matt.griffith

The other day I was playing with Expression Blend and I noticed that many of the keyboard shortcuts in Blend are the same shortcuts that Illustrator uses. Here's a screencast of some of the things I found.

A flash version of the screencast is available here. Microsoft Expression Blend Uses Common Keyboard Shortcuts

Mitch Walker recently posted a short screencast showing off the Game Components features of the XNA Framework.

This is awesome. I completely wrote off the XNA Framework when I read the FAQ and learned how crippled the functionality is in this initial beta. But this short screencast got me very excited about the possibilities.

The idea of component based game development could be huge. If this takes off it could really revitalize the game development world. Personally I'm tired of paying $50+ for another rehash of the latest First Person Shooter. I long for games that focus on new and interesting game play rather than glitzy graphics and crappy stories. Here's hoping that XNA can do for game development what VB did for Windows software development. Good job XNA Team!

This also helps reinforce the idea that a focused, short, concise screencast is incredibly powerful. Thanks to Jon Udell for having the vision, passion, and patience to lead the way. He truly is one of my heroes.

In this short screencast I show how you can use IronPython and Snoop together to explore the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

IronPython is a wonderful dynamic language with full access to the .NET Framework. Snoop is a great WPF debugging tool. Together they can help you climb the steep WPF learning curve.

A flash version of the screencast is available here.

UPDATE: Rob Relyea points out a way for me to simply my code. Instead of doing:

b.Content = TextBlock()
b.Content.Text = "Hi"

I could do this instead:

b.Content = "Hi"

WPF creates the TextBlock for you automatically when you set the Content property to a string. That does work from IronPython. Thanks Rob.

UPDATE: In the comments to Rob's post above he points out that there is a way to refresh the Snoop visual tree (the treeview on the left side of the window). All you have to do is press F5. Very cool.

If you don't have IronPython installed see: HOWTO Screencast: Install IronPython

If you need to know how to build Snoop without Visual Studio see: HOWTO Screencast: Build Snoop without Visual Studio

Snoop is a great Windows Presentation Foundation debugging tool.

The Snoop download includes the source code and the Visual Studio project files needed to build it. But if you don't have Visual Studio installed you can use MSBuild to build Snoop. In this screencast I show you how to do just that.

A flash version of the screencast is available here.

Now that the Windows Presentation Foundation APIs have stabalized it is time for me to start seriously playing with it.

Jon Udell recently posted the screencast of a interview he did with Jim Hugunin. In this screencast Jim demonstrates IronPython. Jim & Jon do a great job explaining why you should install IronPython. Dynamic languages are a great way to explore new APIs. And IronPython is a great way to explore .NET APIs. But there weren't any demonstrations of how easy it is to install IronPython; until now.

In this 5 minute screencast I show you how to install and set up IronPython so you can use it to explore WPF.

A Flash version of the screencast is available here.

Installing SQLite 3 on Windows is pretty easy, once you figure out what you need to do. But when I started using Ruby on Rails I struggled to figure out what I needed to do. Here's a short screencast that demonstrates how you can install SQLite 3 on Windows so you can use it in your Ruby on Rails applications.

A flash version will eventually be available here.

I first started looking at Ruby on Rails more than a year ago. I even bought the first edition of Agile Web Development with Rails as soon as it was released. But I didn't do much with Rails until recently. I didn't want to struggle with setting up Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL. I've installed Apache and MySQL on Windows before and it wasn't much fun.

But now you don't have to worry about installing anything to try Rails. InstantRails includes everything you need to set up a fully working Ruby on Rails environment. Better yet, with InstantRails you don't have to install anything. You just unzip InstantRails to a folder and you have everything you need to try Ruby on Rails. If you decide you want to get rid of it just delete the InstantRails folder and your machine is back to normal.

I think this is such a big deal for Windows developers that I created a screencast showing how you can get a new Ruby on Rails application running on Windows in under 5 minutes.

5 minutes to Ruby on Rails nirvana

A flash version will eventually be available here.