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GSearch is a set of class libraries for searching Google from .NET 3.5 and Silverlight 2 managed code. GSearch uses the Google RESTful webservice API to execute searches and receive results, and supports the following search types: blogs, books, images, locations, news, patents, video, and web.

GSearch consists of a core assembly, GSearch.Core.dll, that is approximately 21k in size, along with a set of eight related asemblies that implement the specific search types. These range in size from 9k to 15k, and since an application needs to reference and distribute just the assemblies for the search types it uses, the overhead for adding search to your application is fairly small.

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The SilverDraw library is an update to my ColorTools and GradientEditor projects. It primarily contains the color pickers and gradient editors from those two assemblies, and provides a place for me to hang other classes as I develop them. I produced this in response to a request for access to the GradientEditor application, which I was happy to consent to since I had meant to get to it at some point anyway.

What you get in SilverDraw are the ColorPicker and SimpleColorPicker controls, as well as a utility control for displaying sytem colors, and of course the GradientEditor control, which you can see in action here. Ultimately my plan for this assembly was to add complete support for drawing features, and I may still get to that at some point, but it’s pretty much been on hold for a year now for various reasons. In any case, I hope you find the controls in SilverDraw useful.

Downloads: SilverDraw Assemblies, SilverDraw Source

GMemory is a Google-based image search and match game that takes its inspiration from the game of Memory that I used to play with my kids when they were young. The Memory game consists of a number of wooden tiles with images on one side. Each distinct image appears twice in the tile set. The tiles are spread out face down, and the object is to match the pairs by turning over first one tile, and then another. If you match the tiles stay face up and you turn another. Otherwise they are turned face down again and play passes to the other player if there is one.

GMemory works the same way, except that it searches Google Images for the pictures to use, based on search criteria supplied by the player. It’s a simple game that gave me a chance to learn Silverlight and the Google RESTful search API. (For more on that topic see my GSearch post).

You can play the game here, or download the source and project files here.

TextTable is a C# class that makes it easy to define tabular data formats and render them in fixed-width text. It started out as the answer to an email reporting requirement, and evolved into something fairly flexible. Here’s a screenshot of the output from the example program included in the archive, in which several TextTables are used to create an invoice.

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AvalonLife is a pretty complete and full-featured implementation of John Conway’s Game of Life, which I created a couple of years ago as an experiment in WPF programming. I ended up writing a long feature on the creation of the program, which begins here. It has a ton of information on the background of the game, it’s rules, etc., as well as a pretty decent overview of WPF concepts.

The program doesn’t require any installation. Just unzip the package to a folder and run it. You can build and run your own models by clicking to turn cells on or off, or load and experiment with one of the many models included with the program. You can even drag and drop models from the Life Lexicon website and run those.

Downloads: AvalonLife, AvalonLife + Source