44th US Presidential Inauguration Coverage with Photo Synth

Check it out.

Visual Studio 2008 Tips and Tricks

A superb video covering VS 2008 in action. You can also find the MVC  (Multiple Virtual Server, not model-view-controller) demo. Follow the link.

Interview with Adware author..

Mark Knox, a talented Ruby instructor and coder talks about his early days designing and writing adware for Direct Revenue. Follow the link

Investigating Silverlight Exception: System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range

Hi,

Good to be back in action after a long break. I just found this nasty little exception when i was adding a user control to a Grid in Silverlight 2. Took me some time to understand what was happening though, until i found that it was a known issue on the silverlight forum.

I managed to get a work around that problem which i promptly shared on the same forum.

System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range at Ms.InternalXcpImports.MethodEx(IntPtr ptr, String name, CValue[] cvData)

Turns out that every container needs a unique 'Name' property to be set for it's child. I have managed to get it fixed with the following self explanatory code snippet.

private static int componentID = 0;

private Grid tableGrid;

FrameworkElement element; //this is a user control.

element.SetValue(Canvas.NameProperty, GetComponentID().ToString());

private static int GetComponentID()

{

return componentID++; 
}

//This will not give the 'Value does not fall within the expected range' exception. 

tableGrid.Children.Add(element);

Silverlight Toolkit - Merry Christmas!!

Go grab the silverlight toolkit from here. A newer version got released today. If you are wondering what's new,

Here, take a sneak peek

What's New?

• More than 80 improvements and bug fixes
• AutoCompleteBox and NumericUpDown have been moved into the Stable Quality Band.
• Three new themes have been added: Bureau Black, Bureau Blue and Whistler Blue.
• The sample application has been given a make-over and is now more polished and easier to navigate.
• More tests added.
• Better design-time support in both Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend, including icons, property tooltips and better property organization in the property editor.
• AutomationPeer support added for AutoCompleteBox, Expander and NumericUpDown (as well as UpDownBase).
• Charting improvements galore!

What's in the Silverlight Toolkit December 2008 release?

• Components in the Stable Quality Band
  • AutoCompleteBox
  • DockPanel
  • HeaderedContentControl
  • HeaderedItemsControl
  • Label
  • NumericUpDown
  • TreeView
  • WrapPanel
• Components in the Preview Quality Band
  • ButtonSpinner
  • Charting
  • Expander
  • ImplicitStyleManager
  • Spinner
  • UpdownBase
  • Viewbox
• Several professional Themes for use in your applications.
• Sample application projects
  • View the samples live
  • Integrated code and XAML source viewer

Some Links

Silverlight Tookit Quick View