Blog List

It is actually very easy to display gigabytes of custom imagery on Bing Maps with fantastic results, the trick is to know what tools to use. Read on for a streamlined process for the common geo image formats using Global Mapper, SpaceBlock, Windows Azure and a few helpful tips along the way.



At Bing Map’s core is the ability to render really large images in your browser. Both the AJAX, Silverlight and Mobile versions all use a concept of a tile pyramid to make this possible and effective over the web, you can read more about the tile system in great detail here. Today we are going to look at a process I use to process custom imagery to overlay Bing maps.



In the GIS field these custom images are called raster images and come in various file formats like...

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I’ve been exploring some of the fantastic Silverlight panel systems out there and was blown away by the Drag Dock Panel in the open source Blacklight project.





See the full demo here:

http://soulsolutions.com.au/silverlight/blacklight/

It is very impressive and makes you rethink how you may design your next LOB Bing Maps application. The panel system lets you add as many elements as your like and then drag them around or impressively make one larger with the other stacked up:



Imagine a tracking application where you could allow the user to dynamically add new map panes and in real time track many assets individually.



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For our July Girl Geek Dinner we're heading to The Hutch Bistro at New Farm and we're fortunate to have Kay Lam-Beattie as our guest speaker.  So gather all of your legal/IT questions to ask Kay on the night!



About Kay:

Kay graduated from QUT in 1992 with a Bachelor of Business (Accountancy) and an honours degree in Law. To obtain more specialised skills, Kay also completed a Masters in Law concentrating on the areas of intellectual property (IP) and IT-related legal issues, as well as a Graduate Certificate in IT.

Kay has been the principal of IDEALAW (and its predecessor Legal Capital Lawyers) since 2005.

Kay’s broadly based academic qualifications places her in an ideal position not only to understand the intricacies of her specialist areas of IT and IP related law, but also technical IT and business issues. Kay also speaks conversational Japanese, having lived and worked in Japan for a number of years.

Who is invited?

If you are a geek and a girl or know of one who is willing to escort you then you are welcome and encouraged to come along. There is a technical focus with the intention of having fun and connecting with other women in IT.

Who pays for dinner? This month is not sponsored so you will have to pay for your own dinner

Where + When Date: Thursday 2nd July, 2009 Time: 7:00 pm Where: The Hutch Bistro

75 Welsby Street, New Farm

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I downloaded the sample app for the Windows Live Messenger bits in preparation for our talk at Remix next week.  If you haven’t played with it, the WebToolkit Sample site is a great starting place!  There’s a couple of things you have to do to get them running so I thought it’d be a good idea to write these down for others.

Firstly, you’ll need an application id, so make sure you go to the Azure Services Developer Portal: https://lx.azure.microsoft.com/Cloud/Provisioning/Default.aspx and create a new project with a Live Services: Existing APIs type. Make sure you remember the domain name and URL you chose e.g. I picked remixdemo.com.au and return URL of http://remixdemo.com.au/Messenger/Default.aspx and also note down your app_id and secret key as you’ll need them to run the samples.

Make sure you add an entry in your hosts file for the domain you chose so you can run the application locally.  To do this open notepad as administrator, and open the hosts file located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and create an entry like: 127.0.0.1    remixdemo.com.au

Next, I went to IIS and created a virtual directory called Messenger and pointed it to the SampleSite. To run the application I browsed to http://remixdemo.com.au/messenger/Default.aspx.

Make sure you setup your site in the web.config to use your app_id,...

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Fonts Setting fonts used to be a bit painful but I’ve found it quite easy in WPF.  In my project I’ve copied the font files into a directory structure: \Resources\Fonts and I have a font file masanreg.ttf which contains the font called MasonSansRegular.

To use the font in Xaml if just reference the path to the font and the font name prefixed with a # e.g.

FontFamily="./Resources/Fonts/#MasonSansRegular"

You can also see the list in Blend under the Text section

I’ve been using ListBoxes with IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem property set to True to do a lot of master/detail views recently.  When using MVVM with Command Pattern it’s wasn’t immediately obvious to me how to manipulate which item was selected when I added/removed etc from the list.

If I’ve just created a client record and added it to my ObservableCollection of Clients in my viewModel I can use CollectionViewSource to get a hold of the view and manipulate the current item e.g.

CollectionViewSource.GetDefaultView(viewModel.Clients).MoveCurrentTo(client);

I’ve come across a few times when I want to change the layout and contents of my screen depending on what data I have in my object. I’ve found DataTriggers really useful for this.  Based on a field being populated or not is can switch out the actual template I apply to the ContentTemplate e.g.

    DataTemplate x:Key="clientDetails">         ContentPresenter x:Name="clientDetailsPresenter"    ContentTemplate="{StaticResource clientSummary}"    Content="{TemplateBinding Content}" />         DataTemplate.Triggers>             DataTrigger Binding="{BindingClient.TFN}"Value="{x:Null}">                 SetterTargetName="clientDetailsPresenter"            Property="ContentTemplate"            Value="{StaticResource clientFullDetails}" />             DataTrigger>         DataTemplate.Triggers>     DataTemplate>

The other spot I find this really useful is showing different data in a list when the item is Selected.

 

Technorati Tags: WPF,DataTemplate,DataTrigger

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Setting focus to a particular element on a screen seems like a simple and common task.  It gives the user that nice fuzzy feeling when they can just start typing in the first field of a screen without having to click into it with their mouse.  In WPF it doesn’t seem that easy to do.  For a lot of screens I was able to do this in XAML using the Focus Manager e.g.

FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=firstNameBox}" 

This worked pretty well in 90% of cases until I tried using this in an application using CAL where the controls are reused.  In this case I ended up having to use codebehind to set the focus on visibility changed and use element.Focus(). Seemed to be the only way to do this so it would set the correct visible field every time.  Anyone else got a better way?

We’re fortunate enough to be presenting at this year’s Remix in Sydney 11th June.  We’re making an appearance in the Designer Track this year and will be showing off the new Messenger Toolkit bits.  The abstract for our talk is:



See how to add IM to a site with the Windows Live Messenger Library and UI Controls, and how to build new relationships around content with Messenger social capabilities. Also hear how top sites and marketers are using the social connections of Windows Live users to grow and build brand loyalty.

What we intend to to cover is:

Put a little piece together to show off the latest features of the platform itself such as custom emotions on avatars, multi-point presence, xbox integration, photo sharing etc. What is messenger, why would you want to use messenger on your site? Show current examples Show the new controls and how they fit together Skinning Top Australian sites mix up, thought provoking ideas of how some of the top sites in Australia could use messenger. Call to action, get started today, links + resources.  

There are some great sessions including Silverlight 3, Expression 3 Sketchflow, Blend 3, Virtual Earth Silverlight Control, Surface development just to name a few. Register HERE and secure your Early Bird Ticket for $199!

 

Don’t forget to enter the IE8 competition: build a Web Slice, Accelerator or Visual Search Provider and you could...

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The Microsoft Mapping Road Show is back this year with sessions in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.  This year’s event is broken into both customer and partner sessions. This year’s special guest is Chris Pendleton a Virtual Earth Tech Evangelist in the US.

We’ll be presenting at the partner session in Brisbane on 10th June and will attend the Sydney sessions on the 12th.  Hope to see you all there.

Register at the following:

Microsoft Partner Sessions: https://www.microsoft.com.au/events/register/home.aspx?levent=324573&linvitation

Microsoft Customer Sessions: https://www.microsoft.com.au/events/register/home.aspx?levent=383149&linvitation

 

The agenda for both sessions is similar so we’ve included the extract from the customer one below:

The Microsoft mapping team are holding an event to provide you with all the information you require to integrate Virtual Earth into your business offering. Never before has it been so easy for companies to track assets, find customers, manage a mobile sales force or to make sure customers find you before they find a competitor!

Gain real insight into how map-enabling business applications can help create customer satisfaction and an optimised organisation. If you are a technologist you’ll be amazed at just how easy it is to access and integrate Microsoft maps into your existing environment. Developers should not miss this opportunity to hear from Chris...

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