Since the beginning of my career I have thought of design as a very important skill to have, at least a bit, regarding fundamentals of design, color theory, and most important, user interface design, that fits well with “pure design” and usability & all the related knowledge… with this “base” skillset you can be creative and evolve a creativity process for whatever you want to.

Also I have always loved to create things and this is not limited to software architecture and I love to design & conceive things, it’s a pretty satisfying process.

It happens that Nokia Spain is organizing a contest for creating a design inspired by the colors of the new Nokia Lumia 800 mobile smartphone which is not limited in any aspect. You can read (in Spanish) about this contest here: http://eldadodelarte.blogspot.com/2012/01/demuestra-tu-creatividad-en.html?spref=tw and here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=349720035043739#16064

So… we can do whatever we want! Yay!

Guess what!? I decided to participate and I started some days ago to let my mind wander around for a cool idea!!

To say that I am a proud Windows Phone Geek and I can tell I was there when Windows Phone was presented 1st time at the World Mobile Congress and also I was also at the presentation of Mango… so I have the Tiles & METRO design language very close to my heart… and with this idea I started thinking of a design that I could wear close to my heart and that revived the Nokia Lumia 800 colors – everything all together!!!

After giving a lot of thought and lots of designs in paper I come to a “Tile scenario” over black that went well with the Nokia Lumia 800 design & showcased its colors properly, and went alltogether with the METRO feeling. It has been designed to wear it close to the heart – you will see why in short – and clearly showcase the love I have for this outstanding device the Nokia Lumia 800 is and its operating system, Windows Phone.
After a lot of designs, tests, playing with tiles, symbols, I came to this:

To mention that I tried to create the tiles using a plastic material on my own buying vinyl plastic tiles of 5cm x 5cm but I failed terribly, tried other materials and well, they did not look good as they reflected too much light (or none at all) so I decided, after trying paperboard & vinyl, to go and order 5×5 tiles at Zazzle.es.
They arrived me the last day of the contest and the quality was good, without flash I have been able to have a clear picture of the creation, which was attached to the sweatshirt through pins – in fact each Tile is a pin.
There is a lot of message in the tiles which are designed to be placed over the heart, meaning clearly “I love Nokia & Windows Phone”.

Additionally I envisioned another design were this design would be well placed and also close to our heart, warm and close to our right hand (or the hand that we most use) and did this other variation of the tiles design:

Obviously, these logos are trademarked and exclusively created for the purpose of this design contest so please do not use them outside of the contest. For this I have created alternative versions without the logos & trade marks that make them unusable outside the scope of the contest.

Hope you like them!!

Great news ahead, we (Silverlight MVP’s & insiders program members) just have been allowed to talk about one of the most exciting capabilities of Silverlight 5: PivotViewer… if you don’t know what it is, basically I’d define it as:

“An awesome way to efficiently present information & enable incredible interaction with this information, allowing an incredible understanding of the information due to its graphical representation. Also its nature allows to present “gazillions” of data in a very performant way“

Oh, did I mention that it is also very fun to reorganize & play with the information? it’s just basically amazing…. keep tuned to this blog for more good later on this weekend but by now I leave you these links:

http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/pivotviewer/

http://www.silverlight.net/learn/pivotviewer/

http://netflixpivot.cloudapp.net/

http://www.hitched.co.uk/wedding-venues/visual-search.htm

Amazing, right?

Also, on the not so 3D side, we have interesting advancements on the 2D with the new DrawingSurface. There we don’t have XNA’s SpriteBatch but Bill Reiss is actively working on that, as you can read here: http://blogs.silverarcade.com/silverlight-games-101/13/silverlight-silverlight-5-takes-2d-silverlight-game-development-to-the-next-level/
Apart from that we have some already mentioned capabilities – if you remember past 2th of December, the Silverlight Firestarter? – And some other brand new.
We have improved tooling which is called XAML debugging but I’d like to remember as XAML databinding debugging, on the Media aspect we have low latency sound where we can use XNA class “SoundEffect” directly and also “TrickPlay” that enables to change the playback speed with audio pitch correction so we are not hearing the “smurfs” when going quick..
Layout of text has been improved, DataBinding has been feeded with Steroids and, apart from the debugging capability, we have implicit DataTemplates for a concrete type over all our application, custom MarkupExtensions and more… Additionally, we have multi window support, more trust for our applications so they now can access whatever we allow them to (with appropriate permission of course).
Apart from this, you can expect an incredible increase in performance on startup & render, we can now do vector printing, 64bit plugin support, COM interop for in-browser applications, P/Invoke and, oh, an improved pivot viewer control already included on the Silverlight 5 SDK.
You can read more at Tim Heuer’s fabulous post here http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2011/04/13/whats-new-in-silverlight-5-a-guide.aspx or go straight and download the bits http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-5-beta/ where you have also at your fingertips and for free awesome training video material from Pete Brown.

Well, have fun!

I just became a Silverlight MVP so… I feel great!

This video relates how I do feel… very clearly

Thanks Microsoft for these MVP years. A billion more thanks for this Silverlight MVP.

And yes, like in the video, I setup my company after this. Well I was already on that so it just was “the right moment”.

If you are interested, go and say “hi” to Brainsiders, http://www.brainsiders.com, it’s focused on User Interfaces, User eXperience, usability, design, training, mentoring and architecting & developing / co-developing rich applications for Web, Desktop and Mobile & other devices.
We are also doing pretty interesting business applications for a big spanish company and also some interesting web application that will leverage Silverlight capabilities and provide incredible usability to a key provider in the industry over its competitors (not yet finished but it will be in one month and a half or less).

What better thanks than to dedicate your business life to the technology you love?

Silverlight power!!

This has become a reality this week and I have so many people to thank that I don’t know where to start… I guess I can start with my friends at the INETA Board, great hard working people, Starting with Damir Tomicic, Tomislav Bronzin, Sander Gerz, Dobrisa Adamec, Miguel Lopez, Christian Nagel, André Obelink, All.

Also many thanks to those that believed and proposed (and allowed) me to talk at their events, Bernardin Katric (Kulen Dayz) with a session regarding Silverlight 3, Andrej Radinjer at Mobility Days where I had the honor of giving two sessions on WP7 development that were originally assigned to Andy Wigley  – wow! also to Ankesh Mehta who invited me to talk at his User Group – thanks!

I could not keep on without thanking those that helped me getting started, concretly I am talking of such amazing people from Microsoft Spain’s team which first I can mention Alfonso Rodriguez (you rock!), José Murillo, Elisa, Isabel, Ethel, and of course two great persons & even better speakers, David Carmona & David Salgado!!! Of course thanks a lot to my MVP Lead, Cristina – for your continuous support & believing so much (sometimes more than me), thanks too to Antonio Gomez & Enrique Fernandez Laguilhoat - I know that I have probably left many more people that I know so – thanks everybody that has helped & supported me with even some kind words!!

Can’t keep on without thanking too to Paco Marin, Netalia chief editor & Aula Vulcan partner – and also a good friend, to Marino Posadas, David Nudelman, both good friends  & also to everybody that supported me in one way or other.

And there is even more – I joined in September a local Toastmasters association, Bcn-toastmasters with great people that have helped me grow by quite a lot during a very short time!! for those of you that don’t know, Toastmasters is an interantional organization with the goal of helping Speakers to become even better Speakers so it’s highly recommended!! check www.toastmasters.org if you’re interested!! I just can say it’s awesome

So, thanks a lot to MA Garcias, FAbulous speaker who dedicated me some time to help me prepare, Pilar de Obeso, Joan Fabregat, Cormac Walsh, … All Toastmaster’s Barcelona, thank you!! with special mention to my actual mentor, Celine Quissac who also helped & supported in an incredible way in the short time she was my mentor -only one week before TechEd… if she did this in one week I can’t imagine what will happen next – I’m looking forward to that!!

Also thanks to the delegates that came to my session and for the nice comments -best one is that he learned a lot in just 40′…

– feeling great!

As promised, here are the links to my slides and demos.

I am actually battling with a Silverlight business application with some interesting design & behavior – in fact it is a migration from a VB6.0 App.. but the design of the screens is not bad and it’s pretty useful to the task they are designed for. 

One of the most costly things I’ve suffered is that I had to show off some information grouped and totalized (nothing strange here, you just have to search a bit and you know the how-to) and also each group of information could have different format on the same column…. and oh my, this has been a real killer… 

I tried to change it programmatically but the Binding is bound to the column… so I tried to change the binding, first through the StringFormat but… hey! it is not bindable! Bummer… then I tried to use a custom Converter and bind the ConverterParameter but it also happened not to be bindable – or I did not find how to implement it. I tried also to implement a custom Converter deriving from FrameworkElement and IConverter so I could create a bindable property for using it instead of the ConverterParameter…. but that didn’t work out properly… 

Until I found a gem, the “Silverlight MultiBinding” solution that a smart guy, Colin Eberhardt conceived & developed to implement a similar binding model to that of WPF, with more funcitons and to be clear, more mature. Silverlight team, we need that on SL ASAP if we are to build serious SL business apps… if not some developers can get near to crazy to solve some “customer needs”… like I have . 

Regarding the MultiBinding, you can read from Colin on his blog here: http://www.scottlogic.co.uk/blog/colin/2010/08/silverlight-multibinding-updated-adding-support-for-elementname-and-twoway-binding/ 

Gladly I’m not alone as “Full Databinding Support” is the top requested feature on the Silverlight Feature Suggestions forum here:  http://dotnet.uservoice.com/forums/4325-silverlight-feature-suggestions, with over three thousand points, it’s the Nº1!!. 

Wich includes requests for fabulous features like: 

+ ValueConverter ConvertParameter binding.
+ StringFormat binding.
+ Strongly typed DataBinding support (intellisense).
+ Conditional Binding.
+ Binding to dynamic objects .
+ More extensibility.
+ Etc.. 

Regarding to my solution I implemented it on the DataGridTemplateColumn for each column I needed to format conditionally, considering also that some columns will need to be editable, so I had to use the usual binding for the editable template even that the TwoWay binding works on the Multibinding implementation but I found no way to keep the format from being reset (by now the TwoWay multibinding requires that all the properties are TwoWay). You can see the XAML code next: 

<data:DataGridTemplateColumn Header=”Budget” > 

<data:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>

<DataTemplate>

<TextBlock TextAlignment=”Right” > 

<multibinding:BindingUtil.MultiBindings>

<multibinding:MultiBindings>

<multibinding:MultiBinding TargetProperty=”Text” Converter=”{StaticResource MultiBindingGenericConverter}” >

<multibinding:MultiBinding.Bindings>

<multibinding:BindingCollection>

<Binding Path=”Budget” />

<Binding Path=”Budget_Format” />

</multibinding:BindingCollection>

</multibinding:MultiBinding.Bindings>

</multibinding:MultiBinding>

</multibinding:MultiBindings>

</multibinding:BindingUtil.MultiBindings>

</TextBlock>

</DataTemplate>

</data:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>

<data:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellEditingTemplate>

<DataTemplate>

<TextBox TextAlignment=”Right” Text=”{Binding Budget, Converter={StaticResource RoundedConverter}, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=true, ValidatesOnExceptions=true}” >

</TextBox>

</DataTemplate>

</data:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellEditingTemplate></data:DataGridTemplateColumn>

So if you have a similar scenario, I’d recommend Colin’s solution.

Other issue I had with the DataGrid was with the Virtualization – it’s virtually impossible to deactivate. Also the search for a solution on this was” a bit chaotic… “

I was lucky to find out this gem here http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/101075.aspx on which Xusan is telling us not to deactivate it but to change its structure and take out the component that provides the virtualization, changing its ControlTemplate.

That saved my day as the DataGrid really is not “Recycling” but “Reusing”, which I think should be changed or made  optional. As this can be Ok for performance reasons but on others you can end up coding a huge clean-up function that will kill the performance of the virtualization…  if there is a quick way of “cleaning” a row or cell, it would be great this was as fast as possible…

Well, will keep on finishing my DataGrid based project management Silverlight Bizz app  

Have fun!

But it does not. at least not “always”, lets be clear maybe I’m doing something wrong but this randomness on this behavior is driving me crazy, if I click on a Grid row, it should select it and mark the SelectedItem on the corresponding property, right? 

I have been doing so in the MouseLeftButtonUp of the DataGrid, so that’s what I expected but… sometimes it had it, sometimes not… bummer! 

So I have been trying to detect why is this happening but could not discover it… maybe I’m wrong in any of the assumptins but meanwhile, I got a workaround that does really work . 

The following code explains it all… 

void datagrid_MouseLeftButtonUp(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e) { 

  } 

} 

Basically I check first If I have the SelectedItem set, sometimes it is, so then I avoid doing the following trick.

The “trick” mainly gets the originalsource that is launching the event, that is the control inside the cell of the grid,  most of times it will be a TextBox. Second I get the Parent, with this I am getting to the Cell.

Note that if you have a complex structure you should set up a recursive function to go “up” until you get a reference for the cell.

From the cell you have the datacontext which is the item whe should have got from the SelectedItem property.  you should cast it to the inherent type and get any value you need from it.

Also, please note that the DataContext could be caught from the first element (OriginalSource) but it’s more ellegant to get it from the Cell, and if it is a complex custom cell this also asures that it gets the DataContext properly.

And yes, it works 100%

Happy coding!

PS: If somebody knows what I have done wrong or why the DataGrid.SelectedItem Property does not return the clicked item, I would be happy to hear.

1. One, is check the DDI version and the driver model, for doing this you should go to Windows button  and on the search/execute area type dxdiag & pulse return. There should appear the DirectX diagnostic tool, once there click one of the Display tabs and on the controllers, validate the DDI version. It should be 10 or better. Also check the Dirver model, should be WDDM 1.1 or better – if it appears, as it does on one of my laptops but on my desktop it does not – note that I have a three monitor display working with two GPU, so I guess that’s why…

2. Second, enable the BIOS virtualization support, as this is set to disabled on most motherboards. This can significantly increase the emulator speed as it will run directly on the CPU which is better than a layer of software – as a “man in the middle” which is logically slower.. this will mean getting into your BIOS and rebooting your system.

For more insight on WP7 performance, this talk is a must : http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL60

Have fun!

Here are the slides and codes from past Thursday presentation at the Bartlesville NET User Group, I was honored to join you at your past meeting .

Sadly it was a virtual event so I could not enjoy the free lunch nor participate in a more direct way, which is something you loose for the extremely reduced travel costs that Live Meeting brings on to all .NET user’s group!

Thanks Ankesh for organizing it so amazingly and thanks to everybody that assisted, being heard is a big thing.

The slides are here and the code is here. Have fun and please answer to this post if there is any issue with this.

Have fun!