Fret1 Blog

Well after numerous days of coding, you would think it would be a disaster to lose all my code if something went horribly wrong. Of course, we all take daily backups, right?

If you’ve got yourself set up with Subversion source control then you have no excuse. Lots of free subversion hosting nowadays.

Floyd Price who host Planetmicroisv has free Subversion hosting for single projects.

Alternatively just zipping up the code and sending to an email account or backing up to a USB drive could save you a whole lot of heartache.

Sitting in Australia on Collins, tucking into a ham sandwich and free wifi. On a drizzly holiday Monday here in Melbourne. Time for a peek at what I’ve been working on. Silverlight Beta 2 was released, but no comboboxes yet They should be in the release candidate according to Scott Guthrie. So I’m stuck with big listboxes for the time being.

Guitar Chord Finder Preview

First up a Major D chord being highlighted

Here is a C Major Scale

An E Major Chord(blue) inside an E Major Scale(green)

And finally a all the notes in C-E-G chord progression

How is it Day 6 already?

Anyway things are progressing along fairly nicely. Except when developing in Silverlight I need to still bear in mind that it is still beta so there are still some rough edges.

My top complaints so far:

1) No dropdownlist.

This is a huge omission, better be fixed in the upcoming release or I’ll be going round Balmer’s house to complain.

Workaround: Currently just using listboxes in the UI.

2) Can’t disable controls.

Another strange omission, seems like a standard requirement. You can make them not visible but not disable them like Windows controls

Workaround: Quick and nasty hack is to drop the opacity to 0.5 and check on the click event whether it should fire.

3) Can’t modify UI on other thread

At least I think that’s the problem, haven’t looked to much into this one. I was trying to alter a shape on a timer callback thread, but access violation exceptions were getting thrown.

Workaround: Move the main animation loop into the control. In fact for what I was looking to get done, a storyboard is probably a better option

The great thing about Silverlight is that I can code in C# and just have an application run on the web. The main new thing to learn in XAML which is a declarative markup for the visuals. MS Blend is program provided by Microsoft to help with the development of Silverlight front-ends. Potentially they have a really nice split between designers and coders with this. VS.Net is somewhat lacking currently in the visual design of Silverlight (i.e. you can’t do anything!). However unlike Blend it has intellisense where you can directly edit the XAML and see the result in real-time. I find myself flicking between Blend and VS.Net.

After reading about the 30 day sprint challenge, I thought I would join in.

30 Days to create a product and release for the paying public. How hard could it be?

The Plan

Create a set of web-based music tools which help hobby musicians enough that there are willing to open their wallets and shell out some cash for a monthly subscription.

Next Step

Write some code! I am planning on using Silverlight to write these music tools. Mostly because Rich Internet Applications (RIA) look interesting and because I’m used to C# it’s not too much of a stretch.

I have a rough idea for the guitar chord finder tool. I want to make it more advanced so that you can use multiple features simultaneously. The hard bit is keep the user interface simple and intuitive.

Added Challenges

I’ve recently moved to Melbourne and am currently job hunting (anybody need a .Net developer?) and staying in a hostel. Not exactly an ideal coding situation, but nevermind. At least I’ve found a cafe with free wifi (I think I’ll be a regular

Good luck to all the other fellow challengers out there, I look forward to seeing what everybody comes up with in 30 days (erm 28days)

Hi,

Welcome to the Fret1 Blog. I aim to make Fret1.com a centre for web-based music tools. The first tool is already here!

Feel free to try the new Guitar Chord Finder

Let me know what you think.

p.s. If you don’t have Silverlight install you will need to add it. It’s a free download from Microsoft.