Download LINQ.psm1 I’m gonna start off by saying the module I’m posting about does not follow the PowerShell naming guidelines. In fact, not only does it use non-standard verb names, but the "verb" part of all the function names aren’t even verbs. I hate breaking the rules like this but the Verb-Noun naming couldn’t really [...]
Archives for February 2010
Path.Combine in .NET 4
I recently blogged about a new method I noticed in .NET 4 on the Enum class. One of the great things about .NET 4 is that it is a new version of base class library too. In .NET 3.0 and 3.5 as we all know, the CLR and BCL was left at version 2.0 which [...]
Hate VS2010 help? Get H3Viewer!
Update: There was a bug in H3Viewer at the time I posted this that showed an empty TOC and Index on x64 versions of Windows. Rob Chandler just informed me the current build (1.0.0.20) fixes this and I have confirmed it now works fine on x64! Apparently in between Beta 2 and RC Microsoft may [...]
FullScreenBehavior makes full-screen apps in WPF easy
Download FullScreenDemo Project So now I’m working on an application that will be used at a trade show in a booth. Customers will come up to the application and type in the area code and exchange of their phone number and the application will tell them whether or not they can move their phone number [...]
Enum.HasFlag in .NET 4
Shh… hear that? It’s the sound of a million developers ripping out their home-grown HasFlag, IsFlagSet, CheckFlag, etc helper methods. Just noticed that in .NET 4 System.Enum now has a built-in HasFlag method. As Forrest Gump would say “Lt. Dan says we don’t have to worry about enum flags no more. That’s good. One less [...]
Unit tests are no substitute for manual tests by end users
I like unit testing. I’m not a hard liner so I don’t take it too seriously. I don’t necessarily fully subscribe to the test-first approach in all cases and I think aiming for 100% code coverage is rarely practical. But I do like unit tests. They give my a certain peace of mind and set [...]
Useful PowerShell Function: Use-Location
It’s a simple one, but useful. And it can clean up some of your ugly scripts that have a lot of redundant paths embedded in strings. # Reduced for the sake of the example # The full advanced function is included at the end. function Use-Location($Path, $Body) { Push-Location $Path try { &$Body } finally [...]
Silverlight: Animated "Turbo Tax" style number display
If you’ve used Turbo Tax, you may have noticed the prominent “Federal Refund” box that’s ever-present at the top of the page while you’re figuring out your taxes. I like this UI concept because when most people are filing their taxes, there’s only one number they actually care about and they care about it every step of the way.
One nice little touch about the display is that whenever you make changes to your return that affect the federal refund, instead of the field just changing immediately, it has a nice incrementing (or decrementing if you’re like me) animation. It is a subtle effect that draws your attention to the field whenever it changes. Try the working example below.
Recently I worked on a line of business application that would benefit from a similar UI. The application is for pricing out sales proposals and takes into account cost of goods, retail price, agent commission, etc. At every step of the way, slight changes to the various inputs affect the bottom line which is the profitability of the deal. So the profitability is always displayed on the screen. When the value changes, I wanted to have this smooth animation between numbers just like Turbo Tax. Turns out it isn’t that hard.
Google begins phasing out support for legacy versions of Internet Explorer
And hopefully many more will follow suit. SharePoint 2010 also does not support IE6. Hopefully this will hasten it’s demise. Dear Google Apps admin, In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript [...]
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