Metro UIs for WPF / Silverlight

Just found an amazing looking gui framework for WPF:
nRoute

The WPF look and feel of the application sample is based of : http://www.nikosbaxevanis.com/bonus-bits/2010/12/building-a-metro-ui-with-wpf.html

Update: the best way with WPF 4 and above to make a custom window chrome would be undoubtedly the WindowChrome class that comes with the Ribbon library / WPF Shell integration library (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WPFShell) : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wpfsdk/archive/2010/08/25/experiments-with-windowchrome.aspx
Expect an update on that in the future :)

There is nothing much that can be said that isn't already present on their website. All I can do is make some application with it ... hmmmm.

Enjoy!

Blue is THE most appealing color for mass consumption

You have every right to disagree but statistics are against you:

Apple: soooo many examples ... Mail icon ... Safari icon ... Ipod interface ... Safari progress bar
Facebook. Its blue.
Twitter. Again blue.
Blogspot. The blogger backend interface and the blog title bar (where it says sign in) ... Guess what ... blue.
My towel. Hey I think it counts :)

I am glad i have always loved blue in my applications ... It is my favorite color you know ;)

A minor modification in the SQLite connection string. A major improvement in performance

If you use EF (entity framework 1) with SQLite you might know that it does not have bulk import support (this is because EF doesn't provide any bulk import API. 

So for quick code you end up with multiple import commands sent to the database in a loop. With synchronization enabled (sqlite flushes the data to the disk after every change) the performance is slow. With synchronization disabled it is BLAZING fast. Just be sure to flush the data at the end :) 

Just add:

synchronous=Off

to your connection string. For a comparison of the perforamance change you can look at : http://www.sqlite.org/speed.html 

SQLite 2.7.6:   13.061

SQLite 2.7.6 (nosync):   0.223

This is how much it feels in my code as well :) It now actually works faster than a portable untuned mysql (5) / postgresql (8.4) / firebird (2.2) 

I keep loving this database more and more :)

Found the .net settings here:

http://www.csharphacker.com/technicalblog/index.php/2009/07/02/sqlite-for-c-–-part-6-–-sqlite-connection-string-definitions/

Enjoy!