Blog about software development and technology
Scott Hanselman built a web site that helps you to get the smallest download possible to get your .NET Framework up to date. On the site he also provides the script that developers can use to add the functionality to their own websites. It’s very useful if you provide a download of your application on your web site.
Get it at http://www.hanselman.com/smallestdotnet/
Building a SketchFlow demo with Expression Blend is easy. You can even add data to the demo and add navigation without writing any code.
This post shows you how to build a simple demo for searching and editing an employee database.
<UserControl
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" x:Name="Screen_1_Name"
mc:Ignorable="d"
x:Class="SketchFlowScreens.Screen_1"
Width="260" Height="260">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,8,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource TextBlock-Sketch}" VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="79" Height="25" Text="Name:"/>
<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,37,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource TextBlock-Sketch}" VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="79" Height="25" Text="Department:"/>
<TextBox HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="91,8,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource TextBox-Sketch}" VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="162" Height="25" TextWrapping="Wrap"/>
<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,78,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource TextBlock-Sketch}" VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="79" Height="25" Text="Results:"/>
<ListBox HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,103,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource ListBox-Sketch}" VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="245" Height="119"/>
<Button HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,226,8,0"
Style="{DynamicResource Button-Sketch}" Width="64" Content="Open"
VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="25"/>
<Button Margin="120,226,76,0" Style="{DynamicResource Button-Sketch}"
Content="Cancel" VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="25"/>
<ComboBox Margin="91,37,8,0" Style="{DynamicResource ComboBox-Sketch}"
VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="25"/>
</Grid>
</UserControl>
ItemsSource="{Binding Collection, Mode=Default}" DisplayMemberPath="Name"
<UserControl
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" x:Name="Screen_1_1_Name"
mc:Ignorable="d"
x:Class="SketchFlowScreens.Screen_1_1"
Width="260" Height="110">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,8,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource TextBlock-Sketch}"
VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="79" Height="25" Text="Name:"/>
<TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="8,37,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource TextBlock-Sketch}"
VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="79" Height="25" Text="Department:"/>
<TextBox HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="91,8,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource TextBox-Sketch}"
VerticalAlignment="Top"
Width="162" Height="25" TextWrapping="Wrap"
d:LayoutOverrides="HorizontalAlignment"/>
<ComboBox Margin="91,37,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource ComboBox-Sketch}"
VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="25"
HorizontalAlignment="Left"
Width="161">
<ComboBoxItem>Finance</ComboBoxItem>
<ComboBoxItem>Human Resources</ComboBoxItem>
<ComboBoxItem>Development</ComboBoxItem>
</ComboBox>
<Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="188,75,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource Button-Sketch}" Width="64"
Content="Update"
VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="25"
d:LayoutOverrides="VerticalAlignment"/>
<Button Margin="120,75,0,0"
Style="{DynamicResource Button-Sketch}"
Content="Cancel" VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="25"
HorizontalAlignment="Left"
Width="64" d:LayoutOverrides="VerticalAlignment"/>
</Grid>
</UserControl>
On his blog, Brian Harry describes how TFS 2010 makes life easier for small teams, enabling more teams to use it.
Definitely worth a read if you are still using SourceSafe.
Typing long text messages is a pain on most phones. Today, while typing a message that was quite long (and getting really frustrated), I decided to look for a product that I could use to control my phone from my PC.
I found a nice application called My Mobiler.
Apart from allowing you to remotely control your Windows Mobile device, it also supports copy/paste and dragging files between your PC and mobile device.
When you select an item in a ListBox, the background will be set to the default system background colour.
You can override the background by defining a style for the ListBox:
<Window.Resources>
<Style x:Key="ListBoxStyle">
<Style.Resources>
<SolidColorBrush
x:Key="{x:Static SystemColors.HighlightBrushKey}" Color="Red" />
</Style.Resources>
</Style>
</Window.Resources>
Now, define a ListBox, and let it use the style that we just defined:
<ListBox Style="{StaticResource ListBoxStyle}" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
Margin="120,96,0,0" Width="151"
IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True" Height="92" VerticalAlignment="Top">
<ListBoxItem>Item 1</ListBoxItem>
<ListBoxItem>Item 2</ListBoxItem>
<ListBoxItem>Item 3</ListBoxItem>
<ListBoxItem>Item 4</ListBoxItem>
<ListBoxItem>Item 5</ListBoxItem>
</ListBox>
The selected items will now have a red background:
You can also define a foreground colour. Add the following line to the style definition to make the foreground of selected items blue:
<SolidColorBrush x:Key="{x:Static SystemColors.HighlightTextBrushKey}" Color="Blue" />
I encountered this error while writing a sample app. The namespace reference was:
xmlns:local=”clr-namespace:ListviewTick;assembly=ListviewTick”
Everything looked 100% and I could not figure out why the compiler was complaining.
After some googling, I found out that you can remove “;assembly=ListviewTick”, and it was happy.
If you need to give users the ability to sort a ListView by clicking on the header, you can use the following method:
First, we will define a style for the header (this is optional, but allows you to specify the alignment of the header). Add the following to the Window.Resources section:
<Style x:Key="myHeaderStyle" TargetType="{x:Type GridViewColumnHeader}">
<Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Left"/>
</Style>
Now, define the listview (for this example, we will display a list of employees):
<ListView Name="lvwEmployees">
<ListView.View>
<GridView>
<GridViewColumn DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=Name}"
HeaderContainerStyle="{StaticResource myHeaderStyle}" Width="135" >
<GridViewColumnHeader Content="Name" Tag="Name"
Click="GridViewColumnHeader_Click" />
</GridViewColumn>
<GridViewColumn DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=Surname}"
HeaderContainerStyle="{StaticResource myHeaderStyle}" Width="135" >
<GridViewColumnHeader Content="Surname" Tag="Surname"
Click="GridViewColumnHeader_Click" />
</GridViewColumn>
</GridView>
</ListView.View>
</ListView>
We will use the Tag property of each GridViewColumnHeader to figure out which one was clicked.
The ListView is bound to a generic list of clsEmployee, defined as follows:
class clsEmployee
{
public clsEmployee(string sName, string sSurname)
{
_Name = sName;
_Surname = sSurname;
}
private string _Name;
private string _Surname;
public string Surname
{
get { return _Surname; }
set { _Surname = value; }
}
public string Name
{
get { return _Name; }
set { _Name = value; }
}
}
Now populate the ListView with dummy data:
Employees = new List<clsEmployee>();
Employees.Add(new clsEmployee("John", "Smith"));
Employees.Add(new clsEmployee("Jenny", "Jones"));
Employees.Add(new clsEmployee("William", "Wilson"));
Employees.Add(new clsEmployee("Susan", "Brown"));
Employees.Add(new clsEmployee("Robert", "Jones"));
Employees.Add(new clsEmployee("David", "Moore"));
Employees.Add(new clsEmployee("Linda", "Taylor"));
lvwEmployees.ItemsSource = Employees;
Now for the click event on the header:
private void GridViewColumnHeader_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
GridViewColumnHeader ClickedHeader = (GridViewColumnHeader)sender;
Employees.Sort(delegate(clsEmployee e1, clsEmployee e2)
{
if (ClickedHeader.Tag.ToString() == "Name")
{
return e1.Name.CompareTo(e2.Name);
}
else
{
return e1.Surname.CompareTo(e2.Surname);
}
}
);
lvwEmployees.ItemsSource = null;
lvwEmployees.ItemsSource = Employees;
}
This sample only sorts the items ascending. If you swap e1 and e2 in the comparison, the list will be sorted descending.
In this sample, the user will not be able to see the sort direction (usually indicated by an arrow on the header). I will explain how to add this arrow, using an adorner, in another post.
One of the many cool features of Windows 7 is the ability to install it from a USB drive.
On her blog, Lynn Langit describes how she upgraded a low-end netbook from Windows XP to Windows 7.
Check it out
LINQ to objects allows you to use LINQ queries on any collection that implements the IEnumerable interface.
This has a huge impact on developers who need to perform operations like search and sort on collections.
In order to demonstrate LINQ to Objects, we will write an application that allows the user to select a folder and an extension, and then list the files with the selected extension in the folder. Please note that providing a search pattern to Directory.GetFiles is much more efficient than the method I’ve used in this sample, but I’ve chosen to retrieve all the files first in order to filter the collection through LINQ.
I’ve chosen to create a .NET 3.5 WPF application in Visual Studio 2008.
When you’ve created the application, add a reference to System.Windows.Forms (this will allow you to use the FolderBrowserDialog class).
The XML for the window looks as follows:
The following 3 functions allow the user to select the folder and populate the list of available file extensions:
private IEnumerable<FileInfo> getAllFiles(string sFolder)
{
//Get a list of files in the selected folder
List<FileInfo> allFiles = new List<FileInfo>();
string[] fileNames = Directory.GetFiles(sFolder);
foreach (string name in fileNames)
{
allFiles.Add(new FileInfo(name));
}
return allFiles;
}
private IEnumerable<string> getExtensions(IEnumerable<FileInfo> allfiles)
{
//Get a distinct list of file extensions
IEnumerable<string> extensions =
(from file in allfiles
orderby file.Extension
select file.Extension).Distinct();
return extensions;
}
private void cmdSelectFolder_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
//Select the folder to search and populate the combo box with a list of file extensions
System.Windows.Forms.FolderBrowserDialog folderBrowser = new System.Windows.Forms.FolderBrowserDialog();
if (folderBrowser.ShowDialog() == System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK)
{
txtFolder.Text = folderBrowser.SelectedPath;
cboExtensions.ItemsSource = getExtensions(getAllFiles(txtFolder.Text));
}
}
Now, when the user clicks the “Search” button, we will only list the files with the selected extension:
private void cmdSearch_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
IEnumerable<FileInfo> allFiles;
allFiles = getAllFiles(txtFolder.Text);
IEnumerable<FileInfo> filteredFiles =
(from file in allFiles
where file.Extension == (string)cboExtensions.SelectedItem
select file);
lvwResults.ItemsSource = filteredFiles;
}
One of the coolest features in Windows 7 is Windows XP Mode. It allows you to run applications in an XP virtual machine to ensure backwards compatibility.
While this sounds like something you could do previously with virtual machines, XP mode allows for better integration with the Windows 7 environment.
XP mode does not ship with the release candidate, so you will need to download it from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx
Read the “Before You Download” section about enabling virtualisation in your BIOS, since this can save you some frustration.
Now follow steps 1 to 3 on the site to download and install the required components.
Once you have downloaded and installed all the components, you can try it out by installing an application. For this illustration I’ve installed Visual Studio 6.
When the XP virtual machine is running, it gives you direct access to your machine’s storage, so you can install it directly from your hard drive.
When the setup has completed, you can close the virtual machine, and get a shortcut to the installed software from your Windows 7 start menu under “Windows XP Mode Applications”.
When you click on the shortcut, you will see the virtual machine starting:
As soon as the virtual machine is running, your application will run, while appearing to run directly in Windows 7:
