Month: January 2009

Randomness! Canvas properties

Posted on by ARSpaulding

As mentioned before, I’ve finally begun to go through Jeff Paries’ book on Silverlight 2, Animations, and I’m going through chapter 1.  In a nutshell, chapter 1 is a crash course on Blend 2, Codebehind, Silverlight and XAML.  The author at one point is describing the properties of a canvas and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the 1 property which to me stands out like a sore thumb.

As described in his chapter, Canvases can have properties  such as background, height, IsHitTestVisible, Left, Name, Opacity, Tag, Top, Visibility, and Width.

Most of them seem pretty standard, right?  But what about IsHitTestVisible? 

Seems a bit like an oddball.  Like having a basketball player standing among a group of japanese martial artists.

I'm not the engineer

Posted on by ARSpaulding

Its been about 2 weeks since I completed Victor Gaudioso’s book on Blend 2 and just after I wrote the review on his book, I blogged that next on the order of business was to start going through the newly released book by Jeff Paries, Silverlight 2 Animation – and then I ran into computer troubles.

If you’re actually interested in reading me blogging while pulling my hair out, by all means, look through the archives.  I think I blogged about it enough.

This blog posting is to say that finally, I’m able to begin going through this book by Jeff Paries (YAY!).

Before even getting to numbered pages, I’m reading the “Who this book is for” and am wondering.  He mentions that this book is intended for web developers – developers being the key word here.  As much as I enjoy getting my hands dirty in code, I wouldn’t really consider myself to be a developer.  I can comprehend code, I can tinker around with things or make things work, but to me, a developer is a whole lot… I don’t know.  I just don’t consider myself to be a developer.  I’m the half-and-half.  I do some cool, clean and shiny looking design work and tie it together with things that have already been created, and tinker until it works the way I want it to.  So where there are 3 parts, the pretty picture, the engine behind it, and the pieces that make the pretty picture interact with the engine … I am the one that usually is creating the pretty picture and putting in place the stuff that makes that pretty picture talk w/ the engine.  I’m not the engineer.

So hopefuly, I won’t get completely lost while going through this book.

We shall see.

Hitting every bump in the road

Posted on by ARSpaulding

Last week’s SeattleD2ig meeting I became the proud new owner of a shiny new box filled with Expression goodness – the MS Expression Studio is MINE!

Uninstall my previews, verify that I did in fact install .net 3.5 SP1 as remembered, and then install the new shiny MS Expression Blend w/ key and all.

OOoohh… but its Blend 2.0.  Can’t do Silverlight.  Shoot.

So I download the Service Pack for Blend 2, and commense installation to see this lovely gem after accepting the TOS:

Windows Installer returned error code 1605
Windows Installer returned error code 1605

I’ll post if/when I discover how to get past this issue. I’m beginning to feel that if there are any bumps to be experienced on a roadway where it comes to working with Blend or anything related, I’m bound to find them.

Ugh.

 

Update: I discovered the cause of my issue.  The version which is in the MS Expression Studio was Expression Blend v. 1   Not Blend 2.

Uninstalling the version from the box, installed one from the MSDN website and applied the key from the box then tried to run the SP1 installation update: Lovely lovely installation success.

Up arrow = kiddy corner to the right?!

Posted on by ARSpaulding

I’m working on a project and am creating a few custom paths but am having some really strange behavior occur with blend that I am just not able to explain.

I’m direct clicking upon a node on a path and am wanting to modify the exact location of it by clicking the up arrow.

Well, no matter which directly I click my arrow, its making the ENTIRE OBJECT scoot up and to the right like its floating in a diagonal path.

What the heck?!

Windows 7 on a Mac with Parallels 4

Posted on by ARSpaulding

About 2 weeks ago, I made the mistake of installing the SP1 update to blend – but the incorrect one.  I had a full release version of Blend 2, but the Service Pack which I’d downloaded was for the preview.

The installer was angry, wouldn’t uninstall, wouldn’t repair – wouldn’t load.  I’d get the beginning of the pretty window and then a windows crashed alert, do you want to let Microsoft know why this program crashed?

Launching Blend resulted in the beautiful message related to it expiring… ugh.

Well this happened the day after my preview version which was installed on my PC had expired!  Suffice it to say, I was cut off from my fun almost all at once.  I decided to concentrate on the PC, and come back to the Macbook later.

Well now is later and I decided to be adventurous and install Windows 7 on the macbook with a shiny new Parallels 4 virtual drive.

So far so good, we’re in the middle of the installation.  I’ll blog if I run into problems or … well.

I’ll blog.

Oh, and by the way, if you were interested in trying out Windows 7, its downloadable for free as a Beta version here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

XamlFest – 2 day training

Posted on by ARSpaulding

The most recent group meeting with the Seattle Developer / Designer Interaction group was great – I think one of the most fun that we’ve had so far.

One of those attending was development Evangelist, Mithun Dhar, who mentioned to us the 2 upcoming XamlFest training events occuring next month.

I can’t help myself – 2 days of uninturupted training and colaboration with others who are interested in development and design working in WPF and Silverlight?

My email has been sent in to RSVP a spot – especially w/ mention that there are only 50 seats available!

Ok, so if you’re visiting and interested as well, here are a few links with information:

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/01/22/designers-developers-ramp-up-with-februrary-xamlfest-events-across-the-usa.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/MithunD/

The skinny that you’ll find there is this:

Redmond & Portland both are hosts to XamlFest in the Pacific Northwest.  There are other areas that have these events as well, but I’m just going to talk about the 2 which are close to my home.  The Redmond, Washington one is the 16th and 17th (Monday and Tuesday) of February, and Portland, Oregon one is on the 19th and the 20th (Thursday and Friday).

If you wish to join, RSVP asap – seating is limited and I mean quite limited. 

The email addresses are fairly obvious which is for which, so I’m going to just list them both below:

xamlfest-redmond@live.com

xamlfest-portland@live.com

All who attend will obtain a copy of Expression Studio and Visual Studio 2008 Pro.