A day in the life of...

I’ve had a bit of a play with WPF for the first time today. I decided to create my own button template. The idea of a template is that you can redefine the visual elements that make up the control. Create a new WPF application Now add a button within the grid like so  <Grid>   <Button Content="Click me" Width="150" Height="50"/>  </Grid> So that we can see what we are designing add a gradient background to the window. Within the <Window> node add  <Window.Background>   <LinearGradientBrush>    <GradientStop Color="Black" Offset="0"/>    <GradientStop Color="White" Offset="1"/>   </LinearGradientBrush>  </Window.Background> Now to start designing the button template. Within the <Window> node add  <Window.Resources>  </Window.Resources> this i...

Today I wanted to give access to certain files on a website only via my DownloadController. This was so that I could ensure the current user had purchased the item in question first, and also sign any license info into the download aswell. I tried getting a URL like this to work http://localhost/download/1/SomeFileName which would remap to the DownloadController public void Index(int id, string fileName) This worked fine, and because the URL ended with "SomeFileName" it would get saved as the correct filename too, but this was no use because SomeFileName has no file extension. As soon as I added .zip on the end the request no longer went via the new HttpHandler in the MVC web extensions. Even when I added it in the <httpHandlers> section of web.config it just wouldn’t work. My problem was in relying on the url for the filename. This is apprarently not the way it should be done. Instead I should have stuck to the standard URL approach http://localhost/download/1 an...

First download the binaries you need from here: http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/ Next run VS2008 and create a new project. Select the Silverlight node and then the Silverlight Application node. ProjectName = MySilverlightApp Tick the checkbox "Create directory for solution" Click OK On the wizard page you want the default values: * Add a new page to the solution for hosting the control Project type = Web Site Name = MyWebService Now delete the two ASPX files, we wont be needing those. Rename the HTML page to Index.html and set it as the project start page. Right click the website project and select "Add new item". Select "Web Service". Name = DateTimeService.asmx Click ADD Change the HelloWorld method to public DateTime GetServerDateTime() {   return DateTime.Now; } Right-click the References node on the Silverlight project and select "Add service reference". Click the "Discover" button, and in the tree view that appears select the Da...