to participate in. I will not divulge the name or anything else about this person, as that's not my style, so please do not ask. But what I can do is provide some advice on things you should NOT do unless you really want to bomb an interview horribly...

What NOT to do in an interview:

If you are asked to "self rate" yourself, give yourself a 9 out of 10 in a new "buzz" technology that you really don't know much about. The interviewer won't know the difference anyway.
Give the recruiter your cell phone number even though you know you get horrible reception where you expect to be taking technical screening calls.
Before starting a technical screening, be sure to tell the interviewer that your skills are "more broad than deep" so that they will see just how fabulously excellent you are even if you miss a bunch of the questions.
When the interviewer asks an entry-level question that you don't know, complain that "those kinds of nitpicking questions are for a more junior person than me", and follow it by "I usually manage people who would answer those kinds of questions".
Try to turn the tables on the interviewer if you don't think you are doing well. Try to convince them that they are being unreasonable by asking them a technical question of your own. The idea here is to make sure that they can't answer it correctly - in fact, just make something up! Here is a good one to try: "what’s the parameter five of the MoveWindow?". Without a doubt, you will have made your point to the interviewer.
Be sure to argue with the interviewer that they are wrong about their own entry-level question. After all, only a moron would claim that "SQL Server" was one of the three "out of the box" configurable options for Session State storage in ASP.NET.
Remember, nothing can prove you wrong, not even Truth itself. If the interviewer isn't asking you the questions that you want them to ask, then it is surely because they are not worth your time. In fact, you should tell them that they ask too many nitpicking questions, and then hang up on them.

What a complete tool.

Expression Design Service Pack 1

Keith Rome — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:23:12 GMT

While it probably will not get as much attention as a Visual Studio or Windows Service Pack release, the Expression Team blog announced that there is an SP now available for Expression Design that solves some very nagging issues with the RTM version of the product. These problems mostly impacted those of us using Design and Blend with Silverlight, most were a nuisance and had workarounds, but this update really improves the "flow" of creating a Silverlight or WPF UI.

Some of the "big" fixes from my perspective:

Gradient Midpoints are now exported (glass fanatics across the globe rejoiced). This was one of my pet peeves with gradients - you could use Midpoints to create truly spectacular glass and glow effects in Design - but they would end up more along the lines of "craptacular" when exported to XAML. The workaround wasn't 100% equivalent, and was fairly annoying (convert midpoints to new gradient stops before exporting).
Exporting to XAML will now emit the correct (forward) slash character in image paths for Silverlight exports. This was an annoying problem when Silverlight 1.0 was sent to RTM and no longer supported the backslash.
Text exported as TextBlocks instead of Paths. Thatsa verra niiice!

One thing that hasn't been addressed that still bugs me is how the exporter handles layers: Each layer becomes a canvas stacked, each stacked on top of the other. This isn't inherently troublesome, except that the canvases all start at 0,0 and fill the workspace... which basically means that only the topmost canvas will recieve mouse events by default. It would be better if the exported canvases were only as large as they needed to be, and positioned accordingly.

Then again, I guess I could always file a bug/suggestion report that would be more likely to be seen by the Expression Team...

Win a free pass to Devscovery 2008!

Keith Rome — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:16:43 GMT

John Robbins, the wizard of debugging, is looking for suggestions for the Devscovery 2008 Keynotes. To encourage submissions, he is offering a FREE conference pass to the person with the best idea. Full price for such a pass is $900, which is a bargain in itself, but FREE is even BETTER!

The spring Devscovery will be in New York, and the fall Devscovery will be held in Redmond - the winner will get to choose which event they prefer to attend. Having attended the fall Redmond conference this year, I HIGHLY recommend it! Even if I weren't a Wintellect employee, I would still be comfortable claiming that this is hands-down the best way to spend your training time and budget.

To submit a keynote idea, please either comment on John's post here or email your suggestion directly to him. You can submit as many ideas as you like.

No user group meeting Monday night

Keith Rome — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 20:52:14 GMT

We have not sent out a bulletin message yet, but we will not be meeting on Monday 9/3 due to the holiday. The next Atlanta Cutting Edge / VBUG / AMP meeting will take place in October.

Speaking in Charlotte tonight

Keith Rome — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:14:12 GMT

Steve Porter and myself are driving up to Charlotte tonight to present on Silverlight at the Developers Guild meeting. Steve will be giving an overview of Silverlight features and development, and of course I will be deconstructing my newest Silverlight game - Gem Blaster!

If you remember Popper!, this is the next generation of that game engine, upgraded to work with the newer Alpha 1.1 Refresh, and with better graphics and gameplay. You can also go directly here to play the game: http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/gemblaster/

EDIT: The game has been moved to the Wintellect servers at: http://www.wintellect.com/gemblaster/

I am also working on getting the source code published to CodePlex, but it has taken a while due to my very busy work schedule.

Blend 2 August CTP Refresh

Keith Rome — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:05:39 GMT

Using the August CTP of Expression Blend 2? Worried about the lack of a registration key and that ever-decreasing "remaining days" counter at startup?

The Expression team has released a new refresh build to address that. This build is supposed to not expire until January 2008. It also has a refreshed Silverlight template that creates projects compatible with the Alpha 1.1 refresh that shipped earlier this month. You can go here to find out more.

Too bad they didn't get in a quick fix for the clipped menus bug too...

AirportWait (Silverlight Demo)

Keith Rome — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:48:16 GMT

Here is a second Silverlight demo you may or may not have seen already... this one is from a former colleage, John West. AirportWait (http://www.airportwait.com/) is a website that provides congestion data for the various checkpoints in your local airport (where provided). It basically lets you get an idea of just how early you should plan on getting to that gate in order to make your flight. Silverlight is being used to create the polar (circular) charts.

Check it out!

SilverLife (Silverlight Demo) posted

Keith Rome — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:19:14 GMT

Jeff Prosise just published a new code sample to his Wintellect blog to show his Silverlight adaptation of the classic Game of Life, which he calls "SilverLife".

It's a really cool demo of Silverlight capabilities and programming model, and pretty fun to play with as well. Best of all, he has the source code available to download as well so you can see exactly how things are being done under the hood.

Go check it out!

MVP Award - C#

Keith Rome — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:53:33 GMT

This year, both Dan Attis and myself recieved MVP awards from Microsoft. I am very honored that my contributions to the developer community have been recognized, and I hope to continue giving to the local community in the years to come... but at least now my wife can see something tangible to show for all of my involvement (she has a hard time with the fact that I spend almost every monday night out at UG meetings instead of being home with her).

Anyways, I am very pleased to have been given this award. Special thanks go to Doug Turnure for supporting us local guys, and also thanks to my wife for putting up with it all, and both my current (Wintellect) and former (Intellinet) employers for having the vision to support involvement in the community.

Whose Slide is it anyway?

Keith Rome — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:41:13 GMT

On Monday, July 9th (thats today!), Microsoft is trucking in a bunch of evangelists who will participate in an impromptu user group meeting at the Microsoft campus.

There will be three "tracks" of sessions, one covering Vista Internals (by Brian Hitney - NC), another covering Silverlight (by David Isbitski - PA), and the third covering the ASP.NET Provider Model (by Danilo Diaz - PA). After the main presentations, there will be an open Q&A period followed by "Whose Slide is it Anyway?" featuring Dev Evangelists being asked to present for a couple minutes based on a slide from someone else's decks that they have never seen before.

The festivities will begin as 6:30pm. If you have been to a Microsoft User Group meeting in the past 2 years, then you already know the place. If not, then the map and directions from this page on the Cutting Edge User Group website should get you there.

Doug Turnure has more information about the event on his weblog here.

Popper!

Keith Rome — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 06:40:42 GMT

Popper! is a simple Silverlight puzzle game. I wrote it as an exercise of my own skill with the platform, but then decided it was a rather fun (at least for a little while...) little game, so I am sharing it with the rest of the developer community. Popper! is written against Silverlight 1.1 alpha, and is mostly in C#, although the initial splash screen is done using unmanaged javaScript (yes, on purpose).

I will be walking through the innards of Popper! at the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group meeting tonight. So if you will be attending, then come check it out. Or if you just want to kill some time at "work" today... then play with it a little and let me know how it goes (good or bad)...

http://www.mindfusioncorp.com/popper/

I know of one minor bug so far: if you try to click around while a set of bubbles is in the process of "popping", then an error is raised internally, and the game pretty much stops working. I just haven't had the time to get that bug addressed yet.

I intend to post the source for this sometime after this month's meeting. Pretty much that equates to "when I have time to do it".

Quick Tip - Input Controls in Silverlight

Keith Rome — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:25:05 GMT

UPDATE 10/25/2007: Updated this sample to function correctly with the Silverlight 1.0 release. The main changes necessary were the typical 0.9 to 1.0 changes (remove "Sys.", isWindowless now takes a string and not a boolean, event handlers no longer string based), and I also had to explicitly set the z-index of the INPUT element. Thank you Erik for bringing it to my attention.

I have seen a lot of questions and confusion regarding capturing input when using Silverlight. There are no Button, TextBox, or other similar controls to work with. I see many folks asking for help with building their own directly within Silverlight - and bless their hearts, that is a daunting task indeed! The UI model currently does not offer basic input capture features such as "focus" or "tabbing", or even control-level keystroke capture. So folks tend to start building those basic services first, before they ever even get to writing code and xaml to support that simple textbox they need.

If you read that first paragraph and thought "thats crazy, it shouldn't be that hard!", then I would agree with you. Fortunately, there is a FAR easier and more robust way to achieve the same thing. In fact, its something that is not new to Silverlight at all, it's been with us for years. I am of course talking about the tried-and-true html <input> tag.

One of the most overlooked aspects of Silverlight is that it is a component, not a platform. Your browser is the platform. It can do a lot of stuff, if you just ask it to. Nobody wants an entire site as a single Silverlight canvas, just like nobody wants an entire site as a Flash canvas (unless possibly it is a mini-game or rich media application)... Flash designers realized this fact years ago. And as a component, a part of the solution if you will, Silverlight can play nicely with it's neighbors. With just a little bit of effort and sprinkling a very minimal amount of javascript pixie dust, we can get a Silverlight applet talking to the rest of our html DOM. And that's exactly what I am going to show in this topic...

You can download the code demonstrated in this article here (QuickTip-TextboxesInSilverlight.zip).

First of all, I am doing this with Silverlight 1.0 beta (the javascript one), as I think the 1.1 alpha is far too likely to change, and this technique should work with either. That, and I am lazy and don't want to come back and revisit this post later to correct the code...

Secondly, I am using the current CTP builds of Visual Studio Orcas and Blend 2 (the May 2007 bits), both with the Silverlight extensions. If you are using something else, then your mileage may vary.

UPDATE 10/25/2007: Code updated for VS2008 beta2 and the RTM version of Silverlight 1.0.

Now on to the code... to be sure we are on the same page, I am creating a new project from scratch...

First, Create a new project in Blend. Select the Silverlight 1.0 (JavaScript) project type. It does not matter what you name the project, but for this example I went with "TextboxesInSilverlight".

Switch to XAML view and replace the default canvas with this markup:

<Canvas
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Width="252" Height="272"
Background="#FFFF2121"
>
<TextBlock Width="64" Height="24" Canvas.Left="8" Canvas.Top="8"
             Text="Opacity" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
<Ellipse Opacity="1" Fill="#FF0406FF" Stroke="#FF000000"
           x:Name="TheCircle" Width="180" Height="180"
           Canvas.Left="36" Canvas.Top="64"/>
</Canvas>

This will create a simple red canvas, with a blue circle.

At this point, I generally switch over to Visual Studio Orcas since Blend does not have Intellisense nor does it really know how to deal with JavaScript. You can do this easily by right-clicking a project item (such as the xaml file) and selecting "Edit in Visual Studio".

Next, we need to do one small housekeeping chore to make sure that our Silverlight canvas plays nicely - specifically, we need to ask it to operate "windowless", which will allow other dhtml elements to overlay it, Open the Default.html.js file, and modify the call to Silverlight.createObjectEx(). We want to add the parameter for isWindowless...

Silverlight.createObjectEx({
  source: "Scene.xaml",
  parentElement: document.getElementById("SilverlightControlHost"),
  id: "SilverlightControl",
  properties: {
   width: "100%",
   height: "100%",
   version: "0.9",
   isWindowless: "true"
  },
  events: {
   onLoad: sceneLoaded
  }
});

To make things a bit more "clean", we will create the input element directly from code, however it's always good to control visual styling with CSS. Therefore, open up the Default.html, and alter the <style> tag to match the following:

<style type="text/css">
  div, body, input
  {
   margin: 0;
   padding: 0;
  }
  #opacity
  {
   margin: -272px 0 0 75px;
   z-index: 100;
  }
  .silverlightHost
  {
   margin: 40px auto auto auto;
   height: 272px;
   width: 252px;
  }
</style>

This will handle the placement and sizing of the silverlight container <div> as well as the input control itself. The negative margin is not a typo - this is used to pull the input control "on top" of the silverlight canvas. We could have also used absolute positioning, but that is much more brittle, relative positioning FTW. Also, notice the use of "auto" margins for the main Silverlight Host <div>. This is how you can center content without resorting to using <center> or <table>... if you take nothing away from this post, at least remember that one trick.

The last thing we must do is wire the whole thing up. This can be done in many places, in many ways. I consider this particular TextBox to be an extension of the Xaml "scene", so I will add my code to the TextboxesInSilverlight.Scene class which was created for us by the Blend project template. This is not the only place you could do this kind of code, but I found that in this particular example it made the most sense. Had I been building a dialog for a game engine, I might have this code in a seperate script file that manages my game mechanics (but thats another article...).

First, we need to capture a global reference to the Scene object that is created (this object is instantiated by the createSilverlight() function of the Default.html.js script file we edited in a previous step). The purpose of capturing this reference is that we will need it later in an event handler. This will allow our html <input> control to communicate back with the silverlight content. This is easier done than said. Open the Scene.xaml.js file. Just before the definition of the TextboxesInSilverlight.Scene.prototype (look up javascript prototype for what this is if you are interested, but that discussion is out of scope for this article), add a line of code to declare the global reference:

var globalScene = null;

Now we will create a callback function that will be used to create our JavaScript object and initialize it:

function sceneLoaded(control,
userContext, rootElement)

{

    globalScene = new TextboxesInSilverlight.Scene();

    globalScene.handleLoad(control, userContext, rootElement);

};

Now, the idea for this example is that the value of the text box will determine the "Opacity" Xaml property of the Ellipse shape in our markup. In order for the event handler we are about to add to be able to do this, we will capture a reference to the circle object (technically we can wait and use findName() later during the event handler, but I prefer to capture it only once - its just my style of coding). Add this line to the handleLoad function:

this.circle = control.content.findName("TheCircle");

Next, we will create the input control and add it to the DHTML document. We will add it directly to the same <div> that Silverlight has injected itself into, and therefore any layout or positioning that affects the Silverlight canvas will also affect our <input> box. Add this code to the end of the handleLoad function:

var opacityEdit = window.document.createElement("input");
opacityEdit.type = "text";
opacityEdit.id = "opacity";
opacityEdit.name = "opacity";
opacityEdit.value = "1.0";

We are almost done - only two more steps and then we can fire this thing up! First, we need to add an event handler to react to changes in the value property of the input control. Add this code to the very end of the handleLoad function:

opacityEdit.onpropertychange = function()
    {
        if (event.propertyName == "value")
        {
            globalScene.circle.Opacity = event.srcElement.value;
        }
    }

This effectively creates an anonymous function to handle property change events on the <input> control, which in turn updates the Opacity property of the circle shape. Cool, huh?

The last thing to do is finally add the new <input> element to the page, otherwise all the work until this point will have had no discernable impact at all... add this one last line to the handleLoad function:

this.control.parentElement.appendChild(opacityEdit);

At this point, your Scene.xaml.js file should look like this:

if (!window.TextboxesInSilverlight)
window.TextboxesInSilverlight = {};
TextboxesInSilverlight.Scene = function()
{
}
var globalScene = null;
function sceneLoaded(control, userContext, rootElement)
{
    globalScene = new TextboxesInSilverlight.Scene();
    globalScene.handleLoad(control, userContext, rootElement);
}

TextboxesInSilverlight.Scene.prototype =
{
handleLoad: function(control, userContext, rootElement)
{
  this.control = control;

  this.circle = control.content.findName("TheCircle");

  var opacityEdit = window.document.createElement("input");
  opacityEdit.type = "text";
  opacityEdit.id = "opacity";
  opacityEdit.name = "opacity";
  opacityEdit.value = "1.0";
  opacityEdit.onpropertychange = function()
    {
      if (event.propertyName == "value")
      {
        globalScene.circle.Opacity = event.srcElement.value;
      }
    }
  this.control.parentElement.appendChild(opacityEdit);
}
}

If the typo gods favor you, then you should be able to use F5 to run the page and see it all working together:

Notice the positioning of the input textboxes, and the interaction of them with the underlying Silverlight canvas. This is just a simple example, but can be a very powerful way to "plug in" Silverlight into the surrounding DHTML.

Understanding what it means to "hit the curve"

Keith Rome — Wed, 23 May 2007 17:56:33 GMT

The past few months I have been diving deeper and deeper into the two main pillars of .NET 3.0 - WPF and WCF. This post by Karsten Januszewski, although a year old, totally resonates even today.

I always laugh a little (on the inside) when I hear "senior" developers claim how all the difficult "real" work is to be found in back-end services and components. They assert that all UI development is easy, and doesn't even require much developer skill. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the new UI framwork (WPF) makes this glaringly obvious.

Basic concepts can be difficult to grasp like the layout system - where controls get to "vote" on their size and position, but it is really up to their container to make the decision. Another one that is hard to get a handle on - control templates and data templates... very powerful indeed, but a completely new approach to build an interface. Or just the whole concept of resources and style resolution. It feels a little bit like CSS... until you realize that nothing really cascades, it only overrides.

Now, don't misinterpret this as a bash towards WPF... I really feel the complexity and learning curve are warranted, and that the platform is above and beyond anything that was available before. But XAML is HARD until you get the swing of it, and don't let anyone try to convince you otherwise.

Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET - May 2007

Keith Rome — Mon, 07 May 2007 00:30:37 GMT

Tomorrow night is the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group meeting for May. Actually, it's also the May meeting for the Atlanta MS Pros and VB.NET groups as well. We will all be sharing the facility and sponsorship, as well as having a combined networking period before the meeting and a combined "keynote" presentation for the first half hour. After that, we will split up into 3 rooms (well technically, we will probably just close the walls and divide the main room into individual sections), each of which will offer a seperate track of material. We have a track for Cutting Edge, one for VB.NET, and one for MS Pros.

For more details, including the topics and speakers that are scheduled, please refer to the user group website at http://www.atlantace.com/

A storm is brewing

Keith Rome — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:29:00 GMT

It has been a good while since this industry has had a significant shake-up, where the world as we know it changes almost overnight, and our skills and practices are all made obsolete. We generally seem to have one every few years or so, and according to my calculations, it has been about 7 or 8 years since the last one.

I am sure there were other events, but the first I can recall was the introduction of Object Oriented programming in the 80's. This paradigm shift left multitudes of mainframe COBOL and RPG analysts behind, forever to toil in a world of green on black terminal displays. Then in the early and mid 90's there was an explosion of "client-server" and "N-Tier" applications in the business world. These were all the rage, and again the flock was divided. Many OOP purists were left in the dust, trying to fend off the "younger kids" that embraced the 3GL and 4GL tools of the day. But as luck would have it, only a few years later the terms "client-server" and "N-Tier" took a back seat to the newest technology explosion - the age of the Web. Right or Wrong, everyone wanted to be on the web. Try as they might, the n-tier supporters could not withstand this assault. To this day, there remains a contingent of developers that cling to the world before the web - in the Microsoft kingdom, we call them "Windows Forms Programmers", or perhaps the slightly more dignified "Smart Client Developers". But the significant majority of development work admittedly goes into Web applications.

So for the last few generations of the industry, roughly every five to seven years, we experienced a wholesale disruption in the status quo. Things are no longer what we thought they were. Skills become unmarketable. Management becomes confused. Projects get scrapped. We have to retool - retool or else go the way of the Do-Do Bird (extinct).

The only problem is - it has been about eight years now since the last paradigm shift (I do not count .NET as a paradigm shift - it is simply a consolidation and improvement on ideas and methods already in place). It has been eight years, and I fear that we are long overdue. More than that though - I feel that perhaps, just perhaps, the paradigm shift has already begun - and that I can't see it due to my own Myopia. And what if the shift has already passed me by, and I have missed it entirely?

In conclusion, I think the shift is just now underway. I have smelled the crispness in the air that precedes a thunderstorm. I think the industry is about to change again, in a very significant way, and I hope to be a small part of it yet again. But in order to accept and participate in a significant change, a person must adapt to the new way of things. To that end I have begun the arduous task of retooling and rebranding myself. This will not be the first time, nor likely the last. As a as/400 specialist, converted to PC technician, converted to Delphi developer, converted to DBA, converted to Web Developer, and finally to .NET windows/web developer, I can say that I have definately been through this process before, and it does not scare me. What scares me is the thought of not adapting.

Some of the people I know and trust feel that they too have "seen the light". Some have their own theories about where to be when the music stops playing. My good friend Scooter seems to think that Sharepoint is the entire future. I don't necessarily agree with that. I have heard similar theories about the grand direction of things from others as well ("Linux is the future!", "Everything will be AJAX!", "OMGZ It's all going to Pocket PC format!") - most of which I cannot find reason with either. Everyone seems to agree that the winds are changing, only nobody appears to agree on the direction. But I have my own ideas and theories and will once again be betting the next half-decade or longer of my career on that insight. It hasn't let me down in the past - I trust it will not let me down this time either.

WPF/E Gets a Name

Keith Rome — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:09:06 GMT

Soma tells us that WPF/E has finally recieved a more inspiring name. The announcement was made at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Vegas.

What's the new name? Silverlight. They even have a slick logo for it:

You can also see how it stacks up against Flash here.

Expression tools for MSDN Subscribers and Partners

Keith Rome — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:45:43 GMT

Today I was on MSDN Subscriber Downloads to pull down an ISO that I needed. First I noticed this in the Partner VLA Keys section:

Then I noticed the new download in the downloads area:

Then I checked my RSS Reader and saw these posts by Somasegar, Walt, Tim, and Forest.

To make a long story short, Expression Web is now available to folks with MSDN Premium subscriptions, and Expression Blend will be available upon release. If you have one of the flavors of VS Team Suite w/ MSDN Premium then you will also have access to the full Expression Suite (I think this includes Expression Design and Expression Media?).

And while it was not reported on any of the above blogs, I assume that Certified and Gold level Microsoft Partners will also be granted a certain number of licenses for internal use - since I currently see it listed in that section.

This is great news for WPF fans. Tool availability is one of the biggest things holding back adoption of Fx 3.5, and this move to make Expression tools available to MSDN subscribers (without jacking up the price ala TFS) will help smooth the transition.

Alabama .NET Code Camp

Keith Rome — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:56:22 GMT

In case you missed the highly successful Atlanta Code Camp, there is another one coming up in Mobile, Alabame on April 14th. Registration is currently open, and I do not think they are sold out (yet). Like always, this Code Camp is a free event and it is jam-packed with lots of great topics being delivered by great speakers.

If you are anywheres near Mobile that weekend, it would be worth signing up for.

http://www.alabamacodecamp.com/

Longest Posts EVAR

Keith Rome — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 19:12:22 GMT

I catch a lot of crap from my peers about the length of my posts and their apparent lack of reasonable brevity. Well complain no more, because my pal Dan has totally jumped the shark with his pair of matching Longest Posts Evar:

Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) Walk-through - Part 1

and the sequel to the bestselling novel:

Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) w/MySites Walk-through - Part 2

Heck, even the titles are huge.

Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group Meeting - Monday March 5th

Keith Rome — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 19:45:10 GMT

Please join us on Monday, March 5th at 6:00 PM for the monthly Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group meeting.

**************************************

This month we have two speakers:

Paul Lockwood will be presenting Semi-Advanced Production Debugging - a brief discussion on little known debugging techniques including WinDbg and the sos.dll.

About the speaker:

Paul maintains a weblog at http://www.dotnetworkaholic.com/.

Also speaking this month is Eric Engler who will be presenting ASP.NET AJAX: Beyond the UpdatePanel. This session will provide an overview of ASP.NET AJAX. Eric will briefly cover the basics of ASP.NET AJAX, and then he'll drill down on some of the less commonly known, but very powerful aspects. Among the subjects to be discussed will be:

The parts of the AJAX Distribution
UpdatePanel - a brief obligatory overview
The ScriptManager
AJAX Control Toolkit: design of server-side control extenders and custom controls
JavaScript: how to use objects in a non-OOP language
AJAX Client Library: micro sized version of the .NET Framework written in JavaScript
ASP.NET AJAX Application Services
Calling Web Services from the Client
Debugging AJAX applications

About the speaker:

Eric is a Senior Software Engineer at ZC Sterling, a real estate insurance and tax servicing company in Atlanta. He has over 20 years of experience programming many languages, on many platforms. His current focus is on Visual Studio and C#, including all types of applications: Windows, Web, and middle-tier. He holds a MCSD.NET certification.

Website: http://www.EricEngler.com

Thanks go to our sponsor Intellinet (www.intellinet.com) for graciously providing refreshments during the meeting.

This month's agenda (Monday, March 5th)

    * Networking starting at 6:00
    * Announcements at 6:15
    * Paul Lockwood – Production Debugging at 6:30
    * Break at 7:00
    * Eric Engler – ASP.NET AJAX at 7:15

We will be meeting at the Microsoft Regional Headquarters at the Sanctuary Park complex in Alpharetta (Mansell Rd. Exit). The meeting begins at 6 PM so folks can mingle, however the announcements and presentations are not scheduled to begin until 6:15 PM.

For more information on this month's meeting, please visit our website at:

http://www.atlantace.com/

If you are not familiar with the meeting location, please print out the driving directions for reference:

http://www.atlantace.com/MeetingLocation.aspx

**** A CALL FOR SPEAKERS ****

If you have a topic that you would like to present to the group, please contact me to discuss your ideas. We have lots of available time slots in the coming months, and our group is a fantastic place to hone your public speaking skills and to contribute back to the user group community.

*****************************************

NOTE: You have received this message because your email address was registered at the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET website at http://www.atlantace.com/ or the Atlanta C# Developers Group website at http://www.atlantacsharp.org/.

*****************************************

Thanks, and I hope to see everyone at this month's meeting!

Keith Rome
MCPD-EAD MCSD MCDBA MCAD

New Job

Keith Rome — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:11:56 GMT

For those who know me well, this will be old news.

As of last Monday, I have been a consultant with Wintellect. This new position gives me the opportunity to "get in early" and help shape a consulting organization from the ground up. I will also get to continue building my technical and management skills and perhaps have a chance to get in on some more exciting projects that leverage the newest technologies.

My two years at Intellinet were a great employment experience, and I would definately recommend them to prospective employees and clients without hesitation. I still have many good friends there. Frank Bell and the Intellinet EMT have managed to build a great working environment, and they have some of the best technical specialists in the region. I wish them the very best, as it was a very difficult decision when I decided to move on to this next phase of my career.

Project Planning Basics

Keith Rome — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 02:08:08 GMT

At this month's Atlanta Cutting Edge, I presented a short talk on basic project management and estimation using PERT techniques. This is a topic that I find most developers (and managers too!) tend to ignore because they assume it woul dbe uninteresting or perhaps "fake science". Quite the opposite is actually true, and it can be astounding how much positive impact some of these techniques can bring to a software development project.

So if you were there and requested the slides, or if you were simply not able to make it, here they are.

Adventures in Databinding ~ Part 2 ~ Simple versus Complex Binding

Keith Rome — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:21:26 GMT

Databinding in .NET is immensely powerful. You can bind nearly any property of any object to any property of any control. The source object can be any .NET object - a business component, a DataSet, a built-in .NET class, or even another Control! Of course like any powerful feature, the Devil is in the Details.

Simple versus Complex Binding

To understand the databinding system first requires acknowledgement that there is in fact two "flavors" of databinding. You can bind to two very different categories of objects, and this is what differentiates the flavors of binding. The two flavors are called Simple and Complex binding. This is somewhat of a misnomer in my opinion as there is nothing inherently more complicated about Complex binding - it's just different. I would prefer to call these two forms of binding Item and List binding, as that more accurately describes their use. In fact, I will try to refer to them as such throughout these posts.

Item Binding

Item Binding refers to the connection of a source object property value to a target control's bindable property. These connections are typically two-way, in other words you can change either side of the connection and the databinding system will push the change to the other side. Another cool aspect is that you can bind many controls to the same source property - however you cannot bind a control's property to more than one source. An example of this would be binding the Text property of a Label control to the FirstName string property of a Customer object.

List Binding

List Binding refers to the connection of a source list of objects to a target control that is capable of display and/or navigating between multiple items in the list. The source list can be any .NET object that implements IList, ICollection, IEnumerable or IBindingList, including arrays, collections, generic lists, and DataTables. In more advanced scenarios, an object that implements IListSource can also be used - IListSource simply defines a list of lists. Controls that are able to participate in List Binding include the ubiquitous DataGrid/DataGridView, and many other controls that consume lists of items for various reasons - DropDowns, ListBoxes, and TreeViews to name a few.

Mixing and Matching

Unfortunately, you usually cannot mix (or should not mix) both Item and List Binding in the same source objects. Due to the way the databinding system discovers and uses databinding interfaces (will be discussed in a followup topic), it is not possible to have both Item and List bindings on the same object. An example of this would be binding to Customer entries in a list as well as the Count property of the list itself.

Examples

Item Binding Examples

When creating Item Binding connections, you always begin with the target control, and add to its DataBindings collection a list of property names and their sources. DataBindings.Add() is an overloaded method with two main usage scenarios. Most of the time you will use the form of Add(PropertyName, DataSource, SourcePropertyName). In more rare situations you might want to create a Binding object directly and and use the form Add(Binding)... this can be useful when you want to override default formatting and parsing of values.

Binding to a property of a business object

Customer C = new Customer("John");

TextBox TextBox1 = new TextBox();

TextBox1.DataBindings.Add("Text", C, "FirstName");

-or-

Binding B = new Binding("Text", C, "FirstName");

TextBox1.DataBindings.Add(B);

Binding to a public field of a business object

You can't do it in this version of the framework!

Binding to a field in a DataTable

DataTable CustomerDT = new DataTable("Customers");

CustomerDT.Columns.Add("FirstName", typeof(string));

CustomerDT.Rows.Add(new object[1] {"John"});

TextBox TextBox1 = new TextBox();

TextBox1.DataBindings.Add("Text", CustomerDT, "FirstName");

Binding multiple controls to the same source data

CheckBox CheckBox1 = new CheckBox();

TextBox TextBox1 = new TextBox();

TextBox1.DataBindings.Add("Enabled", CheckBox1, "Checked");

List Binding Examples

Binding a grid to a DataTable

DataSet CustomerDS = new DataSet();

DataTable CustomerDT = CustomerDS.Tables.Add("Customers");

CustomerDT.Columns.Add("FirstName", typeof(string));

DataGrid CustomerGrid = new DataGrid();

CustomerGrid.DataSource = CustomerDT;

Note that the following can also replace the above DataSource assignment:

CustomerGrid.DataMember = "Customers";

CustomerGrid.DataSource = CustomerDS;

However, it is very important to realize that while on the surface they may appear to give identical results, these datasource assignments are not the same! I will explain this further in part 6 of this series.

Binding a ComboBox to an array

string[] StatusList = new string[2] {"Active", "Canceled", "Completed"};

ComboBox CurrentStatus = new ComboBox();

CurrentStatus.DataSource = StatusList;

Note that with a ComboBox, the List Binding is what is used to supply the list of possible values displayed when activating the control.

Binding a ListBox to a Business Object Collection

List<Customer> CustomerList = new List<Customer>;

CustomerList.Add(new Customer("John"));

CustomerList.Add(new Customer("Mary"));

ComboBox CustomerSelection = new ComboBox();

CustomerSelection.DisplayMember = "FirstName";

CustomerSelection.ValueMember = "CustomerID";

CustomerSelection.DataSource = CustomerList;

Note that ListBox controls, like ComboBox controls, use a List Binding to supply values for the range pf possible values. They both can also use an Item Binding to connect the actual currently selected value to a data source object.

To Be Continued...

Adventures in Databinding

Keith Rome — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 20:52:55 GMT

Why would I care about Databinding?

Perhaps you are just writing some server code. Maybe XML processing, web services, or even some good old-fashioned application server components. If so, then maybe you really shouldn't care about Databinding.

But maybe - just maybe - you are building the User Interface for an application. Or perhaps a set of business objects that will eventually be displayed in a User Interface. And maybe, just maybe, that interface happens to live in the world we now call "Smart Clients". If so, then three paths will lay before you:

You can pretend that databinding does not exist and manually update/read data values directly from UI controls.
You can try to ignore the intricacies inherent to databinding and hope that everything works out (might be OK if nothing in your UI is "outside of the box").
You could embrace the beast that is .NET Databinding, study and plot against your foe, and finally prevail against that poorly documented adversary which has terrorized legions of .NET developers.

OK, well maybe it's not quite that exciting, but there is definitely some interesting (I think) stuff to be learned when you take a deeper dive into the world of .NET Databinding.

In a series of topics I hope to shed some light on this dark and often cursed part of the .NET infrastructure. In my past few years of .NET experience I have had to tackle databinding from many angles, and have managed to develop a fairly good grasp of the subject (I think - ...always more to be learned). Hopefully I can share some of that with readers. So let's see where this goes...

Crawling back out of my cave

Keith Rome — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 21:22:26 GMT

For nearly a year I have been bogged down in what I can only describe as a quagmire of a project. But this week that all changes - I am moving on to some new work finally, and maybe - just perhaps - I will have more time to blog about the things I have learned and re-learned during that time...

2007 Atlanta Code Camp - Registration is OPEN

Keith Rome — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 20:55:47 GMT

As announced earlier today by Jim Wooley:

Fellow Code Campers,

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Registration for the 3rd annual Atlanta Code Camp is now open. Please register on the Click to Attend website to guarantee your spot at the Code Camp.

Here's the link:
https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=113135

Just a reminder. The 3rd annual Atlanta Code Camp will take place on January 20th. The event is completely free and lunch is included. Doors open at 7:30am at the Decatur campus of DeVry University

250 North Arcadia Ave
Decatur , GA 30030

If you are coming in from out of town, we have a recommended hotel near the event. Call the Holiday Inn and ask for the DeVry University rate to get a $99/night rate. Parking is extra and costs $7/day

Holiday Inn

130 Clairemont Ave
Decatur, GA 30030
404-372-0204

During the Code Camp, lunch will be provided at no cost to you. After the event, we are planning on gathering in a local eatery to continue any discussions which we were not able to complete by our 5:30 pm end time. Location information will be made available at the event.

The Atlanta Code Camps have historically "sold out" extremely rapidly and we don't expect this time to be any different. Please register quickly to lock in your spot as we are capping registration and attendance due to facility limitations.

Microsoft Lunch and Learn

Keith Rome — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:54:58 GMT

Join Doug Turnure and guests on the third Monday of every month at the Microsoft regional headquarters in Alpharetta for a "Lunch and Learn" event.

These events are 1 hour in length, held from noon to 1pm. Lunch is not provided - you will need to bring your own if you wish to eat. The content itself is level 100 to 200.

This month, the topic is WPF and Cardspace. Visit Doug's weblog for more information if you are interested... Lunch and Learns at Microsoft

MCPD - EAD

Keith Rome — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 03:31:29 GMT

I am very pleased. Today I took the second of two upgrade tests needed to convert my existing MCSD certification to the new MCPD-EAD (MS Certified Professional Developer - Enterprise Application Developer) - and passed it by a comfortable margin! I am fairly sure this makes me the first Intellinet consultant to carry this new certification.

The test itself was pretty tough - I am very lucky to have had enough exposure to deep WSE and Remoting. A good 20 of the 58 questions were directly related to WSE3 implementation details - and quite picky too. SOAP Filters, policy, addressing, referral cache, signing/encryption, etc... this test hit nearly everything. For remoting, the test covered client and server declarative as well as imperative configuration of the channels and services/clients. There were even a significant number of questions on message queueing and serviced components. In all, I am quite impressed with the depth and breadth of testing coverage.

I actually wanted to take this test a few months ago (I took part 1 while the tests were still in "beta"), but I was holding out to see if my employer was going to institute a reward policy for obtaining certifications - something that many of our competitors do. I finally just gave up on waiting and scheduled the test before my free test voucher expired. Intellinet would have paid for the test - but free is free.

Now I just need to decide whether I want to pursue updating of my MCDBA credentials...

Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET - September 2006

Keith Rome — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 13:47:33 GMT

Tonight is the September meeting for the Atlanta Cutting Edge .NET User Group. Jim Wooley (RSS ) will be presenting on LINQ - the new language integrated query extension technology. This is really cool stuff IMO.

Normally we meet on the first Monday of every month, but with yesterday being a holiday, we moved this month's meeting to tonight.

In case you don't have it yet - our new User Group's URL is http://www.atlantace.com/.

CANCELLED: Atlanta C# User Group Meeting for June 2006

Keith Rome — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 02:00:16 GMT

Just in case you happen to monitor this weblog, but have not registered with the group's mailing list:

------------------------------------

Please be aware that due to inability to secure a speaker for this month, the Atlanta C# User Group will NOT be meeting in June.

Also, the July meeting would fall adjacent to the Independance Day holiday, and therefore there will not be a C# Meeting in July either.

Our next scheduled meeting is currently expected for August, more details will be posted when we get nearer to the meeting date.

**** A CALL FOR SPEAKERS ****

**** SPONSORS ****

If your company is interested in sponsoring a month (or more) of the Atlanta C# Developers Group, please contact me to discuss. Sponsorship is inexpensive and a great way to market your organization.

*****************************************

NOTE: You have received this message because your email address was registered at the Atlanta C# Developers Group website at
http://www.atlantacsharp.org/ .

*****************************************

Keith Rome
MCSD MCDBA MCAD

2006 Atlanta Code Camp

Keith Rome — Mon, 01 May 2006 03:48:09 GMT

In case you haven't heard, the 2006 Atlanta Code Camp site has now begun accepting registrations. This year promises to be even more successful than last, we have nearly thirty topic submissions, so many in fact that we will not be able to accept them all due to the realities of physical meeting space and event logistics.

We are planning on 5 different topic tracks, so there should be a little bit of something for everyone.

You can now register for the Atlanta Code Camp by clicking on the registration link on http://www.atlantacodecamp.com/ or go directly to the registration site at https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=108776.

Unit testing and Test Driven Development

Keith Rome — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 00:11:32 GMT

Paul Lockwood gave an interesting presentation last night to the .NET UG on TDD. I will admit that haven't integrated this methodology deeply into my own development habits (yet). I do however recognize the benefits, and fully intend to incorporate it into my habits, just taking things one step at a time as I push my own skills to ever higher levels. So to me, the discussion was quite timely.

Listening to audience feedback, it appears that a number of folks (Rusty, Marcie, etc) are already leveraging this technique... and have some really positive opinions of it. When smart people are recommending something with such enthusiasm, it is generally a wise thing to pay attention.

One thing I would have liked to have seen is an end-to-end example of the process itself. I have seen unit tests before, I have even used NUnit on a few projects, but never to much success. I always felt like I was "not getting it". I get the impression (mainly from Rusty's comments), that this is normal, and there is a point of critical mass, serendipity if you will, where it all just starts to "make sense", and your Unit Tests become the first-class citizens that they deserve to be. I want to reach that point, but am shooting blind right now... a slight nudge towards that light is really what I need I think.

My current development habits have served me well (I have been told on more than one occasion that I am the most meticulous developer ever to pick up a keyboard), but I wish to push it to the next level. Zero defects in QA Iteration 1 is the Holy Grail. So now I at least have an idea of what I need to work towards. The next step is finding the best path to get there.

Atlanta MS Professionals UG

Keith Rome — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:30:46 GMT

Last night, the Atlanta MS Professionals User Group was treated to an outstanding presentation by one of the great gurus of Windows programming - Jeffrey Richter of Wintellect. His coverage of the internals of CLR thread termination and associated concerns was extremely enlightening. I would rank this talk as easily being in the top 5 presentations I have ever had the opportunity to attend (and I have seen a LOT in recent years).

Anyways, Jeffrey has a new book coming out in March ("CLR Via C#: Applied Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 Programming"), which he claims will be his last. I made sure to pre-order a copy ($50!) so I can divine some of his wisdom and insight.

Adding a Google or MSDN2 search to VS2005

Keith Rome — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:52:21 GMT

Rik explains how to use a Visual Studio macro to search for highlited text using Google (or alternatively from MSDN2 online) directly from within the IDE... its a pretty cool trick.

Which reminds me - Rik R has been a friend of mine for a few years now (a former coworker from 2001/2002), we were building highly interactive websites years ago using javascript, xml, and XmlHttpRequest. Today, we would call such a system a "Web 2.0 AJAX site". But back then, it was seen as heretical - since postbacks were the status quo. Anyways... I finally talked him into blogging... you can catch the feed at www.r2musings.com as he writes about his journey in the land of .NET

Speaking of new bloggers.... I also convinced Dan Attis to pick up the habit not too long ago... and as you can tell from the activity on his weblog, he is quite the prolific writer!

PageFlakes

Keith Rome — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 06:56:28 GMT

I came across this site tonight... it is another ajax framework with some interesting stuff going on behind the scenes. This approach really lowers the entry bar for building simple ajax-driven portlets (it can literally suck in a functional page and inject the content into a new web part / portlet)... a nice and simple approach.

Check it out at http://www.pageflakes.com/

They are also claiming to be giving away an xBox 360 in a "flake building" contest through february.

Interested in AJAX?

Keith Rome — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 17:46:48 GMT

I have been following this blog for a while now - it is quite active and has great timely information on AJAX technologies (not just .NET either - they talk about anything ajax):

http://www.ajaxian.com/

Weird HTTP header issue in Internet Explorer 6

Keith Rome — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 03:55:51 GMT

I recently needed to implement an HttpHandler in a project to handle retrieval of rendered PDF reports from a database. It shouldn't have been a big deal, very few lines of code, even less than typical since my Business Logic Layer encapsulates all of the aspects of the data retrieval itself into a single line of code... my handler only had to set the ContentType, add a couple of headers (Content-Length and Content-Disposition), and then BinaryWrite() the data. Easy as pie, or so I thought.

The file streamed fine out of the database - no surprises there. Content-Length had no issue and once I remembered to install Acrobat Reader into my VPC where I was testing this, then the ContentType of "application/pdf" worked as well.

But try as I might, I could not seem to get that darn Content-Disposition to be recognized by Internet Explorer! Every time I tested it, the "Save" dialog would always display a random file name, instead of the one I supplied in the header.

I double-checked, then triple-checked my code. I had two other web developers look at the code, and give it a thumbs-up. I even resorted to tracing the HTTP protocol traffic just to be 100% certain that IE was getting the HTTP header. Sure enough, the header was being set and IE was seeing it. But it wasnt obeying it.

It turns out there seems to be a maximum length to the filename you can supply using the attachment notation of the Content-Disposition header. And my filename was in excess of that limit, causing it to be ignored by IE. While I am not sure what the exact limit is (or if it is some other kind of esoteric bug in IE), and do not have time to experiment and discover that limit, simply reducing the length of my attachment filename has resolved the issue.

By the way, the length of the filename causing a problem was only something like 40 to 50 characters, which really isn't unrealistic. I was embedding the report execution date/time (in a string format that is valid in a file name), in order to prevent saved reports from being overwritten.