Scott Logic / Altogether Smarter

Blog

Colin Eberhardt

I am CTO at Scott Logic and am a prolific technical author, blogger and speaker on a range of technologies.

My blog includes posts on a wide range of topics, including WebAssembly, HTML5 / JavaScript and data visualisation with D3 and d3fc. You'll also find a whole host of posts about previous technology interests including iOS, Swift, WPF and Silverlight.

I'm board member of FINOS, which is encouraging open source collaboration in the financial sector. I'm also very active on GitHub, contributing to a number of different projects.

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Artificial Intelligence

If software development were a race, AI wins every time

We’ve undertaken experiments to explore the impact of GenAI tools on developer productivity, revealing a 37% improvement in productivity (speed), however, this result is a misrepresentation of what it means to be productive as a developer. This article delves more deeply, beyond punchy metrics, to explore the overall experience of working with these entirely new tools. We discuss where these tools are most effective, the challenge of quality code, the learning curve and much more.
Colin Eberhardt, Paul Graham, Lisa Perrett, Yotaka Blowers · 18th  Dec 2023 · 15 min read
Podcast

Beyond the Hype: Is generative AI coming for programming jobs?

In this episode, I'm joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Chris Price and James Heward for a lively debate on whether the latest advances in generative AI are going to threaten our jobs – are we going to be made redundant by our own creation?
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  May 2023 · 1 min read
Tech
LLMs vs Advent of Code, AI is winning
This blog post explores the capabilities of OpenAIs o1-mini through the Advent of Code challenge, finding that it is astonishingly capable. In a significant step-up from previous models, it answers most of the questions with ease.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Dec · 4 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Can we do better than 'carbon aware' computing?
In this episode, Oliver Cronk and David Rees from Scott Logic are joined by Hannah Smith, Director of Operations at Green Web Foundation, to explore the potential benefits and limitations of ‘carbon aware’ computing. With global emissions from cloud computing exceeding those from commercial flights, is 'carbon aware' a distraction from getting to grips with the scale of the challenge we face?
Colin Eberhardt, Oliver Cronk, David Rees · 3rd  Jun · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: UK GOV AI – Is innovation guided by principles enough?
In this episode, I'm joined by Jess McEvoy and Peter Chamberlin for a discussion about the UK government’s approach to addressing AI challenges with its pro-innovation mantra, and whether this creates the right environment for success.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  May · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Are Data Mesh and Data Fabric just Marchitecture?
In this episode, Oliver Cronk, Andrew Carr and David Hope talk about the ever-changing world of data, with conversations moving from data warehouse to data lake, and data mesh to data fabric. They discuss the importance of data ownership and common tooling, and their view that data mesh is an approach rather than an architecture.
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Apr · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Can technology sustainability really make a difference?
In this episode, Oliver Cronk is joined by experts including Jeremy Axe, Group CTO at DS Smith, and consultants Darren Smith and Katie Davis from Scott Logic. Together, they unpack topics like the energy usage and carbon emissions of IT infrastructure, the challenges in accurately measuring sustainability, and whether claims of ‘green tech’ are substantiated or just hype.
Colin Eberhardt, Oliver Cronk, Katie Davis · 19th  Feb · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Was the threat the CRA seemed to pose to open source just hype?
In this episode, I'm joined by Rebecca Rumbul, CEO of Rust Foundation, and Mirko Boehm from Linux Foundation Europe. We discuss the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), a piece of EU legislation that is actively under development, designed to make end-user products more secure. Early drafts of this act detailed significant obligations on open source maintainers, despite the fact that they often work without financial reward. We discuss how the latest update of the CRA has thankfully addressed these concerns and ponder whether it will actually solve the problems it has set out to tackle.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Jan · 1 min read
Artificial Intelligence
If software development were a race, AI wins every time
We’ve undertaken experiments to explore the impact of GenAI tools on developer productivity, revealing a 37% improvement in productivity (speed), however, this result is a misrepresentation of what it means to be productive as a developer. This article delves more deeply, beyond punchy metrics, to explore the overall experience of working with these entirely new tools. We discuss where these tools are most effective, the challenge of quality code, the learning curve and much more.
Colin Eberhardt, Paul Graham, Lisa Perrett, Yotaka Blowers · 18th  Dec 2023 · 15 min read
Tech
The State of WebAssembly 2023
This blog posts shares the results of the third annual State of WebAssembly survey, where we found that Rust and JavaScript usage continues to increase, but there is a growing desire for Zig and Kotlin. The use of wasm as a plugin environment continues to climb, with developers hoping it will deliver of the “write once and run anywhere” promise.
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Oct 2023 · 6 min read
Tech
LF Europe Summit Journal - Day Three
This year I’m attending the Linux Foundation Europe Summit, a sizable event bringing together 1,000s of people involved in open source. Day three made us think about allyship, yet more AI and the looming shadow of the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Sep 2023 · 3 min read
Tech
LF Europe Summit Journal - Day Two
This year I’m attending the Linux Foundation Europe Summit, a sizable event bringing together 1,000s of people involved in open source. Day two was packed with surveys, statistics and the fragility of the node ecosystem..
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Sep 2023 · 3 min read
Tech
LF Europe Summit Journal - Day One
This year I’m attending the Linux Foundation Europe Summit, a sizable event bringing together 1,000s of people involved in open source. I typically take extensive notes of the sessions I attend, so thought I’d share them here on our blog.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Sep 2023 · 5 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: DevSecOps, a portmanteau too far?
In this episode, Oliver and Peter from Scott Logic are joined by Laura Bell Main, CEO and co-founder of SafeStack, for a lively discussion on DevSecOps. They touch on techniques such as “assume breach” and “shift left”, and the relationship to DevOps, which is trying to solve a similar problem.
Colin Eberhardt, Oliver Cronk · 4th  Sep 2023 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: WebAssembly – from the browser to beyond
In this episode, I'm joined by Bailey Hayes from Cosmonic and Sean Isom from Adobe to go beyond the hype with WebAssembly. We start by discussing the early days of WebAssembly, and where it all began, in the browser. We debate the infamous tweet that compares WebAssembly to Docker, and look at the future promise of the Component Model, which aims to break down language barriers.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Aug 2023 · 1 min read
Artificial Intelligence
A guide to Generative AI terminology
Generative AI is moving at an incredible pace, bringing with it a whole new raft of terminology. With articles packed full of terms like prompt injection, embeddings and funky acronyms like LoRA, it can be a little hard to keep pace. For a while now I've been keeping a notebook where I record brief definitions of these new terms as I encounter them. I find it such a useful reference, I thought I'd share it in this blog post.
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Jun 2023 · 7 min read
Artificial Intelligence
Re-implementing LangChain in 100 lines of code
LangChain has become a tremendously popular toolkit for building a wide range of LLM-powered applications, including chat, Q&A and document search. In this blogpost I re-implement some of the novel LangChain functionality as a learning exercise, looking at the low-level prompts it uses to create these higher level capabilities.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  May 2023 · 13 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Is generative AI coming for programming jobs?
In this episode, I'm joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Chris Price and James Heward for a lively debate on whether the latest advances in generative AI are going to threaten our jobs – are we going to be made redundant by our own creation?
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  May 2023 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Y2Q – The end of encryption as we know it?
In this episode – the second of a two-parter – we talk to Denis Mandich, CTO of Qrypt, about the growing threat that Quantum Computers will ultimately render our current cryptographic techniques useless – an event dubbed ‘Y2Q’, in a nod to the Y2K issue we faced over twenty years ago.
Colin Eberhardt · 3rd  Apr 2023 · 1 min read
Artificial Intelligence
AI is morphing from tool to platform (and the next technology epoch begins)
The buzz and excitement around generative AI is continuing to grow as their capabilities rapidly expand. However, their ability to generate content is just the starting point. From my perspective, the emergent reasoning capability, coupled with their intelligent use of tools, is what will make this technology truly transformational, and will mark the start of a new technology epoch.
Colin Eberhardt · 31st  Mar 2023 · 5 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Quantum Computing – hype and not hype simultaneously?
In this episode, we talk about Quantum Computing with Denis Mandich, CTO of Qrypt. As well as discussing quantum physics, we cover the practical aspects of cloud-based Quantum Computers and what can be achieved today through circuit design. Finally, we look to the future to discuss the impact this breakthrough technology is likely to have.
Colin Eberhardt · 13th  Mar 2023 · 1 min read
Tech · Video
Could the Public Sector Solve the OSS Sustainability Challenges?
The rapid rise in the consumption or usage of open source hasn’t been met with an equal rise in contribution – to put it simply, there are far more takers than givers, and the challenges created by this imbalance are starting to emerge.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Feb 2023
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: ChatGPT and why it has set the internet alight
In this episode, I'm joined by my colleague, Oliver Cronk, and Chris Booth from NatWest for a lively discussion about the much-hyped ChatGPT – covering its origins and recent advances, the new discipline of prompt engineering, and some practical applications and limitations of this technology.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Feb 2023 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Blockchain is dead, long live blockchain
In this episode, I’m joined by colleagues Oliver Cronk, Peter Chamberlin and Chris Price for a lively discussion about blockchain, including the mechanics of bitcoin, the proof of work consensus, and technologies which are blockchain-like, but prefer not to use that term. Finally, we ask ourselves the question, is blockchain just hype?
Colin Eberhardt, Oliver Cronk, Chris Price · 15th  Dec 2022 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Is the Metaverse built on foundations of hype?
In this episode Colin, Ollie, Johanna and Lily hold a lively conversation that dives into Web3 and the Metaverse. We ask the question “what is Web3.0”, and explore what it means to be a decentralised technology. We discuss the Metaverse, Roblox and other virtual environments, and very briefly touch on NFTs. But for the most part, we talk about exploration and innovation.
Colin Eberhardt, Oliver Cronk · 7th  Nov 2022 · 1 min read
Tech · Video
The State of Open Source in Finance - Keynote Panel
FINOS, in partnership with Linux Foundation Research, GitHub, Red Hat, Scott Logic, and with the support of many other FINOS members, conducted the second annual study to assess the opportunities and potential challenges of consuming, contributing to, and governing open source in financial services. This panel dives into the research's key findings, as well as provides insight into how things have progressed year-over-year.
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Nov 2022
Tech
Can Web3 beat public cloud?
There are a growing number of voices heralding Web3 as the future of the internet, and this technology (concept?) is receiving considerable coverage at conferences, in the technology press, and internet forums. I decided it was time to put Web3 to the test and see how it fares against the contemporary approach to building apps - the public cloud. Unfortunately I found Web3 to be very lacking.
Colin Eberhardt · 31st  Oct 2022 · 16 min read
Tech · Video
Evaluating Workflow Technology
A panel discussion from FinJS London 2022, exploring the latest developments in desktop workflows
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Oct 2022
Podcast
Beyond the Hype: Most-loved language – does Rust justify the hype?
In this episode, Simon Martin, Chris Price and Rob Pilling share their interest and insights into Rust. This relatively new programming language has caught the attention of the development community, being voted the ‘most-loved’ language seven years in a row in the StackOverflow survey.
Colin Eberhardt, Chris Price, Simon Martin, Rob Pilling · 1st  Aug 2022 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype - Investing in Innovation and avoiding the Hype in Digital Government
In this month’s episode, we tackle a wide range of topics relating to the role of technology innovation, and the perils of hyped technology, within Digital Government.
Colin Eberhardt, Jessica McEvoy, Alex Segrove · 8th  Jul 2022 · 1 min read
Tech
The State of WebAssembly 2022
WebAssembly has gone through quite a transformation this last year, while the wasm language landscape is slowly shifting, the more notable change is in what people are using WebAssembly for. The use of wasm for serverless, containerisation and as a plug-in technology has leapt considerably, with WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) becoming ever more important.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Jun 2022 · 4 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype - Behaviour Driven Development, Hype? Or just misunderstood?
In this month’s episode we talk about Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), a testing practice where system behaviours are captured in a human readable Domain Specific Language (DSL), which are automated and executed.
Colin Eberhardt, Daniel McNamee, Xin Chen, Jack Arnstein · 15th  Jun 2022 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype - Is multi-cloud a myth?
In this month’s episode, we talk multi-cloud. This is a challenging topic, even the first step—nailing down what the term actually means—isn’t easy. How does it differ from hybrid-cloud or poly-cloud? Does the term refer to the deployment approach for a single application or an entire organisation?
Colin Eberhardt, James Heward, Robert Griffiths · 3rd  May 2022 · 1 min read
Tech
Building a WebAssembly-powered serverless platform
WebAssembly is really starting to shine is as a standalone runtime environment. In this blog post I explore the Wasmtime WebAssembly runtime, and build a WebAssembly-powered serverless platform in just 70 lines of code.
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  Apr 2022 · 11 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype - Do you actually need a microfrontend?
A relatively new architectural style for building web-based applications, micro-frontends are an extension of the popular microservices pattern where the vertical slice of functionality that a microservice provides is extended all the way to the front-end. With micro-frontends, you can more easily scale your development teams by composing applications from loosely coupled frontend components. In this podcast we ask the question 'Do you actually need a micro-frontend?'
Colin Eberhardt, Sam Hogarth, Dean Kerr · 5th  Apr 2022 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype - Microservices: are they the only architecture you need?
Microservices have become the standard architectural pattern for everything. It’s a great and versatile pattern, but what people rarely talk about is the cost. You didn’t think you got all that good stuff (polyglot, scalable, decoupled...) for free, did you? In this episode, we talk about the real-world impact of choosing this pattern and when it might not be the right choice.
Colin Eberhardt, Ian Sugar, Harry Bellamy · 8th  Mar 2022 · 1 min read
Podcast
Beyond the Hype - Coming soon from Scott Logic
Beyond the Hype is a brand new monthly podcast from the Scott Logic team, where we cast a practical eye over what is new and exciting in technology – everything from Kafka to Kubernetes, AI to APIs, microservices to micro-frontends. We look beyond the promises, the buzz and excitement to guide you towards the genuine value.
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Feb 2022 · 1 min read
Artificial Intelligence
Article recommendations and increasing engagement with OpenAI GPT-3 Embeddings
It is quite common for blogs, or news / content distribution websites, to organise their content around categories of tags. However, this approach is time-consuming, and from measuring behaviours, it doesn't seem to do much to encourage browsing. In this blog post I use the new OpenAI embedding API to create highly targeted article recommendations, resulting in a four-fold (x4) increase in engagement.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Feb 2022 · 5 min read
Open Source
Open Source Sustainability through Corporate Social Responsibility
The recent Log4j vulnerability has once again sparked a lot of debate around our reliance on open source projects and their sustainability challenges. I argue that money cannot fix this issue, nor can hiding behind security scans, audits and other defenses. The solution is to genuinely understand the open source community, acknowledge the shared responsibility we have in our commons and through the well-understood tool of Corporate Social Responsibility, look to fill the ethical and philanthropic gaps.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Dec 2021 · 6 min read
Artificial Intelligence
Creating personalised data stories with GPT-3
You can tell powerful stories with data, but so often we are faced with raw data (albeit beautifully presented), and are left to create our own narratives. My previous attempts at turning data into stories have been time consuming and underwhelming. In this post I demonstrate how GPT-3, a new and advanced language model, can construct engaging and unique stories from user-specific data, with relative ease.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Dec 2021 · 10 min read
Open Source
Open source in financial services, bridging the contribution gap
We recently worked on a research project, exploring open source issues and challenges within financial services organisations. We found that consumption is “acceptable” rather than “encouraged”, with security concerns representing the biggest obstacle. On the flip-side, open source maintainers don’t wish to invest further in security. Financial services organisations, whose contribution policies lag behind, need to bridge this gap in order to fully capitalise on the value open source presents.
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Oct 2021 · 4 min read
Open Source · Video
Open Source Sustainability through Corporate Social Responsibility
Modern software is increasingly complex, made up of hundreds or thousands of open source components, hidden away in deeply nested dependency trees. Just how much do we know about these components that are an integral part of our products? What are the risks associated with their usage, and our exposure?
Colin Eberhardt · 13th  Oct 2021
Tech
Exploring 120 years of timezones
Timezones, and daylight saving - the practice of moving clocks forward by one hour once a year - are a pain. They make it hard to schedule international meetings, plan travel, or may simply cause you to be an hour late for work once a year. For a developer, they are even worse! This blog post takes a visual journey through the last 120 years of timezones, daylight saving and the ever changing world time.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Sep 2021 · 4 min read
Artificial Intelligence · Video
Copilot - Life with an AI-powered programming pair
Last month GitHub released Copilot, an AI powered tool that provides surprising accurate suggestions ranging from a few lines of code to entire functions. Copilot uses a vast and powerful AI model that is trained on billions of lines of open source code from GitHub. This, combined with the context provided by your code and comments, allows it to provide amazingly accurate suggestions. This is no simple autocomplete, this is pair programming with a robot!
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Aug 2021
Artificial Intelligence
GitHub Copilot Experiences - a glimpse of an AI-assisted future
I've been lucky enough to be granted access to the preview of Copilot, GitHub's new 'AI pair programmer' that is causing quite a stir. This blog post shares my initial thoughts and experiences with this tool. In brief, I'm stunned by its capabilities. It has genuinely made me say 'wow' out loud a few times in the past few hours, not something you expect from your developer tooling.
Colin Eberhardt · 3rd  Jul 2021 · 6 min read
Tech
The State of WebAssembly 2021
This blog post shares the results of the first State of WebAssembly Survey, with results from 250 respondents surveyed in June 2021. We find that Rust is the most frequently used and most desired WebAssembly language and many other interesting results
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Jun 2021 · 5 min read
Tech
You probably don’t need a micro-frontend
Micro-frontends is a relatively new architectural style for building web-based applications, which as the name suggests, is an extension of the popular microservices pattern. In this blog post I argue that this is a pattern you might not need!
Colin Eberhardt · 17th  Feb 2021 · 6 min read
Open Source
What the financial crash can teach us about open source
A talk I gave at the virtual Open Source Strategy Forum conference in 2020, where I compared some of the challenges facing open source (complexity, fragility, sustainability) to those which triggered the financial crisis of 2008.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Dec 2020 · 12 min read
Tech · Video
What the financial crash can teach us about open source?
A talk, from the Open Source Strategy Forums, where I compared some of the challenges facing open source (complexity, fragility, sustainability) to those which triggered the financial crisis of 2008.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Dec 2020
Tech
In-browser transcoding of video files with FFmpeg and WebAssembly
The WebAssembly build of FFmpeg allows you to run this powerful video processing tool directly within the browser. In this blog post I explore FFmpeg.wasm and create a simple client-side transcoder that streams data into a video element, with a bit of RxJS thrown in for good measure.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Nov 2020 · 8 min read
Tech
Code generating a WebAssembly 6502 emulator from specifications
Writing emulators that bring old computer hardware back to life is a popular hobby, and one that I have been enjoying recently through my own goal of writing an Atari 2600 emulator. However, writing a CPU emulator can get a little repetitive and tedious, so I thought I'd explore a different approach - generating the CPU emulation code from a specification rather than manually translating it. This blog post shares the fruitful results.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Aug 2020 · 9 min read
Resources
White Paper: Building an integrated desktop application ecosystem
This white paper identifies the core building blocks that are required to build an integrated desktop application ecosystem using a combination of web and legacy technologies, looks at the associated challenges, and reviews the various open source and commercial products that form the foundations of this ecosystem of the future.
Colin Eberhardt · 13th  Aug 2020 · 1 min read
Tech · Video
The new normal for your desktop
This webinar explores the potential and realities of an emerging vision for a more integrated desktop application ecosystem, as facilitated by various open-source and vendor products.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Jun 2020
Tech · Video
A gentle introduction to WebAssembly
WebAssembly is a brand new W3C standard for a secure and load-time optimised, stack-based virtual machine that is a compilation target for a broad range of languages. That's clear isn't it?! This talk will provide a very gentle introduction to WebAssembly, with practical examples. By the end of the talk you'll have a much better understanding of this exciting new technology.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Jun 2020
Tech
Rendering One Million Datapoints with D3 and WebGL
This blog post introduces the WebGL components which we recently added to D3FC, this suite of components make it easy to render charts with very large numbers of datapoints using D3. Throughout this post I'll describe the creation of the following visualisation, which displays 1 million books from the Hathi Trust library
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  May 2020 · 15 min read
Tech
A WebAssembly Powered Augmented Reality Sudoku Solver
An Augmented Reality Sudoku solver using the WebAssembly build of OpenCV (a C++ computer vision library), Tensorflow (a machine learning library) and solver written in Rust. It neatly demonstrates how WebAssembly allows you to write performance-critical web-based applications in a wide range of languages.
Colin Eberhardt · 3rd  Jan 2020 · 13 min read
Tech
WebAssembly 2019 Year In Review
I've been authoring the WebAssembly Weekly newsletter for just over two years now. As we near the end of 2019 I want to take the opportunity to share some of my favourite articles from the year.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Dec 2019 · 4 min read
Tech
WebAssembly on the Blockchain and JavaScript Smart Contracts
WebAssembly, despite the name, is a universal runtime that is finding traction on a number of platforms beyond the web. In this blog post I explore just one example, the use of WebAssembly as a smart contract engine on the blockchain. This post looks at the creation of a simple meetup-style event with ticket allocation governed by a smart contract written in JavaScript.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Nov 2019 · 11 min read
Tech
Faster Fractals with Multi-Threaded WebAssembly
When WebAssembly was released a couple of years ago it was an MVP (Minimal Viable Product), one significant feature that was missing from the MVP was threads. The WebAssembly threads proposal is now quite mature and available in both the tooling and Chrome. This blog post explores the internals of this feature, the new instruction set, and how it supports multi-threaded applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Jul 2019 · 13 min read
Tech
Build your own WebAssembly Compiler
Have you ever wanted to write your own compiler? ... yes? ... of course you have! I've always wanted to have a go at writing a compiler, and with the recent release of WebAssembly, I had the perfect excuse to have a go.
Colin Eberhardt · 17th  May 2019 · 20 min read
Tech
Building a better D3 axis
Recently we've been looking at enhancing the D3 axis component to implement a number of common features including more flexible label placement (e.g. positioning labels between ticks) and rotation / offset of labels to avoid collisions. This blog post demonstrates some of these features and how they were implemented.
Andy Lee, Colin Eberhardt · 9th  May 2019 · 6 min read
Tech · Video
Build Your Own WebAssembly Compiler - London Node User Group - April 2019
This talk, from London Node User Group, looked at some of the internals of WebAssembly, exploring how it works ‘under the hood’ with a demonstration of how you can create your own (simple) compiler that targets this runtime.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Apr 2019
Resources
White Paper: Thinking differently - the cloud as a value driver
The Financial Services industry is having to change and adapt in the face of regulations, competition, changes in buying habits and client expectations. This white paper encourages the industry to look at public cloud not as a tool for driving down costs, but as a vehicle for technical and business agility.
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Apr 2019 · 1 min read
Cloud
Maintaining global state in AWS Lambda functions with Async Hooks
This post looks at how the experimental Async Hooks API can be used to support global state within AWS Lambda functions. Considering that this is an experimental API it's worth treating with caution, but it does provide an interesting potential solution to a common problem.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Mar 2019 · 9 min read
Tech · Video
Tools, Bots and Automation for better Open Source Projects
With open source projects, we often work with strangers, people we may never speak to, let alone meet. Creating a quality product, with such a disparate team can be quite a challenge. This talk takes a look at how tools and automation are a critical component when creating a successful open source project.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Dec 2018
Tech
OpenFin Layouts added to StockFlux
We've updated StockFlux, our OpenFin demo app, to make use of the recently-released OpenFin Layouts APIs. This blog post takes a quick look at the features we've added, and the APIs used.
Colin Eberhardt, Marzio Superina · 3rd  Dec 2018 · 2 min read
Tech
Realtime crypto charting with JPM Perspective and d3fc
Perspective is a streaming pivot visualization engine which uses WebAssembly. This blog post explores its capabilities and creates a custom cryptocurrency visualisation using d3fc.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Nov 2018 · 6 min read
Open Source
7 Reasons I ❤️ Open Source
Here's why I spend so much of my time—including evenings and weekends—on GitHub, as an active member of the open source community.
Colin Eberhardt · 9th  Nov 2018 · 1 min read
Cloud
Serverless Rust with AWS Lambda and WebAssembly
In this post, I look at how WebAssembly can be used to create serverless functions and demonstrate an AWS Lambda function written entirely in Rust.
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Oct 2018 · 5 min read
Tech
Building a Complex Financial Chart with D3 and d3fc
When it comes to creating complex bespoke charts, of all the JavaScript visualisation / charting frameworks, D3 is the clear winner. This blog post takes a step-by-step look at the process of of building an ‘advanced’ financial charting using D3, with additional components from d3fc.
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Sep 2018 · 16 min read
Tech
The future of WebAssembly - A look at upcoming features and proposals
WebAssembly is a performance optimised virtual machine that was shipped in all four major browsers earlier this year. It is a nascent technology and the current version is very much an MVP. This blog post takes a look at the WebAssembly roadmap and the features it might gain in the near future.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Jul 2018 · 10 min read
Cloud
Sleeping Lambdas and AWS Step Functions
With AWS Lambda you pay for execution duration, which means that sleeping or waiting during execution has a direct impact on your bill! This blog post takes a look at how to make AWS Lambda functions sleep, without incurring costs, via AWS Step Functions.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Jun 2018 · 9 min read
Tech
Transpiling WebAssembly to support Multi Return Values
The WebAssembly specification is evolving, with many new features on the way. This blog post makes one of these future features available today, multi value returns, using the Babel approach of transpiling.
Colin Eberhardt · 29th  May 2018 · 10 min read
Tech
Writing WebAssembly By Hand
WebAssembly is a new language for the web, although unlike JavaScript it's not a language you are expected to use directly. However, it is actually possible to write WebAssembly directly by hand and it turns out this is an educational and enjoyable process, which I will explore in this blog post.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Apr 2018 · 13 min read
Resources
White Paper: The Web Assembles
WebAssembly is a new runtime for the web; a fast and efficient compilation target for a wide range of languages that could have a far-reaching impact on the web as we know it. This paper looks at at the performance limits of JavaScript and how WebAssembly was designed to tackle them.
Colin Eberhardt, Chris Price · 24th  Apr 2018 · 1 min read
Tech · Video
WebAssembly - and the Death of JavaScript?
This talk, from JSMonthly, looked at what's wrong with the way we are using JavaScript today and why we need WebAssembly.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Feb 2018
Tech
Writing a CHIP-8 emulator with Rust and WebAssembly
Over the past couple of months I’ve been exploring the potential of WebAssembly. I wanted to try my hand at creating a more complex WebAssembly application, which is why I’ve been spending my evenings working on a CHIP-8 emulator ... and learning Rust!
Colin Eberhardt · 13th  Dec 2017 · 12 min read
Open Source
Developing Bristol Pound - An Open Source React Native App
A few weeks ago the new Bristol Pound mobile app was launched, allowing users of this local currency to find vendors, view transactions and make payments on both iOS and Android. This post describes our experience of writing this application using React Native.
Colin Eberhardt, Georgiana Ginghina, Chris Meehan · 22nd  Nov 2017 · 9 min read
Tech
Migrating D3 Force Layout to WebAssembly
In this blog post I'll take a look at a real-world application of WebAssembly (WASM), the re-implementation of D3 force layout. The end result is a drop-in replacement for the D3 APIs, compiled to WASM using AssemblyScript (TypeScript).
Colin Eberhardt · 30th  Oct 2017 · 12 min read
Tech · Video
Serverless JavaScript
JavaScript is the dominant force on the web and increasingly the desktop too, but what about on the server? This talk looks at server-side JavaScript within the context of serverless architectures, a cloud-computing pattern with zero configuration, automatic scaling and a pay-per execution model.
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Oct 2017
Tech
Exploring different approaches to building WebAssembly modules
In this blog post I'll explore the various different ways you can create WebAssembly modules, using Emscripten, LLVM and AssemblyScript, comparing the tooling and performance.
Colin Eberhardt · 17th  Oct 2017 · 10 min read
Tech
Asynchronous Recursion with Callbacks, Promises and Async.
Creating asynchronous functions that are recursive can be a bit of a challenge. This blog post takes a look at various different approaches, including callbacks and promises, and ultimately demonstrates how async functions result in a much simpler and cleaner solution.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Sep 2017 · 11 min read
Tech
Creating a Market Profile Chart with D3
Market profile charts are relatively complicated and specialised charts used by financial traders. This blog post looks at how to render a market profile chart using D3.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Aug 2017 · 8 min read
Open Source
cla-bot a GitHub bot for automating Contributor Licence Agreements
A few months ago we contributed a project, ContainerJS, to the Symphony Software Foundation, an organization that fosters open source and collaboration within financial services.
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  Jul 2017 · 2 min read
Tech
Mapping UK place name endings (With command line cartography tools)
Place names in UK and Ireland are very much influenced by their surroundings, with endings such as -hill, -ford, and -wood quite clearly referencing local geography. This blog post uses the new NDJSON command line tools for processing, transforming and joining datasets to create an optimised visualisation.
Colin Eberhardt · 25th  Jun 2017 · 8 min read
Cloud
gifbot - Building a GitHub App
This post takes a look at the recently launched GitHub App platform, that allows developers to create integrations and services which can be shared with others. The post describes the development of gifbot, a simple and fun App!
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  May 2017 · 8 min read
Cloud
Developing a GitHub Bot with AWS Lambda
This blog post describes the process of creating a GitHub bot, hosted as an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda function, that performs various checks on pull requests.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  May 2017 · 15 min read
Tech
Interactive and Responsive Small Multiples with D3
Small multiples repeat the same basic chart, typically with the same axes, to display different slices of a dataset. They are an excellent way of showing rich multi-dimensional data, without becoming a dense mess of lines. This post looks at how to implement small multiples with D3 and d3fc.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Apr 2017 · 11 min read
Tech
Visualising London Marathon Training Data From Strava
I downloaded an analysed the training data for 1,000 athlete who ran the London Marathon in 2016. From this data I've learnt that people put in ~30% less mileage than popular plans suggest, Sunday mornings are a firm favourite for long runs, and that Saturday morning parkruns are very popular!
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Feb 2017 · 4 min read
Tech
Visualising London Marathon Strava Data
I recently downloaded run data for the 7,190 athletes who recorded their London Marathon on Strava, a popular platform for runners and cyclists. This blog post visualises and analyses the data in various interesting ways.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Jan 2017 · 4 min read
Tech
Our most popular Tech Blog posts of 2016
OK, I’m a bit late; I intended this for the start of January, but this time last year I wrote a post on our most popular 2015 technical blogs. Here I am again!
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Jan 2017 · 1 min read
Tech
Semantic Versioning is not enough
A few days ago the roadmap for future Angular releases, starting with v.4 in March 2017, was unveiled. It once again made me re-visit my personal doubts about semantic versioning, the underlying issue being that it is great for computers, but bad for humans. Considering that people are the primary consumers of your libraries and frameworks this can’t be right? Perhaps a hybrid approach that combines both semantic and romantic versioning would keep both the computers and the humans happy?
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Dec 2016 · 5 min read
Tech
A Journey Through Sound Synthesis with AudioKit
For the past four years I've been an author on Ray Wenderlich's website which provides tutorials for iOS developers. I don't do much native iOS development these days, However, I do like to keep my skills up to date. As part of this team I sometimes find myself being assigned topics that I wouldn't otherwise look into. And so it was, a couple of months ago, that I received an assignment to write a tutorial on the open source AudioKit project.
Colin Eberhardt · 30th  Nov 2016 · 1 min read
Resources
White Paper: Unstoppable HTML5
A white paper which takes a looks at the continued growth of HTML5 and how it is now a viable solution for desktop application development.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Oct 2016 · 1 min read
Tech · Video
Time Travel and The Future of HTML5 Productivity
In this talk I'll review how the functional programming style of frameworks such as React, ImmutableJS and Redux have paved the way for novel techniques that once again support rapid development cycles
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Jul 2016
Tech
Recursive Pattern Matching and Transformation of JavaScript AST
I've recently been playing around with the JavaScript Abstract Syntax Trees (AST), with the aim of transforming some JavaScript code into various other languages (Java, C#, Objective-C). As part of my research, I looked at how Babel performs AST transforms. If you're not familiar with Babel, and the plugins which perform the transformations, I'd recommend this blog post by Shuhei Kagawa that describes the development of a simple plugin for Angular 2 code generation.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Jun 2016 · 10 min read
Tech
Six tips for cleaner javascript promises
This blog post shares a few quick tips and patterns that I've been using to structure JavaScript promises; keeping them clean, simple and readable.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Jun 2016 · 12 min read
Tech
Applying redux reducers to arrays
The redux pattern provides a simple (and strict) pattern for managing state; a single store holds the state while a reducer applies actions, evolving the application state.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  May 2016 · 9 min read
Tech
Automating Expenses With the Mondo API
Mondo Bank has recently moved into public Beta, sending out 1,000 cards to trial customers each week. I received my Beta card a few days ago, and have been using it ever since. This blog post takes a quick look at the Mondo API and how I used it to automate expense claims!
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Mar 2016 · 7 min read
Tech
Binding with Bond
Swift Bond is a binding framework that removes the mundane task of wiring up your UI. In this tutorial, which was originally published on Ray Wenderlich's website, I introduce the concepts of Bond and demonstrate how to use it to rapidly build an iOS app.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Feb 2016 · 1 min read
Tech
Angular 2 Time Travel with Redux
This post looks at integrating Angular 2 with Immutable.js and Redux, a popular Flux store implementation. It also demonstrates that the functional approach, encouraged by these technologies, allow for powerful concepts such as time travel, where you can replay actions and application state.
Colin Eberhardt · 25th  Jan 2016 · 11 min read
Tech
Angular 2 with Immutable.JS
Angular 2.0 introduces a component-based approach to building applications, where the rendering can be optimised by selecting a suitable change detection strategy for each component. This post looks at how the OnPush change detection strategy works quite elegantly with the concept of immutable objects as enforced by Immutable.js.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Jan 2016 · 8 min read
Tech
Most popular Tech Blog posts of 2015
Most popular tech blog posts of 2015
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Jan 2016 · 1 min read
Tech
Creating an Angular 2 build with Gulp, TSLint and DefinitelyTyped
From my perspective Angular 2 is a great improvement over Angular 1. The framework is simpler, and as a result your code is more concise, making use of modern JavaScript concepts. However, this does come at a cost; with Angular 2 the required tooling is really quite complicated.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Dec 2015 · 15 min read
Tech
Building a todo list application with Angular 2.0
This blog post takes a step-by-step approach to building a simple todo-list application with Angular 2.0. Along the way we'll look at web components, dependency injection, TypeScript, bindings and the Angular 2.0 change detection strategy which combine to make a much more elegant framework to its predecessor.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Dec 2015 · 16 min read
Tech
Rendering ASCII Charts with D3
A few days ago Bloomberg published their list of 50 companies to watch in 2016, and for some reason they decided to publish the entire report in ASCII! I thought it would be a bit of fun to see if I could use D3 to create my own ASCI charts
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Nov 2015 · 8 min read
Tech · Video
Geeking out about React Native
ReactJS, Virtual DOM, JSX, a hackable editor, ES6 modules, classes, arrow functions, node, iOS, native-UI, flexbox, idempotent functions… In this talk I’ll be geeking out about all the seriously cool tech that makes ReactNative possible.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Oct 2015
Resources
White Paper: HTML5 Migration – Get started with a Little Bang
This white paper explores and addresses the importance of migrating complex business applications from Flex and Silverlight to HTML5. It highlights the risks involved in delaying your migration and provides a solution that tackles cost concerns at the same time as delivering an early return on investment.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Oct 2015 · 1 min read
Tech
Improving Grunt Performance
JavaScript builds are getting more complex and time consuming. This blog post shares a few steps I took to improve the performance of one of our project's grunt build, hopefully some of the tools I used will be of use to others.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Oct 2015 · 6 min read
Tech
MVVM With ReactiveCocoa 3.0
This is my final article on ReactiveCocoa 3.0 (RAC3), where I demonstrate some more complex RAC3 usages within the context of an application built using the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  May 2015 · 8 min read
Resources
White Paper: Making Technology Disappear
Creating omni-channel experiences in enterprise is more often than not a challenge in terms of strategy and mindset rather than technology. This white paper outlines a twinned design and technical approach that ensures focus is squarely on users and the contexts within they use a system.
Graham Odds, Colin Eberhardt · 8th  May 2015 · 1 min read
Tech
ReactiveCocoa 3.0 - Signal Producers and API clarity
My previous blog post took a first look at ReactiveCocoa 3.0 (RC3), where I described the new Signal interface, and the pipe forward operator. In this blog post I continue my exploration of the RC3 APIs and turn my attention to signal producers. I also discuss a few points around the overall clarity of the new ReactiveCocoa APIs.
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Apr 2015 · 7 min read
Tech
A First Look at ReactiveCocoa 3.0
This blog post takes a look at the new ReactiveCocoa 3.0 swift interface, which introduces generics, a pipe-forward operator and an interesting use of curried functions.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Apr 2015 · 7 min read
Tech
Retrospective on Developing an application with React Native
I've been building a React Native app for the past few months, which was published as a tutorial yesterday. A number of people have asked about my thoughts and opinions about React Native - which I am sharing in this blog post.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Mar 2015 · 7 min read
Tech
Introducing React Native
A few months ago Facebook announced React Native, a framework that lets you build native iOS applications with JavaScript. I've been spending the past couple of months building am app with this framework, which I have finally been able to share!
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Mar 2015 · 1 min read
Tech
Implementing React.js in Swift
This blog post explores the novel approach taken by the React.js team, where the UI is expressed as a function of the current application state, and re-implements it with Swift.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Mar 2015 · 12 min read
Tech
Exploring KVO alternatives with Swift
Swift has access to all of the Objective-C APIs, which means that anything you could do with Objective-C you can now do with Swift. However, there are times when it is worth exploring a better, pure-Swift, alternative. This post explores the pros and cons of KVO versus a couple of Swift alternatives.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Feb 2015 · 8 min read
Tech
Implementing Events in Swift
Swift does not have a built in eventing mechanism. This post explores a few different ways events can be implemented in Swift and how to avoid problems of retain cycles and closure reference equality.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Feb 2015 · 6 min read
Tech
SVG layout with Flexbox for simpler D3 charts
This blog looks at how CSS flexbox layout can be applied to SVG in order to simplify the task of constructing charts with D3. This approach has been made possible by the JavaScript flexbox implementation that Facebook recently open sourced to support ReactJS Native.
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  Feb 2015 · 9 min read
Tech
Exception Handling in Swift
Swift doesn't support throwing exceptions, nor does it support catching them. This wouldn't be a problem if you could develop iOS apps in pure Swift, but unfortunately at the moment you cannot.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Jan 2015 · 7 min read
Tech
Tearing Down Swift's Optional Pyramid of Doom
This blog post looks at a few techniques that can be used to remove the deeply nested if-let statements that are a common sight in Swift code.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Dec 2014 · 7 min read
Tech
Swift Initialization and the Pain of Optionals
Swift's strict initialisation process results in a number of practical issues, leaving developers scratching their heads. This post explores a few solutions including two-phase initialisation, the use of optionals and lazy properties.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Nov 2014 · 5 min read
Tech
Binding mutable arrays with ReactiveCocoa
This post describes a binding helper that allows you to bind arrays directly to table views with ReactiveCocoa. In this update to my previous post, the helper is extended to support mutable arrays.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Nov 2014 · 2 min read
Tech
Mandelbrot Generation With Concurrent Functional Swift
This post show how the simple task of computing a Mandelbrot set can be split up across multiple threads (and processors) using functional techniques.
Colin Eberhardt · 29th  Oct 2014 · 10 min read
Tech
Jekyll Pagination and Infinite Scroll
Recently I updated the Scott Logic blog to implement infinite scrolling using a combination of Jekyll pagination and jScroll. Both of these components are quite fussy about their respective configuration, meaning that integrating them took longer than expected. I thought I'd share my solution in this blog post, hopefully saving others from the hours I spent digging into jScroll code or cursing Jekyll!
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Oct 2014 · 4 min read
Tech
Swift and the curious case of AnyObject
Swift, as I am sure you are aware, is quite a strict, safe and strongly-typed language. However, because the language needs to maintain Objective-C compatibility it has some rather curious features, and the behaviour of `AnyObject` is one of them!
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Sep 2014 · 2 min read
Tech
Functional Swift and Memoization
This post is a continuation of my previous which looked at implementing Conway’s Game of Life using functional techniques. Here I look at how memoization can be used to cache the return value of a function in order to improve performance.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Sep 2014 · 11 min read
Tech
Swift By Tutorials is Published
Apple released the first public beta of the Swift programming language just over three months ago. Within days of the release myself and Matt Galloway started working on our book Swift by Tutorials, which as of yesterday is finally finished and shipping!
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Sep 2014 · 1 min read
Tech
The Game of Life with Functional Swift
This blog post shows an implementation of Conway's Game of Life using functional techniques in Swift.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Sep 2014 · 12 min read
Tech
Swift Adoption Statistics
It was just two months ago that Apple took us by surprise in releasing the Swift programming language. This blog post reflects on the first few months of Swift adoption.
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Aug 2014 · 2 min read
Tech
MVVM, Swift and ReactiveCocoa - It's all good!
This blog post looks out how Swift makes the combination of ReactiveCocoa and MVVM even better ...
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Jul 2014 · 5 min read
Tech
A Statistical Comparison of the iOS and Android Stores
A few months ago I published a blog post which showed the results of analysing the meta-data of 75,000 apps from the iTunes App Store. This blog post continues the analysis by adding 60,000 Android apps into the mix.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Jul 2014 · 1 min read
Tech
MVVM with ReactiveCocoa
I've recently had a two-part tutorial published on Ray Wenderlich's website that details how ReactiveCocoa can be used to implement the MVVM pattern within iOS applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Jul 2014 · 1 min read
Tech
Swift Sequences and Lazy Evaluation
In this blog post I want to take a quick look at the Swift Sequence protocol, which forms the basis for the for-in loop, and see how this allows you to write code that performs sequence operations that are only evaluated on-demand.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Jun 2014 · 7 min read
Resources
White Paper - HTML5 At Enterprise Scale
Moving from desktop or plugin technologies (Flex, Silverlight, Java Applets) to HTML5 is a challenge for developers of large-scale enterprise applications. This White Paper discusses the challenges and offers potential solutions.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  May 2014 · 1 min read
Tech
Binding to a UITableView from a ReactiveCocoa ViewModel
This blog post presents a simple utility class for binding ReactiveCocoa ViewModels to UITableViews without the need for the usual datasource / delegate boiler-plate.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  May 2014 · 9 min read
Tech
A Colour Analysis of the Apple App Store
This blog post presents the result of analysing 250,000 screenshots from the Apple App Store, looking at hue, lightness and saturation histograms for each category.
Colin Eberhardt · 12th  Apr 2014 · 8 min read
Tech
A Statistical Analysis of the Apple App Store
The App Store continues its rapid growth, with approximately 300,000 apps added each year. I decided it would be fun to download as much app metadata as possible in order to see what patterns and trends I could find. This blog post describes the results.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Mar 2014 · 9 min read
Tech
Simulating Accelerometer and Location data for iOS
This blog post looks at how to simulate accelerometer and location data so that you can test iOS apps without the need for a physical device. The simulated data is provided by an interactive UI which allows you to rotate the phone and mark paths on a map which can then be replayed.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Mar 2014 · 7 min read
Tech
ReactiveCocoa - The Definitive Guide
It feels like everyone in the iOS community is talking about ReactiveCocoa at the moment. In this blog post I talk briefly about what ReactiveCocoa is and the 'Definitive Guide' which I wrote for raywenderlich.com
Colin Eberhardt · 13th  Mar 2014 · 2 min read
Tech
PropertyCross 1.3 Released
PropertyCross has just announced a v1.3 release, which includes two new frameworks, a number of updates and an improved build system.
Colin Eberhardt · 31st  Jan 2014 · 2 min read
Tech
iOS 7 By Tutorials In Print
The book, iOS 7 By Tutorials, which I contributed four chapters to, is now in print.
Colin Eberhardt · 29th  Jan 2014 · 1 min read
Tech
Understanding JavaScript Object Creation Patterns
This article explores the various ways you can create objects with the JavaScript language, and through this exploration finds that there is much to learn about the language!
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Nov 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
An Interactive Tab Bar Controller Transition
This blog post looks at creating an interactive tab bar controller transition, where you can swipe left and right to navigate between the tabs. The transition itself is a 'paperfold' effect - very pretty!
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Sep 2013 · 9 min read
Tech
Creating a custom flip view controller transition
With iOS 7 Apple introduced a new set of APIs for creating custom View Controller transitions. In this blog post I look at how to create a custom 'flip' transition, giving the impression of a turning page.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Sep 2013 · 8 min read
Tech
iOS 7 by Tutorials - the first iOS 7 book - is published
For the past four months I have been hard at work writing four chapters for a book, iOS 7 by tutorials. Just yesterday, as the iOS 7 NDA was lifted, the book went on sale.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Sep 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
Windows Phone App Studio - Shows Potential ...
A couple of days ago Microsoft announced Windows Phone App Studio, a web based tool for the rapid creation of Windows Phone applications. In this blog post I take this new technology for a spin to see what it's capable of, and the interesting potential it has for creating 'personal' apps.
Colin Eberhardt · 9th  Aug 2013 · 5 min read
Tech
New iOS Article - How To Make a Custom Control
My latest iOS development article has been published on Ray Wenderlich's site, this time I look into how to develop custom iOS controls.
Colin Eberhardt · 3rd  Jun 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
ReversiEight - A Windows 8 Reversi Game
For the last six months or so I have been deeply immersed in a combination of iOS and HTML5 development. Now I don't want my C#/XAML skills to get too rusty, so over the weekend I decided to write a simple Windows 8 Store App.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  May 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
HTML5 - It Just Got Real - Slides
A couple of days ago we hosted a one-day conference, HTML5 - It Just Got Real, at the Royal Society buildings in London. As promised, we have made all of our presentations available online.
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  May 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
Enhanced Windows Phone 8 Map Gestures
This blog post describes the addition of a two-finger rotation and three-finger pitch gesture to the Windows Phone 8 Map control.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Apr 2013 · 6 min read
Tech
Comparing KendoUI and Knockout (with a bit of jQueryMobile on the side)
This blog post compares the same twitter search application written with both Knockout and Kendo in order to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each framework.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Apr 2013 · 9 min read
Tech
HTML5 - It Just Got Real - A One-day Conference in London 14th May
Announcing a one-day conference at the Royal Society, London UK, on the 14th of May.
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Mar 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
Windows Phone 8 Running App Article wins CodeProject competition
I've just received an email from those nice folks at CodeProject letting me know that my article 'A Windows Phone 8 Run Tracking App in 100 Lines of Code' has just won the Best Mobile article of January 2013 award.
Colin Eberhardt · 25th  Feb 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
Linq to Objective-C
In the past few months I have been immersing myself into the world of iOS development.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Feb 2013 · 10 min read
Tech
CodeProject MVP 2013
Earlier today I received an email informing me that I have been awarded a CodeProject MVP for the year 2013.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Jan 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
CodeProject Article on Xamarin Cross Platform Development
This article looks at how you can write a cross-platform mobile application with a shared C# code base using Xamarin MonoTouch.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Jan 2013 · 1 min read
Tech
Introducing PropertyCross - Helping you select a cross-platform mobile framework
Introduces a new open source project that helps developers choose a suitable cross-platform framework
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Dec 2012 · 7 min read
Tech
A Multicast Delegate Pattern for iOS Controls
This blog post introduces a simple pattern for adding multicasting capabilities to existing iOS controls. Adding multicasting allows for improved clarity and code re-use.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Nov 2012 · 4 min read
Tech
Ray Wenderlich and My Adventures in iOS
The technologies that we use to write applications for our end users are changing at a frightening pace!
Colin Eberhardt · 12th  Nov 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
Integrating Knockout and jQueryMobile
This blog post looks at the issues regarding integration of KnockoutJS and jQueryMobile, and provides a simple worked example - a Twitter Search application - where the two technologies play nicely together!
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Oct 2012 · 7 min read
Tech
Clearer - A Gesture-Driven Windows 8 To-Do Application
A couple of days ago a published a new article on CodeProject, this latest article tackles the migration of a gesture-drive application from Windows Phone to Windows 8.
Colin Eberhardt · 12th  Oct 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
Gesture-Driven To Do List Article Wins CodeProject Monthly Competition
I have just found out that my article "A Gesture-Driven Windows Phone To-Do List" won first place in the July 2012 best mobile article category.
Colin Eberhardt · 29th  Aug 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
Property Finder - A Cross-platform HTML5 Mobile App
A while back, when PhoneGap for Windows Phone was still in beta, I created Property Finder, an application for searching UK property listings.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Aug 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
Book Review: iOS Programming for .NET Developers
A couple of weeks ago Josh Smith published his latest book, "iOS Programming for .NET Developers", which seeks to ease the transition from .NET to iOS developers.
Colin Eberhardt · 30th  Jul 2012 · 5 min read
Tech
A Gesture-Driven Windows Phone To-Do List - Complete Example
Over the past few weeks I have been working on a Windows Phone to-do list application, inspired by the iPhone Clear app.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Jul 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
An Introduction and Thoughts on Developing iOS Applications with MonoTouch
This blog post describes the creation of a simple twitter search application for iOS, based on a similar application I wrote for Windows Phone a few months back.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Jul 2012 · 13 min read
Tech
The Higgs Boson, Comic Sans and my 15 minutes of Twitter fame
It's been a busy Twitter day for me. A reasonably inane tweet that I posted this morning pointing out that the announcement of the (potential) Higgs Boson discovery was written using the much derided Comic Sans font has been retweeted thousands of times.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Jul 2012 · 4 min read
Tech
A gesture-driven Windows Phone to-do application Part Two - drag re-ordering
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a todo list application which uses gestures to achieve its basic functions.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Jun 2012 · 9 min read
Tech
A Developer Perspective on Windows Phone 8 - An Update
My blog post from yesterday "A Developer Perspective on Windows Phone 8" sparked a bit of furious debate on Twitter.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Jun 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
A Developer Perspective on Windows Phone 8
This blog post takes a look at what Windows Phone 8 (WP8) means for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) developers and the Microsoft development platform in general.
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Jun 2012 · 3 min read
Tech
Microsoft Surface vs. Apple iPad - a Visual Comparison
In this post I present a graphical comparison of the Microsoft Surface and Apple iPad tablets
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Jun 2012 · 2 min read
Tech
A gesture-driven Windows Phone to-do application
This blog post describes the implementation of a gesture-based todo-list application. The simple interface is controlled entirely by drag, flick and swipe.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Jun 2012 · 13 min read
Tech
Introducing the jQuery Mobile Metro Theme
This blog post introduces the new jQuery Mobile Metro theme and demonstrates how to create a web UI that detects the device it is being viewed on, to render a Metro UI on WP7 and iOS on other devices
Colin Eberhardt · 30th  Apr 2012 · 10 min read
Tech
WPF Charting Performance Comparisons (the Battle Continues)
This blog post presents a thorough analysis of the performance of various WPF Charting components. The results show that a new class of charting solutions, which use raster-based graphics as opposed to retained mode vector graphics, provide a considerable performance advantage
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Apr 2012 · 4 min read
Tech
Everything you wanted to know about databinding in WPF, Silverlight and WP7 (Part Two)
This is the second post in my series about databinding in Silverlight and WPF.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Apr 2012 · 8 min read
Tech
KnockoutJS vs. Silverlight - a new CodeProject article
I have just published a new article over on CodeProject called "KnockoutJS vs. Silverlight".
Colin Eberhardt · 12th  Apr 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
Everything you wanted to know about databinding in WPF, Silverlight and WP7 (Part One)
OK, so the title is a little ambitious, but there is nothing wrong with setting yourself lofty aims! Because of the depth of this topic I have decided to split this tutorial up into a series of blog posts, each of which explore a different aspect of the binding framework.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Apr 2012 · 10 min read
Tech
Developing a GWT TodoMVC application
This blog post describes my experiences of developing a simple Todo application with Google Web Toolkit (GWT), that I have contributed to the JavaScript TodoMVC project, which compares the implementation of the same application with various JavaScript frameworks.
Colin Eberhardt · 12th  Mar 2012 · 8 min read
Tech
Plotting Circular Relationships Graphs with Silverlight
I have just published a new article on codeproject, which describes the creation of a Silverlight custom control for plotting the relationships between a network of nodes.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Mar 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
Slides and code from my WPUG talk on PhoneGap
Yesterday I presented a talk at the London-based Windows Phone User Group on the development of cross-platform mobile applications using PhoneGap.
Colin Eberhardt · 29th  Feb 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
Visualising StackOverflow Tag Relationships with Silverlight
Recently I have been wondering about the wealth of information that can be gleaned from the 2.5 million programming question on Stack Overflow.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Feb 2012 · 2 min read
Tech
The Gradual Decline in Silverlight Adoption
Around one year ago I made the prediction that Silverlight would have an overall adoption of 81% by the end of 2011.
Colin Eberhardt · 13th  Feb 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
WPUG Talk: Developing cross-platform mobile applications with PhoneGap for Windows Phone 7
In a couple of weeks I will be giving a talk on using PhoneGap for cross platform mobile application development at the WPUG #NotAtMWC12 event on Tuesday, February 28, in London. This post gives a brief overview of my talk and a video.
Colin Eberhardt · 9th  Feb 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
A Simple Pattern for Creating Re-useable UserControls in WPF / Silverlight
This blog post provides step-by-step instructions for creating a user control, which exposes bindable properties, in WPF and Silverlight. The post covers dependency properties, and how to manage DataContext inheritance.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Feb 2012 · 8 min read
Tech
WP7 PhoneGap Backbutton Support Re-visited
About a month ago I published an article which demonstrated how to create a WP7 application using static HTML pages and PhoneGap.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Jan 2012 · 2 min read
Tech
Windows Phone 7 - Browsing your Photos via Bing Maps
The Windows Phone 7 camera gives you the option to record the location where a picture was taken (under Settings => applications => pictures+camera).
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  Jan 2012 · 6 min read
Tech
Proud to be a CodeProject MVP 2012
I have just received an email from Chris Maunder, co-founder of CodeProject, informing me that I have been awarded CodeProject MVP status for 2012.
Colin Eberhardt · 9th  Jan 2012 · 1 min read
Tech
FastClick for WP7 - Improving Browser Responsiveness for PhoneGap Apps
I recently released an update of the HTML5 / PhoneGap application I wrote a few months ago to the marketplace.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  Jan 2012 · 4 min read
Tech
A Festive and Fun Windows Phone 7 Maze Game
Last night, with my Christmas presents all wrapped and a lack of any decent programmes (festive or otherwise) on television, I had a few hours to kill, so decided to create a festive-themed WP7 game ...
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Dec 2011 · 8 min read
Tech
A Metro Themed PowerPoint Template
Over the weekend I mentioned on Twitter that I had created a Metro-style PowerPoint template. There were a few requests to share, so hence this blog post. Scroll to the bottom to download the PowerPoint file.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Dec 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
A Simple Multi-Page Windows Phone 7 PhoneGap Example
This blog post shows how you can use PhoneGap to create Windows Phone 7 applications that are comprised of multiple, simple HTML pages, whilst meeting the Marketplace certification requirements.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Dec 2011 · 6 min read
Tech
A Windows Phone 7 Slide View with Page Pips
A popular user-interface in the iOS world is the UIPageControl which renders a small set of dots to indicate the number of pages.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Dec 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
Handling the back-stack in Windows Phone 7 PhoneGap applications
Recently I have been researching the use of PhoneGap for creating HTML5 Windows Phone 7 applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Nov 2011 · 5 min read
Tech
Pushpin Clustering with the Windows Phone 7 Bing Map control
This blog post provides a simple utility class that will cluster pushpins on a Bing Map control. This utility provides a way to achieve great performance with 1000s of pushpins.
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Nov 2011 · 5 min read
Tech
Suppressing Zoom and Scroll interactions in the Windows Phone 7 WebBrowser Control
This blog post describes a simple helper class that can be used to supress scrolling and pinch zoom of the Windows Phone 7 WebBrowser control.
Colin Eberhardt · 17th  Nov 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
The Untimely Demise of the Plugin (and how LOB developments will suffer)
It has been another interesting week for HTML5 and front-end technologies. We have seen Adobe abandon work on mobile versions of the Flash plugin, news of Silverlight 5 being the last version of the Microsoft plugin and more recently an announcement that Adobe will no longer develop Flex.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Nov 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
An Introduction to Semantic Zoom in Windows 8 Metro
With the new Metro UI, Windows 8 has firmly embraced the tablet form-factor, with the interface tailored for touch and multi-touch interactions.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Nov 2011 · 5 min read
Tech
Property Finder - the first HTML5-based Windows Phone 7 Application
Last week I submitted Property Finder, a simple application that searches for properties based in the UK, to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. I was happy to receive confirmation that this application had been certified and published just two days later.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Nov 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
Tombstoning with PhoneGap for Windows Phone 7 (and KnockoutJS)
A few weeks back I wrote a blog post about how the recent announcement of PhoneGap support for Windows Phone 7 (WP7) which makes it possible to develop HTML5-based applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Oct 2011 · 9 min read
Tech
Codeproject September Competition - Scored a Double!
I have just received an email from Codeproject - my article on XAMLFinance, a cross platform Silverlight, WPF and WP7 application, has won Best C# and Best Overall article competitions for September.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Oct 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Adding Error Bars to Visiblox Silverlight Charts
Having spent a number of years studying Physics at university, I have had the importance of error bars well and truly drummed into me!
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Oct 2011 · 6 min read
Tech
Paging Data from the Server with Silverlight
This blog post provides an implementation of IPagedCollectionView which allows paging of data from the server. An IPagedDataSource is introduced that allows any paged data source to be plugged in, with the standard controls such as DataPager making it easy to create paging applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Oct 2011 · 7 min read
Tech
WinRT Transitions - Creating Fast and Fluid Metro UIs
This blog post looks at the new concept of 'transitions' that WinRT, within Windows 8, introduces. This concept makes it very easy for you to create a fluid and interactive UI without going anywhere near storyboards!
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Oct 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
Using ObservableCollection with WinRT (via a little shim!)
WInRT introduces a new interface for collection change notification, IObservableVector, which means ObservableCollection no longer works with this framework. In this blog post I will show how you can use ObservableCollection, via a simple adapter, within you WInRT applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Oct 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
A Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) MVVM Tombstoning Example
In this blog post I look at the new application lifecycle model that Windows Phone 7.1 (Mango) introduces, and show how to handle the various lifecycle events in a simple MVVM application.
Colin Eberhardt · 3rd  Oct 2011 · 6 min read
Tech
Developing Windows Phone 7 HTML5 apps with PhoneGap
This article show the step-by-step development of a Windows Phone 7 HTML5 application using PhoneGap. It also looks at how viable this approach is for cross-platform mobile development.
Colin Eberhardt · 29th  Sep 2011 · 14 min read
Tech
Building Windows Phone Apps - a free WP7 eBook
I've just had an email land in my inbox from Microsoft's Mike Ormond, announcing that the Windows Phone 7 book that I contributed a couple of chapters to (Introduction and Tools), has finally been published!
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Sep 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
XAML Finance - a cross-platform WPF, Silverlight, WP7 application
I have just published a new article on codeproject which describes the development of XAMLFinance, a cross-platform application for the desktop (WPF), web (Silverlight) and phone (WP7).
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Sep 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
TweetSearch - A Cross platform Metro UI WinRT and Silverlight Application
With the Windows 8 preview release earlier this week, developers are now faced with a whole new and exciting Microsoft stack.
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  Sep 2011 · 9 min read
Tech
Windows 8 - An OS of two halves.
In this blog post I take a look at Windows 8 on the outside, from a user perspective; and on the inside, from a developer perspective to see how it will change the way we develop with Windows on tablets, smartphones and the desktop when it is released next year.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Sep 2011 · 7 min read
Tech
Dart - will Google make HTML5 applications viable?
Just a few weeks ago I wrote a blogpost "Can Microsoft 'fix' JavaScript and make HTML5 applications viable?", where I described some of the issues with JavaScript and how these could be solved by Microsoft if they wrote a C# to JavaScript compiler.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Sep 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
Can Microsoft 'fix' JavaScript and make HTML5 applications viable?
Microsoft's recent change in stance over Silverlight, promoting HTML5 as "the only true cross-platform solution for everything", seems to have sidelined Silverlight as a niche framework.
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  Aug 2011 · 6 min read
Tech
Talk on Cross-Platform XAML Applications @NEBytes
I am happy to have been invited by NEBytes to give a talk on cross-platform XAML applications later this month.
Colin Eberhardt · 9th  Aug 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Implementing a Windows Phone 7 Conversation View Part Two
This blog post describes how to implement a conversation / messaging style application with Windows Phone 7. It covers how to style the speech bubbles and the scrolling of the conversation list view when the phone keyboard is shown.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Aug 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
Capturing Windows Phone 7 Panorama Images
The Windows Phone 7 Panorama control is widely used in applications and to many has come to symbolise the Metro Design Language.
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Jul 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
Implementing a Windows Phone 7 Conversation View
This blog post looks at how to to create a conversation view, mimicking the SMS messaging interface within Windows Phone 7. This post shows how we can select different DataTemplate for each item in an ItemsControl to achieve this effect.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Jul 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
From Silverlight to HTML5 CodeProject Article
I have just published an article on codeproject which describes the differences in development between Silverlight and HTML5.
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Jul 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Silverlight UK User Group Presentation on Cross Platform XAML
Earlier this week I presented a talk to the Silverlight UK User Group on cross-platform application development with WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7.
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Jul 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Visiblox MVP Giveaway
Readers of my blog will probably have noticed that I have a keen interest in both charting and performance.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Jun 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion #8 - AutoCompleteBox Reveal Animation
When I started the Metro In Motion series, I thought I would probably post three or four articles and be done. However, every time I use my Windows Phone 7 I seem to spot a new 'native' fluid UI effect which I would like to use in my own code.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Jun 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion Part #7 - Panorama Prettiness and Opacity
This blog post details a simple metro-in-motion behaviour which reduces the Panorama control's contents while the user slides from item-to-item so that they can really appreciate your fancy background graphic!
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Jun 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion Part #6 - Rolling List Location Indicator
This blog post describes the development of a rolling list location indicator. This indicator mirrors the behaviour seen in the native Windows Phone 7 calendar which rolls from one date to the next as the user scrolls.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Jun 2011 · 5 min read
Tech
A Simple Windows Phone 7 MVVM Tombstoning Example
This blog post shows how to implement tombstoning within a Windows Phone 7 application that following the Model-View-ViewModel pattern.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  May 2011 · 13 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion #5 - SandwichFlow
For the past few months I have been writing a Metro-In-Motion blog series which describes how to recreate some of the fluid effects found in native Windows Phone 7 applications within your own applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  May 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
White Paper: Flex, Silverlight or HTML5? Time to decide...
When meeting current and prospective clients the subject of web technology choice often arises. There has been a great deal of confusion and uncertainty out there, even before Microsoft's perceived change of stance with respect to Silverlight emerged.
Colin Eberhardt · 5th  May 2011 · 1 min read
Resources
White Paper: Flex, Silverlight or HTML5? Time to decide...
When meeting current and prospective clients the subject of web technology choice often arises. There has been a great deal of confusion and uncertainty out there, even before Microsoft's perceived change of stance with respect to Silverlight emerged.
Colin Eberhardt, Graham Odds, Chris Price · 5th  May 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion Part #4 - Tilt Effect
This blog post describes the implementation of a metro 'tilt' effect for Windows Phone 7 which causes element to respond to user interactions by tilting in 3D
Colin Eberhardt · 3rd  May 2011 · 6 min read
Tech
ViewModel INotifyPropertyChanged Code Generation
This blog post describes a novel method of generating boiler-plate MVVM code using codesnippet automation. You simply add attributes to your view model classes and the code is generated for you!
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Apr 2011 · 5 min read
Tech
A Fast Loading Windows Phone 7 NavigationList Control
This blog post describes a Windows Phone 7 NavigationList control, a list control designed for navigation pages. The NavigationList renders twice as fast as a ListBox and has a slightly simpler API.
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Apr 2011 · 5 min read
Tech
MIX11 - A Tale of Two Keynotes - As Told By Twitter
The annual MIX conference, where Microsoft showcases the latest and greatest technologies to the development community is now coming to an end.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Apr 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Gartner Predicts a Promising Future for Windows Phone 7 Developers
Yesterday Gartner released its latest mobile smartphone sales predications, with the figures showing a dramatic turnaround in their predictions for the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 platform.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Apr 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion Part #3 - Flying Titles!
In this blog post I look at how to implement the fly-out fly-in effect seen in native Windows Phone 7 applications. This effect is seen in the native mail application; when you click on a message, the title flies out of the list then flies back in as the title of the message page.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Apr 2011 · 8 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion Part #2 - 'Peel' Animations
This blog post is part Š of my Metro In Motion series. In this post I demonstrate how to implement the animated 'peel' effect seen when native Windows Phone 7 applications exit.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Mar 2011 · 6 min read
Tech
Metro In Motion Part #1 - Fluid List Animation
This blog post presents an attached behaviour that gracefully slides the contents of a list into view when used in conjunction with a Pivot control, emulating the Windows Phone 7 email application.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Mar 2011 · 5 min read
Tech
A Silverlight Resizable TextBlock (and other resizable things)
In this blog post I present a simple attached behaviour that uses a Thumb control within a Popup to adorn any UI element so that the user can re-size it.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Mar 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
CodeProject Article on WP7 Jump List
I have just published a new CodeProject article on developing a Windows Phone 7 jump list control.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Mar 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
MVVM Charting - Binding Multiple Series to a Visiblox Chart
This post describes a method of using attached properties to bind a ViewModel which contains multiple data series to a Visiblox chart without any code-behind.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Mar 2011 · 8 min read
Tech
Google Sky on Windows Phone 7
This blog post shows just how easy it is to use Google Sky as a tile source for Bing Maps, bringing the universe to Windows Phone 7!
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Feb 2011 · 2 min read
Tech
My DDDHack Entry
At the weekend my wife was having a 'girls night out', which gave me an excellent excuse (and roughly four hours) to spend working on a DDDHack entry.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Feb 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Windows Phone 7 Performance Measurements - Emulator vs. Hardware
This blog post presents a few performance measurements that detail the relative performance of ItemsControl, ListBox and manual addition of elements to the UI. These performance measurements are also compared when ran on the emulator and the real hardware.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Feb 2011 · 2 min read
Tech
A Circular ProgressBar Style using an Attached ViewModel
This blog post describes how to re-template the Silverlight ProgressBar control to render a circular progress indicator. This approach uses an attached view model to circumnavigate some of the limitations of the ProgressBar design.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Feb 2011 · 8 min read
Tech
Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight + WPF)
Both WPF and Silverlight have a property TextTrimming="WordEllipsis", which trims the text that a TextBlock displays based on the available width.
Colin Eberhardt · 31st  Jan 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
Windows Phone 7 DeferredLoadContentControl
This blog post describes a simple content control that can be used to defer the rendering of its contents in order to provide a better user experience on Windows Phone 7.
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Jan 2011 · 3 min read
Tech
A Navigator Control For Visiblox Time Series Charts
In this blog post I will describe the creation of a simple range selector UserControl, which can be used alongside a Visiblox chart to create an interactive navigator for time series data.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Jan 2011 · 8 min read
Tech
A Windows Phone 7 Jump List Control
This blog post presents a Windows Phone 7 Jump List control that I have developed.This post describes the API in detail and includes full sourcecode. Feel free to use and enjoy!
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Jan 2011 · 8 min read
Tech
#ukfuel - another Twitter / Bing Maps Mashup!
A few weeks ago I blogged about a Twitter / Bing Maps mashup that I had created for tracking snowfall in the UK via the #uksnow twitter hashtag.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Jan 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight)
Silverlight 4 added TextTrimming="WordEllipsis", which trims the text that a TextBlock displays based on the available width. This blog post describes a simple method for automatically showing the full text as a tooltip whenever the text is trimmed. This is presented as an attached behaviour.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Jan 2011 · 4 min read
Tech
#ukfuel - a Twitter / Bing Maps Mashup for Tracking Fuel Prices
A few weeks ago I created a Silverlight version of the #uksnow Twitter mashup, which plots twitter users snow reports on a UK map.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Jan 2011 · 1 min read
Tech
#uksnow #silverlight The Movie! - Happy Christmas.
It's Christmas Eve and time for some fun! A few weeks back I published an article on Reactive Extensions where I created a Bing Maps / Twitter mashup that plotted the geolocation of #uksnow twitter tags.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Dec 2010 · 3 min read
Tech
A Simplified Grid Markup for Silverlight and WPF
The WPF / Silverlight syntax is long and cumbersome. This blog post describe a simple attached property that allows you to specify row and column widths / heights as a simple comma separated list, e.g. RowDefinitions="Auto,,3*,,,,2*"
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Dec 2010 · 5 min read
Tech
Visiblox Charts vs. amCharts Quick Charts
Around one week ago I published an article which compared the performance of Visibox charts to a few of its competitors.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Dec 2010 · 2 min read
Tech
Visiblox, Visifire, DynamicDataDisplay - Charting Performance Comparison
A few weeks ago I published a blog post which compared the performance of the Visiblox charts and the Silverlight Toolkit charts.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Dec 2010 · 10 min read
Tech
Silverlight 5 Adoption Predictions
The announced launch of Silverlight 5 has got the developer community all excited about improved media capabilities, MVVM support, printing and 3D, but how will Silverlight adoption evolve throughout 2011.
Colin Eberhardt · 6th  Dec 2010 · 1 min read
Tech
Exploring Reactive Extensions (Rx) through Twitter and Bing Maps Mashups
The following are a couple of examples to accompany my codeproject article on Reactive Extensions.
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  Dec 2010 · 1 min read
Tech
UKSnow Silverlight Twitter / Bing Maps mashup - Sourcecode available
I have published an article on codeproject "Exploring Reactive Extensions (Rx) through Twitter and Bing Maps Mashups" which includes the sourcecode for my uksnow mashup.
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  Dec 2010 · 1 min read
Tech
UKSnow Silverlight - An Rx powered Twitter, Bing Maps mashup.
A week ago a colleague of mine posted an interesting article on parallelism in .NET 4.0 which included a few different libraries for asynchronous / parallel processing.
Colin Eberhardt · 29th  Nov 2010 · 1 min read
Tech
Adding a Smoothed Line Series (Bézier curve) to a Visiblox Chart
In this blog post I look at how to add a new series type to the Visiblox charts by creating my own series type which renders a smoothed line using a Bézier curve.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Nov 2010 · 7 min read
Tech
Using a Grid as the Panel for an ItemsControl
In this blog post I look at how to use a Grid as the ItemsPanel for an ItemsControl, solving a few of the issues that crop up along the way.
Colin Eberhardt · 15th  Nov 2010 · 9 min read
Tech
Visiblox Charts vs. Silverlight Toolkit Charts - a test of Performance
This blog post compares the performance of the Visiblox and Silverlight Toolkit charts using a simple image processing tool to test and illustrate their differences in performance.
Colin Eberhardt · 8th  Nov 2010 · 10 min read
Tech
Does HTML5 mean the end is in sight for Silverlight?
This blog post looks at the fallout after last week's PDC conference where Microsoft were quoted as saying "our strategy on Silverlight has shifted", and the resulting fallout in the developer community.
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  Nov 2010 · 6 min read
Tech
Developing a Lookless Silverlight Gauge Control (part 2)
In a previous blog post I described the process of creating a lookless gauge control. I introduced the concept of an attached view model which separates view specific concepts from the control. In this post I demonstrate how this allows for great flexibility when re-templating the control.
Colin Eberhardt · 20th  Oct 2010 · 9 min read
Tech
Silverlight as an alternative to PowerPoint
Recently I gave a presentation on cross platform application development with Silverlight, WPF and WP7.
Colin Eberhardt · 13th  Oct 2010 · 6 min read
Tech
White Paper: Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone 7 cross platform development
Last week I gave a presentation at a joint Scott Logic / Microsoft event about how WPF and Silverlight are unifying the development platform for desktop, web and mobile. To accompany the talk I wrote a white paper which delves into this subject in a little more detail.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Oct 2010 · 1 min read
Resources
White Paper: Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone 7 cross platform development
Last week I gave a presentation at a joint Scott Logic / Microsoft event about how WPF and Silverlight are unifying the development platform for desktop, web and mobile.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Oct 2010 · 1 min read
Tech
XAML Finance
XAML finance.
Colin Eberhardt · 24th  Sep 2010 · 1 min read
Tech
Templates, or Why I love WPF (and Silverlight Too!)
This post compares the implementation of a simple ListBox layout with Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation. The use of Templates within WPF are a clear winner over the WinForms 'owner draw' route.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Sep 2010 · 6 min read
Tech
Developing a (very) Lookless Silverlight Radial Gauge Control
This blog post describes the development of a lookless radial gauge control. In this post I will explore the use of an attached view model in order to move view specific properties and logic out of the control code in order to give a truly lookless control.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Aug 2010 · 10 min read
Tech
Silverlight MultiBinding updated, adding support for ElementName and TwoWay binding
This blog post describes an update to the Silverlight 4 MultiBinding technique I blogged about a couple of months ago to add support for ElementName binding and TwoWay binding.
Colin Eberhardt · 12th  Aug 2010 · 7 min read
Tech
Exposing and Binding to a Silverlight ScrollViewer's Scrollbars
The Silverlight ScrollViewer exposes readonly properties which indicate the current vertical and horizontal scroll offset, and methods for setting the current offset.
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Jul 2010 · 5 min read
Tech
A Universal Value Converter for WPF
This post provides a simple IValueConverter implementation that makes use of the framework type converters in order to convert between a large range of source / target types. This converter can be used both within bindings and in code-behind to give more concise property setters.
Colin Eberhardt · 9th  Jul 2010 · 4 min read
Tech
Modal dialogs in cross-platform WPF/Silverlight applications
This blog post looks at the problem of showing modal dialog windows in applications that target both the Silverlight and WPF platforms. A solution is provided which allows modal dialogs to be written that work well for both technologies.
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Jun 2010 · 7 min read
Tech
Throttling Silverlight Mouse Events to Keep the UI Responsive
If your Silverlight application performs intensive updates to the UI during mouse events, the UI can freeze because it is invalidated before it has a chance to render.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Jun 2010 · 7 min read
Tech
Silverlight MultiBinding solution for Silverlight 4
In this post I describe an update to the Silverlight MultiBinding solution I presented last year. This update includes support for Silverlight 4, attached properties and multiple bindings on a single object.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  May 2010 · 1 min read
UX Design
Ineffective Data Visualisation ... and how to fix it
This blog post looks at a recently published set of charts in a UK newspaper and how they fail to help in the comprehension of the data which they visualise. I will also look at much more effective ways of displaying this same data.
Colin Eberhardt · 30th  Apr 2010 · 4 min read
Tech
Binding a Silverlight 3 DataGrid to dynamic data via IDictionary (Updated)
In this post I demonstrate a method for binding a Silverlight 3 DataGrid to dynamic data, i.e. data which does not have properties that are known at design time.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Mar 2010 · 5 min read
Tech
Linq to Visual Tree
This blog post demonstrates a Linq API which can be used to query the WPF / Silverlight Visual Tree.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Mar 2010 · 9 min read
Tech
Forcing Event Consumer Cleanup without Weak Events
This blog post describes a simple technique for ensuring that consumers of events unsubscribe their event handlers without the need for weak events.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Feb 2010 · 4 min read
Delivery
Presentation on Agile Development
Last week I gave a presentation on Agile Development for an event hosted by Codeworks and Sunderland Software City.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Jan 2010 · 4 min read
Tech
My Mix10k entry - Old Skool demo - plus a few tips
This blog post is about my entry to the Mix10k code competition, and old-skool demo, plus a few tips about how to keep you code size to below 10k.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Jan 2010 · 5 min read
Tech
Rippling Reflection Effect with Silverlight 3's WriteableBitmap
This blog post demonstrates how Silvelight 3's WriteableBitmap can be used to create a UserControl that renders the content of any other Framework Element as a reflection with an animated ripple effect.
Colin Eberhardt · 16th  Dec 2009 · 4 min read
Tech
Simple Logging Facade released on codeplex today
Today, Philipp Sumi and I and are proud to announce the release of SLF - the Simple Logging Facade.
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  Dec 2009 · 1 min read
Tech
Silverlight 4 beta released leaving Flex behind
This post looks at the speed of development of the two leading RIA frameworks, Silverlight and Flex, giving unequivocal proof that Silverlight is better than Flex ... !
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Nov 2009 · 1 min read
Tech
Helpful extension methods for Show / Hide animations in Silverlight
Today's blog post is a couple of very simple utility methods that I have found myself using again and again ...
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Sep 2009 · 3 min read
Tech
Declarative Dependency Property Definition with T4 + DTE
This blog post describes a technique for specifying WPF / Silverlight Dependency Properties declaritively via attributes
Colin Eberhardt · 18th  Aug 2009 · 7 min read
Tech
The mini-ViewModel pattern
The construction of a ViewModel is often seen as the standard technique for solving binding problems within WPF and Silverlight.
Colin Eberhardt · 7th  Aug 2009 · 7 min read
Tech
News on Silverlight adoption from the Silverlight 3 UK Launch
Yesterday myself and Gary Scott (our MD) went down to London for the Silverlight 3 UK launch event.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Jul 2009 · 2 min read
Tech
Silverlight v3 ClearType Font Rendering - A comparison
Text rendering has been a problem for both Silverlight and WPF for a while. This blog post looks at ClearType in Silverlight v3 and compares it to WPF and WinForms text rendering.
Colin Eberhardt · 14th  Jul 2009 · 1 min read
Tech
Silverlight 3 UK launch ... and the future of WPF?
A brief article on the launch of Silverlight 3 and why the interest in Silverlight is eclipsing that of WPF.
Colin Eberhardt · 9th  Jul 2009 · 3 min read
Tech
Silverlight MultiBindings, How to attached multiple bindings to a single property.
This blog posts describes a technique for associating multiple bindings with a single dependency property within Silverlight applications.
Colin Eberhardt · 25th  Jun 2009 · 6 min read
Tech
Exposing Bindings as Properties of a Control
I must admit that the title of this post is not entirely clear, however I couldn't find a way to sum up the content in one short sentence, so we'll dive straight into an example.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Jun 2009 · 5 min read
Tech
Dependency Property Performance and Lissajous Figures
A few night ago I was working on a Siverlight control which renders some quite complex Paths, the geometry of which is determined from a number of dependency properties.
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  Jun 2009 · 4 min read
Tech
Silverlight ClipToBounds - Can I Clip It?, Yes You Can!
With Silverlight, Panels do not clip their contents by default.
Colin Eberhardt · 12th  May 2009 · 3 min read
Tech
Community Credit Prize Winner
Last month was a busy one for me - I wrote quite a few blog posts, with the Silverlight ones proving very popular, and added new article posted to codeproject.
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  May 2009 · 1 min read
Tech
New codeproject article on WPF, Silverlight + T4 Templates
I have just finished a new article on CodeProject - Generate WPF and Silverlight Dependency Properties using T4 Templates
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Apr 2009 · 1 min read
Tech
Binding a Silverlight DataGrid to dynamic data Part 2 - editable data and INotifyPropertyChanged
In my previous blog post I described a method for solving the commonly faced problem of binding a Silverlight DataGrid to dynamic data, the form of which is not know at compile time.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Apr 2009 · 5 min read
Tech
Binding a Silverlight DataGrid to dynamic data via IDictionary
This post demonstrates a technique for binding a Silverlight DataGrid to dynamic data, the structure of which is not know at compile-time ...
Colin Eberhardt · 17th  Apr 2009 · 7 min read
Tech
Silverlight Dependency Property Code Generation
This blog details a technique for generating Silverlight dependency properties from an XML file via a T4 template.
Colin Eberhardt · 1st  Apr 2009 · 8 min read
Tech
Adding a Location Crosshair to Silverlight charts (again!)
Silverlight is moving fast. Really fast.
Colin Eberhardt · 23rd  Mar 2009 · 4 min read
Tech
Silverlight 3 is here! (but is it a flash killer yet?)
Less than 24 hours ago Microsoft's MIX09 conference kicked of in Las Vegas with Silverlight 3 taking centre stage.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Mar 2009 · 2 min read
Tech
Using CSS Selectors for Styling in WPF
When I first encountered WPF I was really impressed by its styling and templating features which are more powerful than anything else I had previously seen for desktop software development.
Colin Eberhardt · 11th  Mar 2009 · 6 min read
Tech
Implementing RelativeSource binding in Silverlight
In my previous post I demonstrated how an the WPF ElementName style binding can be emulated with Silverlight via an attached behaviour.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Feb 2009 · 6 min read
Tech
ElementName binding in Silverlight via Attached Behaviours
As a relative newcomer to Silverlight I was happily greeted by the warm feeling of familiarity when I started developing.
Colin Eberhardt · 22nd  Feb 2009 · 7 min read
Tech
Styling hard-to-reach elements in control templates with attached behaviours
OK, the title of this blog post is not very snappy, but it is not an easy problem to describe in a few short words.
Colin Eberhardt · 10th  Feb 2009 · 4 min read
Tech
Adding a Location Crosshair to Silverlight Charts
This blog post describes how to add a location crosshair to your Silverlight charts.
Colin Eberhardt · 4th  Feb 2009 · 5 min read
Tech
BindingGroups for Total View Validation
Over the weekend Sacha published a new article on codeproject, Total View Validation (does Sacha ever sleep?).
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Jan 2009 · 4 min read
Tech
WPF DataGrid - Committing changes cell-by-cell
In my recent codeproject article on the DataGrid I described a number of techniques for handling the updates to DataTables which are bound to the grid.
Colin Eberhardt · 21st  Jan 2009 · 2 min read
Tech
LayoutTransform vs. RenderTransform - What's the Difference?
I have answered a few forum posts about the WPF transforms recently, mostly regarding confusion between RenderTransform and LayoutTransform.
Colin Eberhardt · 19th  Dec 2008 · 1 min read
Tech
WPF DataGrid - detecting the column, cell and row that has been clicked
The WPF DataGrid is a very flexible tool, however in its current state certain simple tasks can prove to be rather tricky.
Colin Eberhardt · 2nd  Dec 2008 · 4 min read
Tech
Using BindingGroups for greater control over input validation
In a recent post on his blog Josh Smith described a technique for providing more meaningful error messages when the type conversion process fails within the binding framework.
Colin Eberhardt · 28th  Nov 2008 · 5 min read
Tech
Design time drag-and-drop binding is on its way
In my opinion the lack of decent design-time tool support is currently hampering the adoption of WPF, that and the relatively small number of controls available to the developer out-of-the-box.
Colin Eberhardt · 27th  Nov 2008 · 1 min read
Tech
About
Welcome to my blog, Colin Eberhardt's Adventures in WPF. This page gives a little background on myself and the blog.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Nov 2008 · 1 min read
Tech
Multiselect DataGrid with CheckBoxes
I am currently very interested in the new WPF DataGrid which was released on codeplex recently.
Colin Eberhardt · 26th  Nov 2008 · 2 min read

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A practitioner’s view of legacy migration
16 July 2020
The New Normal for your Desktop
24 June 2020
NE-RPC
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NE:Tech
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Techie Brekkie Bristol #14
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Cloudflare
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Cloud Breakfast Briefing
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React London – Bring Your Own Project
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Full Stack NYC
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FINOS Members Meeting
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The Summit for Asset Management
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Open Source Strategy Forum 2018
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WebAssembly and the Future of JavaScript
24 October 2018
FullStack 2018
12 July 2018
London Java Community
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FinJS – London
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20 March 2018
QCon London
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JSMonthly
27 February 2018
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FinJS – London
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Symphony Foundation Annual Member Meeting
21 June 2017
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Project Automation Series Webinar
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Morgan Stanley Tech Talk
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Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise
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Swift Summit
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Swift London Meetup
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Xamarin Webinar
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DIBI 2013
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HTML5 It Just Got Real
14 May 2013
Silverlight User Group
30 July 2011