In the early days of Silverlight 2, one of the included controls was the WatermarkedTextBox.  In Beta 2 the control was removed from the runtime for among other things, WPF compatibility.  The control source code was made available for people to look at as it was referenced in a few projects, namely ScottGu’s Digg sample application.  There was hinting about future plans but nothing concrete. 

Now that Silverlight 2 is released, the control is not there :-).  I’ve gotten enough requests about it that I wanted to provide some action for you.  First, let me say that there are no concrete plans for WatermarkedTextBox at this time that I have to share.  I’m not saying there isn’t plans, but just that none at a point to make any worthwhile announcements.  Perhaps something like this would show up in the Silverlight Toolkit, but at this time no plans have been defined.

Again, as I’ve received enough requests, I’ve modified the source code for WatermarkedTextBox for Silverlight 2 release and am making it available for you to consume.  The code has been updated for use in Silverlight 2 and also updated to reflect the default styling of the released controls (namely to match TextBox).

If you aren’t familiar with the concept, it’s basically a TextBox with a value you can set for some helper text if the value is not set.  Typically you use this when you want to provide “prompt” text for some input, as an example here:

As you can see the TextBox provides a '”faded” default text that isn’t the TextBox.Text property of the control, but rather the Watermark property of this control.  Once data is entered in the control, the watermark goes away.  As long as data is input the watermark isn’t displayed…if the value is empty, the watermark displays.  Simple enough.

The XAML for the above looks like this:

   1: <UserControl x:Class="WatermarkTester.Page"

   2:     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" 

   3:     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

   4:     xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=Microsoft.Windows.Controls.WatermarkedTextBox"

   5:     Height="300" Width="600" xmlns:vsm="clr-namespace:System.Windows;assembly=System.Windows">

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

   7:         <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">

   8:             <Grid Margin="15">

   9:                 <Grid.RowDefinitions>

  10:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />

  11:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />

  12:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />

  13:                     <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />

  14:                 </Grid.RowDefinitions>

  15:                 <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

  16:                     <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />

  17:                     <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />

  18:                 </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

  19:                 <TextBlock Text="First Name:" Margin="5" Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" />

  20:                 <local:WatermarkedTextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0" Watermark="Enter your first name here..."/>

  21:                 <TextBlock Text="Last Name:" Margin="5" Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="1" />

  22:                 <local:WatermarkedTextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="1" Watermark="Enter your last name here..." />

  23:                 <TextBlock Text="Phone Number:" Margin="5" Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="2" />

  24:                 <local:WatermarkedTextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="2" Watermark="(xxx) xxx-xxxx" />

  25:             </Grid>

  26:         </StackPanel>

  27:     </Grid>

  28: </UserControl>

Note the xmlns:local declaration in the user control which references the binary.

The control is also Blend compatible if you want to change the style/control template so if you wanted to change the Watermark color or something like that you could easily do that with Blend:

So if you’ve been looking for this control, here you go.  You can download the bits here:

• Source: WatermarkedTextBox-Source.zip
• Binary only: WatermarkedTextBox-Binary.zip

The source is available as Ms-Pl.  Hope this helps!

Last week I had the pleasure of talking with the crew from the Herding Code podcast.  Among the questions was one about the open source community and Silverlight.  There was mention about MVCContrib and how that community sprouted almost instantly with the ASP.NET MVC initial releases.  I let the Herding Code crew know that I believe there already is a vibrant open source community around Silverlight and pointed to things like DevExpress’ AgDataGrid control which is free and provides source.  I also mentioned a project that did start right away around Silverlight 2 initial releases: SilverlightContrib.  The project, started by Page Brooks, had a good start and keeps on rolling now as they just released a set of free open source Silverlight controls!

The team of Page Brooks, Rob Houweling, Koen Zwikstra, and Shawn Wildermuth have just released “Alpha 2” of the project which includes:

• Color Picker
• Gauge Control
• Star Selector
• Enhanced Metafile (EMF)
• Cool Menu
• Libraries: Zip, Byte utilities, String utilities, Simple text parser, Animation Tweening, Wheel Mouse listener

While the project code is hosted at Codeplex, the team also has a blog at SilverlightContrib.org which has a Live Demo page that will show you demonstrations about the controls:

Color Picker:

Cool Menu (OSX style):

Gauge samples:

The code is available with the Ms-Pl license which is very permissive, so go and grab these controls…and better yet…contribute back to the project!!!  There are more than just controls there as I mentioned there are libraries as well – check out the Live Demo for examples.  I haven’t checked to see their compatibility with the Blend designer, but that is something you can tweak with yourself as needed.

Congratulations to Page and the team for a great community resource and a great release.  I look forward to more great things!

With the release of Silverlight 2 many people faced the task of ensuring their applications/code written targeting Beta 2 was upgraded to release.  The team at the Silverlight community site was no different.  We’ve updated almost all the content so far, but I wanted to draw your attention to a few things.

Get Started – http://silverlight.net/GetStarted

As noted on this page for those getting started, there are links to Scott Guthrie’s 8 part example of building a Digg client in Silverlight (and then using that code for a WPF desktop application).  Scott has updated his code, so that if you download the code it will be Silverlight 2 release code.  The articles themselves, however, still contain some screenshots that if you are explicitly following along might have you scratching your head.  One example is the use of the WatermarkTextBox in the screenshots and may be wondering what happened to that.  Since that control is not a part of Silverlight 2 core controls (primarily because of WPF compatibility), it isn’t in Scott’s final download.  The code still works of course so rest assured it was updated.  (Note: if you want to look at the WatermarkTextBox code it is available here.)

Learning Resources – http://silverlight.net/Learn

We’ve updated all the code downloads to contain Silverlight 2 release code updates.  One important thing to note here is that the videos don’t get a refresh.  Over time this may change as we will add more media to enhance the resources, but there’s no search/replace in video yet to make that task a simple one and the team wants to concentrate on creating new content rather than spin cycles on minor updates.  One example of where there may be some differences in the information would be in the services video.  While the concepts still apply, the notes about ensuring the configuration are correct, updating web.config, etc. are bypassed if you use the Silverlight-enabled WCF Service template in Visual Studio when creating your WCF service.  It does all that work for you (web.config, binding information, etc.).  Of course the information isn’t negated at all, for if you chose the WCF Service template (which you still can), then the steps are still valid.  The end result for both is the same however in execution (that being you end up with a WCF service that Silverlight can consume).

We fully expect there may be some of these minor differences in the video and code, but wanted to make sure that when you download the code (in C# or Visual Basic) that you are able to run it.  Should we have made a mistake, missed one, whatever, please leave a note on the comments for that video and we will rectify it immediately.

Tutorials - http://silverlight.net/learn/tutorials.aspx

Jesse has also gone through the work to update the tutorials, which are more in-depth walk-throughs, for release code as well.  There are currently 7 of them there, and will have more coming.  Because these have accompanying article (written) content, both the code and the actual tutorial itself have been updated so they should be parity with the content and code.

Hands-on Labs - http://silverlight.net/learn/labs.aspx

Okay, an admission on my part here.  In my haste, this one slipped through the cracks.  While no code is provided for 3 of the labs (they are more self-led), the Margie’s Travel site does have code.  I’m in the process now of getting these updated.  The updates should all be minor and if you download these please understand that it should be simple for you to update.  Most of the time the step involves opening the project (using the new tools), re-referencing the System.Web.Silverlight.dll assembly (as most use the asp:Silverlight control), and recompiling the application.  Not having them in release code already is an inconvenience, but doesn’t diminish the lab themselves.  If you have questions before they get updated, please let me know and I’m happy to help.

Community Gallery - http://silverlight.net/community/communitygallery.aspx

As I previously noted for gallery sample owners, the community gallery would be purged of Beta 2 samples simply because they won’t work “as-is” with the release runtime.  For now we’ve kept a category up there for old Beta 2 samples but it will not be permanent.  A lot of people have already updated and/or submitted new gallery samples for the site.  If you have a sample you’d like to submit, please feel free to contribute.

It’s our goal to ensure that the Silverlight community site is your first stop for resources.  We’re aggregating a lot of information there and a log of community blogs so I’d encourage you to visit and subscribe.

One thing that I’m just as guilty as probably most of some of my peers is creating US-centric applications.  Forgetting to think globally for your users is something that I think happens too often.  We operate in our US-centric worlds and forget that sometimes even the simplest things can make a difference.

Take for instance, honoring your user’s culture settings (region/locale/whatever you want to call it).  Even if you have a US-based application for a US-company, how do you know that a user might not be of French origin and still perhaps like to view their operating system information in French settings, so they change their culture.

Luckily in some areas this is simple to do, and for Silverlight applications you can let the platform do some of the work for you.  I’ll take a simple example of currency settings.  A colleague of mine was asking about currency formatting in his Silverlight application with regard to data binding.  He sent me a note asking why his formatter didn’t work.  He asked me why:

   1: ConverterParameter={0:$##.00}

As it turns out, it was just something missing in his implementing of a custom converter in his application.  But I let him know that he should really use {0:c} and let the platform do the work.  Let’s look at a simple example of an employee and their salary.  If we data bind this information to a DataGrid using the above formatter here is what we might get:

Makes sense right, looks fine.  Now let’s change the regional settings on my machine to French (France):

Hmm…what happened here.  Well the problem is we forced the format.  Let’s change the format parameter to {0:c} and keep French as our settings and see:

Ah, now that makes sense.  You see we can let our platform do the work and Silverlight is aware of how to use culture settings to honor currency, dates, etc. – here’s the default Calendar with French settings:

Now ideally in our sample with salaries above a literal visual translation probably isn’t accurate (by that I mean USD $1 is not the same as 1 Euro right now in translation.  We could add some custom logic though and get this output based on culture settings:

So be mindful of your applications and look for ways you can reliably and meaningfully add value to your global end users.  Don’t force a format unless you absolutely have to.

A while back I wrote to my elected officials about the passing of H.R. 1424.  I tried to be able to write to my elected officials electronically.  I submitted an electronic message to my congressman and got a reply that I’d be sent a US postal mail response, which made me shake my head.

At any rate, I’ve only got 1 response, and not from my congressman…but from one of my Senators, Jon Kyl.  Since he sent it to me via snail mail, I had to find a letter opener, figure out how to hold a piece of paper again, and scour a scanner to even report back to you here on the response.  Here it is in full:

I still call BS on some of the things.  Regardless of the explanations, it still rubs me the wrong way that these previous bills were tacked on to something called a stabilization act.  Anyway, there you go.