Archive for November, 2008
Technical Timeout 1
Nov 25th
I’m going to try a new thing out on my blog. It’s called the “Technical Timeout” … its a small time to take a break from Technology and get a laugh or two.
With that said, here is Technical Timeout, Part 1.
Introducing…. Terry Tate – Office Linebacker:
I advise that you use headphones on this. PG-13 language.
To a lot of you, this is old stuff, but to those of you who have never seen Terry Tate, oh goodness, you’re in for a surprise. If you’ve already seen this… watch it again, its worth it.
Store Locator – Moved to Codeplex
Nov 23rd
The Store Locator I built for ASP.NET has been getting a lot of traffic over the last year and requests have been coming in for new features like crazy. To manage this project a little more effectively, I’ve decided to move the project to CodePlex.
You can now download the source from Codeplex here (codeplex.com/storelocator).
Debugging Silverlight Tip
Nov 21st
If you’re doing any kind of Silverlight work you’re bound to get “Error on page” in Internet Explorer. Here’s what I’m talking about.
You fire up your app in the browser window and BLAM. Screen is empty and you get the “Error in page” error. Double click the error and you get an Internet Explorer JS Error Window. Here it is in all its glory:
How Do I Catch The Exception in Code?
The exception IS happening in code you’re just not catching un-handled exceptions.
To turn them on, go to Debug –> Exceptions:
You’ll get the window below. Check the “Common Language Runtime Exceptions” checkbox and click OK.
You will not get exceptions bubbled up to the Dev Environment. Here’s what it looks like in action (with the same error as the “blank screen” above).
Click “Break” and break into the area where the code barfed on you, and then clean up the mess you’ve created (on accident of course – who creates un-handled exceptions for fun anyway). 
Enjoy.
TCCC 5 Interview on You Tube
Nov 17th
Back at the Twin Cities Code Camp I was interviewed by Jason Bock. He decided to post the interview on You Tube. If you want to hear me ramble on for almost 4 minutes you can do so by clicking the picture below. We go over my talk and some of my history of working at McFarlane Toys. Enjoy!
XamlParserException – AG_E_PARSER_BAD_TYPE
Nov 14th
Ohhhhh the dreaded XamlParserException. The exception message is not to helpful at all.
In my instance I was working with Silverlight. Namely working with the Prism V2 Drop #5 from the Composite WPF team. Get the latest and read up the project here. I was loading the TreeView control into my view (Xaml) and when the app fired up the project would bomb with this exception and the message was VERY informative *sarcasm*.
AG_E_PARSER_BAD_TYPE
Hmm… Ok. Sure. Sounds good.
I have my projects laid out like so.
The Prism Shell (Top) loads different modules at runtime. Module A has a view (View 1) which has a tree view. Therefore, Module A (which is a Silverlight App itself) references the Microsoft.Windows.Controls library which contains the new controls for Silverlight (download them here). When this was getting compiled and referenced at runtime, the Microsoft.Windows.Controls dll was not in the Shell project, therefore it would blow up when it tried to parse the Xaml. Giving me the lovelly and dreaded XamlParserException.
The Fix
Simple. Add a reference to the Microsoft.Windows.Controls dll in the main Prism App. Then…. BLAMMO… the control toolkit works as expected.