[∞] Amazedsaint's Tech Journal

Visual Studio 2010 is super cool. Here are few features I love most in VS 2010.
Tip 1 - Generating Sequence Diagrams To Inspect And Document control flowAnother cool feature in Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to generate Sequence diagrams. You may right click inside a method and select “Generate the sequence diagram”  from the pop up menu, to generate the diagram. In this example, you may see that my SubmitOrder method in OrderViewModel class is instantiating an OrderServiceClient, to call AddOrderAsync method inside the same.

Tip 2 - Architecture ExplorerA cool addition in VS2010 is the Architecture Explorer (Click View->Architecture Explorer). The Architecture Explorer will provide you a very friendly interface to browse through and navigate to your solution assets. You can right click on an item (Namespace, Class Name, or Class Member etc) and select ‘View Content’ to navigate to the definition as well.

Also, you can export the selected items to a graph document from the Architec…

Here is a quick Windows Phone 7 client for Nerd Dinner. You can query the Nerd Dinner oData endpoint and see the dinners in the Bing maps as push pins. Also, you can select a Push Pin to view the related details of the dinner. Source code is available hereIt is a spin off of my actual Silverlight + oData + Bing Maps Client for Nerd DinnerIt was a quick 1-2 hour work. Myself and Shoban was discussing this for some time, and today we spend some time together in Tech Ed India 2010 – and did a quick port - at least partially to Windows Phone 7. Key Changes from Silverlight VersionAs you can’t add an oData service reference directly in VS 2010 Express for Windows Phone, we created an oData endpoint for Scott’s nerd dinner website (http://www.nerddinner.com) manually using the DataSvcUtil.exe from the command line, and added to the Phone project. I’ve taken away the MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) implementation (Yes, I know, Glenn block have a custom port of MEF to Windows Phone 7, b…

Guys, I’m talking at the Great Indian Developer Summit, April 20-23 2010; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. With over 6500 attendees benefiting over two game changing editions, GIDS is the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms,languages, software and standards.My session will be : Hands on MVVM for WPF and Silverlight, April 20th. In this session, we’ll be exploring everything you need to know about creating useful, feature rich applications using WPF and Silverlight, leveraging the power of MVVM. My presentation will also cover binding concepts, Commanding, Behaviors (Triggers, Actions), User Controls etc. Click here for detailsThe GIDS guys have created a nice poster (that you see on right) for my session. Cool :) Alright, so see you there!!

I was thinking about creating a Blog digest, by picking few nice articles from this Blog. I finally did that over the weekend.Silverlight:Creating a Silverlight Client for @shanselman ’s Nerd Dinner, using oData and Bing MapsBehaviors, Triggers and Actions in Silverlight And WPF Made Simple – Part I – BehaviorsBehaviors, Triggers and Actions in Silverlight And WPF Made Simple – Part 2 – TriggersSilverdraw: A collaboration board using SIlverlight + WCF - Source Code & Intro ArticleSilverlight : Listening to Dependency Property Change notification of a given ElementJSON Serialization and De-serialization In Silverlight - Few Handy Extension MethodsSilverlight in Windows Phone 7 and beyond - Why Silverlight is going to be ‘THE’ development platformA Silverlight helper class to get/set Dependency property values of other objectsIntroducing Slex Framework For Silverlight Preview – Conditionally invoking Triggers & Actions, Decoupled Triggers, etc.Key Take Aways and Links from #Mix1…

After reading Scott’s post on creating an oData API for StackOverflow, I got inspired and was planning to book a long flight ticket to do some work with oData. Finally, over the weekend, I’ve decided to stay at home and create a quick browser in Silverlight for Nerd Dinner ;). Final app - http://amazedsaint.net/nerddinnerSource Code - http://amazedsaint.net/nerddinner/silverlightnerddinner.zipWhat we’ll be doing?The Silverlight read only client can pull Dinners and RSVPs from Nerd Dinner website over the oData endpoint, and show them via the Bing maps control for Silverlight. I ended up putting the whole pieces together in less than two hours. You may also click a pushpin to view the dinner details. Wow, that was super easy. Have a look at the final app before we start, or see this video.Now, let us have a look at how to build the above app. Download the source and keep it handy. Of course,you may do a lot of other exciting things as well – Creating a Windows Phone 7 client version of…

This post is a thank you note to Microsoft for awarding me the MVP status.For the past few years, I’ve shifted my focus a bit more to client side technologies, like Silverlight and WPF. After joining Kerala Microsoft Users Group (k-mug.org) few years back, I used to give sessions via UG meetings, Microsoft Virtual Tech days etc. Today, I’m honored to be recognized as a Microsoft MVP for Client Application Development. Thank you Microsoft. It is really good to be a part of the MVP community. First of all, you get access to a lot of great guys out there. Secondly, it is a great way to get early product releases and a lot of good content, insights and inspiration from Microsoft. Looking back, it is (hopefully) interesting to see the kind of pots I’ve published in the last couple of months. Hence, I thought about creating a quick “.NET Journal Digest” – so that you can have a look at them in one place. This digest covers some of my hand picked Silverlight and WPF posts, along with few art…