The GuruByte Blog

The Fix: Tell Visual Studio to ignore ValidationExceptions. Press cntrl-alt-E to open the Exceptions dialog. Click the Add button and select “Common Language Runtime Exceptions” From the Type dropdown. Enter “System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations.ValidationException” into the Name box and press ok. Find the line you just added in the Exceptions list and clear the User-unhandled checkbox. Now your exceptions will appear in your app as expected! Happy coding!

I get this error in my Silverlight projects occasionally and even though my projects still compile this error is annoying. I found a quick fix on the Silverlight forums which worked for me. Click on the xaml file causing the error and change the “Custom Tool” setting from MSBuild:MarkupCompilePass1 to MSBuild:CompileXaml and rebuild. The error should no longer appear. Remember to set the custom tool back to MSBuild:MarkupCompilePass1.

I have worked my way though most of this book and I have found it very helpful in getting started with Blend. In Foundation Expression Blend 3 with Silverlight, Victor Guidioso has assembled an excellent collection of examples that walk you through creating Silverlight applications from scratch using a combination of Blend and Visual Studio. This book is written in a style that emphasizes jumping right in and getting the job done. There are no gratuitous “video in a button” type examples here but examples based on the types of projects you are most likely to write. I found an error in the book which had a bad link for a source code download URL so I sent an email. To my surprise, not only did I get a reply email notifying me the link was fixed, Victor called me to let me know. You can’t ask for anything better than that! Anyway, I found this book extremely helpful in getting started writing Silverlight applications with Blend and I think you will too!