danielwoolston.com » .net

Asus translators to the rescue!

daniel — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 02:44:55 +0000

Guess the English translator was on vacation during error message development day:

off to bed now. time for my brain to be ‘abooted.’

silverlight quick tip

daniel — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:40:36 +0000

Getting a “AG_E_PARSER_BAD_PROPERTY_VALUE” error when running your silverlight app?

Verify that your xaml events have the corresponding event handler on the code side.
Resharper will help you eliminate these kind of errors as well. You can find that at:
http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Word of warning though…the product is $200. But it will save you a boatload of time and ultimately your time is money.

Upcoming presentation

daniel — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:52:34 +0000

I’ll be at the West Michigan DotNet-U event on April 4th. Bruce (http://blog.bruceabernethy.com/) and I will tag team a presentation on Silverlight development. This will be a 3 hour edu-tainment event and space will be limited. Hit the site to register now! ..and its free!

Also..check back after the event for video and documentation.

figures…

daniel — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:18:30 +0000

Silverlight 2.0 was released to production today and I attempted to install it:

So the popup says it didnt install, but when I click on the Details link, the error code indicates that it did install?
oh boy…its going to be one of those kind of nights.
�

Working with Flash

daniel — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:34:19 +0000

I’ve been demo’ing my side project to a few friends lately and I’ve managed to impress a few of them with the flash component of the site. Its a key component to the overall ’selling’ point of the application and I really can’t say much more than that out of fear that one of you endeavorous types might run with the idea despite the patents pending. I’m anxious to begin posting details of the upcoming beta, but I have to restrain myself.
I did however want to mention to my fellow dot netters that working with flash and building a client side interface has really been exciting. Sure there were times that I sincerely hated Flash and anyone associated with it. And there were times when i just wanted to quit the project entirely. But I made it through and reflecting on what the application has become leaves me with a sense of gratification that only a software developer can know.
I was able to build a pretty detailed information pipeline between Flash, JavaScript, Ajax to server side C#. JSON became my bestest buddy for a good chunk of the work and fortunately for me, JSON parsing isnt that big of a deal in ActionScript 3.0. I was quite pleased at how smooth the process became.

In hindsight, it would have been an awesome experience to build my component with Silverlight, but I’m pretty sure that it would have taken me twice as long to get the results that I have with Flash. Not because Silverlight isn’t as powerful as Flash, but the support organization and availability of Flash help, tips the scale in their favor when factoring in adoption. I can build something in Flash quickly, knowing that a majority of the issues that I’ll face have been dealt with and blogged about before. With Silverlight…not so much. Maybe next year, after the project has launched beyond Beta and things calm down, I’ll recode the Flash piece into Silverlight but for now I’m pretty happy with it just the way it is.
After launching to Beta, I’ll return to the blog to discuss the Flash/.Net interaction process. Soon my friends…very soon.

Microsoft Learning

daniel — Wed, 14 May 2008 05:20:44 +0000

I wanted to throw this out there to those of you who haven’t dropped into Microsoft’s Learning portal in a while:
There was a time when I really thought that the MSFT Learning site just plain sucked. The content was old and crusty and the interface/searching was clunky. But I have to say that lately its been pretty cool. The paid courses aren’t that bad for pricing (compared to AppDev) and to be honest..There is a lot of free stuff in there. For instance…Currently they’re running free access to the 3.5 Framework and Visual Studio 2008 courseware. This is 6 hours of video that they typically charge for but currently is free. Once you’ve activated it, the license will last for a year.
So head over and dig through the site. Learn something. New skills pay bills.

-daniel