John Liu .NET

Surprise!  PictureBox in Windows CE doesn’t support transparency.

Diving into yet another old forgotten corner of the .NET compact framework.

And just in case the mention of Compact Framework hasn’t scared you to death, today’s code will be in Visual Basic .NET

Imports System.Drawing.Imaging
Imports System.ComponentModel

Public Class TransparentPictureBox
    Inherits PictureBox

    Private _transparentColor As Color = Color.White
    Public Property TransparentColor() As Color
        Get
            Return _transparentColor
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As Color)
            _transparentColor = value
        End Set
    End Property

    Protected Overloads Overrides Sub OnPaint(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs)

        If Not Me.Image Is Nothing Then
            Dim pictureBounds As New Rectangle(0, 0, Me.Width, Me.Height)
            Dim imageBounds As New Rectangle(0, 0, Me.Image.Width, Me.Image.Height)
            Dim attributes As New ImageAttributes()
            ' set color to be set to transparent - if you don't paint the background below, then these pixels
            ' will appear black
            attributes.SetColorKey(Me.TransparentColor, Me.TransparentColor)
            e.Graphics.DrawImage(Me.Image, pictureBounds, imageBounds.X, imageBounds.Y, imageBounds.Width, imageBounds.Height, GraphicsUnit.Pixel, attributes)
        End If

    End Sub

    Protected Overloads Overrides Sub OnPaintBackground(ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs)
        ' paint background color
        Dim brush As SolidBrush
        brush = New SolidBrush(Me.Parent.BackColor)
        e.Graphics.FillRectangle(brush, Me.ClientRectangle)
    End Sub

End Class

I’m quite used to tick agreeing to Terms and Conditions.  This PopCap checkbox has additional strings attached!

“You are required to receive the PopCap Newsletter and agree to the terms of service.”

This question comes up a lot when people have heard both buzzwords and have trouble working out which one is better for them.

One good chart I found is this one:

http://jamesshore.com/Blog/Scrum-XP-Practices-Cross-Reference.html

My attempt to answer this question:

XP is

• Agile methodology driven by developers
• with many prescribed engineering practices

Scrum is

• Agile methodology driven by management
• Simpler framework where engineering isn’t prescribed
• Trust team to do what they need to do
• Can evolve overtime and take on many XP practices incrementally

I actually learn of VirtualBox via Twitter.

That’s one of the things I realize from Twitter – people talk about things they like.  One person says it…  Then a couple of months later you hear another one that has something nice to say.  Then you hear from a third guy.

Word of Mouth advertising.  It works.

What is VirtualBox – why do I need this?

VirtualBox is Sun/Oracle’s virtualization host. 

• It is free for personal use.
• It can host x64 (better than Virtual PC)
• It can understand both VMDK and VHD formats (beats Virtual PC or VMWare)
• It is faster than Virtual PC
• You can create new VM with VirtualBox (beats VMWare Player)

How does it compare with other offerings?

Here’s a totally unscientific chart based on my understanding:

Anyway, VirtualBox and Boot to VHD are my two picks.

Martin said something recently in an email that really echoed with what I think.

Always blog it if you had to do it… it serves as both a reminder to yourself and helps others..

It reminded me why I started ranting on a blog.  If anything, my own goals for starting a blog was never a noble crusade to help other people.  I did it primarily to help myself find something that I’ve found… and then add my own additional comments.  But hey – it’s public enough, and if it helps anybody out there that’s nice - I’m not complaining.

Thanks Martin, for the reminder to blog more.  There’s always words, always drafts sitting in my Windows Live Writer….  one day I’ll get through all this and hit the publish all button.

1. In solution, select the Feature
   
   
   
   Change the “Folder Name” property to new name. Press Enter – VS.NET will try to help you rename everything correctly.  The reason this field is called “Folder Name” is because SharePoint packaged solutions are deployed to the 14 HIVE, and are organized by folders there.
   Double click on the feature to bring up the Feature designer UI, you still need to change the Title and Description
   
   
   
2. To rename the web part
   
   
   
   Change the Folder Name
   You still need to change the actual UserControl file name
   
   
   
   As well as the user control filename, class name… standard .NET stuff.  Some tools such as VS.NET’s rename tool, or if you use Resharper, can help you with class renaming.
   
3. WARNING: generally renaming packages is very bad after you have deployed to production. This should not be done lightly. 

Was working on a presentation on SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight.

Finally, I get to marry my two favourite technologies in one awesome demo.

There’s not a lot of people blogging about this yet, but what we were digging up was very delightful.

In bullet point form – because this is a brain dump blog post, and if you want to know how everything ties together you’ll have to catch up to one of the user groups where I present this stuff (or Adam Cogan… he gets around a lot more than me):

Technologies that made it possible:

• SharePoint web services
• SharePoint REST / OData services NEW
• This is actually great news for the AJAX / JavaScript crowd.  Technically, you can write JQuery solutions that will query SharePoint for you.
• Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll(s), and the corresponding Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Silverlight.dll(s) – which are awesome wrappers
• CAML is nearly gone, but still lingers on for huge data processing.
• LINQ to SharePoint is the new crafting knife
• Silverlight XAP files can be uploaded anywhere
• Silverlight web part can load XAP files and run them
• So a user that can upload a short movie to SharePoint, then configure a Silverlight movie player to play that movie… already has the permissions required to run custom XAP applications.
• Which, if you stop and think about it, is a “different” deployment model!