.Net 4.0

Is there going to be a support for Microsoft Surface programming in .Net Framework 4.0? If someone knows I would be glad to hear the answer.. :)

Cool games made with XNA

I was just wandering around the net and found a few interesting games made with XNA. While we are waiting for a stable release of XNA 3.0 there's time to take a look at some cool things people have made with the earlier versions.

http://hamboeck.blogspot.com/2008/03/xna-car-cup-article-for-dndj-part1.html

http://skasoftware.wordpress.com/page/3/ (The Dishwasher: Dead Ninja)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY9Ufm5zXeY (Racketball game. Screenshot below)

And at the end, a little video showing off the game made with XNA 3.0:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8KU1TXT66U

Check back tommorow for more interesting posts about .net world!

Timo Salomäki

Textbox with custom border

People always ask how to create a TextBox with a custom border in C#. Unfortunately you can't achieve the goal by overriding the Paint() or PaintBackground() events. TextBox is one of those controls whose drawing is handled by Windows so for example Paint() event is never fired.

We can tweak around this problem by creating a custom control which holds a TextBox control inside it. The textbox's Borderstyle must be set to none. Now we can draw the border in custom controls Paint() event.

Remember! Textbox has to be placed like this:

Location: (1,1)
Size: (textBox.Width - 2, textBox.Height - 2)

Now you just have to draw a rectangle around the textbox area:

graphics.DrawRectangle(borderPen, new Rectangle(0, 0, this.Width - 1, this.Height - 1));

Screenshot from Visual Studio 2010 Team System

Visual Studio 2010

Microsoft has announced the future version of Visual Studio development environment. There will be key innovations in the following pillars:

• Democratizing Application Lifecycle Management
• Enabling emerging trends
• Inspiring developer delight
• Riding the next generation platform wave
• Breakthrough Departmental Applications

If you want to learn more about Visual Studio 2010 Team System, please take a look at the following videos at Channel9:

http://channel9.msdn.com/visualstudio/

Shopping - Windows Vista Home Premium Student

Yesterday I finally got bored on my Windows XP Professional (and the problems I had with it) and went to a local computer shop. My purpose was to buy a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium Student (Upgrade), but there was a surprise waiting for me... First I was just roaming between the shelves searching for a nice little box (that one where Vista is packaged inside) but only I could find was a Windows Vista Ultimate box. Its price was 300€ and compared to the one I was going to buy (104€) it was a little bit too much for me. So after all I had to ask the busy salesman if they happen to have any copies of Home Premium Student in their stock. There wasn't. I asked if there is one in some other shop near to my town (There's at least five of them (and a dozen not so far away...)) but they had none. I was amazed and decided to order one. I was thinking that it would take three to four days for my OS to ship, but they said that it will take at least one week! Now I'm waiting for my OS and I can hardly work on my machine with the older version of Windows (There's many explanations to that but they're not important). Of course I could reinstall Windows, but it would take hours to reinstall all the drivers and other important stuff. I just have not enough time. And yes I live in Finland, it really shouldn't take that long for a product like that to ship...

Warning for component developers

It's announced that the Ribbon control is going to be an important part of the form in the forthcoming release of Windows OS (Windows 7). It means that there's no more need for a 3rd party Ribbon control. I bet that the most advanced packages will remain used by developers (because of the other controls and features they contain), but those who provide plain Ribbon control, won't survive so easily without making changes to their product. This is just guessing but it's based on widely known facts. In the near future component developers will definitely need some ordinary ideas to stay in the business.

Exception! There might be a need for Ribbon control in Mac, when the .net Framework works in it.

Future plans for .net framework

Even though there's no official roadmap made for .net framework there's some public plans made for its future. First of all there's plans to implement better support for parallel programs, which target multi-core or distributed systems. Parallel implementation of the LINQ (Language Integrated Query: Adds native data querying capabilities to .net languages).

Leaked Windows 7 screenshots

It seems that according to the latest screenshots of Windows 7 (published at thinknext.net blog) there's no big changes in WIndows 7 UI compared to Windows Vista. Start menu looks pretty similar and the overall look is nearly the same. Here are some of the screenshots:

I will work to bring Cloud Toolkit.Net up to date to provide Windows 7 themed controls. There will be some difficulties along the way but I'll report all the important stuff here in the blog.

See you!

Timo Salomäki

.Net going Mac!

- "Microsoft is working on having a version of the framework that will run on the mac!" (Scott Guthrie)

From: http://weblogs.asp.net/pwilson/archive/2007/01/13/breaking-news-future-version-of-net-framework-to-run-on-the-mac.aspx

It seems that the .net programming is going to be used in both Mac and Linux, because of the actions made by Microsoft and .net language porting project Mono are bringing the language nearer to all developers in different platforms. If there's going to be a working .net framework for Mac, I will be among the first developers who update their programs to work on Mac. This is a big chance for those who understand the possibilities of this situation. For example:

There's huge amount of custom control providers for Windows Forms, but when the dotnet framework is available in Mac, there will be available markets for the first 3rd party component providers (Mac UI focused).

A little update

I just wanted to add a few links to the text which I published yesterday.. Here's some links:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/menus/Office2007Renderer.aspx
(This tutorial is made by the creator of Component Factory´s Kyrpton Suite)

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/menus/Ribbon_Panel.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/buttons/The_New_RibbonMenuButton.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/Office2007_Panels.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/Ribbon_Form_RoundButton.aspx


Timo Salomäki

From beginner to pro (part 1) - Custom controls

.Net libraries are a rather big business today. It's a shame that there's still not enough detailed step-by-step tutorials about how to make (for example) custom controls. Most of the resources are for real beginners or skilled professionals. When I started to develop my own .net custom controls I was confused. All the articles I found were so easy that I didn't get anything out of them. On the other hand I found those articles which were for true experts. It was a hard work to construct a list of tutorials which are suitable for developers with nearly any kind of skill level.

So here is my from beginner to pro list (part 1 - custom controls):

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/propertyeditor.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/customdesigner.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/ThemedExplorerControls.aspx (Windows XP theme)
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/DividerPanel.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/miscctrl/cutebutton.aspx (Very simple)
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/dzcollectioneditor.aspx (Not for beginners)
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/toolbars/MSOfficeTaskPane.aspx


Timo Salomäki (DudeDesign)

Cloud Toolkit N6

There's thousands of 3rd party controls for .net developers but only few of them which can be used freely without any limitations. I would like to introduce you a toolkit which is called Cloud Toolkit.Net. The newest version Cloud Toolkit N6 provides .net developers with a comprehensive collection (23) of carefully detailed and coded .net controls.

The package comes with the following controls:

Cloud Button

Cloud ButtonListControl

Cloud CaptionButton

Cloud Chat

Cloud Clock

Cloud Form

Cloud Group

Cloud GroupBoxContainer

Cloud Label

Cloud PictureBox

Cloud PlayerControl

Cloud RadioButton

Cloud SplitButton

Cloud StarRatingControl

Cloud Slider

Cloud TextBox

Cloud TickerTape

Cloud Header

Cloud TrackBar

Cloud ToolstripRenderer

Cloud CheckBox

Cloud NotificationWindow

Cloud ProgressBar

Cloud Colordialog

Visit www.cloud-toolkit.tk for more information

Project site is located at http://sourceforge.net/projects/cloudtoolkitnet

Make sure to visit this blog daily for more cool articles about .Net!