Some days ago someone in the Silverlight forums asked about how an auto-complete box that highlights the matched parts of potential hits could be made. Something like:

There is no built-in feature for this in the AutoCompleteBox and I didn't have a simple answer to that question. However I found it an interesting topic and a useful feature, so I decided to put some research in it as soon as I have some time. As it happens, I just had that time, and the result is this blog post :-). As always you can download the full source code at the end of the post. More...

If you are like me, you like using the keyboard for navigating around in and between applications, and to use shortcuts for common (and not so common) tasks. For example, I've memorized a lot of the shortcuts in Visual Studio, because often it's so much faster to use them than to move your hands away from the keyboard and navigate through multiple menu levels using the mouse. I also make heavy use of standard navigation features in data entry forms, especially the tab key. Unfortunately, when you build a Silverlight application, and in particular when you're using items controls like the list box for data entry scenarios, the default behavior is a bit annoying and requires quite some work for a smooth user experience. Here's how to do it. More...

Silverlight's auto-complete box is a very versatile control and also often subject of questions in the Silverlight forums. In a recent project I have taken a deeper look at it and decided to write an article about its features. First I explain the very basics and simple usage scenarios. After that I move on to more advanced topics like using custom filters and item templates, and eventually to asynchronous filtering using a web service. I also show a possible way to integrate that into an MVVM application design. As always the complete source code is available for download too. The full article can be found here.

A question that frequently surfaces on the Silverlight forums is the one after a DateTimePicker control. The Silverlight Toolkit has both a date picker and a time picker, but not the combination of both. The issue tracker of the Toolkit project on Codeplex lists that control among the Top-20 voted features. But when you ask about it, the answer usually is that it's so simple to build one yourself that it's not worth creating a dedicated control for that. However, when I looked at the source code of an attempted DateTimePicker control someone sent me in desperation, I realized that you can get lost in undesired behavior and unforeseeable problems with mutually triggering events easily. So here is a short post that shows a straight-forward way to create a functioning simple DateTimePicker control. You can download the complete sample at the end of this article. More...