Αύγουστος 2012 - Δημοσιεύσεις

HowTo: Scale control arround its center using a render transform
15 Αυγούστου 12 07:02 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

In the context of ClipFlair development, I was recently adding independent scaling (zooming) functionality to its ZUI container’s floating windows (apart from the container zooming functionality) and came across some strange behavior, where the windows seemed to also move apart from getting scaled. After banging my head a bit I decided to take a closer [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: .NET, Transforms, UI, Posts, WPF, Silverlight, ClipFlair, ZUI, HowTo, Scaling

HowTo: Type in double-quote in Windows Live Writer
14 Αυγούστου 12 10:08 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

A big nuissance in Windows Live Writer is that when you try to type in a double-quote character you get some special Unicode character (“ or ”, at the start and end of a string respectively), other than the classic ASCII character used in programming. That way people copy-pasting snippets from your blog can get [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: Text, Blogs, Posts, Programming, HowTo, Editor, Windows Live Writer

HowTo: Bind to a DataContext property named Source in XAML
14 Αυγούστου 12 03:27 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

While refactoring ClipFlair code to use MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern, I came across the XAML error “Object reference not set to an instance of an object.”, shown in Visual Studio when trying to bind to my ViewModel (accessed implicitly, being set as the DataContext of the XAML control) for a property named Source. I have settled [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: .NET, Posts, WPF, Silverlight, XAML, ClipFlair, HowTo, Image, Properties, MVVM, Binding, Source

Single statement ScaleTransform initialization in both WPF and SL
11 Αυγούστου 12 06:32 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

With Silverlight using a cut-down .NET API, some decisions have been at least ackward, causing Silverlight code to be sometimes unnecesserily more complex than its WPF counterpart and WPF code needing several changes to get ported for Silverlight. In ClipFlair I’ve implemented a WPFCompatibility layer to ease compiling WPF code for Silverlight (and vice-versa too) [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: Posts, Compatibility, WPF, Silverlight, ClipFlair, Extensions, Constructors, ScaleTransform

Gotcha: Silverlight DependencyProperty metadata: 0d not 0 for double
09 Αυγούστου 12 11:38 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

Just came accross a runtime error message that troubled me a bit to resolve while adding Prezi-like content scaling functionality in ClipFlair‘s FloatingWindowHostZUI (ZUI = Zoomable User Interface) container. I had added the following: /// Identifies the <see cref="FloatingWindow.Scale" /> dependency property. /// </summary> /// <value> /// The identifier for the <see cref="FloatingWindow.Scale" /> dependency [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: .NET, Posts, WPF, Silverlight, XAML, ClipFlair, ZUI, Gotcha, Runtime, DependencyProperty, XAMLParseException, PropertyMetadata

HowTo: Compress speech audio using CSpeex codec at Silverlight apps
04 Αυγούστου 12 07:15 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

Following up on my post on how to fix CSpeex (http://cspeex.codeplex.com) to compile at Silverlight 5 (see http://zoomicon.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/fix-compile-cspeex-audio-codec-at-silverlight-4-rc-and-silverlight-5/).  Initially I thought it was not working correctly, but then I noticed I was running it on Terminal Server and didn’t have an audio device available. Running SLAudioDemo included in the CSpeex distribution (after doing the fix [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: .NET, Posts, Silverlight, ClipFlair, Codec, Speex, Audio, HowTo, Compression

Vertical Centering with CSS
03 Αυγούστου 12 04:50 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

According to http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/center.en.html#vertical CSS level 2 doesn’t have a property for centering things vertically. There will probably be one in CSS level 3. But even in CSS2 you can center blocks vertically, by combining a few properties. The trick is to specify that the outer block is to be formatted as a table cell, because [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: Posts, ClipFlair, HowTo, Links, Layout, Vertical, CSS, Centering

ASP.net WebPartZone skins and CSS
03 Αυγούστου 12 03:59 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

I was just examining a MonoX portal skin that our designer is authoring for the ClipFlair platform and noticed that in the Default.skin file, there’s a note pointing to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911717 that speaks of an issue with Microsoft’s implementation of WebPartZone skins: There it says: The CssClass property does not affect the following style objects: •The [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: Posts, ClipFlair, Styles, CSS, WebPartZone, Skins, ASP.net, WebPart

HowTo: Remove Babylon search from Mozilla Firefox address bar
03 Αυγούστου 12 03:07 μμ | Μπιρμπίλης Γεώργιος | 0 σχόλια   

Babylon Search is one of the most abusive addons for Mozilla Firefox and other web browsers. It installs with other free software (most probably profiting from tracking your searching habits) and then it is quite hard even for experienced users to completely uninstall it. While maintaining other computers in the past I’ve used a combination [...]

Δημοσίευση στην κατηγορία: Security, Posts, Search, Fix, HowTo, Privacy, Addon, Babylon