I might be the last person to find this out, I don't know - in that case, regard it as a note to self.

I was working with a Windows Forms project, using an ElementHost to embed a WPF control. I was trying to create a WPF UserControl and it just wasn't working, because Visual Studio didn't seem to build the control correctly. For instance, the InitializeComponent method call in the constructor of the UserControl resulted in an error message. I looked around for a while and was a bit confused about possible sources of the problem. Then I compared two project files and found out that the targets for WPF are simply not there when the project wasn't originally created to target WPF - kind of obvious once you know it, but then what isn't...

I edited the project file of the Windows Forms project to include this line:

<Import Project="$(MSBuildBinPath)\Microsoft.WinFX.targets" />

And voilá, suddenly everything builds just fine. Duh.

October 17th and 18th this year, the VBUG conference 2007 takes place at Microsoft Campus in Thames Valley Park in Reading. Here's the official info PDF about the conference. I'll be speaking there about LINQ as well as WPF, and if you're interested in Developer Express technology, this is the place to be because I'll have a booth there and I'll be ready to demonstrate all the products and answer all your questions. Looking forward to meeting you there!

Another new thing to mention: for Basta! conference Spring Edition 2008, I'm a member of the advisory board as well as the track chair for C#. Should be very interesting, not least because C# will play a very important role in that conference in February. A call for papers is already out - please feel free to contact me if you haven't received it but you think you should have or it would otherwise be interesting for you.

If you're in Germany, here's (hopefully) interesting news: starting from issue 11, my column "C# Corner" will be a regular feature in dot.net magazin. I'm looking forward to writing articles for that, on new and interesting things going on around the C# language, as well as best practices and whatever else comes to mind, really :-).

I just got back yesterday from the Basta! conference in Germany. It was a great event, very busy for me but also lots of fun. My sessions all went very well and I had a great time talking to people at the Developer Express booth. Thanks to everybody who stopped by the booth or came to one of my sessions!

Here's all the content from my sessions (if you attended Basta!, you should also receive a CD shortly with all the session slides and samples):

Power Workshop: .NET 3 - The Game Challenge (314896 bytes)

VB Day - Tipps und Tricks zum DataGridView (544838 bytes)

Dynamische Sprachen mit .NET (298443 bytes)

Bluffers' Guide to C# 3.0 (318172 bytes)

10 coole Sachen, die man mit C# 3.0 machen kann (344387 bytes)