The stuff I was interested in:

• Add New Row for the DataGrid
• Improved application startup performance
• Mouse wheel support for out-of-browser  applications on the Mac
• Media bug fixes
• MouseCapture memory leak is fixed
• Inline DataTemplate memory leak fixed.

Developers go get the tools:

• Windows developer runtime
• Mac developer runtime
• Silverlight 4.0.50826.0

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/geekSpeak/geekSpeak-Recording-Local-Messaging-and-Silverlight-with-Brian-Lagunas/

And yes, I did give Elegant Code some love on the show.

• Get the Bing Maps Silverlight Control
• Get a Bing Maps API Key
• Play with the Bing Maps interactive SDK Application
• Read the Bing Maps blog
• Check out the Bing Maps forum

You can also get the source code to my presentation here:  Download the source.

Note: You will need to download the Bing Maps Silverlight control and re-reference the DLLs before the source will compile.  Also, you have to have a Bing Maps API key in order to use any of the geocoding service examples.

Here is the episode description:

“A powerful feature of Microsoft Silverlight is the ability for different Silverlight controls to communicate, even with instances running out of browser. In this geekSpeak, Silverlight guru Brian Lagunas shows us the ins and outs of how to communicate between Silverlight applications by using local messaging. We'll cover everything from multiple banner ads synchronizing animations to business applications displaying master/detail data. Brian goes over how to create complex layouts that combine multiple Silverlight-based applications with content that is based on other technologies. Join us for this unique take on Silverlight programming.”

When: Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 3:00-4:00 ET

If you are interested or have some questions register at https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032455709&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Owners of v3 pay special attention to what I am about to tell you.  You can get v4 for FREE.  Yes, I said FREE.  Just install the v4 trial on top of your licensed v3 and upgrade it.  For more information read this article.

So what’s new with Expression Studio 4?  Rather than writing everything down for you, it is just as easy to provide the links that can give a much better explanation.

• Expression Blend 4 (note worthy MVVM support)
• Expression Web 4
• Expression Encoder 4
• Expression Design 4

Important!  If you are developing in Silverlight for Windows Phone 7, do not install this released version of Blend in Expression Studio 4.  You must continue to use Blend 4 Beta and Add-in Preview for Windows Phone.  A service pack will be released when the Windows Phone SDK releases.  Read more about this here.

Developers can update their runtime by downloading and installing the updated Silverlight developer runtime for Windows or Mac.  Any new Silverlight 4 applications will target this updated version.  For existing applications, if your users must have the newest version, update your <object> tag by setting the minRuntimeVersion to 4.0.50524.0.

Go get’em boys and girls!

Accent Color

Windows 7

Cosmopolitan

Go To Value Definition

Have you ever had a control that had a style assigned to it, but had no idea where to find that style?  It could be nested down in some obscure folder path in a ResourceDictionary somewhere.  You would have to do the good-old “ctrl + F” and do a search for it.  Well, no longer.  You can now go to the style value definition just by using the property inspector.

And when you click that magic button, it takes you straight to its definition.

Style Intellisense

A big pain for writing styles is that you have to hope you are setting the correct properties, and not fat-fingering them (misspelling).  Well, never fear, Style intellisense is here.  Never guess which property to use in the setter again.

Grid manipulation with a simple right-click

The source of my biggest headaches comes from the Grid.  Yes the Grid.  Because it can be a real pain to change once you have it created.  Lets say that I have laid out my nice beautiful form, and all of a sudden realize I put a row in the wrong order.  Well, I have to go into my XAML and update all my Grid attached properties for all the controls affected.

Not anymore!  With a simple right-click I can now move, insert, and delete rows and columns from my grid.  I just have to select any control in the row/column I want to manipulate, right-click it, then make my selection.  In this case I chose to move an entire row down one level.

As you can see, not just the control I selected moves, but the entire row moves with it.

As you can see, the Silverlight Tools for VS2010 aren’t just for Silverlight developers.  Even WPF peeps get a little love. 

Check out this video which shows theses features in action.

Local messaging enables you to create communication channels between multiple Silverlight plug-ins running on a single computer. You typically host the plug-ins in a single Web page and use local messaging to coordinate their behavior. This enables you to create complex layouts that combine multiple Silverlight-based applications with content based on other technologies.  You can also use local messaging to establish communication between a Silverlight-based application in a Web page and another one running outside the browser.  Heck, you can even go cross domains.

The Basics

Establishing a connection between Silverlight applications is as simple as creating a LocalMessageSender object in one application and a LocalMessageReceiver in another application.

The Receiver

When you create the receiver, you must give it a name that is unique globally or across the host domain.  Once you have created the receiver, you must handle the MessageReceived event.  This event is fired when a message is successfully received from a sender.  The sent message is available in the Message property.  The next required step is to call the Listen method on the receiver.  The receiver will continue receiving messages until you call its Dispose method.

After a message is received you can send a response back to the sender by setting the Response property in the MessageReceived event handler.

The Sender

When you create the sender you must specify the receiver that will be listening for the messages.  To send a message, the sending application calls the SendAsync method, passing in a String message with a maximum size of 40 kilobytes.

Any response from the receiver can be handled in the SendCompleted event.

The Sample Application

I have created a sample application to demonstrate a basic example of communicating between two Silverlight applications.  In my example, I decided to send an object as a message instead of a simple string, because lets be real, most of the time we need to send a complex message.  The first application has a list of objects.  As I select an object in the list, I will send that object to the second application which will display the objects details.  Once the receiving application has received the object, it will send a response back to the sending application, and the sending application will display the response.

I won’t bore you with all the code in my sample application.  You will get to download it anyways.  I just want to point out the important stuff.

The Sender

Each time a selection is made in the ListBox, this method is called and the selected object is passed to it.  I am also creating a handler or the SendCompleted event to display any responses sent back from the receiver. 

When sending complex messages, such as an object graph, you need to consider the size of your message.  Remember that 40 kb limit mentioned earlier?  Well, you better.  In order to send our complex message we need to serialize the object into something the other application to understand.  The easiest ways are XML and JSON, and since XML is heavy, I prefer JSON.  So I created a nice little helper method that converts my object graph into a JSON string.

The Receiver

The receiver is extremely simple.  It has a view that shows the details of my object.

It has a LocalMessageReciever that listens for any messages sent from my sender application.  It takes the JSON message, deserializes it back into an object.  Set the DataContext of the form, and sends the response back to the sender application.

Here is my JSON deserialization method:

The Final Product

That is all there is to it.  As you can see, communicating between multiple Silverlight applications is pretty simple, and you can get pretty crazy with it, especially when you have an IE hosted application communicating with a Out-Of-Browser Silverlight app.  Cool stuff!

Download the Source and start tinkering.

So here is a hidden performance increasing jewel you might find useful.  We can set the default open mode to be in full XAML view.

First thing you need to do is in Visual Studio go to your Tools ==> Options ==> Text Editor ==> XAML ==> Miscellaneous.  There you will see an option for “Always open documents in full XAML view”.  Check that box.

Now every time you open a XAML file it will open in full XAML view and give you one less thing to gripe about.