You can find the slides and source code for my DevWeek 2009 presentations this week here:-

• StyleCop (or How To Start A Fight) (Slides)
• Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005 (Slides)
• Automating Testing Using Virtual Server 2005 (Source Code)
• Visual Studio 2008 Tips And Tricks (Slides)
• Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight Applications (Slides)

Craig Murphy and Andy Westgarth interviewed me at the "Heroes Happen Here" Visual Studio 2008 Launch last March and Craig posted the podcast on his site here as part of his Twelve Podcasts Of Christmas. It's about 15 minutes and I talk about Visual Studio 2008, extension methods, internationalization, community and The .NET Developer Network.

Yesterday I presented Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight (non-TechEd branded slides here) at TechEd Europe 2008 in Barcelona. I was quite pleased with it and felt it went fairly well. I went straight from the session to the Ask The Experts stand to answer questions about my subject. So I missed the excitement. But fortunately for me Richard Costall took the following photo:-

This is the speakers leader board and it shows how well the sessions are doing at any one moment in time. Sadly this is one of those times when a picture is worth a thousand misleading words. I would love to end the story here but it only lasted a short while and my moment was over:-

And now I'm no longer in the top 10 (there are 210 speakers here and 330 unique breakout or interactive sessions and mine is currently 31st) but I remain chuffed to bits with my 15 seconds of fame. BTW take a look at Bart De Smet and Jeff Wharton on the leader board in third and fourth places in the first picture (at the time the photo was taken). Bart and Jeff are the Speaker Idol Winners for TechEd Europe 2006 and 2007 respectively (Jeff is still fifth place on the board). FWIW Daniel Moth is currently top of the leader board but I'm sure Daniel would be the first to point out that as Rafal Lucawiecki and Anders Hejlsberg are not speaking at TechEd Europe this year it doesn't really count (just kidding, Daniel).

A while ago I blogged about the solution to creating strongly typed resource classes for Silverlight so that the classes had a public constructor to allow them to be loaded by the Silverlight XAML loader. Apologies to the people who downloaded the PublicResourceCodeGenerator and discovered that it worked in Visual Studio 2005 but not in Visual Studio 2008. It is fixed now for Visual Studio 2008. You can download it here.

I?m hoping it will be third time lucky for me as I return to the Coventry chapter of The Next Generation User Group on Monday 8th December 2008 for another outing of the Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight Applications talk. Here?s the abstract again:-

• The .NET Framework has supported internationalization since 1.0 but with each new UI platform comes a new approach and new challenges. Unlike Windows Forms and ASP.NET, WPF does not offer one standard solution to localization. Instead it offers choices. This session shows how to localize WPF applications using standard .resx files and how to localize ?post-build? using LocBaml with and without Resource Dictionaries. In addition you will see how to localize a Silverlight application using .resx files and we will consider issues that are specific to Silverlight. We will evaluate the pros and cons of each approach and arm you with the information required to form a localization strategy for your applications.

On my previous two attempts despite heavy and heavier hints for my fondness for medically disturbing junk food taste sensations the "Faggot And Pea Batch" (a delicacy of Coventry) was not forthcoming. But this time it?s Christmas. Surely it will be this time. And a Merry "Faggot And Pea Batch" Christmas to everyone!

I?m delighted to say that I will be speaking at TechEd Europe again this year and would you believe it I?m speaking on internationalization. No, it?s true. This time it?s the internationalization slant on WPF and Silverlight in:-

• WIN304: Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight Applications
  The .NET Framework has supported internationalization since 1.0 but with each new UI platform comes a new approach and new challenges. Unlike Windows Forms and ASP.NET, WPF does not offer one standard solution to localization. Instead it offers choices. This session shows how to localize WPF applications using standard .resx files and how to localize ?post-build? using LocBaml with and without Resource Dictionaries. In addition you will see how to localize a Silverlight application using .resx files and we will consider issues that are specific to Silverlight. We will evaluate the pros and cons of each approach and arm you with the information required to form a localization strategy for your applications.

Just like previous years I get the much coveted first slot of the day when everyone has had a great night out and are fully refreshed and really ready to receive lots of technical content. This time it?s on Wednesday 12th November 2008 between 9:00am and 10:15am. If you?re feeling fully refreshed and just bursting with eagerness to learn about internationalizing WPF and Silverlight come along!

I have posted unbranded slides on my Resources page for the Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight presentation first shown at ReMix UK 08 a couple of weeks ago.

If you have tried to localize Silverlight applications using .resx files you will probably have noticed that strongly typed resource classes don't work straight out of the box. This post describes how you can overcome this.

New in Visual Studio 2008 is the PublicResXFileCodeGenerator, a code generator for creating public strongly typed resource classes. This code generator does indeed generate public classes with public properties and for all applications except Silverlight this is exactly what is wanted of a public strongly typed resource class. But for Silverlight applications it is not enough. The problem is that the constructor in the generated code is still internal. Normally this doesn't make any difference because nothing ever constructs a strongly typed resource class directly; only the static properties are used. But the constructor is used in a Silverlight application and that's where the internal constructor is unhelpful. The manual solution to this problem is to edit the generated code and this is a very undesirable solution because you have to continually re-edit the generated code every time it is re-generated. A more permanent solution is needed and it is available in the form of the PublicResourceCodeGenerator. I have written a number of code generators for strongly typed resource classes that solve various problems. You can download the code generators here and the source code is included in the source code for my .NET Internationalization book here. Here is the current list of code generators for strongly typed resource classes:-

Code Generator Class	Description
ResourceCodeGenerator	Generates the exact same code as the ResXFileCodeGenerator and offers no additional benefit.
PublicResourceCodeGenerator	Generates almost the same code as the PublicResXFileCodeGenerator except that the constructor is public instead of internal.
ResourceProviderCodeGenerator	Generates the same code as the ResXFileCodeGenerator except that it uses a provider model instead of the ResourceManager.
PublicResourceProviderCodeGenerator	Generates the same code as the PublicResXFileCodeGenerator except that it uses a provider model instead of the ResourceManager and the constructor is public.
GlobalResourceProviderProxyGenerator	Generates the same code as the GlobalResXFileProxyGenerator (used for ASP.NET global resources) except that it uses a provider model instead of the ResourceManager.

So to generate strongly typed resource classes that can be used in Silverlight applications select the .resx file in Solution Explorer and then in the Properties Window set the Custom Tool to PublicResourceCodeGenerator.

Here's another automatic translation tool from Microsoft: the Captions Language Interface Pack (CLIP). CLIP is an offline real time translator that translates whatever control is under the mouse cursor. CLIP manifests itself as a stand alone window and a tooltip (you can enable/disable both independently). Here's the window:-

Here's a cut out of a menu with a CLIP tooltip translating "New" into "Nouveau":-

At the time of writing CLIP supports translation from English (United States) to French (France) and Alsatian (France) and vice-versa but you can probably expect more languages to be added in the future.

CLIP has similarities with another Microsoft technology. Back in May 2004 Microsoft announced Microsoft Application Translator (MAT). This product was designed to translate applications on the fly. MAT was never released but I'm guessing that CLIP is using some of the same technology.

 

ReMix UK 08 is Microsoft's 2 day UI technologies conference for designers and developers. This year it will be held in Brighton on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th September 2008 and I'm very pleased to say that I will be speaking on the Friday. My session is:-

Internationalizing WPF And Silverlight Applications
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications have as many similarities as differences from Windows Forms applications. The same is true for WPF’s localization model. This session illustrates how to localize and globalize WPF and Silverlight applications and pays particular attention to those issues that are unique to XAML, WPF and Silverlight.

There's lots to cover here and some thinking and some decisions to be made to get the right result.

See you there.