Andy Weston's Blog

Silverlight 3 is now available for download  from MSDN.  It seems pretty crazy that MS was able to add so many features so quickly, the last release was less than a year ago.  I haven’t explored all the new features yet but the first thing I plan on looking at is the new Expression Blend 3 which [...]

If you have ever wished that you could compare the schemas on two databases to see what the differences are, look no further than xSQL Object … http://www.xsqlsoftware.com  I tried the free version and it worked great, the full versions look even better.

I discovered a nice tool recently that helps you target, market and analyze the keywords and effectiveness of your websites … it is called Web CEO.  It has tools for helping you find good keywords to focus on, for example, it calculates an index called the KEI which represents a ratio of the popularity of [...]

There is a new starter kit available out on CodePlex called BlogEngine.NET that has some very nice features to it.  Its a lightweight blog application written in ASP.NET that has most of the usual features you would expect from a blog.  The source code is a nice reference implementation of an ASP.NET app that uses themes, etc., for rendering.  There are [...]

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. — MC Escher
Absurd and impossible … why are all my ideas seeming that way lately?  ;)  –Andy

I’ve been playing around with formatting XAML for Silverlight on the server side and I decided to mash-up some XML from an Amazon web service and get it to display a list of books. Here’s a sample page …

I ran into a few limitations but overall it went pretty well. The plugin doesn’t [...]

ComponentOne is now showing off demos of it’s upcoming Sapphire Silverlight controls.  After installing the plugin, click on the Show Me Sapphire button on the carrousel.  The control gallery includes Flashy versions of buttons and listboxes and docking panels.  These are still alpha versions of the controls (a few things don’t work yet, like the Tab [...]

I’ve been playing around with creating some XAML snippets and I needed a place to post my code so I created this little framework page to display them … ./silverlight/samples
 I’d like to create a little XAML Sample Manger in ASP.NET … if only I can find the time!!!

If you want to get started with AJAX for .NET and you are looking around for a platform you should give some consideration to a library I found called Anthem.NET.  Its very easy to setup and works by simply changing the namespace of most of the standard asp controls to “anthem” and then telling the control [...]

“Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.”  –Einstein
Guess what, you know that complicated subsystem that you want to build on your next project?  You probably don’t need all of that.  Keep it simple, dude, but make sure it does the simple things well.  –Andy