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A less abrupt progress bar for Windows Phone developers

Here’s a progress bar for showing loading operations that lets the animation smoothly finish before disappearing. It’s a lot more like that in the Windows Phone itself, and easy to use: just data bind to the IsLoading property (a new property; the standard IsIndeterminate still will immediately start or stop the animation, so don’t try ...

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WP7 Panorama: Smoothly fading the background (and enabling fading when changing, too)

I’ve heard a number of conversations with developers about wanting to smoothly fade in background image changes within the Panorama control that ships in the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools. I spent the better part of this rainy Seattle Sunday looking into this. I actually had a conversation with the famed Kelly Sommers (@kellabyte) a ...

“The Future of Silverlight” keynote by ScottGu starts off the 12/2/10 FireStarter event

As a developer on the Silverlight team, I get the joy of seeing the many code review and checkin e-mails that our dev team is doing. It’s exciting, and sometimes I do wish I could share that sort of thing with the world. We’ve been hosting Silverlight FireStarter events for some time, but in light ...

Silverlight and Windows Phone sessions at Øredev next week

Next week in Malmö, Sweden, there will be several great sessions on Windows Phone and Silverlight development at the Øredev Conference. I look forward to having a chance to present on some great topics and have some fun conversations as well. There’s a good presence of Microsoft presenters at the event, and I wanted to ...

Exploring Windows Phone Application Development Talk at JAOO Conference 4.10.10

Updated 10/4 post-talk: Slides are available for 4.5MB either as PPTX or PDF. There is a lot more information in the slide deck, I wish I had time to review it all properly at a more leisurely pace! Thank you for everyone who attended. Original post before the talk This week is the JAOO Conference ...

Early Windows Phone media with the Silverlight Mobile team

Links to a few videos, podcasts and documents by Silverlight mobile team members.

Transition guide from phone.codeplex.com to the official Panorama & Pivot controls

There is now a transition guide online written by Stephane Crozatier for those who were using the unofficial phone.codeplex.com panorama and pivot controls.

Windows Phone Developers: Enjoy the new controls, toolkit, and final tools!

Today the Windows Phone tools are out, the new Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit is live, and yes you can finally use the Panorama and Pivot controls!

Exploring List capacities and growth on the Windows Phone

Since the generic .NET list (List<T> documentation) is a pretty common data structure found in phone apps, I figured it was worth a few minutes to direct everyone’s attention to how the list and its capacity works on the phone. Unlike desktop computers, where we’re often dealing with gigabytes of potential memory on a modern ...

Windows Phone performance progress bar update: part 2, remember to turn IsIndeterminate off when not needed!

Expanded phone progress bar performance guidance: use an improved template and always toggle IsIndeterminate when not needed.

Blend tip: finding default styles using “Edit a Copy”

Here's a super quick tutorial on how to use Blend to find the default control styles and templates.

Panorama and Pivot controls for Windows Phone developers

Here's a preview of what to expect with the Panorama and Pivot controls that will be built into the Windows Phone Developer Tools.

TiltContentControl for Windows Phone

Here's a content control that has an implementation of the "tilt" interactive effect on the Windows Phone.

Creating high performance Windows Phone apps – THE WHITEPAPER

Our performance whitepaper on Silverlight for Windows Phone applications is out. Please take a look.

The high performance ProgressBar for Windows Phone (“PerformanceProgressBar”)

The ProgressBar template for Windows Phone can be improved upon for better performance in indeterminate mode.

Frame rate counters in Windows Phone

Information about the frame rate counters and graphics stats for analyzing Silverlight for Windows Phone applications.

Updated Silverlight Unit Test Framework bits for Windows Phone and Silverlight 3

Here's the same unit test framework from the April 2010 Silverlight Toolkit, built for Windows Phone and SL3 developers only.

How about a Zune-style ChildWindow?

Today I am sharing my ChildWindow style that resembles the Zune software user interface and has a nice transition. Enjoy!

Windows Phone? Sounds exciting!

Just letting folks know... I'm working in a much more official capacity on the Silverlight and Windows Phone developer story.

Using Silverlight 4 features to create a Zune-like context menu

A customized Silverlight 4 ContextMenu control that resembles the crisp, simple look of the Zune software's context menu.

Deep dive on Silverlight unit testing at Tech Ed next month

Jeff Wilcox will be presenting a 200-level deep dive talk on Silverlight unit testing at the TechEd North America 2010 conference next month in New Orleans.

Silverlight Unit Test Framework: New version in the April 2010 Silverlight Toolkit

The latest release of the Silverlight Toolkit contains the new Silverlight Unit Test Framework, with a new modern user interface, out-of-browser support, and performance improvements.

Property change notifications for multithreaded Silverlight applications

Jeff Wilcox introduces a base class for dealing with INotifyPropertyChanged classes that is safe to use from background threads in Silverlight and Windows Phone.

Template parts and custom controls (quick tip)

Here’s a few simple tips and recommendations when developing custom Silverlight controls, as it relates to template parts. What’s with all the control development tips? We’re looking at the best way to share a lot of the ‘black magic’ of control development with the community, and will have details on that another way – today ...

Silverlight 4: New parser implementation. New parser features.

Buttons with direct content. Better error messages. Designers and developers will like the new parser implementation in Silverlight 4.

“Peppermint” MIX demo sources

At MIX, during my talk on unit testing Silverlight and Windows Phone applications, I demoed a simple application called ‘Peppermint’. Here’s the source; I’ll be writing up a full tutorial on Windows Phone later, so these are just ‘bleeding-edge bits’. Peppermint-Demo.zip [Zip, 1.2 MB] Silverlight: Requires Visual Studio 2010 (or express) Requires the Silverlight Toolkit ...

Displaying 2D QR barcodes in Windows Phone applications

Last year, enthused by the Starbucks Mobile Card application for the iPhone, I built an app that displays 2D QR barcodes in Silverlight. Today, in two minutes, I got that running on the Windows Phone. Talk about an awesome development experience. These barcode-displaying apps let you get rid of the plastic in your wallet and ...

Data binding user settings in Windows Phone applications

Thanks to the rich data binding system built into Silverlight for Windows Phone, you can easily store rich user settings without using code behind files. The canonical example of user settings is a “Show this welcome screen at startup” checkbox so that your application can offer a nice out-of-box experience. By writing a simple type ...

No March 2010 release of the Silverlight Toolkit

I’ve received a number of emails and questions from developers about the next release of the Silverlight Toolkit and wanted to take a moment to address the lack of a March release. Although we had previously talked about a March 2010 release to coincide with the Silverlight 4 RC at MIX, we have decided not ...

Making that corporate office a little more personal

I received word this week that I’m moving offices next month. It’s only fitting for an off-topic post about my current office; if nothing else, this can serve as a sort of memorial for me to look back on once I’m back in a storage closet somewhere. I also received a few questions at MIX ...

Silverlight Toolkit and the Windows Phone: WrapPanel, and a few others

Are you looking for WrapPanel for your Windows Phone application? Look no further. The Silverlight Toolkit has several controls that work pretty well on the Windows Phone. I wanted to provide my own informal look at how it’s working with Silverlight for Windows Phone today. Note that this information is only current as of today, ...

Building Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 applications on a .NET 3.5 build machine

Thanks to modular MSBuild tasks and components, you can actually build Silverlight 3 and Silverlight 4 applications on the same build machine, without having .NET 4 installed. This is great for constrained TFS build environments, and although not supported in any way, this does allow you to edit and build simple Silverlight 4 apps created ...

Unit Testing Silverlight & Windows Phone Applications – talk now online

My MIX 10 talk, an introduction to unit testing on Silverlight and the Windows Phone, is now online for streaming and download. Thank you to everyone who attended. An early preview set of bits are online at http://jeffatmix.com/ – and the next release of the Silverlight Toolkit when Silverlight 4 ships will contain support for ...

Insert Tag Snippet plugin for Windows Live Writer (that works with Windows 7)

The source code plugin that I use on my blog is great, but does require that I insert some escaped tags with special class names in the XHTML. For years I’ve used the InsertTagSnippet plugin by Coskun Sunali to help me write posts – but on Windows 7, it doesn’t work well without running Live ...

A syntax highlighting TextBlock for Silverlight 3

I’ve adapted a syntax highlighting engine to generate a syntax highlighting TextBlock control for Silverlight. This control has built-in syntax highlighting C#, C++, JavaScript, VB.NET, XAML/XML. In the future, once Silverlight 4 is out, I’ll of course make sure to update this to work with the rich text control to allow for copying and pasting ...

Ready to test those Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Series apps?

At MIX 10 this year, Tues. 3/16 at 2pm: Learn from Jeff Wilcox how to create and maintain Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 Series applications using the Silverlight Unit Test Framework.

Code signing Visual Studio 2010 extensions (VSIX)

Here's a simple application (and optional source) for a tool to allow you to quickly Authenticode code sign Visual Studio 2010 extension files (VSIX).

Getting started with code signing for under $100

I recently documented the steps to "code signing 101": acquiring a trusted cert/key pair, the process, and then signing an app.

Column guides for Visual Studio 2010: An extension

On the Silverlight team, I use this Visual Studio 2010 extension to keep my comments looking pretty.

AutoCompleteBox: Now with 100% more WPF

The AutoCompleteBox control I originally developed for the Silverlight Toolkit is now inside of the WPF Toolkit.

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