Today while creating my first CI Build definition in the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, I noticed that, though the Silverlight 5 SDK is installed in the server, I was unable to run the build. It was throwing an error message that says “The Silverlight 4 SDK is not installed”.

The issue was not actually with the Silverlight SDK and I found the solution after lots of analysis. In this post, I am going to share it so that, if you come across the same issue, it will be helpful.

Sometime we might want to navigate to a specific URL in LightSwitch application. That might be a web page URL or a direct URL to some file. If you are a Silverlight developer, you might know how to navigate to an URL but there are some trick in case of LightSwitch.

If you are looking for a piece of code to learn the mechanism and to include in your project, then this post will guide you step-by-step.

XAML namespace is an extension of XML namespace and conventionally written as “xmlns” in XAML pages. We use it on all XAML pages in Silverlight, Windows Phone, Windows 8, WPF related technologies to better reference assemblies and namespaces.

In this post we will learn more about this XMLNS namespace and the way to customize it for a cleaner XAML page. Interested to know it? Continue reading and share your feedback about the post.

If you are using Telerik’s RadRichTextBox control in your Silverlight application, you might have noticed that the control exposes a format tool which pops up in the screen when you select some text inside the control. This is the same behaviour that you notice in Microsoft Word too.

But for some reason, you might want to hide that toolbar if you are building an application like notepad. This small post will cover the same for you.

If you are working with the Telerik’s RadRichTextBox control for Silverlight, you might come to a situation where as per your business need you might have to customize the default context menu of the said control. If you are looking for an way to add or remove context menu group, this post will help you.

Continue reading the post to understand the way this context menu has been structured. Once you understand the basics, it will be easy for you to do further modifications.

In your Silverlight application, you might want to detect whether network connection is available and then based on the result, you might want to do a service call or disable few buttons. This is a most wanted feature by the Silverlight developers.

So if you are looking for code, this post will help you to understand the APIs and integrate the same in your Silverlight applications.

A long time ago while developing a custom control, I wrote a piece of code which allows a developer to enter “Auto” as string to a custom property of type double. Yesterday, I was in a need to use the same functionality in one of my control.

That reminds me the previous implementation and fortunately I was able to get it from TFS repository. Thus I thought to share the same with you in case you need it in future.

Memory Leakage in applications are most common and a developer maximum time does not care about it. There are various possibilities for Memory leakage and one of them is Events registered in applications which a developer unknowingly forgets to handle.

So, what are the cases where that could make problem and are there any proper solutions to tackle down this issue? Let us discuss on this topic today.

“What is Dispatcher object and why to use it in application?” - It’s a common question asked by beginners working in various XAML technologies like Silverlight, Windows Phone etc. I came to such instances many time when the developer has no clue about “Cross Thread Exception”.

That is the reason I wanted to publish this post mentioning the use of this Dispatcher object, mainly when you are getting an “Invalid cross-thread access” exception.

In the last post we discussed “How to Crop an Image using the WriteableBitmap class”. If you didn’t read it yet, first try to understand that before reading this post as we are going to use it in this post very frequently.

Today in this post we are going to learn how to crop an image in different shapes like rectangle, circle or any other different complex shapes programmatically.

Some time we need to crop an image uploaded by user in Silverlight or Windows Phone applications. Sometime we also need to do a rotate transform or skew transform to the image before saving it. So, how to achieve it?

This blog post will cover the code with details using the WriteableBitmap class that comes with the SDK. Continue reading to know more about it.

Earlier days while working with Silverlight 2, it was very difficult to take a snapshot of the XAML page programmatically in Silverlight. Later WritableBitmap class helped us to take snapshot of any portion and save it as image.

Today I learnt something new to do this operation very easily using Telerik library methods and hence thought to share with you in this post.

Yesterday while working with Telerik’s RadHtmlPlaceholder control for Silverlight, I noticed that, it is unable to open certain websites and showing a message that says “The content cannot be displayed in a Frame”.

After doing an investigation, I came to know that, it is default behaviour of the control we can not handle. Let’s discuss more on the issue and the reason behind it.

Here comes my new Windows Phone application in the Windows Phone Store. The application is free for you to use. Kids can learn capitals of countries using this app. Not only this, you can anytime search on this app to query about the capital of a country.

This is my 8th Windows Phone app and dedicating it to all Windows Phone users. Continue to get the downloadable link and few screenshots of the application.

1st October is the most prestigious day for me. Today Microsoft re-awarded me the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award for the 3rd time in a row and I am still a Silverlight MVP since October 2010.

My sincere thanks to all the community friends, MVP Lead for their continuous support. Hope to serve the developer community with more contents in coming year.

Recently I had shown few of my Windows Phone application to few people and connected with one “Mahatma” (Guru) and inspired by him I built a “Quotes of Vivekananda” application for the sake of Swami Vivekananda lovers.

I am dedicating this application to all the followers of Vivekananda who need the bless and inspiration from his great quotes.

Here comes the 6th Windows Phone application from me named “Emergency Dialer”. This application is freely available in the Marketplace and I hope, this will be helpful for you and your parents for sure.

I am dedicating this phone app to all the senior citizens who need to contact their doctor, nurse or family members in emergency. Sharing herewith few snaps and downloadable link.

Finally the “MCTS: Microsoft Silverlight 4 Development (70-506) Certification Guide” book authored by Johnny Tordgeman is available in the market. I was the Technical Reviewer of this book along with Evan Hutnick, who works as a Developer Evangelist at Telerik.

In short, this book will provide all that you need to know to pass the Microsoft Silverlight 4 dev exam (70-506). Find more about this book and publisher link to buy it online.

My 5th Windows Phone application is now in Windows Phone Marketplace which you can download for free and motivate yourself and your friends with random motivational quotes. It provides sharing functionality to share the quotes in social networking sites.

The app has been designed using the Telerik controls and I am confident that, it will be the best quote app in the marketplace. Keep reading to know more about this free application, few screenshots of it and get the downloadable link to install it in your device.

The Microsoft 70-506 exam is designed for candidates who are preparing and maintaining rich Internet-based applications using Silverlight. It emphasizes on Silverlight 4, however also covers core Silverlight concepts. The TS: Silverlight 4 Development (70-506) exam provides credit towards MCTS: Silverlight 4 Development.

Few days ago, I started reviewing the preparation kit and today in this blog post, I am going to share the review report of the Preparation Kit. Read how it will help you to prepare yourself for the Exam. Special discounts are available for my blog followers. If you want to purchase it, contact me first to get a discount coupon.