Copyright 2012 Michael Knopf's BlogMicrosoft's Silverlight systemLearning all the ins-and-outs of how to set up your Silverlight project so that you can actually solve a real-world business problem just isn't easy. This post is all about connecting the dots between your business, data, web services, website, and Silverlight app so that they can all communicate the way they need to.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/connecting-the-dots-how-to-build-a-real-world-silverlight-app.htmlSat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT2011-03-26T00:00:00Say What?! That's exactly what I said when I first saw this error. Come to find out the cause was nothing even close to what the message statedhttp://www.mknopf.com/articles/error-the-message-with-action-cannot-be-processed-at-the-receiver-due-to-a-contract-filter-mismatch-at-the-endpoint-dispatcher.htmlFri, 08 Oct 2010 16:04:36 GMT2010-10-08T16:04:36In the Silverlight Navigation Framework moving between pages is pretty straight forward, however you can run into some odd errors that will throw you for a loop if your not careful. As with...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/silverlight-navigation-framework-the-navigationcontext-and-query-string-parameters.htmlWed, 22 Sep 2010 12:38:12 GMT2010-09-22T12:38:12Often we have objects that we manipulate in code and need to add/remove from the visual surface of a Silverlight interface. One issue that may arise is the dreaded "Element is already the...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/silverlight-error-element-is-already-the-child-of-another-element.htmlThu, 16 Sep 2010 13:40:59 GMT2010-09-16T13:40:59I have heard, and participated in, the HTML 5 vs. Silverlight argument. Often the dialog begins with something like "Silverlight is on deaths door, HTML 5 has fatally wounded Silverlight and it will officially become a corpse in the very near future"...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/two-chefs-in-the-kitchen-the-future-of-silverlight-with-html-5.htmlThu, 02 Sep 2010 08:45:36 GMT2010-09-02T08:45:36Say What?!!! Why my Silverlight Project file suddenly won't load. Demystifying the The default XML namespace of the project must be the MSBuild XML namespace errorhttp://www.mknopf.com/articles/error-the-default-xml-namespace-of-the-project-must-be-the-msbuild-xml-namespace.htmlWed, 25 Aug 2010 13:09:34 GMT2010-08-25T13:09:34Resolving the annoying error: System.IO.FileNotFoundException Could not load file or assembly 'System.Windows.Interactivity, Version=4.0.5.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/error-could-not-load-file-or-assembly-system.windows.interactivity.htmlMon, 23 Aug 2010 10:23:41 GMT2010-08-23T10:23:41Recently I read an article by Sean Wildermuth concering the State of Data Access in Silverlight 4. He provided an excellent chart outlining the Pros and Cons of each data access choice.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/databind-options-in-silverlight-pros-and-cons-of-each.htmlWed, 21 Jul 2010 09:04:58 GMT2010-07-21T09:04:58A frank and easy to understand overview, in straight forward language, of the latest buzz word MVVM: what it is, how to use it, and if we should even care about at all.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/whats-this-mvvm-thing-and-why-should-i-care.htmlFri, 26 Mar 2010 18:10:11 GMT2010-03-26T18:10:11Bing has release a Maps SDK for use in your Silverlight projects. In this white paper we will cover how to use the SDK to display weather conditions for cities across the United States. The real-time weather data will be retrieved using the WeatherBug API and shown on the map. We will animate the weather conditions (a glowing sun for Sunny conditions, a raining cloud for Rain, etc...) and cover some core concepts along the way, specifically use of a Controller mechanism in your Silverlight projects, parsing XML into your own data model that can be returned from a Web Service, and of course getting up to speed with the Bing Maps SDK for Silverlight.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/creating-a-weather-map-using-the-bing-silverlight-map-sdk-and-weatherbug.htmlWed, 23 Dec 2009 19:55:08 GMT2009-12-23T19:55:08Building Silverlight application takes time, effort, patients, and tools (yes, you have to have some tools). In this post we will cover: where to get the necessities and some useful additional tools, as well as straight talk about the awesomeness, disadvantages, and difficulties of building Silverlight applications. We will also cover the basics of XAML, referencing and using related assemblies, and the how Expression Blend and Visual Studio make it all happen.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/silverlight-straight-talk-the-awesomeness-disadvantages-and-difficulties-in-silverlight.htmlMon, 07 Sep 2009 20:03:27 GMT2009-09-07T20:03:27In this post we will cover Silverlight from start to finish; including architecting, coding, testing, and deploying real-world Silverlight apps. We will also discuss security, its limitations, and what you need to know to secure your application and WCF services and deploy them to IIS.http://www.mknopf.com/articles/building-real-world-data-driven-silverlight-applications.htmlSat, 29 Aug 2009 22:43:54 GMT2009-08-29T22:43:54I've been working for several months on a Silverlight project and decided to upgraded from Silverlight 2 to Silverlight 3. The installs of the Toolkit and Visual Studio SDK's went well as did the upgrade to the project, however once the upgrade was done I compiled the project and was promptly smacked in the face with 182 compilation errors, 4 of which were Error 6 Custom tool error: Failed to generate code for the service reference 'Your Service Ref Name Here'. Please check other error and warning messages for details. 'Path to your Service Ref Resources File Here' and the rest were the typical cannot find, are you missing an assembly reference?http://www.mknopf.com/articles/upgrading-from-silverlight-2-to-silverlight-3-breaks-existing-wcf-service-references.htmlMon, 13 Jul 2009 12:46:30 GMT2009-07-13T12:46:30At some time in your career you will need to interview for a job, if you own your own consulting firm then you are most likely interviewing for jobs on a weekly basis (by pitching clients to contract you for work). Preparing for technical job interviews requires a great deal of research, work, and most of all patience. This article provides a list of questions and answers that I fielded while interviewing for senior level software development positions, it is a collection of my experiences during 17 different job interviews with 10 companies including NASA (who offered me a job)...http://www.mknopf.com/articles/preparing-for-technical-job-interviews.htmlFri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT2009-03-27T00:00:00http://www.mknopf.com/topics/silverlight.htmlMon, 15 Sep 2008 11:23:07 GMTen-us