How would you like your WPF application to have a Context Menu like this:

Well, It is not so hard. Here is how you do it:

We have all used WPF DataTemplates, but I bet most of you never gave thought to the meaning of the x:Key attribute. We all know the meaning of the DataType attribute, which determines to what type of data the template will apply to. But what about the x:Key why is it there? Lets tale a look at the following code:

<Window.Resources>
        <DataTemplate DataType=”{x:Type data:s}”>
            <Button Width=”50″ Height=”50″>
                <TextBlock Text=”{Binding text}”></TextBlock>
            </Button>
        </DataTemplate>
    </Window.Resources>
    <Canvas>
        <ItemsControl ItemsSource=”{Binding}”>
        </ItemsControl>
    </Canvas>

Here are two interesting tools I found while working on our Silveredo 2 theme.

Install Multiple Internet Explorer Versions

This one is quite helpful and a must if you are working and building themes. Usually you want your theme to be compatible with FF2/3 and IE7 which we all know has its issues…

I bet there are many people who want their site to be compatible with Internet Explorer 6 too, having IE6 and IE7 working together on your windows is a problem, as it turns out, you CAN have all the Internet Explorer versions working along side each other, all you have to do is to download the multiple IE version installer and install any version you need.

Last week I was in the need to use a WPF TextBox that had multi line capabilities. I started Typing Multi and hit CTRL + Space to get the intelisense and I was shocked! No MultiLine TextBox, I did get the following:

But no MultiLine TextBox

   1: <MultiBinding></MultiBinding>

   2: <MultiBindingExpression></MultiBindingExpression>

   3: <MultiDataTrigger></MultiDataTrigger>

   4: <MultiTrigger></MultiTrigger>

Last evening we have experienced our first ever crash due to traffic, it was quite annoying, but I guess it is a good sign :). Our current hosting program supports 150 concurrent users (shared hosting). The article that caused the trouble was When a Company Logo Doesn’t Come Out So Good. We are using a WordPress plugin to track online activity in the site called Wassup, which we recommend and here is the traffic graph of just before the crash:

May is gone and now is the time to check out the stats. I am so happy to see that we have managed to make all parameters grow substantially, although i must say it is getting harder and harder.

We have tweaked our theme several times this month due too some test we were running, the conclusion of those test will be published in the following week.

Just before the stats we would like to announce that from now on we will be accepting guest posts.

In my last post about 5 Firefox plugin’s any web developer needs I got hammered for not posting FireBug. I admit that FireBug is Amazing and I use it often, but anyone knows FireBug, so posting about it is a bit pointless. My aim was to shed some light on some less known plugins, and therefore today’s post will not include FireBug again

lets start then:

I’m sure you’ve seen those nice interactive form validations on some Web 2.0 websites. The validation occurs while you’re typing your form input. For example, you’re typing your email in the email address field. You see a red “X” mark beside the field and when you’re finished typing your email address, a green check mark replaces the red “X” mark. What happens there is while you’re typing in your email address, the page communicates with the server to validate what you’re typing. When you finished typing your email address and the data you keyed in is valid, it passes the validation so it shows the green check mark without reloading the page. This is done using Ajax.

In this tutorial, you’re going to learn how to make this kind of interactive, Ajax-powered form validation (the same validation sample mentioned earlier). If you haven’t used Ajax before, don’t worry because I will show you how you can create Ajax-powered applications without worrying about the whole XmlHttpRequest process. If you can program with PHP and a little Javascript, you’re good to go. All you need is this handy little open-source Ajax toolkit called Sajax.

During the past couple of weeks we noticed that whenever we tweak our theme or change something in one of our posts, it causes some pages to become XHTML invalid. We came to think that you never know where it is going to hit you, so we sat down and created a small application which helps you keep all your pages XHTML valid. We checked it on our sitemap, and seems we have some HTML work to do :).

This application is written in WPF and is based on the .Net Framework 3.5.

It will allow you to validate you entire sitemap in one click. The validation is done through the W3C validation SOAP service, so you can trust it :).

Hi all
As you might have noticed we have just tweaked our theme again. During the past month we made some theme changes and tests, but now we think we finally got something we like!. We are sure that the new design will makes Dev102 much more “Easy on the eyes”  :).
Hope you all like it as much as [...]