Expression Blend Tips

tips and tricks for Expression Blend:

SilverZine

Windows Azure Guidance on DeepFried

On my way to work, I just listened to a podcast of DeepFriedBytes. Check it our here: http://deepfriedbytes.com/

It was an episode about Windows Azure Guidance. This Guidance is developed by the Microsoft Patterns and Practices team and can be found here: http://wag.codeplex.com/

The podcast shortly touches the easiness of deploying your SQL to SQL Azure. The existence of the X-drive, meant for migrating legacy applications to the Cloud. Minor issue: only one worker process can write to it.

Azure has three types of storage: Table, Queue and Blobs. Table is the SQL part, Queue for the communication between the Web Role process and the Worker Role process and of course the Blobs to store files. There are samples to code against the Storage API.

Also mentioned the security model, used in Azure: Claims Based Authentication. Background to be found on Codeplex.

Just read read it and listen to it !

Jumping into Azure (links)

Azure Coding.NET

http://azurecoding.net/content/AzureDev1.aspx

MSDN: Getting started with Azure development

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsazure/dd439432

Windows Azure Management Portal

http://windows.azure.com/

Azure Storage Explorer

http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

Windows Azure Platform Training Course

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/wazplatformtrainingcourse.aspx

Windows Azure Platform Virtual Labs

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/dd540819

Lab	time
· MSDN Virtual Lab: Windows Azure Native Code New!	90 min
· MSDN Virtual Lab: Building Windows Azure Services with PHP	90 min
· MSDN Virtual Lab: Getting Started with Windows Azure Storage	90 min
· MSDN Virtual Lab: Building Windows Azure Services	90 min
· MSDN Virtual Lab: Using Windows Azure Tables	90 min

Windows Azure Team blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/

Creating a userfriendly Excel input form

Creating a form in Excel is fairly easy, using the right options in Excel.

• enter a label
• select the field which should contain the input and unlock the field.
• Add a message to be displayed when the input field is selected:

• Deselect the gridlines in View:

• Protect the Sheet: allow Select unlocked fields only.

 

Now the sheet is ready for use.

Conditional Comment

With this NON scrip technique, the browser info can be detected.
on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537512(VS.85).aspx
Also used to create WP7 optimized sites: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/iemobile/archive/2010/12/08/targeting-mobile-optimized-css-at-windows-phone-7.aspx

JournalOwnership

 

As of Silverlight 3.0, there is a Navigation API. It is located in System.Windows.Controls.Navigation.

As explained in this blog there is a Frame Container which has several options.

One of these options is JournalOwnership. It is documented in MSDN here.

JournalOwnership has influence on the behavior of the browser history.

If the JournalOwnership is set to UsesParentJournal, navigation will be visible in the browser history:

This enables the end user to navigate through the Silverlight application using the browser history.

If you do not want to use this feature, for instance in a banking application, the JournalOwnership should be set to OwnsJournal.

After navigating through the menu items, the browser history remains empty.

Debugging Submit in InfoPath 2007

When you submit an InfoPath form which was opened from an existing form, so called Edit, it is hard to debug the managed code. The method that I use to resolve the problem is to put statements into the code I suspect. Just as the writelines in the early days developing without debugger. Instead of writelines I used the MessageBox.Show() command. This enabled me to pinpoint the error location.

Today I fixed a problem when submitting the InfoPath form which was caused by the fact that the file already existed in the SharePoint Document Library.

The solution was to enable a checkbox in the Data Connections of the InfoPath Form Template. Just as described in the weblogs below:

• InfoPath submit error
• Auto generate filenames for InfoPath