Here’s the unofficial demo video. I broke it up into two parts due to Youtube’s 10 minute limitation.

SketchFlow Demo Part I

Jon demos the SketchFlow map, design surface, and sample data features. In the end of this video, he show’s SketchFlow documentation and annotation features.

SketchFlow Demo Part II

In this demo, Jon demos bringing a pen and paper drawing to life with interactivity from SketchFlow. Awesome!

To give you a sense what’s impressive about Wolfram|Alpha, I’ve listed a sampling of searches and their corresponding results below. You can also watch this introduction video from Stephen Wolfram himself to get a good idea on this search engine.

I’m so enamored by Wolfram|Alpha that I’ve installed a firefox addon that adds Wolfram|Alpha results to Google search results. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12006.

Mashable has a nice collection of Wolfram|Alpha easter eggs. Buzzfeed found that it knows superheroes’ secret identities. Meanwhile, folks on Friendfeed has come up with some really zany searches like: how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?, how many peppers did peter piper pick? and why is the sky blue?

Name search

Genealogic relation Search

City Search

Date Search comparison with Google

Gradient Tool Improvements

Built-in Pixel Shader Effects

Arrange By Z-Order

Easing Functions

Import Adobe File

Preview States

Copy State

New Item Window

Add Sample Data Source

Define New Sample Data

Property Type

String Format

Edit Sample Values

Annotations

Projection Transform

XAML Intellisense

C# Intellisense

Workspaces

Behaviors

When implementing a design that was created using Expression Design, I need to convert the point values for fonts to pixel values for the fonts to be rendered accurately as designed. Traditionally, a point is 1/72 of an inch. A Silverlight pixel renders at 1/96 of an inch. To convert a point to a pixel, I need to multiply the point by 96/72 or 1.333….

Here’s a handy chart that I use.

Note that this is not an issue with setting FontSize for TextBlocks in WPF. With WPF, the FontSize value can be set with the “pt” unit qualifier and no conversion is necessary. Unit qualifiers are not supported in Silverlight 2.

Here’s a video that I captured of the Safari 4 tabs in action.

Instead of naming a brush resource as MainWindowBackgroundBrush, they would use the name Background_MainWindow. At first, this may seem like an odd convention, especially with the underscore. However taken as a whole, this convention can be really useful in Expression Blend.

During the implementation process when applying brushes to WPF elements, the brushes can be quickly and easily set. Just select Brush Resources and find the correct brush. Since the brushes are in alphabetically order, all of the background brushes are in the same area. Likewise for the border and foreground brushes.

Also with this convention, we can remove the “Brush” word in the name since we can easily tell that a resource is a brush because the brush resources start with Border_, Background_, or Foreground_.

I think I will start following this naming convention in future WPF and Silverlight projects.

In WPF, you can call the DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode for it. In Silverlight, you can check for HtmlPage.IsEnabled property.

I check for design mode often and needed a simple, consistent method to mask the DesignerProperties call in WPF. In Silverlight, I wanted to hide the hacky HtmlPage.IsEnabled check and change it from being a not(!) check to a positive check. Also, when Silverlight support the DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode method, I can just easily change my check in one place. With some refinements from friends at work, I condensed it to a single static property in App.xaml.cs that I can use throughout my application.

In App.xaml.cs:

public static bool IsInDesignMode

{

    get

    {

        #if Silverlight

            return !HtmlPage.IsEnabled;;

        #else

            return DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(new DependencyObject());

        #endif

    }

}

Note that the precompiler directives can be removed if you’re just targeting WPF or just targeting Silverlight

Here’s how I use it:

void MainView_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

{

    if (App.IsInDesignMode)

    {

        LoadSampleData();

    }

    else

    {

        LoadRunTimeData();

    }

}

In the past month, I’ve seen fun links around Bacon, Legos, and Darth Vader. I wonder what will be the theme tomorrow?

A quick way to share the current page that you’re browsing on friendfeed is to use the friendfeed bookmarklet. Make sure to watch the video to see how to share sites along with pictures.

An issue I have with the bookmarklet is that I need to display the bookmarks toolbar in order to have a place to hold the bookmarklet. Ideally, I want to keep the browser chrome at a minimum. But unfortunately, you can’t just drag the bookmarklet like a button into the toolbar; it needs to reside in the bookmarks toolbar.

Here’s how I was able to add it to the left of the address bar.

1. Drag the Share on FriendFeed bookmarklet to the bookmarks toolbar
2. Delete the default bookmarks.
3. Right-click on an unused area in the toolbar and select customize
4. Move the Bookmarks toolbar to the left of the address bar and select done.
5. Right-click on an unused area in the toolbar again and uncheck bookmarks toolbar
6. I renamed the bookmark to simply “FF”

One thing that I would like to do is change the Icon to use the Friendfeed ico file and remove the text. That’s something that I’ll explore.