Archive for August, 2007

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Team Explorer, and Codeplex

August 8th, 2007

If you happen to use CodePlex as I do, I hope you found Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2005 to be a huge productivity boost.  With Visual Studio 2008 it wasn’t entirely obvious to me how to replicate this setup.  It turns out that Team Explorer can be installed individually from the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2008 Beta 2 (what a mouthful) installer without all the extra gunk.  I figured this out when I noticed the Team Explorer for 2005 installer had a graphic for Team Foundation Server. 

So go grab the Microsoft Secure Content Downloader and its a ridiculously quick 1.5gb download – about 45 minutes over my Timewarner cable connection.

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Posted in .Net

Exporting Adobe Illustrator resources to WPF

August 3rd, 2007

There are a lot of sites out there with great vector resources provided in Adobe Illustrator files.  A few have taken a stab at creating exporters or converts, including Mike Swanson and a CodePlex.com project called XamlXporter. 

I tried out Mike’s XamlExport plugin and it worked fairly well, but he has some well documented items that aren’t supported which seem to be pretty common in the AI world.  This lead me to try the XamlXporter which was built for Illustrator C2.  C3 is the latest version and I’m using the 30-day trial.  XamlXporter uses the Illustrator COM Type Library, but apparently Adobe changed the COM GUID for this release.  It was pretty easy to resolve and I’ve got another post here showing you how to fix that.

Here are some pretty nice sites with some Illustrator Vector resources you can use, but beware of the conversion gotcha’s.  WPF is young and Illustrator is, err, mature, so not everything has a translation.

I think we really need a site where people can upload and share WPF resources.  This would be great for styles, templates, etc. which can be time consuming and difficult for non-design people like I.

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Posted in WPF

XamlXporter COMException Fix

August 3rd, 2007

There is a pretty cool, but curiously quiet, CodePlex project called XamlXporter that allows you to export Adobe Illustrator files/resources to WPF files.  This is a great thing since WPF is young and there are a lot of free resources and tutorials for Adobe Illustrator out there, as well as, you will probably find that design firms are going to use Illustrator before Blend for quite while. 

The current version of Illustrator is C3, but the current/latest version of XamlXporter is built for C2.  Apparently Adobe has updated the GUID for Illustrator’s COM Type Library, so the XamlXporter won’t work with C3.  Here’s how I fixed it:

  1. Install Illustrator.  There is a 30-day trial version here.
  2. Download XamlXporter (0.2 Alpha is here).
  3. Open Visual Studio 2005 (you can probably use 2008/Orcas, but I didn’t).
  4. Create a new project (I used C# Console), but I’m sure VB WinForms, etc will work just as well.
  5. Add a COM Reference to Adobe Illustrator C3 Type Library.
  6. Browse to the <project>\bin\Debug|Release directory and copy the Interop.Illustrator.dll to the XamlXporter binary directory.
  7. Start up the XamlXporter according to the instructions and Voila!

If you’re lazy, you can download the Interop assembly I created here

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Posted in Software Reviews, WPF

Awesome Tool of the Day: StumbleUpon Firefox Add-On

August 1st, 2007

The other day I happened upon the Firefox Add-On page and decided to give the recommended Add-On a try.  I’ve been infatuated ever since.

Though there’s an inordinate number of buttons on the default toolbar layout, StumbleUpon is pretty simple: You/others browse the web and when you find something you like you give it a thumbs-up image or a thumbs-down image if you don’t.  Then there’s the magic button image which randomly picks pages from the submitted pages that are recommended (thumbs-up).  Their pitch says it pretty well…“Channel surf the internet.”

I warn you, it is very addictive, but if you choose topics you are actually interested in, you’ll find quite a few cool and relevant sites.  Check out my recommended sites so far..

Get the StumbleUpon Add-On

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Posted in Software Reviews

"This problem is being researched"

August 1st, 2007

I’m a big fan of the Vista Problem Reports and Solutions feature.  I’d say it’s had a satisfactory solution to real problems +50% of the time, which is better than I can say for any Support FAQ or Help file I can recall.  Today, though, I’ve been let down.  Here’s what I’ve got – see second screen shot for details:

image

image

Thanks guys.  Appreciate the update.

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Posted in Uncategorized