Silverlight

After a few months of experimenting with programming for Windows Phone 7, but without really publishing the application, I decided to try to launch an application that would be published: Sports MTL. An application that allows you to know the status of various recreational/sports venues such as ice rinks, slides, and cross-country ski trails.

This application is available in French and English, in trial or paid version. If you have any suggestions or comments about this application, please visit the UserVoice site for Sports MTL.

For some time now, Microsoft use the UserVoice platform for gathering feedbacks from some of their products, which mostly target developers. UserVoice is really good for that task and its looks even better than Connect for feedback, which is still use for bugs and technical issues. But I don’t they are any list detailing theses site. So here’s my short list, and if you found one, let me know!

• ASP.Net
• Expression Encoder
• Expression Super Preview
• Expression Web
• Microsoft Advertising
• Silverlight
• Visual Studio
• WCF RIA Services (Thanks Colin!)
• Windows Phone (Users)
• Windows Phone (Developers) and the WP7 application for this site
• Windows Phone Interoperability

Microsoft has launched the Windows PowerShell Command Builder for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products and Microsoft Office 365 allowing you to create PowerShell commands graphically and more easily than if you had to type them yourself.

It is a simple Silverlight application but it allows you to make queries (SharePoint Server 2010, Foundation 2010, and Office 365) that can be more complex:

The documentation is here!

Happy PowerShell

When using Silverlight to develop web parts for SharePoint 2010, you might use the Silverlight Client Object Model to access SharePoint data. But what happens if you try to move out of the Silverlight web part and, for example, put Silverlight in a SharePoint dialog box? Answer: Unhandled Error in Silverlight Application Object reference not set to an instance of an object at ClientContext.Current.

The problem arises because the Silverlight web part injects the SharePoint context into the HTML object parameter for the proper functioning of the Client Object Model. Therefore, you need to inject the SharePoint site URLs where the Silverlight is currently displayed into the initParams (MS.SP.url):

Microsoft has just unveiled LightSwitch, a tool for developing business applications without having to touch the code. Jason Zander provides an excellent introduction on his site.

There will be a template for C# and VB. At first glance, the generated application seems to run on WPF for the Desktop version, and probably Silverlight or XBAP for the web version.

The beta will be available on August 23rd.

Stay tuned

For some time now, I have been experimenting with Silverlight and PRISM. If you are curious like me, here are some links to help you get started:

• The source code on Codeplex
• To evaluate the Composite Application Guidance
• The development activities, a more visual representation of all available modules/functions. In fact, it is a large list of well-explained How-To’s.
• Enterprise Library on Codeplex
• And most importantly: download the Composite Application Guidance, Project Linker, and sources.

Good luck, and if you have other links, feel free to leave a comment!