Telerik’s ComboboxColumn for the Silverlight RadGrid is highly useful for presenting drop-down list options for the user in a grid-editing scenario. But it’s also very easy to template, and you can even template the ‘Display’ look of the cells to match that of your dropdown list items. Using templates, we have the ability to display the dropdown choices using data-driven visual elements, for a much richer user experience.

If you aren’t aware of the unique qualities of Falafel Software, here’s one for the archives. Falafelites are located across 4 time zones in California, Colorado, Texas, and Michigan, and through each other we get to experience lives beyond our own. And they aren't always what you might expect (includes cute baby animal pictures!)

I have been using Telerik’s RadTabControl for Silverlight for a while, and have finally been able to upgrade to the new Q3 2009 release. Happily, I am noticing some new features from my wish-list which will make tab navigation oh so much easier.

Ever find yourself getting emailed tasks and then noticing they get lost too easily in the daily pile of emails? Generally it doesn’t happen to the really important ones, or those that are tracked by some other task/project tracking mechanism. To avoid permanently feeling scatterbrained, I started trying to use the Tasks section of Outlook 2007 to track such otherwise un-tracked items on my To-Do list. I liked the categorization, and also the summary list that showed up next to my email reading pane. But recently I found a feature that makes it invaluable – Drag and Drop tasks!

One feature I really like in Telerik’s WinForms RadGrid control is the ability to save and load layout information using the Serialization API. It’s nice to be able to to persist appearance and other settings in XML format, so that they can be restored later and provide a more consistent feel for the user. In this blog, learn how to save a non-typical setting: Summary Row formatting.

Once again I’m sharing some tips and tricks for the Telerik RadGridView control; this time for your combobox editors inside the grid. Learn to allow cell clearing using the combobox and have properly sized dropdowns regardless of cell width.

Once again I am spending a lot of time working with Telerk’s RadControls for WinForms, and most recently have been looking for all sorts of ways to squeeze every possible bit of speed out of a RadGridView control. Sometimes a really simple change has made a noticeable improvement, and I thought it would be useful to collect those simple-yet-effective tips all in one place.

I recently needed to use the cells of a Telerik RadGridView to display data in an unusual way, and bind the values of those cells to the records of another RadGridView control. Some experimentation revealed that the RadGridView cells can be quite versatile, and I thought the resulting sample project was interesting enough to share.

A recent project has had me spending a lot of time working with Telerik controls for WinForms, and sometimes learning some lesser-known tricks in the process. Whether by research on Telerik's support site, contact with the fine people at Telerik themselves, or just plain old experimentation, it's been fun to learn these little tidbits that can help turn a control, like the RadTabStrip from just functionally acceptable into something much more.

There are times when you may want to create your own custom build configuration for a project in Visual Studio, such as to define compiler symbols or to set build options for different projects within your solution. Fortunately, Visual studio makes it very simple.

Use these simple settings to save time on Windows Forms with Accept and Cancel functionality.

Enabling spellchecking on TextBox and RichTextBox controls is so simple in WPF, and it works just like in Microsoft office!

In a recent post, I explained how to use WPF validation rules and error templates to validate user input and provide meaningful feedback for invalid input in the form of tooltips. But what if you need to have a non-error tooltip as well?

Need to capture popups or tooltips in your screen shots? It's easy with the Windows Vista Snipping Tool.

Windows Presentation Foundation provides a simple way to validate user input on your data-bound controls, and it's completely customizable, too. By writing a custom class deriving from ValidationRule, and adding an error template to our control, we can have consistent UI notification of invalid input according to our specific needs.

For those of use whose first language is something other than XAML, the default control template styles generated in Expression Blend are pretty intimidating. There has got to be a simpler place to start. Well, there is! It's a handy little download you can get straight from your Visual Studio help called ControlTemplateExamples.

I was recently working on a WPF form that allowed users to edit data stored in an XML file. In the process, I learned a lot about simplifying my databinding code.

After a Vista upgrade none of my .NET 3.5 web applications would run! Visual Studio gives a "Child nodes not allowed" error for the web.config file, but there is a simple solution - once you find it.

Passing Microsoft Exam 70-315 Web Applications with Visual C# and Visual Studio.NET - A recent exam-taker's experience and tips for success.