I ran across a cool idea from Microsoft where they have released a Power Toy for middle school aged kids. The tool is called Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0 and is a software package particularly designed by Microsoft to help middle school students learn computer programming.

Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0 is a software package particularly designed by Microsoft to help middle school students learn computer programming. It consists of the following five components:

• Visual Sort Designer Control - is a supplementary teaching tool developed to help middle school students learn the basic concepts, algorithms, and implementations of popular computer sorting algorithms. It supports bubble and insertion sorting. The control generates initial values automatically and demonstrates intermediate states in the sorting process. It also generates sorting source code for both Visual Basic and C#.
• Visual Search Designer Control - is a teaching tool developed to help middle school students learn the basic concepts, algorithms, and implementations of popular data search algorithms. It supports binary and sequential searches. The control generates initial values automatically and demonstrates intermediate states in the searching process. It also generates source code for both Visual Basic and C#.
• Visual Declarative Designer - is an intuitive variable declaration tool designed for novice programmers. During the coding process the student can declare variables of various types and generate the corresponding source code. Visual Variable Declarative Designer provides a visual approach to variable declaration. Teachers in the Information Technology (IT) field can use this designer to teach students the basic concepts of variable declaration and naming, variable types, access modifiers, and initial values.
• Assistant Class Designer - is a visual class designer intended for novice programmers such as middle school students. During the design process, students can easily add classes, properties, methods and events. The designer also generates source code that can be inserted into a project and modified as needed. By using this class designer and code generator, complicated classes can be easily created and configured. The Assistant Class Designer provides an intuitive approach to designing classes and helps students to understand key object-oriented programming concepts such as classes, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.
• Visual Programming Flow Chart - is a supplementary teaching tool designed to help students understand program control flow. It generates flow charts for functions and saves them in the JPG picture format. This tool is easily activated from the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) by simply right-clicking on a function name and choosing “Generate flow chart…” from the context menu. The resulting flowchart can be customized by changing its colors and other effects. This visual tool provides an intuitive way to explore source code, to examine its control flow, and to identify logic errors.
   

You can download the tool from the Microsoft Download site by clicking here.

Microsoft has released the first preview of the new AJAX features in ASP.NET. These new features are a step in the right direction of the new ASP.NET AJAX Roadmap that was released.

This release contains a preview version of the following features:

• Client-side template rendering
• Declarative instantiation of behaviors and controls
• DataView control
• Markup extensions
• Bindings
   

The User Account Control of Windows Vista has been the source of frustration and problems for many users that are trying to make the switch over to Windows Vista. I have always been the administrator on my Windows XP PCs and never had any of the problems of installing or running programs. The continuous prompts to run or install programs even when the user is an administrator can take quite a lot of getting used to. I can see what Microsoft was trying to do with the feature, but it still doesn't deliver a good user experience in my opinion.

Luckily, I ran across a tool that will help relieve some these frustations. The tool is called TweakUAC. TweakUAC™ is a free software tool that you can use to quickly turn UAC (User Account Control of Windows Vista) on or off, or to make UAC operate in the quiet mode. This software does not require installation, it is ready for use as it is! Just download the file and save it to your computer's hard drive.

The Silverlight team has been releasing some Silverlight Tips of the Day to help developers get started using Silverlight. I thought that I would post them here as well as a reference for me and anyone else that is needing help with working with Silverlight.

This list will expand as more Tips are released from the Silverlight team.

 Silverlight Tips of the Day:

• Tip of the Day #1 - Setup and Installation of Silverlight Tools Beta 2
• Tip of the Day #2 - Creating a Silverlight Application Project with Visual Studio 2008
• Tip of the Day #3 - Silverlight Game Support, Limitations and Workarounds
• Tip of the Day #4 - Building the Game Interface Using the Grid Control
• Tip of the Day #5 - Timers and the Main Game Loop
• Tip of the Day #6 - Monitoring for Keyboard and Mouse Events
• Tip of the Day #7 - Creating Transparent PNG files for Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #8 - Silverlight Resources
• Tip of the Day #9 - Browser Resize – How to capture the size of your browser when it is resized
• Tip of the Day #10 - Dynamically loading and displaying images in Beta 2
• Tip of the Day #11 - Transparency - How to make your Silverlight control transparent
• Tip of the Day #12 - Full Implementation of a Silverlight Policy Server
• Tip of the Day #13 - How to Get an Images Dimensions in Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #14 - How to Right Click on a Silverlight Application
• Tip of the Day #15 - Communicating between JavaScript & Silverlight
• Tip of the Day #16 - StoryBoard versus DispatcherTimer for Animation and Game Loops
• Tip of the Day #17 - How to Animate a Rotating Image
• Tip of the Day #18 - How to Set Browser Cookies
• Tip of the Day #19 - Using Isolated Storage
• Tip of the Day #20 - How to Increase the Isolated Storage Quota for your App
GameFest 2008 - Silverlight Game Programming
Tip of the Day #21 - How to work with Shapes, Brushes and Gradients
Tip of the Day #22 - How to add Sound Effects, Music and Video to your Silverlight App.
Tip of the Day #23 -How to Capture the Mouse Wheel Event
Tip of the Day #24 - How to Apply a XAML Template to a Class
3D Simulated Terrain Tutorials for Silverlight Games
Terrain Tutorial Part 1 - Creating a Scrolling Map
Tip of the Day #25 - How to Build the XAP File to the Debug/Release Folders
Tip of the Day #26 - How to Change the Output XAP File Name.
Tip of the Day #27 - How to Change the Mouse Cursor
Tip of the Day #28: - How to Implement a Custom Mouse Cursor
Tip of the Day #29: - Creating a Transparent, Draggable Dialog with Rounded Corners
Tip of the Day #30 - Fast Sprite Animation in Silverlight
Tip of the Day #31 - How to Detect Alt, Shift, Control, Windows and Apple keys with Left Mouse Down in Silverlight
Silverlight Terrain Tutorial Part 3 - Creating Smooth Tile Transitions using Opacity Masks
Tip of the Day #32 - How to Declare a Custom User Control from a XAML Page
Tip of the Day #33 - How to Scale your entire App and its Elements to your Browsers Size
Tip of the Day #34 - How to Center your Silverlight Application in your Browser
Tip of the Day #35 - Full Screen Mode Implementation
Tip of the Day #36 - How to Create Reflections and Shadows for Images and Text
Tip of the Day #37 - How to Dynamically Load and Display Silverlight Applications
Tip of the Day #38 - How to Customize the Silverlight Install Experience
Tip of the Day #39 - How to Create a Zoom Toolbar
Tip of the Day #40 -1.05 != 1.05 - Peril with Floating Point Comparisons.
Tip of the Day #41 - Using Bookmarks in your Silverlight Application.
Tip of the Day #42 - How to Create a Web Service for your Silverlight App.
Tip of the Day #43 - Making it Snow in Silverlight.
Tip of the Day #44 - Silverlight-enabled WCF Services versus ASMX Web Services.
Tip of the Day #45 - Text Formatting with the TextBlock control
Tip of the Day #46 - Font Support in Silverlight
Tip of the Day #47 - How to Implement a Password Box
Tip of the Day #48 - How to Implement a Combobox
Tip of the Day #49 - How to Implement a Progress Bar
Tip of the Day #50 - Main Game Loop Revisited!
Tip of the Day #51 - How to Enable and Disable Controls
Tip of the Day #52 - How to Popup a Browser Window
Tip of the Day #53 - MessageBox is now Available in Silverlight 2
Tip of the Day #54 - How to Develop with Silverlight Tools for Free
Tip of the Day #55 - How to Apply Styles in Silverlight – Part I
Tip of the Day #56 - Accessing the HTML DOM from Silverlight.
Tip of the Day #57 - How to Dynamically Load a Silverlight Control within another Silverlight Control

Last Updated: 10/13/2008 06:00 PM
 

There is a new SharePoint video from the Ted Pattison Group on the Microsoft Downloads. The video gives a real world example of how to build web parts for SharePoint as user controls that utilize AJAX.

Overview:

Learn about building Office SharePoint Server Web Parts with user controls and AJAX. Walk through a real-world example of separating your UI from your code-behind, using user controls to create input panels. Also, learn about using the AJAX update panel.

You can download and watch the video, by clicking here.

After working with this site for a while, I decided that I wanted to migrate away from the initial theme that I had chosen for the site. I searched around on the internet and found a theme that I really liked and configured it to fit my site. At the same time, a new release of BlogEngine.Net was released. I decided this would be a good time and update the site to the latest 1.4 version.

 Hopefully, everyone will like the new look. Let me know what you think and if you happen to find any problems with the site or theme.