It’s a pleasure for me to attend TechEd 2009 in Berlin this year (9-13 November)! This will be my first time at TechEd and I hope I meet with some great speakers and attendees there.

I’ll be at the Meet the Experts Silverlight booth on

Tuesday 10 Nov
11:30 – 15:15
15:15 – 18:45

Wednesday 11 Nov
11:30 – 15:15

Thursday 12 Nov
11:30 – 15:15

Hope I meet you there!

I’ll speak about Blend 3 SketchFlow and Sample Data on Dev Reach this year. It will be an interactive demonstration of what you can do with SketchFlow, how to get feedback, quickly, easy and inexpensively. Read more

The session will be on the virtual track on 11 October, 14:30-15:45 and is only for registered DevReach attendees.

I’ll also be available on Meet the Experts booth on 12 October, 17:15-18:45.

I was dealing with the DataForm control and I wanted to show multiple command buttons through the CommandButtonsVisibility property. CommandButtonsVisibility is enum. While it was perfectly clear how to do this in code (

dataForm.CommandButtonsVisibility =
	DataFormCommandButtonsVisibility.Add |
	DataFormCommandButtonsVisibility.Cancel |
	DataFormCommandButtonsVisibility.Edit;

), that wasn’t the case with XAML.

I tried to apply the same technique in XAML, but with no luck. Turns out it is even easier to set this in XAML:

CommandButtonsVisibility="Add,Cancel,Edit"

That’s just a little tip that I thought it’d be useful to share.

The summer is ending and its time to start the new season for the Silverlight User Group meetings.

Next meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, 08 September, 18:30h at the local Microsoft Office. There will be 2 sessions:

• What’s new in Silverlight 3 and Blend 3
• Routed and attached events in Silverlight 3.0 (commanding framework)

More information is available on http://www.silverlight.bg.

RSVP in the Facebook event http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=121538788987

Meet you there.

The registration for the fourth edition of the premier conference on Microsoft Technologies in Southeastern Europe – DevReach is open!

With over of 45 sessions and speakers like Chris Sells, a Program Manager for the Business Platform Division in Microsoft, Microsoft Regional Director Christian Weyer, the INETA Country Leader for Sweden Tiberiu Covaci, Richard Campbell, a .NET Rocks and Run As Radio fame, Telerik Chief Technical Evangelist Todd Anglin, Telerik Chief Strategy Officer Stephen Forte, Shawn Wildermuth and many more it will be difnitely a lot of fun again this year.

The event will be held in Sofia, Bulgaria so if you are somewhere near around 12 October don’t hesitate to join!

Localization and internationalization have never been great in Silverlight, but are totally possible and kind of easy with a bit of manual work.

There are a lot of articles out there focused on localization so I won’t dig deep in that. Instead, I want to make a note about the generated code for the resources and especially the nasty internal constructor.

By default, when you add a new resource, the generated code is internal. However, if you want to use the resources in XAML then you can go with Public access modifier:

OK, nothing special yet.

What you will notice is that you still can’t use the resources, because the constructor of the generated class is internal. All properties that are generated are static and in most cases you don’t need a constructor. But that’s not the case here. We want to use the resources in XAML so it has to create an instance of this class.

Of course a possible solution is to open the generated class, change the modifier from internal to public and that’s it. Well, yes, but you have to do this every time you add/update a resource in your file. Developers are lazy these days so I know you want something that can automate this process.

The resource class is automatically generated by a custom tool called PublicResXFileCodeGenerator (in case of public code generation). Guy Smith-Ferrier created another custom tool that behaves just like this one, except that it generates a public constructor. Read Guy’s post and download his tool to fix future problems with resources.

I know that not much time passed since the release of Silverlight 3, but I’m looking ahead and thinking about Silverlight 4 (or whatever the next version is called). Features like printing, HTML formatting, better duplex support, etc are currently not supported out of the box, but many of you need them. I’m interested in hearing from you what are the features that you miss?

Something that you really need in building line-of-business or other rich media applications. Something that will boost the process of delivering your applications in time, that will boost your performance.

Of course, there is a way to support printing in Silverlight apps now, but is that what you really expect from a platform like Silverlight? Do you need anything more? Anything that can be easier and faster achieved?

How many times did you hear from clients that they want ‘just a little formatting in the text’? Or a hyperlink?

I was blogging at weblogs.asp.net, but recently I was awarded MVP for my contributions in the Silverlight community and I thought it is time to move on. SilverlightShow.net is a Silverlight community and as such I think it is a good place for my blog.

Here I’ll post my activities in the Silverlight community – publications, speaking engagements, articles, etc.

I’ll try to be as helpful and close to the community as I can. If you are interested in Silverlight in any way, need some information or whatever don’t hesitate to contact me.

Emil