Category Archives: Silverlight

Anything related to Microsoft Silverlight

Visual Studio Automatic Version Numbering

Visual Studio (2010+) allows you to specify that it should generate (incremental) build versions for your projects. The syntax is quite simple (for AssemblyInfo.cs), but there are a few caveats to know. Continue reading

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Integrating NUnit with CruiseControl.NET

Interested in using CruiseControl.NET to execute NUnit tasks and integrate the results in the dashboard, without using the nunit task type? You can do it through exec, if you merge the results. This article outlines how. Continue reading

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Using NInject For Compile-Time AOP

An update to my aspect-oriented design pattern for compile-time checking: you can implement aspects as interfaces with singular implementations, and use Ninject to inject the interface implementations. Smooth, easy, and it works! Continue reading

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Sending Multiple Updates Through the Updater Block

Adding multiple updates to an updater block manifest is actually quite easy. Simply package every update into its own manifest XML file, reference the manifests from the main/index manifest, and update the ID of the main/index manifest so that clients can tell that changes occurred. That’s it! Continue reading

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An Overview of the Updater Application Block

The Updater Application Block from Microsoft’s Enterprise Library is not immediately obvious in design. How does it work? We go through the basics. It’s a client-server architecture, which exposes an XML file containing a list of updates — what to download, and what to execute when that’s done. It uses BITS for passive transferring. Continue reading

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Fixing ApplicationBlocks.Updater Exception in x64

Microsoft Enterprise Library’s Update block throws an exception in 64-bit machines; this is because of the BG_BASIC_CREDENTIALS struct that uses a field offset of 4 instead of 8. Change it to eight, and your exception will vanish. Continue reading

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Debugging Silverlight Apps in Firefox

Debugging Silverlight applications in Firefox without a Web project is easy; just enable the dom.ipc.plugins.enabled configuration point in Firefox, restart your browser, and you’re ready to go! Continue reading

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Enums, SQL Server, and Null

Ever wonder how to deal with enumerations that might be null? Should you have a “nothing” value? What about SQL Server? As it turns out, enumerations are value types (often represented by integers), which means that they can be nullable! Continue reading

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Limiting the Number of Results from LINQ

How can you limit the number of objects returned from a LINQ query, i.e. only request the first N objects (similar to MySQL’s LIMIT keyword)? The answer is via the Take(n) LINQ method; it pulls the first N rows specified. Continue reading

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Tools Update: BaseEncoder and Hasher

We’ve updated the Tools library again. You can now convert integers to an from an arbitrary base (binary, hexadecimal, base64, or any base you wish) as well as calculate SHA-1 hashes of strings with one function call. Useful! Continue reading

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