Aug 29, 2011

Knowing Enough To Know I Know Nothing

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It takes every fiber of my being to resist arguing with folks on the usual suspects: religion and politics. And it's not for the reason you might think. Sure, I hold very controversial positions (read: atheist libertarian) on each subject, so I'm bound to disagree with just about anyone I talk to. But that's not why I resist the urge, generally speaking.

I read a lot. I try to keep up with the basics in news, particularly politics, science, and other geeky things related to my career in software. It takes a lot of my time. I imagine many folks choose other things instead. Or choose to read different topics than I do. That's fine, of course.

But if all of this absorption of knowledge so far in my short life has taught me anything it is that things are always more complicated than they seem.

Aug 16, 2011

A WPF SearchTextBox control

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Something missing from WPF (and the toolkit and even the extended toolkit) is a good reusable search box control. Well, now you too can have a pretty good one (if I dare say so). The need for one is so apparent that even Microsoft singles it out as a specific control in their guidelines*, which I used extensively to design the look and behavior of this control.

Too busy to read the details? That’s fine.

(Don’t forget to change the namespaces and image paths!)

See another of my custom WPF controls here.

Updated (9/27/2011): Added Luna.NormalColor.xaml and Classic.xaml files for XP and classic theme support.