Developers always try to provide the user a easiest way to represent the data irrespective of the technology that has been used. Hence, for a huge collection of data, generally we provide “AutoComplete TextBox” to the user instead of ComboBox or ListBox.

The reason behind this is to provide searchable and filterable UI to the user for easy access. Today in this post, we will learn how to use the Telerik’s RadAutoCompleteBox in both Silverlight and Windows Phone.

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.

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.

For Windows Phone applications and/or Windows 8 Store applications we need metro icons and that’s very easy to create with Syncfusion Metro Studio 2. I am using this free tool for quite a long time in my apps as well as in my blog posts and am quite impressed with it.

Many people asked me several times about creating metro icons and thus I thought to share about it in today’s blog post. Here it goes for you.

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.

Microsoft released CTP (Community Technology Preview) version of Visual Studio 2012 Update 2 just few months after the release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 1. This new release comes with the Blend for Visual Studio which now supports all the major project templates.

If you are using multiple versions of Expression Blend, it’s time for you to upgrade to this release. Find out more about this release and download links.

“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.

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.

During TechEd 2012 Telerik announced their first control library set for Windows 8 Metro application. I blogged about it few days ago and if you didn’t read it yet, you can find it here “First Look to Telerik RadControls for Win8 Metro”.

Earlier this control library set was for few developers through invitation only as it was in Early Adopter Mode. Telerik now released the first beta set of this controls for public download. You can now use these controls to develop your Windows 8 Metro applications. As it is in beta stage, the library is available for free download and once they release the final binaries, we will come to know about the pricing. Till then, try out the controls and read the complete post to find out the downloadable link and other resources.

During TechEd 2012, Telerik announced their first commercial library for building Windows 8 Metro applications. This control library is a set of controls for XAML and HTML apps. User can chose the language of their own choice and deliver a high end Windows 8 enterprise and consumer applications using these controls.

In this blog post, I will describe more about the controls and guide you to kick start with your Metro application development using the Telerik RadControls. The controls set is neither yet released nor available publicly to download. In case you want a special early adopter access, this blog post will help you to get one too.

Here comes the weekly news digest of Silverlight-Zone.com for the week 6th November 2011 to 12th November 2011. Once again the “Future of Silverlight” hit the developers. Lots of rumours we have seen during the week on Silverlight. Still waiting to hear about the future from the voice of Microsoft.

Find the top 5 posts made by Mike James, John Callaham, @maryjofoley, @JeremyLikness and @Telerik. Also find out the daily news digest links, if you missed any one during last week.

Behaviors are most demanded feature to include in Silverlight, Windows Phone 7 and/or WPF applications to implement proper MVVM pattern to do some UI level actions. These are pluggable on demand and don’t need any other extra code to integrate. Just a simple XAML change and you are done.

In this article, we will learn how to use the inbuilt “PlaySoundAction” behavior to add sound effect on button click. We will demonstrate it using Windows Phone 7 application. Read more to learn. Complete demonstration with images for each steps available.

Weekly News Digest of Silverlight-Zone.com is up once again. We publish this digest every Sunday. As regular, find herewith the “Top 5 Posts of the Week” and “Daily News Digests” links.

During the week, we submitted 71 article links related to Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, Metro, LightSwitch, XAML etc. We submitted these links from various authors. If you are also writing blog posts on those topics, please share us your blog link so that, we can contribute them to the site to reach out the already available good content to the vast readers. We welcome every feedbacks and suggestions to improve our site. Thanks to everyone for their support.

Last day we discussed about “Silverlight Page Navigation Framework” where we understood the basic concept. We learnt how to add pages in the project from the template and the root of the page xaml. We also learnt about the assembly which we need to use to develop a navigation application using Silverlight.

Today in this post, we will discuss about Uri Mapping which will help you to implement the navigation application very easily. You will also be able to hide the actual Url of the page. We will discuss about each point in brief with a simple example continuing from previous post.

Let us start with a three days tutorial series on Silverlight Navigation Framework. Today in this post, we will discuss about Page Navigation Framework in Silverlight. Here we will learn what the Page is, how to kick start with navigation framework and details about this.

This post will help to understand the basic knowledge of it. You will find it handy while developing your Silverlight application. Next two days, we will learn how to map a page URL and pass parameter to the page using a small and simple example. Continue reading to learn more about it.

Few days ago, I published a XAML Tips "How to Convert a Rectangle to a Path Control using Expression Blend?". Today in this post, we will discuss on another tips similar to that post. In this post, we will discuss on the steps to crop an element to give a desired output.

This post will help a beginner who just started designing XAML using Expression Blend. Hope, this small tip will help you to understand it in better way. Read to know more on this topic.

This will be a short tip of the day where I will show you the way to convert a Rectangle or a Ellipse control to a Path control. If you are not familiar with Expression Blend and currently working with it to design your UI, this tip will definitely help you in various scenarios.

Let’s start with a small demonstration using Rectangle control. You can do the same for Ellipse too. Read to know more.