Washington at 5th - SoBe
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I’ve been updating some file uploader code in my photoalbum today and while I was working with the uploader I noticed that the File Open dialog using Silverlight that handles the file selections didn’t allow me to ever see an image preview for image files. It sure would be nice if I could preview the images I’m about to upload before selecting them from a list. Here’s what my list looked like:
This is the Medium Icon view, but regardless of the views available including Content view only icons are showing up.
Silverlight uses the standard Windows File Open Dialog so it uses all the same settings that apply to Explorer when displaying content. It turns out that the Customization options in particular are the problem here. Specifically the Always show icons, never thumbnails option:
I had this option checked initially, because it’s one of the defenses against runaway random Explorer views that never stay set at my preferences. Alas, while this setting affects Explorer views apparently it also affects all dialog based views in the same way. Unchecking the option above brings back full thumbnailing for all content and icon views. Here’s the same Medium Icon view after turning the option off:
which obviously works a whole lot better for selection of images.
The bummer of this is that it’s not controllable at the dialog level – at least not in Silverlight. Dialogs obviously have different requirements than what you see in Explorer so the global configuration is a bit extreme especially when there are no overrides on the dialog interface. Certainly for Silverlight the ability to have previews is a key feature for many applications since it will be dealing with lots of media content most likely.
Hope this helps somebody out. Thanks to Tim Heuer who helped me track this down on Twitter.
West Wind Technologies has released version 5.55 of West Wind Html Help Builder. Help Builder produces documentation in Html Help, plain HTML and Word format for end user applications as well as developer documentation for FoxPro, .NET, Sql Service, Web Services and other environments. Version 5.55 provides a number of template rendering updates for cleaner HTML output, a host of small UI improvements, Visual Studio 2010 support as well as many fixes around .NET class imports. Help Builder is available as shareware and registered users can update to the latest version through the Check For Latest Version option on the Help Menu.
(Via The Thinking Atheist)
Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Dinah Shore destroy Gone With The Wind.
(Via Miss Cellania)
Google’s patent awarded last week for using location in advertising is interesting news (patent details here via VentureBeat). Not because of the dramatic effect (dun, dun, dah) it might have on the industry . No, the key point here is they submitted the patent for consideration back in September 2003.
This is significant because it shows the foresight Google has.
Sure, the concept of location isn’t new – people have been talking about it (or at least claiming to have talked about it) for more than a decade. And recently the talk has reached mainstream discussion. But most of that talk (myself included) has been about location enabled services.
Google on the other hand – with patents like the one mentioned above – was proactively making monetization plans seven (7) years ago. To put this in perspective time-wise, this is around the same time they launched AdWords.
This is another indication of the gulf between Google and its competitors (Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, etc) when it comes to search. Google has been working on these concepts for so long now, it’s difficult to see how any of their competitors can catch up (especially when we see how primitive Steve Ballmer’s ‘insights’ remain – discussed later).
By the way, don’t get worried about Foursquare, Yelp and other location enabled services, they won’t be affected (contrary to what some blogs misunderstood) since this patent is about using location in advertising delivery. They’re safe. Rather, it’s the companies that use location in their advertising services that should be feeling uncomfortable – for example if Opera uses location information to alter inserted ads in the compressed pages they return.
BTW, a little clarification on location in search versus local search (since they are often confused). Both are surprisingly complex but here’s a simple overview:
Local search is when a user searches for something specific to a location eg ’sydney airport parking’ and the results that are returned take the location terms (’sydney airport’ in this case) into account.
Using location in search is about search engines using your current location to tailor the results you get eg searching for ‘nearest hospital’ would be a situation where you’d experience this. The search engines have done this for years based on broad location (eg IP address based) and are constantly refining it based on other factors (eg GPS, Wi-Fi and cellular triangulation). And obviously, mobile devices are a particularly appropriate platform for this.
The two can overlap eg when you are physically at Sydney airport and search for ‘nearest parking’ you’ll likely get similar results – often referred to as the ‘where I am versus where I am going’ overlap.
But the big opportunity is when it comes to advertising. Advertisers want maximum control over where and how their ads are shown, and under what circumstances (eg based on the searcher’s specific location, and what they are searching for). Plus in most markets the location will be used for non included keywords (eg searching for ‘nearest dominos pizza’ can return results for other vendor’s locations as well – not just other vendor’s ads).
[BTW it’s not just traditional ads – already we’re seeing Google charge for enhanced organic location results in their 7-packs.]
OK, so we know that location is important, right? Google obviously saw the dollar potential back in 2003.
It’s foresight like this that makes me wonder what Google is working on and patenting now.
By the way, I’ve been following Eric Schmidt a lot more lately. Not that I think he’s particularly charismatic, but I do think he’s fucking smart – even if he still doesn’t get privacy 
.
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No matter what he’s questioned on, he brings an interesting perspective. Take his off-hand comments about Twitter (recorded a year ago) (thanks to Matt Cutts for the link). Most people think about social interaction. Eric thinks about storage and identity. Google is, at it’s core, a data company, and they approach Twitter in terms of data. I wonder what patent they’ve got in play there…
Let’s move on to Microsoft. How will location, mobile advertising and Google’s patent affect them. In fact, how is Microsoft responding in general to the moving target that is Search. Perhaps Steve Ballmer can bring us up to speed…
Unlikely. What a disappointment Steve Ballmer’s keynote at SMX West last week was (embedded below). If you haven’t got time to watch the video (it’s 49 minutes) have a read of Jennita’s summary on this SEOmoz post or Lisa Barone’s excellent coverage on this Outspoken Media post (oh and while you’re there make sure you subscribe to the Outspoken blog – highly recommended).
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" height="415" id="q8636iob" width="432"><param name="movie" value="http://images.video.msn.com/flash/customplayer/1_0/customplayer.swf"><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><param name="base" value="."><param name="flashvars" value="configCsid=msnvideo&fg=shareEmbed&player.v=e761c5d9-cd33-42ea-9d52-23bf29b00c46&brand=&mkt=en-us&from=sp&configName=syndicationplayer&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" base="." bgcolor="#ffffff" flashvars="configCsid=msnvideo&fg=shareEmbed&player.v=e761c5d9-cd33-42ea-9d52-23bf29b00c46&brand=&mkt=en-us&from=sp&configName=syndicationplayer&" height="415" id="q8636iob" pluginspage="http://macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://images.video.msn.com/flash/customplayer/1_0/customplayer.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="432" wmode="transparent"></embed><noembed>Video: Steve Ballmer SMX West Keynote Conversation with Danny Sullivan</noembed></object>
This could have been *the* opportunity for Microsoft to give us some confidence about their search initiatives; some insights into how they’re going to change the game. But no. Instead Steve trotted out much of the same stuff he spoke about at MIX 08 (yes, two years ago). At the time I’d been impressed with his perspective, today I’m wondering what else he’s going to do… because passing references to personal search, social search, cash back, alluding to game-changer, and an understanding that the ‘search market is still young and we see opportunities’ won’t cut it.
Admittedly, part of the problem was Danny Sullivan’s questions – they were *soft hitting* to say the least. The main problem though is that Microsoft is so far behind the game, and Steve knows they need to focus on growing search share as their highest priority. Perhaps talking about any innovation they’ll be making in search would be construed as them getting ahead of themselves?
But I could hope couldn’t I? Hope to hear about them embracing key growth areas (eg location based search on mobile). Instead we were ‘treated’ to a discourse into regulation, anti-trust issues against Google and advertiser lock-ins before moving onto a few comments about the China situation. Sheesh! At least Steve rightly referred to them as ’sideshows’. I thought we were here to learn about Microsoft’s insights into Search, not their response to agendas set by Google!
Towards the end of the chat, Danny finally gives Steve the gift question when he asks: What is the biggest opportunity in search?
The floor’s yours Steve. Please deliver. Please redeem yourself. Please give us hope.
Despair. Steve answers with a platitude: ‘The biggest opportunity is helping people get done what they need to get done’. Worse, he then outlines some of the problems he personally runs into when searching. Yes, Steve, but what are you doing about it? How are you solving this problem? Give us some substance. Details. Anything that would give us pause to consider moving to Bing. Anything but the stunning insight that you ‘see this as an opportunity’…
This, from the company that will be Google’s biggest competitor in search (as they will be once the Yahoo search deal completes later this year).
And so we return to Google’s recently awarded patent. Should we be worried? Yes, we should.
When a company has:
then we can be reasonably confident/scared they are only going to get stronger.
To this observer it seems that Microsoft is attempting to compete with the Google of 2005. And in the next five years they may even make some in-roads… At which stage they’ll be fighting a Google that is 10 years ahead of them.
Related posts:
Just wanted to give a shout out to our local DVD store: Video Ezy at Chatswood.
They’re just down on the corner of Victoria Avenue and Neridah Street near Chatswood Chase.
Why this post?
Well, two reasons. The first is mentioned in my disclaimer at the bottom, but the second – and most important – is because we want more people to patronise them.
We’ve been happy customers there for more than a decade, and currently take advantage of their $39.95 a month membership. There’s no lock-in, so we can cancel at any time. And we get to hire 4 DVDs at once. Overnight videos need to be returned (or renewed) the next day, but 3 day and weekly hires we can keep as long as we like.
This latter feature is particularly useful for watching TV shows, which we do a lot. Oh, and that’s another thing – they have a great TV show range. Just about every show you can think of (eg The Wire, The Tudors, Life, NCIS, The L-Word, Breaking Bad, Heroes, Bones, Sarah Connor Chronicles, etc as well as all the comedies 2 1/2 men, Seinfeld, Scrubs, How I met Your Mother, etc) are there. In fact they have one of the best ranges of TV shows I’ve seen (and I’ve been to at least one other store ). And bonus, on the older shows hiring the entire series counts as one DVD.
But the best part –> the staff: Matt, Chelsea, Lucy, Jack, Andie, Hannah, Angie, Bec & Adrian – they all rock. Sometimes we go in just to chat to the staff – they should set up a little cafe in there. Flat White with one please!
<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&gl=au&q=corner+of+victoria+avenue+neridah+street+chatswood&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Victoria+Ave+%26+Neridah+St,+Chatswood+New+South+Wales+2067&ll=-33.795126,151.186895&spn=0.006241,0.011802&z=16&iwloc=A&output=embed" width="550"></iframe>
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[Their other claim to fame is they have the 4th largest blue-ray collection in the state. But this is useless to us since we don’t have a blu ray player. 
… yet]
(Disclaimer: this post is also part of an experiment)
Related posts:
The Sandpit, a short time-lapse film by director/photographer Sam O’Hare is wonderful to watch. It was shot on a Nikon D3 with two lenses over 5 days and two nights all over New York and Brooklyn. He did over 35,000 shots that were then blurred and edited in post-processing to give the fake tilt-shift miniature effect. Score is original music by Human, written for the film.
I’m heading up to Toronto this week for the DevTeach conference! I’ve spoken at DevTeach every time except for the very first one. This is a great Canadian conference that really brings a bunch of awesome speakers in our industry into a more intimate setting than say a TechEd. Check out all the sessions here. This year there’s a SharePoint track that I’m really excited about.
I’m doing the keynote this time and I’m going to make an attempt at showing off some of the awesome new features in Visual Studio 2010. I’ve got some IDE tricks up my sleeve and I’ll walk through some language, parallel, data, WPF and SharePoint tools and features. I can’t hit everything because there’s so much packed into Visual Studio 2010 that it would take a full day to explore, but hopefully this gets people excited enough attend the rest of the sessions to learn more. My sessions tend to be pretty demo-heavy so look for less than 15 minutes of Keynote slides and the rest of the time I’ll be wowing the crowd (at least I hope) with real demos. I want to get the crowd PUMPED UP so if I have to put on my tap shoes so be it. ;-)
I’m also doing a session on VB 10 & C# 4 new language features and a session on building on Office and SharePoint that should be a lot of fun.
Hope to see you there!
A couple months ago Robert Green, VSTO MVP, started a series of step-by-step tutorials on building on Office 2007. Part 4 is now published. Thanks Robert!
In this fourth part of the series of tutorials on Office Business Applications, learn how to create an Excel 2007 solution using Visual Studio 2008 that generates reports from a database and allows you to take those reports offline. This tutorial shows you how to cache the set of data directly in the Excel workbook and also shows you how to easily print the data as a PDF. This step-by-step tutorial also includes full source code in Visual Basic & C#. Check out the tutorial on the VSTO Developer Center:
Building an Office Business Application Part 4 – Generating Reports
And if you missed the previous tutorials:
These tutorials are pretty popular so if you’re just getting started with Office development in Visual Studio, this is a great place to start. Download all the code here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/ContosoAutoOBA
Enjoy!
Chicago FUDG's March meeting will feature presentations by 2 members - Tom Corrigan on Amazon Cloud computing and Jim Wiggins on using the VFPX graphics classes (GDIPLUSX) library. Here is the RSVP url click: http://bit.ly/aQnmD8 Do it now. See you then - 5:30pm on Tuesday the 9th of March - Tech Nexus, 200 S. Wacker Drive, 15th floor meeting room C.
Note: This blog post is written using the .NET framework 4.0 RC 1
Most of the time I used compiled workflows in Windows Workflow Foundation 4. Its nice and easy, you design the workflow, compile it and at runtime there is a .NET type you use to create and run workflows. The main drawback is that this approach isn’t very flexible, sometimes you want to be able to change your workflow definition at runtime or store it in a database so recompiling isn’t an option.
Fortunately we can also load a workflow from the XAML file itself and execute the resulting workflow activity. This is done using the ActivityXamlServices class that will let us load the XAML file and return an activity, to be exact it returns a DynamicActivity as a wrapper around your definition.
The simplest option is just to call Load() passing in the file name like this:
Activity workflow = ActivityXamlServices.Load("YourWorkflow.xaml");
If you are using activities, or other types, from the local assembly this is going to fail though and you need a slightly more verbose way of doing thing like this:
var settings = new XamlXmlReaderSettings()
{
LocalAssembly = typeof(SendForManualApproval).Assembly
};
var reader = new XamlXmlReader("YourWorkflow.xaml", settings);
Activity workflow = ActivityXamlServices.Load(reader);
We need to use the XamlXmlReaderSettings to indicate what the local assembly reference in the XAML is.
Enjoy!
www.TheProblemSolver.nl
Wiki.WindowsWorkflowFoundation.eu
(Via Miss Cellania)
In this month’s issue of MSDN Magazine we’ve got an article on a new language/.NET 4 feature called Generic Co- and Contravariance by Binyam Kelile:
MSDN Magazine: Generic Co- and Contravariance in Visual Basic 2010
I have to admit if I think about this feature too hard my head starts spinning in circles faster than Linda Blair in the Exorcist. But in actuality it’s one of those features that “just works” and probably should have already been available in the CLR. The easiest way for me to think about it is that it enables true inheritance scenarios with generics.
Consider this practical example. Say I have a class called Student that inherits from Person:
Public Class Person Property Name As String Property Age As Integer End Class Public Class Student Inherits Person Public Property Score As Decimal End Class
Now say I have a generic List(Of Student) that I want to pass to a method that accepts an IEnumerable(Of Person)):
Sub Main() Dim students As New List(Of Student) From {New Student With {.Name = "Beth", .Age = 10, .Score = 90.5}, New Student With {.Name = "Alan", .Age = 11, .Score = 100}, New Student With {.Name = "Jenn", .Age = 12, .Score = 98.5}} PrintNames(students) 'This will not work in VS2008 End Sub Sub PrintNames(ByVal list As IEnumerable(Of Person)) For Each p In list Console.WriteLine(p.Name) Next End Sub
Even though a List implements IEnumerable and a Student inherits from Person this will not work in Visual Studio 2008 because generic types behave invariantly in the CLR previous to version 4.0. This is now supported. In Visual Basic 10 (and C# 4) you now have the ability to declare covariant (widening) and contravariant (narrowing) generic types with the Out and In modifiers. So they changed the IEnumerable interface in the CLR 4.0 to designate a covariant generic type:
Public Interface IEnumerable(Of Out T) ...
So this means that the method call above will work now because a widening conversion is allowed. Contravariance is the exact opposite. With the In modifier on the generic type a narrowing conversion is allowed. Piece of cake, right?
Check out the Generic Co- and Contravariance article for a deep dive into this feature and how to use it in your programs. Also check out Lucian’s post: Co- and contra-variance: how do I convert a List(Of Apple) into a List(Of Fruit)?
Enjoy!
SNL Presidential video has been doing the rounds.
Also watch the behind the scenes video in the same site.
Worth watching!
(via YesbutNobutYes)
One question being asked about DataRepeater in the MSDN forum is that how to print all the populated records from DataRepeater. If the number of the records is small enough to fit into the view of the DataRepeater, this would be a very simple task: use PrintForm component to print the form that contains the DataRepeater. However, the number of records is usually large and records cannot be fit in one page. To print all the records including the records that are out of view, Printer component (another VB Power Packs component) can be used.
For example, let’s say I have a DataRepeater control and a “Print” button on a Form.
Then I add a “Click” event handler for the Print button. In the Click event handler, I’ll print all the records. The basic idea here is to go through all the DataRepeater items. For each DataRepeater item, set it as the current item of the DataRepeater. This is to make the item scroll into the view. Then I draw the item to a bitmap by using Control.DrawToBitmap. And finally I print the bitmap to the printer.
This is the code:
Private Sub PrintButton_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles PrintButton.Click If Me.DataRepeater1.ItemCount > 0 Then ' Define a VB Power Packs Printer object Dim printer As New Printer() Dim sz As Size = Me.DataRepeater1.CurrentItem.ClientSize Dim w As Integer = sz.Width Dim h As Integer = sz.Height Dim bm As New Bitmap(w, h) Dim x = 0 Dim y = 100 Dim n As Integer = Me.DataRepeater1.ItemCount For i As Integer = 1 To n ' Set item i be the current item so that it can be visible Me.DataRepeater1.CurrentItemIndex = i - 1 ' Paint the content of the current DataRepeater item to a bitmap Dim item As DataRepeaterItem = Me.DataRepeater1.CurrentItem item.DrawToBitmap(bm, item.ClientRectangle) ' if y coordinate > height of the page, start a new page ' assuming one page can show 15 items If y + h * 15 + 100 > printer.ScaleHeight Then printer.NewPage() y = 100 End If ' Print the bitmap to the printer printer.PaintPicture(bm, x, y) ' Calculate the next left,top position y += h * 15 Next printer.EndDoc() End If End Sub
You may need to import following namespace if you haven’t done so:
Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic.PowerPacks Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic.PowerPacks.Printing.Compatibility.VB6
Related topic: DataRepeater Control for Windows Forms
Teams here at Microsoft have been cranking on a bunch of samples for the next releases of Visual Studio, .NET Framework, Office, SharePoint, Expression, WPF & Silverlight and I’ve been on the hunt to find some favorites and roll them up here. I haven’t played with all of these but depending on what you’re into you probably want to check these out.
Visual Basic Samples
These are a cumulative batch of over 100 samples, demonstrating features found in VS 2010, 2008, 2005 and earlier. You can explore new Visual Basic 10 (VS 2010) samples in the languages section.
Samples for Parallel Programming with the .NET Framework 4
This download includes both VB and C# samples for developers writing parallel and concurrent applications, including Parallel LINQ (PLINQ), the Task Parallel Library (TPL), new thread-safe collections, and a variety of new coordination and synchronization data structures.
Office Development in Visual Studio 2010
Visual Studio 2010 samples demonstrate Office development projects, tools, and techniques. Samples include Excel, Word and Outlook solutions.
SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010
Learn how to use the SharePoint development tools in Visual Studio 2010 to create SharePoint workflows, design and deploy visual web parts, event receivers, custom Business Data Catalog types, and list items in a SharePoint Web site.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Documentation Samples
This is a set of over 20 samples that complement the WPF documentation on MSDN.
WPF & Silverlight Data Binding in Visual Studio 2010
These samples demonstrate how to create a WPF & Silverlight data-based forms solutions using Visual Studio 2010.
Silverlight Toolkit Samples
The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of Silverlight controls, components and utilities made available outside the normal Silverlight release cycle. This set of online samples include both VB and C#.
VB Samples for Expression Encoder 3
Expression Encoder is an advanced application for bringing your edited video project to the web for high-quality playback in Microsoft Silverlight scenarios.
Also don’t forget to check the Visual Basic Developer Center often for more samples, tutorials, and downloads. We’ll be adding a lot more here in the next month to prepare you for the Visual Studio 2010 launch.
Enjoy!
I showed this Dawkins video back in 2007. Now there is a new remake in South Park style by TubeLooB
The Shape control in Microsoft.VisualBasic.PowerPacks provides several useful events, including MouseDown, MouseMove, MouseUp. Some useful actions you can work on a shape is to use the mouse to move or resize the shape. For example, you may want to drag an end point of a line and move the end point. You may also want to drag a side of a rectangle to resize it. Or you may just want to drag the whole shape to another position.
People tend to start with Shape’s MouseDown, MouseMove, MouseUp events but find out that it does not work well later: the mouse seems very slippery, or the drag stop in the halfway. This is because the shape control (or any control) has a limited region and will not fire the events when the mouse moves out of that region.
In the left picture, assume the small box is a RectangleShape control in a form, if you put mouse down at point 1 and then move the mouse along the line to the southeast, it will stop firing mouse events once it pass point 2.
One correct way to move a shape is to use the Shape’s MouseDown event to start the drag, and use its parent control to handle the MouseMove and MouseUp events. All shape controls in a form shares an invisible parent control called ShapeContainer. In the following code sample, I have a form contains an OvalShape1 and its parent control is ShapeContainer1. I added MouseDown handler to OvalShape and MouseMove and MouseUp to ShapeContainer1.
Public Class Form1
Dim dragging As Boolean = False
Dim oldShapePosition As Point
Dim mouseDownX As Integer 'Mouse position based on ShapeContainer
Dim mouseDownY As Integer
Private Sub OvalShape1_MouseDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs) _
Handles OvalShape1.MouseDown
dragging = True
oldShapePosition = OvalShape1.Location
mouseDownX = e.X + OvalShape1.Location.X
mouseDownY = e.Y + OvalShape1.Location.Y
End Sub
Private Sub ShapeContainer1_MouseMove(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs) _
Handles ShapeContainer1.MouseMove
If (dragging) Then
Dim deltaX As Integer = e.X - mouseDownX
Dim deltaY As Integer = e.Y - mouseDownY
Me.OvalShape1.Location = New Point(oldShapePosition.X + deltaX, oldShapePosition.Y + deltaY)
End If
End Sub
Private Sub ShapeContainer1_MouseUp(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs) _
Handles ShapeContainer1.MouseUp
dragging = False
End Sub
End Class
Because MouseEventArgs has the relative mouse position to the underline control, at mouse down, I need to record the mouse down position as below so it converts to the coordinates of the ShapeContainer1.
mouseDownX = e.X + OvalShape1.Location.X
mouseDownY = e.Y + OvalShape1.Location.Y
We can also let ShapeContainer to handle MouseDown event, this will relieve you from converting the mouse coordinate above. However, you will need to use the Shape.HitTest to tell if the mouse down is on a shape. The above sample for mouse down event handling can then be like this:
Private Sub ShapeContainer1_MouseDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs) _
Handles ShapeContainer1.MouseDown
If (OvalShape1.HitTest(MousePosition.X, MousePosition.Y)) Then
dragging = True
oldShapePosition = Me.OvalShape1.Location
mouseDownX = e.X
mouseDownY = e.Y
End If
End Sub
The above code works fine for moving RectangleShape and OvalShape. To resize them, you will need some more work to hit test on the side and change the Size and/or Location.
Now let’s take a look at the LineShape, which is kind of special because it does not have the Location or Size properties. Instead, it has StartPoint and EndPoint properties. To move the whole line, we can move both StatPoint and EndPoint. To drag only one end, we just move either StartPoint or EndPoint. To test mouse down near an end, I add this help function:
Private Function MouseIsNearBy(ByVal testPoint As Point) As Boolean
testPoint = Me.PointToScreen(testPoint)
Return Math.Abs(testPoint.X - MousePosition.X) <= HitTestDelta _
AndAlso Math.Abs(testPoint.Y - MousePosition.Y) <= HitTestDelta
End Function
Here is the complete code that works for a Form with the LineShape control called lineShape1 and its parent container control called ShapeContainer1.
Public Class Form1
Const HitTestDelta As Integer = 3
' The mouse position when mouse down
Dim oldMouseX As Integer
Dim oldMouseY As Integer
' The line position when mouse down.
Dim oldStartPoint As Point
Dim oldEndPoint As Point
Dim dragStartPoint As Boolean = False
Dim dragEndPoint As Boolean = False
Private Sub ShapeContainer1_MouseDown(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs) _
Handles ShapeContainer1.MouseDown
If (LineShape1.HitTest(MousePosition.X, MousePosition.Y)) Then
oldMouseX = e.X
oldMouseY = e.Y
oldStartPoint = LineShape1.StartPoint
oldEndPoint = LineShape1.EndPoint
dragStartPoint = MouseIsNearBy(oldStartPoint)
dragEndPoint = MouseIsNearBy(oldEndPoint)
If (Not dragStartPoint AndAlso Not dragEndPoint) Then
'If not drag either end, then drag both.
dragStartPoint = True
dragEndPoint = True
End If
End If
End Sub
Private Sub ShapeContainer1_MouseMove(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs) _
Handles ShapeContainer1.MouseMove
If (dragStartPoint) Then
LineShape1.StartPoint = New Point(oldStartPoint.X + e.X - oldMouseX, _
oldStartPoint.Y + e.Y - oldMouseY)
End If
If (dragEndPoint) Then
LineShape1.EndPoint = New Point(oldEndPoint.X + e.X - oldMouseX, _
oldEndPoint.Y + e.Y - oldMouseY)
End If
End Sub
Private Sub ShapeContainer1_MouseUp(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As MouseEventArgs) _
Handles ShapeContainer1.MouseUp
dragStartPoint = False
dragEndPoint = False
End Sub
Private Function MouseIsNearBy(ByVal testPoint As Point) As Boolean
testPoint = Me.PointToScreen(testPoint)
Return Math.Abs(testPoint.X - MousePosition.X) <= HitTestDelta _
AndAlso Math.Abs(testPoint.Y - MousePosition.Y) <= HitTestDelta
End Function
End Class
The blog is meant to answer these MSDN forum questions:
Thanks!
I am thrilled on the release of Orbx’s Pacific Northwest (NA Blue) for FSX. It covers a huge area from British Columbia to Oregon and it is breathtaking in its realism. Just released this past weekend, a whopping 4.2Gb download but well worth it.
Just a shot from my first flight around Orcas Island (KORS):
(scenery by Orbx – aircraft: L19 by Sibwings)
SE of Pemberton, BC.
(scenery by Orbx – aircraft: J3 Piper Cub w/Tundra tires, by A2A Simulations)
Here’s a promo video from Orbx:
The flight simulation world keeps getting better, even after the demise of the Microsoft ACES Team, creators of Flight Simulator X (FSX)
Starting in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, you can create ADO.NET Data Services to easily expose data models via RESTful web services. So if you are building a remote CRUD data access layer then this is a technology that you're probably using or are looking into. I’ve written a lot about about data services in VS2008, my favorites are:
With Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 they’ve changed the name of this technology to WCF Data Services and have added some new features, one of which I want to talk about in this post called Query Projections. But first…
If you’ve been writing LINQ queries you’re probably writing a lot of projections already. A projection can be used to limit the number of properties that are returned on a set of objects and/or to perform transformations on those properties. This is done using the Select clause. For example, say I have a list of customers that have 12 properties but I only want to return a couple of them in my result collection. I would write:
Dim result = From c In customerList Select c.CustomerID, c.ContactName
This creates a list of anonymous types that have only a CustomerID and ContactName property. We say that the query projected these properties from the Customer into the anonymous type. You can also project results into your own known types as well. For instance, say I have a class I’ve defined called MyCustomer with just the two properties defined:
Class MyCustomer Property CustomerID As Integer Property ContactName As String End Class
I can write the query so that it will project the results into a collection of MyCustomer objects instead:
Dim result = From c In customerList Select New MyCustomer With {.CustomerID = c.CustomerID, .ContactName = c.ContactName}
Take a look here for some Visual Basic and C# query projection examples.
When you write a LINQ query against a data service it is translated to an HTTP GET call. You can use LINQ to query a data service to perform restriction (Where), ordering (Order By) as well as other basic expressions, although not all LINQ syntax is supported. Unfortunately in Visual Studio 2008 SP1 you cannot use a projection (Select) on your queries to a data service, you’ll get a NotSupportedException. This means that all the properties are returned on the data entities you define in your model behind your data service. This can be a drag if you have entities with lots of properties or properties with heavy payloads like images or other binary data. All these must be sent down the wire regardless if you use them or not. Let me show you what I mean.
I have an Entity Framework model of the Northwind database that I’m exposing via a .NET 3.5 SP1 Data Service just like we built in this previous post. It has Categories and Products entities. The Category entity has a Picture property but I don’t need to use it in my client application. I’ve added the service reference to the client and you would think we could write the following:
Dim svc As New NorthwindService.NorthwindEntities(New Uri("http://.../NorthwindService.svc/")) 'Try to project just the properties we need: Dim result = From c In svc.Categories Select c.CategoryID, c.CategoryName For Each c In result 'NotSupportedException when query executes Console.WriteLine(c) Next
However, we get a runtime error “Select is not supported”. Bummer! In order to project just the properties we need we have to execute the query and bring down the data locally and then project over that list. You can do it in one shot by adding a call to the ToList extension method like this:
Dim result = From c In svc.Categories.ToList Select c.CategoryID, c.CategoryName
Unfortunately if you look at the payload you see all the properties returned. So although the result collection is what we want, the way we got it was inefficient on the wire. In our example you can see the binary picture data is returned but never used:
What we really want is to see just the properties we requested in the payload. Good news is that this is now supported in Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. There’s also an update you can install to get this support in .NET 3.5. Let’s explore this new feature by first creating a new WCF Data Service project in Visual Studio 2010.
I want to fist walk though how to create a WCF data service in Visual Studio 2010 since there are some subtle changes in the designers from VS2008. Create a new Project and select the Web node and then choose ASP.NET Empty Web Application. If you don’t see it, make sure your target is set to .NET Framework 4. This is a new handy project template to use especially if your creating data services.
Click OK and the project is created. It will only contain a web.config. Next add your data model like before. I’m going to use the Entity Framework so go to Project –> Add New Item, select the Data node and then choose ADO.NET Entity Data Model. Click Add and then you can create your data model, in my case I generated it from the Northwind database.
Next we need to add the WCF Data Service (formerly known as ADO.NET Data Service). Project –> Add New Item, select the Web node and then scroll down and choose WCF Data Service. This item template is renamed for both .NET 3.5 and 4.0 Framework targets so keep that in mind when trying to find it:
Now you can set up your entity access. For this example I’ll allow read access to all my entities in the model:
Public Class NorthwindService ' TODO: replace [[class name]] with your data class name Inherits DataService(Of NorthwindEntities) ' This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. Public Shared Sub InitializeService(ByVal config As DataServiceConfiguration) ' TODO: set rules to indicate which entity sets and service operations are visible, updatable, etc. ' Examples: config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.AllRead) ' config.SetServiceOperationAccessRule("MyServiceOperation", ServiceOperationRights.All) config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2 End Sub End Class
Finally, we’ll add a simple client console application to the solution to test the service. File –> Add –> New Project and then select Console application. Right click on the client console application and select "Add Service Reference" in the solution explorer. When the dialog opens click the Discover button and it should find the data service. Name the service reference then click OK. This will automatically generate the client-side proxy and the necessary entities to work with our data service.
Now that we have a .NET 4.0 WCF Data Service set up we can write a query in our client that specifies the projection:
Dim svc As New NorthwindEntities(New Uri("http://.../NorthwindService.svc/")) 'Projections now supported in WCF Data Services Dim result = From c In svc.Categories Select c.CategoryID, c.CategoryName For Each c In result 'No errors Console.WriteLine(c) Next
What this translates to is a GET against our data service that specifies a select parameter that wasn’t supported before. If you open your favorite browser to the WCF Data Service we just created, you can specify a select clause in the query string:
http://…/NorthwindService.svc/Categories?$select=CategoryID,CategoryName
Now if you take a look at the payload we can see that only the CategoryID and CategoryName properties are returned from the service, conserving space on the wire:
For more information on using projections in data service queries please see the MSDN Library and the WCF Data Services Team Blog.
Enjoy!
The next meeting of the Philadelphia VFP User Group will take place on Tuesday, March 9 at 7:00 PM. For March and April only, we will meet at the Granor Price Office Center, 721 Dresher Road, Horsham, PA. This is just a few minutes from the Willow Grove interchange of the PA Turnpike and is not far from the Virginia Drive slip ramp. Either one is a good choice. As usual, if you want, bring dinner and arrive as early at 6:30.
We'll pick up last month's cancelled "Open Mike Night." Bring one command or function that you find really useful, but think is not widely used. It could even be a particular way of using a command or function. If you can demo whatever it is from the Command Window, you don't need to bring a laptop; we'll have one available. Also, feel free to come with a short demo or a question for the group.
Six people braved miserably wet weather to attend the February meeting of the Python Special Interest Group, held as usual on the fourth Thursday of the month at the Amoskeag Business Incubator.
We had a brief set of introductions and announcements of upcoming meetings. We hope to host a discussion of PyCon 2010 presentations by PySIG members next month; details to be worked out, stay tuned.
I’ve seen this presentation seven times and I think this was the best. Along with the Introduction to CSS, I added a “sneak peek” preview of HTML5 and CSS3 and discussed the support (finally!) for CSS 2.1 in Internet Explorer 8 and how that meant the leading browsers all had support for some intriguing features as outlined in the SitePoint book, ”Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong!” There was lots of give and take with the audience, and a few side trips off-script to cover an issue someone wanted to know more about, and a war story or two. Ben Scott was heckled in abstentia.
Slides can be found at http://www.tedroche.com/Present/2010/css/css.html.
Thanks to Bill for arranging and promoting the meeting, to the Amoskeag Business Incubator for the fine facilities, to Laura and the Hopkinton High girls basketball team fundraiser for the M&M cookies, and to all who attended and participated.
This month we’re having a special meeting day, a week earlier than normal, on this Wednesday March 3rd and you don’t want to miss it! MVPs Julie Lerman and Kathleen Dollard are in town and we thought this would be a great chance to snag them both for a killer session on Entity Framework and MEF with the experts. Here’s the 411:
EastBay.NET User’s Group Special Meeting
March meeting – Entity Framework & Managed Extensibility Framework Double Header
When: Wednesday, 3/3/2010 at 6:00 PM
Where: University of Phoenix Learning Center in Livermore, 2481 Constitution Drive, Room 105
First look at POCO Support in Entity Framework 4
One of the most important additions to Entity Framework in VS2010 is its support for POCO (Plain Old CLR Object) classes. In this session you'll see how EF is able to support POCOs, how to create POCOs that EF can work with and the difference between super simple POCOs and those which use dynamic proxies at run time to emulate EntityObject behavior such as change notification. We'll also take a quick look at the critical change to EF code generation that allows us to generate and customize POCOs. With POCO capabilities in hand, you will be able to build persistent ignorant, flexible and testable code using entities while still benefiting from the features of Entity Framework.
The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)
Composable applications are made of building blocks - like Legos. Composability is an extension of many ideas that have fueled architecture evolution in the last twenty years, including isolation, the creation of tiers, and testable applications. Silverlight and .NET now contain the Managed Extensibility Framework or MEF to provide composability. MEF is available in .NET 3.5 and Silverlight 3.0 via downloads and in the box for .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0. MEF is as simple as Import, Export, Compose! You'll learn how do each of these steps with the attributed model to define and retrieve parts in your application. I'll also cover what composability is and the three broad categories - extensions, fully composed applications, and architecturally composed applications. You'll leave understanding when MEF might be a good fit for your applications today and insight into how profoundly MEF is likely to change architectures in the relatively near future.
Hope to see you there!
Helium was up, feathers were down.
Paper was stationary.
Fluorescent tubing was dimmed in light trading.
Knives were up sharply.
Cow steered into a bull market.
Pencils lost a few points.
Hiking equipment was trailing.
Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline.
Weights were up in heavy trading.
Light switches were off.
Mining equipment hit rock bottom.
Diapers remain unchanged.
Shipping lines stayed at an even keel.
The market for raisins dried up.
Coca Cola fizzled.
Caterpillar stock inched up a bit.
Sun peaked at midday.
Balloon prices were inflated.
And batteries exploded in an attempt to recharge the market
(Via Miss Cellania)
