Custom activities in Workflow Foundation 4.0

In this post, I will show how to build custom activities in workflow foundation 4.0 following the code standards from Microsoft. Furthermore, I will introduce how to run a workflow using Workflow Invoker and Workflow Application. All these examples have been done in WPF using a custom WorkflowDesigner control where a Sequence element is initialized in order to add or remove activities from the toolbox.

Using Prism to compose applications with modules AND other applications

In summary, Prism is a great framework (or guide of development for composite applications, whatever). Prism builds applications with modules. An application is a normal one but with some additional things (bootstrapper or shell) and modules are like applications but without possibility to be executed in standalone. But what about if a requirement is to use prism for building applications with modules AND other applications?

In this post, I will introduce how to reach this scenario.

Spy internal messages using MSMQ in a separated system.

As an introduction, MSMQ is a messaging protocol that allows applications running on separate servers/processes to communicate in a failsafe manner. This mechanism uses a queue where, when a new item enters, this is place to the bottom of the queue. Only when all items that were before on the top of the queue are read, this new item will be reached.

Test Driven Development - TDD

Let's talk about Test Driven Development. Surely, many people knows about it nevertheless when they try to apply it, they realise that they must spend many time to change mind of developpers and this will raise that development time grow up. And that's true, this is because in this post, I will try to expose some practices and examples to help about how to use TDD.

Dynamic Localization with observable and shared resources in Silverlight

The purpose of this solution is to achieve the following scenarios:

•    Define scoped resources in a modular solution by specifying the global, the application and/or custom ones.
•    Dynamic loading, so you won't need to download all resources available, this will be done on demand.
•    Observable resources, so if you change the culture, automatically all labels will be updated. No code is required.
•    Shared resources, in modular solutions, you can have a solution with some projects, another solution with some other projects and so on. With this, you will be able to add it sharing the resources.
•    Enable for unit testing.

Official site of Club Atletismo Málaga

I have the pleasure to say that I have finished to publish my first website. This website is the offitial site of "Club Atletismo Málaga" an atheltics team. You can visit on http://www.clubatletismomalaga.es/
I have designed this site in Joomla, a dynamic portal engine very very easy to use. Everything is done just installing the right component :)

Multitargeting of WPF and Silverlight using PRISM

In my last job, I had change to lead a multitargeting project from an existing Silverlight solution to WPF one working together. Then, I will try to arrange all useful info that I needed regarding all this.

Brainstorming gold rules

I would like to elaborate a gold rules to manage a very constructive brainstorming that I has been able to take along all my experience. I see a brainstorming like an evolutive algorithm where all individuals have an initial knowledge and its own reality and all of them mix its vision along an iteration. Little a little, they will give better ideas because they will be involving.

Performance decalogue for Silverlight

This guide has been done following my experience in Silverlight regarding the most useful gaps that I have had to use to make better Silverlight applications.

Strikethrough effect for TextBlock in Silverlight

Here, I would like to introduce a new control for TextBlock to add new text effects. Concretely, the Strikethrough effect that Silverlight does not support.

Silverlight Right Mouse Button

In Silverlight 4, there is a new feature very useful for so many scenarios. This is the right mouse button characteristic that you normally use to show a context menu. But there are some things that you have to take into account.

Retrieve items elements within ListBox control

In this post, I will show a simple method in order to retrieve the container items elements in a ListBox control by using ItemContainerGenerator.

foreach (var item in this.listBox.Items)

{

      var container = this.listBox.ItemContainerGenerator.ContainerFromItem(item) as ListBoxItem;
      if (container != null)
      {
           VisualStateManager.GoToState(container, "Highlighted", true);
       }

}

As you can see, in container element, you will receive the ListBoxItem (or the container that you are using). This is a very simple operation in comparison with some other that you can find by web where you may read that you need to use VisualTreeHelper or navigate among elements until find the container or some other things.