Robert Burke's ObjectSharp blog

Bring on the 3rd major release of WPF (3.5 SP1 Beta is ready!)

2008-05-12T17:25:10Z

A “Week of WPF” begins on Channel 9 with the announcement that the third major release of WPF (3.5 SP1) has gone beta! Tim Sneath’s blog entry has fantastic detail about what’s coming in this release and all the download/update details (Silverlighters: see caveat below). Folks attending my “WPF for Line Of Business apps” presentation on Thursday [...]...(read more)

WPF Commanding - When do Commands re-evaluate their CanExecute method?

2008-04-23T13:30:23Z

I had been merrily using WPF’s built-in support for the Command Pattern for ages (see Commanding Overview, MSDN Docs, and article on implementing the command pattern in WPF, Jeff Druyt)… when suddenly it occured to me that I had no idea what triggered WPF to determine whether or not a command can be executed. Let me [...]...(read more)

Tip: Don’t forget the WPF Performance Suite

2008-04-21T13:32:32Z

The WPF Performance Suite includes the following tools for profiling WPF applications at runtime: Perforator: for analyzing rendering behavior. Visual Profiler: for profiling the use of WPF services, such as layout and event handling, by elements in the visual tree. Working Set Analyzer: for analyzing the working set characteristics of your application. Event Trace: for analyzing events and generating [...]...(read more)

Mike Holmes Makes it Right

2008-04-14T13:25:19Z

I’ve pretty much decided that Mike Holmes is my new idol. If you’re reading this from Canada, you know who Mike is: the contractor who arrives at botched renovation jobs and works his magic. So why is this guy my new idol? 1. He knows everything there is to know about construction. He seems to have deep [...]...(read more)

Make your own WPF Custom BitmapEffects

2008-04-14T00:00:03Z

Custom WPF Bitmap Effects, authored in a Managed C++ assembly, complete with sample project to help you roll your own. It works, complete with live preview, in Expression Blend. Done by a guy called Rob who has a blog called Run To The Hills. ‘Nuff said. Check it out! p.s. My suggestion to Rob: [...]...(read more)

“Mate, this is the Future”

2008-04-11T13:25:03Z

I’m currently consulting independently for a team of developers and designers. The process has been a joy, both for me and for my clients. In part, it has shown me that Blend (2.5) has matured to the point where it delivers on the promise of dramatically improving the developer-designer workflow. I had the good fortune [...]...(read more)

Toronto DevTeach on WPF - what would be useful for you?

2008-04-10T19:24:10Z

I’m in the lineup to speak at the DevTeach conference, which is taking place in Toronto from May 12-15. My presentation is going to be WPF-centric, but I have deliberately left the abstract flexible. What would you like to hear about WPF at DevTeach from someone who’s been consulting in WPF and Silverlight? Building a WPF [...]...(read more)

NLarge v1.1.2 (once more, with feeling, multimon and text annotation support)

2008-03-27T06:15:45Z

Barry’s teaching a course this week and noticed that NLarge didn’t support multimon - or rather, it always zoomed in on the primary monitor. So NLarge got another update. Good thing I don’t sleep! Changelist: Added Multimonitor support - zooms in on the monitor currently containing the mouse pointer. Added Text support - annotate zoomed-in images with [...]...(read more)

NLarge v1.1.1 (once more, with feeling)

2008-03-27T00:09:25Z

I immediately wanted to update NLarge again because its new default hotkeys (Ctrl-1 for Zoom, Ctrl-2 to Draw, Ctrl-3 for Break Timer) conflict with Outlook 2007’s hotkeys for Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. So NLarge v1.1.1 is out. Changelist: Added ability to select your own hotkeys for zoom, draw and countdown timer. Added ability to Alt-Tab away from break timer, [...]...(read more)

NLarge screen magnifier v1.1

2008-03-25T16:50:36Z

NLarge is the screen magnification and annotation utility that I use for technical presentations. It magnifies the screen through a smooth animation, and allows you to pan and zoom around the magnified screen. You can annotate the magnified image using the mouse or a Tablet PC pen. Today I added a few features to NLarge to [...]...(read more)

Silverlight 2 Greasepole Game Engine

2008-03-25T06:29:56Z

If you’re authoring multimedia applications in Silverlight, you might be interested in how each of the core game engine services for Legend of the Greasepole is now implemented for the Silverlight 2 Beta. From C/C++ to a Provider Model-Based .NET Engine When was the last time you looked at code you wrote almost a decade ago? [...]...(read more)

Silverlight 2 Beta Performance

2008-03-25T05:27:26Z

The Silverlight 2 Beta runs rings around the Silverlight 2 Alpha. However, the lack of hardware acceleration is very noticable (and relevant to an Image-oriented application like Legend of the Greasepole) when running at higher resolutions. For a little perspective: In 1998, the first version of Legend of the Greasepole was released. Platform: Windows PC (95, 98, [...]...(read more)

Legend of the Greasepole, Silverlight 2 Beta Edition

2008-03-25T03:12:43Z

The Legend of the Greasepole is a game that began its life on July 1st, 1996, when a group of Engineering students from Queen’s University in Canada decided they’d create a way to re-live their unexplainable annual tradition from the comfort of their long-suffering computers. After last year’s XNA port, the release of the Silverlight 2 [...]...(read more)

.NET Visualized: Treemap and Dependency Matrix

2008-03-20T05:52:31Z

In case you haven’t seen this, check out MVP Patrick Smacchia’s visualizations of the .NET Framework, including an NDepend analysis of the number of Types, a Treemap view, and a dependency matrix for the entire framework. The dependency matrix is, IMO, impressively sparse. Also interesting but perhaps not surprising is that PresentationFramework represents the largest [...]...(read more)

Top 3 of Mix08 (for me)

2008-03-08T23:37:37Z

1. The Cirque du Soleil keynote demo, the most engaging articulation of WPF’s “richer, smarter, more productive line-of-business app” message since Avalon Healthcare. 2. More Microsoft Research innovation sees the light of day in the product groups and for developers at large. Deep Zoom becomes available to developers through Silverlight and demoed by the Hard Rock Cafe, [...]...(read more)