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My annual review is coming up. This is the time when you’re encouraged to reflect on what you’ve done over the past year, and what you want to be when you grow up. While thinking through mine yesterday, and thinking about the ones from the past twelve years, I came to a realization: I’m in this for two reasons: I love the technology I ...

For those of you working with Silverlight 2, are you also working on WPF projects? If so, what types of things are you building in WPF? Are you sharing source and/or team talent across the two technologies? What about readers doing only one or the other? Either way, drop me a note in the comments below. I’m interested in getting a feel for ...

If you know Silverlight or WPF, the job market for those skills is really on the rise. Same for Adobe Flex. Found via Twitter (thanks to whomever tweeted it!) "adobe flex", silverlight, javafx, openlaszlo, wpf Job Trends "adobe flex" jobs - silverlight jobs - javafx jobs - openlaszlo jobs - wpf ...

This one almost slipped past me. Lots of folks have asked about ways to automate encoding videos for Silverlight applications both on the client and on the server. Ben Waggoner just announced that Expression Encoder 2 includes a .NET object model for automation. The code in the SDK example looks really simple and straight-forward: static void ...

During all my Silverlight and WPF talks, one point I try to make is that in those technologies, the important aspect of an out-of-the-box control is not its particular display properties, but its model and its ability to be customized. Back when we used to do Windows Forms work, you often picked third-party controls based on how many UI ...

The Microsoft Health and Life Sciences Evangelism Team have put together a great free event in NJ with Silverlight, SQL Server, Surface, Silverlight Mobile, WPF, AJAX and lots more. April 22 - April 24 2008 Sheraton Atlantic City Convention Center Hotel  Two Miss America Way Atlantic City New Jersey 08401 United States Solutions ...

WPF and Silverlight applications cover a whole spectrum of application types and richness from incredible full-screen applications incorporating 3d and video to games to good old standard (but highly usable and attractive) business applications. It's the last category that I find of particular interest as while those applications don't always get ...

Early in my programming career, we had a choice to make at the beginning of each project: do we do this as a command-line/console app (prompt and response), use a DOS windowing library, or do a Windows 3 native app? Eventually, it became the norm to do a Windows app by default, and fall back to command-line only if you need to call it from batch ...

I always enjoy MIX; it's my favorite conference. I used to look forward to the PDC, but I'd only really enjoy the UI technology-related sessions there anyway. This morning, Scott Guthrie posted a couple of interview videos which cover what's coming up in MIX08 (no, don't expect to see any secrets revealed <g>) just to whet ...

Silverlight lacks the bitmap effects that are commonly used in WPF applications. Most can be simulated using pngs, but some can also be simulated using xaml. The example below shows a passable (but not perfect) drop shadow effect that relies only on vector content exported from Expression design. First, open expression design and create a shape ...