Having develop Silverlight more than a year, I find that I am lacking of a good management tools to organize all of my Silverlight Resources.
For example, suppose I want to add a Gradient Background in one of my control. The xaml coding is somewhat like
<Border.Background>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint=”0,0″ EndPoint=”0,1″>
<GradientStop Color=”#666666″ Offset=”0″/>
<GradientStop Color=”#000000″ Offset=”1″/>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Border.Background>
It looks simple but I can hardly remember the tags of the XAML. It turns out that I need to open the Blend or reference some previous projects for copy and paste.
Therefore, I think we need a better way to reorganize what we have inside our computer and from the community.
Problem
I attempt to solve the above based on my personal experience.
Most of the time, I only need a piece of code (XAML or C#) to solve a particular problem. I understand how all the functions work, but its not that easy to remember all the codings.
Besides, it’s so annoying to open a previous Project using Visual Studio to look for some of the old coding. It’s slow and will consume me a lot of RAM.
I have a lot of Silvelight sample projects inside my harddisk. This is not handy and I always get lost which project contains the coding I need. A search system is needed.
Solution
I am not felling comfortable when things are getting messy. I really need a tool!
My primary target is to implement a application which intended to tackle the problems I mentioned.
The application should be able to help me to :
- Looking for coding easily
- Providing a good searching environment
- Able to execute *.xap file easily
- Allow people to download source easily.
These are my primary targets. I believe more features can be added later on. Meanwhile, you may take a look of the design of my application.
My last word
What do you think about my idea? Please feel free to share with me.
July 28th, 2009 at 12:39 am
I agree with you 100%! I have so many code samples on my hard drive that it is difficult trying to find the one I need. It will all come down to taxonomy of the samples that will make this application a success.
Also, any plan on having people upload sample code as well? Can’t wait for this app!!!
July 28th, 2009 at 1:31 am
Agree!
That’s also what exactly I am doing now.
Hope you can make this framework works first.
Everyone can contribute then help each other.
July 28th, 2009 at 1:54 am
Silverlight Resources Directory…
Thank you for submitting this cool story - Trackback from NewsPeeps…
July 28th, 2009 at 2:33 am
I think that’s a great idea !!!
My team work in many Silverlight developments and it’s difficult to share, find and reuse components and create new ones or improve it. And Shinedraw is a very good place to get good ideas and sometimes is difficult to view and find all of them…
I will be very happy if you create it and share source code with all !! ;-)
Thanks !!!
July 28th, 2009 at 3:13 am
I think Microsoft missed the boat a little with Expression Media. It’s an awesome way of cataloguing. They should have integrated code with it and kept as part of Expression.
July 28th, 2009 at 3:39 am
Off course you are using the Blend Resource Panel heavily.
You drag all you used resource to App.xaml, so you can access them througout the application.
Actually you can create MergedResourceDictionaries in Silverlight 3 and compile the to a DLL that you can reference from all you projects. It may grow to be quite large, though.
So maybe you should drag Resource from the MergedResourceDictionaries back to the App.xaml of your project and remove de lareg ResourceDictionarie before deploying…
hmm… I’m going to try that out now :)
July 29th, 2009 at 5:07 am
So you want to build a location that shows xaml and code in little cut and paste element for the entire web? i think that would be cool. But you should organize them in a tree, for example create an new node based on another sample, then tweek it on line to you get what you want. Like the way a painter mixes paints on a pallet. the good news is, other people can use what is mixed
July 29th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Steve, your idea is great. I haven’t think of it before. I will try to think deeply how it can be achieved.