Image Courtesy MSDN.

The WPF team is sharing new WPF Ribbon control starting on Monday, October 27, 2008! Binaries and source code for the Ribbon can be downloaded at the Office UI Licensing site.

So, your first step is to go to Office UI Licensing site and get yourself a free WPF ribbon control. You must accept and sign license (it’s not a big deal) and download free WPF ribbon control. Just follow this link.

What is Ribbon Control?

Ribbons are the modern way to help users find, understand, and use commands efficiently and directly—with a minimum number of clicks, with less need to resort to trial-and-error, and without having to refer to Help.

The preview version of the WPF Ribbon includes many of the features which Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) need to add a Ribbon control to their WPF applications. Ribbon is a command bar that organizes a program’s features into a series of tabs at the top of a window. The Ribbon UI was designed by Microsoft Office to increase discoverability of features and functions, enable quicker learning of the program as a whole, and make users feel more in control of their experience with the program. The Ribbon is designed to replace the traditional menu bar and toolbars. The WPF Ribbon will include all of the basic Ribbon features and functionality, including tabs, groups, controls (buttons, split buttons, galleries, etc.), title bar integration of the application menu button and quick access toolbar, and resizing with dynamic layout.

For more information, follow this link.

Step 1: Adding The Ribbon Control to your WPF Application

1. Create a new WPF Project using Visual Studio .NET 2008.

2. Add a reference to “RibbonControlsLibrary.dll” that you downloaded earlier.

3. Add the XAML Reference to the DLL you have just added to your project by adding this line to your XAML code.

xmlns:r="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls.Ribbon;assembly=RibbonControlsLibrary"

4. Change the root element of your XAML code to r:RibbonWindow instead of Window.

   1: <r:RibbonWindow x:Class="FirstRibbonApplication.Window1"

   2:     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

   3:     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

   4:     xmlns:r="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls.Ribbon;assembly=RibbonControlsLibrary"

   5:     Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">

   6:     <Grid>

   7:         

   8:     </Grid>

   9: </r:RibbonWindow>

5. Add the r:Ribbon tag to your XAML code.

<r:Ribbon Title="WPF Ribbon - Document1" x:Name="ribbon" />

Your XAML code should now look like this;

<r:RibbonWindow x:Class="FirstRibbonApplication.Window1"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:r="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls.Ribbon;assembly=RibbonControlsLibrary"

    Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">

    <Grid>

       <r:Ribbon Title="WPF Ribbon - Document1" x:Name="ribbon" />

    </Grid>

</r:RibbonWindow>

Congratulations! you have successfully added a ribbon control to your WPF application. Before you can see the control you would need to make a few changes to the accompanying cs file. Open the cs and add the following library and make sure that the partial class inherits from RibbonWindow instead of Window.

using Microsoft.Windows.Controls.Ribbon;

Compile and run the application to see the results.

Step 2: Adding Tabs, Groups and Buttons

As described earlier a ribbon control contains different tabs, each tab contains a groups and groups in turn contain buttons. In this step we would create tabs, groups and buttons.

1. To add tabs to your ribbon control add the r:RibbonTab tag within the r:Ribbon tag you added in the last step.

<r:RibbonTab Label="Home">

</r:RibbonTab><r:RibbonTab Label="Insert">

</r:RibbonTab><r:RibbonTab Label="Help">

</r:RibbonTab>

 

<r:RibbonGroup Name="Clipboard"></r:RibbonGroup><r:RibbonGroup Name="Fonts"></r:RibbonGroup>

<r:RibbonButton ></r:RibbonButton>

<r:RibbonWindow x:Class="FirstRibbonApplication.Window1"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:r="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls.Ribbon;assembly=RibbonControlsLibrary"

    Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">

    <Grid>

        <r:Ribbon Title="Window1" x:Name="ribbon">

            <r:RibbonTab Label="Home">

                <r:RibbonGroup Name="Clipboard">

                    <r:RibbonButton ></r:RibbonButton>

                </r:RibbonGroup>

                <r:RibbonGroup Name="Fonts">

                    <r:RibbonButton ></r:RibbonButton>

                </r:RibbonGroup>

            </r:RibbonTab>

            <r:RibbonTab Label="Insert">

            </r:RibbonTab>

            <r:RibbonTab Label="Help">

            </r:RibbonTab>

        </r:Ribbon>

    </Grid>

</r:RibbonWindow>

Step 3: Adding Commands to Ribbon Groups and Ribbon Buttons

<r:RibbonWindow.Resources><ResourceDictionary></ResourceDictionary></r:RibbonWindow.Resources>

<r:RibbonCommand x:Key="ClipboardGroupCommand"CanExecute="OnCanExecute"Executed="OnShowClipboardGroup"LabelTitle="Clipboard"/>

<r:RibbonGroup Name="Clipboard">

<r:RibbonGroup Name="Clipboard" HasDialogLauncher="True" Command="{StaticResource ClipboardGroupCommand}">

Now, we have connected our resource with RibbonGroup. I have added HasDialogLauncher=”True” because that will allow us to fire OnShowClipboardGroup  event when user clicks on dialog launcher.

5. Go to your CS code-behind file and add these lines:

private void OnCanExecute(object target, CanExecuteRoutedEventArgs args){args.CanExecute = true;}

private void OnShowClipboardGroup(object target, ExecutedRoutedEventArgs args){MessageBox.Show("This is the Clipboard!.", "Clipboard Dialog");}

In principal we are done with this step and the essential concepts have been learnt. You can now learn your application and test to see that the message box is displayed.

Similar to step 4 and 5 create another RibbonCommand, add the resource to the Copy Button and write the corresponding cs code.

Creating another RibbonCommand;

<r:RibbonCommandx:Key="CopyCommand"CanExecute="OnCanExecute"Executed="OnCopyCommand"LabelTitle="Copy"LargeImageSource="Images\copy.png"ToolTipTitle="Copy (Ctrl+C)"ToolTipDescription="Copies the selected content on to the clipboard"></r:RibbonCommand>

<r:RibbonButton Name="Copy" Command="{StaticResource CopyCommand}"></r:RibbonButton>

private void OnCopyCommand(object target, ExecutedRoutedEventArgs args){    MessageBox.Show("This is the copy button!.", "Copy Dialog");}

<r:RibbonWindow x:Class="FirstRibbonApplication.Window1"

    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

    xmlns:r="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls.Ribbon;assembly=RibbonControlsLibrary"

    Title="Window1" Height="600" Width="400">

    <r:RibbonWindow.Resources>

        <ResourceDictionary>

            <r:RibbonCommand x:Key="ClipboardGroupCommand"

                             CanExecute="OnCanExecute"

                             Executed="OnShowClipboardGroup"

                             LabelTitle="Clipboard">

            </r:RibbonCommand>

            <r:RibbonCommand

                x:Key="CopyCommand"

                CanExecute="OnCanExecute"

                Executed="OnCopyCommand"

                LabelTitle="Copy"

                LargeImageSource="Images\copy.png"

                ToolTipTitle="Copy (Ctrl+C)"

                ToolTipDescription="Copies the selected content on to the clipboard">

            </r:RibbonCommand>

        </ResourceDictionary>

    </r:RibbonWindow.Resources>

    <Grid  HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Top">

        <r:Ribbon Title="Window1" x:Name="ribbon"  VerticalAlignment="Top">

            <r:RibbonTab Label="Home">

                <r:RibbonGroup Name="Clipboard" HasDialogLauncher="True" Command="{StaticResource ClipboardGroupCommand}">

                    <r:RibbonButton Name="Copy" Command="{StaticResource CopyCommand}"></r:RibbonButton>

                </r:RibbonGroup>

                <r:RibbonGroup Name="Fonts">

                    <r:RibbonButton  Name="Paste"></r:RibbonButton>

                </r:RibbonGroup>

            </r:RibbonTab>

            <r:RibbonTab Label="Insert">

            </r:RibbonTab>

            <r:RibbonTab Label="Help">

            </r:RibbonTab>

        </r:Ribbon>

    </Grid>

</r:RibbonWindow>

 

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Original article appeared here.

Image credit: Sourav Banerjee

The team of scientists is the first to uncover a central process in encoding memories that occurs at the level of the synapse, where neurons connect with each other.

"When we learn new things, when we store memories, there are a number of things that have to happen," said senior author Kenneth S. Kosik, co-director and Harriman Chair in Neuroscience Research, at UCSB’s Neuroscience Research Institute. Kosik is a leading researcher in the area of Alzheimer’s disease.

"One of the most important processes is that the synapses — which cement those memories into place — have to be strengthened," said Kosik. "In strengthening a synapse you build a connection, and certain synapses are encoding a memory. Those synapses have to be strengthened so that memory is in place and stays there. Strengthening synapses is a very important part of learning. What we have found appears to be one part of how that happens."

Part of strengthening a synapse involves making new proteins. Those proteins build the synapse and make it stronger. Just like with exercise, when new proteins must build up muscle mass, synapses must also make more protein when recording memories. In this research, the regulation and control of that process was uncovered.

The production of new proteins can only occur when the RNA that will make the required proteins is turned on. Until then, the RNA is "locked up" by a silencing molecule, which is a micro RNA. The RNA and micro RNA are part of a package that includes several other proteins.

"When something comes into your brain — a thought, some sort of stimulus, you see something interesting, you hear some music — synapses get activated," said Kosik. "What happens next is really interesting, but to follow the pathway our experiments moved to cultured neurons. When synapses got activated, one of the proteins wrapped around that silencing complex gets degraded."

When the signal comes in, the wrapping protein degrades or gets fragmented. Then the RNA is suddenly free to synthesize a new protein.

"One reason why this is interesting is that scientists have been perplexed for some time as to why, when synapses are strengthened, you need to have proteins degrade and also make new proteins," said Kosik. "You have the degradation of proteins going on side by side with the synthesis of new proteins. So we have now resolved this paradox. We show that protein degradation and synthesis go hand in hand. The degradation permits the synthesis to occur. That’s the elegant scientific finding that comes out of this."

The scientists were able to see some of the specific proteins that are involved in synthesis. Two of these — CaM Kinase and Lypla — are identified in the paper.

One of the approaches used by the scientists in the experiment was to take live neuron cells from rats and look at them under a high-resolution microscope. The team was able to see the synapses and the places where proteins are being made.

Provided by UC Santa Barbara

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Basic PC Laws

Let’s start with Nerve Central–the computer.

Law 1: For every fix that a Windows Update patches, the update will break two more things on your PC. –Darren Gladstone, PC World

Law 2: The likelihood that Windows will automatically install time-sucking critical updates is directly proportional to your need to get your PC started. –Steve Fox, PC World

Law 3: The hard drive always fails just before you were going to back it up. –Denise Paolucci, Dreamwidth Studios via Help A Reporter Out (HARO)

Law 4: Your data will get corrupted just before you plug in your new backup external drive. –Darren Gladstone, PC World

Law 5: Your backup plan is only as good as your last successful restore. –Michael Fisher, ElephantDrive.com via HARO

Law 6: The number of USB ports on your Mac will always be one less than you need at any given time. –Blair Hanley Frank, Macworld

Law 7: Feeling time pressure to make a computer fix quickly will cause you to take longer. –David Marshak, via PC World Facebook page

Law 8: If you close the PC case with screws before testing, it won’t work; If you test before closing, it will. –Harry Liebman via HARO

Tech Support Rules

Now that you’ve mastered the basics, you’re ready to move on to Tech Support.

Law 1: Fix a computer for a friend or family member, and you’ll be tech support for life. –Danny Allen, PC World

Law 2: Build a computer for someone, and he/she owns you! –Louis Farbstein, via PC World’s Facebook page

Law 3: Recommend a product that you’ve used with no problems, and the friend/family member who buys it will immediately descend into RMA [product return] hell. –Scott Keck, via PC World’s Facebook page

Law 4: Show any handy IT skills at work, and your company’s IT department will start referring difficult coworkers to you. –Lars Jacobsen, via PC World’s Facebook page

Law 5: If it’s broken and you call tech support, it will fix itself while you’re on hold. –Brenda Christensen, Public Relations, Servoy.com via HARO

Internet Ordinances

You can find a world of trouble online. For instance…

Law 1: Within a month of agreeing to be "friends" with your boss on Facebook you will regret it, big time. –Tom Spring, PC World

Law 2: The crappier the Web site, the sleazier (and sketchier) the ads. –Tom Spring, PC World

Law 3: When entering "Captcha" verification codes on a Web site, you’ll always type in the numeral 1 when the site wants a lowercase L, and a capital O when the site wants the number 0. –Steve Fox, PC World

Law 4: Just before taking out the boss in a WoW raid, your Internet connection will die. –Nick Mediati, PC World

Law 5: The difficulty involved in redeeming a rebate is directly proportional to the dollar value of the rebate. –Tom Spring, PC World

Law 6: A nasty draft e-mail will always find its way to the (unintended) recipient. –Brian X. Chen

Precepts of Mobile Tech

Desktop technology isn’t the only source of inevitable woe in your life. All those shiny mobile devices can cause pain, too, since the freedom of untethered technology doesn’t extend to immunity from rank on rank of frustrating unalterable laws. We report 10 master Mobile Laws here.

Law 1: The charger for your current cell phone will not work with the next cell phone you buy. –Kimberly Brinson, PC World

Law 2: Your laptop’s charger weighs half of what your laptop weighs. –Darren Gladstone, PC World

Law 3: A laptop battery will drain at twice its normal rate whenever you leave home without your power cord. –Kimberly Brinson, PC World

Corollary: Your laptop’s battery life is inversely proportional to the amount of work you need to get done on a single charge. –Blair Hanley Frank, Macworld

Law 4: Your iPod or iPhone will be on its last burst of power just as the plane door shuts. –Anne B. McDonald, PC World

Law 5: A replacement battery charger will cost 70 percent of the original purchase price of the device. For phones, the figure is 140 percent! –Robert Strohmeyer, PC World

Law 6: Your cell phone will inevitably break before your two-year contract is up, forcing you to overpay for a new, less-cool model. –Lauren Barnard, PC World

Law 7: The proprietary charging plug (cost to produce: 50 cents) for your device will disappear within two weeks and will cost you $40 to replace. –Darren Gladstone, PC World

Law 8: On any vacation, the memory card for your digital camera will be safely lodged in the card reader on your desk at home. (And the camera’s proprietary battery will be dead, with the charger sitting next to the card reader.) –Anne B. McDonald, PC World

Law 9:

A cup of coffee on your desk is guaranteed to render your laptop utterly useless. –Nick Mediati, PC World

Law 10: Your MagSafe adapter will always come unplugged precisely when you need to charge your Mac laptop’s battery. –Nick

Software Statutes

Finally, if entanglements with hardware principles don’t leave you bound and gagged, there are always software standards to render you helpless.

Law 1: Your software provider’s online support pages contain explicit instructions for troubleshooting every conceivable problem–except yours. –Mark Sullivan, PC World

Law 2: Nine times out of ten, tinkering with your Registry to fix a system issue will create a new problem that’s more severe than the original. –Travis Van, ITDatabase via HARO

Law 3: Ten times out of ten, downloading a spyware product will create hidden processes/services more insidious than the original malware/adware encroachment you set out to stop. –Travis Van, ITDatabase via HARO

Law 4:

The performance increase you can expect from running a Registry cleaner can be calculated as z(n + y), where n is the number of Registry entries cleaned, y is your system CPU’s clock speed in gigahertz, and z = 0. –Robert Strohmeyer, PC World

Law 5: The larger the number of people who want your iPhone app, the likelier Apple is to reject it. –Nick Mediati, PC World

Law 6: iTunes will crash. That’s it. No, really. –Darren Gladstone, PC World

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Tool Bag Lost In Space Meets Fiery End

A tool bag lost by a spacewalking astronaut last year met its fiery demise in Earth’s atmosphere Monday after months circling ever closer to the planet.

The $100,000 tool bag plunged toward Earth and burned up as it re-entered the atmosphere, according to the U.S. Air Force’s Joint Space Operations Center tracking it and more than 19,000 other pieces of space junk in orbit today from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

"Based on its size and composition, we expect the object to completely burn up before hitting the Earth," center officials said in a statement.

The tool bag was lost during a Nov. 18 spacewalk at the International Space Station. In addition to the Joint Operations Space Center, amateur skywatchers also tracked the bag as it silently circled the Earth.

Center officials did not immediately have a specific time and location for the tool bag’s ultimate demise, but a Sunday report by the Web site Universe Today predicted the wayward space satchel would hit the Earth’s atmosphere at about 9:16 a.m. EDT (1316 GMT) over the Pacific Ocean, just west of Mexico.

Lost in space

The tool bag weighed about 30 pounds (14 kg) and was about the size of a small backpack. It contained grease guns, trash bags and a scraper tool.

Former NASA astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper lost the bag during a November spacewalk to repair a balky solar array joint on the International Space Station as part of NASA’s STS-126 shuttle mission. A grease gun leaked inside the bag, which apparently wasn’t secured properly, and it drifted free while Stefanyshyn-Piper was trying to clean up the mess.

"There was that split second thinking that, maybe I can go jump for it and grab it. Then I realized that it would just make everything worse and then we’d have two floating objects, one of which would be me," Stefanyshyn-Piper said in a televised Nov. 19 interview from space the day after losing the bag. "So the best thing to do was just to let it go."

Stefanyshyn-Piper, an active captain in the U.S. Navy, retired from NASA’s astronaut corps last month to return to her Navy duties.

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In ongoing war between the two rivals, Google takes to the streets

In the latest shot fired in Google Inc.’s ongoing battle with Microsoft Corp., Google announced today that it’s taking this fight to the streets.

Literally.

Google is kicking off a month-long ad campaign for its online suite of enterprise office applications. The campaign will have the search giant leasing billboard space in four major U.S. cities — New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. Each work day will have a different message for commuters to take in.

The move comes less than a week after Microsoft announced it is partnering with Yahoo on a search and online ad deal. The two companies announced that they had finalized negotiations on a long-anticipated deal that will have Microsoft’s Bing search engine powering Yahoo’s sites, while Yahoo sells premium search advertising services for both companies.

The deal is geared to hit Google with a united force much greater than either Microsoft or Yahoo could muster alone. Individually, neither company has much of an effect on Google and its overwhelming search market share. Together, though, they hope to at least make a dent.

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., noted that while Microsoft is busy going after Google’s search market, Google is using the billboard campaign it go after Microsoft’s bread-and-butter Office suite.

"Each company is targeting the other right now," said Gottheil. "They’re laying the groundwork for what they both see as an inevitable collision in the future. Right now, neither company is deriving much revenue from its presence in the other’s space… Microsoft is more vulnerable because they must cannibalize some of their current application revenue to expand their application market, where Google only has to maintain a rough technical equivalence with Microsoft to maintain its search franchise."

Google’s ad campaign and Microsoft’s deal with Yahoo are just the latest moves in this ongoing fight between industry giants.

In June, Microsoft unveiled its new search engine, Bing, an update to its far-from-beloved Microsoft Live Search. And with Microsoft’s advertising power and a lot of media attention behind it, Bing has shown strong numbers just out of the gate. But with only 8.23% of the market, Bing has done little more than nibble away at Google share, which is just over more than 78% of the search market.

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Microsoft’s Bing gained a single point of market share in July, bringing its total to 9.41 percent, according to a new report by StatCounter. The recent partnership deal between Microsoft and Yahoo has given both companies hope that they can challenge Google, which currently holds a double-digit lead in the search market. Under the terms of the partnership, Bing will power search on Yahoo sites, while Yahoo takes over worldwide sales duties for the companies’ search advertisers.

Microsoft’s share of the U.S. search market increased to 9.41 percent in July 2009, a rise of 1 percentage point, according to research firm StatCounter. At the same time, Google’s share of the U.S. market slipped during the same period to 77.54 percent, down by nearly a point, while Yahoo declined a fraction of a point, from 11.04 to 10.95.

StatCounter’s report came days after the July 29 announcement of a partnership deal between Microsoft and Yahoo: that 10-year agreement that will see Microsoft’s Bing power Yahoo’s search engine, while Yahoo assumes exclusive worldwide sales duties for the companies’ search advertisers. Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TACs) to Yahoo at an initial rate of 88 percent of search revenue generated on Yahoo’s sites.

The deal represents a recognition on both companies’ part that the only way to break Google’s lock on the search and online advertising market may be through working together. According to StatCounter’s report, a combined Microsoft and Yahoo search would have a 20.36 percent market share.

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You can select from a number of types; News, Face, Clip art, Line drawings and Photo. The filtered results are extremely quick and accurate. Moreover, you can also choose a color and Google would give you the images where the selected image is dominant.

Being interested in Image processing myself I know that the second is pretty easy but, categorizing the images between News, Face, Clip art, Line drawings and Photo is pretty darn difficult.

I am a little awe struck and I little worried about my FYP now

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اب آپ کے پاس اردو میں نہ لکھنے کا کوئی بہانہ نہیں
http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic/Urdu
Tyep: aaj ki taza khabar
and see the transliteration  آج کی تازہ خبر
I’ll encourage everyone to start using this and similar services
widely and also spread the word.
The more text there is available in Urdu, the better are chances that
we can preserve our language; this will help us export our culture to
the outside world and also import the knowledge in all the various
languages to the speakers of Urdu language.
Hopefully this will be integrated with gmail, docs etc, soon.
Please spread the word..

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