StructureMap is a Dependency Injection tool written in C# for .NET development. StructureMap is also a generic “Plugin” mechanism for flexible and extensible .NET applications.

The new functionality in StructureMap 2.5:

• Completely revamped Assembly scanning options
• Cleaner, more predictable way to initialize a Container.  StructureMapConfiguration is now deprecated, please use ObjectFactory.Initialize().
• Optional setter injection
• All new abilities to query the configuration of a Container
• The ability to use StructureMap with ZERO Xml or attributes by default
• The ability to add services at runtime. You can now programmatically add an entire Assembly at runtime for modular applications that might not want all services to be loaded at startup.
• An auto mocking container based on Rhino Mocks 3.5. I was a doubter on the validity of AMC, but I'm sold now that I've used it
• Contextual object construction
• More sophisticated auto wiring rules
• Supporting NameValueCollection and IDictionary types
• Far more extensibility
• Interception and post processing hooks for you AOP enthusiasts. StructureMap will NOT include its own AOP engine, but will allow you to use the runtime AOP technique of your choice.
• More configuration options in both Xml and the Fluent Interface. Completely revamped the Registry DSL.
• More options for modular configuration (mix and match Xml configuration or Registry's at will) – which basically had to trigger:
• Completely revamped diagnostics, including the Environment Testing support
• Transparent creation of concrete types that are not explicitly registered
• Create objects with explicit arguments passed to the container
• Use the underlying Container independently of ObjectFactory
• Pluggable auto registration with your own custom Type scanning policies
• StructureMap is now strong named (thanks to Steve Harman)
• Pull configuration from the App.config (thanks to Josh Flanagan)
• Generics fixes (thanks to Derrick Rapp)

Download it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/structuremap

Silverlight 2 got released about a week ago. And this is what ScottGu promises us.

Silverlight 2 is a cross-platform browser plug-in that enables rich media experiences and .NET RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) within the browser.

Silverlight 2 is small in size (4.6M and takes only 4-10 seconds to install on a machine that doesn’t already have it. It does not require the .NET Framework to be installed on a computer to run - the Silverlight setup download includes everything necessary to play video or run applications.

Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby).

That looks promising, especially if you are a .Net programmer like me. But let’s not forget that I’m a programmer and not a designer so my app won’t look as cool as it could.

I’m not convinced yet that Silverlight won’t go the same way as flash. And by that I mean that flash is being misused for advertising and moving things on a website. I hate things that flicker and move while watching a website, probably because most of those things are advertising. The whole advertising thing made people grab onto tools like adblock plus for firefox, or other flash adblocking programs.

Here are some of the suggested remedies.

• How to block Flash selectively
• SuperAdBlocker.Com
• Block Flash Ads in Firefox
• Adblocker for IE

Of course we all know that Youtube does have a good application for flash movies.

I’m not saying flash is bad. It did bring something to the webscene that was sorely needed. And that was a rich user experience. The user could finally do cool things in his webbrowser. The webpage was no longer static. There was user interaction on a scale where you could only dream of with javascript (at the time). But there was also java applets. What happened to them, how many people still use them?

So is Silverlight going to be that killer app we all want to use? Is it finally going to replace all that tedious HTML/CSS/Javascript stuff that we have to check a million times in a several thousand browser to see if we get the same result everywhere? I hope so. But since my crystal ball got broken, I can’t tell.

So I went out to see if people are coming up with any cool things for Silverlight yet.

• A list of Silverlight apps with sourcecode.
• This is a way cool and addictive game. My computer seemed to have some performance problems with it.
• Silverlight airlines. User friendly? Only if you give them the manual. I’m sure my parents won’t be able to use it. But cool none the less.
• Tetris. I think only Cobol doesn’t have a Tetris implementation ;-)
• dr.popper. Another game
• DeepearthPlayin with maps. A bit like googlemaps.

So the cool things are happening and are possible. We will see what the future brings but I think we should start installing Silverlight, it’s out there and it will be used.

Mono 2.0 Has Been Released

Mono 2.0 is a portable and open source implementation of the .NET framework for Unix, Windows, MacOS and other operating systems.

Some Details:

Microsoft Compatible APIs
ADO.NET 2.0 API for accessing databases.
ASP.NET 2.0 API for developing Web-based applications.
Windows.Forms 2.0 API to create desktop applications.
System.XML 2.0: An API to manipulate XML documents.
System.Core: Provides support for the Language Integrated Query (LINQ).
System.Xml.Linq: Provides a LINQ provider for XML.
System.Drawing 2.0 API: A portable graphics rendering API.

Mono APIs
Gtk# 2.12: A binding to the Gtk+ 2.12 and GNOME libraries for creating desktop applications on Linux, Windows and MacOS X.
Mono.Cecil: A library to manipulate ECMA CLI files (the native format used for executables and libraries).
Mono.Cairo: A binding to the Cairo Graphics library to produce 2D graphics and render them into a variety of forms (images, windows, postscript and PDF).
Mono’s SQLite support: a library to create and consume databases created with SQLite.
Mono.Posix: a library to access Linux and Unix specific functionality from your managed application. With both a low-level interface as well as higher level interfaces.

Download Mono 2.0 here: http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html

The DotNetSlackers site has a nice series of articles about design patterns. The articles were written by Granville Barnett and are a very good read. Here is what is in the first four articles.

Design Patterns – Part 1
Learn how to design more robust and maintainable code by incorporating design patterns into your software projects.
1 Introduction
2 The strategy pattern
3 Implementing our design
4 Summary

Design Patterns – Part 2
In this part of the design patterns series we will take a look at the observer design pattern.
1 Introduction
2 What is the observer pattern?
3 The Design
4 Implementing our design
5 Aren’t events already in .NET?
6 Summary

Design Patterns – Part 3
In this part of the design patterns series we will take a look at the factory pattern.
1 Introduction
2 The simple factory
3 Factory pattern
4 Summary

Design Patterns – Part 4
In this part of the design patterns series we will look at the singleton pattern.
1 Introduction
2 How is a singleton typically implemented?
3 The static modifier
4 Issues with our first design
5 beforefieldinit
6 Summary
7 Acknowledgements
8 References

So what are you waiting for? Start reading the articles!

When you try to instantiate a windowsforms control in your NUnit test, you could get the following error:

System.Threading.ThreadStateException: Current thread must be set to single thread apartment (STA) mode before OLE calls can be made. Ensure that your Main function has STAThreadAttribute marked on it.

This has something to do with the fact that windows forms controls like to run in STA (Single threaded apartment) and the latests version of Nunit run as MTA (Multi Threaded apartment).

After some googling (which only returned a small number of hits), I found “Nunit and STATThread by frater”. The solution happens to be very simple. Add this to the assembly where you have the test and the error will go away.

So another day and another problem solved.