Month / May 2010

by Aaron

Visual Studio 2010 Crashes

Visual Studio 2010 crashes a lot while doing WPF and Silverlight development for me. Anyone else having that same problem? It happens frequently after resuming my PC from ‘sleep’ or ‘hibernation’ …, but that could be a coincidence.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 has stopped working

Interestingly, one of the functions in the stack trace is a PNG encoder. PNG’s are my image file of choice in Silverlight and web applications. I know the project that was currently loaded contains several PNG files. Maybe there’s no connection.

     ntdll.dll!_RtlReportCriticalFailure@8()  + 0x57 bytes   
     ntdll.dll!_RtlpReportHeapFailure@4()  + 0x21 bytes   
     ntdll.dll!_RtlpLogHeapFailure@24()  + 0xa1 bytes   
     ntdll.dll!_RtlFreeHeap@12()  + 0x4ffeb bytes   
     kernel32.dll!_HeapFree@12()  + 0x14 bytes   
     WindowsCodecs.dll!WPF::ProcessHeapImpl::Free()  + 0x1c bytes   
>    WindowsCodecs.dll!DynArrayImpl<0>::~DynArrayImpl<0>()  + 0x104f bytes   
     WindowsCodecs.dll!CPngFrameEncode::~CPngFrameEncode()  + 0x66 bytes   
     WindowsCodecs.dll!CPngFrameEncode::`vector deleting destructor'()  + 0xd bytes   
     WindowsCodecs.dll!CMILCOMBase::InternalRelease()  + 0x24 bytes   
     WindowsCodecs.dll!CResetStream::Release()  + 0xe bytes   
     wpfgfx_v0400.dll!MILRelease()  + 0xe bytes   
     PresentationCore.ni.dll!5e74f2b1()    
     [Frames below may be incorrect and/or missing, no symbols loaded for PresentationCore.ni.dll]   
     PresentationCore.ni.dll!5e74f2b1()    
     PresentationCore.ni.dll!5e74f2fe()    
     clr.dll!_CallDescrWorker@20()  + 0x33 bytes   
     clr.dll!_CallDescrWorkerWithHandler@24()  + 0x8a bytes   
     clr.dll!MethodDesc::CallDescr()  + 0x148 bytes   
     clr.dll!MethodDesc::CallTargetWorker()  + 0x21 bytes   
     clr.dll!SafeHandle::RunReleaseMethod()  + 0xc7 bytes   
     clr.dll!SafeHandle::Release()  + 0x7b257 bytes   
     clr.dll!SafeHandle::Dispose()  + 0x2d bytes   
     clr.dll!SafeHandle::Finalize()  + 0xb0 bytes   
     mscorlib.ni.dll!617b913b()    
     mscorlib.ni.dll!617b90b2()    
     clr.dll!MethodTable::SetObjCreateDelegate()  – 0x1fc874 bytes   
     clr.dll!MethodTable::CallFinalizer()  + 0x75 bytes   
     clr.dll!WKS::CallFinalizer()  + 0x80 bytes   
     clr.dll!WKS::GCHeap::TraceGCSegments()  – 0x1f9fc6 bytes   
     clr.dll!WKS::GCHeap::TraceGCSegments()  – 0x1fa08a bytes   
     clr.dll!WKS::GCHeap::FinalizerThreadWorker()  + 0xb1 bytes   
     clr.dll!Thread::DoExtraWorkForFinalizer()  – 0xc291e bytes   
     clr.dll!Thread::ShouldChangeAbortToUnload()  + 0x1251e bytes   
     clr.dll!Thread::ShouldChangeAbortToUnload()  + 0x125d9 bytes   
     clr.dll!ManagedThreadBase_NoADTransition()  + 0x35 bytes   
     clr.dll!ManagedThreadBase::FinalizerBase()  + 0xf bytes   
     clr.dll!WKS::GCHeap::FinalizerThreadStart()  + 0xfb bytes   
     clr.dll!Thread::intermediateThreadProc()  + 0x48 bytes   
     kernel32.dll!@BaseThreadInitThunk@12()  + 0x12 bytes   
     ntdll.dll!___RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x27 bytes   
     ntdll.dll!__RtlUserThreadStart@8()  + 0x1b bytes   

by Aaron

How to embed and use the Google Web Fonts in Silverlight

There are a few steps necessary to using one of the Google Web Fonts in Silverlight.

Step 1

Go to the directory of web fonts here.

  image

Step 2

Pick your favorite font and click the embed link:

SNAGHTML5af9c8a9

Step 3

Verify the license is acceptable to your needs.

SNAGHTML5afad2c6

Step 4

Click the “Get the code” tab:

image

Copy the location of the CSS and open it in your favorite editor. I just paste it into a new tab in Chrome. But you could open it in Visual Studio if you’d like for example (just File > Open).

Step 5

Grab the font URL from the CSS (copy the link to the clipboard).

image

Step 6

From the same tab in Chrome, I paste in that value which prompts me to download the file:

Give the font a file name and save it locally.

image

Step 7

In Windows 7, installing Fonts is easy (as easy as it should have been for years). For other operating systems, consult your OS docs.

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In Windows 7, simply click the image button.

Step 8-Blend 4 (RC)

In Blend 4, to use the font, you’ll need to select it once as a Font choice:

 image

Click the “Embed” checkbox to include it in your XAP file.

image

Step 8-Visual Studio 2010

In Visual Studio 2010, copy the font file to a new folder (suggest something like Fonts). Set the build action to Resource:

image

Step 9

Then, to use the font, set the FontFamily to be the Path/FileName.ext#FontName as shown here:

image 

<Button Content="Login" Height="54" Margin="21,156,16,0" 
                x:Name="button1" 
                VerticalAlignment="Top" Click="button1_Click" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" 
                FontFamily="FONTS/INCONSOLATA.TTF#Inconsolata" />

 

Step 10

Sit back and enjoy the new font.

by Aaron

Impressive LiveCycle Data Services Numbers

My knowledge of Adobe’s LiveCycle Data Services platform is very limited as I’ve experimented with it only once. However, I’m impressed with the ability of the LiveCycle Data Services (LCDS) to push what seems like a massive amount of messages per second to client machines running Adobe Flash/AIR applications.

http://www.dcooper.org/blog/client/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=084D6DDA-4E22-1671-5EFB301D42924692

LCDS in their scenario was able to push 400,000 messages to 500 concurrent clients with an average latency of less than 15 milliseconds on a single dual-processor Intel machine.

I know there were some big improvements in the network stack and polling API in Silverlight 4 (in particular the http stack added multiple messages per poll) – but I don’t know how it compares from a performance perspective to the Adobe options.

Anyone know of any real-world comparisons?

by Aaron

Apple Says: Safari Only!

I was browsing around in Chrome, looking at some examples of different JavaScript frameworks that Apple has created in the past few years and hit this:

Safari Only

“To access One to One, you must use a supported browser. Please download and install Safari 3.”

Harsh.

(And it hasn’t been updated to reflect the current version of Safari).

by Aaron

New magical accessory for iPad Announced: Duct tape and a Timex

image I’m no longer surprised that the iPad doesn’t include a clock or alarm application. It apparently cannot keep time better than a $5 wrist watch. My 3G iPad suggests that it is 5:51am this morning while the LaCrosse atomic clock hanging in my exercise room says it’s 5:59am. (I know that the atomic clock is correct).

There are numerous posts in the Apple forums with people having the same issue. Nice work Apple. Keep up the magic.

Discussions on Apple Forums

Forums on MacRumors

(* Yes, I know the watch isn’t a Timex. It’s an Eddie Bauer watch. :-)  ).