Yesterday Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate was available for MSDN subscribers and would be generally available on 10 February 2010 for the public.  This release represents a significant improvement in the overall Visual Studio product and a lot was based on beta tester feedback.

Of course, as a Silverlight developer you will be wondering: Can I still develop Silverlight 4 applications with the VS2010 RC?

Here’s the simplest form of a FAQ I could provide for you:

Q: What was released this week for Visual Studio 2010?
A: The Visual Studio team released Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Release Candidate builds.

Q: When can I download them?
A: If you are an MSDN subscriber, you can today (8 FEB).  Generally availability will be 10 FEB.

Q: Can I developer Silverlight applications?
A: Yes, you can develop Silverlight 3 applications with the release candidate of Visual Studio 2010.

Q: What about Silverlight 4 applications?
Q: Is there an updated Silverlight 4 Tools installer?
Q: Is there an updated WCF RIA Services build for VS2010?
Q: Is there an updated Silverlight Toolkit build for VS2010/Silverlight 4?
Q: Is there an updated Blend for .NET 4 Preview build?
A: At this time, VS2010 RC does not support developing Silverlight 4 applications.  This means that at this time there is no update for Silverlight 4 runtime/tools or the WCF RIA Services or other companion frameworks (toolkit controls, etc.).  This will not be enabled until the next public build of Silverlight 4 and companion frameworks.

Q: If I want to develop Silverlight 4 applications, what should I do?
A: You should stick on the public Beta 2 build of Visual Studio for now with the companion tools/framework builds.

Q: You mentioned ‘next public build’ so when will that be for Silverlight 4?
A: We haven’t released a timeframe on that availability right now. :-(

Q: Can I run Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and Visual Studio RC side-by-side?
A: No.

Q: Are there hacks to make Silverlight 4 tools work with the VS2010 RC? 
A: I’m sure someone might cobble something together, but frankly there are issues between the two and the combination isn’t supported.

Q: What is wrong with you people?  Why don’t you release things at the same time?!
A: If everyone could intern for a week in the developer division at Microsoft you’d see the challenges faced with various products innovating on different time schedules and resources and teams managing as best they can.  Frankly, Visual Studio is on a path.  Silverlight 4 as a not-yet-released-product has to wait for VS milestones to ensure SL tools work well with our builds.  This same holds true for the companion frameworks and Blend.  It is not a fun place to be as we are all moving targets for each other with varying dependencies.  The Silverlight and RIA Services teams are working hard to finish a product.  That is our goal.  We want to make sure not to distract resources from adding support to interim builds that we simply can’t handle right now in order to deliver a quality FINAL product for you.

Hopefully this helps, even if it isn’t what you wanted to hear for Silverlight development at this time.

Here’s how it started…

Lisa (my wife) [shouting from office into the kitchen]: Tim, what’s this Amazon charge for $193?
Me [thinking what I may have purchased and not remembered]: Um, don’t know…let me look.

I then logged into my Amazon account to see what order I may have forgotten.  Surely I didn’t order $200 worth of MP3…that’s ridiculous.  Sure enough nothing was there.  Immediately I’m thinking fraud.  I start freaking out, getting mad, figuring out my revenge scheme on the scammer, etc.

Then it hit me: Amazon Web Services account.

The Culprit

Sure enough I logged in and my January 2010 billing account was $193 and change.  Yikes.  Well, I could let the (what has been averaging) $30 or so charge slide under the family CFO radar for a while…but this $193 charge…the chief auditor herself caught that one.

So I panicked.  I needed to figure out where/what the spike was.  I logged into the Amazon Web Services management console (I only use the S3/CloudFront storage in their services right no) to see what was going on.  I see ‘Usage Reports’ and click.  I’m met with essentially a bunch of useless data really.  No offense to Amazon, but really the usage reports weren’t really helpful at all.  First, they gave me a Resource ID which I thought would represent the URI I was looking for.  Nope, Resource ID == Bucket.  And they didn’t even put the bucket name in the report!

For some perspective, here’s essentially what I’m used to – here’s my December 2009 billing statement details:

Anyhow, after some hunting it was obvious that I wasn’t going to figure out what bucket objects/unique URIs were causing my spike.  This was primarily because I didn’t have logging turned on at all on my buckets.  I had in the past but really didn’t think I needed it so I turned it off.

I was wrong – go now and enable logging.

While I was searching for a solution to understand my traffic, I was curious for where my traffic was.  Like I said, I’d been averaging (actually *peaking*) at about a $30 charge for the S3 hosting.

NOTE: I use S3 for all my image/screenshot/sample code file hosting.  I’ve invested in S3 for a long time and built my blogging workflow around it with building tools like S3 Browser for Windows Live Writer.

What was interesting was my most usage of my CloudFront data was coming from Hong Kong.  Compare to above the December 2009 billing to this January 2010 billing:

Yeah, that was my reaction too.  I went from roughly 40GB of transfer bandwidth to over 960GB in one month.  I suspected I knew what happened, but needed to confirm before I changed things. 

Implementing Logging for Statistics

The problem was that I didn’t have logging enabled and I was pretty much stuck.  I needed to get some data from the logs before being for sure.  I quickly found S3Stat and it appears to be the de-facto reporting for Amazon S3 log files.  I signed up for the free trial and generated a new access key to give them.

NOTE: They have a ‘manual’ option which means a lot more work.  I simply generated a NEW S3 access key for this specific purpose.  That way I didn’t have to give them my golden key I’ve been using in other places and can shut this off at any time without issue to my other workflows.

24 hours later, I had some reports.  Wicked cool reports.  Here’s a list of what I’m currently looking at:

• Total hits, total files, total kbytes
• Hits/files per hour/day
• Hourly stats
• Top 30 URIs
• Top URIs by kbytes used
• Top referrers (find out who’s using your bits without you knowing)
• User agents

Here’s a quick snapshot of one:

Wow…honestly…THIS is what I was expecting when I see “usage” data reports.  S3Stat is awesome and you should use that now.  Yes, I’m buttering up to them…but they have a great tool here for $5/month if you are a heavy Amazon S3/CloudFront user.  Amazon frankly should just buy them and integrate this into their management console.  You can see other examples of their report outputs on their site at http://www.s3stat.com. 

What I also found out is that the tool I use for my desktop usage of S3/CloudFront (outside of my blogger workfow and S3Browser) has S3Stat integration built in!  I use CloudBerry’s S3 Explorer Pro for managing my S3 content.  It’s awesome and you should look at it.  When I look at the logging features in CloudBerry I see this:

And after enabling the logging, within CloudBerry I can view the log data within the tool:

Summary

Wow, this is incredibly helpful and insightful data.  I now know who/how/when my cloud storage data is being used in various ways I can see the data.  S3Stat immediately showed me incredible value within less than 24 hours of enabling it.  I know can confirm the culprit of the burst of usage and plan accordingly.

Now, to be clear I’m not complaining about the cost of cloud storage.  That has been clear to me from the beginning.  Nothing is hidden and I’m not an idiot for not understanding it.  What I did not account for was the popularity of some files…and then the ones that just happened to be the largest.  I could not have personally thought I’d see a 920GB spike in one month of usage…but now I know…and have to alter some plans. 

Hopefully this is helpful for some who are just exploring cloud storage solutions/services.  Make sure you have instrumentation and logging capabilities turned on so you can identify and tune your situations.  For me, S3Stat and CloudBerry are winners for my personal usages.  If you are an Amazon S3 customer, I recommend looking at S3Stat and turning on logging immediately!

A developer asked me this question and while a simple answer, I thought it would be a good quick tip to share for those who may be in similar situations.

The scenario is the classic master-details scenario where perhaps you have a grid of data and when a user selects the row, the details are enabled in a form (or perhaps the child of the element) for editing.  Maybe something like this:

See you can see the row clearly selected (note: this is using the default DataGrid styling).  But watch what happens when you go to the form to edit:

Notice the focus now on the TextBox in the form, and the row, while still ‘selected’ is much more subtle in which row is selected.  The uninformed eye might miss which one.  For some scenarios this might be important.  Some might even think the row isn’t selected anymore since the visual state changed.

In fact it still *IS* selected and the only thing that changed *IS* the visual state…literally.  Since Silverlight has the concept of the VisualStateManager, that is what we are seeing in action here.  So you want to change that to make your desired UI as expected…having the row retain it’s selected look even when the user is editing.  This is simple.

Using Expression Blend, you can select the DataGrid element and then choose Edit Additional Templates to find the RowStyle template to edit a copy of:

Once you have this, click the States tab in the tool and you’ll see the various visual states that a DataGridRow can have.  Notice the NormalSelected and UnfocusedSelected states:

You would modify the Fill.Color property of the UnfocusedSelected state to accomplish the desired change.  In this example, I just used the same color as the default grid for illustration.  The end result is what the user may be expecting more.  Notice the focus is on the TextBox in the form still, but the row still has a prominent selected color view:

A simple edit, but a helpful UI change to give your users more indication of what they are doing.  Of course I’m just using the default styles of the DataGrid here, but you could use your own styles as well.  Hope this helps!

Here is my style XAML as I completed the task above: StaySelectedStyle.txt

it’s that time again…beginning of a new month!  That means that Smashing Magazine has released their monthly wallpaper pictures again.

As you could expect, February entries are full of a lot of Valentine type stuff.  Here are your February Windows 7 Theme Packs for the wallpapers though…including all images (note: some ‘without calendar’ images are not provided by the authors) unfiltered.

• Smashing Magazine February 2010 Windows 7 Theme (calendar) [58.2 MB]
• Smashing Magazine February 2010 Windows 7 Theme (without calendar) [51.8 MB]
• Smashing Magazine Desktop Wallpaper: February 2010 (original post)

UPDATE PLEASE READ (4-Feb):

There is an issue with the .themepack file for some reason.  Although I’m using the prescribed mechanism for creating these it is not functioning as easily as the January one.  I’ve got some folks on the Windows team looking into it, but no resolution yet.  In the interim, you can extract the .themepack file using 7-Zip (a free and great utility) and then double-click on the .theme file where you extracted it.  This should trigger the installation of the theme.

For details on these and to see past ones, visit the Smashing Magazine Windows 7 Theme information for the specifications I used for the theme pack as well as previous themes.  Want to participate and submit yours?  Join in!

I’m working on a little sample application for music management in Silverlight using WCF RIA Services and some other new Silverlight 4 features.  One thing that I wanted to add to the application was the ability to drag an audio file and either lookup the data and/or add a new album/artist/song to the library automatically.

Audio formats have a ‘tag’ format known as ID3.  It’s a format used for audio file metadata that is used in Windows Media Player, iTunes, and various hardware devices as well.  Over the years there has been an evolution of this format, with the older ID3v1 format basically taking up a header space with fixed character spaces for various things like Album, Artist, Title, Year, Track.  Over time though the ID3v2 format has been adapted more as it is more flexible for things like album art, and longer titles, etc.  There are various implementations of ID3 libraries for .NET that developers can choose from.  All of these implementations don’t take into account Silverlight unfortunately.

Silverlight can only reference Silverlight-compatible libraries.  Most of these libraries were targeted for the full .NET Framework and thus I can’t binary reference them.  Luckily most of them (except one) are Open Source so I could tinker.  I took the step of simply copying the files to a Silverlight project and recompiling.  This did not work 100% in a single task.  Most of the libraries had some form of Serialization attributes/constructors and almost all used some form of ASCII encoding for various string manipulation of byte arrays.

I settled on TagLib# as the library that was the easiest to modify for me.  I had to make the same changes I mentioned above to this library as well.  I created a new Silverlight 4 class library and compiled it as such.  One thing that TagLib# didn’t have was a stream input implementation.  Most of the libraries, in fact, assumed a local file path.  Luckily the library was written using a generic ‘File’ interface, so I just had to create my own StreamFileAbstraction.  I chose to do this within my project rather than the base library.  It was easy since the LocalFileAbstraction actually perfomed an Open on the file as it’s first task and set some public variables.  My abstraction basically just hands the stream already and ready to go.

Now, using the Silverlight 4 drop target feature, I created just a simple test harness to test my theory.  My XAML basically is this (pretty rudimentary just to test my theory):

   1: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

   2:         <StackPanel>

   3:             <Border x:Name="DropZone" Width="700" Height="300" Background="Silver" CornerRadius="8" AllowDrop="True" Drop="DropZone_Drop">

   4:                 <TextBlock TextWrapping="Wrap" Text="drop here" FontSize="64" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" Foreground="Gray"/>

   5:             </Border>

   6:             <Grid Height="255" Width="700">

   7:                 <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

   8:                     <ColumnDefinition Width="111"/>

   9:                     <ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>

  10:                 </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

  11:                 <Grid.RowDefinitions>

  12:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>

  13:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>

  14:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>

  15:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />

  16:                     <RowDefinition Height="50*" />

  17:                 </Grid.RowDefinitions>

  18:                 <dataInput:Label Content="Artist" HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Top" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="4" />

  19:                 <dataInput:Label Content="Album" Grid.Row="1" HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Top" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="4" />

  20:                 <dataInput:Label Content="Title" Grid.Row="2" HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Top" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="4" />

  21:                 <dataInput:Label Grid.Column="1" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Name="Artist" Margin="4" />

  22:                 <dataInput:Label Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="1" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Name="Album" Margin="4" />

  23:                 <dataInput:Label Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="2" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" Name="Title" Margin="4" />

  24:                 <Image Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="4" Height="118" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="4,2,0,0" Name="AlbumArt" Stretch="Fill" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="118" />

  25:             </Grid>

  26:         </StackPanel>

  27:     </Grid>

Notice on the Border the AllowDrop=”True” attribute.  This tells Silverlight that the element can be used as a drop target (for a file from the file system).  The rendered UI looks like this:

You may also notice the Drop attribute on the Border element that maps to the event handler DropZone_Drop.  This event handler basically gives us an event argument that represents the dropped objects on the surface (yes you can drop more than one).  The initial stub of this function looks like this:

   1: private void DropZone_Drop(object sender, DragEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     IDataObject drop = e.Data as IDataObject;

   4:  

   5:     object data = drop.GetData(DataFormats.FileDrop);

   6:  

   7:     FileInfo[] files = data as FileInfo[];

   8:  

   9:     FileInfo file = files[0];

  10: }

I’m being a little verbose in the code to show each of the steps.  As you can see you get a FileInfo array and can pull items out of that.  For my sample I’m just assuming one item was dropped.  In the next steps I just need to get the Stream from the file and use my library.  Here is the full function (with a quick check to make sure it is a supported audio file):

   1: private void DropZone_Drop(object sender, DragEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     IDataObject drop = e.Data as IDataObject;

   4:  

   5:     object data = drop.GetData(DataFormats.FileDrop);

   6:  

   7:     FileInfo[] files = data as FileInfo[];

   8:  

   9:     FileInfo file = files[0];

  10:  

  11:     if (file.Extension.ToLower() != ".mp3" && file.Extension.ToLower() != ".wma")

  12:     {

  13:         MessageBox.Show("Must be an MP3 file");

  14:     }

  15:     else

  16:     {

  17:         Stream fileStream = file.OpenRead();

  18:  

  19:         TagLib.File.IFileAbstraction fileAbstraction = new StreamFileAbstraction(fileStream, file.Name);

  20:  

  21:         TagLib.File tagFile = TagLib.File.Create(fileAbstraction);

  22:  

  23:         if (tagFile.Tag.TagTypes.HasFlag(TagLib.TagTypes.Id3v2))

  24:         {

  25:             Artist.Content = tagFile.Tag.FirstAlbumArtist;

  26:             Album.Content = string.IsNullOrEmpty(tagFile.Tag.Album) ? "NO ALBUM NAME" : tagFile.Tag.Album;

  27:             Title.Content = tagFile.Tag.Title;

  28:             if (tagFile.Tag.Pictures.Length > 0)

  29:             {

  30:                 IPicture pic = tagFile.Tag.Pictures[0];

  31:                 MemoryStream img = new MemoryStream(pic.Data.Data);

  32:                 BitmapImage bmp = new BitmapImage();

  33:                 bmp.SetSource(img);

  34:  

  35:                 AlbumArt.Source = bmp;

  36:             }

  37:         }

  38:         else

  39:         {

  40:             MessageBox.Show("no id3v2 tag");

  41:         }

  42:     }

Once all the pieces are together you drag an audio file on the drop surface and the items will populate.  Here’s a quick video showing how it all works together.

So this is just a start – and I’ve got only the tag reading working…didn’t bother looking at the other parts of the library so I know it isn’t fully ported for Silverlight.

What do you think?  Found a better implementation of ID3 tag reading?

As noted in a previous update post on my Foxit PDF Previewer for Outlook and Vista/Windows 7, there is an issue in the Office 2010 64-bit Beta (specifically Outlook) for executing 32-bit preview handlers on 64-bit Outlook.  I’ve got an update for those temporarily.

First, I can confirm that the issue is fixed in the later builds of Outlook 2010, so this fix is indeed only temporary.

Thanks to some assistance that Leo Davidson provided, I was able to provide a work around for my previewer that I’ve been able to confirm “works for me” on my installation of Outlook 64-bit on Windows 7 64-bit edition.

WARNING: This temporary fix involves messing with your registry.  You should do this with caution.  While I’ve done it successfully and tested fine, don’t hold me responsible if you computer catches on fire or neighbor pet animals die by doing this.  You should backup your registry before applying this to be safe.  Again, that said, it’s minor, only updates my application area settings and shouldn’t interfere with your settings.

The fix involves massaging some registry settings.  I’ve provided the registry settings in a file you can download here: FoxitPreviewerTempFix.zip.  There are two (2) registry files here.  Even though they are labeled 32-bit and 64-bit, they both need to be merged for this fix to work.  You should be able to double-click the .reg file and it will merge it auotomatically.  Additionally you can start regedit.exe and use the Import option (this is what I do).

Once complete, and assuming you have my previewer installed, then PDF preview attachment with my handler for Outlook 64-bit should be fixed for you.  Again, the requirement first here is that you have my Foxit PDF Previewer installed FIRST.

Please leave comments if this solved your issue.  This is ONLY for Outlook 2010 64-bit.  This is not necessary if you are running Outlook 2010 (32-bit), even if you are on Windows 64-bit.  That’s a lot of ‘bit’ talk I know.

Hope this helps! (and thanks Leo!)

Remember the final moments of the Scott Guthrie keynote presentation at PDC09?  Where Brian Goldfarb came on stage and demonstrated a completed application using a lot of the features of Silverlight 4?  Yeah, that Facebook application.  Well, it’s here now!

The Microsoft Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook has been released as a developer preview sample.  In order to use it you must have Silverlight 4 developer builds installed.

NOTE: When you run this application you’ll be installing the developer builds of Silverlight.  When Silverlight 4 releases, unless you are a developer, you’ll likely want to uninstall this plugin and install the released software.  This sample application is being provided as a developer preview to showcase and inspire.

The application is installed as a trusted application and does all the things you’d expect for Facebook.

Status updates:

Drag/drop pictures from your computer to a photo album:

A photo feed view:

Notifications for messages to you:

Add a photo to a post using your web camera on your computer:

And yes, anyone uploading video to Facebook can be played back in the app as well:

A lot of cool ways to explore your Facebook information (sorry, no mafia war games…for me that’s a good thing).  You can also see some Outlook integration if you right-click on events that you may have to send an email and such (I don’t have any events in my Facbook account to snapshot).

So what’s NOT in there?

Good question.  At PDC09 you may have seen a few things that I haven’t mentioned yet above.  The chromeless (borderless application) aspect of the application is not in this preview.  This is because the beta of Silverlight doesn’t include that feature right now.  Additionally the plug-in the camera and have it automatically import the pictures is not in this preview as well.  That was implemented using some COM integration and the team just didn’t clean that code up for this preview for the public.

What about source code?

At this time no source code is being provided…and probably won’t be.  I’m not the decision maker on ultimately if it will or not, just my assumption.  The Facebook client is meant to be a working demonstration/inspiration of what one could do with existing services and providing different views into an existing application framework.

How can I install this and will it work on my Mac?

You can play around with the app by visiting the Microsoft Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook app on the Silverlight samples site (which also includes the other sample applications from PDC09).  As a reminder, this is a developer preview build and intended for developers.  You will need to have Silverlight 4 installed on your machine (which is a beta plugin).  The link to the app will direct you where you can get the appropriate download.

Yes, it will work on your Mac (as long as you have an Intel processor version).  When you install the app you’ll see the Apple preferred install guidelines to drag the application to your Applications folder and can navigate to it there or use Spotlight search to find it.

This is a fun little application to navigate your Facebook account.  The team had a good time building it and is excited to share it with others.  Have fun!

As we’ve all been guilty, when you see demonstrations of technologies most of the time the data samples show single table solutions.  When was the last time you’ve developed a single-table system? :-)  Thought so.

In RIA Services demonstrations, most of them have been single-table samples as well.  So how do you go about retrieving relational data (master/details type) with RIA Services?  Here’s an option.  I’m using VS2010, Silverlight 4 and the WCF RIA Services preview using the below sample.  I’m also using the Chinook sample database which has become one of my favorite simpler relational data samples to use.

Creating your project and associated RIA Services

This is easy, create a new Silverlight project and make sure the ‘Enable .NET RIA Services’ link is checked (yes, we know it doesn’t say WCF in that dialog).  My Silverlight application will be a simple button to retrieve artists then show their associated albums.  Here’s my XAML to start:

   1: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

   2:     <StackPanel Width="400">

   3:         <Button Content="Get Artist Information" x:Name="GetArtistButton" Click="GetArtistButton_Click" />

   4:         <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">

   5:             <StackPanel x:Name="ArtistsContext">

   6:                 <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">

   7:                     <TextBlock Text="Artists: " />

   8:                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=ListOfArtists, Path=Items.Count}" />

   9:                 </StackPanel>

  10:                 <ListBox x:Name="ListOfArtists" Width="200" Height="300" DisplayMemberPath="Name" ItemsSource="{Binding}"/>

  11:             </StackPanel>

  12:             <StackPanel x:Name="AlbumsContext">

  13:                 <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">

  14:                     <TextBlock Text="Albums: " />

  15:                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=ListOfAlbums, Path=Items.Count}" />

  16:                 </StackPanel>

  17:                 <ListBox x:Name="ListOfAlbums" DisplayMemberPath="Title" ItemsSource="{Binding}" Width="200" Height="300"/>

  18:             </StackPanel>

  19:         </StackPanel>

  20:     </StackPanel>

  21: </Grid>

Now on the server side I need to create the associated models and domain services to be consumed.  I’m creating my model using Entity Framework and it looks like this:

Now I need to create my Domain Service class for that model (remember to build the solution after you create your model so it will show up in the tools).  When we create the Domain Service class be sure to enable the checkbox to generate associated classes for metadata.  Once we finish we have some stub services created for us. 

Using the Domain Service functions

We have GetArtists and GetAlbums functions we can work with.  As an example we can wire up the button click to retrieve a list of artists using the default functions we got:

   1: ChinookContext ctx = new ChinookContext();

   2:  

   3: private void GetArtistButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

   4: {

   5:     ArtistsContext.DataContext = ctx.Artists;

   6:     ctx.Load(ctx.GetArtistsQuery());

   7: }

But what about when a user clicks on an Artist, we want to show the albums for that artist and not the others.  We need to modify our Domain Service to add a function:

   1: public IQueryable<Album> GetAlbumsForArtist(int ArtistId)

   2: {

   3:     return this.ObjectContext.Albums.Where(a => a.ArtistId == ArtistId);

   4: }

Now we can use that function when a user clicks on an associated artist to populate the album information:

   1: private void ListOfArtists_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     ListBox theList = sender as ListBox;

   4:     Artist a = theList.SelectedItem as Artist;

   5:     ctx.Albums.Clear();

   6:     AlbumsContext.DataContext = ctx.Albums;

   7:     ctx.Load(ctx.GetAlbumsForArtistQuery(a.ArtistId));

   8: }

Cool.

However, the second event handling for our master-details section for this particular data set seems unnecessary.  After all, why not just include the children data with our initial request if we *know* that we’re doing an explicit master-details view (and our set is not that large relatively speaking).

Modify the metadata classes

Remember the generated metadata classes?  Go back to it now.  You’ll see a definition of the ArtistMetadata that includes this:

   1: public EntityCollection<Album> Albums;

Notice it has an Albums collection property.  Great, so we could just modify our XAML binding to use some element binding and get the Albums property of the SelectedItem right?  Well, not yet.  If we do that, we’ll have no data.  Why is that?  Because we haven’t told RIA Services to perform the necessary additional query to get the data.  Simple add [Include] at the top of the Albums collection:

   1: [Include]

   2: public EntityCollection<Album> Albums;

And that’s what we need.  Now we can add a function to our Domain Service class to get the additional data:

   1: public IQueryable<Artist> GetArtistsWithAlbums()

   2: {

   3:     return this.ObjectContext.Artists.Include("Albums");

   4: }

Now we just need to do some clean up.  We need to change our button click code to get the GetArtistsWithAlbums query now instead of the other one first.

Remove unnecessary code and use binding to help us

Now we can remove the SelectionChanged event handler for our Artists ListBox as well as add some binding commands to our XAML like this:

   1: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">

   2:     <StackPanel Width="400">

   3:         <Button Content="Get Artist Information" x:Name="GetArtistButton" Click="GetArtistButton_Click" />

   4:         <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">

   5:             <StackPanel x:Name="ArtistsContext">

   6:                 <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">

   7:                     <TextBlock Text="Artists: " />

   8:                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=ListOfArtists, Path=Items.Count}" />

   9:                 </StackPanel>

  10:                 <ListBox x:Name="ListOfArtists" Width="200" Height="300" DisplayMemberPath="Name" ItemsSource="{Binding}"/>

  11:             </StackPanel>

  12:             <StackPanel x:Name="AlbumsContext" DataContext="{Binding ElementName=ListOfArtists, Path=SelectedItem}" >

  13:                 <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">

  14:                     <TextBlock Text="Albums: " />

  15:                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding ElementName=ListOfAlbums, Path=Items.Count}" />

  16:                 </StackPanel>

  17:                 <ListBox x:Name="ListOfAlbums" DisplayMemberPath="Title" ItemsSource="{Binding Albums}" Width="200" Height="300"/>

  18:             </StackPanel>

  19:         </StackPanel>

  20:     </StackPanel>

  21: </Grid>

Notice how the DataContext of my Albums ListBox is now set using element binding to the SelectedItem of the Artists ListBox.  Then the ItemsSource of the ListBox for Albums has a {Binding Albums} command.  This is because our Artists query now includes the associated Album data and we can just reference the property.

Use with caution

While this example shows how easy it can be to have included results in your Domain Service query result, be mindful of when you are using.  For instance if you have a customer database of 1000 customers and you want all orders to be retrieved…it might not be wise to use this particular type of method. 

This presents merely another choice for areas where you may want/need it (i.e., country/state/city) for your application.

You can download the sample solution for the above code snippets here: SilverlightApplication41.zip.  Reminder that you will need to have the Chinook database installed already – it is NOT included with this sample download.

Hope this helps!

Happy new year to all!  I hope you enjoyed a safe celebration whether that be playing a board game with friends, toasting the new year with some bubbly, throwing things at Ryan Seacrest on TV, or whatever.

Each quarter, new MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) candidates are awarded.  January 2010 is the first awards of the year and so I present the new/moved/re-awarded Silverlight specific MVPs:

• Jeff Prosise – If you aren’t subscribed to Jeff’s blog, stop and do so now.  It’s filled with some great nuggest that are usually on the advanced ‘how’d he do that’ side of things.  Jeff does a good job spelunking the framework and figuring things out.
• David Yack (@davidyack) – David is a CRM guru and has also written a great Silverlight 3 Jumpstart book (recommended for beginners).  He’s been spending more time with RIA Services for biz/CRM apps lately and been providing great insights into integration uses.  He should blog more :-)
• Laurent Duveau (@LaurentDuveau) – another re-award for Laurent who keeps cranking out great stuff and helps with the Silverlight Tour in Canada.
• Laurent Bugnion (@lbugnion) – one of the XAML experts at IdentityMine, Laurent also has written one of the definitive Silverlight reference books – and is one of the nicest guys you’ll meet.
• Ward Bell (@wardbell) – Ward has some great thoughts on application building for XAML clients and extensive experience with multicolored jackets and general antagonistic views ;-)
• Page Brooks – organizer of SilverlightContrib and various control development efforts in the community.  Control Wrangler?
• Rob Eisenberg (@EisenbergEffect) – one of the brains behind Caliburn, an Open Source Silverlight application framework.
• Andy Beaulieu – have you played a Silverlight game?  If you have, it’s most likely been one of Andy’s :-)
• Jordan Knight (@jakkaj)– hailing from down under (is that phrase still used?), Jordan does a lot in the Melbourne area around Silverlight community and has a great blog of content.
• Alessio Leoncini (@aleoncini) – One of our Italian friends that has been doing a lot in working with Silverlight in Italy and spreading the good word! Grazie!
• Andrew Tokeley – Andrew was one of the developers behind the Buttercup Reader, a completely accessible Silverlight application which is now Open Source.
• Koen Zwikstra (@kozw) – Have you heard of Silverlight Spy, the indispensible Silverlight debugging tool!?  Koen is the brain behind it.
• Qing Li is a new MVP in China that has been doing a great amount of work helping the community understand and learn Silverlight development.

Congratulations to all the new/renewed/moved Silverlight MVPs.  I look forward to seeing you at the MVP Summit soon!

I’ve never been so frustrated with a piece of software as I have been with iTunes lately.

NOTE: Yes, I work for Microsoft.  Yes I’m aware they make the Zune.  I’ve got years invested in hardware with iPods, and until someone makes an OEM integration kit as good as what I have, I can’t switch.  Truth be told, from a portable device player, I *do* think the Zune is better.  But let’s just leave that out of this argument for now.

In my home there are roughly 4 iPods floating around.  We have a library of over 5,000 songs both popular and not that are in our digital library.  That digital library is mostly MP3s, mixed with some iTunes purchased songs (although not since Amazon MP3 began).  That library sits on a shared drive on my Windows Home Server so it can be accessed through various streaming means (Home Server streams to iTunes software, XBOX, etc.).

Also in my home are roughly 6 computers ranging from desktop to laptops (mostly laptops).  These are used between my wife and myself (and one for the kids).

We all listen to music on our devices and via our machines.  We all want to listen to the same library, create our custom playlists and have them available everywhere.  We all want to be able to sync on whatever computer we want, but we’ll settle to be tied to one that you can pair with.

iTunes…sucks.

Yes, I’m looking at you iTunes.  I’m aware of the other options like Songbird, etc. but frankly I haven’t tried them out yet.  If you have and they will solve my woes, can you share your experiences?

Why does iTunes suck?  Easy…

• It assumes 1 user/1 computer – the “library” is a local and static library unless the user interacts with it.  What I mean by this is it does not have the ability to monitor folders (like pretty much every other software out there for media does).  I want to point my iTunes library to my server share and whenever I add music to it via other computers, that other ‘libraries’ will be aware of it and just add it to my local library.
• Portability sucks – try to transfer your iTunes library to another computer.  I dare you.  Navigate through all the Apple support suggestions and hacks online.  Frankly unless you are Mac to Mac migrating, it is not easy for a healthy configured library.
• Not informative – one of my biggest issues is that when I configure the library to be a mapped drive (let’s say M:), if M: is not available for some reason, iTunes decides on it’s own without telling me that it is going to switch the library back to the local volume/hard drive.  Any future action (i.e., iTunes purchasing, Amazon purchasing, etc.) now doesn’t save to my server library.  WTF?!  Can you at least tell me: Hey user, that location you set for your library, ‘M:’ is not available right now…what would you like us to do.  Stop moving it around for me.
• Home Sharing – what is this supposed to be again?  I thought this would save me.  I could have at least one place that would be the library and home share to other clients who could then use this feature to sync.  Um, nope.  This is basically the sharing they already had except with a new name.  Worthless.

I wish the iTunes team would put in their lab 3 iPods and 4 computers with 2 users and a library stored on the server.  Work toward making your software work in that environment as seamless as it does with 1 user and I’ll be happy.  Until then I have to navigate your changes and try my best to explain to my wife why the music we bough on the desktop is not on her laptop until she adds it to the library that is already mapped to the network share where the music already exists.  Yeah, that’s what I though.