How soon we forget. A few years ago, I weaned myself off of Visual C++ and MFC and toyed (briefly) with ASP.NET
Now, I'm finally getting to grips with C#, .NET and CLR 4.0 and Silverlight.
And, all of a sudden, I'm thrust back to 1996. Why? Because we need to write a GINA (Graphical Identification aNd Authentication) component as part of a password reset application.
So, here we are, with definitely no CLR (which rules out C# and CLR) and recommended against the MFC. So, we're literally back in the days of defining dialog boxes as a set of resource definitions, and copious calls to CreateWindow. And that's before we get to the single threaded message pump that is WndProc.
Couple all of that [...]
I had promised to post this to codeproject, but I wanted that article to be sooooooooooooooooooooo perfect… I spent days and weeks and months and years writing the article but never got round to finishing it.
In the meantime, a number of people have asked for the source to FileTreeView and, as promised, here it is!
http://www.scottleckie.com/wp-content/uploads/FileTreeView.zip
I'm an open kinda guy so if you have any suggestions or improvements, please add a comment, or email me, and I'll do my best to incorporate [...]
Edit; 26th May 2010; This is my most favorite post! Check out related Silverlight posts here…
Just getting started in Silverlight 4 WCF RIA Services (which is astonishing, by the way – check out Brad Abram's walkthrough here) but I was getting stuck at the validation part.
When I exercise the validation (you know, red bits in the browser because you're failing metadata requirements) and SubmitChanges, it was throwing up a horrible error;
An unhandled exception ('Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application
Code: 4004
Category: ManagedRunTimError
Message: System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Client.DomainException: And error occurred while submitting changes…
The only funny bit about this was the typo; "And error occurred"… The dialog is shown here;
OK – I got an exception, let's debug… So, I click [...]
I'm passing a POCO to a Child Window, and the very first thing it needs to do is display a couple of properties from that object. So, I rattled off the basic code;
private MachineCredentials machineCreds { get; set; }
private BackupProviderType backupProvider { get; set; }
public RemoteBrowser(MachineCredentials machineCreds, BackupProviderType backupProvider)
{
this.machineCreds = machineCreds;
this.backupProvider = [...]
It occurred to me, tonight, as I copied and pasted the same generic log4net config to a new project that I do this because this is my favourite log4net configuration. And, if it's a good enough starting point for all my projects then it may be of interest to others.
This config writes to two appenders; the console and a file appender. The file appender is pretty neat in that it;
Creates log files in a logs/ folder
The standard file is "general.txt"
This file grows on each iteration, until it reaches a maximum size of 2MB
When it hits 2MB, the file is renamed and a new "general.txt" file is opened
Maintains a maximum of 10 renamed / archived log files (so, a total of 20MB [...]
log4net is a fantastic library for adding configurable logging to your project. Configuration is relatively straightforward but I always get caught out when adding it to a new project.
So, here's a cribsheet for adding it in…
Download the latest stable library, and add a reference to it within your own project
Ensure that you have an app.config file
Add the configSection for log4net (see samples, below)
Add the log4net section (another sample)
Add an ILog object to your class
And, the bit I always forget, add the [assembly] entry to the top of your class
In your app.config file, add log4net to the <configSections> (if you don't have one of these, it goes at the next level down from the <configuration> element;
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler,log4net" />
</configSections>
Next, [...]
The problem
Build a navigation tree that allows users to navigate to specific static pages, from static entries in the menus, and to pages that are built dynamically based on selections from the menu.
The Solution in a picture
The solution in code
Build the static menu selections in xaml, being sure to name each of the major headings with “Tag” entries;
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<controls:TreeView x:Name="treeview"
BorderThickness="0"
Margin="0"
[...]
Obvious, really, but I spent ages chasing down how to bind some kind of POCO to a XAML display;
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="300" />
<RowDefinition Height="auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="auto" />
<RowDefinition Height="auto"/>
<RowDefinition Height="auto"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
[...]
How do you handle the situation where your new Silverlight page needs to shout a warning or error, and then die? No idea, but this is how I do it…
Originally, I was quite scared of my Silverlight pages throwing an exception and then I realised that this was just another object and if we throw an exception, hopefully let the user know, and bail out, then that’s fine.
So the pattern I am now working with is this;
Constructor – set up the load operations
Page_Loaded events – bind the XAML objects to the retrieved data
On any error; display a meaningful message, in a semi-modal window
Navigate back to a safe place (e.g. /home)
What do I mean by “semi-modal”? Well, from the user’s perspective, it [...]
I’ve been toying with Silverlight over the last couple of weeks and, I have to say, it’s much more complete than ASP.Net ever was (**). Lots of new paradigms to get my head around, of course, but overall it’s a very complete solution for an RIA.
Anyway, to the point of this posting; the new (in Silverlight 3.0) Navigation Framework is great; it allows you to present a common interface and have new pages display in a know part of the browser window, supports browser back/forward, and URL rewrites. See here for more information.
If you are inside a page that is controlled by the framework, then you are able to call on the NavigationService.Navigate method to divert control to a new XAML [...]
|
|
