Obviously, the one without the degree. Requires less investment in the short term, is immediatly productive and - because he has no degree - you get away with paying him less. :-)

Your issue seems fixed, which is great. However, I wonder why you use datatriggers to accomplish this. Consider doing it through binding instead with the help of a converter. If the visibility of the texblock is always directly related to the checkbox being checked / unchecked, then you could use elementbinding to do so.

The resulting XAML is simpler and achieves the same result.

Silverlight is very much alive and kicking. It just morphed into "modern apps" for windows phone and windows 8.x Internally at microsoft, these technologies are refered to as "Silverlight 8". But you off course mean Silverlight as a webbrowser plugin. Well, as others have said, it's supported through 2021. So I consider it still a viable technology to use for applications that typically don't have a long lifespan of 5+ years. For apps with longer lifespan... Silverlight is probably not the best idea. For me, the go-to tech for line of business apps now is either ASP MVC for web or WPF for desktop. And it makes me sad, because I love XAML and MVVM.

Are you still stuck on this? I realise it's a bit late, but anyhow... Assuming your binding is working (didn't test your code, can't at the moment), all you would need to do is add a callback for the dependency property change.

public static readonly DependencyProperty SelectecCategoryProperty =
DependencyProperty.Register("SelectecCategory", typeof(object), typeof(LookupComboControl), new UIPropertyMetadata(new PropertyChangedCallback(OnChanged))););

...

private static void OnChanged(DependencyObject obj, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
//obj is your control. you can cast it here and call a method on it to get rid of the static state you are in
var control = obj as LookupComboControl;
control.SetCategoryOnVm();
}

private void SetCategoryOnVm()
{
vm.Category = this.SelectedCategory //(= your dependency property)
}

WPF has the richest xaml-based feature set. Silverlight was pretty much a stripped down version of WPF. WinRT xaml looks like a stripped down version of silverlight ("looks like", because I haven't done anything worthwhile in it yet, it's just first impressions). In any case, as long as you get the xaml principles down along with MVVM, you'll be up and running on all xaml platforms in no time. The learning curve can be quite steap though, it's a lot to take in at first. But it's real fun imo.

Colborne_Greg wrote:

Windows 9 is the end goal of windows 8 - it will not have the desktop that everyone is in love with

Sorry, but that's just nonsense. Never gonna happen. Perhaps in the RT version - and even that sounds very unlikely to me.

I'm not sure what you mean with bringing CSS horrors to application development? I love xaml / C# combo. :-) It's indeed a steap learning curve though. Once you understand the magic, I feel like it's super easy (and fast) to get stuff going on screen. MVVM is a must, though.

So, this is certainly choosing between the lesser of 2 evils :wtf: If I HAD to choose one of both, the first example would be it, even if only for performance reasons - since the loop breaks when ABC was found. But having said that... No. Just... No. :-D

I get that. However, my surface is only a means to an end. It only holds my installed software. My personal data is all on my fileserver, wich I back-up frequently. And the important data (family photo's, some documents etc) is backed up on skydrive as well (so I have it on at least 3 locations at all times) As for the code of the projects I work on, that's all stocked in code repositories on various servers. In other words, if my surface explodes today, I'll be up and running later today with a new device without any loss of data, except for what wasn't saved during the explosion. :-) As my professional (and to some extent my personal) life is largely digital, the possibility of SPoF is probably my single biggest nightmare. So yea, I took the necessary steps to avoid it at all costs :-)

I always find it hilarious when some random guy tells me that he's going to abbandon the windows ship after 15+ years of working on that platform exclusively and is going for a mac instead... and then cites the "learning curve of windows 8" as the reason for making that jump. :omg:

To me it makes a lot of sense. And I mean that in a big way. I used to have a desktop at home, a desktop at the office, a laptop for on the road and a tablet for browsing the web while in the sofa. Now, I have a single windows 8 hybrid tablet. I was literally able to throw out my 2 desktops, my laptop AND my tablet and replace them all with a single surface pro tablet. People yap that the surface pro is "to expensive". It's not cheap, true. But it's not any more expensive then comparable ultrabooks. And in addition, I don't actually have a need for desktops, laptops and tablets anymore. This means that a single 1100 bucks device (with another 250 bucks for a USB3.0 docking station) saves me 4000 bucks worth of now-obsolete devices. I'ld call that a good deal. My home desktop now functions only as a media- and fileserver. My personal opinion is that this is exactly what microsoft had in mind when developing both windows 8 as well as the surface line. And I can only applaud it as being absolutely genius. Are there still quirks in it? Off course... All new products usually have. My guess is that windows 8.1 will solve a lot of those. But even with the current quirks, I would not want to go back to 4 devices with windows 7, android/ios and all the sync troubles that gave me. Now, I have my full pc with me everywhere I go. I have all my important files on skydrive. Through the skydrive desktop app on my fileserver, I have access to everything on that server as well. In my useage scenario's as a professional software engineer, this beats anything I previously owned hands down. Imo, it also beats anything currently on the market by any and all competitors. At least for what I use computers for - off course. My use cases are mine by defenition. So to answer your question: Yes, it makes a lot of sense to me. And no, I do not work for microsoft.

Indeed! It's basicaly the designer from Expression Blend that was injected into visual studio.

I'm not aware of any WPF apps being shipped with win8. But if I remember correctly, both visual studio as well as blend were built with WPF.

I don't get that. WPF is a very stable tool and the default technology for desktop .NET development. Silverlight, on the other hand, is as good as dead. No new versions will come out and it's only a matter of time before it isn't supported any longer.

JackDingler wrote:

Sort of like having a peanut butter sandwich with no peanut butter

No. Kind of like having a peanut butter sandwich with butter from another brand then usual.

JackDingler wrote:

Then you're just talking about a desktop app with more layers than native apps.

Eum, no. Instead of calling a business or datalayer, you just call a webservice. That's all. The number of layers doesn't change, the layers merely change location. And then off course, there still is VPN tunneling. So I don't really see what the problem is.

Sure. We do intranet development regurarly as well. But those are internal systems. It's quite different from the general picture that is being drawn here... Their databases are internal. Their data is internal. And I'll bet you everything I own that, next to the administrative intranet, they'll all have office installed, along with a range of other desktop applications. It's called the "right tool for the right job". I never claimed that web-based applications don't have a place. I'm merely arguing that it's asanine to think that everything will simply move to the browser. Also, I reject the notion that it's "easier" to deploy a web application. This is simply not true. We have an update mechanism for our desktop applications (built it ourselves, I admit). All it takes to deploy a new version: create zip file with new db scripts and the release build and place that file on the FTP. Done. Next time the application is started, it will find the new version and update itself. And last but not least, an intranet is hardly something new. We've been implementing intranet applications for at least 8 years now.

Wait, you guys are getting paid? :omg:

JackDingler wrote:

Nope, web apps will take over, because every business wants their internal data transferred around the world and back with every mouse click

Newsflash: you don't need a web application to be able to use web services.

You need to stop changing your goal post. Your entire rant on this thread is to claim that desktop goes away and the web takes over. And you claim that in such a way as if it completely changes our business. It doesn't. Because we aren't into consumer software. We are into enterprise software. Also, it's extremely wrong to make blanket statements about consumer software as well. I can easily imagine DOZENS of scenario's where the web simply won't get the job done. I'ld also like to remind you that I haven't seen a SINGLE chrome OS laptop. If you are correct in your claims, we SHOULD be seeing them pop up everywhere. I even have trouble finding a store that is willing to order them (not that I want one though).