Did you know that the Silverlight community site has over 150 Silverlight 2 Beta 2 samples submitted by the community?!  These range from short samples of specific functionality to full-fledged applications that people can use.  I recently spoke of 2 of the multi-file uploader controls that were features in the gallery.  There is a lot of good information being shared by our community.

WE NEED YOUR HELP – UPDATE YOUR SAMPLES!

Today I sent around a note to those who I could identify who had submissions in the gallery with some information pointing them to Silverlight RC0 information and how they can/should prepare their samples to be ready for Silverlight release.  We want to continue to feature your great samples, but need you to have them ready/runnable for Silverlight release.

If you have a sample in the gallery, please make sure that you visit the RC0 information, download the tools, and prepare your application/samples.  Once Silverlight 2 is released, please re-submit them to the gallery so that we can categorize them accordingly.  Older Beta 2 samples will be purged as they will not run once Silverlight 2 releases and we don’t want to aggravate new visitors to the gallery by having stuff that doesn’t work :-).

Here’s what you need to do:

• Read the RC0 information
• Download the tools
• Upgrade your sample/application and prepare it for release
• Don’t release it yet :-)
• When Silverlight 2 releases, submit your sample to the Silverlight.net gallery

Thanks again for contributing to the community.  If you know of others that have samples, please be sure to pass this information along.  Thanks for helping to spread the word!

One of the things I hear a lot about it wanting well-designed control templates/styles for developers to use in Silverlight (and WPF).  As someone with that missing creativity gene, I agree.  While we wait for some of these galleries to emerge (and designers to contribute), there is some hope for the rest of us today.

For WPF developers, there has been a commercial resource available (not free) in the templates provided by XAMLTemplates.net.  They provide various styles available for purchase for WPF templates and styles.

There also have been some emerging in the Silverlight.net community gallery (look for Dark Skin for Controls) as well (and I encourage anyone to post theirs to the gallery as well).  One recent one (prepped for Silverlight 2 release) is one of the UK’s user experience consultants, Dave Crawford.  Dave just propped up a blog on MSDN and his first post is his contribution to the Silverlight control template world: Dave’s Glossy Controls.  A preview of the included styles shows some subtle templates to provide a distinctive interface:

Dave released these under Ms-Pl as well and demonstrates in his blog post how easy it is to change some of the colors in his templates as well as how easy they are to use in Expression Blend.  Thanks for contributing Dave!

One of the things that I’ve wanted to do since Silverlight released was two things with text, enable a Stroke and layout text on a Path.  Both of which in Silverlight 2 aren’t readily available.  Luckily we have a great ecosystem of developers and MVPs who love to extend our frameworks and create new capabilities for developers.

Bill Reiss has done just that.  You may recognize Bill from some XNA and Silverlight gaming fame.  His game of Dr. Popper still remains my daughter’s favorite computer game!  Bill has created a new Silverlight user control he calls PathTextBlock control.  Bill describes the new control:

“The PathTextBlock control converts text to a Path which allows you to do a couple of things you can't normally do with text in Silverlight. First of all, instead of a Foreground brush, you have a Stroke and a Fill, which allows you to draw text with an outline. Secondly, the PathTextBlock supports Transform objects which can allow you to distort the text, draw it along a curve, or other transforms. You can easily create your own transforms as well.”

This basically allows you to have a normal TextBlock, but distort and outline it…here’s an example output:

Bill has also included a few transforms to play around with as well.  All of this is included in an Ms-Pl licensed component that is available on Codeplex.  Go check out Bill’s blog post for a link and description.

If you live in the WPF world, you may know the name of Karl Shifflett.  If you’ve heard the name, but just not have met the man…next time you’re at a developer conference, look for the guy in the Hawaiin shirt, shorts, some ink on the arms and is probably passionately talking to some other geeks about the innards of data binding in XAML.

Recently, Karl has joined Microsoft to work on the “Cider” team.  The Cider project is a key part of the developer story for WPF and Silveright.  It is the XAML designer/editor/etc for Visual Studio.  Some of you may know Karl from his work on his pet project, Mole.  Well, Karl is at it again.

He’s been working on another project called XAML Power Toys.  What is it?  In his own words:

“XAML Power Toys is a Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Multi-AppDomain Add-In that empowers WPF & Silverlight developers while working in the XAML editor.  Its Line of Business form generation tools, Grid tools,  DataGrid and ListView generation really shorten the XAML page layout time.”

The goal of this Visual Studio add-in for WPF and Silverlight is to enable developers to quickly layout and maintain business application forms using the UI controls that are a part of the XAML frameworks.  Here’s a list of the features:

• Create WPF or Silverlight DataGrid For Class - quickly create a WPF DataGrid complete with bindings that are easily associated with properties on the source class
• Create WPF ListView For Class - quickly create a ListView complete with bindings that are easily associated with properties on the source class
• Create Business Form For Class - quickly create a form complete with bindings that are easily associated with properties on the source class
• Create Business Form - quickly create a form complete with bindings if desired 
• Show Fields List For Class - display a list of class fields similar to Microsoft Access.  Allows dragging of fields to create controls
• Group Into - allows selecting one or more controls and group them inside a new parent control
• Chainsaw - Minimize Cider Designer XAML - allows selecting of one or more controls and will remove all MinWidth, MinHeight, x:Name, Name, Margin properties and will set all row and column definitions to Auto.
• Remove Margins - allows selecting one or more controls and removes the Margin property from them
• Edit Grid Column and Rows - allows selecting a grid and then add or remove rows and columns
• Set Defaults For Created Controls - allows customizing the initial properties that are set when the software creates a new control

Want to layout a quick form based on a business object, how’s this for a start to help define what the form should be:

After you click create, you just paste the results where you need the form/grid in your XAML and it’s done for you!

Karl has created 8 videos walking developers through the aspects of XAML Power Toys and strongly encourages every XAML Power Toys user to view the videos before you get started.

A *very* cool utility for WPF and Silverlight developers.  Please, please do view the videos that Karl has created…they are short and to the point and helpful to get you understanding some things!  Check out XAML Power Toys!

I don’t know why it has taken me so long to get to this realization.  Perhaps I’ve been more aware of my surroundings as I’ve gotten older.  I’ve always heard “write your congressman” with regard to political issues and people opposing them.

Turns out, writing them is not worth it.  Why?  Because the offices of our elected officials (in Arizona at least) are lame.  Allow me to provide an example.

In my latest post I ranted about how Arizona elected officials voted on the ‘bailout’ plan (that just happened to include new and extensions for bizarre tax credits that have nothing to do with the current economic crisis).  I wanted to contact all the elected officials who represent my state.  Turns out, none of them really know anything about technology.  Every “contact me” form was a web form from 1995.  Enter few bits of information and a plain text area to put in about a few sentences of text.  I sent them links to my letter just to see what happens…after all I took time to write it in a document :-).

I couldn’t contact any representative outside my district and I’m assuming that is some incredibly lame policy identified somewhere.  Needless to say, they don’t want to hear from a taxpayer/voter because I don’t currently reside in an area they represent.  I was able to fill out the 1995 form for my senators and expect nothing to come of it.  I also filled out the form for my district representative, Jeff Flake, who voted against the bailout plan with these ‘sweeteners’ added into the amendment.  His form was from 1995 as well…actually he didn’t even have one but punted me to the US House of Representative contact form, where, by the way you must know your ZIP+4 information.  Who the heck has their +4 memorized?  Sigh.

Anyhow, here was the reply I just received:

Thank you for contacting me.  All legislative inquiries to my office are responded to via the United States Postal Service.  (Nevertheless, please feel free to continue to use e-mail to send me your thoughts and ideas.)  You will receive a response to your question or concern as soon as possible.

WTF?  Seriously dude, I just sent you an email and you are going to respond in old school format?  And waste postage?  Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong.  Wake up Flake!  Challenge the status quo!

Maybe I’m naive here, but I thought they worked for us.  Their contact information for their email should be as readily available as my local mayor and town council.  What’s with the obfuscation?  I’m your constituent!

Man this is horrible and embarrassing.  I would say “write your congressman” to complain about such a practice but somehow I feel we’d be in some weird Bermuda communication triangle.