Here’s a new version of my Electric Editing plugin. Did you know the first version came out in April 2005? Unbelievable how time flies!

This version is built against DXCore 11.1.7. Here’s the download:

CR_ElectricEditing-1.2.6.1.zip (22654 bytes)

Of course, as ever, if you don’t know what Electric Editing is, please check out this page, the various linked blog posts and the comments for the background info!

Have fun!

I was trying to ask this question on Twitter, but that didn’t seem to work out well - many people use different approaches for something vaguely similar to what I’m asking, and it seems impossible to explain the details in 140 chars.

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Solution at the bottom now.

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I want my PowerPoint presentations that have slides with bullets to work in a particular fashion. Say I have three bullets:

• One
• Two
• Three

When the slide comes up first, I want it to appear showing these three bullets. Some people bring up their slides with no bullets at all, or with just the first one showing, but I don’t think that’s good. So, step 1: all bullets showing, default state.

Now I “forward” my deck (I use a remote for that, but whatever). I want the first bullet to be focused somehow, for instance by making it a different color:

• One
• Two
• Three

The next time I forward, I want the first item to “de-focus” and the next one to be focused:

• One
• Two
• Three

Finally, next forward:

• One
• Two
• Three

Now, this all seems like a really simple thing - but it quite hard to set up in PowerPoint. PowerPoint has clever features (summarized as “Text Animations", I believe) that you can apply to a TextBox, which animate each bullet on its own (with configurable paragraph levels). Cool. BUT - the animations you can apply are actually rather stupid.

For example, I can use the “Font Color” animation type to make the font red, and with Text Animations I only need to apply it once. So far, so good, but the focus is never automatically reversed. So the result will be this:

Step 1:

• One
• Two
• Three

Step 2:

• One
• Two
• Three

Step 3:

• One
• Two
• Three

I know I can get exactly what I want, by setting everything up manually. I can select each bullet in sequence and construct a sequence of animation steps:

1. Make bullet One red
2. On next click, make bullet One black again
3. At the same time, make bullet Two red
4. On the next click, make bullet Two black again
5. At the same time, make bullet Three red

Obviously, this is quite a pain to create and even worse to maintain. I’m confused - is there really no PowerPoint feature that can do this obvious thing automatically? Any hints?

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Okay, here’s the solution - found it myself, as usual just after posting this.

There’s an option on the Effect Options page in the settings for the animation, titled “After animation". Contrary to what you might expect, the setting made here (defaults to “Don’t dim” for added confusion) is not applied after the animation - instead it is applied before the next animation! Who would have thought! Oh well, I’m sure they’ll fix it in the next version

So, with the help of this setting I can do what I want (in my case I select the color Black to revert to), and it works automatically. Great - if only they didn’t hide it away like that!

Have fun, and thanks to everybody who tried to help!

I’m proud to have two separate announcements to make today!

There’s great news for all DevExpress DXperience ASP.NET users in the United States!

I’m teaming up with DevExpress for a new training class in Las Vegas, in October 2011. The content of the class will be the same as the Expert DXperience ASP.NET class previously announced here.

Follow this link for all the details about the Las Vegas event.

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The markets in Europe and the US are obviously different, and in recent months currency exchange rates have pushed things even further apart.

However, for the two Expert DXperience ASP.NET events, in Las Vegas and Germany, US and Europe, I’ve decided to bring prices as closely together as reasonably possible. So here you go:

Expert DXperience ASP.NET
Bad Ems, Germany
September 19-21 2011

Click this link to sign up for the European event!

I had a fantastic time at NDC 2011 - thanks to everybody who came to my talks, and to the organizers of course! Here are the downloads for the slides and samples I was using:

Functional Programming in C# (and if you liked this one, check out my book on the topic!) (I apologize for the shameless self-plug )

Functional Programming in F#

Have fun!

I have just made information available on my next DevExpress class: Expert DevExpress DXperience ASP.NET You can find all the details by following the link. The class is one day longer than my earlier ASP.NET classes, but there are some important differences - including these:

• It’s one day longer, for a total of three days

• I call it an “Expert” class, which means it’s meant to go to more depth. Any questions are welcome and will be discussed as much as time allows, plus more time can be spent on in-depth discussion of certain important features.

• Additional content will be included, perhaps most importantly the MVC Extensions that are now part of the DevExpress ASP.NET portfolio.

• Of course it is updated to the latest version of DevExpress tools, most likely 2011.1.

This is the only installment of a public DXperience ASP.NET class I’m planning to do in Europe in 2011. An early-bird period with an offer of €150 off the per-person price is beginning now, ending August 5. Again, for the details please see the main class info page as well as the sign-up page, or of course feel free to get back to me via email.

I’m looking forward to the class!