Recently we rolled out our Silverlight File Uploader Demo out on our Sandbox. We also submitted it to the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 Gallery over at the official Microsoft Silverlight site. Within about a week it was reviewed and accepted and published out to the site, since that time we've received a few comments on the control, specifically asking for us to explain how it works.
Since the File Uploader control was developed for commercial purposes I cannot post the code or delve too deeply into the internals so I will instead rundown the overall architecture of the control and how it's able to do what it does. Please be aware that I will mostly be ignoring the .xaml side of things and focus instead on the underlying architecture, code and logic happening behind the scenes.
Front-End Design
First, the control is actually composed of two distinct pieces: (1) the first piece is the main co... [More]
Aug 26, 2008 • by Justin Gattuso
Serialization is the process of converting objects to a stream of information that can then be saved to disk, sent over the network, committed to a database or otherwise stored in a state where it can later be loaded and recreated.
.NET serialization can be accomplished in two ways: (1) automatic serialization, or (2) custom serialization. Automatic Serialization Automatic serialization is easy to implement, it's really just a matter of adding meta information tags to the class and member information that should support serialization. This takes advantage of .NET reflection to infer information about an object from it's meta information. This is how something as normally complex as serialization is able to become a mostly automated process capable of saving object state information to disk and loading it back up. While it is easy and relatively quick to implement it has it's drawb... [More]
Aug 1, 2008 • by Justin Gattuso
Obfuscation, aside from being a tongue-twister to pronounce, is an important topic within the realm of .NET development. While some folks around the inter-webs might have you believing that obfuscation is a useless, needless or worse - a complete joke and waste of your time - they couldn't be any further from the truth. [More]
Jul 10, 2008 • by Justin Gattuso
There are generally two camps of thought when it comes to comments: (1) some people stress that they be used often and fairly heavily, and (2) others will advise that they are best not to be used at all except in very complex situations where some object, method or algorithm simply needs to be explained. In practice however, the use of comments typically falls somewhere in between. In the end, experience is the best determinant when it comes to using and managing code comments.
The following are my recommendations regarding the use and management of code comments based upon my experiences in a wide variety of projects both large and small. Generally speaking, I tend to discourage the use of comments, primarily because I've found that programmers often do not update them when code changes later in a project. Without proper maintenance, the end result is a bunch of comments that no lo... [More]
Jun 24, 2008 • by Justin Gattuso
Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provide an outstanding architecture on which to design and implement custom user interfaces and controls. Through the use of the XAML specification, the creation of UI's and custom controls has never been easier or more rewarding. In this post I'll be showcasing a very useful and completely custom new control built within Silverlight, the InetSolution File Uploader control.
Below is a screenshot of the InetSolution File Uploader control, this is a brand new uploader control built from scratch within Silverlight. While I'm not a designer, putting together the visual look of the control wasn't difficult at all. The XAML designer in Visual Studio 2008 or Expression Blend allows you to edit the XML and immediately see the results of your changes in a split editing pane, basically eliminating the need to build and test. Other than logic... [More]
Jun 5, 2008 • by Justin Gattuso
