Feddas - Shawn Featherly

Generally you do not want media to be included in the .XAP file as this quickly bloats the size of the .XAP file. However including the media in the .XAP file makes using uri's easier to work with while debugging. To include them in the .XAP click the media file in question and modify its' properties to be the following:
Build Action: Content
Copy to Output Directory: Do not copy

As for setting the source of the MediaElement or other elements that use this file; Use only forward slashes, "/". To debug a page showing media that is being run without the help of a web server (it's URL is something like "C:/myPage.htm") either the site needs to be set to be debuged on a web server (http://myPage.htm) or the uri must be pre-ceeded with a "/" ("/Images/pic.jpg" instead of "Images/pic.jpg")

Labels: MediaElement, Silverlight, uri

I've been writing a custom control that takes a Fraction in the XAML supplied as a Point, (X,Y). I don't want it to freak when the Y isn't supplied, since, in my case this just means Y is equal to 1.
I came across this thread while trying to make this control more user friendly.
http://bytes.com/topic/c-sharp/answers/258911-overloading-properties

The last option of making the Property of type Object is what did the trick for me. Below is how I overloaded my property to accept both double and Point.

private Point ratioToFirst;
public Object RatioToFirst
{
    get { return this.ratioToFirst; }
    set
    {
        if (value is Point)
            this.ratioToFirst = (Point)value;
        else if (value is double || value is int)
            this.ratioToFirst = new Point((double)value, 1);
        else //values from XAML will usually be taken in as strings
        {
            string input = value.ToString();
            try
            {
                if (input.Contains(",") || input.Contains("/") || input.Contains(":")) value = ConvertToPoint(input);
                else value = Convert.ToDouble(value);
                if (value is Point && this.ratioToFirst != (Point)value)//check if the value changed
                    this.ratioToFirst = (Point)value;
                else if (value is double)
                    this.ratioToFirst = new Point((double)value, 1);
            }
            catch  //unsupported or malformed string
            {
                this.ratioToFirst = new Point(-1, 1);
            }
        }
    }
}
private Point ConvertToPoint(string input)
{
    char delimiter = ',';   //find what is used to delimit the two numbers of the Point
    if (input.Contains("/")) delimiter = '/';
    else if (input.Contains(":")) delimiter = ':';

    string x = input.Split(delimiter)[0],
        y = input.Split(delimiter)[1];
    return new Point(Convert.ToDouble(x), Convert.ToDouble(y));
}

This property can be utilized with the following XAML

Labels: C#, Custom Control, Overloading Properties, Silverlight